Inner Life

Mar 27 2011

99% of life

is showing up.

You can be a boring witless schlub,

just get there on time

and dress appropriately.

It’s this kind of loyalty

that gets their respect.

Especially when there’s heavy lifting

in-laws

or lots of paper work.

Marriage often goes like this,

your eye can wander

so long as the rest of you

stays put.

And on the job

look busy

and they’ll think you’re indispensable.

Except, one day, I left,

the kettle on

bills unpaid

a sink of dirty dishes.

I wonder if I’m missed;

or if I’d become invisible, over-exposed,

too familiar to notice.

Where does one go

on such an impetuous whim?

Out, into the world

or in?

A sheet of paper

thin, unwritten

infinitesimally folded?

Or a puff of smoke,

diffusing in air

until its molecules are found

everywhere on earth?

By now

the kettle’s boiled dry

the bills forgiven

the dishes done.

And my place has surely been filled

since I’ve been gone.

99%

is showing up.

And one-in-a-hundred

abscond.

Sorry. There's a technical glitch. I can't enter line breaks; it all comes out paragraph style. Not sure how to fix this. Have tried just about everything. /B ........ Inner Life Mar 27 2011 99% of life is showing up. You can be a boring witless shlub, just get there on time and dress appropriately. It’s this kind of loyalty that gets their respect. Especially when there’s heavy lifting in-laws or lots of paper work. Marriage often works like this, your eye can wander so long as the rest of you stays put. And on the job look busy and they’ll think you’re indispensable. Except, one day, I left, the kettle on bills unpaid a sink of dirty dishes. I wonder if I’m missed; or if I’d become invisible over-exposed, a little too familiar to notice. Where does one go on such an impetuous whim? Out, into the world or in? A sheet of paper thin, unwritten, infinitesimally folded? Or a puff of smoke, diffusing in air until its molecules can be found everywhere on earth? By now the kettle’s boiled dry the bills forgiven the dishes done. And my place has surely been filled since I’ve been gone. 99% is showing up. And one in a hundred abscond.

Something to Say
Mar 24 2011

In the main concourse
of Union Station
sound is unreliable.
On hard marble floors
and faux terrazzo.
Under the curve of the massive vault,
reflecting the clamour
like high beams concentrate light.
And soaking in
to the soft warm bodies
of passers-by,
in downy parkas, woollen mufflers
toting leather bags
stuffed shut.


The measured tone
of the loud speaker
cuts through the babble
echoes back.
You walk, erratically,
as disembodied voices
grab hold, let go.
You hear conversations bleed
into each other,
a snatch of this and that
as voices overlap
then cancel out.
You could talk to yourself
out loud,
and no one would even glance
your way.


What separates man
from the animals
is not tools, or foresight
or rites of passage
but that we always have something to say,
philosophy, gossip, chitchat
passing the time of day.
And sudden laughter
in giggles, guffaws, and gales.


All that talk, going on
in this vast transient place.
Except for you, when you stopped
in silence,
taking everything in, from all directions
trying to make some sense.


Like a highly sensitive antennae,
tuned taut enough to break.

There is implied violence here:  in hard words like “cut” and “disembodied” and “snatch” and “bleed” and “cancel out”.  As well as the final line -- “taut enough to break”. And there is also a paranoid sense of alienation, disembodiment, self-consciousness. So please don’t imagine this is in any way auto-biographical!

Not that I can be sure where it did come from. I do know that I passed by Union Station (in Toronto) shortly before this poem came out. And that I’ve been noticing more and more that when people are together, there  is this ongoing non-stop conversation about anything and everything. It’s amazing how we can always come up with something new to say, how our talk  seems inexhaustible.

The one thing here that may include a bit of me is the hyper-sensitivity of the main character. Which is very much me:  excessively sensitive to all modalities of sensation, including light, smell, sound, and even touch. Easily overwhelmed, in some environments. And I manage that by turning inward, or by putting up walls and baffles:  trying to construct for myself serene and controlled surroundings.

High-Water Mark
Mar 23 2011


A dark line on the wall,
4 ft up
smudged
above musty buckling sheetrock.
Black mould, blooming.
A mix of silt, and mud
and toxic sludge.
A sudden thaw
of river run-off,
the hundred year flood.
So an average life
and the odds aren’t as long as we thought.

After the water recedes
we can’t quite bring ourselves to clean it.

I remember looking down
the tunnel of stairway
into the concrete block basement,
braced against the doorframe
feeling tipsy
disbelief.
Saw the freezer bobbing past,
the flotsam and jetsam
of suburban rec rooms,
a bizarre aquarium
of mismatched chairs.
Or an abandoned indoor pool
full of cold dark water,
stinking of spring
and live electric current.

I am proud of that high-water mark,
that I survived calamity
that life went on.
And now I have a story to tell
even better, embellish,
buff the truth, as story-tellers do.
See, it’s true, I can say
triumphantly pointing.

We try to leave our mark
in the world,
imagining posterity
keeping track of things.

Like the marks on the wall
every birthday
we couldn’t bear painting over.
Straighten-up, butt flush
no slouching, or tip-toes.
Growth spurts, and rites of passage
in the old frame house
that eventually got sold
when the market sunk
the mortgage wouldn’t float.
“Underwater”, they called it,
liquidating assets.

Anyway, by now the kids are grown
long gone.
Sent-off
with tears, and waves
and bon voyage,
and hopes for a hundred years of grace
from every kind of flood.


Haven’t been writing well, or much. Actually, thought I was pretty much over it, time to move on to something else. So I’m grateful for this poem: that I think it’s pretty good; the way it struck me with sudden and irresistible inspiration.

This occurred while I was watching the first season of that terrific HBO series Treme (pronounced “tremmay”). It takes place 3 months after hurricane Katrina, and the subsequent flood of New Orleans. (What a great setting: by far the most idiosyncratic and exotic city in the United States. The music alone is worth the price of admission.) There were scenes of water damaged buildings, water paintings on the walls that were now just vague smudges of colour, the high-water marks of the flood. And it brought me back to my own flood: a story I’ve often told, but never really commemorated in poetry.

It was the expression “high-water mark” that really triggered me, especially its metaphorical power. I guess the imagery of marks on the wall that tracked our growth naturally followed. What I cannot explain is how the recent financial meltdown entered into this. But it worked out nicely: lots of good aquatic metaphors, for one!

What this poem is really about is perseverance, the fatalistic and consoling philosophy of “this too shall pass”. And also maybe the irony contained in “high-water mark”, the idea of unrealized potential: how things actually turn out, once our great aspirations collide with the cold hard real world outside our control. Or parenthood, when the high-water mark may well have been the first year of life: you do your best for 18 or 20 years, then let go, relinquishing them to their own follies and future lives.

Geometry Lessons
Mar 19 2011


I know the world
is not made
for justice.
I thought this, once
so much younger.
An adolescent, judging,
opening my eyes to unfairness
self-righteously outraged.
As if I was the first, for the first time ever.
Which is the self-centred belief
of every generation,
until the next
takes their place.

How evil goes unpunished,
while the humble are scorned
the deserving, unrewarded.
So there is no fearful symmetry
no entitlement, or justice.
But instead, a strict geometry
of disappointment.

Of corners cut, and angles played,
surface skimmed
the depths disdained.
Of downward spirals
that can’t be stopped,
vicious circles
in constricting knots.
Of the hard black box
that keeps us dark,
parallel lines
keeping us apart.
Of intersecting arcs
that give us hope,
aimless tangents
when we’re all alone.
And of love triangles

where no one wins,

the perfect set
for which we wish.
The matched pair

that's more the stuff of myth

than measurement.

In an ideal world
of perfect symmetry
it would all come out equal,
a balance equation
a zero-sum game.
Where you could not take
more than you give.
Where energy
is not destroyed or made
but simply shifts,
in the brief incandescence
of living.

But by now, in late middle age
I’m OK with this.
An indifferent universe
in which no one’s keeping score;
where virtue
is its own reward.

A Body at Rest
Mar 16 2011


The aftershock is never as strong.
Buildings sway, dishes rattle
time stops
again.
Except by now, your nerves are shot
which makes it seem worse,
the helpless held-breath waiting.

For the second time in your life
the earth moved.
Not just him, and you
but all you ever knew
forever uncertain.
Down to bedrock
you were counting on.

But what you forgot
is that the earth is always in motion,
the sun hurtling through heaven
the galaxy circling
the universe
bursting its bonds.
So it’s the sudden stop
that’s fatal,
everyone
flung off the green-and-blue planet
into the cold dark vacuum
of outer space.
A body in constant motion,
a body at rest.

The earth rose, the oceans dropped
and gravity changed
infinitesimally,
feeling the heaviness.
And now, on edge for the next aftershock
wondering
if that was The Big One.
And if not
when?

The Usual Traffic
Mar 12 2011


They called for heavy snow, gale force winds.
Enough to make the steep hill impassable,
wheels spinning, cars in the ditch.

March storms thrill me.
The adversity
that will melt within days,
like a simulated game
of winter.
The final chance
to be snow-stayed,
enclosed in its thick white walls,
that keep me in
keep the world away.

Tomorrow, the clocks will change.
There will be light
the days will seem longer,
and even summer
not that far off.
And winter, all the more precious
for its rarity.

The weatherman sounded gleeful, announcing this.
I suppose he feels useful
when there’s something to predict,
questions his existence
when it’s warm and clear.
An ice storm
and I imagine he’d be insufferable.

I awaken to barely an inch of snow,
a thin layer of gauze
re-dressing the wounded surface
already cratered and soiled by thaw.
Disappointed the world was not re-made.
A thick white blanket
soothing winter skin,
smoothing over
permanent scars.
Making it new, again.
And that the hill was no trouble at all,
the usual traffic
nothing cancelled, no classes called.

Of course, it’s March.
There will be snow.
The weatherman will find happiness.
And I will have my day,
when the roads are bad
the hill impassable
and a mountain of white
leaves the best laid plans
to wait.

Weather, or Not
Mar 6 2011


The road winds higher,
a steep relentless ascent
on switchbacks, hairpins
inch-from-the-edge-of-the-cliff
asphalt,
no passing, no shoulder
and guard-rails that would snap like twigs,
plummeting over
into oblivion.

Rising into cooler air
it goes from mist
to flurries
to fat wet flakes
furiously filling the world,
an impervious wall of white.
Just 20 minutes further
and the weather changes season.
Just a few miles more
and you find yourself transported
20 degrees
of latitude north.
You should have known, of course
not to count on weather reports.

No backward, or forward
and no standing still.
This is when the atheist finds God.
When it’s stunningly obvious
the woman beside you
is the love of your life,
and your search can finally stop.
And when you can no longer deny
the illusion of safety
that makes life bearable —
the climate-controlled car
the purring engine
4 snow clogged tires.
A few square inches
of rubber on the road
that make you feel you’re in control,
but are not.

And then the storm moves on
suddenly,
a pause in the panic
a shaft of light
the voice of God.
Or just the odds
in the random indifferent world
of non-believers.

So far, depending on the day
it’s been fog, and hail
and Biblical rain.
Perhaps, it’s that you tend to forget,
or never learn, from the start.
Or believe you’re blessed, exceptional.
Or, as you always suspected
not especially newsworthy,
and tragedy happens
to other people
somewhere else.

Which at least gets you out of bed, each morning.
Or lying there, bargaining
for a few minutes more.
Listening to the weather.
Learning to ignore it.

March Comes In . . .
Mar 3 2011


In March
the month of lions and lambs
and deadlines and tax
and I’m looking back, amazed
the New Year is already 3 months old;
the champagne flat
resolutions stale.
And idly wonder
if this snow is worth shovelling.
Will it melt in warm spring sun,
or will I spend weeks
mushing through fender-deep slush
re-frozen clumps
of ice?

The month of indecision
transition
submission
to the fickle whims
of Nature,
the lion and the lamb
somehow co-existing.
Although I suspect
the lamb doesn’t get much rest.

February gives permission
to eat and sleep —
sick days, and snow-stayed,
the vegetative state
of long cold nights.
And April, needless to say
is easy.

While March is a beautiful woman
with a caustic tongue,
a handsome lover
who cheats.
The month that would benefit most
from expensive therapy —
questioning its identity
wildly bipolar
sad from the absence of sun.

Spring will eventually come, of course.
In the meantime
I shovel some more,
a pride of hungry lions
roaring outside my door.


(As it is, I ended up shovelling!)

Playing God
Mar 1 2011


When we were kids
we would play God.
Kicking over ant-hills
just to see the hard black bodies
furiously scurry off,
soldiers hurrying nowhere
workers circling, confused.
Armageddon descending, undeserved
from unlaced high-tops
rubber boots.
The divine right of Queens
over-ruled.

Or torture frogs
which were way too easily caught,
tempting us, unfairly.
Dawdling birds, shot
with pearl-handled B-B’s, or badly winged,
rocks pelted at squirrels.

We were insolent masters
of the natural world,
strutting atop Creation.
This is the way of the world,
the powerless turning the tables
when given the chance,
victims blamed
our meagre mercies strained.

And like the deity, inscrutable,
going nameless
appearing unseen.
Because I think ants, confined to their tiny sphere
are utterly unable to grasp
an order of magnitude
so much greater.
So big, we became invisible.
Or perhaps
spread thin enough to vanish.

And now, all grown up
we condemn injustice
contend with moral subtleties.
And find ourselves wishing
that God would play God
a lot more often.

Or at least once
before we’re gone.
His terrible love.
His strict contingent mercy.