Dead Frog

July 28 2011

A dead frog

floats on its back,

slowly ripening.

The flaccid body

gently rocking

in the riffles that lap the shore.

The smooth curve

of its off-white belly,

which will turn bloated, and dark.

The pale underside

of its zigzag legs

with all the tension gone,

slack, in the water.

And two tiny arms

open wide,

as if signing their surrender.

I realize it was the dog,

as I had sat, lakeside

taking the sun.

She finds endless fascination

in frogs,

toys that smell of slime, and bugs

and move all by themselves.

She nuzzles forcefully

cajoling them to play.

Paws them underwater

too slow to get away.

And insistently probes,

with her exquisitely sensitive nose

soft sensuous muzzle.

She cannot recognize

a fellow creature’s suffering,

the inscrutable line

between life, and death.

And when all movement stopped, abandoned it,

in hot pursuit

of balls and sticks.

Because she sees no difference

between inanimate objects

and frogs,

no concept of death.

So, was I negligent to leave her unchecked,

a predator, by nature

born and bred?

She kills

by accident,

naively exploring her world.

Her feral cousin kills

for food,

a necessary end.

It’s we who kill for fun

belief

revenge  — 

holy wars

the ethnically cleansed.

I prodded the frog with a stick.

It did not respond.

Only the rocking,

long loose legs

scissoring

in the desultory waves

that tug, back and forth

at the shore.

Pretty much all that happened today:   the dog and I, swimming, hiking, chasing. The dead frog, of course.  And me, feeling guilty I let her have her way.

Of course, a simple poem like this can’t help but be hijacked – in my hands – into an anti-religious tirade. There are many evil reasons we kill each other. But this devout atheist predictably zeros in on holy wars and crusades!

Antebellum Machines

July 26 2011

Before Elisha Graves Otis

perfected the elevator

  —  safety-brake, counter-weight

a well-appointed box  — 

there were no skyscrapers, skylines,

no race to the top.

When air-conditioning, refrigeration

were not.

Before Clarence Birdseye’s frozen peas,

tender fruit, out of season.

We fanned ourselves

on wide airy verandas.

All summer long

all the windows unstuck, all the way up,

sleeping cool

in a blossom-scented breeze.

And the screen door’s wooden thud,

flapping open-and-shut

on weakly sprung hinges.

There was no inside/out.

A house was not a fortress,

drawbridge up, windows sealed

shades pulled tight as drums.

No need to adjust,

stepping outside

into a blast furnace

that has you hustling for cover

  —  a shuffling jog

too hot to run.

A young lady

in a cotton dress

on that broad shady veranda

is fanning herself.

She is slightly flushed.
Her skin glows,
lightly brushed
with perspiration,

her even tan

a tawny brown.

With the toasted scent

of salt and flesh

that seems only natural.

And the downy hair on her arms

her delicate neck

sun-bleached blonde.

Who brightly accepts

a long cool glass

of lemonade

or Coca Cola,

slick with condensation.

Smiling up

delighted.

Simple “machines”:  screen doors, verandas, fans.

A long tall glass.

A proper Victorian romance.

In other words, a poem that is shamelessly nostalgic for a world that probably never was.

I obviously have a thing for the southern belle.

And also the word “antebellum”. Which is literally “before the war”  —  US Civil War, that is. A word that has the plangent lightness of a bell; and a slightly arcane sound that evokes for me a simpler time.

Graffiti

July 24 2011

Drawing outside the lines.

Which sounds bad

with crayon, and colouring book.

Not that I’m any good

when there are no lines,

confined to stick-figures, finger-paint

rollers, and spray cans.

A grown man

unable to draw.

But then I saw a picture

of Jackson Pollock.

He was standing, as if about to leap

  —  a greyhound

straining its leash.

With the canvas

stretched out at his feet,

he used both hands

attacking the thing  — 

slash/spatter/jab,

daub/drizzle/dab.

Until at last

he’d created a masterpiece.

He ignored

the ruled borders

of the formal frame,

painting most of the floor

in the total absorption

of art.

He defied the lines of convention,

would not be contained

I would never presume

to understand colour, space, shape

like Jackson Pollock.

And I’m far too bourgeois

to spill paint

on expensive hardwood.

But I do draw outside the lines.

In part because

I’ve always felt marginal  —

out of sync

with the world,

out of time

with my contemporaries.

I am an anthropologist

from another planet,

nose pressed to the glass;

taking notes

shaking my head

with incredulity

and horror.

I’ve lived through much

of the 20th century,

said to have been

the most bloody on earth.

And now, in the 21st

things seem worse.

So I choose red.

The colour of war, and sex

the emergency exit

nailed shut.

With a heavy brush  —

a blunt instrument, laid on thick,

as if I could paint away

my hopelessness

in broad impervious strokes.

We are all bad

at staying inside the lines  —

ambition, and greed

overreach,

our hubris

is blinding.

And as for me

I’m still unable to draw.

So my stick figures

have become the alphabet,

my canvas

a blank white sheet.

I draw conclusions,

leave plenty of room

for readers

to colour-in their own.

Not fixed

to a gallery wall

I can go wherever you please,

memorized, plagiarized

recited.

So take your spray can

and take my words;

together, let us vandalize

the world.

Mosquitoes Emerge

July 23 2011

Mosquitoes emerge

a few minutes earlier

each night.

Promptly at dusk

on the cusp of darkness,

when a chill descends

and the cleansing wind

has died.

They are a hive of sound

an angry swarm,

fingernails, on a chalkboard.

So the world seems filled

with predatory insects,

heat-seeking, blood-thirsty bugs.

They play the odds,

overwhelming numbers

insuring

the lucky ones survive.

For most, though

life is a lottery ticket, lost

a miserly slot machine.

Only females bite;

the males are frail, and slight

  —  briefly used

then discarded.

She has navigated precisely

into my ear,

persecuting me

like a buzz-saw gone berserk.

And turned me into a fool,

slapping my head

hard.

Heavy with blood

she lumbers off,

loosing altitude

on a zigzag route

to her final destination.

Primed to reproduce

more annoying mosquitoes.

A vast and empty forest

full of famished bugs

desperate for a meal of blood;

which is highly unlikely

in a brief mosquito life.

Or at least until I appeared  —

the only warm-blooded mammal

for miles.

I wrote recently that I think I needed a break from poetry, since I feared I was just turning out different versions of the same poem. The ending here seems to confirm that:  as you may have noticed, I’ve plagiarized my recent hitch-hiking poem, ending this one with exactly the same line. Trouble is, it works so well here I can’t think of anything else!

On the other hand, I doubt many of my poems – if any at all  – will survive. So I suppose I might as well milk the “good” lines for all they’re worth!

Copy This Poem

Steal This Book*

July 21 2011

At the end of 7 years

every cell in my body

will have replaced itself.

So in a lifetime

I will die

10 times over,

and as many times

be reborn.

The simplest definition of life

is a germ of information,

able to protect itself

pass itself on.

All the complications of life

reduced

to reproduction

survival.

Like the common cold;

a strand of RNA, inviolable

in its simple protein coat.

So is a computer virus

alive?

And are we the monster

or Dr. Frankenstein?

And does consciousness arise

by accident

or is it inevitable,

given liquid water

a magnetic field

a reliable star?

As if sentient self-aware creatures

were pre-ordained

once life gets its start.

And are we privileged, more deserving

do we bask in the eye of God?

Or simply think

far too hard?

Errors accumulate

information degrades,

chemical bonds

eventually fray.

Either way, I will leave no children

behind.

The end of the line,

after millions of years

of survival.
So, have I betrayed my forbears?

Or saved myself

in words?

Information

in the form of a poem

some day overheard

recited

learned.

Because to be plagiarized

is a kind of immortality.

So let me be cribbed, infringed, pinched

lifted, pilfered, filched.

Or will I become unrecognizable,

garbled, hacked, disturbed?

Faithfully memorized,

or consigned to the trash

and burned?

*(My apologies to Abbie Hoffman for the title. Then again, I guess he could hardly complain when someone nicks a title like that!)

           

A rare philosophical poem – the sort of poem about which I’m not terribly enthusiastic. Because they can easily become pretentious, hard to read, no fun. So I’m pleased with this one. I touch briefly on a lot of very complicated and challenging ideas; but the poem moves along, it doesn’t become impersonal or academic, and there is some entertaining word play.

You can always tell at a glance it’s that sort of poem:  just by scanning it, and seeing all those question marks!

After all the metaphysics and big questions – the nature of life, and its likelihood; the singularity of consciousness; the conceit of human exceptionalism – the poem can be distilled down to an exploration of the artistic impulse:  are we fundamentally motivated by the desire to create something that will outlive us? Is art a hopeful – if delusional – means to immortality, to posterity? (Certainly not prosperity!) If all we are is information – an intact reproducible code – then perhaps this container of meat is superfluous, after all.

On the other hand, I am reminded of Woody Allen’s famous pronouncement:  “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve it by not dying”!

Running for Shelter

July 20 2011

It rode in from the south

bareback

in a black furious cloud,

foam-flecked, eyes red

flanks steaming sweat.

The sound was incredible,

like a thundering herd

of buffalo

before the explorers,

filling virgin prairie

shoulder to shoulder

raising dark dusty clouds.

Skittish beasts

whipped into stampede

by premonitions of rain

an ominous breeze,

the pressure of air

plummeting.

There had been lighting

the night before,

soundless flashes in a cloudless sky,

hundreds of miles

and closing.

Now, it was upon us

unstoppable,

with prophetic darkness

the wind, chaotic

heaven, bursting apart.

Running for shelter, hunkered down

we could only wait,

humbly submitting to fate.

We watched

in wonder and awe,

like the first Europeans

who crossed the continent

and felt

unbearably small.

At least until the bison were slaughtered

steel rails laid

straight lines

set down on maps.

But not rain, or thunder

or furious clouds,

with all their pitiless power.

I began this poem with the basic premise of taking shelter in a storm, and hoped to somehow end up exploring the notion of surrender:  how nature compels us to submit, to become fatalistic, in spite of our hubris and illusion of control – that is, in spite of the fallacy of modernity.

Inexplicably, a horse metaphor pushed its way in to the very 1st line, which soon became a stampede, and then jumped species to become a massive herd of buffalo (or, to be technically correct, “bison”):  dark beasts filling the land, just as angry clouds obscure the sky. Instead of thunder, a thundering herd.

Which turned out perfectly, because the image naturally led me back to the early days of exploration:  to the idea of conquest, of man vs. nature. In the poem – and in the end, of course – nature always triumphs. We submit.

Last Remains

July 19 2011

It was a feeble sun

orange, dull, smouldering

through the haze

that had drifted, and settled

windless.

The acrid smell of smoke

singed our nostrils

made sensitive eyes water,

the insensitive

blink hard.

The forest, on fire

somewhere north

not far.

In this heavy humid heat

where we move with weary slowness,

as if the air was viscous

our bodies spent,

I could imagine the end of times.

A planet, grown tired

of human interference.

And why does it bring to mind

the smell of human flesh

burning,

of ovens, stoked high

to incinerate

the evidence?

Which the good citizens

downwind

can’t miss,

averting their heads

and going about

their business.

Or bring to mind

the shattered neck

of the ornamental urn?

Sifting through the ash

to find

the scorched teeth, that always survive,

fragments of blackened bone.

The last remains

might smell the same

as this.

The expert on the radio says

the forest must burn

to renew itself.

As it has, so far

for as long as it’s existed.

The soil enriched.

Seeds, germinated by heat.

The badly charred limbs of trees

an unforgiving nursery.

Wild fire

closing-in on the city,

just over the horizon.

Power-lines

explode into flame

like matchsticks.

A chain reaction

counting-down.

A bad forest fire season: hot, humid, wind-driven, and lack of rain.

The sun looked that way this morning.

The smell of woodsmoke in the air -- here, on the edge of the city -- makes your nostrils flare. This is not the comforting aroma of a woodstove on a cold winter night. There is something unhealthy to it:  the greasy smell of something partially burned; the whiff of disease.

I have built my home in a forest that must inevitably burn. I'm not sure what to make of this. Denial? Magical thinking? Hubris?

I'm sorry for the morbid turn of mind. But the unavoidable feeling was of condemned people anxiously moving about in the early stages of apocalypse. Perhaps payback for the accumulated debt of environmental collapse; of our own folly; of our collective legacy of inhumanity.

Wave Theory

July 11 2011

I could be persuaded

the centre is here.

A flat earth

that ends

in a bottomless edge,

wooden ships

plummeting over.

The ocean, extending

as far as I can see,

the distant horizon

an unbroken line

of blue.

The sea, aquamarine,

sky, cerulean.

Waves roll in

incessantly,

a gently rhythm

that must have been set

by some geocentric metronome

ages ago.

Ticking over, and over

as if to console us.

They crest near shore

break, and surge

in a froth of surf,

then fizz, returning

draining hard-packed sand.

Where all phases of matter

co-exist   —

liquid, solid, gas,

wave, and particle.

Where land ends

and the ocean is spent,

here, at the outer margin.

Pure energy, moving through water

propagating across

an entire planet,

only to move the sea

a mere 6 feet,

darkening my footprints

wiping them clean.

It’s these waves

I cannot explain,

an endless procession

from the ends of the earth.

So the glassy calm

at sunset

seems transient, at best.

The waves, like a heartbeat

and this long …  held… breathe,

as if the earth was decompressing

re-setting itself.

The known world, transfixed.

The universe

still circling.

‘Coons and ‘Possums

July 17 2011

Heat makes us stupid.

We are a northern people,

hustling to get things done

in the short winter window

of light.

Invigorated by cold

resourceful in storms,

snow-stayed

but keeping cozy.

So now I understand

a southern drawl.

The lazy vowels

and idle pause,

long enough

to chew tobacco

and spit it out.

The overgrown lawn,

dotted with beaters

abandoned parts.

The shotgun, sawed-off

for pot-shots, at ‘coons and ‘possums,

off the porch

from a broken rocker,

boots propped on the rail.

I feel that way today

wilting in the heat,

back-bone wobbly

muscles gassed.

I try to think

but humidity has rotted my brain.

Something in the kitchen stinks

of advanced decomposition,

but I haven’t any interest

in sniffing it out.

We have always bragged

“you don’t need air-conditioning

up here”,

smug in our stoic frugality.

But nowadays

I’m having my doubts.

I apologize for the shameless stereotyping. On the other hand, the ludicrous hyperbole should make it clear to even the most politically correct that my tongue is firmly in my cheek.

Not a poem for the ages, I agree. But not too shabby, considering a bad case of incipient brain rot!! I’m especially proud to have shoe-horned in the rhyme of “frugality” with “nowadays”.

A “humidex” warning today. I guess this is the summer counterpart of “wind chill”. No fun, either way.