Memento Mori

Dec 27 2015

The car sat,

angled into the ditch

nose buried in snow.

Engine-block cold,

and frozen cabin

under tinted glass

obscuring what, we wondered?

Heads swivelling, eyes rapt

we whispered slowly past

on a fresh white covering,

tires muffled

the heater's steady hum.

Briefly flooded in light

the abandoned car sat lifeless,

as if left for winter

to bury her.

Tons of steel, immobilized,

200 horses

powerless.

Black ice?

A minor distraction?

Some ass-hole, drunk?

But always

there but for the grace of God

go us.

It's as if the adrenaline's still there,

the way ice-mist hovers

in freezing air;

hearts racing

and arms bracing

and time

taking its own.

While on the snowy road

the spinning skid persists;

asphalt, glistening black

slashed in virgin white.

Tomorrow, the sky will clear

the tow truck come,

heavy wheels crunching

back-up beeper thrumming,

a ruddy man, shovelling snow.

Then, the grappling hook will clang

stinking diesel grind

greasy winch whirr.

How quickly it turns,

the warm refuge of the car

to inanimate object.

Its headlights dark

like 2 dead eyes,

its cold steel

a lifeless body

wheeled out-of-sight.

Until ploughed-up snow, and gouged-out ruts

are all that remain.

In the dead of winter;

reminding us

of grace.

Pour

Dec 25 2015

If only

you could pour yourself into her;

clear into clear

up to the light.

But you are not liquid,

seeking your level, no matter how deep,

mixing

like water in wine.

Your pigment, billowing out,

your colours entwined.

And she is a vessel

whose shape is fixed,

and can hold

only so much.

Dive in

and let her contain you.

Or overflow, and run;

her tightly cupped hands

all she is able to give.

The conceit of romantic love is that we can give ourselves over, be fully known and understood. But even at our best -- exposed, surrendering, truthful -- we can never be fully known, and are always essentially alone. And if there must be some mystery, something inaccessible, this disillusion should not be taken as a marker of insincerity, a test of commitment, a failure of love.

I thought of how one pours oneself out, in the confessional intimacy of a deep relationship. And as soon as that verb came to mind, it became literal. This gave me the gift of the opening line; and from there, the poem pretty much wrote itself.

(The immediate inspiration for this poem was piece of brilliant TV: the 3rd episode of the 2nd season of The Affair. The only other time I remember yelling at the TV as if they could hear me (and with enough intensity to scare the dog!) was watching live sports.)

Longing

Dec 24 2015

The sort of word we never drop

into conversation.

Because who wants to sound like a snob

or drama-queen?

But poets

emboldened by distance, or self-importance

put them on the page

as if they had license to say

any kind of foolishness.

So we skirt their words

as if flirting with danger;

inaudibly pursing our lips

tongues clicking dryly.

Like the feeble-minded,

who talk to themselves

need help getting dressed.

Letting the words

linger in our heads,

circling back

and mouthing them again,

little echoes

rippling out.

But never out loud.

Words like longing

impostor

besot.

Wanting, wanting ...

... but not sure what

how much

or even when.

Lives spent

in triumph, and regret

inertia and intent,

hoping, at best

for meaning

                       …love

                                   …contentment.

Lives that come to a stop

instead of an ending.

When all that is left

is to soldier through indignity,

the galling dependence

of age.

The inchoate longing

we can't make sense of

can never share.

It presumes fulfilment, but is always there

dangling just beyond our grasp;

eyes, bright with desire

hands out-stretched.

I was reading an excerpt from Ian Brown's new book Sixty. Something he said stuck with me, and the poem somehow emerged. I think it was this passage that did it (the underlining is mine, because I think this was the part that twigged): "At sixty, after all, you are suddenly looking into the beginning of the end, the final frontier where you will either find the thing your heart has always sought, which you have never been able to name, or you won’t. And whether you find it or not—I suspect, or at least hope, that it doesn’t really matter, as long as you look hard—that will be your life. I keep trying to peer into the distance, to see how the story ends, how it stacks up, how I did as a human being, but of course you can’t know, no matter what the Freedom 105 people say. I suppose the only thing you can hope for is that it doesn’t get too lonely too fast."

We spend all our lives seeking something, but are never sure what. Contentment? ...meaning? ...immortality? Money? ...sensation? ...pride?

But whatever, it's never enough; we are always ruled by desire.

The poem began with the word "longing". And I realized that this is one of those "poetic"words: something you'd write, but would never say in everyday speech. I try not to use language like that in my poetry, afraid it will sound pretentious and appear inaccessible. So the poem opens with this idea. And then it ends in old age; still seeking completion, still pursuing the heart's desire that was never really understood in the first place.

Chapter One

Dec 21 2015

You know, when a book grabs you

and the pages flip past

and you sit, entranced,

even though your butt-cheek's asleep

and the coffee's cold

and dusk crept in,

leaving your head bowed

in a dark room

in a small pool

of warm incandescence.

The bad cop, interrogating you

an inch from your face.

And then, close to the end

when you force yourself to slow,

stretching it out

making it last.

Every word, lingered over,

every sentence

savoured.

Which is how I remember.

Beginning in a giddy blur.

Then the middle

absorbed in us.

Like careering down a mountainside

thrilling, but hard;

how you kept on surprising me,

and all those story-lines

leading who knows where?

And then, when I could see the end

and knew that was it.

But hoped for a twist, nevertheless;

an epilogue, or sequel

a clever new plot.

And that the smell of your skin

and the brush of your lips

on that last night in bed

was a Russian novel

that went on, and on.

Or at least until death

did us part.

The book remains,

face down

on the bedside table

open to chapter one.

Which is how memory works.

Whole new worlds

opening up,

and so many pages to turn.

In a year-end review called A Few of Our Favourite Things, the Globe and Mail's Marsha Lederman wrote this about Camilla Gibb's new memoir: This is Happy kept me reading through the night on a hot summer weekend, so reluctant was I to put this sorrowful page-turner down -- and then I forced myself to slow down, so reluctant was I to finish.

For some reason, this struck me as a good metaphor for the dynamics of a failed romantic relationship. The result was this poem.

I pretty much always start off trying to write a prose poem; and, almost always, fail utterly. I think that's where the very uncharacteristic You know comes from: I was trying to shoehorn myself into a casual, vernacular, loose style of speech. Even though the poem ended up like most of my others, I kept this in because its instant presumption of familiarity makes a good start. Not to mention that it fits the first stanza, which is kind of pulpy and fun.

The second stanza contains my homage to Lederman, stealing her exact phrasing. It's also unnecessarily wordy, which helps make the point: drawing it out, slowing things down.

The 3rd stanza makes the turn into metaphor. Which may sound forced; especially the us, immediately followed by the full stop of a period, that closes the fourth line. Could I have foreshadowed this better, instead of so abruptly springing it on the reader? After that, the speed of the opening is resumed, and then the thing concludes with hints of complexity and ambivalence. (Careen is more often used; but career is more accurate. The first refers to a sharp change in direction, being whip-sawed from side to side. While the latter refers to sheer speed. I like the unhinged head-long feeling it conveys. Because when you change direction, you lose energy and speed; and there is none of that here!)

I really like the Russian novel in the 4th stanza. (Because they are interminable, and complicated, and everyone tragically dies in the end!) And also the way the short "o" sound gives the stanza an aural through-line (epilogue/ plot/ novel/ on).

In the final stanza, the novel becomes the object instead of its contents. And lives on in the selective magic of memory: the warm glow of nostalgia; the what-ifs and could-have-beens. The image is also a double-edged sword. There is the treasuring of memory here. But there is also something passive-aggressively hostile; because when you leave it that way, you break a book's spine.

Between Four Walls

Dec 15 2015

Dishtowels, folded and pressed,

kneading the crease 
teeth-clenched.

Vacuuming frantically under the bed,

jabbing at dust-balls

like cornered rats.

And elbows greased, both hands,

sponging-down counters

with white-knuckle grips.

There is always cleaning.

You've ground your teeth to bits,

tantrumed

tossed glassware

talked it to death.

But now, next to godliness

exhausting yourself.

The serenity of order

between four walls,

the illusion of control.

Undone, and done again

day-after-day.

Is this a circle of hell, repeating itself?

Or ritual's calming Zen,

  ...virtuous

                   ...measurable

                                           ...fixed?

When things are falling apart, there is a temptation -- among some of us -- to restore order by cleaning. For one, unlike most things in life, cleaning provides a measurable outcome, something tangible and seen. You exorcise your demons, burn off that excess energy, accomplish something. Of course it's also evasion, which is a form of cowardice. And soon, it will need to be done again: this impermanence, disturbingly analogous to the back and forth of life.

On an episode of Masters of Sex I watched last night, Virginia Johnson's visiting mother turns to cleaning to vent her frustration. (In her case, this is a metaphor for her preoccupation with appearances, with what others think. And also passive aggressive: a way of trying to take charge of Virginia's life by taking charge of her house, as well as a non-verbal way of expressing her judgement about Virginia's choices in life.) Anyway, in one scene, she turns away as Virginia talks and stiffly folds a dishtowel. I could just picture her clenched teeth. And there is also the delightful futility of this: folding a dishtowel, of all things?!!

This is the image I begin with. I was about to clean up the kitchen, and it came to mind. Since I, too, find cleaning therapeutic, it seemed worth a poem.

I didn't want to refer to cleaning in the title. So Between Four Walls offers a certain misdirection. And I like the way it reinforces this illusion of control, which is a big appeal of compulsive cleaning: that is, a small contained fragment of the world that appears immune from disorder; that you make fully yours.

Evergreen

Dec 13 2015

Evergreens droop with snow,

slumping shoulders 

rounded spines.

They stand

dumbly, forbearing,

like a man

overloaded with life.

Back when,

needles were shed like thinning hair;

preparing for winter

resigned to loss.

To the invisibility

of middle age.

The first snow was heavy, wet,

soggy clumps

that stuck, and stayed.

Then light,

glittering like tinsel

on the festive tree.

Enough, and the old ones break.

While the young

shrug-off their loads;

in a minor breeze

springing-up, and shaking free

like soaking Labradors.

Elastic spruce, with supple ease

erect as sentinels.

But the demoralized man

does not snap back.

And will leave no trace;

interred

under a season of snow,

scoured smooth

by wind.

With any luck, they will find him in spring;

eyes staring blankly,

suit and tie

immaculate.

Except where the dogs

gnawed his frozen flesh.

Another "nature" poem. Another tree poem. Sigh ...

I was looking out the kitchen window, thinking of something to write. A magnificent spruce stared me in the face, drooping under thick clumps of fresh snow. They look beautiful this way, until they shake free under the first big wind, snapping-back.

Evolution has constructed them perfectly. Because evergreens are not ever-green; in preparation for snow, they drop substantial needles, which are as brown as fallen leaves. And their branches are beautifully engineered; slumping at the ideal angle to shed their load.

When the analogy of slumping shoulders came to me, it was probably inevitable I would go on to personify the trees. As well, I must have been influence by having just listened to Ian Brown -- a writer I greatly admire -- being interviewed about his new book Sixty, which is written as a journal of his 61st year. Well, I'm in my 61st year right now. And, of course, have the usual angst of advancing middle age. So the trees not only became men; they became defeated middle-aged men! The ending of the poem is far bleaker than anything to which I (or he) could (or would want to) lay claim. But as I repeatedly assert, these poems are not autobiography; they are acts of imagination and craft.

Offering

Dec 12 2015

She greeted me with bread and salt.

Grain, gleaned from the fields,

the rock we eat.

That seasons hunger, thickens blood.

That tearing-up, running-down

anoints the tongue.

That pours fire

into open cuts;

knife plunged, handle slapped.

That preserves food, yet corrupts drink,

turning sweet-water

to brackish brine.

And the yeasty earth of bread,

its density, crumble, sponge;

the comfort food

that leaves you filled.

Except with her, only thirstier,

mouth parched

voice rasped.

But this is how one welcomes guests;

lovers and friends

strangers from a distant land.

The precious grain,

bursting with seed, concealed germ.

The gritty crystal

its dull impurities.

She ushers you into her tent,

the warm light of flame

spilling out.

A fragrant bowl

with which to wash,

her offering

of bread and salt.

So you swallow hard.

And join with her

in giving thanks.

Bread and salt is a traditional greeting. (In fact, salt was so valuable in the ancient world -- before they discovered it could be cheaply mined, rather than evaporated from sea water -- that it forms the basis for "salary": in Rome, one could be paid in salt.) I'm picturing something like a Bedouin tent, or some arid steppe in Afghanistan: in either case, a culture steeped in a tradition of unreserved hospitality, of unquestioning welcome to the stranger.

The poem is full of contradiction and switch-backs. I want the reader to feel a bit disoriented, whip-sawed this way and that. Because I think that this complexity, inconsistency, and unknowability has a lot to do with the human condition. So I'm hoping the reader wonders, at the end, just who "she" is: servant? ...seer? ...lover? Poisoner, perhaps?

Nesting Dolls

Dec 10 2015

Closer and closer, the eye constricts.

As I peer down, layer-by-layer

  ...our house

                    ...our room

                                      ...our bed.

Cocooned

in that warm dark space,

burrowing-in

to thickly jumbled quilts.

Like lenses, clicking into place

my field of vision fills;

stop-by-stop, penetrating deeper.

Nature, repeating herself,

  ...organ

                  ...cell

                                 ...molecule

the smaller I get.

The chemistry of life

so compact, and complex,

fold together

like nesting dolls.

I am dreaming now;

slipping through the porous threads

wafting through walls.

Gravity is blind

distance times-out.

A blue-green pendant

against the black

steadily shrinking away;

an ecliptic of planets, a point of light

receding into space.

Where, skin-on-skin, we nest,

body heat, and stale air

a glowing blush of sweat.

Both contained

and infinite;

travelling together,

then off our separate ways.

The poem zooms in and out through many orders of magnitude. I want to convey both a sense of insignificance in a vast indifferent universe, and a sense of magnificence at the privilege of comprehending its extremes. We complacently occupy the plane of our existence as if in blinders, but are really like nesting dolls: there are layers within layers, and we are merely one.

I think two things brought this to mind. One was a recent New Yorker cartoon: two ants are in a field gazing up at the night sky, and one comments on how "it makes you realize how insignificant you really are". What a witty reproach to our lack of humility; our conceit that we, in the here and the now, are at the centre of the universe. The other was glancing out my picture window and seeing the dog-house nestled against the edge of the much larger shed: their roof-lines complimenting each other, their outer walls over-lapping. And as my mind's eye, from its vantage point high above, moved from there to me, I realized I was looking down at something analogous -- cells within cells, repeating themselves; a house, a room, a man, reclining in his chair. And so the poem begins: eye constricting, peering down layer by layer; and with each iteration, its field of vision is filled.

And like nesting dolls, as well, we get close but do not touch. Which is the other theme of the poem: the tension between solitude and togetherness; the impossibility of truly knowing another. I think this comes from the inner life of the narrator, who is in the almost hallucinogenic space of his own head. So as close as he is to his partner physically, he still remains essential inaccessible. We live in our heads; and no one else can ever get all the way in. Writers try, and good writing comes close. But even language at its best -- our only medium of abstract thought -- is imperfect.

In the end, after all that movement -- from the subatomic to outer space, from dreaming to wakefulness -- the poem returns to where it begins: in the same warm intimate space, the same cozy little cell. (And if you're really interested, Gravity is blind/ distance times-out is a reference to Einstein's general theory of relativity; except that here, in the dreamscape of the human imagination, there are no rules, and so the space-time continuum doesn't apply.)

Well Worked-In

Dec 8 2015

An old wicker basket.

Stiff caramel canes,

interwoven

in roughly even rows.

Her finger runs

along the hard finish,

its dark absorbent gloss

grudging give.

Bumps across

the weave and weft,

caresses

the braided rim.

How sturdy it is.

And the oval shape

a perfect fit,

snuggling into her tummy

against her hips.

The basket breathes, open to air,

flexes

but stiffly.

And on its deeply burnished handles

the residue of touch

is well worked-in,

dried sweat

and tiny flecks of skin.

Where once again

she hefts it up, descends the stairs.

On Monday morning, laundry overflows,

colours unsorted

socks unpaired.

And washday over

there's always more,

fluff, fold, stack

and back upstairs.

The ritual

of domestic chores,

the burden

of cleanliness.

How week after week

it wears on her.

But the comfort she gets,

the virtue of work.

I saw this photograph of a wicker casket (in a recent New Yorker - http://bit.ly/1MmttMk). Which is just how I'd like to be buried: in a wicker basket, or cardboard box, or simple shroud; with no chemicals, little ceremony, and easily returned to earth.

But I couldn't write another poem about death. It's getting far too morbid!

Fortunately, the picture also recalled my mother's old laundry basket: sturdy wicker, with a patina of age. So that's what the poem became: a pean to domestic chores; a lament at their endlessness.

.

Driving Into the Sun

Dec 5 2015

Driving into the sun

the windshield scatters light.

Each imperfection in glass

is illuminated,

scratched, chipped, smeared

where the wipers skipped,

tiny pits

refracting rainbows.

Squinting hard

I flip the visor, tighten my grip;

the white line

slipping invisibly by.

When into shadow, just as quick

the world comes clear,

the sheet of glass

immaterial.

Cutting into dusk

smooth as buffed and tapered steel.

Enclosing me

in its calm interior.

Bathed

in the dashboard glow

of cool blues, ghostly greens.

Asphalt, glistening black.

The fizz of rain, wipers slap,

radio

cooing jazz.

I like the movement between sight and sound.

I like the hermetic feel of the car's interior: the slick windshield and sound-deadening material; the slightly hypnotic feel.

If this were a movie, it would be a cliché: the usual downtown street after dark, with the rain-slick pavement reflecting the light of store-fronts and passing cars.

A close reading might raise the question of how the scene so suddenly -- and fortuitously -- turns from sun to rain. A sun shower? break in the weather? The setting sun, peeking out in the distance where the cloud doesn't quite meet the horizon? My answer is "poetic license". It's poetry, after all, so the normal rules of story-telling don't strictly apply. Very different from narrative, I'm more interested in imagery and sound than logic and plot.

Stagnant Front

Dec 1 2015

Snow softens,

sodden glops

heavily drop

through settled air.

Turning to hard rain.

The tipping point

between liquid and solid

that could go either way;

a tight-rope walker, teetering

halfway there.

Now a fine mist

that cuts to the quick

with cold.

Then sleet

with its shimmering sound

chilly edge.

Precipitation mixed

the weatherman said,

a stagnant front

of snow and ice

and frozen mud.

As if we were caught

in a war of attrition

between winter and fall;

hunkered down, freezing wet

in some miserable trench

in no-man’s land.

If only fall would withdraw

winter declare itself.

Like a high pressure system

that comes barrelling-in

on a brisk west wind,

winning the battle

of cold.

I've written far too many "weather poems", so wasn't thrilled to find myself writing another. And I've not only already used this martial metaphor for weather, but also the First World War imagery. But sometimes, a poem insists on being written a certain way, and I'm left simply taking dictation.