SINGLE-HANDED
Strays.
Yard rats we
Shared a railroad,
A yearning for
Burning corn,
A penchant for
Leaving one another
The dead
Of night. Tied
To the tracks.
Creosote smeared legs
Stand in a deep cove
Now, manning my boat.
Trip charted,
Lovers never quit
Beckoning, inserting
Keys, truncating
My swagger,
Saving me
From this lonely perch,
This vast wave.
LOVE HORMONE
Oxytocin starved astronomer
Mimics Orion, hunting lions,
Chasing skirt
Up the wrong leg.
The inability to secrete,
Let down, feel empathy;
Hence the psycho prevails,
Clashes resound.
Squelched desires jangle,
Jilted car commanding astronaut
Double parking
To pepper spray a rival,
While back on earth
Nothing blows up well
For the demolitionist,
Neither concrete monstrosity
Nor the ugliest obstacle.
Assaulted with meat,
Sun wooden, anger builds
Resolutely as prison tatts claiming flesh.
Some things never change.
INOPERATIVE
Let us lurk.
Spoof.
Touch wood.
Long overdue lark
Though rain must intervene,
Doctor numbness,
Float islands,
Drown ticks, butts.
Let us linger. Ponder.
Graph. So much garbage,
Deaf dog hearing malice,
Mercy always garbled,
Medicine arriving post dumpster.
Let us sit and watch. Chart
Possessed joker. Poison aim.
Undiagnosed. Diabolical.
Sick puppy. Whatever.
We are immune.
We must imagine
Fear, a wolf at the door
One prick at a time.
Let us stop. Think.
Beatings, shootings,
Storm of rattling sabers,
Healthy status quo,
My clubfeet halted.
Hacked.
Cured.
Beauty Sleeping
Household era.
Hidden decade.
Robust. Tidy.
Guarded souls.
Ripped. Rubbed.
Hard blessings.
Building bees.
Limbo libido.
Brutal apples.
Stove anchor.
Slices frenzied.
War simmering.
Cold lips.
Eyes flying open.
New poem. First draft. Practically a sea shanty; also brings to mind the Nick Cave song Thirsty Dog.
![](<img src = "http://funnypicturesimages.com/images/image/storm-at-sea-02.jpg" border="0" alt="Storm at Sea" title="Storm at Sea" /><br /><a href="http://funnypicturesimages.com/storm-at-sea.html">Storm at Sea</a> "storm-at-sea-02")
OUR THIRST
Towering, pensive Danny Boy.
Bloodied. Unbowed.
Lithe, simmering
Scar brandishing tomboy.
Preeminent cursers.
Junkyard dog hearts
Swapping reflections.
Damage.
Kiss us. We’re, you know,
Irish. Black Irish.
Fuck yeah. We invented melancholy,
Lap up sea squalls like puddle water,
Bite tragedy’s ass. Devour angst, roll over
Despair. Brood, pour, grapple, shove
The good fight and function Godammit,
Especially when called upon.
Big, deliberate, quixotic, plodding
Through calamity. Breathing little,
We flail against ourselves,
Rail, smack, filch one another’s bones,
Laughing in the morning.
Nothing sacred,
Catholic as we may be
Do not go down. Know Hell. Knees.
Swells. Rising again and again
Through the slag, flames,
Howling, baying,
Fumes. Bellowing waves.
Still hobbled by the hard drive crash but holding fast, the only way I know how to live. This week I battle the flu, a particularly nasty strain, which at its onset, made me feel certain I was dying. But the sun is shining and I’ve been thrown a few life lines. Pandora’s Collective will honour me with an award and I managed to write lyrics for my nephew, which made me very happy. As he pointed out, we’ve come full circle. An Alberta boy, K moved out to the coast a few years ago, playing bass in a band in Vancouver venues in and around my punk rock stomping grounds. Then he bought a nice guitar and started writing songs. He made my year asking me to collaborate. Bonus; I get my song writing chops back and we hang out together.
A poem, then. It seems apropos in light of Madonna’s Super Bowl performance, which I didn’t watch. Once viewed as a flash in the pan, I just like that she’s endured, is still out there being Madonna. So onward and upward, and fight back indeed.
How To Remain
How to remain
thin. Abstain. Abstain from eating
food. Calories kill
the fat rats first. If she could say No
and balance Belgian truffles on her tongue
briefly before spitting them out,
she might remain. Live
long. Enjoy fruition. By shunning urges,
she could linger—dainty as a colt’s
foot—deploying her charms raw,
dogtrotting a straddled chocolate Arabian
through mazes of lane. She could retire
to her body.
Alas, ankles thicken, braids recede,
the old mare conjured whenever she dare
look. Fight back. She may be forced to
cover the grey, yellow, but refuses to swallow
diet pills. Amphetamines in the olden days.
Still, dinner in the garbage rouses niggles
of guilt. She snuffles it out before Buddy can,
barfing rather than blowing
calories on fusty pizza
or molding, olive oil-sopped arugula.
(I am eating well; lots of chicken soup.)
Stormy weather and animal dreams. I was in a slaughterhouse, looking at a hole in the wall. A mouse hole? A hand reached out to stroke the snout of a hippo. To soothe it? Are they related to swine or do they just look like they are? Then many hands emerged from the hole, not exactly waving. Next night, with a guinea pig on my shoulder, I watched as a woman in a window frolicked with four little lap dogs, all different breeds, housed within a kind of four-plex cage. So I don’t know what’s up with that but perhaps such bizarreness was triggered by news of an incident in North Carolina, a sheriffs’ department using stray dogs for target practice, which made me think of the sled dogs that were euthanized in Whistler post-Olympics, after they lost their usefulness. Ah, human cruelty knows no bounds. We treat each other like garbage too.
Word on the Street Festival endured more weather challenges than usual, tents on Hamilton Street blown down by high winds. I was astounded, thought they’d cancelled or something. That would be a first. Then we endured a colossal downpour. An hour later, rainbows and sunshine, me cursing. I always travel with sunglasses and an umbrella but that morning couldn’t imagine the sun emerging. I should know better after all these years of Vancouver weather. Highlights, Elizabeth Bachinksy’s Event Magazine writers/readers Wayde Compton, Charles Demers and Amber Dawn. They’re celebrating 40 years, as is Talonbooks. As usual I ran into many fellow maniacs, happy to see the majority. (Some) people will treat you like garbage, if you let them. One perk of maturity; I know life is precious. Ditto time.
And we are not dogs. Dinner with precious friends. Does wine tastes better in a restaurant or is it just me I asked? Laughter. It’s just you Heather. True enough. It’s just me.
Recovering from an intense weekend of Visible Verse Festival programming. Whew! It really has grown, this festival and I was forced to make some very tough decisions. There were more than a few submissions in the Maybe pile that I wanted to screen but ran out of time. I announced the program Monday, making quite a few artists very happy in the process. Guess it’s all worth it.
I’m posting the essay I wrote for Sheri-D’s Spoken Word Workbook earlier this year. She’ll be in town to perform at the Vancouver International Writers Festival next month and will facilitate a master class in spoken word as well. I’ve been asked how collaborating in music and video affects my practice, thought this answered the question:
S I D E W A Y S
By Any Medium Necessary
Subversive, sub rosa—sideways—like a snake in the grass is often how an artist must move and technology can help us cover more ground. I address social issues in my work but I dread dogma as much as cliché. I believe that being an artist is a political statement.
Though founder of the Edgewise ElectroLit Centre, I am not a technocrat. I felt strongly it was Continue reading
Where’s the poem? Swamped this week screening submissions for Visible Verse Festival 2011 and up to my eyeballs in experimental film, which happens every year. Without being semantical, I have to say poetic is not the same as visible verse, or a video poem or a cine-poem, or whichever term you prefer. I think I just got semantical.
Still laughing and sharing photos from Kevin Chong’s book launch of new novel Beauty and Pity at Vancouver’s infamous Penthouse nightclub, the first and likely the last time I’ll ever set my ass down in there. I was surprised; the interior does not reflect the fading building facade. Neither did the carpet reek of stale beer, wall of framed 8×10 black and white celebrity headshots only one of its charms. Anyway, I’ve spent enough time in strip clubs. Bartending was the only job I could find in New York City when I resided, or rather survived a year there in the 80s. Man, it was a tough town, nothing like it is now, inhabitable. A friend of a friend got me a job at the Baby Doll, a topless bar on White Street, just down from the Mudd Club, where we used to convene after our shifts ended at 2 AM, or at the sushi bar imbibing hot sake, which goes down well in the company of bitterly cold Manhattanites. Club management kept trying to get me to strip too. I was quite miserable after my band broke up and told them, “No thanks, I don’t miss the stage that much.” I only had to watch the dancers—what was left of them—flaunt it, appalled by the Wall Street fat cat CEOs and bankers turned on by such pathetic junkies. No way I was going to wind up down there.
But back to Vancouver. I love book launches that are beyond readings. Kevin commissioned a book trailer, directed and produced by mutual friends Pam Bentley and Tara Flynn and it was hilarious. The book jacket states “Malcolm Kwan is a slacker twenty-something Asian-Canadian who is about to embark on a modeling career.” Kevin had Owen Kwong, a real male model, portray him. Later during the reading, host Charles Demers applied makeup to Kevin’s face, and not expertly, bestowing him with a magnificent unibrow. Kevin admirably kept reciting throughout the lipstick and purple wig application. What an event! And so glamorous. I’m enjoying the book immensely, can recommend it.
Attended a Continue reading
DAWNING CONSCIOUSNESS
She wakes grimly febrile,
desperately nostalgic
for dawdling in ditches
of tadpoles,
wagering glass
marbles in snow lanes,
sewing mini skirts
for her Barbie,
mashed potatoes,
fried baloney,
the gag reflex.
She shuts her eyes,
snubbing the town’s lens
zooming in on her culpability,
incensed at the sun’s insolence,
rising despite collisions,
the most recent death toll.
She groans, engulfed in tokens
of admirers, embattled by,
dreading the delirium of desire,
one resolutely phlegmatic
as the other effuses, plummets.
No incidental leaf
but a loose lunatic rook
lit mate old school canon
raining down like a medicine ball.
Men ostensibly,
on, off or side tracked
interpersonals interpenetrating
fictions, demands, tousles
delightfully incessant.
No accident this transport back
to forsaken tracks,
giant drainpipe beneath.
I engineered it.
I, of humble origin,
melancholy disposition
provide stimulation,
provoke the atmosphere,
orchestrate the robberies.
I, in the cliché of a crisp white shirt
and black hat
inflict pain, increase pressure,
draw hostility, reel in crisis
commonly referred to
as authentic experience.
I dare to sprawl,
invite expansion
as vital to my vitals
as blood on needlework.
Nursing a cold, listening to Kings of Leon sipping Stag Hollow Pinot Noir, ostensibly writing. Dinner by the boys tonight—some kind of pork and pineapple stir-fry—which means a late dinner. Trying to teach Junior life skills. He is very adept at plastering poppy seed bagels with peanut butter or pouring out a bowl of Cheerios but preparing a meal is a bit of a challenge. It is entirely within his abilities, I am certain, which is not to say that he is very motivated. He does like to eat however, so I hope it dawns on him some day soon that we won’t be around forever to feed him and that learning to cook is in his own best interests.
Despite this nasty virus, I am working on poems for our most unusual art book, mine and Tina’s. I must admit to no real method. The work is getting done but I never believe, no matter how many poems I’ve written—that I can do it again. It feels like a hat trick, and of course highly anxiety inducing but if I persist in muddling through, I succeed. Tina digs them and that is the most important thing at this point.
Dreamed I was in a car with Josef at the wheel, a bear in pursuit, it’s giant furious furry head at Josef’s window. Continue reading
