Tag Archives: poetry

ROUGH CUT…

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Fortunately my current videopoem project is going much more smoothly than the one depicted in this poem. Don’t hire crazy people, the moral of the story I guess. It can be hard to tell though; sociopaths are often charming and erudite.

ROUGH CUT

After enduring a gestation period
of eighteen months
and several bouts of incommunicado-ness
she dutifully reports to the clay eater’s

rat’s nest to defend her lump of art
before he nibbled away all the footage.
She sings his praises, pretending
the indiscriminate cravings

and grinding teeth do not exist,
do not wear her down.
Meth-heads don’t generate, they spin
scratched vinyl, shoot blankly,

regurgitate turbulence, gnaw and brew
dandelion wine because it’s free,
free as roadside blackberries
and meadows of psilocybin.

Pirate of his own ship-
bachelor pad bouncy house-
sleeping in a pocket on the floor,
close to the cache

when he isn’t busy
snipping, sniping.
Under the red toque
a mind’s eye so muddied

it can see nothing
move.
Bloodied images, frames, shots
blur unremittingly.

Recreate. Rework. Repeat.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
With no redress, no kind release,
she seriously considers murder.

A PIG WALKS INTO A BAR…a love story

poems,

I am swamped with the videopoem, in the throes of production and haven’t had the wherewithal to journal but what the hell, it’s National Poetry Month, so here you go.

A PIG WALKS INTO A BAR

For Sooke, AKA L112, killed killer whale
Naval exercises, Strait of Juan de Fuca, Feb, 2012

Need fuels catastrophe
But blowing stuff up is a hobby.
Just to see what happens.
In his spare time. For fun.

So, Pig wanders into a bar,
Mauling the first blonde he sees.
The one who’s heard it all.
Meek dick taker. Instant co-spiralee.

No-guff companion, quickly enamored
of her salient recycled mate.
Faithful ego extension, she waits
patiently, fourth in line.

It’s the reckless man
That underestimates her pale grip,
Courts the highly functioning
simpering angel face, dressed up

To impersonate a pure silk purse.
“Can I get a beer please?”
Here, have a cup of cyanide,”
Says the bartender, “it goes down quicker,

Delivers a merciful fate.”
That’s okay,” replies the pig.
“I’m the one that goes
Wee-wee-wee! all the way home.”


The accompanying image is from a Trojan condom commercial. Hardly an illumination of the poem but funny with a pertinent message; I couldn’t resist.

HANS

poems,

First new poem since I lost all my verse in a hard drive crash. This image is by my fabulous friend KAth Boake. It isn’t meant to illustrate the poem, I just like it and it’s new too.

HANS

Under the bridge a blanket rests,

Knave rising, tapping to a bush beat.

Static fussy, hearing reproach in birdsong,

Flak in the bending willows

He may see through concrete

But do not call him clairvoyant or infrared.

Merely tenacious, tenacious is he,

Tenacious as the wildlife

Lured

From the ribbon of road

To flail

Against the vortex of personality.

All furious downhill from here.

Bloodstream

Engulfing triumph

One drop at a time.

I paid the toll.

Where is my protection? Favor.

Boat. Deliverance. Red tulip.

Simmer you, still. Still no loosening

Of your grip around our lovely, long Jane Doe necks.

Confinement has not freed

Nor contemplation illumined.

Are we not macerated into mash,

Pulp enough for paper? Fiction. Fusion

Of forms so 21st century, so now,

So damned imperative.

We aren’t about to quit abeyance, balking,

Irrupting or being pricks. Hiding, stalking, preying

upon squirts. Being obsolete. Polysyllable.

Anemic. Let it leak. Glow. Gush around your finger

in the hole. All the time in the world.

HOW TO REMAIN

Journal, poems, ,

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.)

Remembering Riflemen Whilst Bushwhacking

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Good trick, eh? 11 • 11• 11. Felt like any other, though good news arrived to brighten the short, dark, cold November days. My videopoem Bushwhack is an official selection of the International Literary Film Festival, Director Lee Bob Black, “excited to be screening it along with many other brilliant films.”

I still have not had an opportunity to write an account of our recent Visible Verse Festival, swamped with novel queries, hustling, but did take time to honour our war dead on Rememberance Day. My maternal grandfather Rifleman Reginald Haley of Matapédia, Quebec was a member of the Royal Rifles taken prisoner by the Japanese Christmas Eve 1941, dying of dysentery a few awful years later. My friend author Dennis E. Bolen said it was a damn shame how the outfit had been abandoned by Churchill, tortured for years by the Imperial Japanese. Though we both have many dear Japanese friends, agree that their government’s refusal to apologize is deplorable. He recommended a book on the subject, War Without Mercy, which “attempts to explain the racism wherein the Japs considered North American Caucasians to be effete and we considered Asians to be sub-human. Bad combination.”Indeed. I recently read Michael Crummy’s The Wreckage, which vividly depicted the brutality of a Japanese POW camp and some people, usually Americans, claim that the Kamikaze ideology is what got them nuked. And there’s my hapless big Mick grandfather Reggie caught in the crossfire. Sadly the soldiers that survived received no hero’s welcome either. I regret never having had the privilege of knowing him, sounds like we would have got on. Hell, my mother could barely remember him, only eight years old when he died, leaving her, my grandmother Genora and four brothers and sisters bereft and impoverished. I can honestly say the tremendous loss of my grandfather has impacted our family to this day.

Rest in peace Reginald.

Post fest!

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And boy, are my brains tired! Recovering from Visible Verse Festival 2011, will return soon with an account. All reports so far state this was the best program yet. We did receive twice as many submissions so the (visible) word is slowly getting out, which benefits both artists and audiences.

In the meantime, check out my latest videopoem, Where Sins Are More Sinful, if you like, a serendipitous collaboration with the remarkable Belgian media artist Swoon Bildos, AKA Marc Neys, who submitted a swack of works. We selected four; On Edward Hopper’s Automat, What do animals dream?, Stockholm Syndrome and Sleepdancing (Giddoo). You can check also out the Moving Poems site while you’re there. Dave Bonta is a big booster of the genre and the festival. “Moving Poems is an on-going anthology of the best poetry videos from around the web, appearing at a rate of one every weekday most weeks.”

Black Hearts and Rough Cuts-“Pirate of his own Ship”

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Restless! Full moon? Well, here I sit, occupying my ass, my life, my Self, entitled to that much surely, with discussions of earth shattering events and the nature of heartache, having recently survived colliding with a particularly hard, cold, black heart. I honestly believe that cleaning up one’s own back yard is the first step toward redemption, and ultimately, peace. Peace of mind? My friend Kyle observed, “The only hearts that can’t get broken are hardened ones.” Told him I didn’t find much solace in that. Then my buddy Dennis (E. Bolen) suggested that, “the hardened hearts shatter. It’s the soft heart that survives.” Yeah, but sadly, “shattered” describes perfectly how I felt. At least, I’m starting to use past tense, move forward, as everyone insists I must. Sometimes I miss the intrepid young woman who never looked back. Oy. I’m just tired of losing. Loss. Loss as motif. *sigh* If only people would do what we want. Like bendable Barbies. And Kens. But though it hurts to hope, I still hope. Bend. Accept. Guess I am soft. And curious. Aroused. Unmuzzled. Voracious.

Seque! Cohort Peter Babiak is teaching my poem Voracious to his English students at Langara College. I recorded it and emailed an MP3 which he said they listened to no less than three times. He sent  a picture of the class hard at work, pouring over the text, one girl head in hands. I felt sorry for them. Christ, I’m glad I don’t have to analyze it, and in no way feel inclined to do so, even if I had the time.

Survived Thanksgiving too. Since I must cook every day, I largely ignored the holiday as I do all holidays, or at least the seemingly mandatory rituals. I do enjoy seeing friends and family. At least people get a little time off and my friend Julie gave me some amazing homemade pumpkin pie before we sat down together to play music. We used to have a duo called Bent Tail. We will recover our originals soon, sang Down In The Willow Garden, House of the Rising Sun, tried King of the Road but the high parts were too high. I used to play it when I was busking but we’re both a little rusty. You wouldn’t think it had high parts, listening to Roger Miller’s version. Who knew? Well, I did but I forgot.

Nailing down details for Visible Verse Festival! Check it out. 36 moving treatments of literature and artists Britt Hobart and Rich Ferguson flying in from California, Alexander Jorgensen from Pennsylvania. I am excited. Several friends have bemoaned the difficulty of process, the inherent challenges of producing a videopoem. I went through a painful experience with my directorial debut, Purple Lipstick, editor absconding with the raw footage for an interminable time. Pure torture. I couldn’t even think about this episode for years, let alone write about it. But, we persist. Hope. Exorcise? Bend, surely. In any case, please find the nightmare depicted thusly:

Rough Cut

After enduring a gestation period
of eighteen months
and several bouts of incommunicado-ness
she dutifully reports to the clay eater’s

rat’s nest to defend her lump of art,
before he nibbled away all the footage.
She sings his praises, pretending
the indiscriminate cravings

and grinding teeth do not exist,
do not wear her down.
Meth-heads don’t generate, they spin
scratched vinyl, shoot blankly,

regurgitate turbulence, gnaw and brew
dandelion wine because it’s free,
free as roadside blackberries
and meadows of psilocybin.

Pirate of his own ship-
bachelor pad bouncy house,
sleeping in a pocket on the floor,
close to the cache

when he isn’t busy
snipping, sniping.
Under the red toque
a mind’s eye so muddied

it can see nothing
move.
Bloodied images, frames, shots
blur unremittingly.

Recreate. Rework. Repeat.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
With no redress, no kind release,
she seriously considers murder.

This dream, this precious life

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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 →

(G)literati and Fighting the Good Fight

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Author Kevin Chong

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 →

THE LAST PING

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This poem reminds me of the Ben Folds/Joe Jackson/William Shatner piece, Common People. “Dance, drink, screw, ‘cos there’s nothin’ else to do!” Sometimes with fatal consequences.

The Last Ping

After the girl is gone,
long gone, out of character,
statistical, presumed dead,
the verifying department
hops to it, sniffs out
the revelers,
especially the life of the party,
his liquid engine of beer,
anyone with information,
to confirm names and addresses,
substantiate stories.
They watch your gestures.
Read your face.

Description: Hair Blonde,
Eye Color Blue, Height 5′ 1″,
Weight 101 lbs, phoenix tattoo
ascending from the right hip.
Bright, unintentional dropout,
inadvertently delinquent.
Boyfriend person of interest
according to the RCMP.
Always. He passes the flyer.
Her cell phone may be dead too,
last ping traced—pinpointed in fact—
to here. Right here.
Her last known location.
Right where we’re standing.
This town. Your pretty little town.

Fucken eh.
Check your property,
your shallow ditches,
So petite, she takes up little space
in one’s psyche,
turkey vultures leading us
not to her
body but to a deer carcass.
She was last seen
wearing a blue ski jacket,
white blouse, black jeans.
Parents pray
to repair the squabbles. Home.
Local kids clam up,
weighting the secret with smoke.

A teenaged girl can forget
she’s graduated
the fenced-in yards of childhood
to this vast plain
where condoms provide safety,
sympathy muttered. Crocodile.
She forgot
townies find transcendence in fury,
one vaguely recalling
Eminem shouts,
a catfight in the backyard.
She looked kinda posh,
smashed herd fumbling,
fawning, smooshing,
pushing, over, under.
Dancing, sending her sailing.