Maps

What was there back then?
Saw dust on a concrete floor,
Work boots in the closet,
A rope tied to a maple tree,
And a pink corner-room.

And now, what is different?
The Golden Country shivers
In the cold light of morning,
And it's always moving ahead,
Moving parts - out of reach.

The City isn't perfect,
But its concrete is honest,
It won't change at night.
Here I have a name and a place-
There is a pattern to these pictures.

On a clear day (perfectly clear)
I can see the white sunken edge
of the lake - motionless, a cosmic mirror,
Behind an entire city folding in on itself.
While the Golden Country shivers, asleep.

And I see the concrete floor too,
The pink room, the saw dust,
Blood clinging to a school-yard fence-
They're all planned somewhere,
All laid out like school clothes.

What are these shapes? Tall bodies,
White silhouettes, only air - that's everything.
All that is real are these pictures,
The saw dust, the work boots, the concrete room,
Pictures that appear to me like specters I can touch.

On The Harmonium

My canceled flesh waits,
the harmonium warms up.
A crowd of memories in the
walls wait, they are the
ghost salon.

It plays so that the sleeping
country may awaken,
and find it has missed
a whole metamorphosis,
a dead lifetime.

Shed skin, dirty clothes
wriggled up on the floor-
the harmonium warms up,
our ghosts wait to hear
a song so blue.

The empty country sleeps,
asleep through winter,
and in spring,
she gathers Demeter
to play a song

on the harmonium.

Letters From The War: One Red Evening

Our war was different. There were no trenches dug
In bloody mud, no bombs, no barbed wire.
Alone, we'd wander the dirt roads to no avail,
Driven by distant sounds and a vauge sense
That we should continue.

One red evening we marched through a wrecked village
And for the first time in so long we found something.
There was a house - A tall wooden house
Alongside the battle field. Its windows were white and wide,
And its doors were open.

We stumbled in, exhausted and drawn to the light.
Fear mounting. Breaths uneven. Human contact,
For once, possible. But we encountered nothing.
The great hall was empty, marauded by the war.
There was only silence.

Upstairs, the light that from a far seemed God like
Was now thin and dim. Everything was illusory.
We stood at the window of the tallest peak
And stared into the red glare of dusk, alone.
There was only silence.

Looking out from the highest window,
I realized the whole world was looming
in the distance somewhere, unreachable to me,
That it would always appear to be out of reach.

We left the old empty house
and continued our wandering.
On again towards the war
That no one ever found.

Little Animals

Our voices lost between the night sounds,
We were shapeless then.
The no trespassing sign
Was emboldened by the moonlight.
We raced past it, over the wooden fence,
Howling like wild dogs, like young beasts:
We were something more than human,
Something easier.

From where did we find this courage,
This force that drove us on and on?
It filled us up, stretched its warmth all through us,
It made us pioneers. Something more than human.

We were drunk on time, on our age.
We had yet to experience the despair
That wisdom offers. We were free of
The obsessive need to be responsible,
Yet to develop the endless list
Of ready made answers, for all the
Unimportant questions facing the
Modern Adult. We were, for a moment, free.

The old man cut his way through the forest toward us,
A shot gun slung over his shoulder like a dead animal.
It was loaded. The Human Element.
Upon his warning shot we scattered
Like fearful birds into thick darkness, our territory.

So-To-Speak (With Conviction)

[Something about h1n1 and all our drug-away carefreeness - stagnancy, stasis, good health in the modern age.]

Today we will spend our time
In a line that curls around a city block,
Waiting for our vaccination.

Later, when we are no longer sick,
We will watch the tickers
With grim fascination.

Then we will resign and dissolve
Into our work, into the ghost town,
The passive nation.

And I will say to no one:
Give me one safe bet
And I’ll move the whole world.

In a graffitied window I’ll find
My reflection. Driving alone i listen
For the song in silent foothills.

But with no anchor
The sea is indiscernible madness,
Black billows, sound and evil.

So I surface and resurface,
Think, rethink, edit, revise,
Move towards nothing with conviction.

So we look to our amulets for safety:
Give us one fixed point,
And we’ll leverage the whole world.

Letters III: Dear beloved,

Sorry, but I couldn't afford to be seen as such,
A naked thought, a wish spoken out loud.

I didn't want be uncovered so easily,
Like a rhetorical question, barely heard.

Not when I could have been the world outside
Revealed in the windows of a moving train,

In light and movement i might have been infinite,
Attached to memory, undistinguished, something beautiful.

I wanted to appear slow, like headlights in dense fog,
Like yellow hands reaching down an open road,

An ethereal gesture, a ghost in the distance;
Alien and familiar - a paradox.

Transfigured, I'd have been formless,
Free from this skeletal wreck

Like smoke, an arid fog hovering overhead,
Adrift in the vacant city... belonging to the wind.

I am an unanswered question,
By you I am made real,

Held tight within your memory I will be
Timeless, beautiful, free from human pain.

Only as a thought can I become shapeless,
Bound only by your imagination.

In you I am repeated, reinvented, re-imagined,
Unrestrained, undistinguished, something beautiful.

Dear Photographic Memory,

Look, a house!
By the cemetery,
A town for a ghost,
A sister and me,
Where fallen leaves
Filled the cradle,

Where I'd say speak to me,
A language on your shoulder blades.
Whisper with your hands,
New words for old demands, designs to extract,
To obtain, and then destroy;
Something heartbreakingly beautiful.

Fading from the picture
In the folded newspaper,
Is a hand on the window
And footprints in sawdust,
And the scent of cherry blossom trees,
And a cradle mounted by fallen leaves.

When long ago
This image contained
A boy sinking sideways
Into the picture frame,
With wide green eyes
And a shape so deceiving,

And from a living sky,
A sunset retreating...
This scene was marked
But inevitably became lost
Among heirlooms and keepsakes,
Buried in the ground, lost,

While rain beat on the grate,
I stumbled upon this old box,
A dusty, wounded crate,
Drawn with spider webs and tape.
A part time archeologist,
Employed by my boyish wonder,
My pay checks signed by
My pension for wistful remembering.

I sat cross legged in the crawl space,
Down with the dirt and soot,
And the crackle of the fire place.
I picked over the blue prints;
The pictures and letters,
And I traced the history of a house
Erected by a cemetery.

Where I'd say Lie with me
A little longer, till day comes,
Demands that came from abandon,
Designs that came from adolescence,
I barely understood them myself.
I preferred the gray sky to a sunny day,
But didn't know why. I would stroll
Down the halls of the house like a ghost.
Like the many ghosts in the pictures,
Like the tired, used up men who built it.

I too feel this home is a labour,
Something understood through geography,
When I run my hands along the railings,
I'm touching memories inscribed in material,
I am privy to a story told in the knots and bricks
That appear like messages in invisible ink.

What's in me I wonder?
Am I made of similar things?
I am somehow lead to believe
That such mystery is impossible now,
It is saved for old, dead things,
Preserved for that rugged, ancient world.
Yet, when I touch the fireplace,
When I walk across the wood floors
I feel a part of a timeless sadness,
A slow, turning seriousness-
This old world reserve is an imprint,
like the knots in the railing,
or the spots of paints on the golden bricks,
I am marked by these ghosts.
I have grown with their grim knowledge.

When A Young Man Feels Old (1st Draft)

What does it mean for a young man to feel old?
When he stops dead on lonely streets and searches back,
always back, into his labyrinth past
and surfaces with countless, folded pictures,
Should he fear the passing of time?
What grave, unnatural thing is this,
When a young man feels old?

From a distilled day I plucked certain sounds;
a nervous cry in a subway tunnel;
the creaking of your floorboards,
and i became lost in them.
Young people should feel, should run,
Should have the privilege to be ignorant.

I remember, one gray October day,
speeding past the silent lake,
That when i looked out that way,
I felt infinity twist and break,
deep within me its wounded claw
dragged and then was lost,
To me and to the water lost.
And I became an open wound.

Now I walk under the weight of reflection,
Gripped, because everything is attached,
I am inadvertently focused on my past,
I am held at a distance from the moment.
And yes, there is poetry in my life,
but the most telling exchanges are wordless.

Child Round The Fire (a song)

They walked the oak lined roads
Stretched out ahead,
Alight with the moon
In a celestial bed,
And stopped by the burial
Arms outstretched,
They saw in earth and light
A rhythm etched

There was a spark
In the wood,
Amongst the trees,
Climbing down
There I stood
At its knees
And I was reborn;
A child round the fire

Appeared like rust, metal blades
Swinging high
Your brother’s saw in the glade,
A winding sigh,
And in her bed your mother’s curtain
blown by the wind
With the baby’s cries, the cedar’s smell,
A tree’s dead limb

There was a spark
In the wood,
Amongst the trees,
Climbing down
There I stood
At its knees
And I was reborn;
A child round the fire

Back To Quiet Streets

I climbed down. There was a sudden gust
of cold mountain air brushing the lip
of a mouth of metal, jagged teeth were clenched,
bared in the face of the open, natural world.
I almost slipped there, up among the clouds,
lost in the dividing line of diminishing shades,
where the sun behind the cliff makes the landscape
shrink and disappear.

A figure bound in clutter, evaporating into himself,
I was a man who'd lost the fire, and was searching for it
out there, in the rugged, wild frontier,
where only ghosts whisper at night
where only animals belong.

When I surfaced to the highways and buildings
I was, once again, a letter in a phrase,
a symbol woven in a tapestry,
trash along the parade route.
But, hidden within me was a natural rhythm,
a song beat into silent foothills,
I had kept a piece of that raging wonder,
so I could visit it alone, when ambling down quiet streets.
Traveling deeper, deeper, into myself.

Something Else

Remember me fondly,
a vision removing stasis
from an undistinguished day,
like sudden rain, or
some holy child memory
count me, infinite
like drops of rain
collecting on your
windowsill.

And I will be something unshaped
by your swinging blades,
those scythes cutting for time, i will be
unscathed, only an imprint,
a brand on your shoulder blade.
Remember me as in a dream,
shapeless and sedentary,
fixed within your haunting,
like fog in the morning,
sifting through cars and
stray lights

We know our limitations,
They're cast bodily within us,
Though I wish to be more;
in your photo album
I can be like water weaving
through an emerald embankment
I can be like a violent storm
or a warm breeze moving a blade of grass,
I will show up unannounced
and make room for myself in your dreams,
if only a little while.

Scavenger

From the pre dawn light I pulled:
reflections from the skyline,
the roads from the city,
and the colour pink from a budding sunrise.
And with these things I collected,
i built you a landscape - a place for us to live.

From the whispering of strangers I borrowed
words about love and wild hope,
and short, stuttered breaths that for me,
mean excitement. And with these tools,
I made a song for us to sing.

From the shifting hue of your eyes i gathered
Grey for the morning,
blue for the afternoon,
and navy that rests against
dying light.

With all these things, compiled last night,
I constructed a meandering dream
that I can wander into when I'm alone
and feel whole and rested and pure.

By Your Father's Pond

Sitting by your father's pond,
feeling the humid fog laying heavily on me,
I marveled at the expansive country
and waited for the rain.

I had heard music coming from a distant, hidden valley
that revealed a low, buried longing
with quiet, interrupted words. Not sung, but breathed out.

It was cultural participation,
having never existed in flesh, or been represented bodily.

Far away, they marched and sung their slow lament,
it was a sorrow that whined and twisted
deep within the bellies of all those within earshot,
and though I never saw their faces

I felt their expressions as if they were transposed on me.
With their immortal verse sinking deep within me,
I sang a song by your father's pond,
with no words; just stuttered, knowing breaths-
Just a sentiment, drifting in and out of consciousness-
coming in and out of the light-
interrupted by the humid fog laying heavily on us,
by your father's pond.

Someone Else's Dream

We stood at the brink
Where we saw clearly the ebb of age,
a wearing down, our hearts atrophied from inaction
when we we were prepared to face
all consuming, external evils, but we
were tragically unaware of the shapeless tormentors
patched within us.

I address you like a crowd of strangers,
withdrawn into their own commonplace diaries,
i pull my reluctant audience into my silent chaos
so that they can shed the bonds of their reserve,
their cunning mantra; no surprises, no sudden contact.
we can be one with the chorus-
moving with immense momentum, driving towards the edge,
racing ahead, we pick up our feet in varying intervals
forcing nature herself to revel in our spontaneity.
We could be animals.

When the passion is eroded by all our
many waves of socialization and polite despondence
we'll be like the crest of a magnificent wave,
resting before it inevitably breaks on a numberless
array of ancient rocks that line the shore.
So that, now, our youth appeares to me like a setting sun
and I watch it fade, and melt, and feel
our days and years rain down on me.

Someday, in the future, sparingly, every once-in-awhile,
i will catch a hybrid glimmer of my old spark,
and my life will seem like a book i read,
or a film i saw, like someone Else's dream.

The Park

The Park
On Saturday we painted the park.
For the sky we used a silent grey and a still blue,
And gold for the river,
And yellow for the leaves,
And red for the ancient wind.
And we crafted, from the whispering of strangers,
A harmony; a song for thieves to sing.

We drew the dead-men-walking,
With their skin tanned and leather and
They stood in the shade
With the running ink in the corners.
Our friends were drawn in the field,
Under the dying sunshine…
Against the coming night....

And the watery darkness moved
Like hands, or waves over the whole scene.
They all looked unaware of the enormity of their shadows

Do you remember why we left ourselves out?
With no colour or shape at all?
So that we could be saved for an echo in a silent ocean,
Or a blade of grass in a far away place,
Because only nothing is infinite.

When we were done, (with all the clouds strung
On invisible wires, and the trees stuck on invisible cork,)
We put the painting out in the rain and
Let the ink run down the street,
Until only the dead-leather-men were left,
Under the sinking sunshine…
Against the watery darkness…
We thought it important to teach infinity a lesson,
So that it would value, like we do,
The setting sun, and the rolling tide,
And all the wisdom gleamed from seeing one’s
Life move into the shade with the running ink.
We staked a claim to a small victory over time and space
When we painted the park, with characters so real,
And visions so beautiful. Only to let something larger than ourselves
Inadvertently destroy it.

Gospel (exerpts)

I
Leger De Main
I have watched the white lines, spread across
The grey morning. I watched them trapeze and
Mock gravity, urging us to clap and cheer.
I have been the white line,
Looking down at the vacant city,
Free from the stringencies of self-explanation.
I have been the celestial machine
That directs its semi-prophetic gazes
Down at the city, seemingly moved by
Sleight of hand.

I remember watching them throw
Their new amulets skyward, when they embraced
A new pagan religion – chocked full of numbers
And letters: Hieroglyphs for the Modern Holy Kingdom.
They allow us to map the death of the fisherman and
To synthesize his rebirth with stunning realism.
Now our waxed-wings can fly closer to the sun,
And we know our new god is not as
Vengeful as the last.

When He says the sun will rise,
As it has always risen before, we take
Him on his word. He puts us face to face
With the doom we’ve felt approaching
But dismisses our other primitive fears.
He stands with one hand conducting
Our voices together, and with the other He
Keeps our pervading self interests a bible’s width
From too much chaos.


III
Fever Dream
I’ve surrounded myself with alarms.
Dials and buzzers – computers and other
Loud distractions to redistribute my attention
Away from the debris on a coffee table,
Things I can use to keep myself
Fixed on something.

Last night I fever dreamt a whole life,
And the visions are falling into place:
The highway finds me,
And suddenly I’m passing welcome signs
That say hello as I say goodbye.
Unconsciously I crawl through the traffic,
Knowing in some dark recess that every street light
Stands in for a tragedy and a triumph - and every
Fenced in house is a cautionary tale of some sort.

Increasing speed, thinking in time and distances,
I watch the streetlights flicker and look ahead to the lake.
I follow the yellow lines till they bend and I crash into
The pre dawn light, my headlights skimming the grass before the ridge…
What would grow where my blood fell? What living thing
Would my sacrifice nourish? And in what roll would I be reborn into?
The windshield splinters into a thousand pieces.
They are blue and green and red.
I braced myself for the pressure and the endless light
And found it was less painful than I imagined.

Then it was Sunday, and I sat at a lonely pew,
Trying to close my mouth to keep from inhaling
All the bile and spit dripping from the pulpit, but it wouldn’t work.
I heard the words and I chanted the chorus,
I learnt the songs and loaded the guns anyway.
On the edge of past and present,
I was waiting for the wind to blow me in either direction.

Join in the Parade! They were moving in circles,
Chanting and jumping, free like beasts – suffering only
The trappings of flesh: This giant tribe, this massive
Cult. We love rituals and services and words written in blood.
Chanting: The Fire At Night – The Fire At Night!


We listen for a loud voice, and look to a strong hand
For a way to release all our biblical violence.
Then, when it’s all said and done,
We reject the guilt, blend into the whole, and secretly we keep chanting:
And our sermons become pagan chants that become abattoir noises
That become nothing.

V
Old Engravings
That little weeping maid Ophelia had noticed a nervous optimism
During the Depression;
Everyone was so happy to help… there was such high esteem for the Paying
Customer.

Those journeymen’s smiles were carved in wood, tanned and leather-
They looked to the abyss for fortune, drawing a number from a top hat.
She weeps for them too.

She felt the air get sticky when she watched the sickly, depraved funeral
Progression make its way to the family crypt. She wept for the lonely corpse,
Trapped in the hardened earth.

She feared for us little insects, scraping at the mouth of the hole,
Trying to get back from these cracks we’ve fallen into.
All she could do was drop coins in our eyes and pray.

I see little boys playing banker – their mothers and fathers have
Continued enthusiasm for the status quo, because self reflection is
Un-American.

Which of our labours is this I wonder? Surely now we regret
Starving this beast – now we look back at the fervor of our greed
And the efficiency of our lust with tired lament.

I turned on the TV to watch the eulogies and let their blue static
Wash over me – this is our trial by fire. This is our last supper-
You cannibal zealots – you herd agents.

The dead heat at night gave way to quiet stasis and, barely lucid,
She walked along the main drag. Her was hair wet, and her arms full - uttering a stringent
Prayer; goodnight and goodnight and goodnight etc.

In the first stages of sleep, while the streetlights sifted through the bars, I dreamt
She was in a capsized vessel, sinking down to the end of the earth. They saw the rogue-wave coming, and watched helplessly, paralyzed with beauty and terror.
All of them reclaimed by the old tiger god.