poetry

       Fresh out of the icebox, this brain looks the wrong way from time to time, and misses the cat stepping by, Gerry on the screen laboring to tell the nuances his pink matter almost notices, he’s not my brother, not really my close friend, just my necessary neighbor on a bicycle going by like a whistle from the lips of someone I trust. He has a peculiar skeleton arranged his own way in the mind’s pasture. We were as they say “of an age” and so inter- twine somehow, though I wanted to work when he wanted to play. That long nose is in my life and in my writing and so is the Okanagan River. I sometimes get to the river when I am at work, the sun on my back not the ink in my pen. There was, when I was last in the Okanagan Valley, a cat with big paws in the neighborhood, I was told, fires I could see along the hillside, stunning heat from the sky, enough to thaw any brain.

 Being in a coma can play havoc with your sense of time. It can turn your eyes from brown to blue. It can grow hair on your belly, it can get you lost between bedroom and office. If you are to live in extra innings, you’ll have to watch the corners, step around bad things, ignore insults and welcome loving hands that sculpt you in your chair. Being refrigerated and put to sleep, dropping out of time, you have to save your humor and guard it, a precious trove to bring out as needed, white strips on the road flying beneath your vehicle, eat them up, wake to a busy underground world, where people in body bags keep passing by, tilted toward you know where. Where half the people in your life have gone, dissolving your sense of time, which was never supposed to have an end.

Imagine that — my last words might have been spoken to the dog, she who saved my life, it has been said, spoken with no thought of reply nor of understanding, a genial insult maybe, a philosophical conundrum posed aeons before any household pet ever turned an ear. In the ambulance I made no remark about trees nor how tired I was of them, and in the second ambulance our dog’s heart beat hard with terror.

She sits there on that high hill    just sits there and lets things pass through her until one snags and she fits it into the pattern of this fine mesh of    what    spirit?    But, ah, there’s a cowboy hat and a cherry bomb tattoo and it snags    and what she lets through may, 
I say, may be caught second time around like that oil pan off an old Hudson or that artificial leg    toward morning she’s collected some radio signals from a dead ship    and a janitor’s song and some folderol from a church picnic with iced tea fried chicken collards and a whole lot of stentorian god-speak with apple pie and ice cream.    I’ll be damned if all those things aren’t moving around in one another’s magnetic fields, some kind of counterpoint that happens each time she breathes    it’s a mobile only no wires    there’s a piece of mirror turning on a spider web and now she’s a    signal beacon...

A circle. What was needed was a circuit, and a good operating system. What’s within is without being seen to be so. Optical anomaly as unexceptional. Four left’s a square. One way turning system until it becomes its other way. A passive insistence on multiples until that divorces itself, becomes single. A single pitch made up of the sounds of multiples. Conduction, instrumental absence. Fundamentals establish separate planets. Similarity wars upon their lines, planes. Said well, here opens, his, sits at its bottom. The bodies. Spoke well, agreed in kind, general. But the way of its expression requires hurt and then, treatment of skin for leather clothes or whatever, it’s old, sometimes, often. Depending on the question, it can be the answer. One shouldn’t be proud to not have it. A knee, an elbow, three arms up. Then a last one, a fourth. Last and happiest, willing, fully skin end. The whey, foam, on the head of the safest society in hu...

                            look like birds. Scrawny winter   birds   balanced by   two   sarong                                                       tail   feathers.   Some   look west,                                         others north- east   toward   the                                             mountain.   Stiff in the   cold & remote.   They  haven’t  been   loved                                 ...

He slips on ice near a mailbox —  no gemsbok leaps across the road —  a singer tapped an eagle feather on his shoulders —  women washed indigo-dyed yarn in this river, but today gallium and germanium particles are washed downstream —  once they dynamited dikes to slow advancing troops —  picking psilocybin mushrooms and hearing cowbells in the mist —  as a child, he was tied to a sheep and escaped marauding soldiers —  an apple blossom opens to five petals —  as he hikes up a switchback, he remembers undressing her —  from the train window, he saw they were on ladders cutting fruit off cacti —  in the desert, a crater of radioactive glass —  assembling shards, he starts to repair a gray bowl with gold lacquer —  they ate psilocybin mushrooms, gazed at the pond, undressed —  hunting a turkey in the brush, he stops —  from the ponderosa pines: whoo-ah, whoo whoo whoo —

In Shia Islam, the Twelfth Imam is said to have disappeared in the ninth century. It’s believed his return at the end of the world will deliver order from the chaos. no one ever brings up the wages of virtue        the cost of avoiding that which you were built to do        some men actually love their enemies        remind me to tell you about them when you arrive and when will that be again?        I’ve already spiced the duck and hidden the sherry        even grain has genes that say drink this or bend there so much like our own        I am rubbing yogurt through my hair getting ready for your return        I read old mail from my bababazorg the Farsi like tea leaves or exotic blades        years ago he melted into the tautness of earth like a pad of butter on turtle meat       ...

And thou art dead, as young and fair  As aught of mortal birth;  And form so soft, and charms so rare,  Too soon return'd to Earth!  Though Earth receiv'd them in her bed,  And o'er the spot the crowd may tread  In carelessness or mirth,  There is an eye which could not brook  A moment on that grave to look.  I will not ask where thou liest low,  Nor gaze upon the spot;  There flowers or weeds at will may grow,  So I behold them not:  It is enough for me to prove  That what I lov'd, and long must love,  Like common earth can rot;  To me there needs no stone to tell,  'T is Nothing that I lov'd so well.  Yet did I love thee to the last  As fervently as thou,  Who didst not change through all the past,  And canst not alter now.  The love where Death has set his seal,  Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,  Nor falsehood disavow:  And, wh...

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;  Ae fareweel, and then forever!  Deep in heart-wrung tears   I'll pledge thee,  Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.  Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,  While the star of hope she leaves him?  Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me;  Dark despair around benights me.  I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy,  Naething could resist my Nancy;  But to see her was to love her;  Love but her, and love forever.  Had we never lov'd sae kindly,  Had we never lov'd sae blindly,  Never met—or never parted—  We had ne'er been broken-hearted.  Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest!  Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest!  Thine be ilka joy and treasure,  Peace. enjoyment, love, and pleasure!  Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;  Ae fareweel, alas, forever!  Deep in heart-wrung tears   I'll pledge thee,...

Was it like lifting a veil And was the grass treacherous, the green grass Did you think of your own mother Was it like a virus Did the software flicker And was this the beginning Was it like that Was there gas station food and was it a long trip And is there sun there or drones or punishment or growth Was it a blackout And did you still create me And what was I like on the first day of my life Were we two from the start And was our time an entrance or an ending Did we stand in the heated room Did we look at the painting Did the snow appear cold Were our feet red with it, with the wet snow And then what were our names Did you love me or did I misunderstand Is it terrible Do you intend to come back Do you hear the world’s keening Will you stay the night

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth. Her vigor flows like tides into my blood, Giving me strength erect against her hate, Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood. Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state, I stand within her walls with not a shred Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer. Darkly I gaze into the days ahead, And see her might and granite wonders there, Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand, Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

Bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root,       Cocoa in pods and alligator pears, And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit,       Fit for the highest prize at parish fairs, Set in the window, bringing memories       Of fruit-trees laden by low-singing rills, And dewy dawns, and mystical blue skies       In benediction over nun-like hills. My eyes grew dim, and I could no more gaze;       A wave of longing through my body swept, And, hungry for the old, familiar ways,       I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.

To clasp you now and feel your head close-pressed, Scented and warm against my beating breast; To whisper soft and quivering your name, And drink the passion burning in your frame; To lie at full length, taut, with cheek to cheek, And tease your mouth with kisses till you speak Love words, mad words, dream words, sweet senseless words, Melodious like notes of mating birds; To hear you ask if I shall love always, And myself answer: Till the end of days; To feel your easeful sigh of happiness When on your trembling lips I murmur: Yes; It is so sweet. We know it is not true. What matters it? The night must shed her dew. We know it is not true, but it is sweet— The poem with this music is complete. Claude McKay, "Romance" from Harlem Shadows: The Poems of Claude McKay (New York: Harcourt, 1922). Courtesy of the Literary Representative for the Works of Claude McKay, Schombourg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox...

If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursèd lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!