148. Mr. Canada

Image source:

http://blog.rogersbroadcasting.com/andycole/files/2009/10/oympic-shirt.jpg

I answer the
voice –
scarcely believing
such a beautiful
creature is
greeting me;

No, I am not
a student,
I answer
dismissively,
in a daze –
CANADA
sits comfortably on
his
crimson
chest

foolish, I do not realize
what I have done
until he
leaves –

Oh!
If only I was,

vulnerable and
innocent,
young and
fresh departed from a
foreign country;

Alas, I am
returning to a
homeland
where I
don’t belong

from roots
I do not quite
understand,

lost and
disillusioned.

If we could only return
to the fresh, enthused
wide-eyed
gaze of
youth,

if only we could
escape with a
handsome
stranger at a familiar
airport
and
rediscover joy
once more

147. Little Litany

Little unborn
fetus,
peeking through the
window of a
burrowed
egg:

Sympathetic arteries
trail to and
from your
thumping
body

So exposed, so
fragile: your heart is
beating; it is
a tiny
miracle –
a strange thing
to see such
inner workings
crudely
revealed

We are
injecting you with
strange
fluids,
failing to
explant
you

We have
mangled the
yolk and
you are blurred
in
the aftermath;

Upon rediscovery
you are
hovering,
heartbeats
faltering

I am so
sorry

I say, over and
over as
you fade, as your
heart
stills

Poor little
chicken embryo,
I am so
sorry;

We are discarding you into
a plastic
bucket
used for
cherry
picking some
summers
ago

I would like to
say a
prayer for your
unborn
soul

But I am not
religious, and we
are surrounded by
uncommon
melancholy

Or I am,
as the others leave and
discuss their
weekend plans

I am left,
devastated – for
what?

The sacrilege of a
stifled life,
dissected and
discarded

I am haunted,
and I am
so,
so
sorry.

146. 端午节

Triangles,
banana leaves
wrapped tight
around the
rice and
crunchy egg
yolk:

Drawing no initial parallels
with the
colouring books I
scribbled in as a
child
while
the teams of
rowers
plunged their oars
into the
dragon-mirrored
waters –

Ma
tells me
a poet once
drowned out of
the misery of
exile

and that villagers
filled the lake
with these
triangles
out of
sympathy –

the fish kept away
and the body was
saved;

And on this
strange-appointed
day
I ponder,
perhaps too
much of
such tales.

145. Shirley

R.I.P. Shirley Verrett
(May 31, 1931 – November 5, 2010)

Teetering in at
half-past-ten,
old Shirley
appears –

shopping bag draped over
one arm, pink jacket
dotted in faux
crystals:

rolling my eyes,
I grin over at
Mark at the
shelves,
stocking;

Shirley has caught
as victim some
helpless mother,
baby slung over her
front side:

she is being assaulted with
ornery small talk
interspersed
with
diva-tales –

I’m not quite sure
(half-the time)
if most of these are
true;

sometimes it all seems
so wonderful
I think she’s
senile;
or maybe lives like this
existed:

Carmen, Normas,
Ebolis; her latest
unruly
soprano –
some language I don’t
quite
understand,
standing here in my
green-and-white
grocer’s uniform

puzzled, and
perplexed.

144. In anticipation

Each time
with the same foolish
fervour:
each
time
greeted with the same
indifference.

Cold stares,
absences,
empty
promises:
turned away from
leaden doors, cold.

In vain have I pleaded,
begging for a single
word, a
single glance,
a fleeting
touch;

Life has no heroes
they say:
I thought would be
above
shadows

yet I am becoming one:
day by day,
colon by semicolon;
I am resigning myself,
resigning my life to
complacency,
acknowledging my ill
fortune:
we must be masochists,
the survivors; and
the survived,
the helpless
sadists.

143. The Sublime

From: Jan Axel's Blog

swarm of vultures,
high in the afternoon
sun;
slow and circular,
like a baby’s
mobile, suspended in morbid
listlessness above the
Florida
flats:

restless,
tension hovers in the
unoccupied molecules
buzzing between the
unfashionably active
fat mosquitoes;

boxed-up fish suppliers and
phony Chinese restaurants;
ghetto Black-men at the
7-11:
tank-top children in the
avenues and
dried-up yellowed
grass
roasting in the
sunburnt air.

142. Temporality

Like the morning dew,
here
and gone tomorrow:

3 flies lay,
spent
on the
plastic
desktop.

Having seen
them live and
breathe and munch on
dead skin cells;
buzzing now and again
on my face,

strange to see them
immobile,
almost sleeping or in
a trance-like state

It is bizarre,
sweeping them into the
garbage bin,
nestled among the
used tissues:

thinking,
this is what things
come to?

We try to live with a little
dignity, die
with a little
dignity.

Artistic visions,
dreams, and
loves:
sometimes it seems so
meaningless;

yet we carry on,
filling our lives with
things,
as if this will
somehow fill the
hollow restlessness,
or at least cover it,
like a soggy
glow-in-the-dark
bandaid

141. Glossolalia

Butterflies,
coy smiles:
I like to think
I am still naïve enough,
not yet jaded;

that I still believe
there is
love and beauty
in the world:

it is horrendous
thinking this is
all there is –

one needs a little
fantasy,
a diversion once
in a while

something to bring us
out of our
sullen moods,

to take us out of our
fatalistic musings,
and remind us

We are young,
there are moments ahead
and years behind us
already.

Let us laugh and
giggle,
foolish today,
not knowing if they
will ring again
tomorrow,
not knowing if we are
being altogether too
insincere;
for in this life,
we survive,
we enjoy.

140. Visiting the Fly

In the midst of the
height of spring
robins bob their
crimson heads across
the earth again:

In a moment of
inspiration,
I am perched myself
at the hot metallic
school desk,
placed so wondrous
in the centre of such
impossible
artistry;

Flies rest calmly
on the spots beside me;
it is not mine, but
theirs:
having no place in our
domain -
here, we are reunited,
all at peace with our
own
ephemerality –

I wonder on our
hypocrisy,
the strangeness of our
condition, our
species,
our cruelty in the midst of such
serene hospitality?

"Dual School Bench" (2002)

Verne Harrison

Donald Forster Sculpture Park,

Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Photo by the very talented Hanneorla

139. Grandma’s

Dust is everywhere;
so is dog hair, cat hair, granny hair.
Old monochromatic photographs,
black and white, rest beside giraffes;
dollar-store dolphins on the mantle
complete the odd ensemble.

Orotund, magnanimous reminders
of a foreign past of hers
finds stasis in this irony:
grandiose relics in harmony
with cheap trinkets,
purchased as tourists do from over-eager merchants.

As if to eradicate
longings for another place,
they are placed, souvenirs,
living with the present, ghosts, for fear
that memory is not enough, that
physical mementos are evermore more apt;

Rummaging through this
strange apartment, it is
odd to feel small
in the magnitude of
such frailty.

Everything here feels
disembodied and disconnected.
Stories of the “old country”
flit in and out of my
head as I finger aimlessly
though album leaves,
eyeing hopelessly
the digital clock on the
stainless steel
microwave.

I am almost powerless as I
realize I am in a shrine to
my past,
our past,
locked in a bygone
identity housed in
another which
makes even
less
sense.

I am trying to care, but
I am confused.

138. Coal Workers

Easy to
regard dirtied
blue-collar workers
with a wry
eye –
there is certainly
something
that makes us
special,
protected:

Clothed in warm
furs,
Tchaikovsky
flitting between our ears
via iPods,
iPads –

After a fall,
we pick ourselves
up late at night,
completely vulnerable;

we
realize:
this is life,
happy or
less so,
it carries on in its
drab
shades…

Forced to confront the
reality of our condition,
the frigid weather,
the boring country and its
resolute permanence

We look at ourselves
and the grey walls and
wonder, how much is
delusion?

How many escapist
stories have we told
ourselves to escape
these
cold winters,
dry summers?

The geese flee
and return
as we ponder these
Grecian thoughts,
not insensitive
nor enlightened;
but better off that
way,
perhaps.

137. Icarus

 

Curious,
the brown and grey
fruit fly
slips quickly
into view;

perched briefly
on the
tumbler’s
edge –

Plip!
Hops, indiscreetly
upon the
untouched
water:

Terror at being
trapped;
or to human
eyes
trying to remember
the breastroke,
quasi-comically:
limbs flailing as
wings begin to
sink;
milliseconds
before the struggle

ends.

An imperceptible
hush
and there is
Ophelia,
laid calmly to rest
in the still
liquid

Thomas did not need
write a mad
scene;
Shakespeare, a
play,
nor Berlioz, an
art song
or
Delaroche,
a painting;

In grim
fascination
have I surveyed
this picturesque
suicide,
having the power to
inform, yet
powerless
to save;
a strange sadism and an
equal
guilt:

136. Erlkönig

Obsession, lust, desire –
these are things permissible
in moments such as this:

Quiet on a snowy night,
young man hunched over,
brow wrinkled in concentration!

In a moment of oblivion,
single-minded focus,
he is unaware of my predation;

In such a moment,
brief and fortunate,
all is possible –

Knowing there’s no second
chance; no harm in being
sinful for the present:

A glance or five is
nothing; a thought or two
is nothing,

For he is leaning here,
his coatless self
upon my car

and I, his captor
have no reason to
expect or wish –

but one may dream
in an instant,
only to laugh later,

in
smiling
irony!

135. Blackbirds at Noon

Blackbirds at noon,
feeding on the lawn
and in the fields.

Stragglers rest
upon the prickly, bare
branches, swaying
in the biting breeze:

As one by one,
they join the others,
there is always the
one
resting
solitary
in the
trees

Explain to me,
how even among these
mundane
creatures
there are
poets, staring at the
mid-day
sun,
pondering the
infiniteness of
the world

Else,
it is my
ridiculous
anthropomorphic
personification,
projected upon
unassuming
subjects

He is simply tired
from a day’s
flight;
full from the
last meal;
He joins them,
all the same,
in due time.

And I am left here,
watching,
until by some fluke,
they all steal away,
black ribbons on a
stony sky

and I remain,
wondering if it is
foolish to be
too
pensive

134. Cherub

Dearest one:
blankets spread,
scattered
on the bed,
legs splayed
at an unnaturally
natural
angle;

How many years
it has been
since we were
both young,
carefree –

could I wish
you would retain
the happinesses
only youth
affords
and that life
will be
kind
to
you

Cheeks flushed from
a day of
activity,
breathing slow and
deep, contented
oxygen filling each
breath –

Exuberance,
tempered by the quiet night;
plush dog
in tow,
I am at once
completely at
one
yet an
intruder all the
same

In such
imperfect repose
do we find the sweetest
joys –

133. Skins of our fathers

After the rain,
the frightened insects
emerge,
surveying the damage,
knowing this battered land
is what remains
and what must be
lived through.

How many tears have irrigated
this unruly soil in
vain?

Suns will one day emerge,
but how, but
when?

In such darkness and
uncertainty, how
strong must one be,
to trust,
to hope!

132. Caro nome

Dearest name,

repeated fervently,
bringing me such
sudden joy, a
smile each time,
like a stolen, secret
prayer;

waiting by the forgotten
lanes for a single
glimpse

drawn by an unexplained
foolishness –

how do we forget
such a name,
and the hopes
that rested so
tenderly upon it?

There was no high
drama
where I was called to sacrifice
myself to a callous,
immobile
lover
but how strange it is
to feel
that I still love you,
though you so coldly
abandoned
me

I must forget,
erasing all the imagined
moments of exuberance,
retiring to a quiet, backward
silence,
reflecting

131. Bite-Size

A moment of indulgence;
for I have spilled my soda,
and you are searching for
napkins:

right pocket, left
pocket, jacket –
meanwhile, I have
tissues, tucked precisely
in my own
backpack

watching you struggle is
adorable, perplexing, as if
slight suffering
justifies
affection

What does it mean
to not expect,
and be surprised?
To not desire,
but to exist in
simple
moments?

In such a fleeting
moment
of unadulterated
complicity –
is this what
friends do,
kindness in discrete,
foldable portions,
unexpected bliss
never beyond
these
confined
means?
Must we demand
more?

130. Kindness

In your eyes,
I see only coldness;
in your smile
I feel only hardness

In my mind, I
see only joy, I
feel only warmth

Only after have I been
informed
plainly,
nonchalantly

that you had not cared,
I realize how foolish I was,
how naïve I had been again,
fooled to believe in
a world of
false illusions,
forced again to return to
a bleak and
unchanging reality.

Could I have believed
a mere mortal
could transport me out of
this misery, this
eternal, natural world?

All we have are empty trees,
empty skies,
empty oxygen
filled with our misguided
dreams, lofty
expectations –

Stripped down to molecules,
what are we searching for:
meaning from our
atomic structures?
How could beauty assuage
fears, solve
insecurities?

Is it really only
escapist tendencies,
wishing to pretend there is
something more, there is
meaning?

In vain, searching
the same cold irises for
truth

Beauty is not truth;
beauty forces us to
examine, to
struggle from, to accept
our condition,
our destiny:
our frailty
and our
mortality.

129. Un giro sol

Dawning on me

there are eyes staring back;
that what I thought was
vacant air is
occupied
by eyes and a
soul

Startled,
I am caught in a strange
reciprocity
and idle musing is
no more

Here
for only a slice of 5
minutes, it impossible to say
more, to do
more

Yet it is precisely
this impossibility of a
mutual stare,

resounding through the
lutes of centuries
that fill our minds with
perplexed obsession and
our hearts with
unexpected
longing

Dark stranger on a
spiralling bike:
snow-tipped tree leaves shift their
skirts
and uncommon beauty
glints in the
dappled light;

128. Surveillance

Somehow the night gives pause
to this commonplace
world

An empty library lit in the
late winter darkness
glows with a new
fervour

Devoid of blood,
do we finally see its
architecture, itself for
itself?

All this
wasted electricity, which could power
a small African
village
or whose space could
house a thousand
hobos

Such irony, such impossible
possibility, is this what
we observe –

plants in an oft-neglected
window,
the tantalizing glow of a
pop
machine?

In this silence,
I reclaim
sight

Never at home when others
occupy these walls,
it is in
contemplative silence
that these buildings
seem as lonely as I
am

Yet emptied of follies,
they are locked and cold; and I
must go
before the moon begins
suspecting

127. Sylvan Daphne

Farewell,
shadows

You brought wonderful darkness
to my life,
imbued it with
strange, special
meaning

Always searching,
we can never win when we
vie with shadows

All around me
are happy faces,
all smiling;
it is my birthday,
it is Black Friday,
they are smiling all the
time

Taking my place amongst
their artificial
joy,
I realize their artifice is false
and mine is
true

it is only I who is
pretending

My only regret being
why I could never
figure out why I was so
unhappy

Always questioning,
always wondering,
always
dreaming –

Perhaps there was only this
world,
these trees,
and that is what made me so
sad

In memory of Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide on Feburary 11, 1963 at about 4:30 AM.

126. Callas Cries

So tired –
it is past anyone’s
logical bedtime

The crowd is still
cheering
the cast and crew
all
jubilant

I am so tired

Tired of E-flats
and flute cadenzas and
blood-soaked
gowns

I am tired of this
migrant
life,
receptions,
recitals,
rehearsals,

(Hear how the
audience roars –)

I missed a word tonight
in the duet with
Edgardo,
ran out of breath in the
mad scene…

Audiences hear
what they want to
hear:
success is in their
eager
hands

Roars of lions
today
jeers and boos
tomorrow –
what is success?

I failed today,
I could have done
better;
I can always do
better –
is it all absolute?
Is it just
subjective?

125. Immolates

Adorned in sumptuous silk,
cherry red, as on the
wedding
day;
phoenixes climb,
iridescent gold
along the
hem

It is cold;
it is late autumn;
mourners line the burial ground

Wails adorn the
grey and limpid
sky

Flames touch;
fabric and skin
ablaze in
leaping
flames

there are screams
and there is
crackling

They are victims of an
undying love;
too young,
naïve,
I know
nothing

Only to obey in
servitude,
fed and clothed in the
finest lies

only to live
in eternal solitude,
bound to an old
man who
so loved me
that he could not bear
to leave me living

so carved the
two characters
of my
lowly position

in an unrelenting
damning document
of
sacrifice.

124. Infinite Possibility

Amidst these grayscale skeletons
the mysteries of life are
solvable

Entwining voices, produced of
searching fingers,
dancing, inextricable

Counterpoint and
imitation, sequences
up and
down;
modulations,
stretto,
Tierce de
Picardie

Predictable,
inexplicable!

A mortal
who,
inspired by some grand
device
set forth these
mystic harmonies and
countersubjects

How small we
are,
fumbling with a simple
fugue, one
of a
lethal oeuvre
none can quite
explain!