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.