(a selection herewith…)
The Living Poem
You make it up
It starts like this:
an empty room
and paper to write on
Quill in hand
the peacock’s feather
an eye upon the world
You are the optical
On your bones
are fleshed the words
of your very seeing
Vision, your deliverance
crafts the songs
you sing to life
You make it thus:
the winds on reasoned sands
gulls wheeling above
the waters of mind:
mermaids, coves
and drowning men
It starts with the ebb
of experience
that change in season
Works of hope
galleon landfalls
of imagination
It starts with you
and the tides
of desire
It starts with you
on quiet shorelines
alone and looking out to sea
alone and looking inward
…………………………………….
Morning devotion
There’s a lot
to be said
for clarity
especially at
2. 3 &
4 a.m.
In order to in-
crease perspective
u need
many people asleep
Mental dis-
engagement
& openness to
suggestion
don’t hurt either
So what can
u see or
figure out?
The future
past & present
for starters
Overall
u must be
ready to learn
to love silence
& whatever u ken
invent in the air
not blowing your
infrequent chance
to be
immaculate
on paper
& so u wait
wait for the
first words
to come on paper
each one of
them
pure
simple & true
…………………………….
Upsy-daisy
Rejecting the d-hive paradigm
and prevailing winds of
“All’s right with the world”–
the ear candy,
grasshopper minds,
vested interests,
and lowest common denominator,
my very free will transcends
a cognitive dissonance
and depressive realism,
moves instead
toward sweetness and light,
Buddha nature,
first magnitude,
binary stars,
the je ne sais quoi and
ad libitum of
blue-sky thinking,
the entre nous of
high kindred spirits
savoir vivre,
and magic hour.
…………………………
March 2020
Spring wanted to
come, honest,
like a slow-moving
antediluvian brain
over a white
receding tundra.
It was all about
timing, apparently
and the ebb and flow
of atoms globally.
Nation-state borders
dissolved as you
looked at them
McLuhanesquely on
whatever maps remaining.
Gazes quite froze to
screens and never-ending
press conferences,
dire counselling and
imploding economies.
1929–here we come.
I watched the sparrows
descend desperate
on my morning offering,
the squirrel asleep,
though the sky
felt soft blue so early
in this otherwise world
of gutted knowns
and defeated dreams.
……………………………….
March 2021
Leave something behind, he said.
Tracks, traces, or vapor trails,
better brief than not.
The idea of marking spring somehow.
Kilroy and all that.
The traffic hum and snow melting
in the yard. At long last
coming up for air.
Water running in the eaves,
the sun warm on his jacket
where he sat on the patio
trying to make sense of
what comes after pandemic.
…………………………….
A Poem Like Sirmilik
More than enough to pleasure
eyes or soul, take your pick.
Sirmilik does not disappoint
beyond the treeline and barrens
with its tundra and moonscapes,
the frosted mounts and few carpets of green
hugging hills you could never hope to mow.
Glaciers rolling out to basins of stone
or ice, chilblain-cold.
So which Sirmilik do you desire?
The hoodoos like motley pagan worshippers?
Hills that spill against one another?
The lake below that is snow-illusion?
Sirmilik: a state of raw wild being,
impossible to reduce to a clause or phrase.
Oystered boulders, snow-illumined peaks,
the ranges forever spilling over,
gravelling downward everywhere you look
to multitudinous vistas.
Polar shelves and pale-layered strata.
Minute rivulets heading south or brooks
negotiating throngs of rocks.
Impossible to render except visually.
Inexplicable snowbergs without a Titanic
to waylay amid the blue or purple snow.
Striated coulees run dry
onto an interminable plain
with heaps of antlers now backlit by sun.
Just a weird dispatch from Sirmilik.
(Established in 2001, Sirmilik National Park is located in Nunavut. The name means “the place of glaciers”.)
………………………………
Nordicity: A Nordic Index
(after Glenn Gould’s The Idea of North)
(We have administered these vast territories of North in an almost continuing state of mind…)
High latitude
vast flatness of poles
wind a whitewash
breathing lungs
stone-cold
(I have an enormous compulsion to look upon the polar seas and I find that this is growing apace each year, so that I really want to get it out of my system somehow…)
Cold enlarges consciousness
an inner feeling: hinterlands
We are stirred & sharpened
made precise, altered–
a mental nordicity
(The North is almost everything beyond the comfortable and familiar, everything frozen and dark, treeless and windswept…)
Arctic night
blizzard bone
drift of pelt & parka
polar values
break the ice in rime
evoke an introversion
like isotherms
(When men live in the North their values change…)
permafrost/permavision
cold Judas chill
solitude
& idea-flakes
(They live a lifetime and die when they emerge. They become citizens of a different country–that tapestry of tundra and taiga…)
blue-planed spirit
frozen subsoil
keen surface
cutting/nipping
uninhabited
vanishing point
(There was something spiritual about it, elements of magic having to do with the magnetic pole…)
brush-blade pointillism
breath & breathe
vision elemental
inland seas
frozen sonata
(Something really does happen to people up here…)
ice age cold snap
cold storage
icefields
pro-found snow-bound
(It cares so little and sort of diminishes you…)
pack-ice growlers
overhang design
spirit gathers hoarfrost
terminal moraine
(It looks so odd and cold you wouldn’t want to live there…)
chilblain shiver
raw polar night
boreal abstract
a treeline sensibility
gather & evoke
this nordic index.
………………………….
Season’s greeting
after the toasters
the mints and
scented soaps
after the widescreens
the gift cards
and mugs
after the oranges
the laptops
and socks
after the Botox
the iPhones
and gold chains
after the Lindor
the Blu-rays
and spiced teas
after the slippers
Lego
and nuts
after the vacuums
the knife sets
and dolls
after the stockings
the Play-Doh
and games
I thought of you again
I did, yes I did
your kisses, the snowflakes
your hair, your eyes
over and over again
………………………..
Webworks
All it takes are two spinners
to collect the unsuspecting flotsam
of long summer nights.
Apart in the same yard
we cast our respective filaments–
some to control, some to set free,
some in love, some of death itself.
Silver on dark,
I braid a net to enhance my loves.
You–a snare for your gossamer schemes.
I follow impulse with fiber-like freedom,
the warp of odd honesty.
You spin charm like crazy
and admire a dead collection.
Snared in your own beguiles,
you measure success
by the material bodies around you.
I, by the spirits who sing
spinning songs
beyond our entrapments.
You connive and hatch.
I invent or enhance.
My designs, your makeshift.
My resolution, your madness.
My labyrinth, your skeletons.
Keep your intrigues to yourself,
the nightly feedings that have
kept you alive and dead for so long.
Though we may die this winter,
we have chosen then
and I shan’t be catching you later.
Alone now, I spin quite free
far from your threadbare joy.
I have been victim enough
to know the Sisyphus pangs
of starting each arc over.
Honest now, I cannot spin for you
and you are too busy with
your morning morgue
to taste of mercy or honour.
Centered, I will be fine in the autumn sun.
Improved, I will continue my passion
to teach and let go.
True, I shall weave like this, alone forever.
…………………………
Druthers
And I remember
running as fast as I could
up the long hill leaving
the others far behind.
Away, away, said a voice.
The wide blue sky is this way
and you have wings to fly
you can feel in your arms.
Ah, the bold rush of youth
when all seems possible,
within close reach.
Only now I recollect
having this dream about
a sun-kissed boy of summer
climbing ever higher till
he was one with the sky.
I go with him still
in my mind’s eye
this dismal morn,
van sitting in a grey lot,
awaiting another’s return
from the tyranny of
appointments and aging.
A boy long flown
in my rear-view mirror.
………………………….
The Waking Vision
Without an object of desire he could
face down the flames of aurora borealis.
He became a poet of weather now
and carved his name on clouds.
The poles of sun and moon informed this,
his final art in a landscape of enchantment.
His sense of world came from within
and he knew no limits of other.
The propositions of dream had replaced
the latitudes of nuanced love.
The compensation of words fulfilled
the charts of imagination.
His mind had grown vast
like the stars in a living poem.
And that which he loved and could value
was everything he had imagined.
Things were now as they were.
No longer mere man of flesh and bone,
he drew his breath from all of this–
the grand thoughts of refined experience.
…………………………….
Refutation
(after T.S. Eliot)
You cannot live in Art,
they told him.
Don’t trust in those dreams.
The Lady of Shalott died
by that river, you’ll recall.
(So they insist on ruts
and the thousand deaths
of heart’s desire.)
Keep a clear heart
when forests burn down.
Hang on to stars
when all the maps are gone.
(A fool’s paradise beats
the coffins of convention.)
Who could efface
the red-flowering snow?
The miracle of running water
in a desert of mind?
Imagination’s insistence.
The movie-reel of Time
unloops like an obsession.
Cups of tea, a long afternoon,
the sun through lace curtains.
Measures of quietude,
the lovers’ discourse.
(I guess we all lived here once,
heard concertos in the park
and wondered if the band
would ever play for us.)
Ice and warm hands–
we carry on somehow
with what is left of forgotten love:
What could be and what was.
The garden asleep, its forever
keys for the finding.
………………………………………..
Proximity
Close to ‘It’ on many daze
that elusive feeling
of sublime contentment.
The satisfaction of knowing
who and what I am
might really matter.
Much was precarious
and misfire–missed opportunity.
That and close calls amid
the sun-warm moments of being.
And all the while becoming.
Restless process
like a cold mountain stream.
The collective impression
of all who knew me
along my vertiginous edges.
Realizing however late
the long, slow climb
and precipitousness
of love–the eternal assay.
Never rueing though,
just enjoying the heights
after all–what it meant
to be so close, periodically
dissolved within another.
It is there you shall
finally find me
when recalling what it meant
to be who and what I really was.
Then you, too,
might come close,
be proximate yourself,
a mirror-like essence.
………………………………….
Last Poem
It is no longer for me to say for you.
You will need to fill in the blanks yourself,
to answer the remaining questions,
to find your missing peace
and decide which dream is worth
the living and dying for.
It remains but for you
to walk alone on that beach
with nothing but your thoughts.
It is up to you to decide
if touch is the best art of all
and if an old Inner Child still lives.
It is not in this poem then
that someone will smile fondly at you
and find all you say so interesting.
It is no longer the job of this poet
to free you, to whisper your name,
or tell you where all the treasure’s hid.
No, it is you alone
who will write the last poem, love–
your very own, and tell us all
who you truly, really are.
………………………
Out-of-print
“After love, book collecting is
the most exhilirating sport of all.”
–A.S.W. Rosenbach
You were the rarest book of all,
for me, the ultimate edition.
Much of you had been unread
though you remained in great shape,
unfaded and unmarked.
Crisp and fine,
inscribed to me only,
a true collectible.
Bibiliophile that I am,
I had never come across
such definitive copy.
Nothing chipped or shelf-cocked
about you.
A trim folio, unpaginated,
without a slipcase.
Your spine sunned,
but binding intact.
I had no blurb to go by,
but dedicated myself
to your sole acquisition.
Your front matter
and end-pages skim-read
as I turned you
over in my hands, savouring
each distinguishing point.
Your non-gilt edges
and errata were all forgiven.
I loved most your imprint
your laid-ins
and variant proofs.
And so for me, as issued,
you were First Thus.
No bookplate ever
for you, o precious tome.
……………………………
Emily Dickinson: A Summer Slam
In another life, Emily Dickinson
befriended Andre the Giant
and body-slammed him to the mat
at Riverside Coliseum.
Andre was impressed by her
technique and white dress.
‘I have always depended on
the excellence of execution,’ she winked.
For his own part, Andre went gaga
when the Belle rang his bell:
‘Me Andre, you Emily’ and sent her
roses after every Royal Rumble.
Tour guides at Amherst
became embarrassed by
the ghostly sightings of Miss E
in her second-story bedroom
from which she lowered picnic baskets
of bananas and bread to the Giant
who visited her by moonlight
or whenever his contract permitted.
When Andre died, it was said
she wrote him an ode with caps galore.
His last gift to her was the dropkick of love:
a tribute for all his hardcore fans.
…………………………..
Elephant Man
Wearing his Sunday best
he sits upright
on his bed beside
the open black dressing bag.
His smooth girl’s hand
gently strokes the razor
shoehorn and cigarette case–
the mirror long since removed.
Picking up a brush
he combs the wispy hairs
of his cauliflower head,
fancies himself a lover
in cool evening shadows.
From overgrown lips
come no spluttering noises–
only poetry and affectionate song.
(The lady in question accepts his proposal.
They marry in a cardboard church
which Joseph has constructed.)
The reverie passes
and Joseph sighs.
Lonelier than ever
he limps about his cell
gazing at the bric-a-brac
his noble friends have sent him.
Sitting by a casement
he contemplates the sky,
his child-like soul thirsting
for vistas, woods, and lawns unseen,
birds, fish and flowers.
Till tired of pining
and out of time and hope,
he lies down on the bed
‘like other people’,
and closes his forlorn eyes.
In his latest dream,
he imagines asylums
for the blind and distant lighthouses
twinkling in the dark.
……………………..
Mother’s Day Moment
After dinner and croquet
we sat happy, content
with ourselves,
family and world
in the grey backyard
calm of twilight.
The whoosh and cries
came too sudden
for knowing/
the stillness broken
by necessity and
Nature’s fact.
The cedar shattered
with absurd terror
as the hawk tore
a path to just one
unready sparrow.
He cleared the bush
in nano-seconds,
his unreal shriek
of triumph lifting
supper, arcing upon
an indifferent sky–
the random babe
ripped out of
the only life it had
ever dumbly known.
“What was that?” we asked,
“hawk or merlin?”
But exactitude
no longer mattered
in that eerie birdless hush,
as we turned once more
in private doubt, lost
for words, and resumed
our game of Scrabble.
……………………………
Rappel Heaven
Something about nonchalantly
throwing a leg over
the top of guard-rail
25 stories up
creating your own story–
the hero of imagined possibility;
no one else about
to stop or question you
about the legalities of such,
inching slowly down
like Spiderman
peeping in tenants’ windows,
giving them a giddy wave,
peering into their own imagined
pseudo-private worlds;
it’s really only ego
conquering a high-rise
like a still-life mountain
when a line snaps/
and the descender feels
an even greater rush
trying to aim where
she might land
and then walk away
intact.
………………..
September
In the fall we drift along
the tree-lined streets
of unfamiliar places.
Leaves cover everything:
sleepy cars and houses
sidewalks and our coats.
My son drags his foot
beside the curb
like a street-cleaner,
but even he admits
we could never hope
to hide these dead
in all the sewer grates.
Joggers and young girls
with dogs pass by
and look at us as if to say
‘You don’t fit our decor.’
The leaves uncaring,
fall in slow time,
wordless to the earth.
I used to think
that streets like these
were only meant for lovers
and their lonely ways,
but how wrong can one be
about yellow, orange, and green?
In the fall they drift along
the tree-lined streets.
The man is crunching memories
as he watches his son
run on ahead,
laughing with the wind
and leaves.
………………………
Notes from the Garden
(for my daughter Heather)
The poet is in the garden.
He has come to hear your dreams
to bless your green endeavours.
He speaks to you in earth-tones
many sounding strange to your ears.
A bird sings of the cedars.
Here there is still time to bud
and bear fruit in the garden,
to turn into leaves or flowers
thus, on the ever-changing land.
Growing seasons have been known
to vary, but always recur in the annals
of earth. With more sun and belief
in the garden, you too, might grow
in a summer of stems and blossoms.
There is so little time, though.
The wind calls your name
and whispers of eternity.
Clouds come and go
and the fence needs painting.
A poet is in the garden now.
No one else will walk with him today.
But the sun is surely good to all
and blinds his failing eyes
with a white warmth of wisdom.
…………………………..
Behind These Fronts
We are all held together
by wires or Wi-Fi.
The props that hold us up
can only be glimpsed
in a certain slant of light.
We are really coming apart
all the time, even as we laugh
and profess a strength.
Lame the underpinnings
of our all-so gossamer texts.
We droop our fatigues
against a greater mystery,
our pains and plans mere habits
of exclusiveness.
We turn ourselves inside-out
for others to see how
we might glow in the dark:
blue shadows on evening snow.
When winter came that year,
we could almost imagine
another breathing,
some vague restoration.
There were, though, those among us
who reported seeing streaks of light
or perhaps a radiance
behind all these fronts.
………………………
Astral projections
2 players chasing shadows
on a dim-lit city street
full moon in october
night jet above flashing red
hooo-fffffff
whho-fff
poor man’s tennis:
father-son
no rhyme or reason to our play
writing a poem without a net
hooo–ffff
click<ffff
dream: a bird’s eye view of life
waiting for the one that never falls
about as close to heaven
as we may get: 2 shades of night
on the fly we serve & are served
playing blind for most of the game,
live in dark, though we aim to
keep it going (the bird, I mean)
lightweight though it is,
by backhands & bouncers
doingggg–ffff
whhoo–ff
the net affect of twilight
is a kind of love between us,
stabilizing feathers,
we fly to one another
& pray for contact–
the odd bird grounding out
with the thud & racquet-scrape
of failure
& yet that empyreal possibility
(father-son)
we keep the bird alive
between us & the spirit of flight
fine gut exchanging volleys
in the welkin
beneath polaris star
counting hits & hang-time
waiting for the one
that won’t come down
the one that won’t come back
whoo–fffff
hhhooooo——
…………………..
The House
From where you stand
beside the road,
you can almost see
the house. Fence slats
bow to you & paint
curls upon itself~
a mockery of maintenance.
Overhead
tall spreading trees
threaten sun. Strange
you never understood
what time might do
to plans & seeds.
Cracks in the walk
meander like veins
toward a wooden door.
Open it. Step inside.
Enter the house.
Brush by leaves
& buds that
cover the air
with unremembered names.
Pass calendars & mirrors
that conceal the holes
& smears of yesterday.
A rabble of books
throng aching shelves
with the wisdom of dust.
Photographs on a table.
Who are these faces?
These prisoners
in gilt-edged pose.
In the final room of all
there is an unmade bed.
A pair of glasses
stand upright
on the dresser.
Listen. You can almost
kiss the silence.
Clocks whirr–a heart beats
as slowly time
engulfs the house.
Leave the house.
It’s best that way.
People have grown old
& died here.
Children once laughed
& laughing took
their voices, left for good.
Left to live in
other rooms
of other houses
glimpsed by roadways
through tall spreading trees.
……………………………………………………………
(Written on a warm Sunday afternoon in the ’80s at my wife’s family’s house, while they all had gone for a fall walk. I believe the poem pretty much wrote itself in the time they were gone. I walked around the quiet house and imagined the above. Solitude sometimes automatically invokes the writing mood or impulse for me. I had been reading James Dickey’s poetry and had used some of his work in a school poetry anthology I had written and edited. “Inside the River” was one of his that stood out. I guess you could say I wrote “Inside the House.”)
Both presence and non-presence are simultaneously quite palpable in this poem. The house itself seemed veritably alive with a character and presence all its own, which I tried to capture. On the other hand, it wasn’t hard to imagine non-presence since the family was absent and, one day in the future, the various people would be gone for permanently. I guess you could call this imminent or palpable non-presence there for the imagining.
……………………….
Away
So much is of the
blur, the motion
the non-stopness
of one day
after another.
The accumulation
of life-scenes
and whether one
processes them
or not, let alone
remembers.
These daze I prefer
the moment,
the extended stills
that transcend film.
In those you can
really see the details
and some sense in what
a diminished world
is, means, or once was.
It is the steady gaze,
the single photo
that speaks of
beauty and detail
for the beholding.
So much of life
is flow, the crazy
and distraction.
Less of it to do
with apprehension
by eyes, mind,
heart and soul
of wholeness.
There is a glory
to permanence
in nature above all
on a windless day
as lived by self.
The other world,
public and restless,
a remote facsimile
of faux-connect,
beaten up by flux
and man’s desires
for “me”, ignorance,
and usage.
Sad truth
belieing a much
deeper quest
for nourishment.
No, eternity is best
a photograph
that slows time
and change
to mere notion
of perspective.
In that
soundless image,
unchanging and unchanged,
the dream, the moment,
and a far better hope
and view.
……………….
Default by Techno
No bot could ever
replace a sky.
No phone will ever
stop the tides.
Nor any hack nullify
our limitless love.
No avatar could
supplant you
in any case.
Nor any cloud
clone Monet
nor any bug
take down Beethoven.
The variables in the
Internet of Things
are this limited.
Touchscreens will never
supercede skin,
mind or soul.
All the brave new whims
are merely greyscale
and deletable.
And a user world is just that.
Egoic diminishments
in virtual domains.
More or less.
………………………………..
Le Bassin d’Argenteuil
Nineteenth-century figures
walk beside a river basin.
Some carry umbrellas
and discuss the French weather.
Three or four strollers
sit down on the bankside
watching sailboats:
parasol ladies onshore.
What could they know of
world war, Covid, or acid rain
under trees that cast
shadows on afternoon grass?
A small barge glides toward an arched bridge.
You stand distracted
a moment in the gallery
fusing with light
strokes of soft blue paint
Monet’s view stiller now
than your own digital time.
………………………..
As Good As It Gets
(for the late Stu Millman, consummate bass-jazzer)
There is so much to like
about this trio, this gig.
In a word, movement.
Piano lets you know which standard
is to be resignatured.
And then the momentum
of bass and drums and
you are into it before
the waitress even takes your order.
Courtyard lounge,
big-screen tv menacingly above
the real news and true art.
What is there about
these 3 that delights?
A look, a glance,
a sideways motion?
Cymbals splash and then
bassman is on–
spontaneously composing
in public–an unnatural act
if ever there was one
for this space.
Up and down, he speaketh
and what rhythm, man!
What memory of melody.
It may look like work
and yet is so effortless,
this desire to put it out there–
to declare oneself:
one`s chops and sensibility.
And stopping and waiting
for that first tentative clap,
no matter how quiet–
to know there`s a connection
going down, a bridge
gapped by noteful play
and interplay.
(These 3 have evidently met before.
This is not their first or last time.
The encore of divorce aside,
some marriages are charmed.)
Like this one–
piano precise, taste-full
and yet open-ended
to what the crowd might bring
to this swingin`smorg.
Drummer only seems to be
`way over there`–
distance a mirage.
His brushes and accents
an undersong bonus.
And then those bass arms–
over, under, and finally thru.
Who`da thunk he could re-
enact a chiropractor`s dream?
But pay close attention:
this is a very good story.
An encapsulation of all
of life`s gigs and quest
for spiritual nourishment.
A plot rolled out like
a Kerouac teletype novel.
As life could and might be.
Three pairs of eyes and ears
on the very same page
saying, We are unit–
our experience and jazz wisdom
times three.
Another break, a laugh
and no one knows
who it came from.
Well, that was easy,
that was a slice.
What next, o brothers?
Wither wilt we goest?
Duke? Porter? Train?
So much to recall now,
so much of the ideal–
the jazz gods be praised tonight
for this assemblage of mortals.
The limitation of lounge,
non-listeners and chatter
now forgotten and small.
Irrelevant.
There are always limitations.
But maybe this once,
for some anyway:
a remembered lyric
a nameless glow
a gentle communion
a momentary stay
against confusion.
And thus curiosity becomes a drummer`s brushes.
Whim, a bassman`s bow.
Wonder, a minor 6th chord.
It`s all there with a first-drink mind,
the charts momentarily abandoned.
So many tones and colours
to be sampled and voiced,
each player imagining
his own way and role.
Look.
It`s all in their faces–
the way the eyes focus
as a zone is ascended.
Out there and yet
strangely here.
Passing strange, in fact.
The great balancing act of all art
and all that jazz.
Consummate,
a word devoutly to be wished.
One can only savour
the tonal axe-stasy of these 3.
The Glad-To-Be-Alive.
This moment.
A truly cool place to be.
As good as it gets, folks.
No kiddin`.
………………………………………………..
For me, music has been one of life’s great possibilities. This poem is an homage to live jazz, a particular trio, and a very special bassman-friend. What I tried to capture was the emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual equivalent of a performance. I think what interested me most was the communication that was going on here, especially amongst the musicians. Music can be a transcendent experience; in this case, the musicians transcended the context of a somewhat impersonal setting, their three instruments, and some initial audience distraction. What jazz musicians impressively do is very risky, far riskier than anything played by a classical music orchestra or a commercial rock act, for instance. They basically create something beautiful, true and good out of nothing, spontaneously and continuously.
Good and great music speaks to the feelings, the mind, and the soul. In concert, this can be seen and experienced en masse for large numbers of different people. No other form of art (except dance) can do this with large numbers of people in one spot, in one time. Music offers the great life possibility and experience of transcendence from one’s own cares and situation. The best music depends on intuitive communication between players and audience. And good or great music offers depth, richness, and connection. At its best, music makes us feel less alienated and more connected to something other or greater than ourselves.
“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.”–Willa Cather, My Antonia
…………………………..
Burton
“Stars go out when actors die.”
More Henry than we ever knew,
your haunted blue eyes
looking skyward
from a father’s coalpit,
calling for forgiveness or fame
with an omnipotent voice.
Smile curled on cynic’s lips:
the failed cherubim.
Ever-hungry for spirits and song,
you took New York by storm
inverting mirrors to Hamlet’s soul
and made us weep to hear
your too too sullied flesh
melt and thaw unresolved
in a whorl of late night
carousing with buds and Liz.
Flushed with fever and wit,
you abdicated the playhouse throne
and found success
as hollow as Hollywood.
Pockmarked and stiff,
you sleep-walked through
a plethora of dire scripts,
mocking your right to rule
with a vigorous impotence.
Having at last to live
with your self–
a gaunt shadow of greatness
and unkind reflection.
Too late, you must have grieved,
like brother Dylan, the sun lost
in its dark inexorable flight.
……………………………………………………..
And then there are bad choices, as reflected in the famous and great, to wit Richard Burton. Burton played Henry VIII in Anne of a Thousand Days, one of the many dissolute parts that echoed his own decline. Born in Wales, he took up acting to avoid a future like his coal-miner father’s. Burton’s smile variously reflected his satisfaction with success initially and later a cynical smugness about film acting, which helped to pay for his and Elizabeth Taylor’s excessive lifestyle.
His New York stage performance as Hamlet was a significant achievement. I can remember being very moved by it when I listened to it on record in the late ’60s. To me, he seemed to peel layers off the character and role, he was that great an actor. At this time, though, he was starting to drink heavily which led to bad choices in roles and films. He knew he had been the greatest stage actor of his time and yet had sold out to Hollywood.
In the end, he was literally wasting away, though his voice remained memorable as always. Burton had a tremendous library, incidentally, and loved to read. He often quoted from Shakespeare and had a great love for his fellow countryman-poet Dylan Thomas, who similarly drank himself to death. (The last line alludes to “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.” )Certainly, Burton knew very well he had squandered his talent and could not overcome the demons of his self-inflicted alcoholism.
I include this poem to demonstrate how we sometimes ‘do it to ourselves’ with our poor choices. This can sometimes result in tragedy and an unnecessary wasting of whatever talents we have.
ps/ My favorite Burton films remain: Anne of the Thousand Days, Becket, The Comedians, The Desert Rats, Equus, Look Back in Anger, 1984, The Night of the Iguana, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Taming of the Shrew, The V.I.P.s, Where Eagles Dare, and Who`s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, He is the only actor I have ever been moved by to write about…
……………………
My Old Man and the Sea
As photographs go
this is a defining moment.
Dad steps from the ocean
wearing a green ball-cap
bronze pectorals
glistening.
De profundis.
The only things missing
are marlin and trident.
Spirit.
He has emerged.
Transcendent.
He will live forever.
Self.
Only his footprints
grace the sand.
This is his beach.
Reality meets mythos.
Brine on flesh.
Dad is a god.
This is my father.
Sublime. Incarnate.
Even Hemingway nods.
…………………………………..
My old man will and does, of course, live forever in the art of my poem. The poem is based on an actual photograph taken by my mother on one of their trips to Mexico, the Dominican Republic, or Venezuela. They had also visited Spain and Portugal which loomed large in the Hemingwayesque mythos my father occasionally vicariously tried living. He was always in great physical shape (until his decline because of cancer) and he was definitely an enviable, attractive ‘manly specimen’. My own passion to write and, specifically, to write an ode celebrating his power and grace, comes from him and the memory of him. I can only hope that some of his passion has been realized vicariously in my own life and work.
………………………………..
Winnipeg Nostalgia
(Union Station–built 1912,one of the few grand buildings left standing in Wpg.)
Like a pot of dry geraniums
in a North-End wartime window,
you cling to life though
your halcyon days are done.
Oh Winnipeg, your history is dead now.
Who remembers the Strike, the Blizzard, floods?
Who remembers your Indian Jack,
Gisele MacKenzie, Lenny Breau?
White with birdlime.
old banks and empty warehouses
stand silent in a row,
awaiting another fin de siècle boom.
Arcades and pawnshops
infect your once-proud avenues
where kings and queens passed flags
waved by caucasian throngs.
Like transit-riders stranded at 3 am, Riel and Golden Boy ponder Assiniboine waters, wondering why Hull ever left.
Nothing else remains
but second-hand stores on William
selling spurs, quilts and memories
that no one really needs.
…………………
Notes:
pot of geraniums–allusion to John Marlyn’s 1957 novel Under the Ribs of Death, about a Hungarian-Canadian’s struggle for survival in Winnipeg’s North-End during the Depression
Strike–the famous General labor strike in the summer of 1919
Blizzard–which paralyzed Wpg Mar. 4, 1966; nothing was running and the city shut down
floods–especially the 1950 Red River Flood which flooded parts of the city
Indian Jack–Indian Jack Jacobs, a popular quarterback-punter for the Wpg Blue Bombers, 1950-52
Gisele MacKenzie–popular Wpg. singer who had her own American tv shows in the ’50s and ’60s
Lenny Breau–legendary jazz guitarist, considered to be the all-time best by many fans; mysteriously killed in L.A. in 1984
Riel–Metis hero; a sculpture-monument facing the Assiniboine River near the legislature is dedicated to him
Golden Boy–famous statue on top of the legislature, signifying prosperity
Hull–aka the Golden Jet, first superstar of the Wpg Jets, who signed the 1st million dollar contract in professional hockey, playing from 1972-79
William–William Avenue, seedy once-popular street running to Main Street
……………………………..
Aftenoon nap
(my grandson)
Quiet footsteps
& people leaving rooms
talk in whispers–
curtains drawn slowly
across his falling lids
as colours fade to
black in Lawnmower Land
a place where he can
drive a large truck
inspecting garbage bins
unhindered by grown-ups
in a heaven of motors
vents & sewers–
all with my son
in charge
Weedeaters trim
his long eyelashes
as i sit far off
reading in another room
unable to stop
the demons of wheel-dreams
from rolling over
my little boy’s brain
……………………………
And So Lately
(a lone traveller: living-room sofa cushion)
I choose this island
and its freedom from false face.
I select a landfall apart
from the swell and tides of others.
I claim this lone strand
for the Dominion of Self.
Unattended by minions, I live
without the cant of congregations.
Self-governed, yet worthy
I shun the uncentered
fawners for lost pieces
in the shadows of Other.
I pick my comings and goings,
my music and arts.
I cull first flowers
and pitch the weeds of dependence.
My mind sharpens and sculpts itself
in monuments to glory and love
begging naught of another.
I go it alone, unafraid and unperplexed.
Respectful of this reign,
my hopes people this island.
I harvest the metaphors of life
with a timeless abandon
that knows no thought of Other.
Bygone, the grey deep moans,
now distant, unheard.
***************************************************************************
“I sometimes think I inhabit my own country.”–Tennessee Williams
A major turning point in my life from about 1990 A.D.. A very strengthful detachment and repositioning of my life. And, looking back, far from a simple, mindless, conventional withdrawal or escape. A rebirth of significant personal consciousness and a new, truer identity as things turned out. I ‘remade’ myself in this single, signature poem and (re)confirmed my own autonomous self. And “the rest has made all the difference”, as Frost said.
Someone Nobody Knows
Across from the Banana Republic near an armoured truck, Duane Eddy’s “Rebel Rouser” blaring from the corner Starbuck’s, he sat on a Robson sidewalk awaiting the Second Coming with his tattered New Testament, green porcupine exercise-ball, and a selection of hotel body-wash bottles; his newspapers weighted to the pavement by a lint roller and leopard-spotted umbrella. Head-down, he was passed by an endless parade of hand-held screens, tattoos, suits, low-cut blouses, leashed dogs, veiled faces, and sunglassed-mothers with fraps and Winners bags wheeling babies by, their eyes closed to him, too. He only awoke when I dropped a fiver into his empty black food tray, smiled and said “Ya know, I was just dreaming of my mother taking me to school for the first time back in Thunder Bay.”
–April 21. 2015, Vancouver
……………………………………………
A Call to Poetry, Spring, 1967 A.D.
(in gr. 12 English, back of class, reading poetry)
Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold.
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific–and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise–
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
–John Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”
……………………..
The spring of 1967, English 300–grade 12, Silver Heights Collegiate, Winnipeg. Mr. George Brown’s class. The context–he invited each of us to pick a poem from our poetry anthology and to read it and talk about it, possibly analyzing it.
I had cased the entire book and picked this one. Simply put, it spoke to me in volumes–to my close connection with nature, my exponentially increasing interest in and love of words from grade 12 on, my essential core interest in possibilities and beautiful discoveries, and my only-child-based solitude. It was a very freeing, liberating poem, consciousness-wise. Very much an objective correlative of where I was at then and where I wanted to go, what I wanted to be, what I would eventually become. A romantic, a lover, a writer, a poet, a teacher, a performer, a possibilitarian, a seeker, and discoverer.
I memorized those words for the oral recitation; they emblazoned my mind, heart, and soul. I spoke with passion about the meaning and purpose of the poem. It was a true defining moment of being, performance, and turning point in my life. I had been marked for a life of literature–both reading and writing thereof. I would go on to teach 3-5 thousand senior high kids about literature in a 30 year career. I would go on to talk to thousands of English teachers across Canada, again, in a 30-year span from 1980-2010.
As a singer-guitarist-songwriter, I would perform for several thousand more people (kids and adults) from 1969-2003. I would go on to write over 60 widely-authorized ELA texts and guides for Canadian senior high students and teachers, books that would eventually sell over a million copies. I would go on to write hundreds of poems as well as songs, stories, and plays and read them in many venues and have well over 100 published, winning contests along the way. I would return to my gr. 12 teacher in the 1980s and tell him personally what this opportunity had meant to me. I would finally remember this moment and tell about it here today.
………………………………………………..
Birdbath
True, it gets soiled
now & then
& after fall
with snow.
Eventually ice,
then waiting for
beak-pecked memory.
Spring’s first robin–
full, the mirror bath
catches eyes alike,
revives new stock.
So someone
refills it–it is,
after all, expected.
I take the jug
& pour libations
to my aery brethren.
Honoured by their
short feathery stays,
voyeur to their dips.
Yes, I could do
nothing,
but it’s not mine
to choose.
And they cannot
do this simple thing,
the water of
necessity.
………………………………..
Fantasy
You ask for the dream
like a child
set on ice-cream
at a Saturday circus
You yearn for
old calendars, broken clocks
and promise to keep
your corner clear of webs
You want to retell
your famous life-story
to poets and editors:
recorders of time
But most of all
you ache inside
for the touch of
someone else
nestled close
beside you
breath warm
along your hair
whispering
dark wishes
in the still nights
of your room
…………………………………..
Owed to Stan Getz
Who could ever forget “Ipanema”
and the wisp, silky sounds
accompanying Astrud
on her husband’s song?
Clearly classic, like forever.
You played both sad and sweet
opening up the melancholy
aloneness of our hearts
from the inside.
Decades later,
posthumously no less,
you sprang free from death
with Barron’s rich piano
live in Copenhagen,
dancing forever
beyond your cancer.
“Night and Day”,
“People Time”–
How you guys cooked!
A wonder and miracle of two.
Later I watched you, magically
play one retro summer eve
in a California vineyard
before a huge appreciative throng,
unlike any dive you had formerly
played in your heroin free-fall daze,
fixes feeding your oh-so-eloquent pain.
Ah, the tunes and greats you knew
or had known and internalized
like no other jazzer since.
“Spring Can Really Hang You up the Most”.
“Lush Life”, “Blood Count”,
Billy Strayhorn.
Stan the Mellow Man affecting
the quality of our inner jazz lives,
your ashes asleep
off Marina del Rey.
(People Time: his last CD with Kenny Barron, was released posthumously)
………………………………..
After Snakes & Ladders
Snakessss
invariably you’ve seen
them in a pile of junk
beside your bed.
In winter they slither
into vents of houses
seeking the warmth of
undercovers & fresh kills.
They doze on sofas
over the feet
of sleeping fathers
& strangle pet poodles.
Snakes like open
drawers & trails of
sugar leading to
dark kitchen cupboards.
Laundry baskets make
good homes for cold pythons
& closets are great
for boas to hang out in.
Snakes are the stuff
of children’s nightmares
The darkness under beds
is a den of coiling fearssss.
…………………………..
Reckoning
it is an honest wind
that blows the grass
across these tombs
the sun at noon
knows not leaf
nor lie
geese above
V their way
across a sky
and tell of time
for stars
and time for hope
there is truth
to every absence
beyond despair
………………………
Zenith
(based on Monet’s “Terrace at Sainte-Adresse”)
I am just such a man
who sits alone on latticed chairs
of afternoon terraces
considering the bay.
I don’t much mind being
the only tourist here
who truly notes the bobbing
white boats in Newport Harbor.
Overhead, a blue sky
and breeze flap flags
that salute red flowers
hedging my forever moment.
Pairs. Today’s word.
A couple holding hands
their backs against the view.
Two sweeping gulls stitch
their betrothal from left to right.
Almost everything fits, I think.
Even my own absurd shadow.
…………………………………….
Shades of Lily Briscoe in To the Lighthouse, the writer takes the air at Newport, R.I. recording what others do not see or appreciate. A memory of two New England fall voyages in the early ’90s. Monet’s painting crystallized a moment.
…………………………………
Rhythmic continuity
A question of attitude.
He played the integrity
of his contrapuntal flow–
this poet of the keys,
expressing fervour
like none before him.
His tonal concepts
grown slow now
but deliberate.
One pulse ran
sonantly through all
reference points.
A pointillistic relationship
between notes.
Listening to or reading him
was to experience
all music, all life and love
subliminally.
……………………………
Goin’ Back
(the 15 year anniversary CD recording of my songs in Wayne’s basement, Calgary)
Remembering who or what I was
slowly, in pieces returning,
the way I felt without
ever knowing where
I was really going.
In a dark grove somewhere,
the smell of evergreen
all around and the sound
of voices mixing together
harmonizing like a warm dream.
Never having to think,
only singing the next song
playing the next gig,
enjoying the passing fanship
and increasing respect
of peers and those searching
for something similar
in a world ever-revolving.
I hear that spirit today–
the simplicity of it all
a guitar, some drums
and bass moving through
the chord changes
and lovin’ sounds.
Sounds beyond school,
university and some
much-dreaded 9 to 5
waiting for us all
down the road.
It was all too easy and obvious
back then, those dreams.
Whatever was possible
arose in a basement
in a club, or on a swing
sitting around creating, sharing.
It was its own thing very much.
It was its own magic
and raison d’etre.
Our youth, our music–
together we were, once.
……………………………….
Musical Integrity
The two-note
chickadee song.
…………………………
Chant for Pilgrims
(Castile, Spain)
In the musty cloister corridors
of Santo Domingo
are the voices of the ages
unexpectedly.
Men without women.
Men without guns.
Men assured of purpose sublime.
Regardless of time,
untouched by war, chaos
and the mad pursuit of money.
Here there is the grace of
melody sans harmony
and rhythm.
Here there is holy society
of the single melody
in language and tones
beyond your limitations.
Listen. It sounds like Peace.
It sounds like Soul
conversing with self.
It sounds like sanctuary, blessing
and forgiveness for
all and everything.
Leave all cares outside
the stones, this monastery.
Pettiness, ego,
control and strife.
Here there is only eternity
and a balm that none
of us likely deserve.
Listen to the songs as
they change keys
and time signatures
slowly, magically.
This is a transcendent life here
beyond your haste, your
real and imagined complications.
No one here lives beyond
the simple chants which
forever start each
passing day or century.
Within these walls,
the monks have found It.
A timeless Truth we all need,
having lost our ways
so many times in
life’s ever-changing journey.
…………………………….
A Caution to Everybody
Dazzling & bright
eye m just visiting
yr loco galaxy
a whimsical bit
of cosmic mass
from `somewhere else.`
Entering yr atmosphere
eye plunge comet-like
thru clouds of destiny
sidereal satellite
of the last 1/4
my magnitude unlimited.
Don`t look 2 long
at my radiants tho`
lest eye scorch yr
site 4 good–
…………………………….
