soak the edge

.

2012-01-29T00:17:00.003-05:00

A Postmodern Sublime

Eco+poetics is not synonymous with or equivalent to Nature poetry.
Because if traditional Nature poetry is a meditation on the pastoral
beauty of a landscape, it is not that. It is not about the bird without
the bulldozer, and it is also not a transcendent prayer that celebrates
the majesty of wilderness or a travelogue from the writer out-in-the-
wild. If Nature poetry colonizes, tracks and contains the Other, traps
it in a dichotomy (Nature vs Humanity), it isn't that. And if its tact is
predatory or voyeuristic even as it revels in that rare glimpse of
something wild without considering a relationship, it certainly isn't
that.

And if writing a poem is a little like terraforming, using available
resources to create an artificially assembled but self-sustaining
ecosystem of thought, a (poem's) elements interact with an
environment (readers and their sociopolitical context make its
meaning) to leave a lasting impact.

James Englehart in his Ecopoetry Manifesto describes eco+poetry
as connection. And while I don't agree with everything he declares,
I accept his notion that it is;

"a tension between numerous disciplines that surround it - an interdisciplinary creature, whose purview includes science and the arts."

Eco+poetics implies a call to action, implores stewardship,
and upholds an ethos of concern; the poet-observer as an
agent for environmental change. The poet-observer as a
postmodern moralist? The poet-observer as activist.

In today's climate (literally), there is no current landscape,
no ecosystem on this planet, that is currently untouched by
the clang of human intervention, by technology spiralling
out of control, its threatening by-products soaking the edges
of everything. Writing a poem about Nature that ignores its
politicization seems hypocritical.

It also makes the 18th C. notion of the Sublime irrelevant.
Distinct from beauty, the Sublime fears and reveres Mother
Nature, holds it up as magnificent and powerful even if at a
safe distance; the beauty of a hurricane digitized, close-up
blood thirsty carnivores captured in a scope. This viewpoint
no longer fits, and instead demands revision. And so,the
eco+poet implicates a Revised Sublime, incorporates
the calamity of humanity into its picture of the world.
Awesome spectacles of ecological disaster, surreal
devastations of war waged on a landscape bathed in
a breathtaking sunset; a Revised Sublime illustrates this
tension and contains it as a message. It is a complex
beauty that entangles power with fragility like oil on
water or acid on earth, Mosanto-esque greed with
animal rights.

Eco+poetics describe an environment-in-crisis and is
an urgent call. At best, it is a tool for political resistance.
What justifies its prefix, its 'eco', to any poetic, might
be its insinuation of, or underlying question about
interconnectedness, a redress for Nature's internment,
as a false dichotomy. Maybe it is a desperate plea to
expand the Golden Rule into a higher consciousness,
an (innate?) need to apply equal respect to every
thing on the Planet. A nod to the Nepalese and
maybe in recognition of ancestral memory or all
aboriginal values, a Revised Sublime exposes the
impact of large-scale human activity on ecosystems.
Beginning simply, with the form of a poem, and
transcending through pipelines past hungry polar
bears, rises through the toxic air we share as one
interconnected breath. Richard Lowe's scheme to
get-kids back-to-nature implies that we somehow
left it. Really?! Separate? As if ...!

An eco+poetic message reminds readers that bulldozers
and birds share the same air. Aware of the poet/poem/poetics
(and all related industries from lumber to EMFs), it soars
beyond itself to become the voice of change within a larger
literary 'ecosystem', a habit of mind that recognizes unavoidable
connections between the complex sociopolitical realities of
culture and natural ecologies. And taking it further, then
wages war.

As it turns out, anyone with lungs and breathe has a voice
(if not a responsibility) to defend an ethos of interconnection,
to terraform new habits of mind, one word, one breath, at a time.

Simple, really.

.

2011-12-18T10:42:00.011-05:00

"Love is so short, forgetting is so long."

(Pablo Neruda)

You are that relentless flap of wings across

an endless sky through cloud-into-cloud,

or a last drop of rain that clings to the edge

of something offshore. Whereas I am a ladder,

a shadow that leans against double dead dusk

and reaches up to a fleet of incoming stars,

which is where you last hid.

.

2011-12-17T22:37:00.002-05:00

.

2011-11-19T21:42:00.008-05:00

at the bottom of a pot, he finds a small degree
of fault and therefore reasons that the glaze's
way too thick. a simple problem to resolve;
no poetry required whatsoever. he then goes
on to state that yellow salt's to blame. use
mostly white at cone 10 gas. the alchemy
is key, the random stirring up of things.
but ash glaze over yellow salt will work.
he states this, knowing his word lingers
longer and that's the way he always
wants it.

.

2011-11-02T14:34:00.014-04:00

Whichever way you travel,
through Einstein's space
or Van Gogh's sky,
through Buddha,
Jesus, or Mohammed;
it's all the same divinitas.

.

2011-08-07T22:27:00.008-04:00

To displace a conventional view of Iraq,

Mark Cousins creates a documentary in

the style of magical realism. War is on

the edge but intermingled with the

crunch of juicy pomegranate seeds,

the flow of sheep through open fields

and the dreams of children. He gives

the children of Goptapa their first

taste of cinema, projected across bed

sheets that waft in the open night air.

It is the first time that film has been

seen there. He shares a lyrical view of

their village in spite of its history; a

town that was gassed in a series of

genocidal attacks from 1986 to 1989.

The children speak of 1988 as The Anfal,

and reminisce about its chemical rain;

many died. And yet, Cousins portrays

this village with undying beauty, its

pearly light and orange palm trees,

birds perched on cacti that foreground

a war-ravaged horizon.

Overlaid against Cousins' thesis is

the magical flight of little Mohammed,

his dream of flying over Goptapa, and

equally airborne is his plea to all of

Goptapa's children, and perhaps to

endless youth everywhere, that

imagination can counter war.

The First Movie

.

2011-08-03T10:39:00.027-04:00

On the Ingenuity of Birds

This past spring, I hung a small set of chimes

from my balcony ceiling, all the while knowing

that they were way too close to the roof to get

enough wind momentum. It was tucked into

a sheltered corner of a balcony and although

I had some vague plan to eventually lower

them for more wind exposure, never did.

Soon after the last spring snow melted,

a pair of barn swallows scouted this area

for secluded nesting sites and appropriated

my chimes; the actual chimes were supported

by a flat vertically-hung 4" x 4" glass

decoration. And from their point of view,

a great surface on which to build a nest.

And so, their daily task of spitting tiny

mouthfuls of mud against the 'chime glass'

began. Back and forth all day long, each

time soaring low off the balcony into

nearby trees, and returning with yet

another mouthful to splatter. And

gradually over a two week period,

the form of their nest emerged.

Occasionally, they would spend more time away,

presumably foraging for tasty bugs or water. But

generally, theirs was a relentless task that never

let up from first light til sunset; this kind of

dedication was admirable. The weight of their

completed nest displaced my chimes only slightly

to one side. But best of all, whenever they arrived

back at the nest, I always heard the chimes jingle.

Like Pavlov's dogs, this sound always sparked

a joyful race to the window to see what they

were up to next.

Their next task was to line the nest and

to that end, both birds plucked breast feathers

daily. But all this during an exceptionally

stormy spring, one wrought with high winds,

cold temperatures and record rain falls.

Through all of this their nest was well shielded

from intense winds; they had chosen well. Still,

I wondered about the structural integrity; would

the mud absorb too much rain water and bit by

bit, or all at once, slide off the glass during the

next heavy storm? Or later in the spring, in

dryer weather, would it crack and crumble under

the added weight of eggs or newborns? Each night,

I watched them settle in, to sleep perched atop

their nest, and even took to chirping them a

goodnight call.

Meanwhile, I devised various crisis intervention

schemes, just in case the nest gave way, therefore

laying cushions and blankets directly below the

nest on the balcony floor. But just as an aside,

not only are barn swallows exceptionally beautiful

birds, not only do they portray an endearing spirit,

but they are excellent engineers.

At the other end of this balcony, hung a silver

orb that reflected the entire balcony along

with a panoramic view of everything beyond.

The male liked to perch above it when he wasn't

doing nest duty, and so there, atop a silver orb

he sang to his mate. It became my habit to sit

directly beneath him and mimic his musical phrases.

Our duets lasted throughout spring; him singing

first, then pausing just long enough for me

to repeat it, my inarticulate reply followed by a

new sound pattern from him and my subsequent

attempts at mastery. I discovered that swallows

have a complex language. Also, that the spring

of my personal discontent was suddenly populated

by these glorious avian solitudes filled with song.

I am now truly convinced that he was amused by

my dedicated efforts to sing in 'swallowese' because

if not, it is doubtful that he would have continued

his sing-and-pause pattern throughout the egg

incubation period. Both birds seemed to enjoy

my presence as much as I enjoyed theirs and so,

I am also convinced that (these) birds lead rich

emotional lives.

When they perched on top of their nest, their heads

barely cleared the ceiling. Apparently, swallows like

this feeling of being enclosed. Ironic that they would

desire this since I had just emerged from 2 grueling

years of feeling trapped by my neighbours' airborne

toxins. My own sense of entrapment had seemed

inescapable and these birds added a delightful

distraction. While searching online to learn more

about swallows, I hit a host of sites that uniformly

promoted quick and fatal solutions to the "swallow

problem". Apparently, there is no species on the

planet that someone, somewhere, does not consider

a threat to humanity.

But so it went, that the nest was built and snugly

lined with down. The female began her monotonous

task of egg laying and egg sitting. But whenever she

needed relief, her mate became an equal partner,

'sitting the eggs' for extended periods while she left

to find food or to stretch her wings. And then one day,

I found an empty egg shell on the floor beneath their

nest. A cream coloured shell with brown speckles.

Clearly, the eggs were beginning to hatch and

occasionally, I glimpsed a little pink head pop up.

Interestingly, the parents were not concerned by

my presence. Until one day, I found the last egg

splattered on the balcony floor. An infertile egg

that had been nudged out to make way for

growing babies. It took almost two weeks before

I was able to count 4 featherless heads. But most

astounding was their parents' backandforth tenacity,

flying off to catch a bug in midair and then return just

long enough to stuff it into any open mouth. Their

findandfeed food excursions were exactly like their

nest-building habits. Incessant. All day long from

first flight til last light. Filling up their babies'

hungry bellies was an all-day affair.

Another week passed; babies now had feathers

and wings. Also, the nest was becoming a rather

crowded place since all 6 birds slept there (with

absolutely no sign of nest slippage or crackage).

Until the first born began to perch atop the rim,

wobbling and fluffing his untested wings. Ultimately,

three out of the four babies began this daily wobble

on the edge until the oldest fluttered off and landed

on the nearby balcony railing. Soon, the second and

then the third one followed. But the fourth was

tentative. A few days later, the first three were

taking daily flights, short circles off the balcony

and back again to the nest. All four were still being

fed by both parents but the youngest was alone in

the nest for longer periods of time. Eventually, he

also wobbled off but fluttered to the balcony floor.

Disoriented, he eventually made his way back up

to the soft security of the nest. The next day, he

tried again with the same result. The wobbly edge,

the flutter and fall. And so, I sat next to him for a

moment, until he. he lifted and landed on the

balcony railing. His entire day was spent wobbling

on various nearby edges with no intent to push off.

I worried that he might be disabled. But his siblings

were playful and continued to fly past him until he

was entirely convinced of flight. When he finally

did lift off into the open expanse, that was the

last day this family used their nest for sleeping.

My swallow family had finally flown the coup.

Nesting swallows is a fantastic video that depicts

a 30 day nesting period shot on someone else's

balcony two years ago; I have watched it many

times. At some point, the videographer Andrey

Yeliseyev aptly describes swallows as birds that

keep their nest very clean. I had also observed

my swallow parents continually cleaning the nest

of debris. Afterall, 4 growing babies make a mess

and I had noted daily how the babies would perch

on the edge of the nest with head pointed inward,

about to poop; their parents were quick to strategically

position their heads directly underneath, ready to

catch the little bundles by the beak, a midstream

capture that then sent them flying off the balcony

to make yet another dirty drop somewhere far

away from the nest itself.

But even now, weeks after the nesting extravaganza

came to an end, I continue to count a cluster of six

swallows playfully swooping and soaring through

the open air just beyond my balcony. One or two

of them often venture in, flying within an inch of

their old nest and hovering like a humming bird

just long enough to peer inside, perhaps to reaffirm

that it is still there, or that it is still theirs. Their

swoopandpeek visits are still a daily event. And

so, it is my intention is to leave it hanging there,

in hope that it might get used again and out of

respect.

Mainly, what I've learned is this; that birds share complex

social relationships, lead rich emotional lives, speak in a

subtle language not entirely discernible to our ears, and

actually want to know us in some peaceful way. I happen

to live beside a fresh water bay and close to the tree tops

where I hear and see many kinds of birds flying past my

balcony at eye level. But I always make it a point to search

for the swallows, have newfound respect for who and what

they are, and appreciation for what we shared. Or to be

more accurate, for what they chose to share with me.

Swallowese, indeed.

.

2011-05-16T08:57:00.010-04:00

"Every Truth passes through three stages before
it is recognized. In the first, it is ridiculed. In the
second, it is opposed. In the third, it is regarded
as self-evident." (Schopenhauer)

.

2011-04-12T13:47:00.013-04:00

Mapping Winter Birds At Night

Beneath
this little hill
of corn that sits
on your dark palm,
a map is creased from
lines of skin cupped round,
cartographic flyways crushed
across your hand like hope across
your heart, and as the moon emerges
from behind a heap of clouds, your fingers
gently stretch apart, spill yellow flecks of light
that briefly blow across a dusty dock, but sink into
the earthbound bridge of food you've
forged between this winged world
of winter birds at night and
your unfeathered plight,
as if to fling your hope
across a lake of ice
and snow, as if
to join them
when they
lift and
go.

.

2010-12-05T16:34:00.013-05:00

Zero Comments

Today, I drift hopelessly away from everything

remotely reminiscent of a buy-nothing-day

slacktivism. This particular portmanteau

refers to any do-good desire not predicated

upon the actual act of getting out of one's

armchair. One could easily categorize those

poets who have not yet visited regions directly

affected by BP's oil spill but who nonetheless

write about it, as slacktivistic scribes.

Slacktivistically speaking, ribbon magnets on

moving vehicles and the gratuitous posting of

YouTube protest videos also fits this definition.

Somewhat analogously, the current digi-clime

of harvesting hundreds of virtual 'friends' by

tapping a few keys in the name of anti-content

seems wrought from the same anesthetized

state of mind. As notions of locality crash

headlong into (this kind of) voyeuristic virtuality,

one doesn't need to ask how writing has changed.

Cyberism has more to do with social ranking

than it does with language. And although blogs

may have eroded traditional broadcast media,

the jury is still out on those blogs that receive

no user feedback. If not for that grandiose

practice of social presence, what are writers

writing for, or rather, for whom? Being on the

lowest rung of internet hierarchy widens the

frontier for free expression. Afterall, no one is

watching. So, while the meat-eating majority

get all distracted by an in-crowd dynamic,

twitterizing their blog rolls for the sake of

social currency, some writers are repurposing

the blog tool for an entirely different effect.

That sweet stranger syndrome. But whatever

their intent, it is not yet the mainstream

stuff of contemporary media research.

Cynical slacktivism indeed.

"Then from those profound slumbers,
we awake in a dawn, not knowing who
we are, being nobody newly born, ready
for anything, the brain emptied of that
past which was life until then ... Then,
from the black storm through which we
seem to have passed (but we do not even
say we), we emerge prostrate, without
a thought. a we that is void of content."
(Proust II, 1014)

.

2010-09-21T12:45:00.014-04:00

No surprise that Alberto Giacometti

was hungry for expression in his mid

40's, and as such, eliminated mass

and volume from his walking men

(and women) series. His clay figures

were long and lean, perhaps because

Giacometti's postwar WW 2 Paris

was populated by so many emaciated

veterans and victims. Attenuated

figures with hollow eyes.

His forms breathe solitude as they

stride towards some unnamed horizon.

But they are also caught up in the coming

and going of lonely crowds. Perhaps they

are a visual manifestation of Giacometti's

belief that an individual's life force is best

evidenced in the natural balance of (his)

walking. In an epoch of abstraction,

Giacometti stretched the limits of

representation towards the push-pull

frenzy of modern metropolitan life.

For example, his portrait of a friend,

Jean Genet, depicts a traditional 17th

C pose, but is one that conveys a sense

of solitude (which Genet referred to

as a "wound").

“Beauty has no other origin than
the singular wound, different in
every case, hidden or visible, which
each man bears within himself,”

wrote playwright Jean Genet.

“Giacometti’s art seems to me
determined to discover this secret
wound in each being and even in
each thing, in order to illuminate
them.”

The artist's solitude is likely filled with

self-doubt. But art, like writing, is not a

wound one bears (unless one loves to pick

at scabs). More likely, art is a flightpath

to freedom. A sense of lifting up and out,

in a quest for connectedness.

"If I am only what I am, I am indestructible.
Being what I am, and unconditionally, my
solitude knows yours.'"
(Jean Genet, The Studio of Alberto Giacometti)

.

2010-06-14T00:45:00.009-04:00

the year of not sleeping

the notion that home is not a place

so much as a sense of self one wears

just under the skin.

this year could so easily be blamed

on unending fatigue due to a distinct

lack of oxygen; the recent fact of

Finland setting a national law in

motion to render tobacco illegal

is small consolation since second

hand smoke still drifts across borders

and oceans; but it is one country's

way of saying NO to the insidious

obscenity of a greed that prays

on addiction-for-profit.

cancer sticks.

at 1 am, the distinct rush of water

from a nearby ravine is underscored

by the gentle sway of leaves through

dark; this is what I'll recall when all

of this is finally done and I've moved

on.

until then ...

hold on

lone-heart

to the sway of air

that lifts and trails

a midnight dream

of winged oceans,

evangeline in search

of home, her tall grass

redemption found in

a latin word for truth,

hold on

home-heart

don't drift too far!

.

2010-04-29T00:14:00.008-04:00

full moon, low winds off the lake, and the usual late evening drive
spent writing in my head to the sound of a chorus singing something
classical, the sense of being born out of time, that this time is somehow
'wrong' without being able to explain 'how' or why', and lost to a string
of moments that stretch into years, that seem off, out of joint,
discombobulated as my father would say (I miss you Dad), like the
year of not sleeping which was last year, like feeling stuck in a web
or being chased by that faceless predator until my legs move so slowly
that the only recourse is to pull myself along a chain link fence by my arms
(a recurring dream since childhood), wanting to turn the car west and
just drive through the dark into a night without end.

the little tundra swan who was injured this winter has decided not to
migrate north for the spring with the trumpeters. we've named her Gloria
and she has gone missing in the past week. months ago, she was found injured,
shot in the wing and has since recovered but may not be able to fly long
distances anymore. so we watch out for her. there is a small group who
looks out for injured macro birds, and amoung them the question 'have you
seen Gloria?' is wrought with implication; it asks if there has been more evidence
of animal (bird) abuse (like paint ball target practice to white swans at night,
the kill shot being their head).

I think I could write a dissertation about disorientation, dislocation,
disequilibrium, put it in a letter to no one and send it into the ether, or ...

2010-04-06T21:38:00.007-04:00

.

2010-01-12T23:41:00.042-05:00

on the move

I am

floating somewhere between

day and night with boxes still

unpacked and no progression

...

here

where chaos clutters,

time grafts a waking

dream. milieu of all

milieus like bud lines

in a tangled branch.

time is out of joint

but the task is clear;

find meaning in this

misalignment.

strangely

he is the thread

that anchors me to what

I still hold dear; distance

sailing, flying, making light

of living through a desert

storm

and

those were special days,

riding words that fanned

out into cosmic spheres

empowered by a centrifugal

force that triumphed over

gravity and effervescent

screens.

so

this is where mere

chance and circumstance

succeed by loops and knots,

by speeds and movements,

gestures, packs of multiplicities

stringing into moments I must

claim as mine. but still the same

old question;

what comes next?

"Kerouac's dream, and Virginia Woolf's,
was for the writing to be like the line of
a Chinese poem-drawing. She says that
it is necessary to "saturate every atom"
and to do that it is necessary to eliminate,
to eliminate all that is resemblance and
analogy, but also 'to put everything into
it' : eliminate everything that exceeds
the moment, but put in everything that
it includes - and the moment is not the
instantaneous, it is the haecceity into
which one slips and that slips into
other haecceities by transparency.
To be present at the dawn of the
world."

(Deleuze and Guattari, 1988)

.

2009-10-19T17:03:00.002-04:00

Not compassed

North to South,

I would shed

this skin for wings,

for a thick billed beak

writ small

by sideways rain

and slate grey sky

.

2009-10-04T18:51:00.010-04:00

1001

there you go again,

desolately crazy rhizo

bloggist writing rap-shod

on a grafitti web of desire,

eyes eclipsed by your screen-

wielding cut-up collages

with stolen wireless and

talking to poor dead Deleuze

as if he were still taking

off up into outer space

in his dancing shoes

high in the sky, so maybe

I'll steal your fonts and

your alignments, ignore

your sideways glances

and contemplate poetry

as a kind of crucifixion

that poets nail down

words with because

yours is metrically

antithetical,prefaced

on a faster page loading

King Kong theory

ladled with the laws

of laithest levitas

How else can one write of those things
which one doesn't know, or knows badly?
It is precisely here that we imagine having
something to say. We write only at the
frontiers of our knowledge, at the border
which seperates our knowledge from our
ignorance and transforms the one to the
other.

Only in this manner are we resolved to write.
To satisfy ignorance is to put off writing until
tomorrow -or rather, to make it impossible.
Perhaps writing was a relation to silence
altogether more threantening that that,
which is supposed to entertain with death.
_______________________

Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (.)

.

2009-09-18T19:16:00.021-04:00

The View From Here

dusk

drops

like silk

across a fleeting-green

escarpment, here, where

Fall maintains an incomplete

equation (as of yet) with my

molasses-mellow buzz n'clink

of coffee cup containment and,

in café-style, stirs the trailing

edge, a drift of thought devoid

of time zones, airfoil for

expresso-wings stretched

wide as if to thrust the night

back up to sky, like lifting angels

with a lust for wind, for shoving

off, for navigating oceans under

stars bucked high by force

'til all are out of sight,

and all in preface for

self-flagellation

.

2009-08-30T19:23:00.006-04:00

bio

I have lived my entire life

as if in denial, stuffing back

that part of me that is most

me, as if to say that being in

the world and writing it down

were somehow separate events

but now I seek a community
of writers to bridge that gap
in my own mis-understanding

... the time to begin is now,

and now, and now again.

.

2009-04-26T09:12:00.012-04:00

written from within
an incessant haze of
second hand smoke
inflicted by selfish
neighbours, my words
turn back on me like
a boomerang and I
am immersed in a haze
with no release.

that's what this sunday
best exemplifies; its
sense of non-linearity.
... like a box of straws
that fall on the floor
and re-configure in
random overlap, myriad
planes of experience
that converge in the head
like an amorphous cloud,
like multiple beloveds
who map onto each other
over time in some foggy
way.

there is no place
on the planet that
anyone should be
allowed to smoke.

.

2009-03-24T16:03:00.010-04:00

cone 10 blue

each day, the lake adopts
a different colour and today
it is a cone 10 blue. high
winds toss it into white caps
and spray a crystal sky with
bitter chill. snow is coming,
one can 'feel' it (much as
those of us in northern
climes now pray for spring).

but like the season-yet-to-be,
my thoughts are undetermined.
they roll across my day like white
caps on a restless lake. there, then
not, and I am in retreat, in search
of something warmer, lost inside
some inner sanctum.

when he walks, he drops his bottom
lip as if about to speak; he is always
just one warm breath away from
words. his gait is decidedly slow,
head tilted slightly to the right and
up. half smile there, then not.
occasionally, an open hand cradles
his left shoulder; perhaps a former
baseball injury? but today, it is
the clink of weights that concentrates
the silence of a mid-week afternoon
spent at the gym. within this crowded
room, the only eyes I see are his ...
C, the next best thing to G

... almost.

all eyes and breath, his calm against
my storm, as wordless and as rare
as cone 10 blue.

he is in every other thought I own,
in sky and windows, shadows, light,
but best of all, in white capped
waves that toss and spill the
cone-10-blue-sprayed god-spot
in this restless day.

.

2009-02-22T11:46:00.004-05:00

haiku-who?

he counts the words, taps
one to three, their measured toss -
while outside, broken glass

When you come right down to it,
all you have is yourself. Yourself
is a sun with a thousand fires in
your belly. The rest is nothing.
(Pablo Picasso)

.

2009-02-15T15:30:00.018-05:00

a child recently said to me,
there are big things in the
little things.

1. I was shopping in
a local market, fondling
vegetables as a preface
to dinner, when I spied
a row of potted herbs
bordering the broccoli;
I leaned closer to breathe
in fresh sage, but a gruff
voice said, "no, not like
that, like this!". his was
a dense Italian accent
with work-worn stubs
for fingers, black lines
under his nails, and as
he grasped, he rubbed.
I watched his thumb
drag hard against a
leaf and then lift it to
his nose with unexpected
precision. he breathed
deeply and repeated,
" ... like this".

2. Jenn: a trainer with the
blue-est blues I've ever seen.
her voice is sweet and soft
as if in direct conduit to her
soul, it embodies the very
source of light and hope.
she is the only one I know
who can speak the following
words with convincing
resonance and credibility;
she softly whispers them
into my ear with a warm
breath that lingers on my
skin just as I am about to
give in to fatigue. she taunts,
"push through the pain" ...
and so I do. Jenn, who
candidly admits to no one
in particular, "I was married
once ... and never again.".
Jenn with the ultra-short
baby-fine blond haircut
that frames her face so
severely it is best described
"just like a man's", and who
is always loosely clad in
black to hide her rock-hard
frame but who, nonetheless,
keeps an Ironman tattoo
clearly visible on her right
ankle. both soft and hard,
she is Anomalous Jenn, the
one I want to hate but
somehow can't because
her left brain meets my
far right at unexpected
junctions (even though
she always gets those
two hemispheres mixed
up and endearingly calls
herself 'analytical-right'),
her push to my pull never
fails to inspire something
more from me. with little
lilting words like, "listen
to your body when it speaks
to you"(because she knows
I never do) from anyone
else would just fall flat as
way-too-clichéd. but not
from her. not from Über Jenn.

3. there is a box unopened on
my dining room table. I study
the reflected light on its corners
as I walk around it each morning
with coffee in hand. day in, day
out, I stalk it as if I am doing
Grande Rounds but am somehow
not yet convinced that it presents
well. bill of sale still attached, my
new macintosh remains unopened.
I stare it down like a bad day at
the gym, and each successive
morning is like Ground Hog Day.
its presence insists on something
more from me, just like Jenn does,
or like a rare sighting of a snowy
owl perched motionless on an
urban lamppost at dusk. it is a
laptop with a learning curve that
I, so far, deny. my tiny mac book
pro looms large. but one day soon
I will wake up from my pc fog
and launch that paradigmatic shift
from pc to mac ... will set it in motion
like a stage one launch, when the
time is right. but until that time,
there it sits, taunting me like the
techno-phobic elephant-in-the-
room that I am. tattoo-bound
Jenn would conquer it swift and
sure, with 'not like that, like this',
she'd say "Push through the pain!"

4. the bay remains frozen, even
though every 6 foot snow drift
has melted off the streets in
the past few days. milder
temperatures bring many
early migrants to this
region that just happens
to rest under a major
migratory flyway.

dusk on the bay is witching hour
for all the resident waterfowl
who raise their heads in anxious
chatter at sunset, made nervous
by the day's diminishing light.
lack of snow means less night-vision
on the ice and some of these birds
(geese, swans and ducks included)
stretch their necks high to face
southward in unison, as if to
synchronize themselves for flight.
for those who remain on land
every foreign noise, including
a paper bag that slowly scratches
the ground, spooks them.

inevitably, all will head for open
water soon, and that is where they
will spend the night (to keep warm
and to stay safe from predators
who hunt on dark ice). this winter
has been particularly cold, and
there is less food for coyotes and
birds of prey (since small rodents
have burrowed deep under the
snow). instead, they stalk the
frozen bay at night where the
phrase 'like a sitting duck'
literally applies.

their exit unfolds in two stages;
first, small groups of birds take
flight; they flock to the ice near
shore where they reconfigure into
family groupings before launching
into stage two for open water. but
it is on their second launch from bay
to lake that a resident snowy owl
will track the weaker ones in hope
of catching a mid-flight dinner.
needless to say, this is the most
interesting time of day to watch
their social behaviours unravel.

I am standing amidst a huge flock
of geese and swans on the corner
of a pier by a nearby parking lot.
these particular birds know and
trust me, but our eyes are riveted
to the night sky. for the past few
nights, a hungry owl in-wait has
perched atop a corner lamppost
directly above them. but they are
never alarmed until it follows them
out onto the ice. stage two becomes
a dangerous leap of life-or-death.
although the snowy owl is not visible
tonight, ken sits in his car, window
wide, with a huge lens propped up
at the sky. an hour passes and then
suddenly, all the grounded birds lift
their necks in uniform agitation, and
noisily take off. the night sky becomes
riddled with wings heading south
towards the lake. honking their way
past stage one, something has alarmed
them. but what? nothing is visible.
Ken rushes from his car to the pier
with surprising stealth and speed,
a gargantuan camera cloaked in
camophlage on his arm. we stand
shoulder-to-shoulder, motionless,
looking upward into the night.
but nothing. no 6 foot wingspan
soaring sideways. most of the
birds have now cleared the
horizon and only distant
honking is audible. ken
reluctantly releases a deep
sigh. lack of snow on the
ice obscures the owl's night
vision (and also ours); perhaps
he is finding more rodents
rambling on land. whatever
the reason, ken recounts his
owl stories. standing there
by a frozen bay under the
warm glow of a February
streetlamp and with an
industrial line of flaming
furnaces facing us from
across the bay, their odd
reflections cast strange
flickerings on the ice as
he recounts his owl stories.

one includes a great grey owl
who perched in a tree a mere
foot away from him, one that
he describes as "rather dumb"
since it did not flinch as he clicked
away. we agree that the lack
of accessible food this winter
has led many owl species to
prey on other owls. boreals
eating tiny screech owls, etc.
"beautiful, vicious birds", I
say. but he just smiles. he'll
be back tomorrow at dusk (and
so will I), both of us in perpetual
awe of an elusive bird intelligence
that seems to surpass ours, their
avian embodiment of ancestral
memory far surpassing ours by
billions of years ('they were
here first' becomes my mantra).

and so, we share a wordless
thought that maintains profound
respect for these macrobirds
coupled with an incessant
insistence that they need to
be protected. their primordial
history is far greater than the
right-left one our human species
boasts about. and so, I step back
into my car, headlights and radio,
street signs and pavement all
launching me into the night,
my stage two, driving me back
to a dis-connected (sub)urbanity
that leads away from the wisdom
of these feathered skies at dusk ...
at least until tomorrow night.

in essence,
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 ≈ something big
(inside the small).

.

2009-01-09T22:58:00.010-05:00

within the small causal layer
that comprises a single life,
only the future is within
one's control.

here comes the arrow
of time

... whooooosh

.

2008-12-06T10:29:00.015-05:00

on tol ogy

in his eyes
a universe
of edges,
a cloud to
paynes grey
skies that
slips across
my view
of things

his words
become a boat
that floats across
my river of ideas,
spinning eddies
of essentialities,
agents of domain
he loosely paddles
with his tongue

and this
is all too
abstract
for a poem
I know,
I know.

.

2008-11-09T16:32:00.008-05:00

"suspended between my darkest
fears and darkest hope"
(Sting)

... it is one of those grey canadian days
of early november filled with the kind
of light that renders dreams and time
indistinguishable from dawn to dusk.

it is late Sunday afternoon on the
tail of a previously restless night,
one filled with bad dreams for no
apparent reason. with no outstanding
debts to speak of and no undelivered
promises to grate at the inside, I am
scattered

... in a walking-up-hill-both-ways
kind of way.

this is something only countless
listenings of Alone Together can
possibly cure ... this, the only remedy
for making sense of all senseless things
... in his words, it is 'uphill, uphill';

"... [and] if they don't make sense, then
they're certainly layered with nuances ...
what if instead you were to tell me about
the lake today? and the sky north of the
border? and the fog off the water? and
the light drizzle or rain or snow? or the
street-lights and decorations, all things
more interesting than what's bouncing
around in my mind (which includes Chet
and Alone Together as I type this)."

in the world of words, certain moments
live on in the heart. as Shakespeare
perceptively stated,

"The more I give to thee, the more I have,
for both are infinite."
(Act II, Scene I)

... so, for dinner tonight? five centuries
of spanish guitar, lightly fried feta and a
certain lingering inflection to the phrase
"you so have no answers".

all in the spirit of mood and ambience,
as if to move beyond this dark
november day.

.

2008-10-26T12:04:00.018-04:00

october poem

love rises like a waning crescent
moon at five percent of full,
night light to a limping male
plumed for fall and hungry
as the dark inside his eyes.

he feeds on circumstance,
just barely off the rocks with
water diamonds caped across
his back. bee-yellow beak
occluding air for corn which
spills below my seeded hand,

it taps the ground. it is a code
for calling geese ashore amidst
the orange rise and spew of steel
stacks beyond a berm that can`t
contain its toxic harbour slime.

when waves splash through
like unexpected innuendos in a suitor`s
eyes, their unattainable containment
simultaneously crushes hope
to empty sky

and dashes any dream of flight
from cold October winds for
birds in sight and for a love
that bites like hungry beaks
at five percent of full.

2008-10-12T11:54:00.000-04:00

.

2008-10-08T17:05:00.004-04:00

a song for Canada

.

2008-10-07T00:30:00.005-04:00

"and if I only could, I`d make a deal with god
and I'd get him to change our places."

or words to that effect. those lyrics have been running
through my head since early this morning. it's been
that kind of a day. and it ends with a slow mist rising
from the bay under an orange half moon. the city,
the work, the gym, the art, none of it matters to these
concluding moments in the dark. perhaps that's the
point, that there is no point other than these concluding
moments in a day that replays a song as the next best
thing to a dream.

.

2008-09-05T09:09:00.004-04:00

yesterday was born of a fine mist,
a diaphanous veil that slowly slipped
sideways, a curtain of fog invading
windows from far off but it was also
the mournful repetition of a passing
ship, a horn that trailed the line
of a lake obscured by gondola
grey.

such a little word, lake. even `great lake`
doesn`t begin to convey the concept of
immensity nor vastness of volume in
retreat, this backwards shoreline
known here only as `the escarpment`
is filled with blessed immensity; all
the fresh water one could ever want
is what this region represents.

waterfalls abound, and hiking trails that
transverse shale and limestone, that frame
the ridge of a once larger lake now silently
saturated with ancestral history, and all
this is laced by the countless waterfowl
who grace these shores for home and
respite. they are the ones who lift life
up as high as the skies from one winged
season to the next and bring to a close
this busy one of nestings and moltings.

this shore fits precisely beneath a major
migratory flight path and teems with activity
four times a year. but between seasons,
night skies come alive with flight, thousands
passing overhead, living on the wind, and
most of them move unnoticed by earth-bound
urban-suburban dwellers who rarely look
up and never really listen to the night skies.

but these particular bay shores offer an
invitation for respite from an arduous-airborne
journey. fall is a funnel of wings that prefaces
their journey north and to fully understand
this place one needs to live here for awhile,
take root in every successive season rather
than visiting for a few short weeks to know
the direct correlation between culture and
geography. life in our cities masks that
connection to land that we are all ancestrally
hard-wired for. but when an early September
breeze blows across the lake at night, when
one feels it light on the skin, that gentle
warm-cool air that heralds change in a
Leibnizian sense, one grasps the true
acquiescence of spirit to place, a sense
inseparable from this great lake`s night
skies.

only someone who has lived this season
many times over can really understand
the meaning of its approach. but last night,
with bare toes on rocks and stars at my
fingertips, I heard its pre-flight symphony
in the trees, wind and song all tangled up
to the rhythm of three words in my head,
their ergodic loop and eternal return, sad
mantra for its inbetweenness ... and I heard
it with all the beauty that change inspires,
I heard `fall is coming, fall is coming`.

.

2008-08-30T09:44:00.004-04:00

pylvia slath-ing

in the lake lined spray
of a blue sky day spent
on a bay-shaded bench,
I drift to the word-messy
muse of a head-in-the-oven
poetic-bound Plath who,
soft as summer, rests
on my knee wearing
only a paperback jacket
cold-pressed in turquoise,
and Colossus-clad, she
forges calamitous paths
through my head but
even her name sounds
like wading through mud,
her galoshes-bound words
with their thick aftermath,
plath-plath go her thoughts
through my sighs worn in
and worn out by successive
re-readings, her letters
house hours, each step
of a phrase though exquisitely
chosen weds shadows
to verse with the shove
and the suck of each
wrist-writhing wound
that weighs me down
to the blunt indefatigable
facts of her life

2008-08-18T08:14:00.001-04:00

.

2008-08-16T11:35:00.017-04:00

not that this is a political
blog, but my country borders
theirs , therefore theirs affects
mine daily, and since Nature knows
no nation, I pray for urgent
leadership for a country that
currently knows none ...

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:16:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: Center for Biological Diversity
Subject: Endangered Species Act Under Assault

Plan Announced to Erase 35 Years of Endangered Species Protection

Dear X,

This week Dirk Kempthorne, secretary of the Interior,
announced devastating changes to the Endangered Species
Act, signaling the end of protection or thousands of
imperiled species.

The Center for Biological Diversity is rallying an immense
surge of opposition to prevent these changes from taking effect.

Tell Secretary Kempthorne what you think of his plans to
pillage the Endangered Species Act

Under the current regulations, federal agencies must consult
with scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National
Marine Fisheries Service to determine whether a project is
likely to harm endangered species or habitat.

The new regulations would ...

* exempt thousands of federal activities from review under
the Endangered Species Act
* eliminate checks and balances of independent oversight
* limit which effects can be considered harmful
* prevent consideration of a project's contribution to global warming
* set an inadequate 60-day deadline for wildlife experts to
evaluate a project in the instances when they are invited to
participate - or else the project gets an automatic green light
* enable large-scale projects to go unreviewed by dividing
them into hundreds of small projects.

In addition, last week Kempthorne and Bush tried to slip
another proposed rule change under the radar that would
limit protection of a species only to where it is currently
found.

Under the current rule a species has protection in its entire
historical range. However many endangered species have
lost substantial portions of that range. For example;
under the proposed changes, prior to being reintroduced,
the California condor would only have been listed in zoos.

And, because these regulations are administrative and not
legislative, they won't need the approval of Congress.

We must stop Kempthorne from fatally crippling our nation's
most successful wildlife law.

Join the Center for Biological Diversity's effort to stop
Kempthorne dead in his tracks. Send a message to
Kempthorne by clicking here ... DemocracyinAction

Sincerely,

Kieran Suckling
Executive Director
Center for Biological Diversity

******************************************

The Center for Biological Diversity sends out action alerts
and newsletters through DemocracyinAction.org

Center for Biological Diversity
P.O. BOX 710 TUCSON, AZ, USA 85702
1-866-357-3349

.

2008-07-20T14:15:00.015-04:00

For My Father

like sunshine sweeping through

a summer fog, you slowly swing

your way across the lake and in

descent upon an early morning

slap of wings, you lift from log

to air with south-bound beak,

your silent flight

you are

a great blue heron sitting on

the tendril of a dock at dusk,

standing sleek, stealth-still

with head bent low while watching

for the next big catch to swim

a brushing kiss away from you,

your blade-sharp wait

you leave me

like the pearly light through rainclouds

in an august night, moon-thinned, broken

by the passing cold but subsequently filled

with heavy insight from the upward breath

of birds in migratory flight, northbound

cranes converging on my rooted sky,

a far-flung tapestry so sadly out of reach

.

2008-07-01T12:48:00.005-04:00

elsewhere

is unspoiled, and as advertised,
pristine (ie. expensive?), uplifting
like a hand-sewn purse comprised
of fifty thousand flinches worth
of feathers from a beach bound molt,

is a sandy perch with dazzling shots of
late day light on weekend sailors' wakes,
exponent of all sky-tossed angels in disguise,
is youandme contained within a supernova sense
of self tossed high into an elsewhere sky

.

2008-06-18T09:28:00.010-04:00

it`s been a month of clouds,
hard rain and rainbows, arcs
and bows. this fast-paced sky,
for all its restless speed,excites
me like his name still does. he
should have been my password
but for time and distance.
fingertips-to-thoughts form
small abstractions that
dismantle moments held
in trust. still, I watch what`s
coming next; what`s above
me must have been above
him first, that western-edgey
thrust of air that took too
long for May to make, it
must have touched him first.
and even now, this soft
June air gently whispers
past my skin, its faint hint
of him reminding me of
maps, straight lines that
meet at intersections,
perfect and precise.

.

2008-05-18T08:40:00.010-04:00

unbeknownst

to the verbotically-rambling
muse of Self ....

now that this readership
has distilled itself down
to an audience of none,
perhaps I finally feel
like writing again. but
it has never been the notion
of verbing a blog nor the
social construct of blogging
that inspires a reason to
write; there is no immediate
sense of satisfaction in that.
instead, the question remains;
who do I write for (in this
so-called space of a place
for words, with its
relentlessly-faceless
screen)? and who is it
that I publish these words
to, if not to some Buddhist
notion of nothingness? all
my words adrift in the ether,
connected but capsized in
a sea of metaphoric black
with no particular destination,
at least none until all of
them collide with other
(previously written) ones
in unexpected ways as if
to conquer new meanings,
to go where no words have
gone before (or so one hopes)
... ?

... because I really like
that image of (all my) letters
weightlesssly adrift and
breaking free of their
predictable (ie. traditional)
word-orbits to recombine,
circling others like new
moons, re-creating skylines
of thought, horizons
previously unbeknownst
to me, because it's all
about process, about
clicking their little
lettered launchpads and
blasting them into the
digivoid just to see what
conspires in the milky
way of meaningful bits
and bytes. not light-on
but light-through, and
only to be revisited from
another space of thought,
from another evocation
further down the line of
time.

maybe if time is a line,
it is a stretchy string
that flings itself back
and forth with certain
elasticity and with such
speed that all we see is
a battered blur until our
persistance of vision leaves
us with that illusive
possibility of seeing
many lines at once.

multiplicibilities.

and being a seeker of
images, maybe this is how
we write, by gathering up
our line of time into one
great big stretchy ball of
tangled thoughts, layers
upon layers all strung up
but allthewhile knowing we
could unwind our lifeline
ball of history-words,
unfurl it like an umbilical
cord, could pull it back
into one long stretchy
string that connects us
to some philosophical
conception of (capital L)
Life that actually makes
sense from start to finish.
but how tedious. and why
bother?

perhaps I launch these words
from here, today, just to
create a temporary record of
myself, a mirror image, one
that I can revist or reconstruct
from within a different frame
of mind (ie. another time)
knowing that one day, soon,
and whenever technology takes
its next great leap, that
this particulate expression
combined with this software
and this hardware will also
be obsolete. when that day
comes, all these words will
be lost forever. when CDs
and memory sticks are no
longer compatable storage
devices, ours will be a
generation with no permanent
trace or trail, with nothing
left on paper and therefore
no lifeline record of who
we are. from blogging to
texting to youtube to
talking on a cell, all
habits that benefit trees (?)
but also contradict our
current concept of re-corded
history. perhaps McLuhan was
right; we are fast becoming
an oral society once again.

and as for this trite post,
knowing that it will ultimately
disappear, will be lost in
time, perhaps I will eventually
rethink my notion of publishing.
perhaps I'll transpose my first
novel onto one long-stretchy
string of words, reconfigure
it into one elastic line of
paragraphs that I subsequently
tangle up into one big bouncy
ball of thought. literally.
then I'll place it on a
gallery pedestal for public
viewing, words objectified,
and maybe its bibliography
will get tangled into
a significantly tinier
ball, a little über-moon
of ancillary thought
that will mechanically
rotate 'round my bigger
globe-of-thought
construction.

object permanence.

until then, I'll continue
to launch these little
lettered ships into the
digivoid, destined to no one
in particular but allthewhile
pondering the grander notion
of nothingness with its
quaintly characteristic
click-click-click.

.

2008-05-16T19:43:00.002-04:00

overheard in the women`s locker room

"I have to write a 2000 word essay
by tomorrow and I won't get home
til 7 o'clock. It has to be about how
to take over New Zealand. I could
have had Finland but Amber got
it first. What do I know about New
Zealand; I'm Canadian. Look how
much my forehead sticks out. It
really sticks out! I can't believe I
have to write a 5000 word essay
about how to take over New Zealand
by tomorrow."

.

2008-04-12T08:40:00.017-04:00

details

today, an unprecedented
visit to a St*rbucks-bookstore
led to some randomly chosen
literature and a small table
near the back under a big
red wall of names, and while
trying to stir Neruda's thoughts
into a cup of vanilla latté
(peppered with a little cinamon),
I unintentionally tore the poem
I was writing, my gel grip unibel
black fine tip marker grazing
a little too hard, haste and
friction dragging a brown
paper napkin across its
promise (of 100% recycled
fibres) and inadvertently
ripped a hole in my words;
this gap of a distraction led
to another divergence, to
a book with colour plate
photos of Adelié penguins
nesting near a South Pole,
this in stark contrast to
the whiz of a nearby expresso
machine, but after a clerk
confirmed the $29. 95 book
jacket price on Meredith
Hooper`s hardcover version
of The Ferocious Summer
to be Canadian, I sipped
and sank into random
paragraphs that described
various penguin behaviours,
thinking how great it would
be to spend time in the
Antarctic for the sake of
sitting next to them and
watching them from day
to day, becoming familiar
with their individual
personalities along-side
the biologists who study
them, and when I finally
closed the book, David Suzuki`s
endorsement on the cover
stated;

"Like canaries in a coal mine,
penguins present an undeniable
and urgent warning of the devastating
effect of climate change on the planet.
This timely book must be read."

(Copyright 2008 by Greystone
Books, Vancouver B.C.)

... and this is when Bill McKibben's
turn of phrase came to mind, his
"end of nature" plea which heralds
t/his time in human history as
technologically catastrophic to
the "Natural World", his heart-felt
words always overlaid by my
reverence for birds, and all of
this a momentary oasis in an
otherwise busy-peopling place,
and it was there, taken from
the brow up, that I remembered
an expression someone once
shared with me, one that I've
since pondered long and hard,
and one that has ultimately
added yet another layer to his
overall mystique (if I can call it
that, or, more likely, the aura
of his distance), his curious
'the devil is in the details'
expression which I still
ponder ... what currently
constitutes 'details', or rather,
how do we assign value to
those seemingly simple things
we simultaneously acknowledge
and dismiss?

like Deleuze's notion of the Sorcerrer;.

"becoming-animal always ... a pack,
a band, a population, a peopling,
in short, a multiplicity."

... a Lord-of-the-Flies kind of Devil
sans religious dogma, not taken too
seriously by anyone from day to day
perhaps because 'it' sits "independent
of the population it appeals to or
takes as its witness", perhaps
because of its ubiquitous presence
in our lives, the Devil in the daily
taken for granted like wild birds
and beasts, that it is always there,

quite harmless until we pay it
some attention, and if every
animal contains a pack, a faceless
mob, (as Deleuze suggests), this
is what his becoming-animal
means and if so, does it also
define his fascination for the pack
(ie. for multiplicity)?, his notion
of becoming-animal as a desire
for (control of) the outside?

but does his notion of a
pack-becoming reduce animals
to a swarm of socially inferior
forms and faceless entities? if so,
D's irony lies in the involution of
his Devil as a desire to occupy
seats of power by proliferating
'contagions, epidemics, battlefields,
and catastrophes'.

... perhaps the antithesis of D's
Devil-notion is not some abstract
idea of Go(o)d (theological or otherwise),
but rather, pertains to the fringe,
represents the Loner, is someone
who stands apart from the pack in
anomalous alliance with something
Unique, as poet, artist, musician,
inventor, seeker, is anyone who
sits on the edge of their own
deterritorialization as if to maintain
a borderline view of self, is a
counterpoint to the peopling
notion of a Deleuzian Sorcerrer,
and if this appears to be a
misreading (or half-reading) of
Deleuze & Guattari, perhaps it
is my disagreement with their
Memories of a Sorcerrer (ATP),
with the way D&G misrepresent
animals by reducing them to
the dichotomy of pet-or-pack,
and all this sits in stark deviation
to my simply-Friday vanilla
latté with its stirred-up images
of icebergs and penguins
perched at the pole, coupled
with an enduring desire to
see them up close, to prove
each one's individuality and
to erupt the notion of the
faceless pack we trap them
in, and all this to indulge in
a little week-end thinking
without the restrictive
pressure of philosophical
borders, but most of all,
is a desire to travel to the
edge (however surreptitiously),
go south-to-the-extreme
and come back again.

.

2008-04-06T09:37:00.018-04:00

there

in this slow pace
between his intentions
in a crowded room,
moments measure
nothing next to late
day light that wraps
in ribbons `round
his neck, brown eyes
steeped in way too
much and heavy metal
in a mirrored gym, its
High C ring, the force
of gravitation, his
unhurried moves
that weave the air
with head bent low
as if to test the weight
of steps, just like
approaching geese
(ie. the feathered
rise of cautious heads
above the rocks to
guage their pressence
on a pier before
advancing any further),
but in a downward
glance with arms pulled
taut like Jesus on a Friday
cross in quiet reciprocity,
it seems that there are
only two regimes of
madness in this
April-shrouded lift,
like feathers up to sky,
his airborne eyes defy
each sigh, each repetition,
and these define the space
between each moving
shadow on the floor
and light on skin because
in this slow space, time
means something more.

2008-03-13T23:32:00.000-04:00

.

2008-03-09T23:26:00.010-04:00

denouement

it doesn't take Deleuze to figure
out that, on some level, there is
one particlar question that always
hangs in the air of any social
situation, requires no answer
and will never be spoken outloud
(unless someone breaks the rule,
in which case, the exhilaration
of multiple lines of flight will
be killed). better to let it live
as a nebulous notion of multiplicity
so it can loom large in the ether
because no matter how remote a shot,
without it, if there is no what-if
tension to any given gathering,
then all that's left in a room
are dead stars and endless space).

so there it is. in the gym,
at an opening, wherever any
three are gathered. variables
don't matter to the question.
it's the asking that counts;
'which one of us would you pick?'
becomes the only thing worth
investing one's attention in.
forget the fact that any one
of the three of us might actually
be in an incredibly satisfying
relationship. also, forget that
all three of us might actually
be standing at one of the two
guys` wedding receptions
(who just happens to be holding
a non-refundable plane ticket
departing shortly for his own
hot brazilian honeymoon). and
it doesn`t matter if the other
guy has recently been diagnosed
with full body cancer and has,
at best, a few short hours left
to live, or, alternatively, has
made a life-altering decision
to join the Tibetan priesthood
and move to Nepal in, say,
precisely 15 minutes, where
he will live out the remainder
of his celibate life in an
isolated monastery with no
way to return, due to the
war-torn circumstances of
its geography.

and forget the fact that I may
also be happily involved with
someone else, who, say, just
happens to be another woman
(which I`m not, but just let`s say) ...

none of this matters.

despite all the hairy details,
the unspoken guy-question remains;
`yeah, girl, I know all that, but
if you had to pick just one of us ... ?'

...

of course, the question has it's
own magnetic pull, drives any
social cirucmstance to the point
that it affirms to (all three
of) us that we are indeed still
alive, and keeps us firmly
anchored to the planet of
earthly desires so that we
don't spin off the floor and
spiral uncontrollably back
into the black nothingness
of our own private places
(by which I mean our respective
residences, which, admittedly,
can, at times, be a little
void of exotic possibility).

so there it is.

and it's not that women
tolerate this unspoken querry.
we actually love it, even thrive
on it, because the alternative,
the deafening black hole of
unquestioning silence, of
absolutely no possible tension
to ignite our inner what-ifs
and to (re)charge us with that
little maybe-buzz that courses
so pleasantly throughout our
entire orbit, is, well,
everything.

.

2008-03-08T22:29:00.002-05:00

eros is a crow, indeed.

.

2008-03-05T13:37:00.007-05:00

in mind, your name is soft,
and not unlike the silence
of the songbirds, in decline
but therefore valued even
more, its letters bunched
like birds into a swirling
mass of sounds that tip
the tongue unbound by sky,
like winged specks that
fly against marsh clouds
and disappear behind tall
reeds, a dusky-dotted funnel
of what-ifs that pour through
sleepy grass in search
of rest

it is a purple martin in the palm,
largest of the swallows but that
small, diminishing all other thoughts
of you, your seven letters skimming
hundreds low across the lake, too
impossible to count but even so
your name is like another gust of
wind that presses weeds like hands
through hair, that stirs the birds
in upward screeching streams who
lift away from thunderheads, fall
back again to waterbeds, finally
find another perching place from which
to chase their migratory mark

like me repeating sounds as if
to fly with angels in the dark

2008-03-04T17:31:00.000-05:00

.

2008-02-14T23:32:00.014-05:00

another grey day
and a small storefront space
in the heart of a local antique
district; something about the
confluence of light on late
afternoon snow glowing gold
under streetlamps. Monday at
dusk in a dingy shop filled
with old objects haphazzardly
strewn on a floor one could
trip over, and me snaking my
way past so many useless
curiousities.

treasure-seeking? the thrill
of random discovery? or some
subjective notion of history?
maybe I was just avoiding home
with its always-five-o'clock
reminder of one lost angel
and that seemingly incessant
mood of late afternoons, its
northern sunless sense of
is-it-only-January? an oppressive
low-light malaise accompanied
by the dark-at-dinnertime drive
to anywhere but home. and home
with its shadowy remainder of
one more valued voice now gone
from my life.

while searching for nothing in
particular (or maybe everything
at once?) and of course not finding
it, my eyes turned streetward with
one reluctant palm pressed against
the handle. I was one step away
from pulling cold air into the
dusty shop and ready to hear
brass chimes hit the glass hard,
that thick all-encompassing
clink-thud defeat of a nebulous
search. but through lowered lids
and a sideways glance something
pulled me back in. the shop was
otherwise empty but for one man
leaning quite heavily against
a glass display case. he was
waiting for the owner to show
him a watch with a thick leather
strap with 30-ish intensity for
something so clearly unextraordinary.
would he buy it or walk away? I
inched closer to the counter but
his eyes were what I really wanted.
dark and heavily lidded as if
trapped in some bottomless abyss.
and the nervous way his fingers
tapped the glass. big hands, I
thought. and substantial eyes.

call it hope but the owner
presented me with an unwound
miniature cuckoo clock (5 x 4 inches);
it was the notion of time without
progression, the word 'Germany'
stamped onto its small brass face.
small weights and chains were
intact but the miniscule wind-up
key was missing; this was time
as pure possibility. a watchmaker-
friend might know how to replace
the key, I thought.

four hand-carved leaves framed the
clockface and denoted traditional
Black Forest design. at the top was
a wooden white bird with red wings,
a yellow-billed cuckoo who slid
sideways to tap each new hour
against the seeds of a wooden flower.
at the bottom of the clock, a little
wooden nest with 3 eggs. for a moment,
I forgot about the man with bottomless
eyes and asked how much. the owner
stated a number, I countered with
a lesser one and we confirmed the
sale with a smile.

a miniature cuckoohouse clock;
how could I not take it home?
from the Greek dramatist,
Aristophanes (450-380 BC.)
the expression "cloud-cuckoo-land"
originated (meaning if someone
indulges in an absurdly over-optomistic
fantasy or makes an impractical
or utopian plan, they are living
in cloud-cuckoo-land).

was that me? living in a cloistered
world of words with no time zones?
in A's ancient comedy (entitled
The Birds), birds built an imaginary
capital city in the air which they
named Nephelokokkygia, a name made
from the Greek words for cloud
(nephele) and cuckoo (kokkux).
regardless, this unworkable time
piece somehow lifted me out of
my grey slush sensibility. this,
in concert with the man who wore
bottomless eyes.

I love how one idea leaps so unexpectedly
into another. mystery surrounds the cuckoo
bird, first in terms of how young cuckoos
actually learn to migrate. the parent
birds typically migrate from Europe in
late August, yet the young leave much
later in the fall. but the question
remains, how do the young know enough
to migrate, or even know where to go?
is the impulse to migrate a function
of genetic imprinting, nature over
nurture? according to migration expert
Weidensaul, migration is a general
function of food availability, rather
than weather conditions. still. the
details of when and where are
traditionally taught to the young
by parent birds. therefore, to say
that cuckoo beginnings are rather
anonalous is an understatement.

rebels and renegades with curious
parenting skills, the European cuckoos
don't bother to build their own nests,
but surreptitously drop their eggs in
another bird's nest. nor do cuckoos
incubate, feed or rear their young.
ornithologists call it brood parasitism.
once hatched, cuckoo fleglings are
hard-wired to manipulate their
surrogate parents (which can be
any one of 50 different species).
for example, hours after hatching,
the baby interloper routinely begins
to rid the nest of its competition.
whenever it comes in contact with
another egg, it pushes it to the
side of the nest and tips it over
the edge. feathery little Damians.
the young cuckoo's insistent cry,
coupled with the red gape and
distinct markings of its open beak
act as an intense stimulant for
the adoptive parents who run
themselves ragged trying to satisfy
the baby cuckoo's capacity for food,
thereby indavertently placing its
need before the other (legitimate)
nestlings.

finally, the cuckoo's prompt April
return to Europe from Africa is
timed so predictably that Greek
historian Hesiod advised farmers
to plow the fields when they heard
cuckoos sing. harbinger of spring,
even if their call is clear their
exact location remains elusive,
thus sending many birdwatchers
throughout the ages on a so-called
fool's erand.

so.

from dusk to dark eyes, from timeless
clocks to anomalous cuckoos, and angels
adrift, the meaning of this confluence
eludes me. perhaps it suggests something
about emphemerality (as opposed to
permanence) or the physics of friendship?
both abstract notions that are ttoo deep
in mind to unravel. maybe it's the idea
that energy is never lost or destroyed
but only transformed (like the distance
between a dormant clock and some random
guy with bottomless eyes buying time
as a watch). but whatever I think I know
in my deep winter drift, one thing is
clear. I won't lose what I, so seemingly
long ago, gained from my five o'clock
friend. some things are immeasurable.
and remembering this, that no matter
how deep anyone dives, at some point
the surface always beckons one back.

it's a matter of time.

"It is not the walls of your library,
decked with ivory and glass, that I need,
but rather the resting place in your heart,
wherein I have not stored books, but I have
of old put that which gives value to books,
a store of thoughts from books of mine."
(Spinoza)

.

2008-02-09T14:45:00.000-05:00

poetry means
to uncover what
is already here
that we are
unaccustomed
to seeing

an interview
with Harold Bloom
on Danish Television
(Jan. 14, 2008).

.

2008-01-27T08:36:00.000-05:00

seen backwards, winter wears
a circle, claims a plane that waits precisely
in the round, floats up and down inside
a looking glass reflection flatly
filled with trees and sky, remains

minutely faithful to a seasoned
circularity and to its why, is bevel-bound
to face the east towards a lake,
a mirrored portal, dresser-propped,
and hinged to solid oak,

its grip is aging brass, its
round-rink surface contradicts
the upright depth of bushy
thickness stripped away
by january light,

is sky fulfilled by wooden lines
that taper to the test of moody
truth revealed in a bounce, becomes
a raven rising to the top, who flaps
its black to white, who caws and taps

from limb to limb with winged
declarations in prolonged suspension
of the space between each hair-like
twig about to give away its weight
to gravitas, til finally time becomes

a feathered float beyond the rim of
day-to-dusk that penetrates the frame
and disappears to some unveiled place
within the circle of a thought that lifts
away to icy moons and hovers

uncomposed by twilight doubt

.

2008-01-13T21:42:00.000-05:00

Dear M,

I received your booklist too.

And would have contacted you regarding that,
except that I have most of them already.

Nothing replaces the spoons.

Remembering this, that;

"if you add or subtract one, you change multiplicity." (ATP),

I bet the same sorcerers
still lay in wait
at the edge.
Always haunting the fringes.

War-machines looking for reasons.

Just give them one
and they might come out
to play.

What happens when a flat line
becomes a fault? Time to shake
things up?

Suffice it to say,
printmakers everywhere
are very excited about
the Year of the Rat.
All those visual metaphors
drawn to inky becomings.
Let's see what it conjures.

Regardless.

Happy New Year, M.

2007-12-17T08:56:00.000-05:00

.

2007-12-16T13:24:00.000-05:00

the goodness of one

frost, and then snow, came way
too early this year and two weeks
ago, where was I? lost in deep six.
caught in nebulous notions of nothing,
the idea of zero deeply rooted in some
sense of not, notsomuch a number as
an innate (ancestral, even primordial)
grasp at naught. of not-having, not-doing,
not-being. "think nothing of it, it's
nothing, nothing to it". thoughts like
these crept in until time stopped (for
me although apparently not for anyone
else). meanwhile, premature frost
hit my fig tree quite surreptitiously.
but by the time I caught its condition,
was way too steeped in a ciphered
zilch to nurse it back to health.
how very uncharacteristic (of me).

and so, from frost to draught, it
was twilight amidst my gods, their
anti-genesis splayed out in full
view of my 10 foot - 15 year old
fig, its brooding heaps of yellow
leaf droppings that were ignored
by my annihilating will. worse
still, it took 2 torturous weeks
to die.

it now seems fitting that today`s
inescapable outside-white is the
perfect equivalent to nietzsche's
nulling words inside my head.
from Zarathrusta`s ten year trek
through wilderness to this raging
winter storm, it is a fitting
metaphor for the guilt of my
all-encompassing crime. but
of course, any sincere gaze into
the abyss eventually leads one
to a Buddha moment, replete
with its "death of God" aha!,
which always wipes horizons
clean. today's blizzard-blur
stared back into me with N's
exact words;

"... how could there be an
outside-of-me? There is no outside!"
(Nietzsche's Zarathustra)

and so, like nihilist-nietzsche bent
on self-overcoming, I now seek
redemption for my crime, a little
solace, and some tender consolation
by writing into the void (for myself
rather than for any amorphously
prefigured notion of audience).
the conception of a(ny) poem
thrives on notions of naught
and like my poor tree, comes
out of no where and does as it
wills until larger forces prevail
to sweep it into its great reversal.
a poem is nothing less than this
arduous journey back from any
abyss, everything vital and
creative asserting itself against
the void. it is the great return
from zero to one.

Nietzsche`s noble lie about his
'will to power' is ultimately
exposed by his understanding of
an überself, the universal man
of Blake`s poetry. N awakens the
notion of one in himself. but if
reading Nietzsche`s internal
struggle (between self and ego)
is much like chewing on tin foil,
nonetheless, his understanding
of an überself approximates the
crossing of a bridge between the
two. it is a Buddhist notion of
`true self`, the unconditioned,
the realization of (his own)
godmanhood. his newly-found
christ-consciousness is a circle
whose centre is everywhere and
whose circumference is no where.
it is this paradoxical notion that
extends the body far beyond
its 'self'.

so what is the universal 'it'
of 'having it all' or of 'losing it'?
according to nietzsche, it is the
seduction away from any organized
religion towards the heart of
Christ's purpose (towards a
body without organs) which
is most likely the realization
of each person's godmanhood,
go(o)dness always being an
equation of one; in this
sense, religionless-nietzsche
ironically becomes the millenial
epitome of a faithful disiciple
of christ. and afterall, isn't
there always a little nietzsche
in christ-mas?

as for me, I weathered the storm.
actually enjoyed the blind adrenalin
rush of driving through white, hitting
drifts in the road without once skidding
off my path, and the sobering sting of
icy wind off a horizonless lake. I
traversed the abyss and made it back
safely from zero to one. but as is
always the case after a blizzard,
after all has resettled, some things
are irreversibly changed, both inside
and out. in this case, the incessant
remains of one thought. nothing will
ever replace my intrepid fig because
some things, like trees and lost
angels, are absolutely irreplaceable
and always need to be remembered
as such.

...

.

2007-11-25T12:39:00.000-05:00

wish

(omnispheric ode: first draft)

poor shorebound me,
my windy eyes tossed
up to sky

poor dead-weight me,
my gravitas
a wingless sigh

poor autumn earth
bound to this flightless
heap, to frost and dew

but o to live upon
the wind, eternity
a leap through blue

.

2007-11-17T10:27:00.000-05:00

only cities that claim their cultural
context from water currently captivate.
a lake, an ocean, a river, each day
the water a different colour, an open
horizon that insists upon an unending
relationship with distance and the
concrete awareness of a natural world
beyond its limits, beyond the dyad of
urbanity and rusticity, as if water
could orient the (mind`s) eye
to some notion of 'beyond'.

too bad the observer gets burdoned
by a word; 'environmentalist'.
exactly what does that mean? it`s
such a conceptual stretch from the
act of appreciating a walk in the
woods to eco-political activism.
so with this notion in mind ...

apparently, the Algonquin Park forest
is getting quieter. birds (Finches,
Chickadees, Nuthatches) seem to be
moving out due to a near-non-existent
natural food situation. if this is a
non-seed year in the forest (due to
low water levels?), the song birds
of Algonquin and nearby Muskoka are
heading south, passing through this
area in huge numbers, and each day
by the lake there are more and more
to see. migrants passing through,
living on the wind.

a seemingly unrelated event:
perhaps because the lake is nearby,
he confides in me. with a shaved
head and infectious laugh, he
admits to his newest artistic
project. "I'm inventing an alphabet.",
he says. something pictographic,
"like chinese characters, only
different. don't know why."
but I nod, knowing there aren't
too many people who will care to
understand his latest compulsion.
like Deleuze's two regimes of
madness and no roundtable for
Proust, with its digressed discourse
"perforated and deconstructed".
inexhaustibilities (like human
imagination) flow like water.
like Nature. (so-called).

"... not because it is always new,
which does not mean much, but
because it is always displaced
when it returns, the idea of
searching for something
which has no end."
(Deleuze, 2006)

I guess that's the point.
to find your own flow.

2007-10-24T23:18:00.000-04:00

.

2007-10-07T10:03:00.000-04:00

truth at -80 kph

this Sunday morning slowly seeps
through lids like wet yellow ochre
on Arches, like Giacometti into
Satie; nothing compares. in this
undying season, occassional red
traces green and is seen through
warm air. October at 26•C is
surreal in this northern space.
but the skies are alive and
teeming with migrants who
hang on the wind, make their
wing-ed way through high wire
flights that nobody sees and
nobody hears despite the
unending grey of lake-into-sky,
and nothing distracts from
this upside down day like
sweet green pepper air that
smells musty and wet, like
something is coming. smells
a little like change.

.

2007-09-21T07:51:00.000-04:00

beatitudo

art is an expression; so why
do people get upset about it,
saying it has to be this way or
that? art is a live-and-let-live
kind of thing, a process perceived
as expression and if you don't
like it, turn the page, walk away.
chill. find your own deep freeze.

it is soft september and we are
sitting beside the bay, he and I,
perched on two rocks nestled in
a small valley with the water
level at our feet. it is so low that
a group of tripod-trekking
photographers currently call it
'the mudflats'. their two foot
long lenses are covered in
camophlage casings.

"lowest it's been in five years",
one of them says. these mudflats
currently attract photographers
from all over this region. they
come hunting for shorebirds, new
migrants like phaloropes and egrets,
little lesser yellow legs and raptors.
poetic names slip off their tongues
like water from a wing but they
are watchers, patient observers
of wing-ed behaviour who firmly
plant their moments in the mud
and rest their eyes on the empty
skies above. every few minutes,
an inaudible alarm provokes a
huge flock of sparrows to leap
into the air, twist and circle a
tree for cover, then seconds
later drop back down for more
ground-level foraging. what
do they hear that we can't?

out of nowhere, the trumpeters
arrive with seven foot wing spans.
bright yellow tags flash sun in our
eyes, the whir of white flight splashes
and skids an oncoming spray at us.
black eyes are full of expectation,
ready to pose for handfuls of corn
and more than willing to meet us
half-way. but shrinking inland
habitats (diminishing wetlands
sacrificed to capital d development)
drive these migrants to the great-lake
shores. one photographer adds,
"they tried to restore this marsh
five years ago, replanting what
used to grow naturally. but this
summer, after five years!
everything stopped growing.
all of it started dying. and they
don't know why. we think we can
fix things. but we can't. and each
time we try, we just create more
imbalances."

above us, the fluid world of city-to-city
spills across a high level bridge. our
mudflat point-of-view miniaturizes all
the cars that parade humanity like honey
through a funnel. metaphors abound
but the difference between there and
here is unquantifiably and immeasurably
a world away. I'd like the life that some
of them lead, travelling the world to its
remotest regions for the sake of tracing
major migratory flightpaths, mount-everest
moments, learning-the-world from its
avian wanderers and re-thinking the
notion of self.

we've just hiked some local trails
that t/race the edge of this dying
wetland, listened to its wet shoe
silences and appreciated the lack
of mechanized noise. here we sit,
taking it all in as if to value the
many levels of distance we think
we've gained from the unstoppable
steel and concrete conjestion above
us, happy that this moment separates
us from the parade. from here, time
finally fits the pace of water and sky.

meanwhile, the beat of pop culture
creates a veil that fractures the whole;
it's not our true skin whereas these
birds have been always been here,
for millions of years they've been
flying the skies of this planet, living
on the wind and seeing the world
from a higher perspective.

but the moment returns. he rests
his bare leg against mine. our feet
redefine the edge of a muddy shore,
one that's busy with birds and cameras.
but wind and water is all I feel, and in
that space I cannot tell where he ends
and the rest begins.

.

2007-09-07T21:50:00.000-04:00

water and wind beneath the wake

.

.

2007-09-01T10:16:00.000-04:00

"they`re coming, they`re coming",
she beams through melancholic hope,
one hundred million strong, these
great blue days, September, so
many airborne migrants bouncing
on the wind, mixing monarch-orange
skies, a sparkling lake and sun
that burns cool air on sleeveless
skin, tree-deep green contained in
shadows on the lawn and wing-ed
lives that seed Sierra Madres drives,
tracking shores inside a quality
of light that begs for change,
an interloping grebe amidst the
geese, its dips and dives, then
her sighs: "the grebes are back
but not for long", and his firm
words, "this, is it, this now,
and now is all you have"

.

2007-08-28T09:04:00.000-04:00

retrocausality

an orange crane
swings west
across a silver sky
and then returns,

closed timelike curve
halves a flock of gulls
while down below
the city sighs

.

2007-08-18T08:47:00.000-04:00

sinking into bed by weight and gravitas,
its tug, the slip-hip curve of silk along
the edge of something sweet and cool,
an August pull to fool the damn dense
day now swept away by fading light
and shifting sheets from left to right,

a curtained veil sails night
into a billowed breeze that
gloves the room and skin in
dim diaphaneities, the on-off-in
of coming sleep, this soft
occassion for his words

inside my head, their drift,
the oh of saying so-so-so
bleeds tones of crimson into black,
the jet push-pull of crimson-black,
the velvet vagueries of when
and then their letting go

.

2007-08-16T08:22:00.000-04:00

he said,

"you`ll have to write your way out of this one."

.

2007-08-05T09:59:00.000-04:00

perhaps because it`s gray

and just as early morning rolls
across the bay, a watercolour wash
bleeds air to sky in pale Payne's
Gray layers, soaking surfaces
like words to lips in ebbsandflows,
like heat to skin between slow
sips of chocolate coffee in a
cup that slides upside the edge
onto a rim and greets the tongue,
lays a flavoured tip to each
incessant repetition while
rhythmic evocation after
rhythmic evocation drifts
along the edge of day, its
thick remains lay undissolved
like honey at the bottom of
a cup, and in the head its
meaning sinks snow-deep,
sliding further from its beat
until its definition melts
away like ice in shallow
pools, or sandy grains that
drift towards the shore,
the backandforth-ness of
unthought thought deposits
time inside a word, a word
that names itself inside
my voice, claims itself
outloud, epistemology,
the word, repeating it again,
its sounds, episteMOLogee,
sinking it like stone into a
moment, into this one time,
this epistemic epoch, episteme
drawn out like seaweed from
a rock, hard-core Locke-Descartes
and philosophes` disputes
between whatisness-es,
rationalisms and empiricisms
(the a priori and a posteriori
origins of the western canon),
non-poetic isms, thisandthat-nesses
hidden from a lazy sun that
seeps through opaque white,
the ink-black heat and cloud-light
gleam of their ideas sounds to
me like humid traffic stirring
up an early buzz below leaving
airborne dust with all of its
particulate presumptions,
ambient, machninic as the
day to dollars is, as if their
'knowing' is an essence that
informs itself, as if their
be-ing is a static thing that
fixes each of us to calendars
and clocks, as if becomings
can be captured and contained
in something separate from the
retrospective definition of
a life, of mine to yours, and
all this trapped in words that
beg for a context that refuses
chauvinistic thought, refuses
the philosophical chauvisism
that (the traditional portrait
of) a philosopher-as-ethical-judge
assumes, as when meter disappears
in jargon or expression to its
form, the this-means-that of it
a chainlink fence that has no
gate, so many words to words,
so, now's the time to rewrite
meaning in the margins like
grafitti on a page, marginalia,
not as episteme but as a hybrid
inter-text, and not to kill
tradition but also not to praise
the totalizing theories and
stagnant fixities of a language
that upholds academe.

hence, just as coffee starts
the day, so too neologies, each
neologizing act that lends no
final say to dictionaries,
epistemological absolutes and
the homogenizing limits held
therein, all these things that
hide new possibilites from view
also tugs the line of logic,
travels us back through 2500
years of Western thought and
like an elastic band pulled-taut
invites a letting-go, takes
taunting aim at this one moment
to blast its pure sense free,
and o sweet irony, the glancing
blow of a line that reads,

"the suppression of pluri-dimensional
symbolic thought ... [producing]
thesaurization, capitalization,
sedentarization and the formation
of ideology by the class that
writes or rather commands the
scribes" (Derrida, 1976)

lines that uphold the ideology
of hierarchy and the derridean
plea for non-linear thought
to pluck philosophy like a guitar
string, his poesis and his
observation being that the
history of non-linear writing
has always been with us (in
poems and paintings) and that
philosophy is a quest-ion of
finding new ways to read outside
the static line(s) of language,
of seeking a new way to "read
what wrote itself between the
lines of the volume" (Derrida),
a derridean notion of
supplementarity that always
seeks new interpretations,
to claim that words have
no metaphysically-fixed nor
historically-fixed origins,
but instead, only and always
arise from the text itself,
from its shifting frame,
from its con-text.

so why not play? puns, rhymes,
neologisms, complex references
and tangential digressions in
Derrida's epistemology, his
anti-episteme an acommunicative
strategy for combating logocentrism,
to seek difference in repetition,
differance,
to be in perpetual search of
a supplement that emancipates
meaning from the canon of any
text, an ethical quest for
what lies in the margins, as
if to dig philosophy out of
its academic entrenchment
because what is most threatening
to the corporate university
infrastructure is not an
interference with its academic
content, but rather any
innovation in the traditional
form of its language, because
stylistic innovation confounds
the logocentric tradition and
its corporate infrastructure
infinitely more than merely
debating its ideas, because
it re-presents that which is
not re-cognizable as that
which is yet-to-be, as if
to open up a new space of
experience that casts doubt
on the entire philosophical
tradition, its language, all
for the sake of exploring
philosophy further than
before.

so, epistemology, say the
word often enough in quick
succession, play it out until
it quickly loses meaning,
defaults into some sonorific
set of sounds stripped of
meaning, until it bleeds
itself of definition just
as early morning bleeds
the bay of sameness, see
predictability lit a little
differently along the static
line of its horizon each new
day because nothing ever
reads the same way twice.

.

2007-07-29T09:04:00.000-04:00

w
he
n I
blank
eted yo
ur words
between the
roller and the
press bed, laid t
hem down and pushe
d them out the other side,
they changed; slightly-raised-i
n-elevation-blind-embossed ideas
stripped of all the inky noise
that previously stuck them
to the page, but once de-
inked t!hey looked like
tiny alphabetic arro
ws aimed at posit
ive impressions
in an e. e. c
ummings k
ind of
wa
y
.

.

2007-07-24T07:55:00.000-04:00

I had a dream that you were listening,
listening the way you always did for
what you wanted to hear, so not really,
and as a consequence, I typed my poem
directly onto your lips, fed them through
an old classic Underwood and pushed
really hard, thinking then you'd have to
feel the impact of my words, but on you
they turned into cipher keys that printed
encryptions, although not for the purpose
of diplomatic correspondance ie. the
British equivalent of the German Enigma
Machine, and didn't that conjure a very
interesting visual image (that you
appropriated in a Burroughs cut-up
machine kind of way and then claimed
as your own), but again, your relentless
point was made that my writing invites
a rather wierd analysis, so, it was
exactly then that I chose to wake up,
to crack your code and start the day
fresh without any residual doubt or
cynicism.

I much prefer the dreams of flight.

unencumbered.

2007-07-17T17:03:00.000-04:00

.

2007-07-11T07:12:00.000-04:00

they found it in each other

a moment

a plateau

a multiplicity connected to another
multiplicity by superficial underground
stems, joined in such a way as to form
or extend a rhizome.

if traditional concepts are bricks,
theirs was an orchestration of crashing
bricks. deleuzian singularities extracted
from a variety of disciplinary edifices,
and each brick carried a trace of their
former place defined by the arc of its
vector. vectors converged in a volatile
juncture, lines of flight drawn between
their two points that played a pitch
of convergent intensity, a suspended
heightening of energies that left
an intensive state, their disparate
elements held together in tight
juxtaposition.

they wrote their story together.

assemblages, ideas converged on
plateaus of thought that collectively
embraced no hierarchical order.
instead, they re-created themselves,
became a non-reducible plurality;
theirs was a new kind of space,
geographied in multidisciplinary
theories that coalesced on the
border between them. and there,
in the in-between-ness of philosophy,
literature and art, history, politics,
even psychoanalysis (which lay
just beneath their surface),
and in language itself, they
found a moment for each other.

if there is a geography to people,
his is a winged-halo flight, a
fast and furious bird's eye view,
while hers is grounded in lakeful
blue, and shoreline-serene.

.

2007-07-08T10:37:00.000-04:00

the ink of my current thought is
still wet but already disproven

by edges of clouds that
touch and grow thinner,

his thigh against mine,
meaning nothing,

just talking

.

2007-07-03T17:56:00.000-04:00

.

2007-07-01T23:45:00.000-04:00

a dangerous temptation, that,
to be like nothing else.

.

2007-06-28T09:59:00.000-04:00

theirs
is a typogarchical touchstone poem,
the already-here but not-yet-there
nonpulsed flare of a floating song
with its allatonce too-early-too-late
knock of a rhyme that has nothing
to do with speed or time since they
ceased to be subjects long ago
to become events refined by lines
from east to west like the firefly
knoll that she breathes in through
the deep green bite of a lake-night
air where water and sky cling to
the stare and silver-hung haze of
a three-quarter inch moon
in late-heat June.

.

2007-06-26T11:38:00.000-04:00

perhaps because it was white.

white jeans rolled up to mid-calf and
a light white cotton shirt slipping
off one shoulder. hair dashing past
the horizon, obstructing the view
and clearly not out to make an
impression.

I closed the car trunk, a heavy bag
in-hand, about to head past the docks
when he lifted a gym bag from his car.
relatively tall and dark, he paused,
glanced directly into the sun and said,
"want a drink?". it was a beautiful Sat.
evening, still rather early and he was
inviting me onto his boat. I smiled
and continued walking. he replied,
"just one?". I thanked him and
politely declined. but we walked
in the same direction and since
he was a little ahead of me I
studied his posture, watched how
he moved. head down, he scratched
his hair a few times as he turned
towards the boats and did not look
back. when men come on too strong
(not that he did), it can be somewhat
off-putting. but alternatively, showing
a little vulnerability can be rather
endearing. after seeing this in him,
perhaps I regretted my decision.
maybe his "just one?" was not
a euphemism, afterall.

"eyes you traverse instead of seeing
yourself in or gazing into in those
glum face-to-face encounters between
signifying subjectivities. "I no longer
look into the eyes of the woman
I hold in my arms but I swim through,
head and arms and legs, and I see
that behind the sockets of the eyes
there is a region unexplored, the
world of futurity, and here there
is no logic whatsoever ... I have
broken the wall ... My eyes are
useless, for they render back only
the image of the known, my whole
body must become a constant beam
of light, moving with an ever
greater rapidity, never arrested,
never looking back, ever dwindling ...
Therefore I close my ears, my eyes,
my mouth." BwO."
(D&G, Milles Plateaus)

moments come and go so quickly
and with a little hesitation,
intersections are lost.

beyond that,
what is it about white?

2007-06-20T00:38:00.000-04:00

.

2007-06-15T18:09:00.000-04:00

what is style?

palimpest, pastiche or cento?

are you

a many-layered palimpest,
a first draught chalked on skin,

a pastiche-ed choir copied
from another culture not your own,

or older still, a cento-ed quilt
of ancient shreds and scraps,

all the medlies
molting in your head?

.

2007-06-13T08:15:00.000-04:00

stop yelling at me, insisting
in a scream that you know
what art is or isn`t. if
millenniums of great thinkers
could not define it, how
can you? fuck this or that,
dig this or that, you say
in a 60`s-ish ideolect.

art is just expression,
an-eye-of-the-beholder kind
of thing, a live and let live
adventure. so chill, baby,
chill.

.

2007-06-03T10:11:00.000-04:00

and now for something completely obscure

Kant and Spinoza

I love that name

Spinoza

And I intend to say
it many times today,
just to amuse myself.

Spinozisms.

O, sweet Spinoza!
With all your heretical
adventures into immanence,
please speak to me
with geometric certainty.
Do you have an adequate
idea of what " I " is referring
to, certainty being nothing
else than the subjective
essence of a thing?

Whereas, Kant was always
rather busy devising critical
arguments for (some) a priories.
Are they really part of (our)
Nature, as he claimed? ...
something about categories
of reason(ing) and his adamant
resolve that knowledge is a thing
unto itself, a perfectly objective
thing.

I don't have that book, the one
with Kant's critique of Spinoza.

"Kant, by his own admission,
had been baffled in his attempts
(probably not very persevering)
to master Spinoza's philosophy."

(Norman Kemp Smith, A Commentary
to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason)

Kant, who followed this dispute
with great interest, with purely
rational faith and his intervention
in the Pantheism debate.

But Spinoza's notion of knowledge
suits this morning better. Its hazy
late-spring sky, lakeful breeze and
all my westward what-if glances.
Honeyed Bavarian chocolate coffee
still hot on the tongue and cradled
beside my Spinoza-ed notion of
knowledge, like this day,
"a confused idea", a hybrid
comprised of more than one essence
(ie. mine, plus the thing I sense
(or reason about)). this crazy
Spinozist-Deleuzian amalgam
of a Canadian-Sunday morning
while Kind of Blue faintly floats
past all the plush green air
of early June.

.

2007-05-31T07:03:00.000-04:00

she said,

"of course we become inspired
to write off one another! that is
how it works! I think it is quite
beautiful when a piece turns into
someone else's masterpiece.
art is about sharing the love,
capisce?"

sign of the times. what's mine is yours
in a Burroughs-Tzara-Gysin cut-up-machine
kind of way. the notion that (found) art is
a process of exploiting externalities,
feeding on whatever crosses one's path
to reflect an already ready-made culture.
the artist-as-consumer becomes the consumed.

these are early morning thoughts

2007-05-27T11:31:00.000-04:00

.

2007-05-25T23:55:00.000-04:00

the quietude of lists

you touch him in a dream
that`s barely there, like lakes
and floating geese at dusk,
lost cool and dim when liquid
flight fades indigo to night.

dark distance barricades you in
with half-closed lids and
shadow-thin beliefs that fight
for sleep like lashes brushed
upon a cheek in light release.

but in a starry state you say
his name aloud, it rides the tongue
like home to bed, the same strange slip
of questions blur til all too soon
soft sleep tugs loose

his hold on you.

.

2007-05-23T08:08:00.000-04:00

that fine line is so much clearer
in a woman's mind.

let Science tramp through untouched
wetlands with goose eggs incubating
all about and without food find out
what hunger really does to nests.
eggs will disappear for breakfast.
but random acts of violence, eggs
smashed and tossed like fireworks
for no greater purpose, is hard to
understand. I`m told it's just a guy
thing. to quote one conservationist,
"target practice. guys pretty much
want to throw stuff at anything.
point and aim is what we do."

"What good is armour when you want to fly?"
(Edwin Morgan)

.

2007-05-13T08:10:00.000-04:00

you tell yourself that the person
sitting across from you, the one
resting his finger on yours, is
a man. but what you see are cells
sliding across a face with no
way to bridge the nearandfar.
unreachable distance. time.
so you wonder if the notion
of personality is just a
convenient something to
frame the chance-and-flow
of pheromones with. considering
how each cell in the human body
will ultimately replace itself
once every seven years, you
remind yourself that this
relationship, whatever it
is, makes both of you
fountains of flesh.
magnificent ones.

if each moment holds infinate
possibilities, how many small
forevers might he have whispered
under what moon? how many
moments could he have prolonged
by the warm breath of words on
skin, back-of-the-neck words?
and what flow of upstream hope
from the surface tension of little
lettered vessels, menisci-breaching
ones, might have spilled through
blood-brain barriers to reach
the inner world in a watery rush
at sense, the thought and feeling
of each subsequent gesture,
the time of it, as if the last?

overhead, I hear the whir-whir-whir
of a Trumpeter's wings thrusting air
at the lake. it is the sound of distance.
long white neck and flat black bill.
an arrow heading home. I am sorry
for what has been done; trans species
genocide hidden in a word, culling,
when 'stateside atrocity' is truer.

ours is a continual vanishing away.
his finger to mine, my distance
to his. but written into every
cell of every thing is the
redress of balance.
always.

.

2007-05-04T07:18:00.000-04:00

last night, a watery city
mirrored the bay, concrete

stacks of smoke bled neon
lines of liquid light, their

surfaces swayed, waved and
birthed a tangerine moon,

slowly rose and severed its
roots with all the festive

impermanence of a large
paper lantern, lifting until all

I could see and feel were
curvatures and rotations

think of the book`s long history:
logos, philospher-kings with
Ideas-transcending, interiority
of Concepts, Republic of Minds
in a papery court of reason,
functionaries of thought,
a writer's self-portait
(legislator-and-subject),
the notion of self. I-dentity.
this long bookish rupture
in human history sits
on a plateau of pages
(a multiplicity connected
to other multiplicities by
superficial underground stems,
black syntactical lines that
form or extend the rhizome),
growing up and out of time
like the pages of a book-of-books
scattered on wind, on
Derridean dissemination.
differance.

somewhere between me
and that big orange moon

hangs the egg of a percept
waiting for birth.

its perpendicular movement
sweeps me and the other away,

becoming-the-moon
in a rising night sky

"What is important is not whether
the flows are - 'One or multiple' -
we're past that point: there is a
collective assemblage of enunciation,
a machinic assemblage of desire,
one inside the other and both
plugged into an immense outside
that is a multiplicity in any case."
(D&G, Milles Plateaux)

2007-04-30T09:50:00.000-04:00

.

2007-04-27T15:57:00.000-04:00

perfunctory

the word and its place in my life

... in his lectures, he revealed himself
to be a perfunctory speaker, his job
a mere formality

I'd rather be by the water right
now, searching for injured birds and
sharing an evening light in the clouds

... for her, the phone was a perfuctory
tool, for making apppointments, obtaining
quick information. her key word was
facetoface

I met an old friend by the docks.
graphic-artist-slash-photographer
with so many years between us and
still so much in common (not to
mention an ideosyncratic fascination
with the behaviour of birds). she
coaches two Dragon Boat teams and
since I've always wanted to race,
this year is the year

... he wove through a clinking-glass
crowd by placing his hand on the back
of each guest like someone who just
wanted to get through a thing. at his
best, a perfunctory courtesy.

two days ago, I went driving with
a biologist. we were hunting for hidden
marshes and I told him about my latent
desire to create trans-species signage,
markers that map migratory pathways
for particular birds (some endangered),
as if to say "respect these resting
places"

... and it is entirely possible to
build friendships with wild birds
although I don't know anyone else
who also believes in their gentle
intelligence. say the word
perfunctoriness rapidly with
particular inflection and it
sounds like a bird call.

there is a cardinal outside my studio
window whom I fear might be trapped
by the frame of these words like
the sign of any idea feathered
with meaning; see how it bleeds
the page of its moment. 'the wild
bird represents red in the trees'
is a sentence I don't wish to tame.
instead, I'll take pleasure in
knowing its blazing colour is
free. angel-free, like someone
I knew

... she set the table perfunctorily
the way a bank teller stamps cheques
in quick succession

"Your image, tormenting and elusive,
I could not touch in the mist,
"God!" I said by mistake,
never thinking to say that myself,

God's name like a gigantic bird,
flew out from my breast.
Before me thick mist swarms,
behind me stands an empty cage."

(Osip Mandelstam)

.

2007-04-10T08:22:00.000-04:00

first draft

another April show that tales white

thrusts cold against a hulking lurch

of docks lined-up along the edge of

winter, veils Mutes who bow between

the rows of rusty beams, who slip

their slender necks through icy swells

with oranged grunts, drip inandout for

gelid-muscled snacks and with one

final slap at airborne resurrection

from a griming bay that saves so few

from toxic black, they lift, and lead

the eye back up to sky, then down again

to snow on sand, to where a gritty-yearling`s

feathered slump along a string of days

dreams green and trumpetlessly leaves

for May with eyes that plead the whir of

Northern winds to pull a homeward-heavy

thrust of air through broken wings

and foggy breath that will not trick

a seasoned stroke of hope to life

nor beat back spring towards another

April show that tales white

second draft

Another April snow

that tails white

thrusts cold against

a hulking lurch of docks

lined-up along the edge

of winter. Veiled Mutes

who bow between

the rows of rusty beams

slip their slender necks

through icy swells

with orange grunts,

dip in and out

for gelid-muscled snacks,

and with one final slap

at airborne resurrection

(from a griming bay

that saves so few

from toxic black)

they lift, and lead

the eye back up to

sky then down again

to snow on sand, to

where a gritty Yearling`s

feathered slump dreams

green. And with no Trumpet

left it sadly leaves for

May with sighs that plead

the whir of Northern winds

to pull a homeward-heavy

thrust of air through broken

wings. A final foggy breath

that will that not trick

it's seasoned stroke

of hope to life but

beats back spring

towards another

April snow that

tails white.

"that we are all late
in a slow time,
that we grow up many
And the single
is not easily
known"

(Charles Olson, The Maximus Poems)

2007-04-04T10:11:00.000-04:00

.

2007-03-28T07:22:00.000-04:00

he was the quinessential man.
tall and dark with unreachable eyes.
perhaps he had seen too much and so,
penetrated everything with an intense
scrutiny that quickly dissolved in
disinterest. unimpressed by anything
less than extraordinary, he carried
himself with a certain detachment,
as if nothing lived up to his
expectations and as if his insights
bore a weight he was bound to protect.

that particular morning, he wore
a thick wool sweater (cable-knit
vintage-ivory, or was it cracked
eggshell? if I had used any one of
those terms, he would have shrugged,
"whatever"). so I scanned it for
some small tear or broken thread
that would suit his character and
define it further. instead, I noted
how low it hung on the back of his
neck, how it framed his short hair
and exposed olive skin. but more,
how it dragged my eyes down the line
of his broad-shouldered back.

our walk across the dyke through fog
was surreal. the ground, wet and
silent, sunk and rose with every step.
colours vanished in air that hung thick
and heavy on his words ... archeologist,
biologist, conservationist. academically
accomplished, well-spoken, but best of
all, at home wherever. with both hands
shoved deep into pockets and shoulders
compressed, he pointed to the water by
tapping his forehead against the damp
day; a pair of geese warming an early
nest, two mute swans protecting their
space, a few ducks. he concluded,
"not much actvity today".

he spoke about the archeologocial value
of marshes and shared a trade secret
(to find an artifact, "go to a marsh!").
as we moved deeper into the fog, he
identified various grasses, promised
their importance to wetland ecosystems,
and then, in mid-sentence, tilted his
head upwards with eyes fixed on a
barely-discernible horizon, listened
to the sky and whispered,

"did you hear that? two sandhill cranes?"

in that moment, I realized something,
that it wasn't his academic expertise
nor the way he looked, but moreso, how
he applied what he knew so effortlessly
to anything around him. that. and in
spite of a thick cloak of indifference,
how acute his observations were, as if he
knew what he knew because of a
particular urgency deeply rooted in the
notion that everything (including himself)
was irretrievably interconnected.

was. and is.

for valuing what others might have
so easily (dis)missed, I admired him.

so ...

in the whir of words, their undertow,
and if everything is text, how like a
hungry animal they pace around my life,
all mouth and tongue, letters tracking
borders, alternating in and out of
leafy shadows and light as if to map
my outer limits, allthewhile remembering
that limits are the lines that any one
of us perpetually resides inside of.

2007-03-25T01:45:00.000-04:00

.

2007-03-18T15:27:00.000-04:00

my hands were covered in clay,
slippery and wet when he said,

"where are the keys?".

my eyes pointed,
"in my pocket ... just a sec."

"which one?"

he slid his hands around hips,
slipped them into both sides,
fingers stretched until
the keys were reached.

the Anglo-Norman word pokete traces
its roots to the Germanic rootword
'bag' which is like the Old English
word pocca. whereas the Scottish sporran
refers to that small purse worn at the
front of a traditional kilt. the word
sporran itself comes from the old Irish
word sparán which traces its roots back
to the Latin word bursa, or 'purse'.
'purse' and 'pocket', incidentally, have
the same root word (even if one is plural
and the other singular).

since then, I've had a thing for pockets.
side pockets, breast pockets, hidden
pockets in any number of places, and
all things related to the word itself.
pockets inside clothing and phrases
(like pocket money, pocket guides,
pocket watches, outofpocket expenses,
stolen pockets of time).

last night I had a dream about finding
a hidden room that was filled with
antiques and art. earlier today,
I took out an old leather pocket
book of my father's. the smell of it
reminded me of him. I'd held it many
times before; it has a sideways flap
that still holds a snall piece of tissue
paper he put there. but today I unfolded
it for the first time and found a small
diamond tie clip. something I had not
seen before.

perhaps it is the notion of hidden things,
spaces that enclose the potential for
something unexpected. or perhaps it
is the disorientation that comes from
uncovering something completely
new. that, and whatever comes
from clay-covered hands.

"Just when we're safest, there's a sunset-touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, someone's death,
A chorus-ending from Euripides."

(Robert Browning)

2007-03-12T02:16:00.000-04:00

.

2007-03-12T00:22:00.000-04:00

I`d toss
these words
across the surface
of a poem like corn
for geese, whisper
blind configurations
into winter wind as if
to fling them up like
rocks for trust, realign
each bird`s eye point
of view with arching
squalls and watch them
fall from down-below
the lettered crash
of language on a page,
make muffled prints
of feathers felting snow
and smacking ice,
and spy all this from
underneath the throw
of black and white
thereby sticking
tongue to soul

2007-03-06T14:04:00.000-05:00

.

2007-03-03T22:02:00.000-05:00

chronicles of light

perhaps it is this unfolding blizzard
with its noiseless drifts of unending
white that obscure a frozen lake from
all geographied expressions, or how it
fills my recent footprints with fresh
snow as if they never existed, erases
white impressions as if to rewrite all
my previous points of orientation.
maybe it is the sting of cold coupled
with the non-migratory fact that my
uncovered skin gets layered by an icy
spray flung wide from wings above;
their whir is incessantly at war with
a winter wind that grips and presses
feathered bodies to a single airborne
spot, and hovering there, my beloved
geese, hang within arm's reach. or
is it their proximity that proves
black-webbed feet to be neatly
tucked into downy under-bellies
during windy flight. what is it
that inspires?

these curiosities are not unlike the lack
of shadows everywhere, this monochromatic
continuum of horizoned white, swans lifting
high into a grey-light sky with nothing tracing
their lines of flight across the ground below.
or any other unconventional beauty that
urges something intimate, like the soft
contrast of a candle flame that flickers
one chiaroscuro-ed thought into the next.
stopping time by thinking past the biting
cyrstal-tones of cold, the storm unfolds
an invitation to rewrite history with warm
flames, and while standing there on ice,
how easy it becomes to conjure chronicles
of light, a study that will paradoxically
preface origins.

mine will be an illustrious thesis filled
with certain desires that bridge dark gaps
of unknowing with undisputable facts.
perhaps a current fascination with candles
is what entices me to drip the history of
illumination from a pen and then, to extract
the invention of wax from nights much
blacker than the Middle East is now.

it will be an exhaustive ten volume epistle
written to the light of the past, or, if stated
in more post modern terms, to infinitive light,
to light-becoming.

a history of the world-revived-through-
the-development-of-invented-light will
undoubtedly grow into a comprehensive
study that unapologetically stakes its
originary claim on the Ancient Egyptians
who carried rushlights, torches. I will
describe how these Ancients first create
candles by soaking the pithy cores of
reeds in molten tallow ('til the Romans
follow suit with cattle and sheep suet:
imagine the smell). at this juncture, I
may dwell momentarily on the phonetics
of the phrase "sheep suet", foot-noting
its sonority, how it dances off the tongue,
allthewhile never forgetting the Asian
experience of speaking with more jaw
than tongue, and noting how this habit
contrasts sharply with the inclination
of all western languages to revel in
tongued annunciations. for this reason
and many others, I like the tongue.
but this study will shine with a light
poesis that also befalls Plato's Phaedrus
when he writes it, wet ink on parchment
and shifting shadows lost in unwritten
corners.

so

while standing headlong in a canadian
storm and repeating the afore-mentioned
alliterations just to memorize their
movements in the mouth, I map it out,
my history of the world revived by light,
an ambitious study that will ultimately
hail as a beacon of historico-logical research.
and even though I`ll note the invention of
fire in my preface, the concluding chapter
will toast the benefits of electricity, pay
tribute by chronologically connecting
flames to fibre optics without the crutch
of too much techno-jargonese, thereby
seamlessly progressing the story of
man-made light beyond the invention
of lightbulbs (in 1859) towards the
the cool glow of strobing screens as
a contemporary source of illumination
(and also the means, both metaphorical
and otherwise, by which post-postmodern
scribes keep vigil in the dark).

however, the intervening years will be what
sustains my enduring interest, and specifically,
that era of the Middle Ages when beeswax is
discovered to burn clean and pure, appreciated
for its non-smokey flame and un-acrid odour.
the quality of shadows will be compared in
pre and post beeswax civilizations, beeswax
extracted from honeycombs that retain a
lasting scent (and a welcome consequence
to the pungence of the 14th C). but this
study will also capture the magic of shadows
on-the-move through castle corridors, their
mystery and momentum, futile spills of wax
on stone and any other tonal gradations that
might lead to the capture of Durer's plates,
his hand rapidly engraving copper with a
burin, evenly darkening his hard ground
with a candle flame and pulling one wet
print after another from a press into the
golden light of eurocentric art history.

the oddity in this study will undoubtedly
remain with the late 18th C whaling industry
and how it evokes the first major change in
candlemaking since the Middle Ages, captures
science at its most grotesque when it discovers
how to extract spermaceti, a wax obtained by
crystallizing sperm whale oil, odourless and
unbendable in summer heat. good god; the
ethical outrage of stealing whale sperm for
the sake of reading in bed. there will also
be brief excursions into American Colonial
bayberry candle making, that tedious task
displayed in complex contrast to the advent
of parafin, followed by the assemblage of
parafin with stearic acid to increase its
melting temperature. but be forewarned,
this study will parse the merits of crude
oil and meat production, pros and cons,
concluding with an evocative question:
what happens when we run out of oil?
further implications will follow, some
concerning eco-poetics, and all this
while standing in a winter storm,
lakeside, and exploring white.

2007-03-02T15:25:00.000-05:00

.

2007-02-17T00:15:00.000-05:00

it is a fascination with roads, images of roads,
curves and contours, the idea of what's unseen
that's just up ahead, and how seasons lend
elements of unexpectedness to otherwise
familiar journeys. the texture of travel
(even if it is only local) and a lingering
question; is it arrival or flight that
draws me in?

... in another life, I actually know him.

and if, as Borges states, rain falls in
the past, then snow is always falling,
always moving through the infinitive.
always coming. just look up! to feel
the timelessness of falling white.
its unending beauty. I am looking
for Borges in his words, searching
his white spaces, not for
the obvious stuff that holds him up
but for all the secrets that he hides.
and there, in the pregnant gaps between
each letter lie his unspoken things,
things that trespass my nightsky with
a familiar sense of uncertainty.

"Behind each name lies that which has no name.
Today I felt its nameless shadow tremble
in the blue clarity of the compass needle,

whose rule extends as far as the far seas,
something like a clock glimpsed in a dream
or a bird that stirs suddenly in its sleep."

(Jorge Luis Borges)

2007-02-15T00:02:00.000-05:00

.

2007-02-13T08:34:00.000-05:00

*
winter waits
on frozen lakes like
huddled-geese for warmth,
icing something sweet for little boys,
parkas on toboggans in the park, plastic
saucers slicing crunchy thrills and scooping
concrete sounds off sidewalks, spilling steamy
kitchen mornings up with crumpled papers on a table,
fingers tracking sharp-to-flat from blackandwhite and
back to coffee in a cup, the waiting-for-your-call
song I invent when there are way too many
hours in this room or too much midnight
in a day that squalls a coming storm
towards some pencilled notes as
if to cheat geography for touch
from west to east like
salt on fallen
snow

*

2007-02-12T23:18:00.000-05:00

.

2007-02-10T09:27:00.001-05:00

dreams of flight

"providence awakes each morning
an hour or two before dawn "
(F. O Morris, 1810-1893)

just when I feel trapped and entrenched
in the Joycean blah of winter, in his "no pen,
no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet,
no inclination"-ness, I have another vivid
dream. the best ones come early in the
morning and on Wed. morning of this week,
a particularily spectacular dream unfolds.
spectacular, not just for its sense of place
(although its location reveals incredible
clarity), but because the empowering
nature of thought remains prevalent
throughout. it represents the truest
sense of a subconscious mind proving
the praxis that 'thinking does make it so'.
in it, I merely have to think the desire
to fly, and then do. I lift and float at will,
past rooftops and trees, chase a train
to peer through its windows, then pull
upandaway, soaring sideways towards the
fall back to earth whenever something
or someone below captures my interest,
and up again for that long overview,
generally flying wherever I want to go.
but the dream restricts me to the same small
Banff-like-ski-resort-village with its
snow-laden evergreens, red shingled roofs,
cobblestone walks, horizoned rockies
and other northern ideosyncracies.
nothing I am not used to.

this is my first flying dream. all my life,
I have envied a family member who boasts
countless flying dreams and much as I've
tried to precondition my thoughts before
falling asleep (to inspire similar airborne
sensations) have never been able to fly
through my dreams. at least, not until a
few days ago. in this one, each lift leaves
that sense of awkwardness that young
birds probably feel when learning to fly,
the uncertainty of a new attempt; will it
work? but to my surprise, every effort
succeeds. this prompts another test,
to merely think a(nother) desire for the
sake of satisfying it; it works for that, too!
(and I manage to manifest the second one
whenever I land). all obvious symbolisms,
I suppose. but my main goal in the dream
is to develop flying skills. what an incredible
feeling but unfortunately, I am interupted,
jolted out of sleep by the rush of a day meant
for work, by the sound of an alarm and no
time left to record any details. they get lost
in busy-ness, even if flashes pervade quiet
moments with coffee, while driving and
throughout the rest of the week; the sense
of flying remains. and incredulity, that
finally! I can fly.

how all-pervasive this interest in birds
must be since the only thing that distracts
me from my return to flight is a waking life.
next time, I plan to go higher, flip and ride
the air upsidedown til its lift subsides, then
chase vast distances as if to release the
power of thought from all wakeful distractions
... and from that, I will answer the question;
what dreams may come?

"seeing the courtesan on parade
one loses the power to resist
like a cuckoo falling in mid-flight."
(Okumura Masanobu (1686-1764)

2007-02-06T01:07:00.000-05:00