Poems

Mantra of No Return

my mother occupies the passenger seat. my brother and i

                     stick in the back.

New Year’s

If you want to travel run

around the neighbourhood with an empty

suitcase in hand. At least once, full circle.

Wear yellow underwear

for the 31st, lest fortune oversee your cup

Wind, Water, Stone

for Roger Caillois

Water hollows stone,

wind scatters water,

stone stops the wind.

Water, wind, stone.

Wind carves stone,

stone's a cup of water,

Finis

Give me a few more hours to pass 

With the mellow flower ofthe elm-bough falling,

And then no more than the lonely grass

And the birds calling.

Give me a few more days to keep

We Lived Happily during the War

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

protested

but not enough, we opposed them but not

enough. I was

in my bed, around my bed America

Two Hours on the Train

During two hours on the train

I rerun the film of my life

Two minutes per year on average

Half an hour for childhood

Another half-hour for prison

Love, books, wandering

take up the rest

DNA

It is told and retold

of how Kohkum killed a bear with a river rock

an arm like Ronnie Lancaster (that old Saskatchewan 

Roughrider)

she throws with precision

From a Book of Weaknesses

Gigantic agenda, this life of ours—

that turned out so different, then after all the same.

We picture ourselves when we close our eyes

in a lift that's counting the years in floors.

juxtaposition with seeds

i thought you were gone / stupid bird / darling worms shifting in the mud / this time i am not so certain / is it kinship or are you gloating? / have i grown bitter with the bees / how they bring the blooms reliably?

Adam Father

He wakes up naked and drunk as a bear

on sun-fermented garbage.

Hungover and queasy and riled up by

bees.

Nothing going well today, he moans,

life being short and the craft, ah, long.

The Pulley

When God at first made man,

Having a glass of blessings standing by,

“Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can.

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

To be a good

ex/current friend for R. To be one last

inspired way to get back at R. To be relationship

advice for L. To be advice

for my mother. To be a more comfortable

Too Negative

I was a kid other kids’ 

parents gossiped about.

They told their children

what I was: too negative.

I get it. Fair to fear

contagion of bad attitudes,

400: Coming Home

You are still on the highway and the great light of

noon comes over the asphalt, the gravelled

shoulders. You are on the highway, there is a kind of

Children Listen

                    It turns out however that I was deeply
Mistaken about the end of the world

We’ll Not Die in Paris

You forget the lines smells colors and sounds

sight weakens       hearing fades       simple pleasures pass

you lift your face and hands toward your soul

My Idea of the Circus Is My Idea of the Circus Otherwise Known As: My Mother Was a Celebrated Stunt Motorcyclist, Vietnam, 1958 to 1962

Very loud    a mad frenzy    The wooden

barrel she rode would have roared

(I first wrote “road”)

To the Ladies

Wife and servant are the same,

But only differ in the name:

For when that fatal knot is tied,

The Windrush

Dem did sey she pregnance

Cum a sea full a mi

Weighing har down eena har shoe dem

Dresses, coco, mangoes an baggy an arl

Dem did sey de ship nearly sink

Mi mumma nebah sleep a wink

An English Speaking Doctor Translates the Concerns of his Patient with Google/Un Docteur Anglophone Traduit Les Inquiétudes De Son Patient Avec Google

écoute

à quoi bon être poète

beau dire

ce mal

semble dans la tête comme

marteau feu enclume clou couteau

ou l’éclat d’une baudroie ou des

aurores boréales

The Bull Moose

Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain,

lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar,

stumbling through tamarack swamps…

A Red, Red Rose

O my Luve is like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June;

O my Luve is like the melody

Praying Herd: For Safe Journey

Draw a line through our scattered bodies. The pattern of fallen calves in this meadow will mirror

the constellation above. Look up. We whip our tails to a silent song:

O Captain! My Captain!

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

From Titian Air Vent

A work of art is a world of signs, at least to the poet’s

nursery bookshelf sheltered behind the artist’s ear.

I recall each little motto howling its ins and outs

to those of us who might as well be on the moon

January 1, Dawn

After the celebrations,

people, TV channels, telephones,

the year’s recently-corrected digit

finally falls asleep.

Between the final night and the first dawn

a jagged piece of sky

The Plot

Won’t let your bad self.

Let go of your old debt.

Tiring of your old self.

Won’t let your made bed.

Let your bad blood let.

Your grown debt get.

Ten Years and More

When my husband 

lay dying a mountain

a lake three 

cities ten years 

and more

lay between us:

There were our

sons my wounds 

and theirs,

Ode on Solitude

Happy the man, whose wish and care

A few paternal acres bound,

Content to breathe his native air,

Money

Coin Exhibit, British Museum.

Their misshapenness strikes the table in tiny splashes,

like still-cooling splatters of silver. Stater and shekel,

Lake Baptiste Ungenders Me

upon contact / head first / baptismal

the rind of me / peels into ribbons

of foam / and pearls / i re-brown at the water’s

touch / its two-way mudmirror / hands me

its own name / earthliquid / bottomless

Hap

If but some vengeful god would call to me

From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,

Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,

from Sharking of the Birdcage ["the spirit of"]

                   the spirit of

                 your flowers is

         my favourite shelter

The Man He Killed

“Had he and I but met

By some old ancient inn,

We should have sat us down to wet

confirmation bias

at least in our waking life

most commemoration

doubles as force

since even

the most benign

zodiacal conceptions

are tinged eurocentric

when brown women die

Mrs. Kessler

Mr. Kessler, you know, was in the army,

And he drew six dollars a month as a pension,

And stood on the corner talking politics,

somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which…

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

The New Experience

I was ready for a new experience.

All the old ones had burned out.

They lay in little ashy heaps along the roadside

Mean Drunk Poem

Backward & down into inbetween as Vicki says. Or as Robin teaches

the gap, from which all things emerge. A left

handed…