carpetbagger

Cursing

2011-12-26T13:01:00.001-08:00

Her cursing is the songline of canaries–
beak open, head thrown back–
warning predators away from eggs
or downy chicks hidden beneath a yellow wing.
The sweet warbling is a spill of notes
on the evening air
aimed at the departing sun,
the stalking cat,
the blackbird with its beady eye and sharp bill
waiting for the moment when the cursing stops
and it moves in for the kill.

But this is no bird, though bird like,
wispy white hair like feathery down
fluffed out from the skull-shaped head,
blue hollows for temples,
a beaked nose over the clacking jaw.
Her bones are not hollow,
yet seem delicately so, as though the wrong pressure
would cause them to snap and splinter
and no wings sprout from those angular shoulders,
but arms covered by the nightgown’s white sleeves
hiding purple bruises of blood
that pools unbidden beneath the surface
of her parchment skin.

She curses at the nurses
who pump her full of pills;
at the physiotherapists
who exercise her swollen joints;
at the waiters
who bring her food she cannot chew.
She curses at God for not letting her die,
and she curses me because she can.

And all the while Death,
like a crested blackbird,
waits for the cursing to cease,
the jaws to relax, eyelids to close,
the breathing to slow
so he can move in for the kill
and stop the song forever.

Draco of the Stars

2011-11-28T11:46:00.001-08:00

Who art thou, worm,
nipping at Herakles’ heels
as thou slitherest past the wary claws
of his milk-mother bears?

Didst thou guard the golden orbs
where they hung from Hera’s boughs
against those pilfering sisters,
Atlas’ legacy?

A gift of Gaea, golden apples for a golden day
—Hera and Zeus, incestuously joined—
so pleased the bride that she sowed the seeds
in her own garden by Atlas’ slope.

But that giant’s spawn, wanton girls all,
slipped across the lawn to steal the fruit,
sun-yellow juice dripping from their laughing mouths,
and raised the goddess’ ire.

Where did Hera find thee, that she placed thee on guard
on that Hesperidean soil?
Wert thou plucked from thy native land,
forced from the comfort of thine own underground home?

Or did she conjure thee out of ivory and fire
with precious gems in thy ruby orbits,
copper and gold for thine impervious scales,
invulnerable to all but Herakles’ well-aimed blow?

Wert thou slumbering as the hero,
draped in the Nemean’s mane,
crept alongside thy sinewy length
and plunged his blade between the stars that are thine eyes?

Didst thou thrash as thou wert slain,
jaws spread wide, venom dripping from impotent fangs,
wild eyes seeking thy murderer
even as the light left them?

Or art thou a different worm, not the victim of Herakles’ labour
but of his half-sister Athena?
Gods fighting gods, uncles against nephews,
storming the ramparts of Olympus itself;

’Twas the banished first-born with their hundred hands,
giants and cyclops from Tartarus released
who joined the fray to overcome their brothers,
revenge on Chronos posthumously complete.

In the peak of battle, didst thou sleep unperturbed,
belly full, basking in the golden light of noon,
when thou wert scooped up by Titan hands
and cast at the warrior goddess?

She snatched thy dry coppery coils
and hurled thee skyward so thou lodged
in the vault of the heavens, trapped
between a great and small bear.

Mayhap thou art none of these
but the father himself, caught in pursuit
of those milking maids who nursed the hero
thou art forced to chase.

’Twas thy desire to suckle
from those dripping teats
milk meant for thy bastard son
whilst hidden from jealous Juno.

Changed to bears and in the firmament fixed,
thou crept upon them in thy true form,
the seducing serpent, the phallic python,
intent upon slaking thy lust.

Who art thou, Draco of the stars?
Thine origins are multifold, and thou
forever caught in the wheel of the sky
in pursuit of a heel thou canst not bite.

How to ease a broken heart

2010-09-05T09:16:00.000-07:00

I lean against a mountain facing east,
cool rock at my back,
morning sun in my eyes,
and sink into the schist,
feel myself enveloped in layer
after layer of ancient ocean floor,
until I am part of the mountain itself
and can feel no more.

Mt. Rundle-Canadian Rockies Painting by Lanny Grant

Absence

2010-08-03T08:03:00.000-07:00

The pain of partition is no less,
though less often.
A whole day may pass before the memory
of the absent one
rises to surface suddenly, invoked by
a change in scenery,
an overheard conversation, a shell laid
on the dresser,
and it overwhelms with its intensity,
takes away the breath,
the keen longing produces
a contraction
which would draw the beloved
into one’s own body.
These spasms are farther spaced,
building energy
until the next one squeezes the viscera
with its acute yearning.

Crush

2010-03-23T10:01:00.000-07:00

She cannot breathe.
She sits beside her crush;
her unspoken longing:
the secret knowledge of dreams,
of busy hands masturbating
where thwarted desire dwells--
enwreaths her like a boa,
not of flirtatious feathers,
but a reptilian hunger
that inexorably constricts
with each exhalation
in its close embrace
until she is overwhelmed
by its steady crush.

Weeding

2009-06-18T17:46:00.001-07:00

I squat before I kneel, finally
collapsing to a cross-legged sit,
my hands busy as dandelions and grass
and false clover come out
by their roots, some more easily
than others. The pile of unwanted
plants grows beside me and the
clean, black dirt is exposed, waiting
for new seeds hanging from soft, white,
floating umbrellas to find
their way to fertile soil.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

I stop and push a strand of hair
off my brow, feel the sweat trickle
between my breasts and hear
the buzz of insects as they survey
my sumptuous flesh in search
of a tasty meal. There is now
a smudge where my muddied hand
brushed my forehead, fingernails
encrusted with embedded dirt that
will take repeated scrubbings
to come clean. I look at the heap
of weeds, at the spaces between
hydrangeas and bleeding heart
and wonder who is the victor here,
to whom go the spoils.

The Webcam

2009-06-17T15:01:00.000-07:00

You gazed upon your lover today,
seeing the remembered face,
the smile, the white teeth
and lips, those lips you
long to kiss, to touch, the eyes
full of love, looking longingly
at you through a looking glass
of unattainability.

Autumn Letter to a Dear Friend

2009-02-23T19:24:00.000-08:00

October 14, 2008

My dear Simone:

It is autumn and the fall colours
remind me of you.
I walk through tunnels of foliage,
limbs overhead, fallen leaves underfoot,
and bask in the luminous golds,
glowing coppers and ruby reds.
The world is ablaze with their glory
and I rejoice in its beauty,
taking photographs with my mind’s eye
that I would send you,
if I only could,
so that you might see them, too,
as I do.

I inhale the scents of the season:
decaying leaves and pine needles,
earth and wood and mould.
I long to send you my impressions,
to have you see and smell them,
to hear the honking of geese
as they pass overhead in their ragged vees,
and feel the rush of their wings
as they fly past.

There are so many things I want to show you.
Today on my walk into town past the cemetery
I stopped to marvel at the maples,
how they were ignited by the sunlight
and seemed to burn with neither heat nor flame,
but an inner luminescence;
and I thought of you.

Coming home, I gathered leaves:
mostly yellow, some tinged with orange and red,
one edged in green with a golden heart.
I placed them between pages of my diary
so that later I might mail them to you,
arranged under glass in a picture frame,
or as surprises,
interleaved among the leaves of another book.

This weekend past I drove for hours
from east to west and back,
and every crimson sumac and golden oak
that lined the long highway
was etched in my memory
so I could tell you about it.
The photographs I took
do not do reality justice.
It is the pictures stored behind my eyes
that I wish you to see;
each is tinged with love,
and suffused with longing.

For it is not just the fall colours
I want to show you,
but the tints of my own soul:
the reds and golds and coppers
that peel away from my heart
and flutter to the ground
only to become brittle
and crumble to dust;
the love I long to lavish
and the words I may not say.

I will not mention this to you,
but quietly accept the inevitable,
as do the leaves that burn defiantly
in the face of winter.

Your loving friend,

Edouard

Dirt

2008-05-28T09:05:00.000-07:00

The dark loam pours out of the box
onto clumps of dirt packed close
by winter’s chill and weight of snow
and ash from the wood stove:
rich, life-giving soil from
vegetable parings and apple cores,
eggshells and grapefruit rinds,
coffee grounds and tea bags;
nothing is wasted.
Scrapings from dinner plates,
tips of beans and celery leaves,
corn cobs and avocado shells
all thrown in together
to rot, metamorphosing
in that polyvinyl cocoon
into the black earth
that cradles the new year’s crop.
Parsley stems and tomato cores return
to the soil that grew them;
tough stalks of basil nourish
next summer’s pesto;
and all this flows onto my spade
and I spread it and bury it
and crumble the clods of clay-packed dirt
which, after years of mingling
with spring’s spoils from winter’s waste,
is still hard and rebellious
under my shovel and rake.
A clang of metal on limestone and
shale brought up by winter heaving;
these will not decompose.
They will not become soil
in my lifetime.

Guinea Pig

2008-02-09T17:19:00.001-08:00

Guinea pigs are the animals of choice
for elementary-school classroom pets;
they live extremely boring lives
and are amazingly content to do so.
Provided with enough food,
They will eat till they burst.
Their cages smell, no matter
how often they are cleaned.

My best friend had a guinea pig.
It was black as coal
and when it died
it was cold as coal.
My girlfriend’s mother asked me,
me, an innocent bystander
unimplicated in the rodent’s demise,
to dispose of the remains.

Why couldn’t she do it?
I still don’t know.
Even my girlfriend was uninformed
of the fate of this pet.
Perhaps it slept, lying as it did
on its side in its cage,
unmoving, unmoved;
and I wrapped it in newspaper like a fish from the market
and deposited it without ceremony in the can
holding next week’s garbage pickup.

I still harbour resentment
at this manipulation of my youthful devotion,
at my friend’s mother’s betrayal,
at the disposal of this lifeless corpse
belonging to something she once loved.

You have only to wait.

2007-10-15T07:30:00.000-07:00

You have only to wait, they will find you;
like tendrils of fog they will infiltrate the cracks,
will seep under closed doors,
they will spread outward across the floor,
lapping at chair legs, licking at baseboards.

They are the good intentions,
the broken promises,
the words spoken in anger,
residue from ill intent.

They carry with them the hatchet unburied,
the sharp-edged grudge,
the dull anger of denial,
the horns of hate.

You cannot outrun them
for they stick to you like burrs,
clinging to your clothing,
staining your lily-white hands,
darkening your innocent brow.

They are the karma that grows,
the debt unpaid,
the sorries unsaid,
the guilt of neglect.

They plague you with what ifs,
should haves,
might have beens.
They replay scenes you’d rather forget
and you burn with shame
and with sorrow and with guilt.

These are the sins unconfessed;
no priest can absolve these iniquities,
no number of Hail Marys will wash
the blood from your hands.

You have only to wait.
Memories forgotten will surface
like the weathered bones of dinosaurs,
grotesque and monstrous,
in the eroding rock strata of your defences.
Every bone exposed, every hurt feeling,
every harsh word is there.

They do not remain buried in the past,
hidden behind the screen of humour,
of good deeds,
of an exemplary life.

Someday all the ill once afflicted on others
will return to haunt you,
to creep in through your bedroom walls
and crawl under the covers,
caressing you with horny hands,
tweaking you and tugging at the blankets
until you can stand it no longer,
until you cry out in your sleep,
“I confess! It was I! I did those horrible things!”

For when that day arrives,
the day they find you and foul you
with their fiendish residue,
that day you will learn,
perhaps too late,
that love was all that was necessary,
forgiveness freedom unfettered,
tolerance a virtue above all.

You can wallow in the despair of past decisions
or you can open the door,
the window,
and your heart.
For life is short and love
is everything.

The Fantasy and the Reality

2007-09-07T16:32:00.000-07:00

In my mind
our bodies entwine
like sinewy adders
and creeping vines
our souls unite
our breath is one
we move together
like a snow-white swan
gliding on the lake
under silver moon-glow
one swan above
its reflection below.

***

We are not one
and never shall be
for though I love you
and you love me
we cannot entwine
but are kept apart
by other claims
on our aching hearts
and though we may live
on either side of a wall
our love is friendship
and that is all.

***

How can we live
knowing our fate
the love we’ll never
consummate
neither to embrace
nor kiss tenderly
or join like the swan
on a moonlit sea
feeling the ache
of love unfulfilled
a fantasy only
tinged with guilt.

Ode to a Deer Skull

2007-06-11T07:05:00.000-07:00

This bone is scoured clean,
the sutures where one plate meets another
are undulating lines,
matching up like the erose edges
of jigsaw puzzle pieces,
meandering like streams flowing
across flat landscapes,
undermining and cutting the soil
to leave switchbacks and ess-curves.
There are no oxbows,
these are not rivers.

The sockets where the eyes once dwelt
are like gaping mouths of subterranean tunnels
sloping inward. The eyes are gone,
the windows shattered, the soul fled.
The antlers are double-tined prongs
curving towards each other.
I imagine in life arcs of thought
leapt from one to the other
like sparks of energy generated
by a Tesla-inspired machine.
But now they are merely bone,
dead, lifeless bone,
a leftover reminder of rutting
and sex and a bid for power
and dominance.

* * *

Who were you, deer, whose skull
now sits atop this pedestal?
Did you run free through the woods,
nibble daintily at the windfall apples
in the farmer’s orchard?
Did you frolic in the moonlight?
Did you have a mate?
Were you racing to meet her
when the truck slammed into you,
ending your brief life,
extinguishing the light in those liquid eyes,
breaking the enclosure where dwelt your soul
so that it continued on its way
across the road and into the field beyond
while you were left behind
in a pool of blood and matted fur?

Dream Haikus

2007-06-01T14:10:00.000-07:00

I.
A foetus in the womb
Dreams about sucking its thumb
While it floats in space.

II.
Whimpering, whining,
Running after dream squirrels,
An old dog slumbers.

III.
I dreamt last night that
You and I became lovers.
It was just a dream.

A dialogue

2007-05-31T17:08:00.000-07:00

The ticking of the clock answered
by the dripping of the rain,
the sound of water as it falls,
as it hits the leaves,
patters on the roof,
splatters on the stone,
clearing the air of dust, of heat,
of the oppressiveness that holds you
immobile on a hot summer’s evening.
The rain comes and the thunder:
a grumble and a growl from afar
heralding the arrival of great beasts
barking at the lightning
flashes that split the darkness
with their forked tongues.
Then there’s a new scent,
a fresh scent, heaven sent,
of ozone, the molecules sundered
as nitrogen seeps into the soil,
nourishes roots of grass and trees,
oxygen liberated into the atmosphere,
that same atmosphere
which so recently bore down on you
with its oppression of heat and humidity
and is lifted with the patter, the splatter,
the dripping of water from the eaves,
the elm, oak and maple leaves;
and as the storm subsides,
the spaces between raindrops become larger,
the gaps are filled in by the regular ticking
of the clock.

Limerick for a poet with writer’s block

2007-05-25T16:32:00.000-07:00

A poet kept eyeing the clock,
Afflicted with bad writer’s block.
As the minutes ticked by,
He let loose a sigh,
Then decided to go for a walk.

It seemed like a good idea at the time

2007-04-09T06:31:00.001-07:00

It seemed like a good idea at the time,
the immortality, the eternal youth.
My mentor reassured me with her crimson lips,
her caresses, her murmured endearments,
all the while stroking my beardless cheek
with her blood-red nails,
nuzzling my pulsating throat,
‘You will be mine, forever.’
And then she sank her ivory fangs into my neck,
and drank deep, deeply, deepest,
drawing out my very soul.

That night I died, only to be born again
by the light of the next rising moon.
No Christ figure I, never again would I set foot
in a house of worship or defile a temple of faith.
The daily company of men was forbidden me;
I sought nightly those of my own kind
and those foolish enough to venture forth,
becoming appeasement for my unceasing hunger,
my insatiable lust for life.

Time passes, the world changes,
mountains crumble, oceans rise;
I remain the same.
I do not change, I cannot die;
my mentor’s words were spoken in truth:
forever young, forever untouched by the passage of time.
Everyone I know, everyone I ever loved is dead.
No one loves such a one as myself.

You cannot see me, as I stand behind you
while you brush your golden hair,
paint your perfect lips,
not reflected in any mirror,
unfelt by your beglamoured senses.
Your beauty, your innocence, are all that I crave,
yet what I desire most is your death,
to drink in your essence, your soul,
to feel the life pour out of you,
to hold you tenderly as your veins empty into mine,
to watch fondly as your rosy glow is replaced by an icy pallor.

And yet with your death I am deprived of your life.
The warmth I would swallow, the blood
filling me with your essence, your very soul,
will in turn guarantee that I shall never have you again.
I wait for you to unclasp the heavy silver chain,
the one that encircles the throat I yearn for,
that keeps me from reaching out and touching
the very thing that I desire most,
and pray that you do not.

Yes, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
But now, as I cannot have your death,
I desire my own; and yet, I cannot die.
I cannot die.

stem the flow of time

2007-02-15T11:12:00.000-08:00

Time is measured in the breaths and heartbeats
of the one whose warmth envelopes you on winter nights,
whose arms comfort you when grief threatens to overwhelm
with the sheer weight of its undeniable and unbearable presence,
whose soft words banish the voices of derision
and smooth the erosion from gnawing doubts.
Time flows like the inhalations and exhalations of the one you love,
who loves you,
and when that heart ceases its beating,
time stops as well.

The Belly Dancer

2006-12-17T20:04:00.000-08:00

She moves,
    sinuous
       as a snake,
         sensuously,
       serpent arms,
     undulating belly,
  shimmying hips;
she weaves through
the crowd with barely
   any room between
       ogling admirers
         as she dances
          on bare
            feet.

The Missile

2006-12-15T08:05:00.000-08:00

That snowball that I saved,
proof of last winter’s bounty
sealed in a zip-lock bag,
stored against summer’s heat in the freezer,
between the lambchop and the frozen peas,
awaiting the hot bare neck
of an unsuspecting victim,
the perfect target for deployment,
ice crystals melting into rivulets of cold
running down sweaty back, moist cleavage,
over burning shoulders,
is gone,
melted,
less than a handful of dirty water
in a zip-lock bag,
the victim of power outages.

The Stars are Falling

2006-12-14T14:08:00.000-08:00

snow
        drifting
                    downward,

gently, oh so gently
                                falling,

dropping from a sky so black
where no stars twinkle
like diamonds on black velvet,
no pewter plate rests on an ebony table,
only snow
                falls...

glittering flakes—six points each—
in the light of the street lamp
where I stand,
head bare,
as they land in my hair,
on my lashes,
melt on my cheeks and on my lips
as I gaze skywards,
watching the stars leave their home,
depart from the depths of blackest space,
to
    fall
          at my feet,

glittering.