Nichola (Nicki) Ward

Poetry is measured madness

2012-01-01T14:05:00.000-05:00

Metered out
Rhymed out
And yes
of course
it's timed out

And there were times
when madness was all that I could speak
And that was poetry

And there were times
when madness was all that I could hear
And that
again
was poetry

The insane
obsession
for the word

THE word
Not a good word
nor even the best word
but...
The perfect word

Poetry is measured madness
and it is the measuring that has made the difference

Me and Mrs. Jones

2011-12-21T13:15:00.000-05:00

There's nothing to be said
She said
Lying in a daytime bed
Past bored betrayal
Lost: The eroticism of duplicity

"Me and Mrs. Jones" used to be our song
"We both know that it's wrong
But it's much too strong..."

But we stopped singing along
Long ago
We never made it to the intimacy
Of finishing each others' sentences

Now our lies
Are just well-practiced alibis

Without the conversation of deceit
There's nothing to be said

Best Friend

2011-12-15T18:54:00.000-05:00

Which friend

Best for your career
Best for your self-esteem
Or humility

Best for Fridays
Or weddings
Or divorces

Best for you

Or best for me
Best for inspiration
Best as an example
Of what not to do

Best as only
Best as crowd

Best as someone
Who follows dreams
Or is pursued by
Demons and debtors

Best owed
Or owned
Or old

I am none of these
To you
Or from you
Or of you

I refuse to be a custodian of your masks
I’m tired of your estrangement
I remain as your reflection
But I am not your friend

First Crack

2011-12-10T02:02:00.000-05:00

Cracked plaster is compelling

It is the locus of all wisdom

It is the dwelling of the infinite

This is the focus point that I am drawn to

When the mind

Caught in re-boot

Needs to start again

Re-Set

This is a crack in a wall

It is shallow by human standards

Deep as a canyon if one were very

Small

A dry gulch connected to others

Sisters and brothers

Who have shifted great tectonic plates

That are smaller than my hand

Blink

Trying to re-think

To find

A Mind mulched

By Real

This isn’t real

This is one of those things

You read about or see

And marvel at how nobly

They cope with their adversity

And find their faith

Crack

What lives inside the cracks

Behind the plates

Sandwiched in the warmth and dark

Between the wall and paint

The mortar

Mort d’art

More Dar

Now

Please let there be now

The Truth About Teapots

2011-12-07T11:48:00.000-05:00

Teapots are known to be somewhat pretentious
C'est vrai
They say

Teapots are known to be somewhat morose
Tea ducts
Tear ducts

Teapots are known to be somewhat contentious
Slake thirst?
Milk first!

Teapots are known to be somewhat grandiose
Tea cups
Mere cups

Least civil of all the cupboard's crockery
They frequently resort to mockery

But some of us

Less easily awed
Can see that they
Are deeply flawed

It isn't just the one who pours
Do not forget
The teacup
Saucer or the spoon
They too are dreamers

Submitted:
Most respectfully yours,

Signed

Your humble creamer

The Graphic Novel: Performed

2011-11-18T11:08:00.001-05:00

Jackie's Not a Real Girl: A Play for Voices by Nichola (Nicki) Ward

Wednesday November 23rd 2011
Doors Open @ 7:30pm - Curtain at 8pm - Symposium after the performance

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre
12 Alexander St 416.975.855

The (true) story of a transwoman who is sent to a men's prison. She survives … Almost

Based on a true story, Jackie's not a Real Girl traces the events surrounding the life, imprisonment and death of a transgendered sex trade worker. The narrative is developed by using the testimony of the people around her. These witnesses to her last days include a best friend, a barfly, a cop, a prison warden, a social worker and a John.

The performance lasts 1hour 15 minutes and is performed using minimal staging and back projections from the graphic novel. It's a fantastic performance space (absolutely perfect)... But it is fairly small... so it's probably a good idea to reserve your spot(s) in advance

Tickets are $10 and are available from Buddies' box office 416.975.8555 http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=190969797624067

We Question the Utility of Humility

2011-10-11T10:00:00.001-04:00

Even when we almost

Have that taste of grace

Even then we cling to faith

That place of no-face

Numbed by all we’ve done

Scared of standing still

And yet too scared to run

Thought

Humble is for losers

Who have no sense of purpose

Who have no strength of character

Who ought to make demands

Not doing everything the world commands

Of course these are just the lies we need

And this so-called honesty

Provides a basis for security

It’s out of necessity we believe

This painful paradox

All power

Is ours

But suffering

Is brought to us by others

Not bought

With bitter fruit of false desires

See

We needed all of our denials

To hide us from the trials of our truth

To provide ourselves permission

For commission and omission

We heeded

Defects

The broken glass of shattered dreams

Reflects

Solutions that now become the problem

Old tools of wars that now

In peace

Are flaws

To be at peace

Demands a different strength

To be happy

To be human

To be whole

Is not a role

It’s real

The Gorgon Rose

2011-10-06T18:10:00.002-04:00

I cannot see the coin but I can feel its heft
Blessings be upon you, your grace and excellence
Each modest tribute of a few small pence
Is great to me
But a florin or a crown as alms!
I am bereft of words
As I am of sight

Yet I would be the more so in your debt
If you could also briefly lend me eyes
I seek a statue in this grand square
It is my place of usual and humble work
But in the bustle of this day
I am lost - Misplaced
Of course, I would not touch your hand
Nor dare to touch your sleeve
But my ears can hear the velvet of your cloak
And I would follow that
If you allow

A thousand thanks again
How foolish I
Far-roaming
Lost
Am found by you
A stranger guiding me to my
Sometime familiar place:
To the South West of this galleried Piazza
To be shielded from the Tuscan sun

Do you see it there?
Shaded in the square
Raised slightly from the ground
An open stage
Do you see the graceful columns?
Holding up the heavens

Look up
They say the portico is gracious no?
And see above
The gabled female virtues carved on high
Facaded fabled:
Fortitude
Temperance
Justice
Prudence

Below
Do you see the theatre filled with frozen testament?
Statues
The witnesses of lanced and stolen love
The raped Sabine
The dead rejected Patroclus
The violated Polyxena
The beaten horseman Nessus
A chorus
Of stories
I am companion to these ancient marbles
Thankful for your accompaniment
To be among them

I can tell by the smell of dust and masonry
We are among them
Do they seem titanic?
Heroic
Not mortal like you?
They are both

Mortal in fact - since they
Were killed most surely dead
Heroic in the way
That they were murder'ed

Let me with my guttered

Bronze noble
Fallen slain

The Gorgon Rose

The Living Testament of Roy Antonio Jones III: A Eulogy

2011-09-28T17:48:00.001-04:00

To my brothers and my sisters and my cousins in-between
To those of us who are tired of being ghosts
Unheard … unseen
Listen close and be uplifted
We have been …sifted
By the gods
We are… the gender…gifted

But lest I go astray - Let me just say
…Just for today (that)
This is my intention
To engage you in an intervention

To do so let me tell you ‘bout a case beyond prevention

Roy Antonio Jones the Third was killed
On August First
This year - The birth
Certificate said that he was born a boy
And I don’t know if that is true or not
Trans or not… that’s not
The point
That’s not my joint

South Hampton in New York - On a reserve
This child got more than anyone deserves

Sometimes the force from a back hand
Takes a year or two or more to land
Sometimes twenty years or more have passed
Before we feel the full force of that blast
Sometimes we face a damn-near fatal bullet
Long since we saw the trigger finger pull it

(But)
Roy Antonio Jones the Third did not have to wait so long
Roy Antonio Jones the Third
Born of the Shinnecock Indian Nation

Was being cared for by a certain
Pedro Jones (a man of no relation)

On August First - Late afternoon
Pedro grabbed the child by the neck
Strangled and
Then beat the child to death
“I was trying to make him act more like a boy…
The murderer said

“Instead … of like a little girl…”
That’s what the perpetrator told
The cops
As to why he didn’t stop…

Why he killed a child
Who was barely
Six… teen … Months …Old
A toddler who was less than two

For heaven’s sake
You can’t lay claim to any guilt or gender
At that tiny… tender age
A life so brief

…Such grief
That … I couldn’t even feel my outrage
I’ve seen too much of this to be surprised
Not least of which
Through my own ears and eyes

I’ve heard those words thrown at poor Roy
Why can’t you be - More like a boy?
Don’t you know
That those are not your toys?
It is perverse
For you to love
The things the other sex enjoys

Of course, today I know that those were lies
But they leave marks
All those punches that were thrown
I still own the bruises and the scars

Sometimes the force from a back hand
Took a year or two or more to land
Sometimes twenty years or more had passed
Before I felt the full force of that blast
Sometimes I faced a damn-near fatal bullet
Long since I saw the trigger finger pull it

And though my old abusers were long gone
Insanely I became accomplice to a prior act
Aided and abetted
Vainly brought old harms… into present fact

Discovered that
For me
…There is no difference between attempted homicide
And a suicide… Besides a slight delay in timing
…Nothing much
They’re just the same excepting who’s assigned the blame.

But, I survived the echoed pain I heaped upon myself
Somehow escaped that circular and pointless game
And lived my pride
…I’m never going there again

And then I hear the fateful news
That Roy Antonio Jones the Third
A Child: Has died

And inside my sadness – I struggle to remember to be grateful
I’m alive
And search for sense in innocent and senseless death

…Yet
– In time I search and find
A truth
This truth - and my true aim

I must not bear the burden of a perpetrators’ shame
I must share the absolute foundation of reality
That murder is perverse profanity
That they
Not us are clinically insane

And though they try to get me to confess
That I am mad – By definition of transgendered-ness
I must not buy their crazed mythology
That I am a victim of some strange pathology

Thank you Roy for reminding me to honor our humanity
To value what it means to be humane
Thank you too for reminding me just who is sane
And who is guilty of insanity

And finally for forcing me to face the truth of our own duty
To negate the ugliness of hate
We must embrace the truth of our own beauty

Oddly Woken

2011-08-29T14:55:00.002-04:00

A phone call

Did I catch you sleeping?
They Say

Just my morning meditation
I lie

The phone call ended
Now I doze

And
dream of gods

The Music of the Spheres

2011-08-23T00:39:00.000-04:00

Someone gave you a book
The Music of the Spheres
You passed it on to me
Here
You said
This is more your cup of tea

You died
And I tried and tried
To read the bloody thing
I only understood
That I was thick
That it had something to do with Pythagoras
And chromatic intervals
And music

I checked the edges
Of the pages
You’d only read the first part
You crafty bugger

Every now and again
I’d pick it up
For a little while
And even in my frustration
Before I set it down again
I’d smile

One day I came upon a bookmark in it
Just a small scrap of paper in it
Your handwriting on it
A single word upon it
Writ clear

My name

A name that I had never heard escape your lips
(You never… ever … said my name)
But you wrote it on a little slip
And left it in a book

Music to my eyes
If not my ears
Perhaps this was the music of the spheres

Bohemian Dry Cleaners

2011-08-20T01:06:00.000-04:00

The streets are too well-swept to be considered squalid
Perhaps it tries too hard to be
Bohemian

This clapboard ghetto sat behind
Spadina’s downtown – Chinatown

And it’s sad testament
That recent refugees
Disregard its cardboard seediness
And live elsewhere

Though old, old immigrants
Mainland Portuguese and Azores
Owners of cheese stores
Seem to live
Seamlessly
With new age wiccans, cyber punks
Under-performing performance artists
Under shopping at the
Butchers
Next to Reggae historians
Fishmongers
Milliners
Compassionate cannabis clubs
Hats

Too many bookstores
Too many strident coffee shops
Too many vegetarians
Of the proper sort
The punks who
Are too too polite
So all the grunge looks like it has been dry-cleaned

And if Toronto is New York
Designed by someone Swiss
Then Kensington Market
Is Amsterdam
Without the hookers and the water

Despite its smugness and its neatness
Its well preserved graffiti and its too too tidy soul
And even though it isn’t ugly
I love it anyway

Poetic Polemic

2011-08-18T18:01:00.000-04:00

Poetry Lesson
One: Poems are not lessons
Two: There is no two

Private Screening

2011-08-18T11:41:00.001-04:00

Inside
Anonymous eyelids
I fail to see a label
I fail to see storage instructions or directions

Distracted by imagination
My mind plays movies
Absent of production credits

(Subtitles are unnecessary)

There is nothing to disclose

No mug shot license plate
No date of arrest

No benchmark of
A … “Best Before”

No insight

I erase this all

I open my eyes

Again

Now it is a Writing Desk

2011-08-11T21:53:00.000-04:00

It is a writing desk…

It was a kitchen table
Back then
When I was unstable
Back when
I pushed her till she finally told the truth

Seven years before
We bought the table new
Alright, alright
(She said)
It’s true, you’re not my type
I’m not attracted to the what you are… become

Struck dumb
Not with surprise but rage
The ages that she’d lied

The steak knife by my side
Cried out
And over-handed raised it high
I stabbed the guiltless pine

Wanted to do violence
Experience
Some sense of vengeance
To scar as I was scarred
Marred

The tip broke off embedded
The argument was ended

Today the knife is gone
And so is she
The shrapnel dent is all that’s left

Some days I think about removing
This remnant shell
Bomb fragment from a former war

But that would change no part of what it was
And change too much of what it is… become
It was a kitchen table

…Now it is a writing desk

Why Toothbrush Holders Move

2011-07-23T18:42:00.001-04:00

Teresa
Gila
Margaret
Annie
Regina
Barbul
Renata

Some were tall
Others short
I think at least 2 were left-handed
Most spoke German
Most loved me

All were mother to me
All left

Tissue

2011-07-11T01:46:00.004-04:00

Reflections
Schooled by past infections

Scars imitate
Emotions

Smiles that don’t quite reach the eyes
Eyes that do not match the lip’s devotions

Laughs that seem contrived

In one
Aged five

Dust Proof

2011-07-09T13:20:00.009-04:00

The couch
Covered
Saved for

Special

But cushions
Unstained
Dimple with time
Sun-faded colors
And quiet dust
Mark passage

Of
A failed premise

Insistence that the cure for
Vita Brevis
Is deferred existence

Proof
The reminiscence
The too too late discovery
That

Now
Was

Special

Take Care

2011-07-02T20:07:00.004-04:00

This is how I take care of myself

I like sand between my toes
That somehow knows
Where to go

But it forgets to stay behind
And fills my socks with grittiness

Warm, warm, warm
But not too warm
And moisturizer if it’s peach and therefore not greasy

Self care sounds like a supermarket buggy
That you use to help yourself to
Beans
And soft cheese
And flowers
And sometimes cat food
To care for your self and your cat

I don’t know how self-care works
It’s not a switch I can turn off
It’s not a room I can step outside of
It’s not an old photograph
It’s not a book that someone else wrote

So I don’t understand it
But it doesn’t seem to matter

Holding Hands

2011-05-07T19:59:00.011-04:00

You wouldn’t hold my hand
I sensed – Not saw – Your
Creased Forehead
Deduced from the set of your Jaw
Saw
The nape of your
Neck and the bravery of your shoulders
That refused to cry

I was wrong

So unforgivable
That my memory
Has saved me from the details

We walked beside each other
And realized that the pace was wrong
I had a limp
Caused by the lost counterweight
Of your hand in mine

I crooked a finger in your belt loop
Swung in time with your angry hips

Unconvincingly you tried
To brush me away
Instead our palms nested in each other
Followed through
Lock-step
In-stride

Our bodies didn’t hide
But forced a grudging confession
Or our mutual need

And therefore
Perhaps
Our love

Bring Sadness to My Side

2011-02-20T19:27:00.010-05:00

Bring sadness to my side
Sing through the night and to the dawn
Of my people’s tears
Of my people’s home – My people’s home

But this loss of mine
Is of my love, my best belov’d
My song is a country without end - A sea - A land / And…
Such is fate, such is fate
Such is fate, such is fate, such is fate

All that I miss – Is this
My Lady and my Life
She is the dream that is my own
Where I am born – Where I am born

Bring sadness to my side
To where I guard my soul
To deep within where lies my hope – That dares to air / If…
Such is fate, such is fate
Such is fate, such is fate, such is fate

What You Should Know

2010-11-25T11:22:00.004-05:00

There’s something that you should know already
But you don’t
And it doesn’t matter what it is
It matters that you don’t know

And you should know

And I’ve long debated all the
Good in should
And should I tell
Need I tell
And well… for me
I’ve gone through tough

And we’ve both lived long enough
Without the burden of full disclosure
What’s the point of more exposure
It won’t provide a drop of peace
Or spiritual composure

As we both age to middle-age
Sage supposedly

And there’s a growing list
Of things you mis-remember
Or dis-remember
Of our common past

So much that I now accept
The stories that you share as true
Acknowledge glories
For races that you say I’ve run
And even won

I’m less committed to those absolutes of truth
Discovered all those shouldn’t - shoulds
Are just a self indulgent luxury of youth

But then
Of course
You know that already

Life is (not) Like a Circus

2010-10-25T16:45:00.002-04:00

Let me say that life is like a circus

It is filled with smells

That you half

Recognize - Smells of other species' sex

Lions' half-tamed dominance

The must of elephants' intellectual

Submission

And are those flesh-colored leotards

Or flesh-colored…flesh

And the contortionist's doing something naughty

And clowns aren't funny

Sometimes sad

Mostly just creepy

And life ends too soon

And has harsh notes

And it's sexist

In an out of date way

And the food is not filling

And the clowns are creepy

And there's too much shit

And not enough sawdust

It is a place of cruelty

To animals but…

Those most cruelly used

Those most cynically exploited

Are the spectators

Fleeced

In each town

Short-changed

Like a herd of wildebeest

Except the cattle stands still

And the lions go from town to town

Run away, run away

Run away

And join the circus

Le Vaisseau D'or - The Golden Heart: a Translated Poem by Nichola Ward

2010-09-10T00:32:00.005-04:00

Le Vaisseau D’or

By Émile Nelligan Circa 1899

C'était un grand Vaisseau taillé dans l'or massif:
Ses mâts touchaient l'azur, sur des mers inconnues;
La Cyprine d'amour, cheveux épars, chairs nues,
S'étalait à sa proue, au soleil excessif.

Mais il vint une nuit frapper le grand écueil
Dans l'Océan trompeur où chantait la Sirène,
Et le naufrage horrible inclina sa carène
Aux profondeurs du Gouffre, immuable cercueil.

Ce fut un Vaisseau d'Or, dont les flancs diaphanes
Révélaient des trésors que les marins profanes,
Dégoùt, Haine et Névrose, entre eux ont disputés.

Que reste-t-il de lui dans la tempête brève ?
Qu'est devenu mon coeur, navire déserté?
Hélas! Il a sombré dans l'abîme du Rêve!

The Golden Heart

A Translated Poem by Nichola (Nicki) Ward, August 2010

She was a Vessel great and graven-gold
Masts touching Lazuli-The-Sky on unknown seas

A Citrine lover, hair in disarray, flesh bare-displayed
Sprawled from stem to stern…naked to the sunlight

But there came a night where she was chastised by the Reef

In an ocean of lies where the sirens sang

It kissed her keel …The horror of her wreckage

Commended to A Chasm and an Ever-Grave

So became a Golden Vessel, whose walls laid open fancy

And revealed her treasures to the dispute of a desecrated deep

To those crude and squabbling tars: Fear, Hatred and Disgust

And what remains of this brief storm?

What happened to the lifeless ship that was my heart?

Wretched! - It died in darkness - in the Abyss of dreams

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Appendix:

Just for the record, this translation is neither free, nor loose nor blank… Nor is this a “McTranslation”… i.e. a blandly academic exercise which slavishly adheres to rhyme schemes at the complete expense of meaning, music or aptness.

The methodology I use strictly observes the great translator Ezra Pound’s rigors of integrity: Logopeia, Phanopoeia and Melopoeia. What emerges from this disciplined process is not a “translation of text” but a “translation of poetry”

To expand on Marianne Moore’s thesis “It is a poem because it is written by a poet”

To which I would add, “Anyone can translate text…But only a poet can translate a poem”

Do I claim this translation to be definitive? Of course not…but while no one can determine Nelligan’s intent… His technique can be observed and honored. In this sense, I have done my very best to see that this translation is a fair reflection of the holism of his language choices…Even to the extent of reviewing his original handwritten drafts for clues. (flow, corrections, punctuation, alignment, intensity of pen pressure, etc.)

So, I do claim that this is a “Translated Poem” (which for me is a pretty bold statement)

FYI, Below are some samples of my notes made on-the-fly… They show some of the reasoning behind the choices I made and the directions I took. I have left them in their rough and unedited state. These are my notes…To myself…From myself…So no attempt has been made to present a cogent argument…they’re just how I navigate the text and remind myself of key points.

I was going to erase them…but then thought…what the heck…someone might find some of it interesting (I did)

INFORMAL NOTES: August 26, 2010

Of Interest: shortly after this, piece was revealed … Nelligan had a psychotic episode and never returned to full mental health…Although it is a little ghoulish to think in these terms… Part of the power of this piece is the rawness of emotion…and the despair.

That said, it is a superbly crafted poem. Structurally, it is incredibly sound. It also displays a high degree of wit and suggests a playfulness and familiarity with Latin and Greek, that comes from considerable study.

However, it transcends the academic and is not the least “precious” – It is first and foremost, emotionally authentic …Having translated this, very carefully… I think his language choice is nothing short of brilliant. It is also deeply layered, because Nelligan was clearly familiar with French, English and Irish… All of this echoes on the page…and to my ear…And yet, it is not a Franco-Anglo-Gaelic poem… It has integrity and a distinct Canadian voice

NOTES

Title:

The vessel (cup) < > vessel (ship) word-play seems stronger in French then in English ... at least to me. I also get a sense too that that one must consider the erotic "word play" that suggests a maiden's vessel i.e. Vagina or (if one was feeling a bit more pro-creative)..."womb"
These last ideas don't carry over into English at all well.
The Golden Vessel, while technically accurate just seems like such a bland translation to me...Also, it seems a little sterile
So, while "Golden Heart" may not be perfect... it does have a bit more humanity...and it does have a figurative sense as a receptacle of love..
It is also a plausible name for a ship

Stanza 1

Azur from Arabic Azul, Lapis Lazuli
Some translators argue (very convincingly) that Cyprine d'amour refers to Venus (of Cyprus)... But, on balance, this seems to be a very ordinary choice for an extraordinary poet
So, I chose to look at the "elemental" language that surrounds this piece overall and this stanza does seem to have a "mineral/earth" thing going on (Gold, Lazuli, Cyprine)... furthermore, there's a lot of yellow and since...

· Cyprine = pale yellow gemstone, form of jade, from which I extrude Citrine, while not technically accurate from a gemologists perspective… the “lemon-ness” of the word.. seems to imply the color”

Judging by Nelligan's wit and erudition it could well mean that this ambiguity is intentional... and that both answers (In French) are correct... of course... in Translation, this would mean that both English answers are wrong.

Stanza 2.

“Il vint”… very specific conjugation (Past Historic… a complete(d) act…not continuous past imperfect as in the earlier stanza
Carine (carina) = Latin name for keel + (interestingly in the Irish Language which Nelligan also spoke… it is the word for a close “friend”)… “Kissed Keel” seems to very much honor these undertones.
Inclina…(literally past participle of “inclined”… to my ear curiously passive voice)… It suggested to me the motion of burying a body at sea…and hence “commended”… This chimes nicely…and also allows the modifier “horribly” to be used. The literal translations “horribly sinking” or “horribly inclined”… are foul to the ear and do not mirror the elegance and melopeia of the original.

Stanza 3.

“Il fut” Once again, this (Past Historic) conjugation is not accidental… and not only links unity of time to time to the preceding stanza But also (in my opinion) unity of tone.
Diaphanous…Literally Dia Phanos… “permeable to fancy” and thus artistically transparent.
Revelaient…Third person plural indicative imperfect…i.e. continuously transparent…
“Tresor” might be ironically intended…Kind of a virginal thing...
The translation of the "marins profanes" section was very tricky ... "mariners", and "sailors" are appropriate... but I thought that "Tars" was a bit more coarse and perhaps sexual...
Untangling the sense structure so that it was both orderly and so that it flowed in English was particularly hard... but to my ear, finishing the stanza "entre eux ont disputés" as "who argue among themselves" was not an option.
Nevrose… Often literally translated as neurosis…However, since the poem predates our current psychiatric understanding of neurosis…And since a relationship is clearly intended between the emotions of disgust and hatred… (what we would perhaps describe today as elements of phobia) My feeling is that the original intent of “nevrose” was broader…to suggest irrational fear.
Scansion.. Fear hatred and disgust

Stanza 4.

Déserté…deserted … hence unpopulated…hence devoid of human life.
Sombre is meant to suggest condemned to darkness and to the land (or sea) of the dead. In French, this “shadow” mirrors the “soleil excessif” in the first stanza beautifully. But, in English, we need to take a different tack…hence “Sunlight” in the 1^st Stanza and “Darkness” in the final envoi.
Also… it feels like the duality of somber death and somber shade deserves a “double-tap”… And I think the consonance of Death and Darkness works well
Helas = Does not translate as the insipid “alas”… I think Old French/Early Quebec French applies i.e = Ha Las (I am ) Wretched > Misery > Lassus >Weary

Accidental Perfection: A Series

2010-08-20T17:22:00.000-04:00

This was an interesting commission that I received: The poetry was to compliment an art show with the theme of "accidental perfection"... So, I used (what I think) is a creative approach to meeting that mandate.

I used a series of random generated events, combined with a series of rigid and mindful editing processes to create "accidental perfection"

First I took The titles of some of the principal pieces in the show and used these as topical themes.

Then I took classical quotations on the topic from established sources…I then created a new poem based on a condensed selection words that were contained within the body quote.

Next I entered this newly created poem into a random generator which scrambled the content.

I repeated this process through several cycles until I found an order that resonated for me

My final edit was to use lyrical license to restore this series of poems to a “perfect” and poetic state.

The results are below:

Accidentally

It is accidental
Not monumental
It is that art is
…Is that our art monumental?
…Is not accidental that art
Not monuments
…Are intimate

Perfect

Wanted
The way
Some beginning
I perfect
Hard and stories
Changing often
Some don't clear
An ending
Some don’t clear
Learning
That rhyme middle
Clear
Poems

Pine Cone

As of rudimentary fish…
Pine cone
Form the often
Small like leaf bud
Like “a”
Like “A”
A-s of
A-ppendage
A-s of small

Squirrel

I squirrel for meaning
Living like example
I must
…No

Great looking and whole
Living is you
Like
It means something

Collision

Of literature all the arts
Complicated
Theatre all
Visual
And tactile
Fractal

All the arts
Are a collision

Desire

Irresistible irresistibly to
Is
Too irresistible irresistibly
Is desired
Love is to be an
Love is a desire to
An be is Love
Desire desired be irresistibly

Interval

Another in mind or hate
Is freed
It two

It separates perfection
In the another
In which
It comes interval
Freed thought
Satisfied in separate calm

Hound Dog

Keep
Teeth
Among a hound

Bite it!
Bite like it lives you
Sticks you

Discovery

In attaining what we want
And all-which human
Our what-happiness
Illumination
Discovery
Reason
Nature can
Give none our obligations
Nor set the comparable

Process

Successive you arrive with portrait
Start search for/through egg
When start
The same
Again
Starting process:
The one with eliminations
The Volume
Comes through inevitably

Walk

Space you relate another person
Real space
We around and
Relate it almost as another
…Another
Walk around it as
Sculpture
And relate as
Real around it

Living Room

Doing over bad and community
About living bad pride
Can
About living room and
Can
Buildings in spots gathering
Someone is restoring
Someone be the new spots

Western

It's all guys
Where the
Weak

It's guys
…The strong guys

Where like - with weak
It's like with the weak

And the
Western good and bad guys

Of lost rooms
On the
Television brutality
Into the room: America
Brutality into living of Vietnam
Comfort the living Vietnam

Brutality
Of the lost
Television was
America
…Learning

Resonance

2010-06-27T15:00:00.005-04:00

I touched you
And I thought that I would never speak again

I touched you
And I forgot… What?… I kept forgetting

An E sailed out
Suspended on itself

Never setting
Tacking organically to the Horizon

It never looked back
Why should it?

It had said all it needed to say
It had said all that needed to be said

I tried to chase it with an A
But that note went its own way

Ignoring the compass And conformity
I released a D
And then a G

Set each free to seek
Their own infinities

I went with them all
Exiled and sustained

Long-later and light-headed
I returned to breath

Slightly
…Changed

Literary Porn Star

2010-06-04T14:41:00.001-04:00

Through the letter box today
Discreetly labeled and discretely sent
A package
No casual passer-by
Could determine the
Subversive nature of its printed content

Delicately I laid it out
Upon the bed
Turned page on page
Didn't realize my breath was held
Until I gasped and let it out
I had made the center spread

Shivered at the bondage clamps across
The navel of this publication - Cut in two
And perfect bound
The staples gleamed
My virgin work lay naked on this scandalous sheet
Spread-eagled in this nude review

Whatever would my mother think of me
If she knew that just this June
I was a Playmate of the Month
In that pornographic mag: the LRC

(On being first published in the June 2010 edition of the Literary Review of Canada)

At the No-Tell Motel

2010-05-27T16:42:00.006-04:00

It started and it ended
At the no-tell … Motel

You were late
And I was drunk
And we were both
Again … Yet again

You were married to your job
And probably to someone else
But we talked about your work
And how your boss was such a jerk

And how to deal with clients
Who were slow-pay … No-pay

And while we took our customary showers
We joked about all the DNA
On the top sheet and the floor

And with all that contamination how
They’d never be able to identify ours

Unless it was a TV show

We tried to recreate our own Crime Scene
But the lust … Was dust

We were thinking of somewhere else
Afterwards - We lay there

Imagining the ticks
Of a digital clock

Waiting to see
Who would suggest
The early checkout

To make a simple statue

2010-05-05T15:36:00.002-04:00

The sculptor says:

Consider the subject matter
Prepare sketches
From every angle

Surprise yourself with its geography
Ride imaginary camels
Across the desert of its flanks
The caverns of its flaring nostrils
The mountains of its shoulders
The rivers of its mane

Listen so carefully
That you can hear the sound of each hoof placed
The before, the during and the after of its pace

Feel
The thud of mud
The recoil of a thousand pounds
Vibrating through soil
To engage the soles of your own feet

Now take a mallet
A chisel and a block of stone

And simply
Chip away
The parts
That are not horse

Message in a bottle

2010-04-27T12:12:00.002-04:00

On my
Deserted island
I walk along the largely
Unlettered shore

I wrote poems
Stuffed them into bottles
Sometimes

The messages at first
Were
Please send help
Get me off this place
I’m not where I should be

But the tides
Returned
These cries

Later they were conversational
Talking about the weather
And sunsets

And the tides
Sent these back too

More recently
They contain
Smiling advice
Kind comfort

I influence
The tone

The tides
Decide
The course of correspondence

Tea Session with Depression

2010-04-22T11:18:00.004-04:00

One lump or two
I ask
Assuming that I am
“Mother”

Depression is indifferent
And so I merely leave the bowl
And spoon
Within reach
In case it has a change of heart

In past visits
Treated with contempt
In my vain attempt
To cast it off

I had always considered it to be coarse
Unrefined
Somehow brutish
Now that we are face to face
It seems quite shy

I’m reaching for compassion
For this unfashionable defense
This wartime response
Who stares
Like a shell-shocked veteran
Lost in peacetime

I try to remember
That it is only trying to help
Old coping
Broken
As a talking doll with a knotted string
Answering questions
That haven’t been asked

That’s why I’m pouring
Gentle tea
For both of us

A Menagerie Friend

2010-04-07T14:03:00.006-04:00

You were my familiar
A strange and cat-like companion
Courteous enough
And so not fully feline
With indifference

I had the sense
On our first meeting
To keep you secret-secret
...Secret

I did not want anyone
To talk me out of hearing
Your imagined laughter

I did not want anyone
To explain away your whispers
As merely breezes

...Or your smile
As a wishful thought

I did not want to question
Your wise insight
Your counsel which was
So often
The same as mine

When did you fade
...Where went the days
That somehow passed without you

...They escaped
Like pets
At incautious doors

This is (Not) a Rich Man's War

2009-12-24T15:54:00.001-05:00

Peace

Sweet All - Animated

2009-12-20T16:25:00.003-05:00

Frankly, I'm not sure of other people's take on these animations.

I love the original - It's a eulogy for an old friend, Declan Mulholland.
One of Declan's biggest roles was that of Jabba the Hutt

... and so I thought it might be nice to do a second version of his piece... animated and in a space station.

If you view this in Youtube, closed captioning is also available.

The Nature of Grilled Bread - Animation

2009-12-18T15:36:00.004-05:00

This is another experimental piece... The original (with my voice) is up here too, but the effect of this version is (to me) quite different.

I like that there's a discussion going on between the superhero and her alter ego... It reflects the duality of the piece I thnk.

By the way, I've added closed captioning which is synced to the animation... However, I think you have to select "Watch on Youtube" on the bottom right hand side of the video

Intended Purpose (animation)

2009-11-25T10:41:00.004-05:00

I continue to explore new ways of presenting the written word/sound/and motion graphics. Most explorations are dead ends...but I find this interesting enough to want to share it.

It's an experimental animation of one of my poems.

I used a computer generated voice to "read" the poem. I then animated an avatar in an artificial 3 dimensional space to present the piece.

This creates a very strange (and I think compelling) relationship between the humanity of the poetry and the mechanical qualities of the presentation.

For me, this has added new layers of meaning. The computer voice software introduced ghost artifacts (surprising phrasings and intonations) - Many of these interfered with comprehension and I removed them in post production. However, some of these "ghosts" were chillingly appropriate - and I emphasized these.

The animation software also introduced ghost artifacts that were incredibly apt... and since the poem speaks to the role of chance in the creation of art...Well, I had to keep them.

FYI, like an increasing number of my pieces, this video is Closed Captioned... However, I would recommend leaving this OFF for the first viewing of this piece. I find this a bit distracting - particularly on a smaller screen. If you choose to view it a second time you might try making it full sized to fit your screen.

Intended Purpose

2009-10-25T16:24:00.005-04:00

Most poems are not put
To their intended purpose

Virtuous
They may be
And filled with innovation
Novel scansion
Consonance
Galore
Assonance
And more

Sure rhymed and chimed - But never mind
The original intention

It's all defeated by a chance line
An off-hand mention
Of a cat's curl
Or the purr of a friend
Or the dark shadow of loss

And thus
The reader reaps
Finds unplanted meaning
Of their own

This is not selfish

This
Is genuine
And truthful
And beautiful
And Divine

On The Nature of Grilled Bread

2009-10-22T16:09:00.002-04:00

Absence of evidence
Is not evidence of absence

Let me explain - There is a part of the brain
That when stimulated makes one perceive god
Kzzt - God! Kzzt God!

There is a part of the brain
That when stimulated makes one smell burnt toast
Kzzt - Toast! Kzzt Toast!

It's all in the head
Yet this does not make me question
The existence of grilled bread

God is a lie
Atheism is a lie
Equal lies

Let me tell you why
Though god (slash) atheism is true to you
There is nothing you can say or do
To make it true for me
Particularly since
My god is an atheist

Try not to worry about that too much
I know it upsets you
To think that others haven't pierced the veil as you
That others wander aimlessly around
Bumping into coincidences
And misinterpreting them as
Proof (slash) disproof of god

Surely life has no meaning for the bumblers
And the mumblers at the churches and (slash) or pubs

Don't they know that the universe is ruled by absolutes
And that every dogmatist agrees
Universal principles -
Require full certainty
That cats observed are either dead or not
Not both and neither

Of course, there is another point of view
Satisfied by proofs among the truths of math and physics
It's this
Gods and atheists do not exist
At least not separately
Both observe the non-existence of the other

That's why Absolutes and Truth
Consistently defeat detection
They're probability waves that collapse
Upon their close inspection

But - I've made a home in this untidy universe filled as she is
With glorious approximation
And strange charm

Maybe that's strange of me
To delight in the necessary tremor
Of the search for something else
To be satisfied without proof that
A thousand unseen hands reach out to me
Just as I reach out to touch the face of god
And to sense perhaps that if I ever reached that space
I might feel fingertips upon my own

So forgive me if I doubt all gods and atheists
But don't confuse that doubt for lack of faith
I believe absolutely
In the existence of toast

100 Steps

2009-10-17T01:58:00.003-04:00

Wake up and exercise your own personal dawn
Doesn't really matter what the time is
If it's the first time you yawn - It's morning

Take a hundred steps before you raise your head

Know the world isn't real until you open your eyes
So look around the inside of your lids
That small and redly-tinted universe

Take a hundred steps before you leave the bed

Keep your hands at your sides like ghosts
Touch your hair at the roots - From the roots
Feel the texture of a breath

Take a hundred breaths before you end this death

Don’t make the decision to be born - Yet
Drink in the possibility of waiting
Or (if you could) donating consciousness to someone else

Take a hundred seconds for your second thoughts

Ignore the fact that god is just a dream
And start a dialogue anyway
It's a good way to start the day

Take a hundred steps with the god inside your head
Take a hundred steps with the god inside your head

Once your feet have touched the floor
After your feet have touched the floor
Then you can debate
Whether to take
A hundred more

Um

2009-09-29T11:33:00.004-04:00

I
Stuttered
Lost in
Ems
Or Tees

Mostly
Silent
Except when too excited

Pulling hems
And pointing
Look

Grown ups turn
So
Slowly
They miss so
Much

Leacock's Lament - A Glossa

2009-09-25T15:24:00.005-04:00

This was the cry of little Jane
In bed she moaning lay,
Delirious with Stomach Pain
That would not go away

Oh! Mr. Malthus! The Hickonomics of Hearth and Heart, Stephen Leacock

In that great depression
Way back then
When men were regulated by their greed alone
When wars were fought for ego
And sustained
By madness
Some day, some day things will change
This was the cry of little Jane

A childish regression
Lack of food
Made her hungry for the good - Blind to all the rest
Her world drowning in excess
Still she starved
Cold kindness
That she couldn't tell the night from day
In bed she moaning lay

Planned for her succession
Toys to friends
Foolish amends and unneeded apologies
Thankfully complete in time
Her mind left
Her heedless
Of the need for market gain
Delirious with stomach pain

Divine intercession
Took her pain
Made something useful of it in a memory
A poem for others - She
Now equal
Now lifeless
She was free to go - But famine stayed
That would not go away

Choka - Interpretation

2009-08-28T14:02:00.008-04:00

Melons eaten
I remember my children
Chestnuts eaten
I remember my pain
Invisible - I see them
In my mind's eye
I cannot help them
Night without end
No rest or quiet sleep

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Uri hameba
Kodomo Omohoyu
Kuri hameba
Mashite Omowayu
Izuko yori
Kitarishi monoso
Manakai ni
Motona kakarite
Yasui shi nesanu

My interpretation of a choka by Yamanoue no Okura circa 730 AD.
I tried to honor the poetic aesthetic of this beautiful poem (particularly the repetition and rhythm) - Mine is not a literal translation of the text nor of its scansion... I would love to see other people's interpretations.

You were Spain

2009-06-22T11:04:00.006-04:00

You were Spain
You were the switch back curves
From the mountain to the sea
Hairpins holding back the olive groves

You were Spain
And we flew through you
Noise some witches
Riding our motorbikes
Riding our broomstick Vespas
Like virgins - Knees pressed firmly to hold our place

You were Spain
And your words made sense
Ananas y Naranjas
Fruits made real by closeness to their roots
And your villages
Clung to the mountain by their high mountain names
Binaraitx, Andratx, Fornalutx
Or lapped low and lovely to the sea of Soller - Puerto de Soller

You were Spain
And we rode the San Franciscan tram
Along the beachfront - And everyone smoked
The black tabac
The cheap filterless Fundadors
More foul than French
Burning our nostrils with their gunpowder stench

And someone young - Played guitar
And someone young clapped
And someone young clapped
And someone young clapped
And we knew that this was perfect
And we knew that every other flamenco
Would be spoiled forever
We knew that every other flamenco would always be somehow wrong
Painted on velvet

Y sonrió
Todos sonrió salvajemente
And we smiled
We all smiled wildly - And we saw their
Tears streaming down cheeks that were clenched with joy
And we smiled at their simple sentimentality

And then we tasted the surprising salt on our own lips
And we smiled again in our community
And we
Were Spain

Nichola Ward - Villanelle Bio

2009-04-01T18:32:00.012-04:00

A Writer and Performance Poet of the hood
Although her neighbours are all decorators
Nichola Ward - Oh yeah - She's good

Not one to self applaud - But if she could
She'd call herself a wicked - Rhyminator
A Writer and Performance Poet of the hood

Inspired by voices from fair Thomas's Milkwood
And by the likes of Arnold's "Terminator"
Nichola Ward - Oh yeah - She's good

Fearless - She'll milk any sacred cow - from the Bible to the Talmud
Preaching to the public - She's a peerless Mass Debater
A Writer and Performance Poet of the hood

She lays no claim to Sainthood
But she's a lover not a hater … and (like most of us) is scared of coming off as some asshole second-rater… So when you see her tell her later…
Nichola Ward - Oh yeah - She's good

Because when you take away the bullshit - She's been standing where you stood
And sharing some humanity… well, that's the reason why she's placed here
A Writer and Performance Poet of the hood
Nichola Ward - Oh yeah - She's good

A Venue

2009-03-17T14:26:00.003-04:00

What future comes from
A void
What place
What pathway

Wholly empty
Completely at a loss
In my loss
As to where I should start
Caught in all that chaos

Where can I begin
To sort the wheat
From chafe
The sheep
From goats
The boys
From men
The truth
From lies
The
What was
From the
What is

They say that art
Seeks
What is and what is not
Which makes it a fair companion for the lost
Like me

They say that art
Like love
Is but discovery

But I have been recovered
Like an old couch
Re-upholstered
So many times
I wonder
What lost
Is left

So I protest:
I cannot start with art
I do not even know
What is

And in the denseness of my argument
I sense the arteries of creation
Narrowing
Constricting flow

And I hear the barest whisper
Of a voice I know
Offering
Not guidance
No that would be too too gauche

But just a thought
An idea
A …perhaps

Perhaps you should just push the boat out and write
Perhaps this is the thing you should do

Perhaps this is the thing to do

To write

Envoi

2009-03-13T17:56:00.005-04:00

Never complain
Never explain

As fathers have it

Or as Fitzgerald said it well
Advising literary folks
Don't use some
Mark of punctuation to exclaim
It's like laughing at your own jokes

And though I don't wish to state another person's truth

...

Damn even that's a lie
More truthfully I
Do not care to close the door on my own truth

I want to leave the door wide open
Open to new strangers

Yet strangely
I feel compelled to craft this envoi

Not to punctuate
Nor parenthesize
Nor foolishly
To try and set some compass path

But selfishly
To try and synthesize
My present sight

Poppies …poppies have to find their height
Search for light

And when a tree dies and falls
It feeds their roots of course

But long before…
Above the forest floor
Above the shoulders that you used to ride
Above the bearded birds nests
Above the silvern hair

Where ancient arms held back the world
The canopy exposed
There is a hole

And light
Before unseen
Light previous and unwitnessed
Light which blessed
The former father

Now unfiltered
Feeds the child

Almost to the point of poison
Sun poisoning
And the son
Is father to…

…Some computational obsession
Circular confusion
An endlessly reworded confession
That only ends
But is never finished

Thoughts wrung out
Exhausted of meaning
No conclusion

Just clues

Geographically
I examine where I was

Geographically
I examine
Where I am

Geographically
I examine where I am not

And graphically
I examine
What I have done with nothing

And I try to think my way
To feeling
Logically

Psychologically

Pharmacologically

But all science fails

Lost in faith
To face

All those shifting sands
And then
Colliding with a barely
Incidental
Accident

And something breaks

And I leap from a diving board into nothing
From a diving board made of nothing
From a platform that I know to be unreal
Even as I lean on it

And knowing this
I use the non-existent recoil
To launch myself
Ignoring the so-called rules of conservation
Self propelled

Into

This devastating insight
How little I know
How little I am

I have to start again

…again

…Yet again

I pass from
Madly quiet

To

Quietly mad

I laugh
Cry at insane legacies

I laugh
Cry at the mad march of science

I laugh
Cry at my deception

Laughing at my
Lies

Laughing at performance
Anxiety

Laughing at sex

Laughing at absurdity

Laughing at the ordinary

And coming to realize that
The gods adore the ordinary

And that living

And growing

And godliness is…

Emptiness

And that art
Is proper suffering

Singing is eternal

And so I sing to you

Imperfect
Unresolved
Trite
Beautiful and temporarily
Complete

I write

Solitary Affair

2009-02-28T01:29:00.002-05:00

I can't live this lie another moment
I must confess my faithlessness

…To a solitary affair

I have been intimate
…With myself

I have told the truth
And watched the movies that I love
I have held myself
And laughed for no good reason

I have remembered that odd waiter in New York
And made my quiet inside joke
About his Freddy Mercury moustache
And his inappropriate trousers

I have sat and watched the sun come up
Cried for long-lost and much-loved pets
I have rehashed old and endless arguments

Which on reflection
I have validated
And finally won

I have argued with myself
And even hated
Had angry sex
Makeup sex
Quick and selfish in the shower
Or bathing long and languorous and alone

It has been an effortless commitment

And some might say
All this is innocent enough
Why bother with confession
There are no victims of this
So-called indiscretion

But that's … not true

Long before I was unfaithful
I escaped - Ran away

That is how
I came to know
I have to go

Everything must change

…Now I … know that

I cannot love myself
…Without first
Leaving you

Evolution

2009-02-22T02:48:00.001-05:00

I have an
Evolution of thought:

Hush
Breathe
Don't search for resolution

Don't be so quick
To seek
Acceptance

One stage of rage
Is merely to
Acknowledge it

Sure resolution comes
But the quest for
Restitution dumbs me down

I know the dissolution of my
Bitterness
From forgiveness
Will come

But do not
Numb me
Now

Don't pacify me yet

Let me
be enraged
… Engaged

Later I will forgive
But first I will be angry

For me
This is a revolution

Full Stop

2009-02-21T02:53:00.005-05:00

The purging of an egg
From womb to tomb
A new death
An old beginning
No wonder I'm sad

This monthly grieving
Grips me and
Lest I dare forget
Clamps me

Cramps me?
Hah!

That's just a pale invented word
An extremity
A bare approximation for
This motion-emotion

Inside it is far more and less

Pulled inwards down
Dragged down
To the size of a half-child I cannot see
Crushed to fetal comfort
Savage in its intensity
Insanely selfish for attention
Clamped to my origin
Wondering
If continued would I in-fold?
Turned outside-in
Like some impossible animation?

I am crushed to singularity

And wrung out
Like some saturated
Psychic sponge I
Expel - These eggs - Expunge - Ex purge - Yes purge

Exhausted all my last
Regrets emerge
…Coincidentally
Putting purpose to my pain
Compelled to re-grieve all my exes
All my pasts

Time passes

And all those once and former princes of my passions
Become flushed clots - Passed clods
Full stops

For now

Sweet All

2009-02-20T09:59:00.005-05:00

Ah, sweet all
‘Tis a pity I cannot sing now
To your poor and mortal ears
As you call for uzz to sing a song

But as I lean back
From this marvelous groaning board
As I lean back gently
Rubbing my proportions
Celebrate that I am here
And dine with the fallen gods
Friends now passed and friends I yet have met

Ah well
I would have loved to speak my own words
Resounding with the swell of Shakespeare
Or that other lad
An' now t’would have been lovely to make you cry
With songs of Yeats and other faerie loves

Ah but never feast on your regrets
I leave you there fair
Friends

Ah the past
Never mind the drab windows
Or all the rubbish parts
The only thing worth carrying
Is all your blessed hearts
And all your faults
And kindnesses

I sit here now
As the ale passes round
And my the food is good
And the craic is something marvelous
So many songs that I have never heard
That it will take eternity to learn them all
How I sang with you my friends
Now I sing forever
Of a long life and a wet mouth

Sure it falls to you
To stand your shout
To raise a hale and hearty glass
And belt one out for all of us
…And all our foolish failings

Jazz Izz

2009-02-18T16:50:00.007-05:00

Spin it
Two minutes and fifty-nine seconds
Or count it out
One Hundred
Plus another Seventy Nine
S’your dime
That’s fine
Got all the space I need to make my time
In Two: fifty-nine

See
Jazz is the space between the notes
Jazz is the space
…
Between the notes
Jazz is
Jazz is
The expectation of
The syncopation of
…
The space between the notes
Yah dig it?

It’s the pauses
Not the clauses

Cut them into quarters twice and twice again
And I got spaces to the power of ten

I can break a heart
Fool around
Roll you over in the clover
And still have space left over

Jazz is the words between the notes
Jazz is the words
…
Between the notes
Jazz is
The alliteration of
The reiteration of
…
The words between the notes
Yah dig it?

Playing with all those crazy mad ellipses
Eclipses sound
Yah ha

Let me show you now the score
Sure

And Honey
If you're looking at all them dots
You gots
It wrong
You surely know that aint the song

Hoo boys
Them notes is noise

Jazz sings the words between the notes
Jazz sings the words
…
Between the notes
Jazz sings
The hesitation of
…
The anticipation of
…
…
The song between the notes

Call it two minutes and fifty-nine
Or count the seconds one hundred
Plus another seventy-nine
S'your dime

That's fine

Got all the space I need
For all the words I need
To sing all the songs I need

My Jazz

Like me

Izz Filled with

… Syncopated
...

Found Album

2009-02-13T18:33:00.003-05:00

I stare at this found album
Each half recognized face
A fractional memory
I can't remember the conversations or the slights
The fights
I think I liked him - I think I had a crush on her
Or vice versa

It wasn’t that I turned my back on them
I just looked forward - Out

Escaping to the gaping
Mouth of …
Running to the empty
Pit of …
The vacuum of
… What now?

Not running away … No

O

I didn't know nostalgia could crush so much
But then I suppose I did
And that is why I never could look back
Not conceiving anyone might care
Nor conceding
I still can't

Beyond the - Occasional - Saloon bar
Whatever happened to what's her name?

Theirs were pinched out lives
Of course they all went on
To do the things that real people do
Being faithful and unfaithful
Coming to god for the children's sake
And battling with addiction
Or paying off that second home
Or not

And I took strange comfort in the fact
That they might assume me to be dead
Sad in the abstract for a moment
But no real or specific pain
And nothing to explain

'Least
Selfishly that worked for me
Taking all their histories in the aggregate
Freed me from conscience

Now this album of awakened ghosts
Reveals the nature of my comatose
And isolated state
I did not ache
For then
I mostly hated
Then

But then I stare into that telescopic past
And realize I've been hypnotized by the highway
I was awake the whole time
I would have crashed if not

But I don't know how I got … here

So I look vainly for landmarks
Or some version of myself
In all those ancient photographs
And the only thing I recognize
Is I
…Was never there

Jimmy's Demons

2009-02-09T15:09:00.007-05:00

Pretty Jimmy
With his gods and demons
Plays both sides
Losing twice

Pretty Jimmy
Faking like some He-man
That he's doing all he can

Shakes down his tricks and demons

It's a grim
Romance
A taxi dance

Meter running on his last chance
He takes cab fare
To feed his demons

But they only feed
On him

Sum

2009-02-06T15:43:00.013-05:00

I am in tears

I am in joy

I am in passion

I am in fear

I am in rage

I am naked of expectation
I am free

Fractals

2009-02-06T14:48:00.003-05:00

I roller blade - hit a crack and fall
I hit a crack while roller blading
I fall
It is the crack that made me fall
Not the roller blading

No
It is my ego that made me think
That I could roller blade
I therefore fell

When I was not so brittle as to crack
I rolled with punches

Now I am less flexible
More frangible
More tangible this ground
I crack and fracture

Fractal
I
Roller blade

No matter how
Finely I divide this
Thought
I still can find a crack
Inside it
Large enough
To make this roller blader fall

Festivities

2009-02-06T08:28:00.003-05:00

We who hibernate meet those who aestivate in spring
Get together and in the break between our
Restive states…

Festive dates
May First a queen and lady day

And then again in Fall
Some Hallow weekend ball

Between the Summer and the Winter sleeps
A moment between realities
Extremities

In winter I am bedded in my clothes
Wrapped in down and comforter
Uncomfortably down

In summer I am dressed in nothing much
Wrapped in oil and musculature
Uncomfortably high

I am festive somewhere in between these seasonal phases
Two intermissions
Parenthesized by street borne
Phrases
Intemperate crazes

Dog days and Jack Frost hazes
Sandwich my sanity

Old Dog

2009-02-05T09:27:00.004-05:00

Loping
Lupine
Floating Across the field with liquid grace

Back straight
Legs driving
Paws that barely scratch the ground

A perfect illusion of movement
As if you trot in place
And it is the land that moves away

A flurry of leaves
Alerts you to your nature
Awakes
Your passion for order
Creates
A phantom flock

Unruly sheep
To stalk and herd

And job well done

Come away boy
Stay back
Look back
...And smile

My civilized wolf
My herder of dreams
My friend

That’ll do

Bad Art & Man's Best Friend

2009-02-03T15:38:00.004-05:00

I turn and my aesthetic reels
As if hit with a blunt object
I see
What I have been told is street art

Abstract in that it is badly rendered
Expressionistic in that I think I recognize it as an object
It is wrought iron
And not rusting fast enough

I sense the art
But only in the deceitful poetry
Of the budget proposal
That spawned this shite

Those council led
And counseled words
“Fusion”
“Respect for Environment”
“Old Meets New”
“Inclusion”
“Social Commentary and Iconic Landmark”

Fabulous and artistic lies

Our children will look at it
Reluctant to melt it down
To put the material to some more productive and artistic use
Like parking meter poles
Or manhole covers

They will fail to label it correctly
As folly without humor

As unintentional satire
An expensive symbol
Of political expedience

No... They will perpetuate
And create new lies
“Part of the community”
“Culture of an era past…
… Demanding conservation”

As if antique
Means
Somehow worth preserving

I see a dog cock its leg
Spraying his nectar of corrosion

I consider this canine
And erosive commentary

I buy some street-meat from a nearby vendor
Tear it into small pieces
And scatter it at the statuary base

Artists need encouragement
But we must also feed our critics

A New Yorker Sketch

2009-02-03T14:39:00.004-05:00

A New Yorker Sketch
Way, way east of the Lower East Side
Spain – crushed by Franco
Proclaimed by Hemingway
And late lamented

This Bebop expectation
Fuelled by Harlem wealth
Onto a self-conquered nation
Pentecostal zeal
Meets pentatonic stealth

Yeah…Funkin, Moorish
Tambourish
Opium baked and desert caked
Sirocco’d - Morroco’d - Kerouac’d then castaway
Tapped out and taken high
Castanet approval and a white ole

A White Ole

Takes a black, rented horn
So what the player’s scorned
This don’t call for café au lait

But Heroin hooked
And crème brule

Five points
Five or more to the four

This place where
Latino, Nehgro
Jewed, Gentile
Arab Style
Azul da blues

Black charcoal
On a city street

Muddied by Manhattan rain
Blurred sketches of Spain

Mistaken Sense

2009-02-03T11:16:00.003-05:00

Now and then I still remember when
We used to laugh too hard
At jokes we didn’t understand ourselves

Forgetting that the laughter turned out flat
When bitterness crept in

At slights we didn’t understand ourselves

And I wonder how I lost myself in you
‘Came uncertain as to what I ought to do

And I wonder how we went from
“Love-that’s-true”

To Gods
I cannot stand the sight of you

I miss our love

The silken fist inside a velvet glove

And sometimes I mistake that sense of loss

…for missing you

Tranquil

2009-02-03T11:11:00.004-05:00

Within stillness
There is no room for suffering
Or any other expectation
Just gentleness

And perhaps a little truth

Calmness

Is not work or toil
Just the harmless

Wisdom

Of standing still

Immersed in self
And other-self

Moistened by truth
And other-truth

Sincerely
I have learned
To be tranquil as a lake

That understands her place

Loyal to her truth

Pole Dancer

2009-02-03T01:40:00.003-05:00

I improvise your dreams
As if they’re yours
But that’s only how it seems

In the balance of expression
You are the substance of my impression
I am the printer’s block
To your paper made of reed

So who shows what to whom?
A dancer in the light
Or an audience that is trapped within its self-reflective gloom

My buxom exhibition
Of untold inhibition
Is movement given voice
A voice you wished you had

Heel and toe, calf and loin
The well rehears-ed elements of style
Creation echoed in your groin

You see

This notion of exposure
Is a fiction of composure
For I am made of flesh

…And you of need

Landscapes

2009-02-03T01:03:00.003-05:00

Passioned Fertile
Fragrant Wild
Virgin Madness
Blooded by hunger
This is a landscape of my birth

A Market Fair
Flat and Far
Untidy, Busy
Messy Mismatched
Patched and
Somehow Saved
This is a landscape of my day

The graceful arch of a bay
A shimmering of leaves in a coastal breeze
The promise born of sidewalks aching from the sun-warmed days
Conspirators of an evening yet to come
This is a landscape of my night

A sunrise grazed by sands
Duned by whispered winds
A watery and golden path
Fair and unknown
This is a landscape of my hope

But there are brushstrokes yet unpainted
And images untainted
In another landscape
But there are palettes yet uncolored
And hues yet undiscovered
In another landscape
But there are vistas yet unseen
And views yet unperceived
In another landscape

My own: So

No… Virgin Forest:
Lest Rousseau be reviled
No… Long Awaited County Fair
Lest Wickersham be wasted
No… Bay of Angels
Lest Dufy be defiled
No… Sunrise between Two Headlands
Lest Turner be untasted

Those are those artists' landscapes
And though I owe to them a deep abiding debt
Yet
It is not to honor artists by
Reproducing their vicarious flaws
Instead to honor their attempts at mirrored truth

The grand escape and the glory of them all
They faced the barren hopelessness of empty space
The wasteland of a blank canvas

Sextina

2009-01-29T17:31:00.003-05:00

Outside the womb of woman
Ideas birth wild
And selfish as a child
Chaotic as a human
Reborn, reworn and falsely styled
Ruin

Upon ruin
A woman
Self-reflected, self-styled
Self-neglected, self-wild
Human
Resurrected and dissected child

Remnant child
Of a bird-nest ruin
Poor human
Groomed woman
Coiffured wild
Styled

Fashionably styled
Coat-checked child
Choked back wild
Jungled ruin
Woman
Naturally human

An unnatural human
Misshapen imperfection styled
Almost woman
Mostly child
Tamed to a selfless ruin
Wild

Contained wild
Maintained human
Sustained ruin
Token styled
Child
Of the broken woman

Just a tangled ruin where vines run wild
A living woman – a dead human
Life-styled into orphaning her child

Foot Fetish

2009-01-29T17:23:00.003-05:00

Stuck to the heel of a shoe
Dirt
This is the aleph
A tiny syllable of observation
And a universe of meaning
When attached to moving people

The subtext of passed lives and passed hopes
Or lack thereof

So it is that when you and you and you are still
You are still... moving
And instead of moving on
I observe shoes

Each wear betrays a past
A history of paths walked
Of puddles not entirely avoided
Of litter that has been scuffed to the curb
And then, having entered a car

That is appropriate to the style of footwear

The right heel worn down with the remembered curve of the wheel well
Gas, brake, Gas Break

A long distance driver’s heel curve is more profound
Gas for twenty clicks, brake at the bend.
Gas for 5 clicks on the 1 in 50 grade
And grinding to make the sunrise delivery

So different to the cabbies heel
The inner city heel and toe
Stop and start
Chasing perfectly timed lights
Avoiding fights
But not eye contact

And different from the rolling right hand
Soccer mum, cross training
Picket fence of an indoor/outdoor runner
Never worn out
Barely broken in
Discarded before they betray anything
Smelling only faintly of regret

Pedestrian lives

The Fridge of Destiny

2009-01-28T19:07:00.008-05:00

I am someone - I claim
I only have indirect proof
Echoes

I cluck at the late-night news
How awful - Why can't someone...?

I tut at the sad and wasted street corner
How bitter - If only someone..?

I gaze into the oracle that is my refrigerator
My crisper has gone from ironic

To disgusting - Why doesn't someone..?

I receive distressing wisdom
I am disturbed to consider that if I am someone…

Then that "someone" is me

Cabbage Town

2009-01-28T18:48:00.007-05:00

We're in a hog town
A hockey town
A slice of Orange with a slab of
Cabbage
Town
Nice and Swiss and orderly

Dumbing any wit down
We're whittled down
Eroded by this city's drabness
Averaged
Down
Fiercely bland and ordinary

We could be world renowned
If we weren't hidebound
By the fact we drag our
Baggage
Round
Blaming our geography

Because the whole world round
The heart of art is found
When artists seek the hidden
Savage
Sounds
Wherever place and art meet awkwardly

Like in a hog town
A hockey town
A slice of Orange with a slab of
Cabbage
Town
Nice and Swiss and orderly

Back Bacon

2009-01-27T16:12:00.007-05:00

How many times I painted those same slabs of meat
Gay pugilists and wrestlers
Grappling men
Groping men
The rough trade
The ancient catch of boozy trawls
Hampstead pub crawls
The Black Cap and The Richard Steele's
King William the Fourth
Jack Straws

And then outdoors
Seeking the Heath and homophobic
Horsemen of my own apocalypse
Cruising for War
Settling for Famine

And later
Lonely and insatiable
I took my papal rage
Cast across a canvas stage
Anger, hatred, page on page

Meat on criss-crossed meat
Crucified
Intense
Youthful
Free-willed and unselfconscious
Though always photographed

Turning tricks into Triptychs

… I outlived my angry work
Aged
Outlived my lovers and regrets

Lived long enough to
Spin my histories of vagrant impropriety
Funded by the patrons of society -

As art that showed a pure and flagrant piety
Haunted by the demons of occasional sobriety

… My demons are gone
Cirrhotic
And forgotten
Once dangerous - now sad

But paid and paid to revisit their vague gravesites
I touched the faded names of headstones
Weary
Vainly
Trying to remember how to dream

Once
…Once I could paint dead drunk
And now I'm only
...dead

Lies: First Draft

2009-01-21T15:19:00.008-05:00

Like you I have no script
On this stage that's not a stage
Like you I am engaged
In autobiography

Like you I write a fiction
In the sense that it's made-up
Non-linear
And not a How-to-Book

Non-fictional
In the sense
That it is true and real
Although, perhaps
My editor would beg to disagree

It all comes down to definitions
Which
Characteristically for me
Seem to keep on changing
Like the index

Which
Although not finished
Has a sizable proportion
Devoted to the topic: Sex
But in the interest of full disclosure
Despite it's scope
It is regrettably
Not quite as broad as I had hoped

The chapters are a bit uneven
"My Youth: The early years"
Leaves much to be desired
Long on enthusiasm
Short on fulfillment
And looking back
Mostly lies

The history that I continuously revise
It flies
In fits and starts
Thank heavens for amnesia
To filter out the boring parts
Or those awful awkward times
When I was wrong

And still today
in the telling of my daily tale - I'm truly awed
I find so many, new, exciting, different, brave and novel ways
To illustrate how deeply I am flawed

In terms of the dramatic tempo too
I've noticed that
I cannot even follow my own story's arc
I'm parked
In my life's first and solitary Act
I keep on missing, that obvious dramatic cue
to signify the beginning of the part that is "Scene 1, Act 2"

Ah what a happy hopeless task
To ravel up this thread the fates have cast
To write a life as best I can - The best I have is this
To document the times I laughed
The rest
I will revisit if
And only if
I ever get a chance to write a second draft

The Gaia Hypothesis to be Promoted to a Theory

2009-01-19T18:38:00.005-05:00

I'm reassured to find this notion

(That the ripples in another ocean
affect the waves in mine)

Is almost ALMOST at the stage
Of being accepted as a theory

Hurrah for this Aquarian age
One cannot help but feel a little teary

That men of science who once disputed
Unifying study

Of this so called "bio-sphere"
As if it were one "giant organism"
As if the things we do in other places
Contribute to this planet's homoestasis

Those self same men
Now almost ALMOST universally
Tentatively
Possibly
Are prepared to shift from

An HYPOTHESIS:
A merely suggested explanation
to
The Gaia THEORY:
A POSSIBLE explanation

To be clear:
Promotion to the Gaia THEORY
Doesn't mean it's true
Just that you can safely study it
And have your research grants come through

Ah beyond their moral courage

and their sage precision
I marvel at the speed
Of this difficult and brave decision

That we are NEARLY there
In less than four or five
Short decades
Barely even half a century

Ah tis pause for thought indeed

But since we we pause for thought
Theoretical
Let me posit something
Hypothetical
At the risk of sounding strident or heretical

I wonder if those men of science
Would have been less deaf
If instead of Lady Gaia
Our planet
Had been christened Jeff

Paisley

2009-01-19T18:19:00.007-05:00

There is a cursive smile
Where my pelvis used to be
A lightly bleached
Mustachioed upper lip
Contrasting my tanned skin
and alien to my reddish brown hair

I feel like some
Deliciously
Fleshed
Harmonica
Half toned and tongued

There are fingers
In my flesh

My thighs
Paisley'd by afternoon sun
Filtering through lace curtains

My legs
A wrap
An
Off-the-shoulder
Shrug

The Naked Page

2009-01-16T15:01:00.010-05:00

Naked and blind to its future

I placed the virgin paper
Between the parallel
Priapic rollers
Ready for the cudgel of the golf ball keystrokes
Selectric typewriter

Teenaged
First page
Intense and unfiltered
Moist ink and mostly angst
Spilled as densely spaced pornography
Bearing witness to my own psychology
And pressing need

First page released
Liberated
Uncritically read
Intellectually massaged
Masturbated

I should have been ashamed
Of its banality
Instead I blushed at its carnality

I lacked the tools to white out my profanity
So lest my less-than literary diversion
Reveal a fledgling writer's base perversion
So I
A coward and a prude
Pursued insanity

First page reinserted
XXX
A vain attempt
To cover words that can't be said
And only lately realizing

Far from sanitizing
The Ex of text on text
Adds sex
Rated triple X

And more
The four letter word
World-known by tone
And context
Frayed and appliquéd
Was rendered coarser more profane

Scantily clad with XXXX
Those peek-a-boo and crotchless letters
Titillated
I exed her ex until her ex was sore
And then I exed her ex
Until she couldn't ex no more

Those exes only served to underscore

So first page reinserted
Once again
This page of sloppy seconds
To be covered with a QWERTY of nonsense

And the page moved from being nude
To rude
To tattooed
Bruised beyond just black and blued

What was left
Was less than naked
The paper's weft
And warp degraded

Pounded into bas relief
Ragged from the brutal scrapes
Of sans serif
Helvetica'd to death

Ruined
The reworked incest
Of a palimpsest
Ruined
The page once naked
Now blind
No longer had a future

It had been undressed
And dressed
Just one too many times

Doing My Nails With Freya

2009-01-12T23:33:00.011-05:00

Sometimes it’s a banquet in the hall of the valorous dead
Sometimes it’s communing with the Lady of the Hunt
Sometimes it’s staring at the huntress moon
And sometimes it’s doing my nails with Freya

The bath is run
Vanilla candles lit
My toes emerging from the foam
Leave-in conditioner… conditioning
Ginger peach tea
With something special in it
And doing my nails with Freya

A manicure, a pedicure
And what would the soulful equivalent be?
A trimmed soul
A cuticled soul
A buffed soul

Cleaned to squeakiness then moisturized
Avocado face masks
Soul masks

And sliced cucumbers where the eyes would be
While doing my nails with Freya

The massaged care
The afterglow
The sense of rightness of a warm soul

This comes from doing my nails with Freya

French Haiku

2009-01-12T23:32:00.009-05:00

Sans peur sans courage
L'espoir est la nourriture
De nos reves

Still Dreaming

2009-01-11T23:57:00.008-05:00

Coffee mornings and wrinkled sheets
The shadow of your warmth beside me holds your scent
Still dreaming of you

Midday cigarettes blue ghosts of smoke
The echo of your laughter in my ears
Still dreaming of you

Why is it that the smallest things
Pull at my heart with tender strings?
Place the world within my hands?
Is it your seashell eyes or sunshine ways
That give my soul such wings?

Lazy haze
Dog days
Misty rays
The waitress’ trays – Each says
Still dreaming of you

A breath of wind across my face
A fleck of dust suspended in the air
Still dreaming of you

Twilight tears of evening rain
Twinkling dew of memories
Still dreaming of you

Why is it that the smallest things
Pull at my heart with tender strings?
Place the world within my hands?
Is it your breezy laugh or easy smile
That give my soul such wings?

High-rise
Wind chime’s sighs
Twist ties
Night skies – Each cries
Still dreaming of you

Empty doors unblinking rooms
Hollow hallways and an empty bed
Still dreaming of you

Midnight books and wrinkled sheets
The shadow of your warmth beside me holds your scent
Still dreaming of you

Q.E.D.

2009-01-11T23:42:00.007-05:00

Life is Boolean
BUT

NOT
always

IF
logic is greater than fate

AND
truth is stranger than fiction.

THEN
all else is false

THEREFORE
the sum is the truth value

Quod Erat Demonstrandum

Abstract Melopoeia

2009-01-09T14:04:00.005-05:00

Excrescent spatula
Winsome Homburg
Excruciating
Equestrian
Fenestration flogger

Crenelation bladder
Poontang duck widget
Crepuscular
Squalid pox

Druid flux
Mandrake flatulence
Crustacean creased
Frangible
Intangible
Gantry flange

Cop-out Clang

Remorse Code

2009-01-09T00:59:00.005-05:00

.:Did dew do it?
-:Doh

[Dot dot dot]

.:Did Da do it?
-:Da!
.:Da did it?
-:Da did it!
.:Da did it?

[Dot dot dot]

.:Dash!

~|~

Dark Satanic Toilets

2009-01-08T16:38:00.006-05:00

The urinals unseen

Are heard
Playing host to an incessant and North-Country drip
I can hear
Their public porcelain
Their brass and copper fittings

Their aging tiles
Haven't seen a cigarette in over a decade
But they are nicotined

And stains
stains echo

Paints yellow
Off Pink and
Institutionally soothing
Clash imperfectly
Missing kitsch

P.T.W.

2009-01-08T15:18:00.006-05:00

It seems so inhospitable
To love you this way

You were free - effortless - amicable
An easy blend of
charming and despicable

Such a worthwhile
Honorable cad
But ultimately
Just not that good
At being bad

Harmless as a child
And therefore
A monster

Epiphany

2009-01-07T14:44:00.008-05:00

Epiphany, I don't even know how to spell it
Here we are
All those we's

Those selfs or selves

Made quiet solitude by
What next
Expectation yes
Exasperation
Aspiration
Breathing halted
Expectoration stuttered to a full stop
Reprieved
I cannot respond to my own lies
If I am saying nothing

Silence is only temporary truth