the backs of knees or necks scent
redolent electric sparks a fracture
amongst the real smashing bottles
gratefully sweeping shards
INTEGRATED ABSENCES
so much to say
now that you/we are
not listening all
receptors broken
where one at a time
does not even make
sense because you/we
can type and talk
at the same
moment and drive
and give birth and fuck
while cleverly composing
where arms should rest to look
good for later your/our
integrated absences somehow
complete as
pencilled in words
disappearing margins
but, you/we don’t mean to sound
so bitter, so critical, you/we mean
to seem jaunty, to just notice
that nobody legislated iPods’
transformation of social spaces
only to say you/we agreed
to let it be so
whatever function you/we create
is good, it’s very good*
you/we mean it ironically
*Bixby, Jerome. “It’s a Good Life”
Do you/we need your/our affect flattened?
Figure 1: Rev up the drama or ramp up the tension.
Figure 2: Who would go to the ends of the earth for you/us now?
Ways the Earth Could End*
global dimming
unpredictable day length
interplanetary chaos
killer supernovas
planetary insolvency
*According to Wired magazine
Seven Ways the World Could End in 2012*
eco-apocalypse
death from the skies
world war III
zombie plague
alien invasion
a glitch in the system
the world is radically transformed
*According to i09
Seven Billionth Baby Born Today: October 31, 2011
was it yours who crash banged
bent toward the sun as it burns
tiny fingers counted and kissed
your carbon baby and soon
my friend says we’ll spend all
our time growing food the dirt
in hand the performance of
survival or some such poetic
practice the lulling whispers of
leaves we can finally eat
INTEGRATED ABSENCES II
1.
I either forgot to show up or decided not to, but you did not care anyway or you did care, but decided not to let it show or you did let it show, but not in the ways a reasonable person could understand or I did show up, but you didn’t see me at the back or you did see me in my audacious dress on such a hot day, but did not nod your head in my direction even when my green beer bottle shattered against the slate of the newly renovated church transformed into a studio in Mount Pleasant or maybe it was more Kingsway, but it was beautifully done, on that we could both easily agree.
2.
I never mind waiting anyway, never mind being alone in a crowd, but do worry if people seem to feel sorry for me and engage in polite conversation so as to relieve my perceived awkwardness and if this reads like a confession, it’s only because you hate that and I do it especially to irritate you and this is how I pass time waiting with confidence, arguing with your disjunctive strategies, but secretly coveting them too even if I would never imagine performing an Oulipian string of guttural nuances or if I would imagine, it would be like a woman and no one likes to hear those noises, no one — no one, thinks that is clever.
3.
When you said, “a tear is an intellectual thing” I was never sure if it was a salty drop or a long rip in a crisp piece of white paper but I guess the analogy works either way, if it works at all and really how so? As in emotion has meaning, as in the body sometimes carries on despite analysis and critical thinking or as in there must always be a divide, a debate, a side in order to make a point? Anyway I never worry about such choices, am content enough for either and/or both to be exactly what you meant.
4.
When you called my body mischievous I literally flashed back to a moment before I jumped off a cliff into the water below, because for a moment I could not make my body move forward, could not risk daring what was a perfectly acceptable scenario and I know you mean mischievous in a different sense at least as in not following the rules perfectly or maybe you were scripting a certain kind of performance mapping out your want with my body creating an involuntary dance to which I would easily consent if only you would ask.
5.
You call out lingua franca at the strangest moments and I do wonder about a language that could bridge our differences. How in your life language is substantial beneath your feet or fits your mind almost perfectly with a compact linearity that seems to whip your soul coherently into shape while I tend to find language transitory and slippery, always muttering that’s not it, that’s not it at all under my breath and wrenching language to approximate my experience, to speak my body but failing, constantly failing. How to build a vehicular language that still moves beyond the generic but allows me, lip to tongue to understand, in the pit of the gut, exactly what I mean to say.
6.
When you apologize for the drama without details but then post on your blog rules for sleeping with friends I am amazed again that my intuition proves correct. The subtext so obviously flashes across claims of your incognito ability and I read your intentions like an e-book, the screen dissolving at every virtual page turn. I discover again that fear is so typical, not epic, just vast, its language an ordinary fact. Textual conversations obscure beautifully where thoughts fall so loudly you can hear an actual book drop off the edge of the earth for every lol you type. Fingertips press knowing more than you think lips kiss your hand checks a back pocket rests there.
7.
Your/our rejection is so courteous it bounces softly off the iPhone edge of amazing where impeccable manners are now logged digitally like a virtual hand at your back crossing the middle of the street a glimpse says it as the mighty click click past a stunning bachelor pad or small studio w/ rent as expensive as a Saskatoon penthouse is where you/we end up aesthetically throwing frames up whispering average talk like listing hockey scores with weird relentless energy sparking the next phase so surely supreme to the remote past.
Your/our connection seems slight at first amongst the wild nostalgia and what you/we come to know about human men so strangely documented in performances of particular pain, certain vulnerabilities and it’s weird to make a study of it, but there’s really no choice under and/or over such circumstances. It’s possible in as far as the thinking can go and one false text can wrest it asunder such are the contemporary vulnerabilities of wineglasses, musical interludes and the fact that you/we often can’t hear what’s actually being said but still the moment when lips whisper whole photographs, abstract portraits, lucid impressions and worlds start to be built, hard and utopic, the neighbours straining to hear.
Section II: THEY LIE ABOUT THE WEATHER
REPRISE FOR RAIN
ramming rivulets reign in frustration
you are not
and so
the objective of rain
is merely to fall
knives don’t even
enter into it
not even cats
let alone dog
s
hearts break under
the weight of awnings
overflowing with want
it’s too much to take in
at once that drop there
is obsolete its evaporation
as evident as your vision
purple light in the dark
pounds but also reveals
a lack of consideration
it smells like rain again
the day always does
so we trudge heads down
against petals falling damply
so stuck you can’t even
kick up a ruckus.
THE SUN WHEN IT HITS
giddy in the conversation
so many jaunty hellos
you can’t keep them all
emotional hoarder you
will gather as many salutations
as possible keep them
glowing in a warm paper
bag to be ripped open in
the dead of winter airy
in release toss the sunny
hellos at the feet of head
down haters who walk
winter streets
without the delight of snow
or crisp of 40 below
where you wanted
to end up anyway.
ALL HAIL
the car wreck dents
where shine used to reside
smooth assault batters
this ping meaning
in this case
no message sent
just the same but harder
and to the left fret
a percussive musicality
for optimists with garages
and roofs that don’t leak
light drips the weirdness
in between things vive
la inbetween weirdness
for the ray it brings
how it pushes the boundaries
of taut and porous where
you seep in sound without
fury this time.
MY PHONE SAYS
11 and raining
and that seems right
a grey green anyone
could fuck with as lush
but foreboding one
clunk where a thought
drops or never forms
through this incessant
interruption of narrative
follow the emotional
trajectory to see what
hurts head held
under lightly dripping
water that will keep
falling until the call
is dropped.
LIVING EARTH — THE APP
i could watch you rotate all day
among the cities i love
how high is the city, how deep
is our love* it’s nice to know
that it’s 22 w/ scattered clouds
and tomorrow in Brisbane those
swirling clouds mix into early morning
status updates colour the tone of lingual
representation of the mundane
and epic alike: he’ll be born here
for example and much loved
at the same time her ennui will be
effectively documented into commentary
sympathy accompanied w/ posters or jokes
of the kind fax machines used to spew
now the phone only rings with fax machine tones
and who sends faxes anymore? that wonder
will have to be 3-D to impress this contemporary moment
with a Skype baby or some such promise.
*Derksen, Jeff
IRONIC CLIMACTIC ADORATION
how my boys love you
when you fall sideways
build their lives around you
chase you to small town America
affluent town Canada where
produce is too expensive and
no one drinks at the bar without
drinking at home first rooms divided
by sheets like gold farmers in China
they approach you via affect falling
in love with the perfect day waxing
not poetic but some creative action
felt in the cells flooding the brain
rush of the good kind of chemicals
kinetic kick down the side thrill
rollers hit rails only what they want
from you to be there to stay as
long as possible then live
in exquisite anticipation
of your inevitable return.
ENGLISH BAY CRANE:
CORNER OF DAVIE AND DENMAN
precarious stack
step by weather
up a blue streak
swing again
close enough
to slide over
drop by the twenty-third floor
for tea or something
harder? “at the end of
the day” your progress
is tangible higher
than any paper pile
drivers loud, so loud
silence rings with
yr clamber down
FALSE CREEK CRANES:
AS SEEN FROM THE GRANVILLE ISLAND HOTEL BAR
as a field of windmills
in Andalusia yr
Vancouver locale
screams Olympics!
so loudly beer glasses
clink involuntarily
not wanting to toast
yr success, but unable
to stop themselves
from revelling in yr
hoopla only slight
concern for the marshy
base on which you all
rest “at the end of the day”
DUNDARAVE CRANE:
CORNER OF MARINE DRIVE AND TWENTY-FOURTH
small and squat yr consideration
for not going high enough
to block the view above
inspires tears of gratitude
so what if people complain
about yr noise down on the beach
on, the. hottest. day. of. summer. ever.
evah. yr swinging honestly creates a welcome
breeze produced from yr red faced sweat
and “at the end of the day” who can do more?
SHANGRI-LA CRANE:
CORNER OF GEORGIA AND THURLOW
no one can argue w/ yr length
imposing breadth and deep
deep reach up into the grey
or blue or grey or blue sky
yr position on the momentary roof
shrieks such status leaves a city
worn out, but ready for more
yr upward thrusts such perfection
leaning feels like flying, but better
who would not risk plummeting
for yr stiff reach or peculiar noise
not even minding the traffic jams
“at the end of the day” to support
yr epic quest la-de-dah
SFU CRANES:
UNIVERSITY DRIVE, BURNABY MOUNTAIN
so much higher
education on a mountain
in need of community
yr environmentally sustainable
practice exudes a form ringing
univer-city a pun most might
avoid, but yr well lit night shot
a confident barometer of progress
getting things done when �
�it’s like
a dance with somebody”* below
and the morning light also snaps
into place the stuff of buildings
called legacies “at the end of the
day” with an architectural heft
resounding from 1965 to this
precise moment when expansion
tings without rocking the rain
soaked concrete reflection
*Crane Operator Phil Harmon
YALETOWN CRANE
(FEATURED IN MANNEQUIN RISING BY ROY MIKI)
yr support is a curve, like a virgin
walks around campus demonstrate
yr lush progress since you are gone now
markers of ingenuity show passable
limits across the toxic waterway
glistens its fusion as market signifier
unparalled on a sunny day and if it’s raining
a mouth full of fog yr existence is questionable
filled in “at the end of the day” with a reach
toward enterprise and flowers that will sit
on condo tables inhabitants look back this way
cappuccinos flow down throats hot, steamy
or a photo on a phone to show the historical
event of leaves changing colour electric red
amidst the black and white moment and pigeons
more than four even
CONTEMPLATIVE
stacks compel like a desire to manipulate
complex realities like imagining what might
be in a heart besides blood coursing through
what logos mark this territory to say simply
it’s mine, as if corporations could care less
I still see your configuration, your pulse beating faster
your deep red makes the sky what it is
grey exists and this is what we make of it