the City accuses the sky
of terrible things.
the fingers of five buildings
spire after
spire after
spire after
spire after
spire, point
at the sky,
the sky silent as a blue-faced baby,
the stillborn sky
and all the gods without names
stare down
at the spires, the skeletal fingers
now closing, joint
after joint
after joint
a fist closing, hardening
the fetal sky heaves
its last breath.
...
the Ladies are singing.
Listen.
‘Bring us the pathetic
the teeming diseased masses.
Bring us the filthy
The depraved, the worthless, the broken.
Only the best, only the best.
Forget the rest.
The wretched never refuse an invitation!
We welcome them, with rank
And trembling arms.’
Imagine three voices.
Imagine a cauldron.
(There’s always a cauldron.)
Imagine the King.
...
O Dogs!
This is my resignation
My repudiation
My life is yours
My City is yours
My body is meat, my body is yours
(bite a smile into my thigh)
My howl is yours, my throat is yours
(the throat of my wrist was always yours)
O Dogs!
This is my song, our song
This is the song of hallways and basements
Rooms in houses rich with whispers
This is the song of stories
This is
…
author and date of composition unknown
Friday, April 23, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Excerpt from “Being, Eternal: Prologue”
(continued from Canto 5)
...
So rest ye, your little and weary head,
for your troubles are many and trials unfair.
Feel Her blanket upon your bosom.
Nestled tight within the grip of whitened paws.
Give us this day – our daily bread,
not tomorrow’s nor the next.
Canto 6
A thought that dreamt a fantasy and a truth.
And sorry it could not know both, and be one dreamer
Long it thought, to peer into one as far as it possibly could.
Then knew the other, as just as fair.
But for both a hope that echoed; beyond difference,
beyond regret, beyond despair:
That though one was magic and the other love,
Neither would ever exist alone. All the world a
thought.
I do not sleep perchance to dream, dear friend:
That is why I wake.
A lake: that one of two could be.
Soft, not dreary, the placid that angels sleep on.
Its origin is a perfection unknown. The final resting place
of a flower most unique:
The petal of a rose that holds the ring of a lover.
It makes no ripples. But it floats. Adrift.
A single ring – commitment never more genuine.
Here it had always been, though never once wanted.
Eternity.
The dim sparkle that it reflects from the apathetic sky
is longing.
Beauty, regrettably, beyond compare. Not the earthly
home of heaven, but its inverse.
Eerily perverse. This forever dreams
of another place, where rocks rain from the sky:
Pebbles crashing cacophonously onto angel’s beds,
and petals sinking or flying amid meaningful
waves.
I do not dream of kings, so we needn’t ask.
Kings must dream of me.
She drives likes wildfire, madness, addicted to a bi-polar dream.
Though the road is long, she does not err:
not one moment upon dusty trails for her. No interest
toward places where nightmares are known to tread.
The sky clouded over long ago; a seeming sorrow.
Tragedy is the fantasy of this fiction, fuel to this fire.
The brazen blues of cement shadows hold her conviction,
driving her endless and onward and forever and ever.
Amen.
Secrets sit in the seat next to her, comfortable and unbuckled:
Unshackled and welcome, they do not boast the same bleak skies.
They simply do not boast.
They are invisible whispers, conditioning the air.
There are no passengers on her ride. Only drivers.
Static and music play in tandem with the road’s chorus
as cities and mountains pass by, each in their own time,
each with their own purpose, their own lofty, unknown climb.
Amen.
Any road that diverged will find its way.
Lines less than perfect must cross or run astray,
and so the drive finds resolve. Though she does not know where,
She knows why.
Unrelentingly is the quiet echo: what is hers and hers alone
is what is when all else retreats.
Her divine mystery.
A perfect coin tells its tales only half the time.
Amen.
Not a man.
I am Woman.
Canto 7
On the 7th day, God rested.
His creation complete. He had His chance.
And in the shadows of His slumber, devils danced.
Six wonders did He create in His ideal.
Six wonders to each other did He reveal.
Six wonders for whom stood no appeal.
Pulse and power, their open eyes,
Ne’er to have a reason why:
for He slept throughout their morning cry.
Without that gift, they’d surely die.
They cast to the depths of chaos, Subtle Care.
Rejected light and all its fare.
No more interlude, no more preface,
all the world to be defaced.
With Dad away, man and beast came to play.
They began to worship like Jekyll and Hyde,
the space between a woman’s thighs.
And of a man of mass and swift reply,
...
(continued)
...
So rest ye, your little and weary head,
for your troubles are many and trials unfair.
Feel Her blanket upon your bosom.
Nestled tight within the grip of whitened paws.
Give us this day – our daily bread,
not tomorrow’s nor the next.
Canto 6
A thought that dreamt a fantasy and a truth.
And sorry it could not know both, and be one dreamer
Long it thought, to peer into one as far as it possibly could.
Then knew the other, as just as fair.
But for both a hope that echoed; beyond difference,
beyond regret, beyond despair:
That though one was magic and the other love,
Neither would ever exist alone. All the world a
thought.
I do not sleep perchance to dream, dear friend:
That is why I wake.
A lake: that one of two could be.
Soft, not dreary, the placid that angels sleep on.
Its origin is a perfection unknown. The final resting place
of a flower most unique:
The petal of a rose that holds the ring of a lover.
It makes no ripples. But it floats. Adrift.
A single ring – commitment never more genuine.
Here it had always been, though never once wanted.
Eternity.
The dim sparkle that it reflects from the apathetic sky
is longing.
Beauty, regrettably, beyond compare. Not the earthly
home of heaven, but its inverse.
Eerily perverse. This forever dreams
of another place, where rocks rain from the sky:
Pebbles crashing cacophonously onto angel’s beds,
and petals sinking or flying amid meaningful
waves.
I do not dream of kings, so we needn’t ask.
Kings must dream of me.
She drives likes wildfire, madness, addicted to a bi-polar dream.
Though the road is long, she does not err:
not one moment upon dusty trails for her. No interest
toward places where nightmares are known to tread.
The sky clouded over long ago; a seeming sorrow.
Tragedy is the fantasy of this fiction, fuel to this fire.
The brazen blues of cement shadows hold her conviction,
driving her endless and onward and forever and ever.
Amen.
Secrets sit in the seat next to her, comfortable and unbuckled:
Unshackled and welcome, they do not boast the same bleak skies.
They simply do not boast.
They are invisible whispers, conditioning the air.
There are no passengers on her ride. Only drivers.
Static and music play in tandem with the road’s chorus
as cities and mountains pass by, each in their own time,
each with their own purpose, their own lofty, unknown climb.
Amen.
Any road that diverged will find its way.
Lines less than perfect must cross or run astray,
and so the drive finds resolve. Though she does not know where,
She knows why.
Unrelentingly is the quiet echo: what is hers and hers alone
is what is when all else retreats.
Her divine mystery.
A perfect coin tells its tales only half the time.
Amen.
Not a man.
I am Woman.
Canto 7
On the 7th day, God rested.
His creation complete. He had His chance.
And in the shadows of His slumber, devils danced.
Six wonders did He create in His ideal.
Six wonders to each other did He reveal.
Six wonders for whom stood no appeal.
Pulse and power, their open eyes,
Ne’er to have a reason why:
for He slept throughout their morning cry.
Without that gift, they’d surely die.
They cast to the depths of chaos, Subtle Care.
Rejected light and all its fare.
No more interlude, no more preface,
all the world to be defaced.
With Dad away, man and beast came to play.
They began to worship like Jekyll and Hyde,
the space between a woman’s thighs.
And of a man of mass and swift reply,
...
(continued)
Friday, April 9, 2010
Not A Eulogy
I am not writing your goddamn eulogy.
I don’t think that suicides deserve a eulogy.
A suicide’s eulogy is scraped into the bloody tracks on her arms. A suicide’s eulogy is written on the rope around his neck. A suicide’s eulogy is printed in the grooves of the pills she swallows.
It’s always the same, it’s the same story every time: I lived, I died. What happens in between is incidental. What happens in between is what kills us.
This isn’t an apology. I’ve been mourning you for two years now, did you know that? It’s you who should apologize.
This is not for you.
It’s for me, and it’s also for this blog I write with my friend. You never met this friend; he wasn’t part of our Inuvik group. I guess I’m exploiting your death to wring a few tears out of my readers, but I have a feeling that’s okay. When you leave, you really leave. Who cares if I get five hundred words out of your death? Another week’s duty done.
I didn’t know what else to write about this week. All I can think about is you. Goddamn you.
(This is nothing new.)
I think that you would have liked the blog. I think you’d be the one person I could always count on to read my posts.
(That hurts a bit, to think about.)
I think you’d want to meet my friend Zach. You both like to talk - a lot. That’s okay. I’m patient, I’m a listener. You and me, we would go for coffee and smoke a pack each. Remember those days? You could still smoke inside back then, at least in Inuvik. We would sit at the Caribou Café for hours, talking about politics and movies and gossip. We thought we were better than everyone else because we read the Globe and Mail every day.
Do you remember when we met? It was almost ten years ago, can you believe it? I worked in the kitchen at the Finto, washing dishing, making salads, preparing desserts. You were a waiter, and you wouldn’t even say hello to me for weeks. Then one evening I was having a smoke in the break room, and somehow we struck up a conversation about books. You decided I was suitable company and not a stupid kitchen-bitch; I decided that, while you were clearly arrogant and a bit shallow, you knew books and I could spare a smoke or two for a conversation. The rest, as they say, is fucking history.
I’m not interested in writing our history. It’s a story that is full of secrets (your and mine) and all the private jokes of a long friendship. I won’t share any of that.
Sometimes it hurts more than anything, so goddamn much, to carry around your secrets.
You loved Motown. I remember how surprised you were when I said I loved Motown too. I played you a CD I made, Aretha and the Temptations and Smokey Robinson, that time you visited me when I tore the tendons in my ankle and couldn’t work. You brought me food and money for take-out, I couldn’t leave my house because of the stairs. Remember our apartment buildings in Inuvik? You lived in Parkview, I lived across the street in Lakeview. There are no basements in Inuvik because of the permafrost, and both of our buildings were hoisted two stories above the ground, on stilts and up those awful, terrifying steps. How many times did we both stumble home drunk, up those stairs?
I’m listening to Motown right now.
I remember everything. I’ve packed away these memories, filed and stacked them, and left them to the dust, but I still remember everything. Everything goddamn thing.
(I can’t.)
You were funny as hell. You always made me laugh. You pissed me off a lot too. The best people do, I’ve found.
(I am still so mad at you.)
I keep going back to this, this one fucking wish – I wish you had lived long enough to read this blog. I’ve done my best writing here. I didn’t write much when we were friends, except for our daily emails. I think that you would be proud of me.
(Why did you leave me.)
I’m reading a book right now that I think you would have liked.
(That hurts.)
You’ve missed a lot of really great movies.
(I try not to think like this.)
I miss your emails.
I don’t use that email address anymore. I kept it for you, did you know that? I stopped using it well before you died, started up a Hotmail account, but I kept Yahoo open for you. That ways I always knew that if I had a new email, it was from you.
I still have your last email, saved. I haven’t read it in two years. It has no subject line, which was unusual.
(I should have seen the signs).
I have no idea what you wrote.
(I don’t want to know.)
I don’t think that I will ever read it.
(You said goodbye in a hotel room in Arizona, you didn't say a word.)
All I want to say is goodbye. All I want is for you to go away. You can go now.
I’m going to visit your grave some time this summer. I will give back all of your secrets when I’m there.
I feel so heavy these days. I cannot carry the burden of you.
(Jimmy, I am so, so sad without you.)
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
I don’t think that suicides deserve a eulogy.
A suicide’s eulogy is scraped into the bloody tracks on her arms. A suicide’s eulogy is written on the rope around his neck. A suicide’s eulogy is printed in the grooves of the pills she swallows.
It’s always the same, it’s the same story every time: I lived, I died. What happens in between is incidental. What happens in between is what kills us.
This isn’t an apology. I’ve been mourning you for two years now, did you know that? It’s you who should apologize.
This is not for you.
It’s for me, and it’s also for this blog I write with my friend. You never met this friend; he wasn’t part of our Inuvik group. I guess I’m exploiting your death to wring a few tears out of my readers, but I have a feeling that’s okay. When you leave, you really leave. Who cares if I get five hundred words out of your death? Another week’s duty done.
I didn’t know what else to write about this week. All I can think about is you. Goddamn you.
(This is nothing new.)
I think that you would have liked the blog. I think you’d be the one person I could always count on to read my posts.
(That hurts a bit, to think about.)
I think you’d want to meet my friend Zach. You both like to talk - a lot. That’s okay. I’m patient, I’m a listener. You and me, we would go for coffee and smoke a pack each. Remember those days? You could still smoke inside back then, at least in Inuvik. We would sit at the Caribou Café for hours, talking about politics and movies and gossip. We thought we were better than everyone else because we read the Globe and Mail every day.
Do you remember when we met? It was almost ten years ago, can you believe it? I worked in the kitchen at the Finto, washing dishing, making salads, preparing desserts. You were a waiter, and you wouldn’t even say hello to me for weeks. Then one evening I was having a smoke in the break room, and somehow we struck up a conversation about books. You decided I was suitable company and not a stupid kitchen-bitch; I decided that, while you were clearly arrogant and a bit shallow, you knew books and I could spare a smoke or two for a conversation. The rest, as they say, is fucking history.
I’m not interested in writing our history. It’s a story that is full of secrets (your and mine) and all the private jokes of a long friendship. I won’t share any of that.
Sometimes it hurts more than anything, so goddamn much, to carry around your secrets.
You loved Motown. I remember how surprised you were when I said I loved Motown too. I played you a CD I made, Aretha and the Temptations and Smokey Robinson, that time you visited me when I tore the tendons in my ankle and couldn’t work. You brought me food and money for take-out, I couldn’t leave my house because of the stairs. Remember our apartment buildings in Inuvik? You lived in Parkview, I lived across the street in Lakeview. There are no basements in Inuvik because of the permafrost, and both of our buildings were hoisted two stories above the ground, on stilts and up those awful, terrifying steps. How many times did we both stumble home drunk, up those stairs?
I’m listening to Motown right now.
I remember everything. I’ve packed away these memories, filed and stacked them, and left them to the dust, but I still remember everything. Everything goddamn thing.
(I can’t.)
You were funny as hell. You always made me laugh. You pissed me off a lot too. The best people do, I’ve found.
(I am still so mad at you.)
I keep going back to this, this one fucking wish – I wish you had lived long enough to read this blog. I’ve done my best writing here. I didn’t write much when we were friends, except for our daily emails. I think that you would be proud of me.
(Why did you leave me.)
I’m reading a book right now that I think you would have liked.
(That hurts.)
You’ve missed a lot of really great movies.
(I try not to think like this.)
I miss your emails.
I don’t use that email address anymore. I kept it for you, did you know that? I stopped using it well before you died, started up a Hotmail account, but I kept Yahoo open for you. That ways I always knew that if I had a new email, it was from you.
I still have your last email, saved. I haven’t read it in two years. It has no subject line, which was unusual.
(I should have seen the signs).
I have no idea what you wrote.
(I don’t want to know.)
I don’t think that I will ever read it.
(You said goodbye in a hotel room in Arizona, you didn't say a word.)
All I want to say is goodbye. All I want is for you to go away. You can go now.
I’m going to visit your grave some time this summer. I will give back all of your secrets when I’m there.
I feel so heavy these days. I cannot carry the burden of you.
(Jimmy, I am so, so sad without you.)
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
Friday, April 2, 2010
“Nietzsche Is Dead.” - God
No one knows what the Other Side looks like. No one. It’s not a question of capacity; there, everyone is blind. The abyss stares outwards because that is the only direction where there is something to see. But the few, the brave, march into the unknown diligently, seeing nothing.
Dearly Beloved,
We are gathered here today to celebrate the life and mourn the loss of our dear friend, Esau.
There’s a lot of things a person can say about Esau. And yet, now that I find myself up here, they all sound kind of silly. He was a man who would have been thrilled to have a funeral – to have such a huge turnout at something so ultimately insignificant to him.
Heh. You know, I can actually hear his voice in my head saying “I’m dead, it’s not like I would notice if no one showed up.” He was happy to imagine that people wanted to celebrate his life, but he never, not once, sounded interested in satisfying some bar or marker. There was no kind of turnout number or achievement in his mind that he was required to meet – not in life, and certainly not in his death. All in all, he was content.
But I never believed him. I still don’t. See, because the whole time I knew him, I saw in his eyes that he was looking for something. Something that he didn’t have, that he didn’t see, but that he knew. That’s because of what I saw in his eyes.
I’d known him since he was born and from the first moment that he learned about the world around him, the man was hoping. Some of his closer friends called it longing. Maybe they were right. But it seemed more positive than that, to me. To me, he wasn’t hoping longingly, he was hoping faithfully. Necessarily.
I think Esau saw what most of us never catch a glimpse of: Real Happiness. He didn’t have it – no, we would have all known it if he had had it – but he saw it. He saw how it was to be birthed.
I have a story that I want to share with you. It was just one of those little memories that we all have. But as I reflect on who this man was, and how he lived his life, I keep thinking about this time I had with him.
One day, when he was little, Esau called me over to see his dominos. He had had them all rigged up so that when you tipped over the first one, they would all fall in succession. He must have had more than 500 hundred dominos set up. I don’t know how long it had taken him, but I could see the pride beaming from his little form. And then, he asked me to push the first one.
I don’t know why he didn’t want to do it himself, I know he could have. He said he wanted me to do it, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to spoil all of his hard work. It must have taken him hours to put them all in the right place. I didn’t want to be the one to walk in and take that pleasure from him. He should do the honours.
But upon reflection, I know that he needed me to do it. Somehow, he knew he couldn’t. If he did, it would ruin everything. It would reduce hours of work into a disappointing, brief, fanfare. If I did, it would mean something.
I think Esau wanted to give us the key to the whole world. Not because it was something he didn’t want, or because he was afraid of it, or because he was selfless. I think because it was something he could only have when someone else took it.
Maybe I’m babbling. I probably am. Esau always let me blab, that’s for sure.
You know what he would see if he was standing here today? He would see millions of Almosts. He would hear every whimsical word, every under-your-breath dream, and he’d be certain that with one step, just one step, by any of you, the whole world would re-arrange itself into something beautiful. And no one can take that step for you. And he always hoped we would.
That’s what he knew. That’s what he trusted. I don’t know why, and I sure as hell don’t know what my step is, but I know that’s how he took every moment.
A wise man once wrote of a great threshold. This threshold was between life and death, between meaning and existence. The no-man’s land between Being and Nothingness. And everything about this threshold was neither here nor there. It was a dream. An intangible, dense, guardian and gateway.
To look upon it from the one side was to look upon a great endless pit and the tallest of insurmountable cliffs. Malevolence given form. All the while, the way and view of the Other Side is blocked; protected as a mystery, unfamiliar, uncertain.
But to look at it from that Other Side would be to see through a full and complete kaleidoscope. An array of coloured glasses and beautiful sounds. Like paintings. Art, inspired. From there you could see a million horizons and a million sunsets.
It was within this place that the Gods live.
I’m not a religious man, but the firm, unwavering content that Esau brought to us certainly challenged me to be a spiritual one. Perhaps that was the step that he had to take. Perhaps that was the step that he was taking all along.
Esau was pure, unrealized potential. Anyone who knew him knew his impotent but incredible charge. I like to imagine that he’s gone on to a better place. Somewhere where he has that happiness. I hope he can not only see it, but he can have it. He deserves it.
With his death, he will teach me to not only look forward but to act forward. To celebrate the past as the past. As something that is ungraspable and unmoldable and impotent against our futures.
...But when all our secrets are laid bare,
What is left for subtle Care?
Goodbye, my friend. You will be missed.
Close your eyes little bird:
Weary heads were never meant to fly.
Jacob, would you like to say a few words?
Dearly Beloved,
We are gathered here today to celebrate the life and mourn the loss of our dear friend, Esau.
There’s a lot of things a person can say about Esau. And yet, now that I find myself up here, they all sound kind of silly. He was a man who would have been thrilled to have a funeral – to have such a huge turnout at something so ultimately insignificant to him.
Heh. You know, I can actually hear his voice in my head saying “I’m dead, it’s not like I would notice if no one showed up.” He was happy to imagine that people wanted to celebrate his life, but he never, not once, sounded interested in satisfying some bar or marker. There was no kind of turnout number or achievement in his mind that he was required to meet – not in life, and certainly not in his death. All in all, he was content.
But I never believed him. I still don’t. See, because the whole time I knew him, I saw in his eyes that he was looking for something. Something that he didn’t have, that he didn’t see, but that he knew. That’s because of what I saw in his eyes.
I’d known him since he was born and from the first moment that he learned about the world around him, the man was hoping. Some of his closer friends called it longing. Maybe they were right. But it seemed more positive than that, to me. To me, he wasn’t hoping longingly, he was hoping faithfully. Necessarily.
I think Esau saw what most of us never catch a glimpse of: Real Happiness. He didn’t have it – no, we would have all known it if he had had it – but he saw it. He saw how it was to be birthed.
I have a story that I want to share with you. It was just one of those little memories that we all have. But as I reflect on who this man was, and how he lived his life, I keep thinking about this time I had with him.
One day, when he was little, Esau called me over to see his dominos. He had had them all rigged up so that when you tipped over the first one, they would all fall in succession. He must have had more than 500 hundred dominos set up. I don’t know how long it had taken him, but I could see the pride beaming from his little form. And then, he asked me to push the first one.
I don’t know why he didn’t want to do it himself, I know he could have. He said he wanted me to do it, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to spoil all of his hard work. It must have taken him hours to put them all in the right place. I didn’t want to be the one to walk in and take that pleasure from him. He should do the honours.
But upon reflection, I know that he needed me to do it. Somehow, he knew he couldn’t. If he did, it would ruin everything. It would reduce hours of work into a disappointing, brief, fanfare. If I did, it would mean something.
I think Esau wanted to give us the key to the whole world. Not because it was something he didn’t want, or because he was afraid of it, or because he was selfless. I think because it was something he could only have when someone else took it.
Maybe I’m babbling. I probably am. Esau always let me blab, that’s for sure.
You know what he would see if he was standing here today? He would see millions of Almosts. He would hear every whimsical word, every under-your-breath dream, and he’d be certain that with one step, just one step, by any of you, the whole world would re-arrange itself into something beautiful. And no one can take that step for you. And he always hoped we would.
That’s what he knew. That’s what he trusted. I don’t know why, and I sure as hell don’t know what my step is, but I know that’s how he took every moment.
A wise man once wrote of a great threshold. This threshold was between life and death, between meaning and existence. The no-man’s land between Being and Nothingness. And everything about this threshold was neither here nor there. It was a dream. An intangible, dense, guardian and gateway.
To look upon it from the one side was to look upon a great endless pit and the tallest of insurmountable cliffs. Malevolence given form. All the while, the way and view of the Other Side is blocked; protected as a mystery, unfamiliar, uncertain.
But to look at it from that Other Side would be to see through a full and complete kaleidoscope. An array of coloured glasses and beautiful sounds. Like paintings. Art, inspired. From there you could see a million horizons and a million sunsets.
It was within this place that the Gods live.
I’m not a religious man, but the firm, unwavering content that Esau brought to us certainly challenged me to be a spiritual one. Perhaps that was the step that he had to take. Perhaps that was the step that he was taking all along.
Esau was pure, unrealized potential. Anyone who knew him knew his impotent but incredible charge. I like to imagine that he’s gone on to a better place. Somewhere where he has that happiness. I hope he can not only see it, but he can have it. He deserves it.
With his death, he will teach me to not only look forward but to act forward. To celebrate the past as the past. As something that is ungraspable and unmoldable and impotent against our futures.
...But when all our secrets are laid bare,
What is left for subtle Care?
Goodbye, my friend. You will be missed.
Close your eyes little bird:
Weary heads were never meant to fly.
Jacob, would you like to say a few words?
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