New Year’s Day Report

Good morning officers

Here’s what’s on the slate

For all you lucky sirs

Living it up last night till late

Drunk tank is full of barflies

Keep your eye on Kringle in red

He trashed a number of guys

For being naughty, he said

We’ve got two missing people, maybe

A senile old man in top hat and cane

And naked except for a sash, a baby

Same report as last year, here we go again

Had a stockbroker murder-suicide his wife

Some toga-wearing Mexican guy

Found and brought them back to life

It’s in the report, don’t ask how or why

Chinatown was strangely quiet

A few fireworks, colors pretty nice

Little Tokyo was a real riot

Drunken punks on sake pounding rice

So off you go on first patrol

I’ll make one thing perfectly clear

Remember that as you roll

It only gets crazier from here

Poetry

There is no metaphor or simile

For poetry

It is not like

Pulling a gem out of a raging stream

Nor is it

Molding clay with your fingertips

It is it

Poetry is its own metaphor

Poetry is only like poetry

Poetry is more than words

Just as life is more than breathing

Ode to Dishwashing

Cleaning dishes

Morning till night

Making wishes

I set things right

Like Nguyễn Sinh Cung

America-bound in the rolling galley

Breathing scalding steam

Among the girlish waiters

On the sterilizing machine

Every evening I stayed later

Comme Eric Arthur Blair

Aux coudes dans la vaisselle des Bourgeois

Making lukewarm suds hotter

Over mother’s dish grime

Swirled red grey water

Slick after bathtime

Like Malcolm Little

Wiping away stains of injustice on the train

Not wasting action

Crowded Japanese pad

Gas fired contraption

No space to be had

Like Bill Murray

Washing his soul in the Ganges

Ode to Almost Eight Years of Marriage

After surviving the fights

The misunderstandings, the itches

Supporting each other

Through losses and sickness

In the end it boils down to this

Try not to catch the other’s eye in the morning light

But try your best to catch it before sleep at night

My Body

My body is a sinking ship

Giving up groans and shrieks in the ocean twilight

Metal fatigue cacophonous symphony

Before it sinks beneath the waves

Tears in two and comes to rest buried below the silt

My body is a rusted boiler

Still giving off some heat in the wintry night

Jetting steam and leaking water

From pipes that do not fit tight anymore

And maintenance can only prolong, not save

My body is a black screened computer

Giving out red warnings in a dim room

Smelling of burnt plastic and wiring

Searching its limited space for answers

As it shuts down for the night

The State of Christmas

The truth?

The North Pole is a totalitarian state

That puts North Korea and Soviet gulags to shame

Elves chained in subzero sweatshops

(Some say they’re aliens from Neptune

Taken from Roswell and put to work)

Making mind control games and gadgets

Plastic voodoo dolls to shape children’s hearts

And mind altering cartons of alien egged nog

The objective?

Reinforce gender stereotypes

A doll for Sally, a GI Joe for Sam

To make the next generation of sluts and soldiers

To fight his wars and fuel his factories

And keep peace and goodwill from man

It’s all about Big Brother Santa

Watching us and making his lists

Checking and rechecking them

Jesus Christ?

Nice guy but it has nothing to do with him

Christianity is just a gateway drug for Christmas

And just as Wenceslaus exiled Drahomira

Became the government and crushed the old religions

Santa has assumed control of the holiday season

Using panopticon shopping centers

And kagemusha men in red suits at every mall

To conduct seated interrogations on our young

The means?

Genetic manipulation to make caribou fly

Those aren’t normal reindeer anymore

Proboscis monkey nose and glowing jellyfish genes

To pull him through the stratospheric storms

Muzak piped straight from the Pole

Sapping our wills and tapping our Id

Ritual deforestation puts weapons in our hands

And increases our urban prison sprawl

The ideology?

Citizens, consume

Doesn’t matter if you were born Christian Muslim or Jew

Eat a 6 winged 6 legged freak with family

Bred in a box for the occasion

With the right amount of estrogen for men

Calcium and testosterone for women

Make a pile of stolen treasure under the sacrifical tree

And rip it to shreds on Christmas morning

The answer?

The US Army is in cahoots

Or else too scared to do anything

Every year NORAD tracks his movements

But is powerless to stop him

He can die about as much as Vlad Tepesh or Rasputin

Saint Nick and Old Nick are one and the same

If only we stop consuming and blindly believing

We can kill this Consumas season

1980s Retro Disco Night

Woot woot!

Smoky bar that stays in your clothes and hair

Elvis-fringed costumed funkologist

(Weekdays he’s a proctologist)

Spinning MP3s of thirty year old tunes ripped from YouTube

That’s retro

Tunsa tunsa!

Divorcee girls shimmy in thirty year old hotpants

Scribble their numbers on paper scraps

(To any man who doesn’t look half crap)

Dancing married guys try not to meet any eyes

That’s retro

Bowdiddy bowdiddy!

Grey hairs, wrinkles disappear into the flashing strobelights

Rhinestone bowlers perch on balding heads

(Toes tap and eyes shine on the seated half dead)

Decayed synapses fire but old bodies cannot follow

That’s retro

It Ain’t All Bad in 2011

Hello 2011!

I thought there’d be weekly rockets to the moon by now

I planned to spend a summer backpacking on the Moon or Mars

Or maybe even teleport or warp somewhere random

But it ain’t all bad

The airport scanners can now see my every nook and granny

And junk food on 12 hour flights is made from recycled styrofoam peanuts

Nice to meet you 2011!

Honestly, I thought we’d all be equals by now

But women are still hitting their heads on transparent ceilings

And people are still blowing themselves and others up for gods

But it could be worse

Johanna Sigurdardottir and Barack Obama are in office

And Muslim countries have had more female presidents than Christian ones

Come on in 2011!

Truth to tell, I thought we’d all have translators by now

Supercomputers in our fountain pens and robot butlers

With cool cybernetic arms housing grappling hooks and lasers

But look on the bright side

Babies are made in test tubes for troubled couples

And smart phones allow us to know less than ever

So stay awhile and have a drink

The world will move on the way it must

And no matter what you or I think

The future always leaves our science fiction in dust

February

I will never forget

Your week of pain blood and fear

Five endless hours cramping in the ER waiting lounge

The false reassurance of a doctor

The tiny beating heart in the ultrasound

I will never forget

Two days before your birthday

Cramps tears and more blood in a crowded emergency room bed

A tired doctor ushered us out afterwards

A tiny unfulfilled promise held in your hand

I will never forget

Driving on a dirty white line into a blank blur of land and sky

There was no sound

As we neared the cliffs

The immense and heaving grey sea

I will never forget

A sparkling tiny cold red ruby in your upturned palm

How you threw overarmed and stiff

Standing in the whipping wind

Unfazed by cold of minus twenty

I will never forget

Your long coat billowing about you as you stood at the guardrail

A part of you arcing down past mammoth icicles

Into the white waves breaking on the rocks

Sluggish tears frozen on your cheek

I will never forget

And I will never trust again

The month of birthdays and carnivals

On Contemplating Grad School

Old professor emeritus

I know without doubt there is a circle of Hell

Reserved for hypocrites such as you

For every mark you stripped from us

May demons strip your flesh

For every threat you uttered

May cenobites pierce your tongue

For every young skirt your old eyes coveted

May venom drip into your open eyes

And succubi pour unscratchable itches in your ears

Old honourable professor

The Heaven in which neither of us believe

Has a throne reserved for you

For every reference letter you wrote

May saints be your character witness

For every mystery you resolved for us

May one be resolved for you

For every human gesture you made

May angels sing you to your rest

And dead poets be your friends

Reflections December 22nd

Wow. Twenty-three poems all told. Not bad, and some of them are not half bad. All of them are spontaneous, however. Exercising my poetry like this has resulted in the ability to let the words flow from an empty mind.

Saints and Angels

Although I try to stay away from the political, I can’t always hold my thoughts back. I thought I’d try and evaluate the concepts of saints and angels in terms of the modern world. Liu Xiabo and Nelson Mandela are, due to the highly politicized careers they have, modern saints. If you know your hagiography, a saint must understand evil before they can be good. Mandela was in the part of the ANC advocating violence (and was arrested for it), while his partner Oliver Tambo urged for a peaceful resolution, and was exiled to the UK as a result. Similarly, Xiabo has been quoted as saying things less than flattering towards women and others. Saints they have become, but certainly not angels. On the other hand, Mother Theresa gave everything to help the poor and downtrodden in Calcutta slums, and although she seems slated for beatification, her compassion for people regardless of political stripe marks her as above saintly status. If ever there were an angel, she was it, and the reports of her disparaging comments during her darkest hours only underscores how great a being she was.

Painless You May Never Go Home

Was this ever a chore to write… This was my first attempt at following a poetic ‘form’ (an imperfect sestina, in case you’re wondering), and the demands of length quickly burgeoned out of control. However, the tales of folk heroes trying tragically to return home resonate strongly with anyone who lives far from their homeland. I think that was their original purpose. Imperfect poem, but interesting.

A Letter to Hacktivists

Like I said, taking down Mastercard is all well and good (and comparatively easy), but if you aspire to activism, start taking aim at countries on Amnesty International lists.

Ode to Metrobus

Riding on anything but a tour bus reduces you in so many ways, and reduces that society into easily understood terms as well. Whether in St. John’s, Quebec, Hawaii, or Shanghai, you can learn a lot by riding a crowded bus.

Indicible

Teaching the wife French, growing irritated at out inability to communicate. I fear losing that ability as we grow older, so I guess there is a lot of that in there. As well as love, one that does away with the need for words.

The Optimist

On rereading this, it sounds like a Newfie song. Just a song of myself, simple and unadorned. Naïve. Maybe not poetry, but I like it.

Stateside, 1980s

Traveling through the US the past few decades, you can see great differences as they close up their borders and we become more like them. Both changes are scary and yet inevitable.

Japanese Construction Site

Mornings in this neighborhood are ripped apart with metallic clangs and machine sputterings. Some days I start work late, and any attempt to catch a few extra winks is doomed from the start. I wanted to find some beauty in all that audio ugliness, and this was what came out.

The Dregs of Lethargy

Hungover after an English teacher meeting, this was exactly how I felt. I am enjoying linking the present with classical mythology. As for Baudelaire, he wasn’t far off calling being drunk a temporary victory over death. That euphoria carries over to hungover Sundays, in my opinion.

Newfies Abroad

I am consistently amazed how well Newfies are received wherever they go, and how I myself am so lucky meeting people. Add this to the memory of an old photo of the Newfie regiment I saw while teaching school in Canada a few years back, and this poem wrote itself.

Kurisumasu

I appreciate not being bludgeoned to death with Christmas music and false cheer. Some boys singing carols in Japanese and nose humming on the bus ride home brought this poem to life.

Cat and Carp

Last but not least, saw both these critters while walking around Kyoto with new old friend Alex Yang. I am forever grateful animals deign to live beside us, and hope we work harder to keep as many kinds of them around as we can.

Cat and Carp

Beautiful black and white stalker

Ears perked, haunches coiled

Eyes alight with birds

You give up instantly

Tongue your muddy paws

Nap standing in the sun

Between stone bench, temple and stream

Thank you for being in my world

Cold gold and grey wanderer

Gills whispering, body undulant

Obsidian eyes inscrutable

You undulate slowly

Through muddy waters

Disappear in the shadow

In dark stream below stone bridge and bench

Thank you for being in my world

Kurisumasu

In this land of Buddha

The holidays sneak up on me

No carols or jingle bells in any store

No crowd jostling for product

No Santas ringing bells on any corner

Just silence, work, life, cold

Until one day on the bus home

Uniformed elementary boys, numbers on their backs

Baseball kits at their feet, hum jingle bells and laugh

The station bakery has a half price sale

Two Santas calling “Irrasshaimase” out front

As I work on Christmas eve and day

My students tell me of their Christmas plans

Chicken, cake, and love hotels

This peace of season and of man

Is seldom known in Christian lands

Newfies Abroad

Look at the old picture of charcoal and grey ghosts

The Newfie regiment in Egypt, 1913

Grins cracked wide, not knowing they would never return

To the icy rock bosom that sired them

None of the stiffness or pretension from paintings of Napoleon’s troops

Even native guides and porters beaming around them

You know you’ve seen Newfies abroad

When you see them at the center of a party

English teachers in Asia, present day

Talking a blue streak, not knowing they might never return

To the icy rock bosom that sired them

Playing out conversation like a ball between one and all

Even dragging quiet ones from their shells

You know you’ve seen Newfies abroad

When you see one having crimson hibiscus tea inside a stall

Luxor market, present day

Whispering and chuckling, knowing he will never return

To the icy rock bosom that sired him

Not turning up his nose at the humble Egyptian hospitality as tourists do

Even sharing tea and talk with a jilbab clad merchant

You know you’ve seen a Newfie abroad

The Dregs of Lethargy

Last night I sipped

The waters of Lethe

In a bar dark as the underworld

Lit with ghastly Carnaval fires

Took a ride with my fellows

In Charon’s gondola

Dipped my fingers

In cold waters of forgetfulness

Sunday morning I sit

Hot tea warming my hands

In bed doing nothing

Bathed in the noonday sun

Wanting to do nothing

Enjoying Baudelaire’s victory

Thinking of the past and smiling

Trying not to think of tomorrow

Japanese Construction Site

Yellow silk-wrapped towers

Cocoon of safety for passers by

What transformations hidden

Are signaled by the grindings and poundings

That mars my noontime slumber

Purple pantaloon-clad workers flit about you

High school dropouts, butterflies in Elvis hair

Wielding power tools and overpriced cigarettes

They tear away your old memories

And bolt in a new future

The salon becomes a saloon

The barber shop becomes a game store

These transformations utterly unforeseeable

By Byzantine zoning laws

White workhorse trucks jam

Our one-lane horsepath road

Bamboo staves and iron piping jut out

Gaily wrapped in coloured kerchiefs

After the deadly heat of summer your change began

Through the chill snowless months they continue

In springtime you will emerge shiny, new

Wreaths of congratulations standing in front

To welcome curious and customers

Until fashions or passions change

And you wrap yourself in silk

Again

Stateside, 1980s

Stateside, 1980s

First time across the border

Into the land of TV cops and GI Joe

I want to kiss her in the backseat

But her father drives, brother sits between us

“Hello sir. You all Canadian? Have a nice trip.”

Passportless, he waves us through

Real rifle on the wall at the corner store

Real Butterfinger, Mounds, Almond Joy

As I count she yells

“Don’t give me no damn Canadian change!”

Startled, I drop beavers, moose, maple leaves

And break the Washington dollar I had planned to save

Lunch in Elmo’s Game Barn, moose steaks and lobster

Cordon Bleu chef in Riviera summers

Hunter in Maine falls

“I thought It’d be different” I say to her father

“You expect leaves would turn into Washington dollar bills?”

Stateside, 1990s

First time adult across the border

Into the land of LA riots and Iraqi Freedom

I want to change the station

But I am licenseless, so he drives and decides

“Hello sirs, you Canadian? Why are you passing through?”

Our passports disappear into the booth, then return

Real pistols at their hips

Real dogs and SMGs on cords

As we sit he asks

“You ever consume any illicit substances?”

We exude a moment of Canadian arctic silence

Like after asking fish how they like water

Lunch in IHOP, Stuffed French Toast

Stuffed until we burst

Bottomless coffee, Coke in larger cans

“This place is so different

Do we leave a tip, is a Washington dollar enough?”

Stateside, 2000s

First time crossing the states

Across the lands of hoodoos and desert Greek cafes

She kisses my cheek as I drive

Two months ago I arrived

“Aloha, welcome. Open your bag, please.

Driving across? Have a good time, bro.”

Real mooks and tittas and howleys

Real OC students and celebrity agent pool parties

Real iron poisoning in Utah

Radio warns us of violent Salt Lake gangs

Who attack anyone they see

Smoking, spitting, or kissing in the street

Lunch in a Detroit trucker buffet

Our 69 Beetle dwarfed by 18 wheelers from New Jersey

Our bodies dwarfed by 7 foot truckers from Alabama

“I feel like I’m back in Canada already.” As I pay he says

“That old Washington dollar? You should have saved it.”

The Optimist

Too satisfied to be a success

Never number one

But always my best

Having a good run

Many are critical

Reactions all tough

My response is tempered

Not good is often good enough

Call me optimist, naïve, or fool

Eternally immature

Better than a negative, pessimistic tool

I rest true to my nature

To the death house I’ll go

With no regrets or rue

For one thing I know

You can’t take it with you

Indicible

Je te vois

Étudiante si bien

Ta troisième langue

Qui est ma deuxième langue

T’as mis ta confiance en moi

Mais mes erreurs te frustrent

Comme mes fautes me frustrent

Tu me parles

Si en colère

En ta première langue

Qui est ma troisième langue

Tu jettes tes émotions à moi

Mais je m’en vague

Comme une brume étrangère

On se parle

S’entendant si bien

En ma première langue

Qui est ta deuxième langue

Quand on fait l’amour

La langue de notre lit

Est celle de mon enfance

Ce qui reste entre nous

Ne se met en mots

Meurait si mis en mots

Donc nos langues se serviraient mieux

De se caresser

Que de s’addresser

Ode to Metrobus

Oh perfect vehicle of Democracy

Where half-sane and insane rub elbows and knees

With balls in one’s face

And arse in another’s

I have ridden you in many lands

In cold Socialist lands

I rode you to university and back

Until the driver’s strike left students

Shivering, riding our thumbs

Extorted or ignored by morning commuters

In warm Capitalist archipelagos

I rode around the girth of islands for a buck

Envious of joyriding homeless

Taking a break from their park life

Sharing cigarettes and expired canned foods

In teeming Communist nations

We rode into the growing guts of economic Babylon

Fishtailed through horsetracks become highways

Rain dripping in my ear whenever we made a hard left

Sleeping locals drooling on our shoulders

In this sleepy industrial has-been

I slip into your crowded belly every morning

Pressed on all sides by sleep-sweaty bodies

Of salarymen who would jump out of my tub in a public bath

And half-dressed girls who would run from me in a night street

Oh perfect vehicle of Democracy

Where over-employed and under-employed rub elbows and knees

With cellphones ringing in one’s ear

And crying babe in another’s

I have ridden you in many lands

A Letter to Hacktivists

Subterranean pizza-eaters,

Mailing list terrorists,

Web-based warriors

Although in truth banks deserve our scorn and worse

Your claims of fighting for justice and freedom

Ring hollow

While Nobel men sit in prison

And at fascist and dictatorial government sites

It is business as usual

Painless You May Never Go Home

Kakdumi, submarine king

Seeking husband for peerless daughter Revati

Waited patiently for Brahma as Ghandarvas play

Twenty seven cycles passed, all suitors, family, and memory gone

Descended to this primitive age, no choice left

Accept the hand of Balarama, avatar of Vishnu

Cuckoo Namjil, bird singer

Soldier well loved, visiting your faraway queen

On winged horse hidden from familiar eyes

Clipped of its wings and life by jealous maid

In your grief take its bones

Leave your country the horse-headed fiddle

Oisin young deer, Fianna warrior poet

Followed golden hair Niamh to the Land of Promise

White horse hooves over the waves back to Erin

Three centuries passed, all heroes, gods gone

Broken girdle hurls you to the ground before saintly Patrick

Molder to bones on the beach of your country

Urashima Taro, youthful fisher

Chased cruel children from the shell-slashed turtle

Married scar-slashed princess of Dragon God Castle

Three centuries passed, all people, village, names gone

In your grief pry off the lid and release a cloud of age

Leave your bones on the beach of your country

Wang Chi, hardy woodcutter

Lost in the woods finding a handle for your great axe

Stumbled upon the Go playing immortals, watched stone against stone

Ate a date from wrinkled hands, felt no hunger or thirst

Centuries passed, handle, family, friends but dust

Return alone to your country

Rip Van Winkle, simple rambler

Poor children hungry and wailing wife

Wandered among ghosts of Hudson and his crew

Played nine pin, got drunk on ghostly brew

Twenty years later awake and return

Reunite with grown children in your new country

All these lives and many others

Tell you that for love or life you may well roam

But painless you may never go home