Stone dead.
my mam used to say
each summer in the garden
that “a bee will get in your ear
and burrow down
and it’ll sting you
stone dead” – perhaps
to teach me
I should clean my earwax.
though I don’t know –
is that a common lesson?
sitting at the table
I check with my littlest finger
and pull it out
when the nail starts
to scrape. I inspect;
it mounts like a melting candle,
yellow as daffodils, orange
as the centre of a sunflower. as a child
if I saw bees
I’d run, screaming
and covering my ears. I’m convinced
she planted
this memory; once
I took my hood down
and released them, bursting with violence
over gardens
and swarming.
A full-feathered bird.
it strikes me again,
when I should finally
be beyond all that; my dad’s hands
have shrunk, but my uncle’s
are still so much bigger
than mine. and this was bandon, calling a minute
for a quick cup of coffee, and we both went
for the biscuits together;
a broken twig bumping
on a thick bag of walnuts
or a full-feathered bird
pecking at thrown out
chickenbones. that strength in there;
all farmwork and moving things – no wonder once
he almost won elections. when I was a boy
I remember his handshakes
crushed me. now 28, I guess a man,
and it still looks like
they’d hurt.
A story which went nowhere.
and so anyway,
we went on a date. she
was studying medicine
in a toronto college. I suggested this bar
in kensington, close-by to
my flat, and she came
some way to see me. we didn’t have much
to talk about, but there were raccoons
climbing the gutters
and we talked for a while
about that. and then about her college,
and my work at the hospital. later on
we went walking up spadina. slowly
we ran dry again, with the rain,
and made our way back
toward the streetcars. she was tired. I
was tired
and there weren’t any more
raccoons.
The piano player.
oh god,
am I a piano player?
not in the sense
of playing the piano
even though
I can do that ok,
improvising my right hand
on the 12 bar blues,
but in that
all I know how to do
is sit at home at night
tapping at the keyboard?
I wish
the piano
was more romantic. it’s no
guitar
or even being a drummer
but god
its satisfying
hearing the click of the keys
as they go down like hammers
and see the words
come up onscreen. begging for forgiveness
or rattling out a jazz. and best of all
the backspace key
which wipes out mistakes
like a rhinoceros
tearing down a village.
heck
I’ll play my piano
to some audience
and imagine
applause
and girls
throwing roses.
To extend a metaphor.
“Kill your darlings.
Die alone”
– Joey Comeau
the good thing
about poetry
is that you don’t actually have to. not,
I mean,
if you don’t want to.
you don’t have to kill
anything
at all. it’s very handy
that way. forgiving.
there’s a space for everything
you think
in poetry.
the trick is
just
extend your metaphors,
see?
lay foundations
and plumbing,
with plenty of room
for them to potter around
drinking tea in their dotage,
talking
and getting in each others way.
heck,
extend it all the way out.
put in baths and elevators
and sell it to the state as nursing home.
they’ll love it there –
able to stretch their legs,
play checkers
and trip each other up
with walking sticks.
of course
there’s a good chance
if you do
you’ll have to
leave them alone
and nobody else
will want them.
like people in nursing homes again
I guess.
worn out
and ragged
and lonely on the page.
but that’s the point,
isn’t it? they’re
your
darlings.
who shares their darling
with anyone else?
