Mujee de Bois
Somewhere in the National Arts Center, your perfume beckoned. In a second I was transfixed by the memories by the music by you, for the first time in years. I cannot forget where you, when you wore it ... in the valleys, in the hollows of your body.I cannot forget
but God
I cannot remember either.
Plaintiff
I would like to write about how the wind is whistling.
The wind is not whistling.
In all my life the wind has never whistled.
It has screamed, chanted, cheated me and my kite.
Something so all powerful and inconsistent
must be conceited.
It has never whistled.
I would like to write as I used to write.
I yearn for the old careless form when,
inspired,
I would let the pen scribble every thought.
Then, I had no experience and the writing was
nine-tenths speculation.
Now after a couple of years I find that it is not
how I imagined it.
The female mind, then so open and uninhibited,
has turned into mystery.
Conversations are flatter,
when the talk is forced she is either bored or hot.
Nights are shorter
the rushes quicker.
The wind does not whistle.
On Your Ignorance
No one knows what is between the periods and the commas.
No one knows what private thoughts the writer has left out
and what one is being led into.
What caused the feeling?
What lies are being told?
What tales are hidden.
The half-life of a word is between the writing and the reading.
Only the writer knows and he guards it jealously
and dies too soon to tell.
I Promise
I promise that if I don't write every night,
keep the diary,
wear the life,
that I will at least type out my past,
my past poems,
my past life.
I promise.
Sitting on the ledge of the 22nd story
with Toronto at my feet
everything passed as a shadow
as a mist in the background.
Sittiing with my head full or words
but no pencil or paper to record them
keep tabs on them
translate these mists into words.
And I couldn't go down to get any,
for all hell I couldn't get any.
I feared that I'd meet someone on the way
and everything would drop out onto the floor
like so many stray, lost dogs.
Thoughts on a Wednesday evening ... Montreal, Spring 1972
I confessed to her.
I told her of my youth,
something I haven't been able to tell anyone yet.
I told of the spring run off,
symbolic, my friend.
But she did not analyze
she absorbed.
Maybe it will all come out in Buitenhuis's essay
like a huge overpowering orgasm,
a madness within a madness
a veritable garden of delight.
Perhaps I will discover why I write on the right side of the page.
Written moments before I met a certain someone on the subway.
I play solitaire for hours.
Days go by when I do nothing but sit in this chair thinking.
Ah, the lethargy of peace.
The sun sets almost in spite of me.
The moons come and go controlling all of the women of the world.
People come and go,
rambling,
foaming
in the vastness of this room.
Father Time marches by. He nods to me now, I've been here that long.
I know all of my record albums by heart.
The skips are anticipated to the split second.
Opening my eyes I see the same things,
the latent image is on the back of my mind.
I think I am going blind.
I am thinking of you, thinking of you.
I will never move.
(untitled)
Standing just down the road from my house.
Time: afternoon, spring.
Being blown over by a warm, wet wind,
I am struck,
swamped
overwhelmed by the presence of nature ...
the huge, ancient maple that majestically overshadowed
the lawn
my youth
my dog as he slept,
vast and green on my horizon as I lay beneath it ...
and the apples trees and the greass and the pines and the wind,
the warm, wet, smothering lovliness of it all,
and the frustrating feeling that I may have missed something.
5/13/78
Sometimes I'll think I've written
when all I've done is think about writing.
I am thinking about writing now
and doing it.
It's not real writing, of course.
It's simply writing about writing.
(untitled)
I found her address today
among some old letters and poetry.
I have a picture of her in my mind ...
she is laughing, lying in her bed
waiting for a letter.
That's her daytime image.
At night when I dream of her
she is smiling, lying on her bed
waiting for me.
April 11, 1978
All these things:
the faraway lookin my eyes,
distant and warm,
the trembling hand, heart, eyelids,
the unsettledness inside ...
walking nowhere slowly
the music that can take my breath away,
stop my talking,
create tiny explosions in my brain ...
the scents, the minute things,
all of this.
Let's make it clear
I'm trying to remember, not trying to forget.
April 1978
A room is holding me hostage.
I'm all packed, clothes folded and sorted,
toothbrush in it's case,
papers arranged,
personally prepared , set, ready to go.
It's just a motel room
yet I can't leave,
There are impressions of you everywhere
the soft dent in the pillow
the blankets exactly as you left them ...
spreading over the bed, white sheets showing,
in a memorable disarray.
The empty wine bottle,
the two lonely glasses,
damp towels and drawn curtains.
I can't leave.
It's just a room but I'm trapped.
I search everywhere, again and again, for a trace of you ...
a dropped comb a silk handkerchief,
perhaps a sigh.
Soft memories hold me ...
it's just a room.
February 2, 2000
Well, Deanna. I hope this is what you wanted.
late night, tired eyes, typing words to put on the site
to do for you what I told myself I would do every day
such a long, long time ago.
writers write so you are a writer
I've been pretending to save up life experiences for the day when I finally have time to write them down. But the days go by, life goes by and all the ladies drift off into some curious corner to wait for me and the writing never gets done. so shame me into it dance off in the distance singing some taunting song and write and write and write and I will too. This isn't much but it's a start. maybe someday we can share the same pen, and every second word will be yours.secrets February 3, 2000
which ones do you want to know
which ones do I want to tell you
the late nights, the early mornings
the times between that are lost in memory
because they happened when nothing else did.
the tales of motel parking lots
and seeing cars of significant others
angry that they were in other rooms
in other embraces
at the same time we were.
the townhouse tales of flight attendants
and young American girls who came
and left and sent letters later
and other young Canadian girls who came
but never seemed to want to leave.
Maybe they are still there now,
their images flashed onto the dark painted walls
by the camera in my mind and
the sunrise over St. James' Park.
The Room (February 4, 2000)
at a time when I least expected it
and in a place where it couldn't have happened
it did.
She sat slumped beside me
holding that magazine out
straight out and away.
the moment held some kind of magic
but probably just for me
the magic it held for her was of the
picture
in the magazine
an attic
a fat feather bed
low roof
wooden this and that
lots of sun through the end windows
she said she could live there
and lie and read
and lie and write
and ...
so could I.
it passed, just as these things do
time became more important
than dreams and magazines
and moments like this just hang around until
I get time to write them down.
Something she said. February 6, 2000
Something she said made me think about love.
Do I have it?
If I have it will I keep it?
If I keep it will I get tired of it?
All of this makes me think I haven't had it yet.
I know, I know
after all of this you say
but what were all of those words about?
Well, first there was infatuation.
Then there was lot of lust,
lots and lots of that.
Then there was a fear of being alone, mixed with lust
and mild infatuation
(not the crazy rip your hair out kind)
and that settled in to whatever it is now.
I say love, I think I mean love but
life doesn't come with a manual and I can't look up love
and then take the test.
I might know it when it comes along, when I get that sinking
awful chest crunching pow that bends me in two
and has me grovelling in front of her.
Something she said made me think about love.
Right now I wish I hadn't listened.
2/7/2000 10:51:05 PM
The Hill
Back in time now, to the trying teenage times
I'd head up the road and across some fields
to the hill.
Not far from the house, but far enough
not real high but high enough
the days I remember are the dark blustery days
of course
the wind and the clouds
darkness in the sky
darkness in me.
I guess I'd go soaring there
flying high and away from the troubles below
across the fields into the wind.
The hardest part was coming down,
trying to fit back into my shell
usually successful but the odd time
with a bit of wing still sticking out,
my family would ask where I'd been.
Friday February 25, 2000
My mind is a bit screwed up I think.
Each night before sleep it sends me images of the awfulest
things it can imagine.
I won't get into it here but, believe me, they are sickening.
It's as if it's trying to make me think of all the crap in order for me
to have a good sleep.
So, continuing on this note I had another thought today.
If you can think of the worst things your mind can drag up, you know
the longest twisting agonies that you can imagine, you can bet that someone
somewhere has done it to another human.
I guess on the opposite side of the coin. when you consider things like
a mother's love, a father's patience, a child's adoration of you
then you will also see that
there is some yin and yang in all of this.
Further along, I guess you might see why and how religion and such
things started.
Personally I hope the good far outweighs the evil, the pleasure
long outdoes the pain.
So you thought I just went to bed and read your poems, and thought about
long hair and softness and you.
Nope. It's a bit more complicated, a bit more painful than that.
The softness and you come later in dreams. I wake up knowing
that neither one is reality.
I guess my mind doesn't exactly sugarcoat it's thoughts, while
my heart does just the opposite.
Damn, wish they would get together and formulate a concept of
reality that I can deal with.
Hate the start, hate the end, the middle is ok.