New Thyme 10:34 p.m.

 

storm at the family cottage in thunder bay 8:07 p.m.

Tree branches slap angrily against aging siding
Like the master’s whip against the bare skin of the
Boy who stole bread from the kitchen and was caught.

Rain hesitates in the parts of the sky nearest to Heaven,
Parts which I have seen only from airplanes, sipping tomato
Juice, reading newsprint and fearing death obediently.

Wrinkled palms smack laminate counters with familiar rhythm
And a fat yellow Labrador retriever barks at the screen of the
Door which confines it to its allowed space like a stupid beast.

Dirty towels and cedar panels, the latest publication on wealth,
music, how to keep the weight off, and this season’s best in pet gear
and top-of-the-line ice cream makers confine me to mine quietly.

Life is the thing which keeps the women in the kitchen reddened
Like fight-filled children, squealing hatred from all available orifices.
What fiction, rattle the blackened skies, that blood is thicker than water.

Thunder ten pins through the heavens like a chorus to the hotly felt verses
Of angry speech that the mistresses of the house pitch to the walls intently
As though words could meet and conquer wallpaper to reveal some antique

Truth preserved in flour-water.

Truth like fabric woven through years of antagonism and strife, bloody
Miscarriages of justice and faith and sisterhood and the dog
Now barks past the screen to the world and it is undeniably a prayer

Or proposition for a cease fire, a laying down of arms and words as the rain
Changes it fickle mind and leaves are silent with the smell of crushed
Revolution and the sky is painted a fresh shade asphalt with all its promises of

Destruction/Freedom

Still in tact.

the ugliest part of town 10:41 a.m.

finch and dufferin: i dare you to find worse. i come up here every now and again for work -- my company has access to a boardroom on alness street. the landscape's unreal this far north. hideous high-rise apartment buidlings, noisy four lane streets framed by stripmalls containing businesses that all look as though they're having a closing out sale. shitty restaurants, bridal shops, a strip bar or two. second floor nail salons and dental offices, bus benches that remind you to call this real estate agent or that personal injury lawyer. it's thoroughly depressing. and accessible only by bus.

i'm definitely infringing on copyright 9:07 p.m.

posting this poem, evie christie's. it's too good, i want the world to read it:

That We Could Let the Season Fall

Not so long ago your parents loaded
you into the yellow Dodge -- a meteor
shower made you forget
just how much you hated your sister. The rusted flatbed,

the smell of gasoline and blackness
were a universe. These days you are never
far from pills that keep you three feet
from anywhere, half a mile between thought and speech,

and your mother calls too often for even
you to believe it's okay -- believe
there is a universe, stars ablaze and falling,
burning, settling into darkness. That we could let the seasons fall

around us without recalling the times
we smiled artlessly at the buckled skies
would be mad. Let the scar
beneath your chin remember a hostile winter, a BMX

and flying, books studded with bus tickets,
ash smudged verses, your fervent youth.
Let a voice remind, across cities tonight,
how you hitched Highway 7, out of your village, .357 replica

tucked in your waistband, to meet the world half
way. Now there are cigarettes and weak syndicated
TV, now there is instant coffee, blinds drawn
and a phone that sings from that world you cannot bear to answer.

a good one 11:17 p.m.

patrice desbiens was born in timmins, ontario and first published in the mid-seventies. if you want to read the english translation, go for it, but it's not nearly as good.

Je me souviens d'une station wagon qui coupe la nuit
qui ouvre la nuit du nord comme un couteau de chasse
ouvre sa proie
Nous sommes tous là
ma mère ma sœur son mari et ses enfants tous
dans cette voiture c'est
Johnny B. Good Leblanc qui conduit son visage vaguement
éclairé par la lueur du tableau de bord
Je suis le seul des passagers qui ne dort pas tandis
qu'on continue avec un océan de vert meurtri de
chaque côté
Ma sœur dort sur le banc d'en avant
la noirceur qui rentre et sort de sa bouche ouverte
La nuit est longue et sans plis
La nuit est longue et sans plis
La nuit est longue et sans plis
La nuit est longue et sans Soudainement
quelque chose déchire le tissu quelque chose bouge
là et
le pare-brise devient un écran cinémascope les phares
de Twentieth Century Fox et Gulf Western éclairant
l'animal l'animal l'orignal en plein milieu du chemin
qui fige et
fixe son destin qui roule vers lui à 60 milles à l'heure
Ses yeux ses yeux ses yeux ô dieu son regard jusqu'à
la dernière minute et le choc sourd-muet de fer contre
chair
Et ma sœur qui se réveille en criant un grand cri
fou et
final comme si l'âme de l'orignal avait passé dans
elle en
mourant et enfin
le silence
le silence de notre silence dans
le silence entre
Timmins et Toronto.

if only unedited meant raw - how do you feel about parentheses? 10:13 p.m.

it doesn't really, mostly it means rough in a few choice spots, in need of a little attention which i don't have time to provide it with at the moment...and for the record, i like them. i like them a lot.

build the walls, brick by brick and stop to contemplate the ceiling

the sky is black like a milne watercolour in a gallery
too small for its city but well-intentioned like the rest of us,
tired and trying like the rest of us in the stormy epilogues
of sunlight our kings and our men (jokers all of them)
invading some warmer plane with brighter lights
and properly thought out plans of attack in some more
radiant place with raked sand and sparkling children
(captains all of them) sensitive and blessed with grand
brush strokes (lilies)—left with impressions the rest of us,
thinner coats of paint and earmuffs packed away like the dirty
ghosts of sound from the last great conversation
which begs to be repeated beneath a lighter expanse
beneath a brighter expanse and those city signs will not trick us,
will not have us believe that we’ve arrived, we know better,
the rest of us, having been deprived, having tried
the honest costume and having been discovered in the most
painful circumstance (bare) we will afford the rest of them
no grace and no advance we will orchestrate this war from
beneath our black sky (violins) and we will be victorious
we will die victorious with the blood of our slaughtered
borrowed futures testifying to our glory, testifying to a breed
of success so twisted that only the trampled spirits
of our generation will know its celebration will know
the walls that we have built in these afterthought years, bound
and blistered by modernity (and what should follow) only they
will know the brick to lay, the pride and secret, the dry
dust-filled breath and only they will know that we’ve kept
at bay the demons of our black skies for one day, more
fighting with the cruel vigor of orphaned warriors,
the sparkle of our unborn babes sharpening our dirty blades