Hummingbird

Her nose brushed mine

Butterfly kisses.

Her hair was pink,

Turned into a hummingbird.

We stood by the water you were there too.

We were sitting on steps. Piano was playing.

Sparkling.

She was so beautiful.

Tattoo on her shoulder danced in the sunlight.

If I had stayed we would have gotten on a boat.

Hair dances, I think she did too.

Didn’t say a word. Words aren’t everything,

I say.

It was a moment short and calm, porcelain and strong.

Sparkling.

I stick my head out the window

Our patriarchy is just more hidden

I stick my head out the window; broad snowflakes dust my face.

Our patriarchy is just more hidden.

“We don’t do that here.”

Our patriarchy is just more hidden.

The 600 women killed by Canadian-born white bread.

The stories not covered,

Their bodies covered by dirt, not even a diligent attempt to hide.

And what sticks in our minds?

          Pig farmer.

And what stays in our minds?

          Honour killing.

And what is overlooked?

          Women are being

                   Killed

                   By men.

Expressionless face mouths the damaging, slow-motion words:

“run of the mill domestic violence.”

I stick my head out the window.

If we name the honour killing

We should name the native-killing;

The wheelchair razing;

The nameless-so-you-can’t-be-identified cowardly killings. The

Easy targets.

By any other name.

Our patriarchy is more hidden.

‘Our’ implicates me.

Compelling

Propelling myself to a place with a microphone in front of my face.

Break it down.

Better, build something up around it. We are creators. Engulf it, so it becomes a speck on an old grey stone in a wall – cemented, no longer free to roll, gaining force, picking up dirt, pebbles, an avalanche by the time

it hits.

Build, use your arms, your strength to over power it.

Stare at it and say I know you’re hiding, I know you’re there, and this game

Is over.

I stick my head out the window. Breath.

Is it honour that drives women to be plastered on billboards, for all us to see?

Honour, that keeps us quiet when that sexist joke is told – don’t embarrass yourself it’s just a joke.

Honour that prevents us from parting our lips and making sounds, opening up to the world, that knowledge that we have?

Honour, or is it shame?

By any other name.

Recognize your worth.

Hold it, like water, cupped, in hands upturned.

  Be careful. It slips through.

Epitaph for Apathy:

Here she lies, beloved wife of Lethargy, 
loving mother of two lazy children. 
"Art and politics, are best experienced from far away. 
Fire is hottest close up."

Time Passes

Time passes

That’s what it does

Time passes like an impatient driver passing in the left lane.

Revs the engine, glares out the passenger side window

Time passes.

Precipitation falls.

That’s what it does

It falls, racing to the ground, to finally rest, to hit the pavement, settling, only to be summoned again, not ready to ascend but up it goes. Time waits for no droplet.

Future happens.

Future happens when you’re busy sitting on a chair, cushions surrounding, fingers flailing, clicking, clicking.

Future happens when, inspired, poems distract you from the task at hand.

The task at hand distracts you from the future, (the present) and so it goes.

Time passes.

Snowballs are formed, then they hit. On impact they come apart and the pieces, so small, melt quickly.

Revolution’s lead-up is prickly, its result disappointing. And its body, painful and illogical in every step.

I feel at home where there is struggle.

I feel at home amongst the rough and the poor.

More,

I feel at home where people are discontent, unquiet, where the trees are not groomed, where the concrete is cracked and where one of the doors is always locked.

I feel at home where struggle is real. Where the people I see, asking for money, aren’t pretending to be in need.

Not a false mandate, channeled hate, or one-sided debate.

And our bodies: a statement of resistance in every step.

But change can be written and change can be bitten, making rabid what was written calm.

And our words: a statement of compliance in every space on the page.

What if I had resisted with every inch of my body?

What if I had permitted his hands to slide under my arms, to grasp my hot anger and drag me into holding? Holding my resistance in his gloved hands; Quieting my unsymmetrical demands.

Would the weather have cooled, the air frozen?

And my questions: a remark on the unclarity of every step.

They have held up pillars, stayed after they have been knocked down.

Smoke and Words

They moved to the suburbs. Got pools

got fooled;

their own tricks used against them.

Peacock’s nothing more than an ornery hen.

“The neighbo[u]rhood of poetry and rhetoric.”

Party at my place tonight

Wander down the block to the house with the red door,

with the painting of the peacock

crawling up the edge on the east side. Its rising. Its raising.

They get together and play word games. Eat flambés, say beautiful

things for their own sake.

Quote Elliott and Joyce, flirt like little

girls and little boys, all curtsies and courtesies.

‘Wait til she sees my new publication: On the Word What.’

Just because.

The neighbourhood went up in smoke last week.

Rhetoric has to speak to the insurance company;

poetry never got insurance. Thought nothing bad could ever happen: 

the place was too beautiful to burn.

So all the fucking paper burned.

Smokey maché churned the words and up they flew, mingled with the smoke, forced up by some physics they didn’t understand: They’re rising, they’re raising.

Now the clouds are full of smoke and words. And all the clever

tricks that were written, that had to be read to be understood
are gone.

Free, honest again. In the clouds where they should be and

where they began.

And poetry and rhetoric are naked.

All their clothes burned.

And their neighbourhood is a pile of smouldering ashes.

Atop the pile sits a particularly elaborately-coloured peacock, all

proud and calling, his Tail spread wide and he’s tramping the dust with strong claws and toes and its rising its raising.