In the course of the setting sun
Eye have gone from
A bare-legged, sun-glassed
Object
In my un-shaded living room window
To the lone light
In an upper storey
Turret
On the cover
Of an old Victorian novel
He said It was like eating
Ice cream —
Too much and you wouldn’t
Like It anymore.
He said It up in his parents’
Green Room —
Last night I saw Big
Dipper in the Northwest Sky —
This morning it tipped
The October sunrise
Has not happened yet —
Eye am writing in the twilight
Of my event —
Venus is suspended
Above unwarmed clouds
And the ocean shoreline
Is silhouetted
With sparse spruce
And one roof
With a complimentary porch light
Eye went around today
Dressed like Alice In Wonderland
Looking for a home
For Stratospheric Universe
And encountered two televisions:
One in a car dealership
With a man-eating volcano
Which turned into a contemporary
“LET’S MAKE A DEAL”
(with commercials showing sick chemo patients) —
And one in a great grandmother’s kitchen
Showing Scottish and Irish gangsters
Exclaiming “fuck” (repeatedly)
In the 1800’s
I have made my bed for men
Show-stoppers
Who have yet to come
Up from my depths
To greet
My smile
Unearthed
From the belt
Of Orion
Eye have driven, pounded
Through the flames of my desire —
Fog has floated in
Around me now
And the peak of my orange/ red
Has been left behind
For some other star-struck
Bohemian
If Eye were in an alien
Space ship
I would direct the commander —
Or would I be the commander?
To put the lights on
“Flare”
To settle in for the night
On the high inshore
Seas of
Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia
Where only Time —
That Human Construct —
Would convey My Story
To The Living Souls
Of an injected —
But not rejected —
Community of
On-lookers
My grandfather used to leave
The room
If a television commercial
Was coming on —
He would excuse himself
To go “vomit”
And now his grand-daughter
Contemplates
Dressing herself in black lace
To attend a domestic
Dinner gathering
Where marijuana might be served
from “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov, page 267
“I have often noticed
that we are inclined to endow our friends
with the stability of type
that literary characters aquire
in the reader’s mind.
No matter how many times
we reopen King Lear,
never shall we find the good king
banging his tankard in high revelry,
all woes forgotten,
at a jolly reunion
with all three daughters
and their lapdogs.
Never will Emma rally,
revived by the sympathetic salts
in Flaubert’s father’s timely tear.
Whatever evolution
this or that popular character
has gone through between
the book covers,
his fate is fixed in our minds, and,
similarly,
we expect our friends to follow
this or that logical and conventional pattern
we have fixed for them.
Thus X will never compose
the immortal music
that would clash
with the second-rate symphonies
he has accustomed us to.
Y will never commit murder.
Under no circumstances
can Z ever betray us.
We have it all arranged
in our minds,
and the less often
we see a particular person
the more satisfying it is to check
how obediently he conforms
to our notion of him every time
we hear of him.
Any deviation in the fates
we have ordained
would strike us as not only anomalous
but unethical.
We prefer not to have known at all our neighbour,
the retired hot-dog stand operator,
if it turns out he has just produced
the greatest book of poetry
his age has seen.”
Joanna Gilman Hyde 