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.”
Somewhere in my house 1:35am
Tonight I danced
To the 50’s, 60’s & 70’s
But when the DJ asked
“What’s your favourite song?”
Eye couldn’t come up
With a single Hip Hop
Answer
My Corner Room 9:42am
There lies a massive ship
Embanked by the horizon
Between the grey of the sky
And the grey of the ocean
Held by the silver line —
The strip of its own proportion —
Eye couldn’t see it
Otherwise
Somewhere in my house 6:24am
Eye have been shot
Through the hips
Thigh
More than I care to remember
And now I must cry
Out for The Man
Who will bring M(eye) Face
Front & Center
Somewhere in my house 7:11am
Somewhere in the dead of night
Eye drempt of a woman with a penis
She was a comely thing —
Sitting in a beige office skirt
In someone’s kitchen
The morning after
Somewhere in my house 9:00pm
Eye have left him
In my wake
Awash in a pool
Of questioning
And will not call him names
Though I could —
Eye will not
Call
My Window Seat 7:05am
Now that Stratospheric Universe
Is framed by Its ancient
Necklace
Eye see The Painting
Through the eyes
Of the dead —
Those cherished
Who are no longer here —
My List?
My Grandparents
My Parents
My Brother
My Uncles
My Aunts
and Guy Tozzoli
Former Director
of The World Trade Center
Who used to call me
by My Last
Name
My Second Floor 7:42am
The tail end of hurricane Jose
Flipped the south east corner
Of STRATOSPHERIC UNIVERSE
And in the darkened wind
I dismantled the trapezoidal concrete blocks
Of my one-and-only flower bed
To reinforce the whole east side
And woke this morning to see
That my heroic effort
From the night before
Enhances the art
And so I will shop for more
Garden blocks
To carry out the remainder
Of my protective frame
