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Another of me is
staring down a rainbow
and winning, if it can be called that.
Is populating the stars.
Is building a rocket,
another rocket.

Another of me is
not. But this is as it should be.
Stillborn. In the wings the ghost
waits for a body,
another body.

Another of me is
running beside, behind, wherever,
binding strings to ever-failing
hooks. Loss of feeling
but a step, a step,
another step.

Another of me is
scraping the sky’s square feet,
hand in setting concrete,
hand over the reins,
a taller, taller, taller, ever taller almost
another meter.

Another of me
holds the gun.
Centre target,
not to be outdone.
She tries, tries, tries,
the metal’s hot:
a new clip,
another shot.

Another of me
can’t hold it together. Ball of wax, blazing sun, line breaks
and it’s done. Words don’t make sense, senses don’t make words.
Poor translation. From the tongue to the tongue or the keyboard.
Either way, there is no way. There must be a way. Not this way.
Another way.

Another of me
wrote is all down and forgot it.
Better to say what passes for nothing.
How are you – how about this weather! – how’re the dogs -
could have done without that snow – Leafs are out of the playoffs -
did you get that thing you were looking for – are you slowly dying -
but afraid to tell anyone that you’re slowly dying -
are you a prison unto yourself full of words that must one day tumble out -
will they tumble out of you into a stranger -
will they break free one day -
my goodness that traffic -
should have taken the 403 -
doing well – another dollar
another day.

Another is me
looks back at you. He asks,
“What have you read? What does it mean?”
And you say,
“It means what it means to me.”
He is frightfully angry because you
are wrong. Wrong!
But there’s nothing he
can do about it but write
another one.

To you
I dedicate the language
of quantum mechanics:
the placelessness of electrons,
how they are either/or but not between.

Yours
are effects that precede causes,
spooky action at a distance,
a furious bubbling into and
out of existence.

To you
I dedicate Newton’s still-moving heart,
the antique, inadequate design.
With love, to all the yous
I’ve discovered.

The strings move;
the anvil shivers.
The story as it is told
is not the interpretation,
not the corners,
not the angles,
not the balancing act
between Plato and Jesus,
not the plate of stained
glass that interrupts.

A thousand years pass
and nothing happens

but

fruit weighs down branches
and falls to the ground

a tree grows that is a great tree
but is also a great forest
an outcropping rises that is
a great mountain
but is also a great range
of mountains

and

this is not what we
thought would
happen.

I would like to become
very small
and swim
in the blood of I
right to the heart
write something that
can’t be viewed upside down and backwards and inside out
but instead can only be read
just so.

Prologue

Before the I that is I was the I that was,
in prototypical amneosis, on transfer paper,
words chiselled to bend straight the I
or bend crooked the I
or it’s more complicated than that;
phrases that begged only to scream
and it will appear, lemon in their infancy,
a first suckling sentence;
in the I that was not was that I that is,
also, ahead of all and behind it,
frost settling itself paragraphs,
fog clearing but traces itself chapters,
whose well-worn pages are the I that was
and the I that is and the I that will be
doomed to repeat it.

Movement 1

These are fingers and these are toes
and these are the planes on which they go,
a mobile object lesson: get as far as you can;
these are numbers and these are letters
and together they can you can if you want to;
eventually pick one or the other
or the other if you pick the other
or the powers of two if you pick the one;
every other finger
every other toe
goes home.

Movement 2

For seven uneven years I saw the chip where it had bounced
and skidded into the corner; every time my toe slid into the groove
I’d recall the few inches I dared not cover,
sometimes cursing sometimes blessing sometimes
absent-mindedly doing the bare-metal calculations;
there still my concrete Jesus is the absence
of something, though those who walk on him now
do not stuff their prayers into the gap;
someone else owns it now: perhaps they
feel that fulcrum, now, where I was made whole.

Movement 3

Round the pole, round and round the pole
I swung under trellis and grape vines
until wine sprayed from between my toes;
a broken bottle in the grass:
oh who has done this wonderful thing!
the white coated soldier coolly took
a spear to my flesh;
I was dead to the world for three hours
till I woke again, and in the black art of it
I still don’t recognize myself.

Interlude

The tangent is determined by measurement;
the instrument, however, is imprecise.
If the system is large enough, we can predict outcomes.
We are too small to notice, then,
and call it freedom.

Movement 4

First of many wounds or wound of many firsts
I am still not sure; shoeless in the orchard
you turned into a pillar: looking back
I call you Carthage or high blood pressure.
The law broke as I touched you,
inscrutable tablets crumbling on my lips:
Thou shalt not, but I did and the glory departed,
a crane tumbling headless to the ground.

Movement 5

Bless the Lord O my body & soul
and forget not all his benefits:
there will be no fillings in the new Jerusalem,
and no Powerpoint presentations;
there will be no budget requirements,
and no boards of review;
there will be no timeclocks
and no shiftwork;
there we be no acronyms
and no acrimony;
but O dear heaven
let there be dogs!

Movement 6

There and back again and there and back again
and there and back again again;
feet of clay mixed with iron and you have
worn them clean to the knuckle;
how many ridiculous hoops on fire before
I’d burn the whole thing down just to show you
who’s boss is whose boss?
Shifts in perspective and I felt each acutely
in the peppermint vomit over the side
of my porcelain Picasso,
in the frenzied stuttered hammering to keep
the charred timbers and holy sheet afloat;
the idol falls, the axe is laid at the root,
and I am stumping for a new vessel.

Epilogue

Before the we we are we were the we we were,
in starlit amneosis, encased in carbon;
now, when you are to me like oxygen to fire
to a city made of matchsticks
to a world of crumpled newspaper,
I can only admit to the movement that
brought me to this place;
soon enough, my love, soon enough,
but not soon enough.

Whose silence is this
that sweeps past like a rolling cloud
of dust?

Whiskey quiet. Cigar quiet.
The house murmurs as it settles in
for the night. Planets and stars
listen and nod. Lungs that whisper,
mind that hums, heart that
mocks, take heart.

All the good people have died.
Your memories of them soon to die as well:
Tablets of untranslatable laws
fall from their pedestals,
paving the way
forward.

You know whose silence this is, then,
and how it will break slowly,
like a breath you can only hold
for so long.

You don’t need to say anything more
complicated than
“You don’t need to say anything more
complicated”.

Leave behind any words you want to learn.
Become a child. Unlearn the syllables.
Let them fall around you like leaves.
Bare branches. Beautiful.

Throw them away. Refuse
to use them. Become blind
and deaf and dumb and
whatever it takes

to say it.

where do we go when we want something to do mississauga
all our friends are twenty-three minutes away by car mississauga
an outlet store to the west mississauga
the same store to the east mississauga
houses slapped up with irrepressible urgency mississauga
houses falling down with inevitable precocious decay mississauga
nothing to do nothing to see so we go to a thousand malls mississauga
so we eat american food mississauga
so we buy american clothes mississauga
seven high-rise condos looking for a city centre mississauga
six lanes of hummers breathing down your neck mississauga
five minutes along the four-oh-three and you’re done mississauga
four transit stops from a city mississauga
a great place to sleep mississauga
bury me anywhere where else mississauga

Smile that smile for me one more time,
and I’ll carry it to the finish line.

You grin, I’ll bear it,
10-carat

or more. Sold every last jewel.
Went back to school

and studied you. Passed.
Cast, re-caste,

but I got the part.
Moving picture, art

with mass appeal.
If this is real,

it’s better than the dream.
And… scene.