Writing Way North Writing Way North Writing

2012-01-10T20:48:00.000-08:00

Blockade 3

| you were there, hobo, ostrich-rider | aknack for being in the wrong place and a disregard for personal safety | can’tstop can’t slow can’t give can’t care can’t live can’t recant can’t not can’t | bythe sign saying ‘watching for trucks turning’, by the sign that something isawry | theterritory’s family name |

sub-boreal spruce and balsam: picea speaking outside the frame | theresult is not conclusive, but the intervening language moved back south |what is it about the interruptionof the normal? | wild rose cattail soapberry and raspberry

| thefirst bulldozer here 1969 under Socreds | gravelfrom Chetwynd

How I Joined the Seal Herd Too

2011-06-27T20:38:00.002-07:00

I learned

to let my body give it was not I

who controlled the rocks

Robert Kroetsch (1927-2011)

for an instant I thought

of the difference between air and

without thinking her flipper

buoyed me out of

gender and the institution was

what I forgot

ankle turned into the fin

I always wanted to know

something other than air

float belly-centered in love

and it was not difficult this

landlessness at the pivot

of our dance what matters

what touches in what language

when the others join too

the curbs and spiral stairways

will all dissolve into swirls

of joy and breaches

and when I spun surprised

in the blue-grey to look

surprised at her eyes she

even more surprised was

there too really really

the waters were words mostly

verbs of being ecstatic and

I did not miss my groin

at all sleek we swam away

iceflows and schools of ideas

art and movement through liquid

ease she teases and swims better

than I ever dreamed

another state of being

intimate with oneself water

a wet embrace of care full

of promise loveswirl

and swerve you sped

ahead and I learning

floundered after eyes

finding new colours the shape

of your longing receding

a moment of doubt would

you leave adrift I wonder

how would I find land again but

by body knows now it will not

turn back arched

dives deeper

where currents meet and fishes

are rich we reached fins skyward

stretching the surface of the

possible beach pebbles against

skin a sound of release

the a waffling wake of

past lives land-bound slow

walkers and linear thinking

maybe you and I maybe

water riffled around our discourse

of love bubbling with the future

my sore ears disappeared overused

to the inane blathering of news

your paper fell apart paint ran

books disintegrated into soggy messes of intention

clothes dissolved into sensation

our house became the many

horizons became a progress toward

on nervousness 2

2011-05-28T16:53:00.002-07:00

whining at the door of

ridiculous requests

hoping that the rash

is not related

stuttering on an explanation

with no question

blabbering on about

herbs and balloons

the century that can

shatter the human myth

the man leaned out the driver

window with his bad teeth

all the reasons are piled

against the wall of the artery i keep forgetting the name of but it is an important one and in real life not at all the neat shape you see on hallmark cards and if i gush will i come clean will the toxins spill out into the river and kill fish eggs aorta it’s the aorta i am thinking of and it constricts when i say i love you but is it the climate my aging cells or true

writing and deleting the same

message 44 times

writing a message and sending

it but before you ~~where~~ were ready

chest pains are a sign hung

on the door saying ‘i am still here’

The Acoustic North

2011-05-11T23:31:00.000-07:00

The word “scenic” stuck in the back of your throat
as you trample the mycelium. The word “wilderness”
as the multiple slime moulds cleanse the spill. The
word “refuge” as the word “recreation” is nailed up
beside the highway. The word “cut” as TFL tenures
cease. The word “resource” as the job ad for customer
relations is posted. The word “plastic” blasts through
exterior of everything. The word “tree” caught in traffic
at Robson and Granville. The word “contour” as a
measure of where you are standing, askance, watching
the subtle movements of a place, its inhabitants, the
busy living that is not you and catching the wave. The
words “joint review panel” sets the stage and lighting and
charges admission at the door and chats over drinks at the
hotel bar, tips big. The word “compassion” sidles up the
scree slope hoping to the catch the human world by surprise.
The word “road” stretches you from the word “here” to the
word “if” and in between the gravel base rolled tight under
asphalt is a desert. The word “Ahbau” from China—a lake,
a street—and the movement between. The word that drifts
downstream in the spring, charging the vegetable matter and
spurring the heat coming from the south face of a civilization.
The word “progress” squats at the side of the road too lost to
hitch, too broke to imagine, too tired to wish anyone ill. The
word tugs at the sleeve of the uninitiated, saunters into the
reading like an outsider, dumps her packsack in the corner,
turns to you, asks a question about water. The word
“bedsprings” dumped in the creekbed and taking on moss.
Whatever stands in place of something else, a metaphor for
actual contact, laid overtop or sketched in chalk on the
sidewalk. The word “echo” choosing to return angles
etched from machines, windfall, lecterns, and corporate
manifesto. The word “north” carries you back to camp,
puts an herbal balm on the wound, tries to explain where
you went wrong.

What the Men Said

2011-04-11T15:42:00.002-07:00

divisions take on the character of said

conflict, sliding into the role as if

to say, ‘here I am

apart’ or something larger

the grandfather would say it

in silence and a swift

whack of power comes

with no context

the men stood around

bereft and swinging for

the fences—fame I suppose,

some sort of immortality

caught up in the sting of

knowing the pain could be lost could

be healed under

here the men said the getting

was good and everything was

freedom which means pain

inflicted quietly, in domesticated ways

means seven of the eight readers

were men and the one woman was

coined in brass and strung out

here the men are libertine, which means

ancient and schooled in the ways of

creeping posts and grooming the style,

the candor of oppression

here the men said nothing has happened

and will never

ungulate blood

2011-04-11T15:40:00.002-07:00

the map was inconclusive and where

we were was a matter of

conversation, gesture, weather

the mother was looking not

for us but for shelter from

our knowing

anything

the books were still

the dull red spots in the snow

are not a cipher but the first

thing that a new world would know

Poem Changes Her State

2011-01-16T18:08:00.000-08:00

the gist of the line or a palette

filled with culture, plastic and

the casual violence of progress

and she teases out of the everyday

daylight sparkles of irony or

a watery chop of sarcasm washing

all those states of being entangled with

patriarchy, its formulated use

of her, her skills, hands across

her mouth, hardly making a

mark, but a thieving all

the things she’d wishes into being

hers, art, justice, the wild

grins of kids by the cleaned-up

pond, standing tall, unprecedented

contact across the impossible

would mean a new paradigm for

touch, lightlight, there and safe

the slurry

2010-10-20T17:31:00.001-07:00

as ideas move across, a wet

interaction will form, made

of material from the sharpening

mind and the listener--it is important that this

remain in the poem to facilitate

slippage and friction

as the moisture in the language

drops, it is crucial that it be kept wet,

slurry re-applied to the reading act because

it contains all the particles—the pieces and fragments

of thought up until that point in the

text—and so will contribute to the

meaning: fine, keen, ready to work

High rings & harm

2010-05-12T09:00:00.002-07:00

by Si Transken

It’s not funny. It’s tragically absurd.

Ugly as an incurable ill that intermittently

recedes below the skin. The sores stop seeping.

It camouflages itself as non-contagious.

You know you’re old when you’ve sat on

more than a 100 hiring committees – from feminist

grassroots non-profits to hiring committees

for org.coms with planes of snow men in suits.

Usually the hired person has an inside track

to the ear of someone already who knows

someone who is sleeping with someone or

the son or daughter of a someone.

Sometimes the most wrong candidate is chosen.

Appointed because they’re the least disliked,

minimally offensive – rather than

that they’re the most skill endowed.

My molars are worn from all the grinding.

Or the person with the obviously

politically correct & stacked disadvantages

gets the position. Stats improve.

No structural or organization change.

Someones make each other shine

& multiply. They fortify each other’s

fortresses. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Everyone’s invited to a barbeque.

Church & club members are keenest

to reproduce their own while being

butter slimy & honey honey sweet

about honesty & transparent process.

I know I’m old because I care only

passingly these days. I see the slides & slithers

of power under the enunciations, behind

the doors, through dozens of disguises.

My eyes hurt from watching all this.

Aware. Aching with ridiculous impotency

I see the lean of the hiring panel into following the

leader who is the whitest, most Big Daddy,

heterosexual, healthy unflawed body …

Recycle the old boy’s networks.

Now with a Sarah Palin/ Margaret Thatcher, Queen Bee,

Cheerleader girl, handmaiden casting with the boys.

Or a token beige boy’s allowed to pretend to lead.

Old tricks. Old codes. An old dog

I pull my unremarkable tail between my slow legs

with shame for being in the same room –

unable to bark. Or even shit on their shoes.

Decommissioning the Road In

2010-04-20T13:28:00.002-07:00

that part living human made

dammed or cut, a lack

of flow in the elements of knowledge

relegated to charts and boardroom

sludge, tailings and run-off clogged

with the residue of ire

to remove the road’s meaning

from here to there the trans-

port a running over, a spill-

way tread deep into the layered

stories of who and what before

rail, pipe, asphalt, ATV

tracks all to get what’s to be got

out of other concerns duly

noted in the consultation process

that living flow is nonhuman

made and divisible by measures,

an unknown technology and

narrative turn just where the road

thought it was stable, before the new

mythology told it why.

from "The Barricades Project, the Life-Long Poem, and the Politics of Form Notes towards a Prospectus" by Stephen Collis

2010-03-30T08:52:00.000-07:00

"I am consistently struck by the singular unambitiousness of much contemporary poetry. It would seem that, as poetry slipped from cultural significance (or at least was perceived to have slipped from perceived significance), poets have simultaneously retired to the safety of lyric introspection, becoming specialists of the quotidian, the small, the insular, the private—shrinking from the historical, social, and public. So poets bemoan the loss of “the centrality of the single poem,” and seek a return to the safe sealed domain of the singular page."

Speaking in English

2010-03-19T23:35:00.000-07:00

I have these

voices in my blood that sang me sitting here

John Lent

You could walk along an avenue here

many places actually and there would appear

unmagically asphalt and road signs and

houses, large and small, and a store

and another (a pedestrian—“hello”) and

another (this one selling something you need

to go with the stuff the first one is selling)

and a restaurant and another,

a government office, a police station . . .

well, you get the picture

You could walk along an avenue here

unmagically and begin to peel away

its imposition, to trace the paths

of its assertion, to unearth (much like

an unearthed mass grave that had gone

unrecorded) the measures of violence

that made this avenue you walk

You could walk differently along this

incline of forgotten waterways

and smell the uprooted vegetation

notice a furtive movement here

a motion that is unmagically you.

Poem’s Epitaph

2010-03-13T21:51:00.003-08:00

now or then it might be

a letter a

chiseled sound-

shaped trace I

read at the funeral

a eulogy-filled

apology for not being

more attentive to language

Here Lies

Poem (2008-2011)

What

Is Written Here

What Is Written

and you know Poem didn’t mean

it in jest or to disrupt

the wake

more of a moreover, more

sanguine than that

I still write to Poem sometimes

long complaints and article

analysis resurrecting old

readings and opinions of Poem,

why she left and who followed

it is one of those moments

when you recognize loss in an early morning daze, and

there Poem is again

agitated, vibrant,

reaching for the plums

Poem Communally Edits

2010-03-02T00:27:00.003-08:00

1) Go to a search engine, see if somebody else has done it already.

2) Poem blogs, studies the commentary cross-linked to other blogs.

3) Twitters in a hundred and forty characters. See if I can get that small. See if it gets retweeted

4) Open source the text; supply some instructables, see if the community takes it any further.

5) Start a Ning social network Poem, the name of the network will be the title, see if anybody accumulates around Poem.

6) Make a Poem video. Youtube it, see if it spreads virally, see if any media convergence accumulates.

7) Create a design fiction that pretends that Poem has already been written. Create some gadget or application or product that has some relevance to Poem and see if anybody builds it.

8) Exacerbate or intensify Poem with a work of interventionist tactical media.

9) Find some kind of pretty illustrations from the Flickr 'On Nothing' photo pool.

10) Then, and only then, Poem will go out and actually talk to someone.

11) Recombine data; go to step 1)

Poem’s Commodity Fetish

2010-03-01T12:51:00.002-08:00

in the reading

room or ancient tomb Poem

dreams of a well-wrought

yearning for something

more stylish or tricky

to show your friends or

ad lib in front of a modest

audience in that quiet café downtown

although at the time Poem

was disappointed with her purchase:

the seams hasty, the graphics

uninspired, an oily flavour . . .

sometimes the transaction is meant

to frustrate, like a rebellious

daughter or mid-life crisis tattoo

the text of which Poem now

carries on her left thigh high

enough to be her own

I can’t tell what is

there and there is no use

begging

Poem and the Nothing Ever After

2010-03-01T12:37:00.002-08:00

when verbs to be are

reclining not even wanting

to work standing well away from the road

where no traffic moves and

an inconsistent hum comes

from somewhere sourceless

to complicate contemplation

a stillness longing into nothing

more and narrative stalled

stuttering to a stop so the

road’s servitude isn’t one any more

postmodernism slips into the reeds

covered in mud called courage and carrying

succulents for the unstable winter

and everything moves

an inhuman vibration or

responsive leafy listening verging

on an apocalypse of knowledge or

when the machines and plots

desist, it is what is left

blandly undefined and bushed

what is left is a rift—ahistorical

and clustered around a faint

filtering disorder called shelter;

you and I live there for years until

the wild men came with weapons—

after that no records were kept . . .

what is left is considered

faulty verse, a hack’s

ruinous reinvention of negative

culpability—‘git outta here

ya damn tree-hugger, damn

hippy—build something or die!’

Poem Considers Masculine Profit

2010-02-26T12:01:00.000-08:00

penniless Poem does not look

well in this light, stark and industrial

dawns with loud semis coming

and going from the factory outlet

behind, a swamp squawks and chitters—

it is unclear whether it pre-existed the mall

or was moved there

Poem is waiting for a ride or something

like epiphany and is attracting stares

the guy across the way selling

burgers and whistling at a vague idea of salvation

why does Poem always end up out of it?

out of sync? out of fashion? out of the way?

pacifism ripples from the untoward

breeze, an ease, a conditional spark of

not knowing why or who to demean, not

wanting to own any of those favorite terms for torture

commercial driving love into mouths, a kind of self-
immolition and Poem exists, stubborn leaflets crumpling under
the boots of the pornographic entrepreneurs
consolidating an unsustainable hate into
something all the stakeholders can approve

jeez, Poem thinks, presses a thumb to his
pulse—if I am not a live man then I’d better
find some new seeds—not a plot but an area—

something simple, some camouflage, some cache

2010-02-09T21:57:00.001-08:00

on the road to the downsized pulp mill

2010-01-10T13:28:00.002-08:00

past the oxeye daisies, five or ten
in a clump in the gravel dust
piling on the leaves and petals

alder and cottonwood saplings
shining in the too-hot sun clinging
to the cutbanks and riverbanks
and the road’s cracked asphalt
gleams with the residue of tar and metal

the sound of the nechako is lost in the blare
of trucks and the glare of the windshields
pass along the far shore where a few
young pines survive and lean over the railway tracks

a bald eagle might pass over but not today—
if there are salmon they would have snuck by
months ago—so crows play in the hot
updrafts and a boy pedals down to look for
saskatoons and room to think of something new

Sea Otter Catches Colonization Under a Rock

2009-12-23T01:14:00.002-08:00

Still salty Salish air in fall
and the small flounder crunches
between her teeth

The otter numbers are up
not like stocks but spirits

She sits on a rock munching
the discourse called trade

that Spanish / Russian / British squeeze
in the straits when skins
came off with a sick sucking noise

Globalization dribbles off her pelt,
her nonchalance, her pregnant belly,

this counter-colonial moment in
English Bay, the tide just turning

her satisfaction in being

the largest service centre

2009-12-08T21:07:00.001-08:00

perfectly situated at the crossroads of two major highways and two
water ways also the junction for

the alaska highway

786km from

one of four secure custody centers in it both open and secure custody based

one of those gateways you first visit on business

also a staging centre for mining and prospecting

currently experiencing

bolstered by a body of reporters from 100 mile house through smithers

a leader in all facets of business and intends to be northern 's fastest growing call centre market

a great place to

currently experiencing enormous growth and improvement

located in the center of a vast

with many assets

an excellent choice for professional customer service

the perfect place to retreat after a hard days work

now home to 416 low

a northern capital

a bustling of 80

changing a vibrant of 70

located at the confluence of the fraser and nechako rivers

located at the confluence

about 800 km from

located in

known as a northern

located in the north central region of at the junctions of highways 97 and 16

the fourth largest in

"right in the middle of it all"

not any worse than the rest of the province in this category

a manufacturing and distribution center for an agricultural and lumbering region

a hub of activity offering visitors an

only local rival for impressive architecture

becoming one of the west's most popular snowmobiling destinations

home to approximately 65

the largest centre in our region

not allowed

ideal for those who utilize public transit or who

located in central approximately 496 miles from

the last of twenty

the primary trade and service area of 110

the regional service centre for post secondary education

directed to

located on a spur of land at the confluence of the fraser and nechako rivers

located right in the middle of and the regional centre of business

located about 400 miles north of vancouver on the fraser river

the voice for volunteerism in

all about

here

one of the cornerstones of this strategy

the only one of its type known to be preserved or to survive in canada

one of canada's investment hot spots

pleased to announce that a family has been selected for our first build

the main of the central interior

bad

known as the northern capital of a regional icon and a jewel in the crown of

fast becoming the jewel of

conveniently situated in the downtown core

what it

for all those reasons

dependent on the logging industry for its economy

a mid

the getaway that has it all

a cozy of 60

a sports persons parade

very excited as another prestigious event comes to our

in the heart of northern

the major transportation hub

situated at the confluence of two rivers and surrounded by extensive boreal forests

service driven

of the opinion

simply not true

The History of Listening

2009-12-08T20:20:00.001-08:00

nearing this heft, nearing
tides and lamplight and
accumulated heirlooms placed
in a row, tambourine-like, against
the pressure of outside, out
of hearing, struck instead
by the riotous friction of cells
on cells, hunger, tissue rustling
just to the left of profound—and
silence is cradled in your impossible mouth
a wordless o obediently biting
off a reply to propriety, a vital levity
in the parabolic viscera, those homey
keys to absolute knowing, knowing
the space your voice should be going,
should be a nostalgic scent in the fabric,
should be resolutely circling the already known.

Downtown Revitalization

2009-09-05T19:19:00.000-07:00

therapy for the rescued
handouts and a reconnection
to the river, assessments
of who is here and why

the heights harbour such
tax relief

the car no longer keyed
conversations begin on George St.
where none were before

it begins partly in a fourplex
on Spruce where awareness
is assembled on corkboard

it begins with that early contradiction:
love for the violent place,
the men who left, the women
who took over

like millworkers and treeplanters
eyeing one another at
Second Cup—a culpability
and an invitation over—
the first question being
‘what’s going on out there?’

Walking with Ken

2009-07-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

down Victoria, or up the hill
through crescents to Central, the powers
tilted away from speech,
each of us looking at the poem
before it is and then
rethinking why

Cranbrook Hill by the Dakelh name
and the cutbanks surround
the cupped hands of the city
taking and giving
while Ken speaks of outside, Blackwater
where the mountains are reflected
into uncertainty and systems
begin to inform the masses

I would not want to be
anywhere else but walking
with Ken, thinking about how
to stay and not betray

—if we were on a lake
it would be in a strong, well-made
canoe unlike the one
I leave in the yard unwritten

Poem the Pizza Guy

2009-06-21T00:08:00.000-07:00

older now, cognizant of commerce
base and superstructure service
the Poem of back then
rebellious against the sure thing
in everything and why not buy
a big goddamn
university degree, the canon
and all those myths out of fashion

now, Poem’s kids eat plain
cheese with multigrain crust

a different kind of economy, love

the shifts are similar, the structure
of directed apathy or panic, the mandatory
sequel, the media spin on feelings

Poem remembers the bird lady at the door
placing old coins in his palm
one at a time, slowly
reciting the full price intensely
focused hunger

“measures of wealth, well-being . . . “
begins to say something standing at
the corner of ethics and art
but the playoffs are on, jobs
are being cut, there is no time to think
we might be not possible

Linh Dinh from the NY Times

2009-06-05T16:01:00.001-07:00

"Confronted by a torrent of bad news from our capsized economy, many people anticipate at least the kind of unrest that has already broken out in many countries, but we are so docile, really. Some people I know speak of heading for the hills and stocking up on canned food, potable water, guns and slugs — the bunker mentality. But instead of fleeing one another, like we’ve already done for half a century or so, shouldn’t we figure out how to be closer in every sense? Why not shorten distances and trim all excess from our lives?

"More Americans are experiencing poverty by the day, and I’m certainly not making light of destitution, but it doesn’t seem to me that increasing consumption — “growth” — is the answer. My ambition was to become an artist, before I switched to something even more practical, poetry, but one need not be a bohemian to value activities that reward the mind and spirit.

"Smaller portions are in order. Simplicity is O.K. It’s time to slim down.
__________________

Linh Dinh is the author of four books of poems and two short story collections, including his most recent, Blood and Soap. His novel, “Love Like Hate,” will be published in 2010 by Seven Stories Press.

We Dream Backward: A Glosa

2009-05-26T23:14:00.000-07:00

the standing address, naked and constitutional
mirrored or thinking of one—one—
self many times: the thick air, re mind
divided between affiliations/mind
an ecology

independence a vitamin
or waterway erosion
the force of dissatisfaction turned

lovewords and systembreaking
and breath

such an address’s
mediation is the subject—classrooms waver—
20th Century bodies are new and
old—the text of skin, skin of
text’s bones, bones of one’s own senses coursed (“all” and
“you” Fr.) into Main St. discourses
with rules, miscreants, war . . .

if there is a narrative it is recurring and
repressive; if there is a poetic it is
non-industrial food and an expenditure

meaning/gender: in it
doing nothing worthwhile

for me, the body is a metaphor of energy, intensity

The Liberal Poem

2009-05-03T13:23:00.001-07:00

the social is a line
out front or in the book that changed
the way words looked but now
Poem finds his home in an ethical
moment—here and there—love and generosity tented
against the wind and mobile like
strange associations

camped outside the headquarters of
who and how long the murmurs
of mythical men who believe, truly believe
and hurl epitaphs from large passing vehicles and Poem
wonders about that too while
ducking and continuing to prepare a
small meal

you see Poem doesn’t want his way to hold
sway and won’t try to convince you of what

anything means anything

this, Poem supposes
is the frightening part

“influence” stands surveying, a uniformed
part, part potential, part in-
security, a role that has something to do with fear
something to do with death

if there is no outside and inside
when then does Poem end?

this is a start

The Uses of Poem

2009-05-03T13:22:00.002-07:00

diversion glides randomly close to
Poem stationed near the door of sense
in case he must leave quickly

a concentric gyre spins in the language
of the strange room we’ve built to house
questions—an aversion of conformity in
motion once the speeches are over
Poem reads the quiet as acquiescence
is disquieted, shuffles to the bar

Poem meant to say something about desire or
faith but understands these ideas don’t work anymore, gears
ground down and toxins leaking from the power
source and Poem gives them to the pawn shop in case
stability is still needed somewhere else

cascades cascades and palliative care chanced
upon by the newer born become tactful in
the ways of tricking hierarchy away from itself

famously, Poem churns down the boulevard hoping
not to find any inspiration in the evening light

such sentiments seem cynical but no,
no, Poem knows the age has turned and
symbols are falling around us everywhere

using leverage is not the mind’s best

Poem Considers Quietude Vs. Post-Avant

2009-03-17T20:30:00.001-07:00

and the history of the sign
that got us here, locked
chain-link barriers to the oversky

Poem remembers standing at the top
of some famous building, maybe
the CN Tower, and looking through
one of those quarter binoculars
on the clunky swivel

you can imagine: the competition
for Poem’s attention was multiple

the material word like this one
stands or scans and the moment,
like this one, takes a side

grain or rallies or trees or technique
and any hope of integration is lost

Reader walks up and asks Poem,
“what are you looking at?”

the answer is a matter of
attention, a field of vision
turned down to the small logo
pasted to the binoculars or
up sweeping up all the details
into a vision of the city and why

particle or wave, Poem
supposes, process or
what it gets you

later, Poem answers,
“the commodification of social life”
but it’s a little late
don’t you think

the plunge to the ground
is punctuated by a history of forms

Indices: Fourth Quarter Returns

2009-02-28T10:52:00.001-08:00

poetic value creates nutrients from the energy of the sun, a metabolic pathway for advancement of the reading organism as well as the immediate environment

Firefighters could not control the blaze and the poem burned to the ground in minutes. No one was injured but damage is estimated at least 35 cents.

This is not a shopping list for big spending, but rather a call for smart, affordable policy. Global economies will rebound and poetry needs to be ready for when they do. Our competitors will be challenged with issues as diverse as deforestation, competing pressure for frontal lobe use and rising passivity. The market for poetry's proven sustainability will grow enormously. Now the federal government has to follow through.

poetry recall affects literally dozens

whereas individual speakers may respond to the person to whom they are speaking, the media can respond only to the aggregation of whom they believe to be their audience, and poetry can respond only to speakers and media

if the elements are ungrammatical they will create a dissonance that will negate one of the perceptual dimensions

what, exactly, do you want from me

The double bouquet cells in the cerebral cortex increases covert attention and contrast sensitivity

"One cannot speak of a narcissistic disturbance," Lyle Ashton Harris says, "without its most crucial variable: redemptive narcissism, or self-love as a form of resistance from the tyranny of mediocrity and as a sight of solace"

regret, I suppose, the regret of the poem, the necessity, what it is, what it is doing, what it must do

My first shoplift was in a small corner store in Yellowknife with a large Coca-Cola sign out front and a dizzying magazine rack along one wall. My friend Cameron would talk loudly about the video game at the back to distract the guy behind the counter while I stuffed candy bars into my parka pocket. Cameron liked the candy more than I so I let her take most of it home. My mom would have known anyway.

feedforward, lateral and feedback connections to the classical receptive field center and extra-classical receptive field surround primate neurons

any offer of purchase has a fixed timeframe, after which the offer becomes null and void. Do you have a sense of when this poem will end?

poetic value is a mnemonic trick

The sensitivity of neurons to walking sequences versus the degree of articulation in static images creates a strong semantic tension

Microsaccades—the clinamen swerve of oculomotor control, attention, and visual perception—move a stationary stimulus in and out of a neuron's receptive field, thereby producing transient neural responses. Microsaccades might account for much of the response variability to text

her statement hung in the air for a long time, without any cognitive reference, and the state of suspension still exists as I move through every day

According to rumor, Mazra threw a rock into one of the caves, seeking a lost goat. The sound of pottery shattering drew him in, whereupon he discovered ancient jars containing scrolls wrapped in linen

“I now freely and openly attest that the best way to get general readers to start to read poetry is to present them with broadly appealing work, with strong emotional content and a clear narrative line."

The visual phantom illusion: a perceptual product of surface completion depending on brightness and contrast –ah, the absent center of what; this illusion is the primary tool of most administrators (see UNBC a history)

The role of familiarity in the recognition of static and dynamic objects outweighs any reliable scientific identification of a thing’s thingness. I am I because my little dog knows me.

tax breaks or infrastructure spending—let the reader off the hook or push the limits of what text can be

I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking how much does this wank make in a year and who’s he in cahoots with

poetic value is a resonance energy transfer

poetic value leaps that stone fence down by the cemetery looking for a way to travel across town without seeing exactly where the next turn is and finding inscriptions on sidewalk a useful guide

poetic value dawdles

or when I got caught doodling instead of solving physics problems

‘Rob, the problem is you read every poem like it is a love poem’

the strange suspicion that neoliberalism has something to do with a character’s name in the film The Matrix

I don’t know you tell me

Product This week Last week
Friday, January 16, 2009 2" x 4" $153 $165
2" x 10" $159 $166
Studs $156 $158

“Poetry should astound and frighten, not make you giggle for two seconds”

Because clichéd writing sounds so familiar, people can complete finish whole lines without even reading them. If they don't bother to read your poem, they certainly won't stop to think about it

Ah, one, ah, two, ah one two three boom boom-boom boom-boom, boom boom-boom boom-boom nah nah-nah nah-nah nah nah-nah nah-nah

If you want to check grammar and spelling, make sure that Check Grammar With Spelling is selected in the Spelling and Grammar Menu

poetic value’s page count multiplied by page size and cover stock minus the time it takes to show me the door

“With e-distribution and e-books, writers will soon be able to put this incompetent and often philistine racket behind us. It couldn't happen too soon."

Although bankruptcy adversely affects a person's credit rating, most people going into bankruptcy have such a bad credit rating that nothing will make it worse. In fact, after bankruptcy, a person is a better credit risk because he or she has no debt. Personal bankruptcy is a powerful vehicle for a debtor to get a fresh financial start.

Automaker CEOs hold a wine and cheese gala to celebrate carmaking excellence in Canada.

ecomony shonomy—just bring me another beer

poetry and vampires—both immortal, both sexy, and both blood-sucking; coincidence, I think not.

this venue rental was donated

capitalism begins / when you open your eyes

a cache of images, a store of knowledge, a wealth of experience, the richness of his prose . . .

The Wanting to Write About Poem

2009-02-22T21:25:00.000-08:00

became the problem, typing, with Poem
in my head, not wanting to write the poem but
capture the spirit of Poem unmediated
by genre or tricks of form

for example: weather—you win or lose

sometimes Poem doesn’t want to be written about;
she sneers and says “what have you done
for me lately?” and it’s true

why does Poem have to do all the giving?

so the other day I says to Poem I says
“Let’s you and me just take off—
Haida Gwaii or Barkerville—and just
you know, be together without,
you know,
them

okay

Indices: Third Quarter Returns (The Bay Street Buyout)

2009-01-15T10:01:00.003-08:00

the sequence is the sorting of order, like coming up with the sentence so not the same but real

codeswitching: a poetics hinged between one discourse /
and another (see “poetry futures”)

what irony?

like the poem’s axle

two signs of the new order: a foucaultian porn site and the vampire ideologies on daytime t.v.

dude, that’s a random state apparatus you got there

Ken reads the webage with a keen adze and thinks of steelhead wakes

poetic value is an asterisk noting the controversy

damn, my transcendental signifier is stuck in traffic

standing here / nohghuni boduz’eh

the compassionate conservative

the Budde effect interrupts the pastel, ups the beta-carotene, stops so you wonder why

tuna DNA spliced into the genetically modified voter

since the crash, corporate culture has returned the christian values that got them there

once upon a time time a once time upon a time once upon a once and so on

“and which codes did you wish me to switch?” they all replied lustfully

oolichan grease the superstructure

ah, like the oh when confusion mercifully returns

the same, just performed in a different dialect

a tumor-like form

the object the subject smacked syntactically

if the narrative does not ‘flow’, if the images do not ‘cohere’, if the speaker is not ‘stable’, if the structure is not ‘structural’, then learning is

the poem’s to-be-looked-at-ness is the traditional feminine; its outward gaze is the traditional masculine; real poetry flips on a multilayered veil, closes both the eyes, thinks

the sound of the written word a trick of neoconservative opportunism

the sound of the written repetition is
is an illusion

poetic value is paradoxia as placebo—an ‘and’ for an ‘or’

canceling my subscription to the Canadian Journal of Disjunction Weekly

the 2010 Winter Olympics is a site—up north we recognize a land management issue when we see one

at the all-candidates forum, the federal front-runners disagreed on the efficacy of language poetry

when torque is lost, the scree hits the fan

the squirrel tore through An Inconvenient Truth like there was no tomorrow

when reading this, part of the interpretive strategy might be considering how much energy it took to make (see ‘consumptive theory’ and ‘planets for poems consortium’)

the railswitch swings the line, the line over to meet, meets an alternative switch, switches the line

poetic value is in the fancy icons you can download and cycle to impress your friends

yes, these are just parlour tricks, turns of phrases, a kind of gamesmanship, a sleight of hand writing

what irony?

poetic value is knowing that if my kids can read this, they can read the signs that might try to hurt them

verbal, dramatic, or cosmic—either way we are doomed

the Belford effect is to recognize the colonial stage of development in each text and write in old-growth gnarls and unusable neural paths

something to give, something, this, to give you, a gift, to you, you

a water-rivulet-like form

poetic value is codeswitching in the middle of mass and passing gas station scratch-and-win displays with mixed nimble symbolism erratically arrayed

not anarchy, not eloquent, not apologetic, not successful, not slick, not pompous, not manipulative, not opportunistic, not realistic, not fatherless, not gregarious, not manageable, not straight, not cursed, not easy, not noticeable, not nice, not mean, not oppositional, not negated, not forgotten, not letting go

ah, just hand over the cash

menace

2008-12-31T11:05:00.001-08:00

in grade nine my grandfather gives me the .22,
tells me to practice my aim—
the gun, its giving, a sentence
with perfect grammar:

the range—syntax, my life as man

the target—dependent object, success as a man

the bullets—the verb, the act, actions, the motion of raising
my voice just so, an entrance/exit pattern
(the damage done—mere semantics)

the gun—the noun, the enunciation, that shadow slung over, well hung,
an inheritance (tempting heresy)

the miss—the ungrammaticality, failure, fallow, the unmettled
forge, the blank, a single feeble flag
sprung from the barrel, a bleating guffaw
a sob, stop, the sentence un—

i broke the gun, literally, a small part near the loading mechanism (i
refuse to look up the proper terminology) snapped when i threw it down,
shocked when i swear i saw blood on the barrel

that and a belt-buckle with a horse rearing, this
taken cumulatively, equals lineage

several listeners have approached me after readings
proclaiming that I hate my parents, citing
my narrative choice to kill off the father in several instances

that passing down, passing on, passing
through my veins the impulse
like an addiction at birth

i did practice with my .22, set up clay targets and took careful aim
the gun hard against my shoulder like a hand and i hit
quite often, i was pretty good, spent afternoons making
clay spray into dust, and then one afternoon, clouds brewing,
a chickadee that had landed on one of the clay targets
sprayed into dust—aim raised just so,
a sob, stop, uncock

Poem’s Rehab

2008-12-21T21:29:00.001-08:00

not many readers
left like antibodies and the town
has the shakes
and this empty space where
it was before returns

poem is leaving town
leaving the collective
the addictive system
where positions remain
without people

rivers continue to run
underneath the street and
if left to, would sluice out
again taking away the parking
meters and sandwich shops

Poem has doubts on how
the drugs have affected memory
function and sensory
calmness can be settling
and unnerving

Poem shirks the narrative
bridle freed from the need
to make coherent boundaries
between what is known

Poem repeats names, ponders
parts of speech, finds the city
doesn’t meet any of the lives

The Plan is the Poem

2008-12-21T21:27:00.000-08:00

that/this body poised for some
intervention into

or pulled from
what is Poem

but the question
preceding this

this strange porous
(sense) contact

ashes across the pass

2008-10-06T23:06:00.000-07:00

the sound of land, wet and
stopped, alternating
language and substance, subject
and object, lost
in a host’s presence

and how he greets you—
the welcome is
stone glottal and aspirant
wistful over the river

(but that river bend, that one
over past the joining, that one is
not for you)

problem: standing on the ground (yun)
double dawning like that other
idea spoken to you and (‘ust’oh) you are

like days of the week and work
ethic and the lord’s order/layers
of speech when the young girl says
she is not coming home

the language comes like (I am)
a four-year-old

an uncertain anger for a verb
its sound eluding your tongue

Indices: 2nd Quarter Returns

2008-07-21T23:46:00.002-07:00

so how can I get you to buy this poem for 34.6% more than it’s worth

when the earth goes into anaphylactic shock from us

in 2005, 975, 622 dog jackets were sold in North America. I have no way of confirming this data. Fastening devices vary

it might just not be for you; let it go—

Boredom, n. (bôr'dəm, bōr'-) the malady of ennui, a fit of sulk; a dull time: "to drill", a persistent indus-trial or developmental annoyance; bourre padding, triviality, bourrer to stuff, to satiate; abhorrer "to shrink back from, have an aversion for, shudder at, abhor": the phonetosphere of bore, bore, bore, abhor, drill, boor, bore bore bore BORE

work doesn’t work

poetic value is a territory without totalities

where did that last line come from

There’s a hole in my poem dear liza dear liza there’s a hole in my poem dear liza a hole.

back then it was said, “as it is written”all the terror and salvation stamped into the inked word so even now we hear the breath beckon

I suppose you are expecting something like a poem here

note: 23 of the 112 lines of this poem are not “mine”

Close: 7.80 Change: -0.27 %Change: -3.35% Volume: 441,151 Open: 8.00 EPS:
-2.83 Shares Out: 142.6 M

I write a lot at the bus stop, before getting on

a piedi

The indices of me: to indicate use or position in an arrangement (see poetics); the index of the expression of values; a character used to direct attention to a note or paragraph —called also fist; derived from a series of observations and used as an indicator or measure; specifically the relation of one dimension of a thing (as an anatomical structure) to another dimension. When I speak to you, the index shifts.

noting that “beetle” is the exact perfect word for a beetle

the value in wondering at the nature of value

inquiring into the symbolic dildo I strap on every day

While no one will argue that 32 offsuit is somehow a "better" hand than 32 suited, what we can easily see is that people play the "better" hand worse -- and thus make the expectation of the better hand to be worse than the worse hand.

poetic value is a goose in love

“Every form of aesthetic must necessarily choose between what is worth preserving and what should be discarded, and what should not even be considered.”

This is an indication that workplace (so, a kind of feeling of belonging) was the mobilizing force behind the revolt: a combination of solidarities based on craft loyalties and the engagement of craft union leaders and unemployed workers in citywide institutions.

poetic value is “an organized evasion procedure”

poetic value finds us, it finds us, we wait, it comes to us, freely, freely—and there is no avoiding it, poetic value happens, you can receive it or look away. . .

how not to say, how not to mean, how not to say, how not to speak, how not to say, how not to stay, how not to say, how not to not

Words have the power to heal wounds. Out of the mysterious place where words first come to be "made flesh"—

I am a dual citizen, born in America, the son of draft dodgers but my citizenship is of the English language and it is an uneasy allegiance

noting that “beetle” might not be the perfect word for a non-English “beetle”

In general, chapbooks were inexpensive publications designed for the poorer literate classes.

by dual I mean not at all

the design process of Brazillian ‘favelas’

a form of social death

so what, $32 for the babysitter, $10 for gas, $55 for dinner, $40 for the massage, market price for weed, $8 for snacks and iced coffee on the way home

Just weeks after Aguas del Tunari, a private company owned by London-based multinational International Water Ltd., took over the city’s water system.

poetic value has nothing to do with “yields”

If value was something it might be uncertain: market price equivalent of human need, the fluctuating idea thought of as being more or less desirable, useful, estimable, important, etc.; worth or, I suppose, intrinsic worth but also principles, standards. In a word, meaning, art, relative lightness or darkness, the relative duration of a note, proportioned effect, this poem’s rhythms, etc.; a symbol stands so we can be strong, stronger.

under written by an under man

this particular line written on a day when nothing particular comes to mind, stands

There are several factors contributing to the improved economy in Prince George. While the mountain pine beetle has devastated forests in Northern B.C., it has meant a significant increase in the amount of timber harvesting activity and the creation of new secondary manufacturing opportunities utilizing the denim pine.

Two-year yields closing down 9.9 bps to 2.43%, five-year yields down 7.9 bps to 3.14%, 10-year yields down 6.9 bps to 3.84% and 30-year yields down 5.3 bps to 4.57%.

the index would have three variables: one you, two an imaginary history, three chance, and the control would be form

it still stands

the art formerly know as form

This process is performed in large vessels known as pulpers where the raw materials are diluted with up to 100 times their weight of water and then subjected to violent mechanical action using steel rotor blades. The resulting slurry (known as papermaking stock) is then passed to holding tanks.

poetic value has nothing to do with “success”

Canfor's shutdown of its first mill last summer is now permanent and components of the mill have already been dismantled and sent to another company mill in Fort St. John. A Canfor spokesman said the indefinite closure gives the company the flexibility to reassess the mill's status if there is a prolonged improvement in market conditions. The consensus among forest industry analysts, however, is the lumber market will depend on the increased sales of local books of poetry.

Once again, at a poetry reading, we find that we have both an opposition and a unity. We have an opposition because the relative use value form and the equivalent exchange form are exactly the opposite of each other and form two opposed, contradictory poles. We have unity because each pole is a partial expression of the simple form of exchange-value as a whole. Together they are "mutually dependent and inseparable" but, ultimately, paradoxical.

once once was a war word

gives the company the flexibility. took over the city’s water system

poetry is not a taking up of arms; poetry is next to nothing; I would die of poetry

Indices: First Quarter Returns

2008-05-16T01:08:00.000-07:00

poetic value (diagnoses) is repetitive motion disorder; the way a habit becomes habit or inhibited / by a turn

The Latest CFP-T Quote, Chart News, Company Snapshot, Dividends, Estimates, Price Reports, Internal Rhyme, Ends

poetic value rolls
into the ditch on that highway
curve near Cluculz lake

poetic value was indeterminate indeterminate
because the street price was quoted
from unreliable sources

EPS (ttm) 2.39 Low 8.480 P/E (ttm) 3.70

for chrissakes watch
where yr going

Auden: "poetry makes nothing happen"

poetic value is an eBay ad
for a 1972 printer’s proof
slightly water damaged
in Jonathan Ball’s basement

“No definition of economics is adequate or can capture the subject. For that reason, most teachers don’t like definitions and skip them”

the act of “grasping after ‘the poem’”

when language begins to devalue its object

I wondered why everyone was staring at me in the grocery store and then I got home and realized my hair was sticking out funny and I had a bloody nose

poetic value is the value of having a name for the source of terror

poetic value is questioning that name for the source of terror

“Investments in our distribution platform, product development and international reach fueled sales, while brand building, select divestitures and a focused acquisition strengthened our competitive position even further”

poetic value = “no one is exempt from playing the game of the ecology of the imaginary!”

how to cope with scarcity

poetic value runs a deficit for the public good

the call was silent because the automatic dialer had a hit on the fourth call, yours was the sixth

Net Change C$ +0.130 % Change +1.50%

there is a moment during a 1981 episode of Mork & Mindy in which a pun (intentional or unintentional) on the word ‘association’ caused a 37% drop in the Nielsen rating of national viewership

nowhere was the job losses felt more deeply than in the manufacturing sector where tens of thousands found themselves without a paycheck

poetic value is that feeling you get when you watch a slick sports car slide into a crew cab at an icy intersection and they mourn the loss of paint, the loss, that is the value

poetic value: I had none so i went on pogy

poetic value curls up on the curb
thinks about the land (under)
and what next

“discourse comes from a word meaning ‘to arrange’, so engaging in discourse is a kind of [flourish of the hands] interior decorating” Robin Blaser, informal talk at the University of Calgary 1995

poetic value is location location location shelf space and facings, merchandizing and traffic flow, the change you toss in the hat

or maybe it was 1994

the brain’s music

royalties for year ending December 31, 2007: $31.29

after the reading we can haggle over the value of this book the “value” will be determined by that brief and awkward exchange

Open 8.550 Mkt Cap ($Mil) 1,255 High 9.130

. . . oh, I skipped a line oh, sorry about that, where was I?

poetic value is the freedom to be ineffectual

i wished i had been born a ruthless business mogul
a tall serious business mogul

who are you people anyway . . .

across six lanes of traffic to retrieve an 1975 8-track I had tossed out the window after sitting on it for the thirteenth time

“Begin by instructing students to use the economic way of thinking to assess and guide their own lives”

Bid 8.770 Forward P/E Ask 8.800 PEG (est. 5 yrs) Volume 237,318

are you taking all of this down

poetic value is post-human

royalties of 10 % for foreign translations

“I just hate forgetting a great line—the idea is lost forever”

The Economy is based on sound principles and will, over the long run, be stable and show steady growth--consumers should not panic but should rather go about their business as usual

in language when damage to the soft tissues in the body are described as a product of the mentally/physically induced environment—if not, the subject may experience complete loss of function

it is the structure of feeling caused in a poetry audience February 2008 in Fort St. John (I will have to edit that part out for the book)

the end of the book of poetry had absolutely no obligations to the state

if something is worthless, truly worthless, then that’s when real work is getting done

Victor Jara's hands

poetic value values poetry and treats it well
how do you say
gingerly
in its old age

poetic value is post-media

measure is not numerical but a matter of aesthetic time and space on the page—it is to poetic what dollars are to donuts

1/3 Canadian 1/3 International 1/3 low interest bonds

Thursday, March 22

2008-04-05T15:41:00.002-07:00

Living here, breakfast cereal
and 1 year old spooning
apple sauce on
to the floor.

Last night’s snow melting,
a mist of rain but
clear skies over Cranbrook Hill.

Ice in my coffee so
I can drink it quicker.

Living here, not summarizing
the weather or whether
somewhere else is different.

In The New Sentence
no one reads
Prince George.

What might be valid
in the face of writing,
land, an “attack” on language
poetry and staked claims;
the line a territory.

The sun saunters the rim,
other kids wake up,
the table fills,
the bus to campus leaves in 15 minutes.

With regards to the particulars
living here is writing
with the latitude to do so.

Hwy #16

2008-01-27T10:02:00.000-08:00

a poetics of interruption, green
signs that names exist, shifts
in zones of code, the topography a knowledge
in the syntax of rivers
that can kill you

the weather is from the north and west
a text tracking eye
but the water flows everywhere
even here

on the new highway the poet’s teacher
talks behind the poem pointing
out the old homesteads, overgrown roads

each valley is a climate
a tincture, a spool of vegetation
veering away from the asphalt, axles
refusing the traffic laws, progress
sliding in mud, a bloom of spores

travel was a finger pointed
at a spot up the valley—now
the highway goes around, longer,
inefficient; and old hazelton exists apart,
a benchmark, an anthology of poems
from the predecessors, dedications
inscribed in finding one’s way.

The Regions of Out

2008-01-27T09:59:00.000-08:00

traces of the town unsettled
like populations of who

terrace’s mill shipped out
on flatbeds of gas and oil
and the mall fills with associations

is a name sustainable? are bar conversations
a poetics of the north?
is the way out commercial
drive and shop?

a fistfight on the shore
over access, modes of use
but none of them really work

purdy & newlove
the paths and waterways
knowing the overgrowth of living language

i travel the regions listening
for the old ways, a funky answer
to an 1890’s question

The Controlled Burn

2007-11-06T01:47:00.000-08:00

Seeds unlocked nutrients, the stock
is sprung, ignition cracks through
clouds, unstacked the faller’s log
books fall and the biomass is maintained.
Sediment corrects itself and recalibrates
the general economy with no
road in. You see, the mercantilist narrative
can’t live here and I will never export
the poetics of land. The line is struck
a careful interaction with the history
of poetry. Where the edges are, a glimmer
of smoldering sense hushes and goes out.

Poem the Avatar

2007-10-07T16:23:00.001-07:00

is all that we are
pushed and patrolled
Poem looks about, peers
through the petrol haze
at the library call numbers’
sequence and scratches his head

if it were a heading
the world would read: Caution
Under Construction—Check
Back in Two Weeks

Identity brushes past Poem
down the library aisle glancing
at his ineptitude, noting
his pout and defeated slouch
--a faint odour of
ginger and justice lingers
as she passes

so Poem heads for the facsimile street, walks
out looking for clues to origins and
why water is so expensive

the sidewalk or small
path through the orders of knowledge
stops

okay,
what now, Poem asks
looking up from the white edge
of invention—what now?

Free Radicals

2007-08-02T10:40:00.000-07:00

oxygen in the air interacts
with molecules in atoms
with an odd (lonely,
unfulfilled) number of electrons

this often occurs during childhood
and it is clear that instability is a matter of
support—who is around you

highly reactive radicals create
a chain reaction, like dominoes
and then the trees fall faster
and good old houses go
and ethics leave

cells may function poorly or die if this occurs
and this general malaise is called progress

but a defense system of antioxidants
often identified by their distinctive colour textures—
the deep red of cherries and tomatoes;
the yellow of corn, mangos,
and saffron; and the blue-purple of blueberries
and a good poem—
these create resistance
to the unstable atoms
and this defense is called community

in this context, oxygen in the air interacts
freely, with a radical poetics,
and cells maintain joy sustainably

the old road

2007-06-24T21:51:00.001-07:00

discussion was inadequate,
it didn’t move us—
that new language wasn’t there
now or then

when inscriptions sank blood
and charters bloomed in the ditch
i was there, shining,
a bobble in the wet loam

parchment bark timed by
the traces of access
and construction, less
overgrown and constant
than the land could bear

edges, boundaries sunk
in, filled in, and then recut
with the scythe of pure politics

to distinguish but not name
or the reverse—the lichen
remained an impossible
feat heightened by loss
under the recurring suggestion
that this was once something
inhumane

Poem, A Haunting

2007-06-02T14:43:00.000-07:00

a nice trick that, there
and not but hoping for
some contact, a brush of
breath or return word
like “yes” to ease the lonely utterance,
to ease the lonely
otherness that follows us
all always giving

into sleep would be giving in to
the imagined presence of
you—clandestine and uncertain
reader, there
and not

a vague after-image
like recognition, or the shift
beneath us as something larger moves:
language, soil, the news . . .

Poem and you meet in a bar
not the usual but one at the edge
of downtown and the conversation
is about line breaks, line
breaks and repetition, line breaks
and where to pause and let the other
possibility occur, words lingering
suggestive but not fulfilled until

you break the linguistic sign into
a question of waiting or giving love

the next evening, Poem waits
in a bar, a different bar, wondering
whether to write or go home

Dear Poem Re: Resistance

2007-05-14T21:19:00.001-07:00

So sorry but my right
turn signal seems broken I
apologize if I

‘ve cut you off Poem
you see I am trying
to decide who is status

quo and who is the resistance
with your penchant for shifting
codes and flooding the market with cheap

pharmaceuticals and me, with my
child car seat instructions and
an identity that is far from

stable. Poem, is it you who teaches
me ethics? Or is it me that
pulls you from that bright

brink of clarity?

Poem Tries to Hail a Cab

2007-05-14T21:18:00.001-07:00

Code whizzes by and Poem is left
ineffectual at 1st and Main
centrally unheeded and unsure
of how to proceed. But he is
in no hurry and likes who
stands with him there, shivering,
bemused: Editing weighs options,
jokes about what could have been;
Font gazes the opposite direction,
admiring the way the street curves
into the industrial park and her shoe is untied;
Paper, unflappable, is telling stories about publishers and
their odd habits of self-destruction.
Laughter, warmly uncomfortable on the curb,
ebbs as the vehicle of time management
flashes by. Poem is worried the others
may catch cold, who will pay the fare,
that this is an elaborate
symbol for the state of poetry
in the world, huddled there,
waiting for something.

The general theory of paradox and entanglement, by Ken Belford

2007-04-14T20:47:00.000-07:00

My first marriage was a closed curve
and together we traveled into the past,
wasting time. Time passes more slowly
at the bottom of a well. We could not be
brought together. Today I went back
in time and deleted my old love poems,
and kept my past and present separate,
between the knower and the known,
and remembered when time was passing
and nothing was happening.

The accumulated reader paradox states
whenever multitudes of poetry tourists wish
to attend a reading, the poets of quietude say
there are no such readers, no such love.

When the past collapses, and things seem
too late, and we think first love never happened,
when it seems nothing in the past is real, then
we know there is no paradox in reading from
back to front when we open a book of poems.

Not machines, but faster than light,
poems allow for time travel, but it is
only possible to go as far back in the past
as remembering we could never exist,
even though everything is possible.

The meter of a poem is consistent and
can never be changed because one does
not have full control of the poem.

New poems can be copies of old ones
with changes caused by time, and any event
that changes a line, creates a new one.
New poems are flexible and subject to change
but published poems are change resistant.

A small change in a published poem
will alter the immediate future, whereas
a large change in a known poem will
alter the distant future. The date of
an unpublished poem is easily changed
because the lines are fluid.

Attempts to travel into the past
to change a poem are possible, provided
the changes do not interfere with the present,
but the poet should know there is no possibility
of returning to the present to witness the change.

As soon as one attempts to write a poem,
one undergoes time travel. This is
the McKinnon effect. If poets write stories,
readers encounter slippage, which prevents them
from reaching the end of the poem. This is
the Budde effect. A poet who travels into
the past to change his Grandfather poem
is snapped back into the present the moment
the lines are changed. This is the Bowering effect.

Poem’s Left-headed Leave

2007-04-14T20:45:00.000-07:00

prosthetics of thought wrought
in post-op—the reconstruction zone

Poem is in dense
clothing, the weight warm
as the lab coats lead him out
to the white white van.

the measure thrown
off and despite that phantom
limb they keep saying how
great everything is
and how about those canucks . . .

the turns taken from the writing
when form colludes to lift
agency from the page, when
the bureaucracy of the text takes over

Poem the automaton cranes his neck to see
what was missed, where they are taking him,
where the cut will be deepest,
why ‘will’ is just the future tense . . .

a minor death, authenticity,
when all the charts say it
must be so

the hospital air is sucked
dry of germs and
expectation of anything else

Poem is under
a thick anesthetic and this
produces a new age of art.

where the advocates? where
are the warriors? a hum-like
dirge is all that we hear

Poem does not make it—
asphyxiates in transit—
and is pronounced 2:13 a.m.

gas sniffing

2007-04-14T20:40:00.001-07:00

the whole continent
bagged and burning
nostrils flared in danger

out back, exhaust pipe
lit by a low orange sun,
the boys lean on their pick-ups
and talk about girls

jobs across the mountains,
across those creatures made
numerical by distance, elevation,
the logistics of pipeline placement

the motorhand maintains the mud
pumps and seizes
the moment to smoke

for miles the plume
turns eyes: a show, a residue
an imprint dug up later
to tell us where we’ve been

Poem’s Poem of Love

2007-02-22T13:22:00.000-08:00

Not saying the word reliably, historically
like weather or the knots
in thinking around
emotional language, tangled
in this bright mid-day moment (of reading)
and the medium
and a pronoun . . .

And “you” is never easy—
a striated sign of things
to come and counter
to the sense of sentence, its ease
and assurance—so the word
“with” becomes still uneasier and
I walk into the sunlit room,
poem in hand, a proximity,
molecular and climatic,
twined and tugging tight
half listening to the news
of storms forming
over the warming oceans . . .

A deligitimized ground, standing
there, as if through a semblance
of scientific instrumentation, who
is who’s target is the question and
the water line wavers in the
refracted calculations--you look up your altitude
in an archaic book of symbols,
you look up and tell me we need
to flee . . .

Love is resistant to anti-
biotics, bodies react to themselves
and become something else; later
we hear 21st century love retreated from the coasts,
subsided in the mountains, subsisted
on salmon and berries . . .

We read “red” in the remaining
records, and “faith”—but these
codes fail, these letters fall still, cars by the side
of the highway house
sparrows and squirrels,
a reorganized polis . . .

And I’d like to think
of us, by the side of the derelict
highway, bereft and happy,
a fistful of yarrow and a wooden cup of tea
but the future tense may
not be, love’s love sprung
from the old language, from
the subject’s regime . . .

The half-theory of poetry, by Ken Belford

2007-02-16T12:29:00.001-08:00

Poets are natural resources.
Poetry is the ultimate reality.
When there are no new poems, nothing is happening.
There is a cause for every word, and every word has an effect.
Poems only come from previous poems.
The supply of poems depends on the price of ink.
The demand for poems is carbon based
and depends on the amount of pages a publisher is willing to pay for.
This is called the demand for poetry.
Resources are wasted when poems are forcibly fixed to universities.
Sometimes there are shortages, sometimes there are surpluses,
and sometimes people pay too much for a book of poems.
All poets pay rent to their publishers
and the main cause of cost differentials is locational.
A poem in the pocket is better than one in the future.
Money cannot create poetry.
Poetry that is present is an indictor of national wealth.
Poetry that is still unwritten comes with high interest.
Each poet is a self-owner.
No poet is superior.
Whomever harms a poet is evil.
Free trade of poetry is the key to social peace.

2007-02-13T00:05:00.000-08:00

Poem’s Dwelling

2007-02-09T11:09:00.000-08:00

"The real dwelling plight lies in this, that mortals ever search anew for the nature of dwelling, that they must ever learn to dwell."
--Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought

where and where a conjunction
occurs, Poem’s home is
in a thrumming arc of self
effacement and unraveling
scene traced back to the eye

a point, a punct of filiation;
knowing in time spent not
knowledge but a strange sense
of self-friction, thigh on thigh or
night’s finger on ethics; it seems

a rhythmic disassociation, Poem’s
body out-doing itself in a physics
of resingularization; he props
himself on the precipice of
an eyelid, shifting, sees static

walls lined with tricky
contradictions: unrecorded music,
overdo lessons, scientific discoveries;
Poem’s place curls in his belly,
a pang of loss, and unfurls

Poem the Spiritual

2007-02-09T11:07:00.001-08:00

Poem trips over the word
that isn’t there. The stumble
puts food on the table, accrues
interest. Praise is bestowed
for not looking back, closer,
and Poem soon forgets
to watch where he is
going.

Back in the day, it wasn’t
even a question; the speeches
moved Poem’s parents (now
disavowed, but still recorded
in the court registry) like
the weather or comedy. The gut
they called it—Poem was
using his gut. The food was
from a long
way away.

The first ulcer came. Poem
misheard it as “Ulster” from the history
books colliding and the old country’s
ferocious hunger
became his own.

The second ulcer wasn’t one but was
related. It hung on Poem’s
free-wheeling pace and gradually
slowed his progress. The visual
icon held his gaze on his death-
bed, smoldered over his shoulder, held
his attention rapt, clasped it when he should have
been busy watching
his footing.

The writing carpet, by Ken Belford

2007-01-12T13:17:00.000-08:00

Poetry is everywhere and language is going
too fast. Repressed for thousands of years,
poetry is in the in-between now but much of it is
still kept on the shelf to help academics understand
the world. Before I was born, the breaks
were called theory but now poetry has filled
the chaos gap and I go around saying
what I just said. I write catastrophe models
with a low frequency variance called contact.

You can’t do anything very well
if you’re in denial about the existence
of poetry. Most of my poems are full of chaos
but some call it life, or love. Sometimes I think
there’s a need to cancel all the poetry classes
for two or three generations and then start over.
Even the President is saying the Gross
National Product is threatened because
the people are no good at poetry.

Poetry is like walking. It’s easy but it’s hard
to tell someone how to walk. Most just watch
and by imitation, learn how to do it.
When there is no poetic knowledge,
there can be no evolution, and when there is
dissonance, there is an illness called war.

Poem Cracked the Liberty Bell

2007-01-02T21:27:00.000-08:00

He didn’t mean it: the plan, the body,

the shape of semantics, the visceral signals
cried out for disruption. Poem wrings
his hands. Indecisive art.

Freedom was the name
of the security guard at the door.

Form is never more. Philadelphia
folds around the absent sound.

Is it new mythologies Poem seeks,
dodging tourist lines and
palmed-bill allusions?

Poem’s research is a re-
calibration of intent.

No, fashion isn’t Poem’s strong suit.

A rhythm of activity presides.
Besides, the bell wasn’t really
there to be broken. Poem
resides in it; Poem,
alive again, takes the job
of tour guide. Misleads.
Breaks again.

Poem vs. Spam

2006-12-16T13:43:00.000-08:00

The streets are awash
with chalk outlines, Poem
walks with care
for the invisible.

The commercial district
lands on his head, his server staggers.

Automoton is a structure
of feeling falsely secure
and shoves Poem
into the overdone store. Poem admits
the others, the lost,
line upon line of the interred. This space
haunts him, skews lines of vision.
He chews a few votive
labels, reads the ingredients,
hums a counter point tune but
he is meant to die here.

The store (afloat in the mouth
of the Automoton) stutters to
a halt. Poem lies
spread-eagle on the checkout counter.
He sings in a high falsetto:

"Take me, my dear dumb crawler
give me that golden drawl here.
Crown that fist and kiss me
shove stocks through me for free.
Spam my head full and clear
claw and fill me up my dear."

The total rings up in
plastic bags of inbox urgency. Poem
excuses himself, apologizes
to the other shoppers, the nervous
security guard,

and with the sound of broken glass and
ungrammatical sentences,
logs out.

Poem’s Fear of Travel

2006-11-26T07:44:00.000-08:00

The history’s there, layered
in arrivals, stonework, a global subject writing
ignorance as mastery and caught
in the traffic between difference.

He is mistaken, a mistranslation.
Random buses and a bad compass.

But this awareness is a release,
a pull-tab on a life-vest tossed at
36 000 ft into the library of
not knowing. Water shimmers below.

The foray takes many
litres of fuel, emissions a trail
over Greenland, the line
and imperial tracing of mobility
a second modernity, two
sunrises a doleful symbol, and
Poem lands, thankful for coffee.

The retrospect is writing—“I
should not have gone.” The earth convulses,
reinvents itself as quantum physics, a psychic
thrust of its own. Unowned. Not the coffee but
the coffee bean and
the dirt it is.

Development: the stuttered, halting end
to a fantastical harmony that never existed.

Please ensure your serving trays are
in an upright position and fasten
your poetics securely around your waist.

Poem with No Credit

2006-11-26T07:43:00.000-08:00

for rob mclennan

Before he begins, Poem
observes the scene—who
has been here before
& why not again/still.

Long coat tasting the soup &
side salad bar slouch w/ poetry
up his sleeve, Poem
comes to town to read.

He’s single, fast
w/ a come back, heckles
the other poet’s reading, strokes
his moustache to better
see the audience.

The improbable harlequin w/
no place for capital, the plane
car bus a text testing
the air a desk.

This time, he strolls onstage
more assured, a vagrant
who knows his place—the words
a rhythm of longing
for the old days, poets
w/ poets’ grace or flair, the madness
hovering like the next stanza—

He knows them, the old guard
floats over his shoulder,
a subtext between the uneven
breaks in thought/breath and

then he begins, an homage
and Poem’s poem carries
us here—home.

The crusher, by Ken Belford

2006-10-28T22:46:00.000-07:00

I will think of your road when the open pit is flooded
and the immediate receiving water is authorized,
and habitat destruction and the flow losses begin
in the final version of the plan. I can say it now,
I can say goodbye Amazay, the crush disposed
under your natural body of living water. And
I don’t have much to add except to say always
these proposed strategies to compensate for
whole lake destruction are lies. I would love to
go back to T’am Uumxsit one day because I was
ageless in Sakxwhi Tax and here you are
needle face, in the crushing café circles of
Seattle, where the wheel of fate is red.

There is a net loss when options fail, when
transplants like me, in the combination
of boulders and woody debris, can’t adhere
to the drainages like a Dolly in another
watershed or lake or upstream passage, here
in the upper Ingenika, when the like for like
transplant men remove the barriers and
mix sacrificial samplings into streams.

They are creek robbers,
and in the spring
they will be lifting gravels and lifting fishes
where slides run out across the channel.
The mainstem reaches
and dewatered Chuckachida
slides in the cascade
along the valley bottom
to an isolated lake downstream.
Still, the bedrock falls
and the function of the passages
angled from the confluence
might destabilize the structure,
so I count rays along the shoreline
while the channel is hammered out.

Form controls and Amazay is powerless
against these men who cannot keep their hands off.
Every second year during the stable summer flows,
they will lace their boots and return
to dominate the waters. Amazay was nature’s body.
This dead body of water was never an idea
and the acts done to the reproductive systems
have everything to do with fragmented bodies,
spawning beds and making money off women.

I can’t imagine compensation lakes.
The littoral truth of the shore zone keeps
Amazay’s structures and cascades in place.
Sediments extend across the bed, across
the gravel, the sand, the silt and clay.
Beneath, the ground water flows
across the inflow and outflow barriers
they plan to blow. But the passage
structure inhibits the over-story
and they say the barriers will be removed
and the classes within the system
will fin their way to the two-way,
to the small lakes at the end.
If transplanted fish squirt over the divide,
and cross over in the headwaters reach
and the flow path length is extended
to the glacial headwater lake,
then poison will seep over the area
and the pure water above the barriers
will be within the system no more.

Photo of Crow

2006-10-28T13:59:00.000-07:00

A gurgle ruffled from a morning
fog hunkered over the park, black
spruce float the sound higher
a sharp click and chuckle.

Lack of definition circles
the tallest evergreen, barks a tattoo
against the white air.

Myth a luminous absence—
the corrosive text, its toxic
sentence flowing out.

Poised here, an intersection of opportunity,
garbage, vantage, and disinterest, the possibility
of flight caught in a thick cracked beak and
a penultimate purple.

Poetry is dead, a photo
not taken, a scavenged plot
adapting itself to the wastelands.

File sharing, by Ken Belford

2006-09-20T23:06:00.000-07:00

I have another job on the weekends now
and my neighbour goes about her business.
A foreign-born worker, she’s moving,
living under a married name. I’m thinking
of file sharing and the fiction of the self,
remembering the day I flew out, leaving
a new person in my place. I’d like to thank him
for coming. It takes a lot of energy to think of
his vacant face. And I had a real sense of place,
even though I’d never been here before.
She never winked at the camera. Apparently,
the man who worked in my shadow slept
through the whole thing. There were episodes
of confusion and frenzy in the south. And
contradictory opinions and book tours gone
after I shot the wrong person. Write down
I’m a traitor. I’m in the mood to work backwards
so I’m hanging on to my name right from the start.

2006-09-20T19:36:00.000-07:00

Why write poetry? For the weird unemployment. For the painless headaches, that must be tapped to strike down your writing arm at the accumulated moment. For the adjustments after, aligning facets in a verb before the trance leaves you. For working always beyond your own intelligence. For not needing to rise and betray the poor to do it. For a non-devouring fame.

--Les Murray

2006-09-11T23:35:00.000-07:00

The Soft Speakers (1741)

2006-09-11T23:34:00.000-07:00

Traversed east-west the axis
of seasons a motion not a span. The rivers
then went around not through.
Less lush than overdone, the walkers
from there to there, when
here wasn’t somewhere. Back when
the traveler's track recorded
in hush and snare.

Imagined trails leading through
the poem, not from. The sentences
on the line cut
wide, overtaken as it
should be. Like parkland from
Grand Rapids through Saskatchewan
Rivers, then over. The living
was hard, a seasonal take.
The old tales moved. Still
do. Just not here.

Thieves & Preachers (Fort George 1914)

2006-09-11T23:30:00.000-07:00

The salmon-coloured mirror leans
closer, closer and then
smack into the forehead

Don’t mistake repulsion
for submissiveness, she crowed
from the back of a boat
heading north

All this dog garned country
is good for is growing Christmas trees
and trading posts for
modernity to land on;
fence-posts disguise the limit

The Dreamland Theatre moved
on a sledge, the tickets
taken as ransom

South & Central in the same tired drawl

The site clear cut for practice
the trees a nuisance even then;
how to get through not why, and
the lens trained to look back south

Each southerner drawn
closer, closer and then
damned and darned
shut, a strange voice
heading away, north

2006-08-25T23:17:00.000-07:00

2006-08-14T13:18:00.000-07:00

Ball too small to see, by Ken Belford

2006-08-12T14:12:00.000-07:00

- for Si

The same ideas seem more likely now
as we move toward completion at the end
of our cycle, when time speeds up and
boundaries dissolve. An occluded line
grazer, an all-at-once animal beyond
syntax in the liminal slime, I’m drawn
toward you through time, to all the last things,
and all the lost things. Why all this talk?
The phone rings in the middle of the night
but I don’t answer. No-one’s ever there.
An updated node and ball too small to see,
when I rearrange my room, interference
patterns and three-dimensional images
reflect living forms. Telephone used to
be a noun made by combining forms
but it’s a verb now. You are not here,
and you are nowhere, and I wonder
if that coherent beam outside my door
is you, casting your shadow in.

Poem Shops for an Image

2006-08-11T00:38:00.000-07:00

Anything really, a visual
cue to go along with the abstract
status of being arty, or vaguely
original. Poem casts about,
almost frantic, for his image.

He tries make-up, you know,
mascara and blush, but
it seems redundant and his white
skin reacts in odd allergic ways.

It doesn’t seem appropriate to go on . . .

He tries acting school, a good one, and
shows promise; his vocal range is
wide and he is able to slip
in and out of character at will. His timing
is impeccable. But his stage presence
sucks and soon the director has him doing
voice-overs for animated films instead.
Poem talks to mirrors, trying to project,
to evoke, to smash through that
blank vacant stare . . .

Poem flails.

An animal, he thinks, I could
be an animal, a bold creature,
majestic, loaded with national
fervour, a history of violence . . .

Poem is not himself.

A musician who radiates light and
transcends the stage, climbing the scale
higher and higher until he blinks out,
a flash of recognition spilling down
onto the upturned faces.

Limits. Poem is what is not-Poem.

He gathers himself, sets off
out the door. The ordinary day
follows him.

Not a Fighter

2006-08-01T22:13:00.000-07:00

Poem’s Industry & Progress

2006-08-01T18:54:00.000-07:00

A review board convenes, votes
to lift the restrictions

lines on a map appear

for the prime investor, it is a coupe, capital
flows into the machines

reading extracts the resources,
truck loads, driving unsafely on questionable roads,
filled with significance, leave
for the container ports, and markets
overseas send a cheque

but jobs are created, review
publications, chapters propped
up thriving on Poem’s product,
that shining bin, that exasperating cargo

economic forecasters watch him,
his subsidiary paper product tax shelter,
and then, the vein is near
exhausted, the reserves spent,
the harvest dwindles and
Poem is left vacant

the road is abandoned,
saplings grow through the windows,
a wealth of rodents move in

Poem pleads, ‘Wait, wait
I can do other things—
look, this waste can become
something else useful or
I can be a call centre or, or
I can, I can sing!

but he is alone, a ghost
town echo

only the knowledge
that his wares, bobbles and
cheap lining material have traveled
the globe, filling drawers
and lost and found boxes

Poem rests, coos at the rafter
pigeons—it’s okay, everything is okay

New Narrative (or, why things don’t happen)

2006-07-20T22:22:00.000-07:00

When
there is always
an elsewhere, an otherwise
to the placed moment, the event—when

Poem sits in a restaurant
named Papa George’s (Winnipeg
or Jasper?) as three vacationers
pose for a fourth who
takes a picture but looks
like she thinks the photo
will not turn out or when

events recede into the larger
integration which, when named
become an event—when

the picture is taken, it
is not one but four emotions
which are taken (but where?)
by Poem—who

recedes, in time

Poem the Fish

2006-07-13T08:24:00.000-07:00

Poem creates the escape
hatchery of ideas—a frayed
patience, a silver sliver dithering,
a small fry leap over
the enclosure bank, a moment mid-
air, fin wings—

but if Poem were farmed, he wouldn’t
be Poem.

By the shoreline, cool and swift
the current’s curve of neural swirl,
that’s where Poem rests.

The imposition of story forms, by Ken Belford

2006-07-02T15:55:00.000-07:00

I have been erased in the stories
that are now told of the Blackwater.
Everybody talks about stories
but nobody remembers them long.

I have a little black bag I wear on my back.
I was an outlaw and my story was killed
without sacrifice. More human than divine,
I am not a man and I live between the forest
and the city. I think the way animals think.

There is the subject and the subjected and
everything happens as if. The cities
at the headwaters of the nass were dissolved
by cutting through the subject but I made places
for rest and found something to eat.

The camp was originally a line cabin
from which one could see both ways –
to the Skeena and the Nass, Blackwater to the front,
the forest on three sides. When I first saw it,
there were no trails and the value was zero.
It’s still unroaded but it won’t be long before it isn’t.

Poem in the Postmodern Age

2006-06-22T15:03:00.000-07:00

part here, part there, past
his prime but plugged in,
Poem tries hard to do the right thing

the paradigms of mid-day
traffic just look bad
but remain in motion; Poem sighs, edges out
on his refurbished bicycle using
proper hand signals and a dash
of theatre

Poem is off to the printers and he
is an informed shopper,
rubs the linen texture between his fingers,
and looks for post-consumer
recycled paper whenever he can

the Age thinks it’s in transition but
Poem knows there is no such thing

if the moment exists,
an object is hurled out of a club-cab
and the object “certainty” is not in flux

it hits him in the forehead, beneath his
properly adjusted helmet, and Poem
falls beneath the wheel of what

when his eyes open Poem looks up at
a kind pizza guy
cradling his head in his lap;
there is something familiar there but
publishers are a restless lot and
Poem must hurry out of consciousness

he winks to the bystanders and takes
one final breath, there

The last entry, by Ken Belford

2006-06-16T23:48:00.000-07:00

We were talking about water the other day,
and I thought there’s a fictional literacy
called access, that some of us get there
by going a different way. Some doors work,
some don’t. People used to think narrative
depicted subjects but now it’s about
the gestures of avatars. Old meaning is
the assimilation of the words of others.
It’s a kind of camera surveillance, so
I alter my behaviour when I’m shifting
around town. When asked, I say
my server is down. In the old oral texts,
results are rewarded, and the words
made flesh. Teachers point at the page
and point at the text but today
I’m thinking the metaphor of flow
has to do with slow. I mean, this looks
like a poem on a page but there’s a world
of difference. My narrative is waves of meaning
crashing through a watery code. Sometimes
meaning is stupid and reading is painful.
With you, clusters of tiny, new perceptions
shift and turn at once and I don’t know
how it works, but I can see it. I can see you
in the river and as crazy as it sounds,
I can hear your cries for help.

Poetry Wars and Their Causes

2006-06-12T20:42:00.000-07:00

what was observed & left
unrecorded, the microphone stand
askew and the patent ideology echo

no one
noticed

blog spit or a tribal
boundary                  the words, a territory
in air, the vibrations of loud
and errant and staked

a variant on chairs, the left/right
chime—

slide into a poetics
of urgency, an unplaced micropolitics
a seepage
        out

Adventures of a Poet at the Forestry Expo--Part 4: My Felling Head, Ornamental Cedar, and an Insurance Salesman

2006-06-01T14:58:00.000-07:00

(click pics for larger image)

Adventures of a Poet at the Forestry Expo--Part 3: Ornamental Spruce & Fence . . . & Hill

2006-06-01T14:53:00.000-07:00

Adventures of a Poet at the Forestry Expo--Part 2: A Fear of Consumption

2006-06-01T14:37:00.000-07:00

Adventures of a Poet at the Forestry Expo--Part 1: The Dangerous Book

2006-06-01T13:48:00.000-07:00

The Weapon of Choice

2006-06-01T13:46:00.000-07:00

‘Tankful’

2006-05-27T20:00:00.000-07:00


(& if they dare,
the system, the tangled boundary
(that has no place in what we learn as place)
deflates, at every encounter point
    --George Stanley, “Gentle Northern Summer”

 1.

The Esso owner shoots me
a scowl when I ask, ‘you 
from around here.’ He is changing
the till and thinks I might rob him. 
I consider

                 tracing the tributaries, the small
flow/large currency, where 
the caches are, the upward 
ascendancy of cash, torrents 
from the station, 5th & Central, 
to Vancouver, Calgary,
Toronto, New York, places

                                      we go to 
vacation, enjoy the amenities
(after all the fill-ups & hotel
expenses), the infrastructure
bought, at both ends,
by poor envious us

i would wish 
not to be used 

The gas plant chugs out
across the river, the local
thug & his territory—the truck
is god,
icon & driven.


 2

Back in the day,
the logs hauled by horse,
those men like the local grocer
bulldozed under by the 7-11
on 20th (the VLA lives on Mars
bars) & the power of conformity, all the

                        fast food and box stores smile,
‘give back to the community’ in charity,
overload the landfill.

If I bought in bulk, 
would knowledge be cheaper?

We send raw logs, fire them
straight out to China
(me, little, trying to 
dig there—like the trees)
& buy the kids meals
with plastic toys made in China
(the logs clog the system
in return) &

deflation occurs not at a point
of political catharsis

                            but upon the collapse,
the breaking point where nothing
is left, and we leave, get in the car
on empty.

Poem’s Shelf-life

2006-05-17T10:13:00.000-07:00

He’s approaching forty,
anthologized three times, an intertextual
allusion four times, translated
once, achieved internal peace
often,

measures like skin.

The Psychiatrist Reconsiders Poem’s Case

2006-05-17T10:08:00.000-07:00

The file closes; there is much
to discuss and the session is near done.
Outside, a small dog, perhaps a poodle or
bichon frise, is barking in a continuous staccato.
A styrofoam coffee cup squeaks.

What is it you really desire?

There is a history to consider here. A change
in the room; has the heating come on? Legs
repositioned. There is to be a debate on the nature
of avoidance. The psychiatrist reads
a note at the top of his page:
“Read as if for the first time.” A candle
lights itself. Street noise enters the room and
the session is near done.

The high water mark, by Ken Belford

2006-05-16T09:27:00.000-07:00


I like poems that aren’t related to everything 
else, where near things are more related 
      than distant things. Where you get the idea,
 
      the Prof is in the puddle 
          and it’s miles between measures 
                                      known as turning points 
                        or borrowing. 
 
Geography’s descriptive 
      but explanation isn’t possible, even 
                  with theory, which only works if 
 
every place is the same.
                                           For forms are made 
      in the idiographic school of poetry 
            assessments office in Fort Pierce, Florida,
            nowhere else. That’s because 
                                      land values decline with distance, 
 
      or, putting it another way, 
theory can have no geography. That's why
there’s no use hanging on to sunsets.

What is a poem? How are they made?

2006-05-11T12:24:00.000-07:00

by Ken Belford

Nothing can be done to save you of poetry.
Poetry is 100 percent communicable.
Even one poem is enough to begin a cycle.
Ingestion of infected poetry results
in permanent death, but injecting poetry
directly into a dead brain is useless.
Meat inspectors, when not looking for lesions,
laugh at the poem and spit at the poet.
Poets posses no powers of regeneration -
poems that are damaged, stay damaged.
Poems travel through the bloodstream,
from their point of entry to the brain.
Not waterborne nor airborne, poems use the cells
of the frontal lobe for replication. This is why
no poetry occurs in nature. Warning
against an act of poetry would be useless,
as the only people to listen would be unconcerned
for their own safety. A poem is safe to handle
within hours of the death of its host.
Children have been infected by brushing their wounds
against those of a poem. In the pastoral areas
of the east and west, studies have shown
that institutions can sense and will reject
an infected poet 100 percent of the time.
Unless someone teaches a course that feeds on living,
human poets, there will be no life in their poems,
no warmth in their words.

He Evades Genre Again 3

2006-05-10T20:11:00.000-07:00

An alter ego or shadow-become-self wallows in the textual minutiae—this is not a form issue or a boundary. Something hovers in the periphery of reading. Where are you looking? Several windows open on your page; there is no narrative presence in the narrative. Evasion is such a word; my motion is unframed. There goes the turn now! The question becomes unclear: how does one write? Take the text in. An endless sequence runs the risk. Even the sentences are changes, corrections, revision, less than. You see, Poem is. Boredom disappears into notions and pages fly. Full stop.

He Evades Genre Again 2

2006-05-10T19:09:00.000-07:00

An alter ego or shadow/self, swallows fly in the textual minutiae—this is not a form issue but/rather a boundary. Where are you? Several windows open on your desktop; this is narrative presence in the narrative presence. Evasion is such a strong word for it; my motion is frame. There goes the alter now! The question becomes: how does one write flux? Take the text tissue in one hand. Even the sentences are changes, corrugated, less than cerebral. You see, Poem is nervous when under surveillance and legislated. Borders disappear into nations and paged. Full stop.

He Evades Genre Again

2006-05-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

An alter ego or shadow/self swallowed in textual minutiae—this is not a form issue but/rather an issue of boundaries. Where are yours? Several windows open on your desktop; this is narrative presence in the narrative present. Evasion is such a strong word for it; my motion is frame. There goes the alter now! Take the text tissue on one hand. Even the sentences are changed, corrugated, less than cerebral. You see, Poem is nervous when under surveillance and legislation. Borders disappear into nations and pages. Full stop.

Poem Achieves Closure

2006-04-28T20:38:00.000-07:00

as if the relationship stood
for some abstract cost—you & Poem
tongue & lobe low vibrations
back seat the language steamy
thick with sweet ambiguity

he swears it is more than just physical

Poem was caught in the end
unawares—a rogue
wave or two coincidental
illnesses causing
the whole to tilt
this way

he knows how to tie
one on, create the escape
hatchery of ideas—a fraying
of your patience, a dithering
near the end, looking for conclusive
clues in the glove compartment, but not quite--
then there is a ‘pop’ air pressure
drop and Poem
is already

Poem and the Movement of Thoughts

2006-04-20T12:46:00.000-07:00

Not like some baroque landscape or group
of seven epiphany, thoughts parasitic and un-
profound. Poem pulls them together like a
catalogue entry, an eBay ad for directions to
some imaginary city with wide avenues and no
traffic. At the post office, there is posted a ‘most
wanted’ poster for a perfect word, its history and
sound pattern. The path of flight is imaginary and
inwardly is the only direction. Buttons and thimbles,
a letter unsent, three inkless pens, a compilation CD
sent late for his birthday; in ten years temperatures
might begin to sky-rocket. The lens changes the thing
is no longer. Etymology and physiology are the same. Or looping.
Reconsidering the word “baroque.” Ah, and in that other city,
the air is clear and deep. Cogito joins you for a walk.

the tax man

2006-04-12T20:16:00.000-07:00

--a RRSP for Ken

he has it with him, always
the records kept unerringly
sharp, cohesive, like a tight pact,
a spiral, sparing the stark days
doled out dumb and exact

the marriage was a lead divisible
number carried over to the thousands
and scaled in degrees;
a cache of time lost, prepaid

his charm swarmed over understood
and he opened the door to zero
and if it was, why

the history of language as an email subject heading

2006-04-07T16:00:00.000-07:00

RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: ma

Poem Reconsiders the Female Muse

2006-04-01T22:06:00.000-08:00

Poem is unamused; she
is a writer, unused, un-engendered,
interdependent, and she shrugs
this off.

Poetry is a truck she learns to drive
differently, somewhere else,
and then leaves it to the overgrowth.

‘Meaning’ she said, meaning
it, and not the way you think, but
closer, and less esoteric, though
that’s not the word she would use.

She realizes, if she only inspires,
she expires.

Poem’s muse is a juncture between.
She considers this point (a wave,
a particle) and muses on
the instability. She works
at a university but does not
love it. Poem’s closure
is an alternative physiology
sensing itself for the first time.

Poem Looks for Poetic Impetus

2006-04-01T21:32:00.000-08:00

In his writing, he waits
for inspiration, waiting
for his writing to begin, starting
with the impetus, the spark that’s
not an easy metaphor, the story that’s
not an easy way out, a futurity
that’s not now.

(Perhaps he could create a narrative
presence, a persona, and call him
“Poem” . . . no that would be
too easy)

The word sits squat
immovable, innate, not an impetus
at all and yet . . .
after a span,
it wavers, there is movement,
the word twists in an indivisible
wind, and the poem begins
by describing its own
disability . . .

(Poem could draw on nostalgia,
an interminable debt, a torrid
addiction; nostalgia hopes
for use, wishes Poem
would fall back into his
unsteady hands.)

But Poem is the word he is
waiting for, his own name, waiting
for the word to distinguish itself
from other words, Poem
waits for his own separation
from the world, waits
to launch from the page,
begins to enjoy waiting . . .