Poem in the Postmodern Age

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

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

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

(click pics for larger image)

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

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

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

The Weapon of Choice

‘Tankful’

(& 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

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

measures like skin.