Convergence

The clock struck.

The guts got ready. At least theirs. 

Not mine. Cuz I have none.

So I listened. 

I heard their wounds. The sharp edges of deconstructed passages.

Passages in a book. I could read them over and over and over.

They expressed in forthright tones. In pain that had muscle. Their breathing apparatus intact.

They spoke with eloquence. 

Dazzling authenticities. 

These beauts of humanity launched their emancipatory prose into a universe, that however vast, felt so totally, radically like HOME.

I sat captivated in the glow of their commentaries and formulations on Life.

How to make it better. How to make it grow. How to love it into a kind of change that seems oh well.

Inconceivable? 

But no, not so impossible, dear heart.

For they had already been doing it long before this meeting of minds.

I was out of my mind. 

Trying to preserve the pretense of a "community role", 

I tensed knowing the release would come, awe-struck by the veracity of experience, I could not withhold the aching need to JUST BE.

The audacity of converging vernaculars! Oh, these precocious spirits were shining something monumental straight into my eyes!

They spoke of visionary, transformative, Indigenous ways of knowing.

And in/justices.

We all identified, a collective among so much nonconformity. 

We were all quite contra-rarities. 

And it soon became a celebration from within. 

This soul who walked the earth in rejected anguish.

To rediscover the lucid glow of a new familiarity, 

one that reminded this near-artifice of the forever-affinities of former companions.

And so it was to come again, today,

To remind me to tread closer to hope instead of the Edge.

Pay mind to the tribulations, my dear, but...

Colour your tainted vista with perspective.

They came. They found me. They pulled me out. 

Wet and weeping. 

But alive! Alive!

Convergence. 

Dear Justin...

Dear Justin,

Congratulations are in order.
A landslide victory for the virtuous red wave.
A collective spring of hope among the masses,
These discordant diversities untwisted and seemingly united within the folds of a thing called a ballot
Dear Justin, before we get too comfortable with each other, let me just say...

I'm guilty, for I've relinquished perspective
in the interests of "For he's a jolly good fellow"
a sad sad song; nevertheless, the band played on.
Justin, you're such a handsome man!
They now play for you, on the lands where "A Canada I can be proud of" echoes something profoundly reckless,
in the sepulchral sights, sounds,
and sighhhhhhhhs...
of our Native children,
coming forth in whispery wispy smudging,
through the cracks and crevices of hallowed grounds that mark these beauties' untimely expirations.

Though timely for you, Justin. Indeed.
And me too, for there is so much comfort and convenience in daily living,
So easy to forget all the misery of INconvenient truths

Your father left you with his legacy meticulously inscribed in grandiose form-latures as in...
"Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law"...
The words flowed like bubbly in the marbled and much marveled halls of colonial idolatry,
but all this time, the bubbly was blood...

of the thousands?

Multi-cultis like me, I remain hopelessly distracted by the illusory winds-of-change farce
And, Justin, your seemingly kind-looking face,
Canada knows comedy, eh

I smile. I feel the ebb and flow of something like tears - an instinct to cry in elation
But I do this because I'm reacting to tear-jerker manipulations and machinations...
at the sight of such deceitfully large gatherings of people,
cheering and lamenting TOGETHER AS ONE

such a..
such a bittersweet win, for political blood had to be spilled, too
Even though, really, really, we're one and the same man
But the ones in Orange, poor souls, skins not thick enough to weather the storms of social media dissatisfactions
Yet, what does it matter, Justin?
We're one and the same man,
something akin to a secret boy's club where not even the best and brightest boys are permitted to enter
because knowing any or many of its malevolence will unconscionably put the innocents in a bad way, and they too will become compost
like the disappearance and disintegration...

of the thousands?

Your angelic-wing-tipped feet walk on the earthy dust that was once full-bodied women with joys, sorrows, herstories, and other strange magical and mellow tellings,
Red dresses hanging in photoshopped shadows do no justice
And Justin, neither does your red wave tsunami
Because all I'll ever see is blood, on your hands, on my hands, on your hands, on my hands

Dear Justin, you now have the power to rip apart the shimmering shiny chimera you and I,
we've created,
You now can finally tell me,
"Ha ha, it was all a joke. A weensy experiment that went on for far too long."
You now can be the first ever leader of this palimpsest of worlds and words,
to uncover the stories and breathings...
annihilated.
exterminated.
invalidated.
massacred.
beyond recognition.

Beyond recognition...

of the thousands?

And of their lands. And of their dreams. And of their gifts to a humanity that might have evolved.
The thousands?
Who we will never get back.
Because they.
unlike you, and me, Justin.
They don't come, have never come, in waves.

Meta.Morph.O.Sees

The body. It has trans.de.ported this soul. 

Dis.figured in ana.comical and psycho.ill.logical ways.

Its brain, once with dormant potency, 

now functions accordingly with de.face.it character.

Nevermind the panic at witnessing the glossy tightness of skin, 

stretching trans.new.sin over the terrific swelling of extrem.i.tease.

It's the approaching ex.p.erasure. 

Beat. Beat. Goes the heart in triple time.

Vital fluids suffocating along narrowed pathways. 

Once sturdy internals mal.fluctuate, unresponsive to the toil of treatment.

Day by day, ex.her.shun augments the numerical results.

So the body ushers in the cons.e.questions. 

And the soul awaits its impending dis.missile. 

La vie n'est pas la vie sans un chat

Permettez-moi de parler d’un chat dans cet espace. N’était pas un simple chat!

Pour aimer cette espèces d'animaux dans notre monde, cela prend la tendresse comme une mère où un père après la naissance de leur bébé.

Mais, l’exception est j' arrête jamais regarder ma chatte de cette façon. Elle est une vieille chatte qui j’ai adopté de Toronto Cat Rescue.

Le monde semble charmant a partir d'ici. 

Tous les jours, je la regarde avec calme fascination.

Je lui suis dans notre appartement

Et j’apporte son brosse à cheveux favori.

Ma chatte adore la toilettage et elle à ronronne comme la vibration du cordes de violoncelle; c’est un son qui est particulière à ma chatte avec pas du miaulement.

J’ai aussi une voix étrange mais elle change quand je suis lui parler. 

À chaque fois je parti pour le travail, j’allume la radio et le bouton est toujours sur la station de la musique classique.

Elle aide ma chatte à se detendre et faire une sieste pendant que je n’est pas là.

Mais, des que je rentre, ma chatte est l’attente à la porte avec sa queue haute.

Heureuse.

Moi et ma chatte les deux!

Cette chatte magnifique est mon petit ange. Elle me donne l’espoir quand le monde sent froid.

Elle me rapelle toujours que j’ai la sagesse de créer un heritage durable avec ma passion pour la composition musicale et l’écriture.

Elle vient de me regarde et je sais ce qu’elle dit à moi. Je me demande souvent qui est derrière ses yeux.

Je pense que c’est la divinité.

*Le mot "chatte" a des deux sens, l'un de qui est apparemment utilisé dans l’argot à Montréal. Mais, dans ce poème, “chatte” veut dire tout simplement une chatte. 

Pretty Little Perfidy

Smiling is an art

And the one who masters its colourful variations has the world plenty in hand
For how can anyone turn away from such nuanced charms?

Tempted too soon, we give that treacherous contortion our undivided confidence
So fall we must

And fall we do.