Indexical Elegies Read online

  Don’t fuck this up

  with your feelings

  Went to sleep without

  him

  Tried to dream him

  back

  But it’s zero sum the

  summer

  Nothing cold about it

  it’s just that

  The closer I come to loving

  the closer I edge into elegy

  Shh. There are

  poets trying to die

  HYMN

  Wicked tension bloom

  blast wistful tenor

  tensor black winter

  Wilted tenure blessed

  blown window terser

  tepid bloke wither

  Wilful tested blame

  bliss winded temper

  tester bleach widows

  CSP

  What is a sign?

  Some grand logic?

  Some cradling?

  HYMN

  Method whistle sense stab

  tenure rapist tract traces

  mother split pencil stretch

  trainer nonce tensor spurt

  Clever brine tory magic

  branded libel scandal lice

  cloister sacred wax mental

  bail snap willing scoundrel

  CSP

  A critick of arguments

  A most necessary question

  So many meanings –

  An injury to language to add a new one

  The word ‘I’ is apparently

  an essential indexical unit

  I hate

  this

  I lost you in November

  and if time isn’t subjective

  it’s November again and I am

  appalled I grieve

  Time is subjunctive

  I am your index now

  HYMN

  Hitches in stance prog

  jab injure ginger strut

  hinges on hand hips

  jar conjure sidle walk

  Graft pilfer menthol mask

  draper mortar swagger lean

  great button tender grime

  drifter bindle twist cap

  CSP

  Primary protegé

  Secondary supplicant

  Mediatory muse

  Every failure follows from a failure

  Memory is kind

  kindness kills

  my em dash is tired

  Verbal version comes

  iPod wrecks the soundtrack

  vice conjugates the visit

  Indicate indecent indices

  HYMN

  Nab when glottal wince

  lick limber water tread

  nick nature nurture this

  lie code ethics shift

  Act yourself skip langue

  icon freight measure safe

  ask symbol fissure pose

  index metric like nest

  CSP

  Indices and indexicals indicate the direction

  Icons bore us to death

  Insofar as we can see

  Every sign, rote signs all the way to hospice

  YOU WERE MY ONLY TERRAN

  Shift subaltern

  lonely all shoot mental

  shun St. Dominique

  why rent mini-Terran

  shawl fist alternative

  Slow eon tool name

  lull yell lamental

  saltwater hymen

  wall comely diy

  stall innate comedy

  HYMN

  so lisper deeper plebe

  bass range glitch crackle

  sect tenor pocket tone

  bitch sever gloss pitch

  fever range check in

  Xerox line strange break

  fractal knowledge sever it

  Xbox lever pulley snare

  CSP

  Spectral analysis

  Embolum – bolt lock –

  thrown together

  Parabolum – collateral lock –

  thrown beside

  Hypobolum – platen lock –

  thrown underneath

  The fall takes forever

  Still thrown for a loss

  MY SINCERE APOLOGISTS

  They knew him

  like

  So stunned by

  your

  And how dare

  it

  Because we never have

  very

  But if s/he

  only

  Troll, you

  trawl

  Shhh

  I object to your secondness

  your leaving

  autumn slippage

  yellowed paper

  small

  pressed

  Sick of signage

  turn left at Ayer’s Cliff

  stick to the side road

  trail any direction

  All roads, side roads

  all text, signage

  All seasons, autumn

  all memories, winter

  Steven dreamed of you the very second

  you died

  (So the poem goes)

  and you may have visited him

  But I’m pretty sure you don’t believe

  in poems

  Home is where the arc is

  home is where the arch is

  Begin with digression

  rerun of the archons

  Alone in ink and whiskey

  wasted well on paper

  Obliterate this order

  eliminate signatures, signifiers

  Make it sense –

  home is where the chart is

  Domiciliation dance

  constrained in little rooms

  Tied up in theory

  so cold on consignment

  Dust gathers

  librarians dust

  He’s dead

  Too much displacement

  not enough condensation

  You have texts

  to be completed

  Left them on a

  jump drive for us

  Archive key

  Terrible symmetry

  sorrowful telemetry

  Start again with

  signatory stature

  Make nice with

  old signposts

  Make strange with

  odd likenesses

  Make new icons

  drop old habits

  Proceed without familial

  consent

  Rob,

  Jay, Dave and I

  stashed all the expensive

  whiskey at your wake.

  Not sorry,

  Jonny

  It’s over

  The invalid townships

  insist

  The sickening tenured

  posit

  Let it rest

  no more mythologies

  Stash pain

  in a volume of poetry

  Where no one could possibly

  find it

  I miss everybody

  Me too

  Where are the other senses:

  the sick twist of what you strain through metre

  The feelings, notions, street corners, alcoves

  jargonistics, sidewinders, string theories, me too

  Flesh and no lungs appalling m’appelling

  never no gerund me fixate when and recalling tome

  Question for every sense and infinite use

  despotism of the finite and drink it, slam it toward me

  Yeah, Robert, I feel you, want you holding on

  me too

  Composed in 1946

  compost in 4/4 time

  Then

  comprosed –

  a new verb

  wicked and defiant

  Missing you

  Send in the nouns

  Transprairie

  (A Post-Prairie Suite)

  The open prairie conceals a chasm.

  – Robert Kroetsch

  in that person is a site

  dreaming of floods and r
ivers woke gagging

  – Jessica Grim

  TRANSPRAIRIE

  Please step away from the scene

  nothing to be here

  It follows that the primary unit of poetry

  in flatland is the line

  We have arrived: world class in our way –

  our way is lost: we like it Rich, standby

  The dreams you don’t know you know

  and the dreams you know all too well

  You are tranced

  I am incidental

  But in which kind of poetry

  do we place our dead dreams?

  INSTRUCTIONS FOR SPROUTING A POET IN WINNIPEG

  It’s non-arable land so go hydroponic

  once you sprout, lay low

  don’t make eye contact with teachers or ministers

  Shower three times a day

  don’t pray. There’s no god in Winnipeg

  there is an understaffed drop-in centre

  Use fine-tip pens

  red ink is more than fine

  only write on receipts and parking tickets

  Pitch a tent. Stay a while

  but don’t get comfortable

  when they find out, lay low in Selkirk

  When they forget, come back

  or don’t. But always remember:

  they will forget you

  INSTRUCTIONS FOR SPROUTING A POST-PRAIRIE POET IN WINNIPEG

  Hydro sprout low

  administer shower shovel

  loyal writhe receipt

  Accept sense tenting

  sell member hideout

  comfort brace remembrance

  Get growl forget

  PROCESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

  (talking points from the Winnipeg Leadership

  Symposium for Leaders, March 1994)

  •What you need to know

  • is the brain is so very good

  • at picking stuff up.

  • Are they really

  • reading the labels?

  • Really?

  • Remember: the idea

  • of the holy grail

  • is viral.

  • Fifty percent of readers

  • will actually do something.

  • That’s a big number.

  • If you think about percentages.

  • Remember the soaps?

  • Remember watching them?

  • They were soap-driven!

  • Remember the soaps.

  • People love advertising.

  • That’s why

  • they buy things.

  • I will show you a chart

  • that will knock you out

  • literally.

  • Think of it as a good workout.

  • The name of the game

  • is brand fitness.

  • Is there an occasion

  • that’s not a purchase occasion?

  • Maybe a funeral, but I don’t think so.

  • People always have rational

  • passions and interests.

  • Use them.

  • If you probe popularity

  • you will avoid playing

  • hard to sell.

  • The question

  • is not ‘why?’

  • It’s ‘how come?’

  • Just think about it:

  • four percent penetration

  • in just five seconds.

  •Who doesn’t want that?

  LATCHKEYED

  Sick of the trains

  left the conscience

  West of the Seine

  dream the Albert

  Prayer of the contingent

  drone the late shift

  Next to November

  tell the mall to swell

  Please the Perimeter

  will straight lines

  Pay homage at wholesale rate

  rent-to-own disappointment

  Croon any scrapyard

  insulate the empties

  Drive by the winter

  sleep summerfall

  Wake up furious, deadlocked

  daydream latchkeyed

  MIASMA MEDICATION

  Take the North Main Car east

  watch your strep

  Selkirk Avenue and so on

  sad insistence. Dark matters

  How’s your labour?

  the smug get paid

  The old dreams never die

  never really lived

  And some of us were

  already someone

  FAMOUS GREY CHEVETTE

  Listen, when we were younger

  we drove to the legislative buildings

  in my famous grey Chevette and smoked

  oil from bottle caps and bought

  licks from street kids

  And then we stared at the floodlights

  until our retinas burned and the city

  turned purple. We called it ‘purple city’ –

  it was the only thing to do in Winnipeg

  Do you remember this?

  I think we were trying to

  upgrade the city or go blind

  ST. TRANSCONA

  Transcona calls me at three in the morning

  demanding a rewrite

  But I’ve moved to St. James. And the Free Press

  is already printed

  The rivers are bingeing and purging again –

  you see them only in the spring on the early news

  This love moves toward something

  at bonspiel speed

  Consider yourself unhaloed in a trailer park

  in St. Vital

  You can lead a tourist to the Red River

  but you can’t make him drink himself to death

  It’s Saturday evening

  I’ll be at home, fucking up locutions

  Sunday morning

  I’ll be at the floodway burying Saturday

  STOP KNOWING HOW I AM

  When the punchline is chlorine

  you transgraze, catch cold

  When the punchline is Advair

  the side effect is death

  When the punchline is adjunct

  high on grad school Sudafed

  When the punchline is prairie

  periodicals spiral

  When the punchline is hockey

  tell it antiseptic