Kansas, letter and a song.

Today, in accordance with my daily routine, I woke up, made coffee, and turned on my computer. I sat at my desk, amongst all my daily news papers and online editions (Onion, Huffington and NYTonline) to internalise my everyday intake of fear propaganda concerning the economy, Obama's candidate for Supreme Court Justice, and the other rigid postures of politics that inform this year of our lord two thousand and nine. The top story of the Huffington post, and several other publications, involved the block letters in red that are so often used to encourage that old innate, intuitive panic, that works best for the functionality of our political schema. "Abortion Doctor Shot Dead at Church In Kansas" the headline read. What troubles me most about this story is its lack of shock value; is it at all surprising. I mean, it's fucked up, but it's by no means bewildering. In fact, this particular doctor had been shot in a previous political/religious aimed assassination attempt. There are just some areas where the proliferation of ignorance and incoherent hate is simply common place. We take the old guard stupidity and decadence of the south for granted, because that is the status quot behavior, and we appreciate it as a cultural phenomenon that we do not subscribe to - a different world, inhabited by another breed of human entirely. By making a state like Kansas seem so other-worldly, basically intrinsically separate from what we might consider mainstream North American society we avoid paying tribute to the real horrors of a story like this. We let the ideologues have free reign. The Governor of Texas recently put forth succession as a possible option for Texas in the face of the Obama administration's fundamentally altering implications for the current American social-political system. Although this seems politically insane, culturally, this has happened to some degree, albeit subconscious and unspoken. By thinking of the south in a kind of civil war sense, as a nation unto itself, wholly incapable of adapting to 'mainstream' North American behavior, we make it, at least partially, the stomping ground of the hyper-conservative, the religious fanatics and flagrant bigots. I'm not implying that this is what the South is entirely, but it seems undeniable at this point that those characters are at least very identifiable stock characters in this southern tragedy. And it is a tragedy. When a doctor is shot dead in a church and it isn't even surprising, something is terribly wrong.

Kansas
I was in the cold-room
When they killed the doctor
On the church floor
Blood on the alter
Depraved the preacher,
And national secret,

no disbelief at
the news this morning
suits' hearts that rust
when we're water pouring

Oh Kansas,
Transient sinners
Mould country canvas
Oh Kansas,
Oh vigilant place
Startling pictures
Out of Kansas today

The shifting face
Of God’s good people,
The depressed city,
The new country evil
Brings about the red dusk
Painted with blood and rust

Enter reporters,
Sharks in red water
Instruct new order
Scared sons and daughters,

Of Kansas,
Transient sinners
Brave race winners
Oh Kansas,
The Vigilant South
Won't go without

New Poem - "At Arms Length"

At Arms Length

Me-
Put at arms length
You-
Pull away at length
With the day
I’m-
Becoming involved,
Nostalgia though unaware
We’re now in that space,
Once reserved for-
Kept for and used by memory.
Moments ago, caught up,
Physical interaction-
Visceral,
Real,
Now printed – wistful longing,
Arms outstretched towards
The ideal past,
A dying image,
A waking dream.

Running hands over pictures
Running water-
Running hands through hair-
Stoic, stagnant, fearful,
You-
Spreading lives,
Asunder torn our still frame memories,
Our wordless exchanges,
I and you and me and them,
Versus,
Against,
Now position is…
Perspective is irrelevant
You’re given a name,
And a place and instructions,
How do these things happen?
Transgressions of selfhood,
Postures of politicking,
You’re well liked,
It’s all about being well liked,
And in one final heroic,
No, paradoxical act,
You will aim at redemption
And fall on short sidedness.

All the Brick Walls in Brampton

All the Brick Walls in Brampton:


Cigarettes smell like brick walls,
and remind me of lurking around corners,
they burn slow with the endless sunsets,
like the great lidless eye of summer,
looking out over the urban sprawl as it eats up the land-
I wondered how its shape would shift next. Who knew?

Against a wall, I was hiding
from the suburban sages
with tobacco, cola and the resolve to do nothing -
I was looking into the eyes of a friend
who was becoming a stranger,
not fighting it - it came with the g
rim understanding of growing up.
Time will leave us powerless,
and like with quicksand,
struggling will only make it worse.

Clutter makes for stagnancy -
this I learned from sleeplessly
staring about your room,
or while contemplating the infinite
transgressions of weakness.
You said it's me. You said it isn't the mess,
it ain't the mess, it's not the mess.
Maybe you're right. But I look around,
dust on the window, all this dirt and clutter -
and there's things need doing.

They make pills for stress now,
and for not having the strength to sleep.
There's medicine to still my shaking hand -
But they don't make a pill for indecision.
Lost amongst the changing faces,
who will reign in my father's strength and boyish wonder?

From a roof top, Like little pebbles,
bits of tar and sand crumbled beneath me,
sent tumbling down to the wet grass
they stuck to the blades.
I was up there looking for a city,
scanning the expanding grid
wanting to find a friendly face,
but they were all shadows
dancing in ritual and
succumbing to the vicious heat.

Cigarettes taste like the air
in that dark guest room, one wet July,
Fog forming on the window -
words exchanged soundlessly,
Light it, ember ignite,
ashes on the mattress (clean it later).
There was always time for later then.
Now the emulsion, Age makes time easier to swallow.
Wisdom, supposedly, is a currency,
Changes hands I suppose,
serves some pragmatic function...
With age we have so much
to look forward to, although I'll
always catch myself looking
back absent mindedly -
suddenly recalling
the brick walls in Brampton,
the ashes on the mattress,
A wet July couched in an endless summer
I spent lurking around corners.