Indexical Elegies (2 page)

you were missed

Do you last?

are you heading there? did it out you?

do you lure? are you dropping?

you miss bugs

Do you lull?

are your friends? did you pulp?

do you mean this? are we meant for this?

yes

SELF-STORAGE

Laminated name tags everywhere everywhere
shelf space for the wicked timid

Bottles tremble in November treble
everyone dying or leaving or straying

Meanwhile quiz-takers make some sonic sense
pitch perfect prose, retail summons

Sermon perfect-lit compartments down
oh value-added mainstays whisper

This name tag, that toe tag
November swallows the widowed

Comedic grievers mutter lame phonemes:
did you hear the one about the laminated coffin?

Heard it –
big year for that joke

POLYCLINIQUE

Find your place –

a local, measure the paces

Arrive with head down

headlong into intent

Lace the notion

with disrigorous play and ploy, somehow

Put the idea under chloroform

deliberate and douse the thing

in a flow of solvents

not as remedy, nor as spark nor wick

but as strategic sublimation

conspicuously consumed

Trick your dreams into commonplace routine –

matte offerings of concrete nouns that ease and shame

Stitch up a coterie of kindreds

note where connections are severed

Finally sew lazily, forcefully. See the language

gnaw at its sutures as you go

Tip well

Indexical Elegies

There is no truth

but in dead event, shaken, stunned

I miss everybody

– Gilbert Sorrentino

The index is physically connected with its object; they make

an organic pair.

– Charles Sanders Peirce

Little Lucifer falls

despite listless prayers

The palliative strain

and cigarette drama

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 rivers 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