The Ghosts of Jay MillAr (12 page)

There have always been

five things in a row:

            footprints, or to speak of

whatever happens

at any free moment:

            feet first

______,

______,                                             ______,'                  (
SPEECH
)

______,

______,

The second takes on five things of its own

Other times the third is

away if it grows bored.

Is time pure reason?: think;

Think the fifth shy stick upon which

birds sit in the present, singing of what is

happening in that moment

‘Each day the five, present

after the other, grow into

his eyes to find row after row

of the mental creature

one who moves along

in sneakers, until I finally reach

about where I am in the world

that repeats after yesterday in

changes are subtle, finding out

where I was yesterday, or

tomorrow, where ever one

can see above their many heads'.

And I might wake with a start:

the morning. And, to boot,

in such a way that some

become something new.

Critique of the Dying

Of the fingers, or

to find itself being meditated upon, great Death

of the day, held or otherwise

these various forms. Sometimes it has

other times it is translucent

but takes its own time to walk up and down

And it grows bored. That fourth

quite rare moment, a shy

time lingers on and sings.

prepare the self for one

mental creature who has opened

two windows, and here are discoveries

designated to be alive at this time.

Building quietly in a green shirt,

what amount of understanding could be

rearing itself in today? Alive,

here to notice that the

not that much different from

will be tomorrow. And I will be

another sky of rare

things retreating in that order.

Something to do will be again

in always disappear

(They may actually change

be content in what I do.)

His Face Looked Like Satie
Sounds

Max could lie there for hours

near the fireplace, then jump aside

sideways and become someone else's

dog for the rest of the afternoon.

Sometimes I liked it when he was

my dog, other times I like to pretend

I was borrowing him from the neighbours.

During the winter we'd go running

together through the night air around the

block and I would run as fast as I could

with him running the same speed,

just ahead of me, and I would fall

to the ground and let him pull me

across the ice and snow by his leash.

Sometimes I could slide 30, 40 feet.

It was a stupid thing to do. Maybe

I could have broke his neck, but he

never complained or let out a yelp or

anything. When we stopped moving

he would always come back and sniff

at me, making sure that I fell down

because I wanted to. I knew lying

there in the flat silence of winter that

he liked making sure I was okay. One

time his leash snapped, but I said

he'd pulled too hard, excited by some

bitch. He was a little crazy and we

all knew it was possible. By 1990

my parents realized that Max was a

farm dog, so we moved to the country.

Max was happy there, and he roamed

about without the confusion of the

maze-like suburban landscape he

grew up in. It fit his brain better,

and as his brain grew to a comfortable

dog size, he kept to himself, running

and running around the back wood

lot, sniffing at everything to make

sure it was all okay, until he came

home one afternoon in 1992 limping

and shaking, covered with mud and

blood. Looking embarrased that

the pack of stray dogs had gotten

the better of him down by the creek

again. And that night he died. It's the

look on his face I hallucinate from time

to time, at moments of flat stillness

against the light, a look somewhere

between pain and shame, his head hung

low as he comes in through the screen

door at the back of the kitchen, shaking

and amazed that all those assholes had

been allowed into the world. We buried

him in the back yard, just north of the

garden, and Mom cried even tho she's

a toughie, so I tried (after looking into

her soft eyes) to justify it all by thinking

youthfully of how Max was now free to run

as he pleased, Dog Of The Four Winds,

a great sniffing spirit. But as I thought

this he just lay there in a black garbage bag

as dad shovelled the dirt back on top.

Postscript:

Today, new years day, 1997, there is someone

pulling me across the cold ice of the world,

and today I share his amazement.

In Another Shimmering Lifetime

(an attempt at memory for you)

January
1390

1
Picture everyone there loving strangers, met only a few months earlier, their various shapes friendly, filled with chatter. Each of them easily a non-threatening member of an anonymous group of people that did exist once, during the patch-work lifetime of someone who could make their acquaintance and disappear soon enough. In the dark living room, a television flashes dull bluish streaks across bodies and brown bottles; quiet sentences are heard as they pass back and forth between people. Through the doorway to the kitchen a bright land can be seen, where voices climb, and never dare to fall. In that blaze I can see my father sitting around the wooden table with his voice. Those sitting at the table are welcome inside the sound of it, not only as pieces of the discussion, but as a source for the gentle interplay of mind. A space is present there, where youth has forged a middle-aged being out of challenge and intrigue, a mind that appears to be enjoying his quick rallies, a kind of professing sage, drinking beers like the rest them, a man who has looked behind himself through those present before him, who has suddenly found himself back at university, this time at the actual pinnacle of a conversation from the vantage point of his own future. My attention is back in the living room where laughter suddenly jumps up and heads for the washroom. Two girls sit cross-legged in front of the television. One of them giggles and a flower blooms, from the top of her head, and begins to shine in purples, yellows, and in the attempt to hold all of my attention, but wilts away when the five guys sitting across the couch, each one on their fourth or fifth beer, laugh at a joke about her ass she does not hear. There are others in the room too, figures who are coated in shadow, mysterious beings who at this moment are further away from my mind, ghosts whose voices can be heard warbling over the television like this seven year-old tape recording of themselves. And the colours there, in that room, grow mouse-like with each stupid gesture, each one a tiny scampering of emotion and fear.

2
Looking into the kitchen my father has vanished.

Outside he is building a bonfire in a snowdrift.

We all crowd the window, amazed at this, totally our discovery,

and as we admit the novelty of this moment,

we throw on coats and boots and head out in search of light.

Merry once again, finally, and in our drunkenness

we have become wholly unconsciously blind to the ugly possibilities of the season.

This is the whole night, what it became in the years to come.

In the future, which is part man, part woman,

there will always be this rage against our darker emotions,

against the cold nature we all come to know as human beings.

A goof-ball escapade of youth trapped forever in the shimmering air,

close to the nostrils and the mouth and the eyes, giving warmth.

This feeling finally solidified around midnight,

as the soccer match exploded into the empty luminescence of the cornfield,

under the mothball light of a full moon; and the girls

choosing to remain huddled near the fire talked about it,

choosing to ignore the drunken shouts of boys

kicking at the black and white ball dad produced from the garage,

aiming each shot between makeshift oil-drum goal posts to the east and to the west,

they talked about it in whispers.

On the field there are the sounds of crunching snow and crazy laughter,

they plow into each other for hours, not even keeping score; around the fire

there can be heard the quiet warmth of the fire glow,

as it licks at their feet, in praise of the night,

that which knows the soft heady warmth of morning,

and the remembrance of dreams.

And between these places I have travelled in one night,

and at each point that I remained still I was one of the people of that place.

(Dad stands near the fire talking and grinning,

he is watching the soccer game with his back to the fire,

he will throw on a log or two to keep it going,

the same way he has all night long

throwing matter into our minds for us to use.)

3
And the soccer game was suddenly a stupid ball

caught in a momentum directed either to the east or the west,

without purpose or resolve, finally to stand in someone's footprint marker.

And the fire to which we returned was cheery, but tiring to look at,

and it slowed us down, somehow, and the night grew suddenly lonely and apart

and the heaviness of the air came to sit upon our breath.

And cars began to disappear from the driveway.

And Dad said goodnight and went into the house to bed.

And we had to coax someone from the bushes,

reassuring him that she had not been overly embarrassed by his actions.

And afterward, to let everyone know he was fine, he tackled me,

diving over one of the blue and white oil drums in the dark blur of memory,

knocking the wind out of me for five long minutes.

And the colours of the night began quietly to recede then,

as I lay there near the fire, in the white darkness of the snow.

Feel the teenage rush of it all again receding, under the snowball moon,

a groaning beneath the dark sway of the pines.

And my breath will hang for all time, like grey angels or tiny stars,

in my mind or the black sky;

there.

1
There are so many women in our country blissfully unaware of how beautiful they are. Please be aware she makes all of you beautiful even if you don't want to be.