Monthly Archives: July 2017

Stranger on the train

I sit,
in stone cold stillness.
Even my breath seems to stay within the invisible bubble I have created around me.
My hands,
they fold neatly on top of my thighs,
which are pressed together so tightly they have become one.

I am breathing,
but my breaths are short and stiff
Labour breaths minus the noise.
And the labour.

My eyes.
Focused dead ahead.
Unwavering. Un-easy.

I have judged you.
We all have judged you.

No not YOU
The exterior of you.

From the moment you walked through those sliding doors,
you feel it too.

You sit on the edge of the seat.
You try to make the invisible bubble around you,
stop the people from staring,
from grimacing,
from gratifying themselves that they
are not sitting beside you.

You get off at the next stop.
My bubble is broken.
But so is yours.

Swings

In the midst of stars, books, dreams and dust

An amicable ghost pushing the swings

Back and forth

Back and forth.

A swing that is surely more than a decade old

Carrying the anthology of local romance stories

Breakups and closures

As if marking their stories

On a steel-made infrastructure

Would make them permanent.

The ghost, now, the only one

To hear and feel the stories

Returning for the same ones

Again and again

Again and again.

@1450 Parkway Blvd, Coquitlam, BC V3E 3L2

A home should be nice and neat

Spic and span

Clutter and mess I cannot stand!

Ow! Lego under feet

Next put the laundry away

Drawers tied together with moose gut cordage

Ugh! In the way

The cedar weaving we’ve had no time for

But….

I don’t clear that clutter from the counter

Nerf bullets underfoot mark the place where you ambushed me

Such glee

Lego in the Ficus tree – the world you imagined and related

So animatedly

Smears on the mirror

Your Xs and Os to me

A home should be neat and tidy

Spic and span

Clutter and mess I cannot stand!

But tidying this space

Erases You from this place

So I wait for you to come home

And try to remember

Not to reprimand

A home should be full of glee

Crap and clutter

You and me

~ CDG

All tucked in

The moonlight shining on the window pain

When the sky opens up and it starts to rain

The rooster crows

The day is ready to go

The smell of the rain lingers

The sun’s rays are like tiny fingers

Massaging me with their warmth

All tucked in

The moonlight shining through the window pain

When the sky opens up and it starts to rain

Fresh cut grass

Blowing in the gentle breeze

Listening carefully

To the sound of the trees

As they whisper just for me

All tucked in

The moonlight shining through the window pain

When the sky opens up and it starts to rain

I came across an old photo from my childhood.

Blond ash Ikea book shelves in the background. They are still in mom’s basement.

Allen key assembly, but real wood.

Our Ikea shelving unit is black, wood based laminate over a cardboard honeycomb filler

I know this, because I put my knee through the middle of the first one I bought.

Hastily assembled during the sleep deprived first months of parenthood.

Each visit is an assault on my reader’s brain.

Fricatives, fullstops and retroflexes all freak my flygel, my grundtal, my Godmorgon

My neighbour calls you the marriage breaker.

Indeed, I saw a childhood friend, pulling two screaming children across the parking lot while his wife yelled at him.

I hadn’t seen him in fifteen years. Today would not be our reunion.

Why were they fighting?

Perhaps a misunderstanding of length and depth?

an hour misspent in the ballpit?

As I manoeuvre through the store, there is an angst, that creeps down the back of my Fyrkantig and rests in my malm.

So much choice should be liberating, but it paralyzes. Have all measurements really been made and no electrical outlet ignored?

NÄCKTEN! I don’t know.

We knew what we wanted before we came in, but things have changed as we wandered the labyrinthine market place.

Make a choice!

I can’t!

GODMORGON! NÄCKTEN!

Spruce Woods Provincial Park

If you wanted one less reason to visit Manitoba then make it Spruce Woods Provincial Park.

We arrive on a suffocating day in August and can’t find the Main Office.

When we do, it seems friendly Manitobans are, more accurately, indifferent Manitobans.

Lungs strain between low hanging dust from gravel trucks rocketing down the nearby highway and air like steam.

We seek refuge in the shade of the campground beneath twisted, stumpy trees where rectangular sand plots have been carved out of knotted, dark, thorny brush.

We’re told the provincial bird is the mosquito which seems to check out.

Crows laugh at us like malevolent, old drunk men.

We think that a swim in Kiche Manitou Lake will offer respite.

It offers stagnant, muddy water and more mosquitos.

We hope the widow makers hanging in every dying oak tree don’t impale us during our walk out of the park.

The park is adjacent to The Spirit Sands, where rogue sand dunes rise 30 metres into relentless prairie sky.

By “adjacent,” Manitoba Parks means “about a 2 K walk along a busy highway, over a dusty bridge crossing a wide, brown stretch of the Assiniboine River.”

First Nations in this area believed the sands were sacred.

It was a place of peace and diplomacy for feuding Nations to talk.

A sign barks at us to stay on the trails because there are live artillery shells from mid-twentieth century military drills lying undetonated throughout the area.

They should have fired them into the campground.

We never do find the gift shop but a T-shirt can never fully express despair anyway.

The kitchen in his place was sort of a bust.

The windows didn’t open all the way

and the low set ceiling meant that

stagnant air set off fire alarms every time we

cooked.

But still, when he spun me round,

my toes sliding across cracked linoleum,

I didn’t notice.

Because when he touched me I didn’t

notice anything else at all.

You slipped from my fingers

as though greased with the pain

of every memory I put to rest.

Now I love you like I love

all things that are not meant for me:

quietly,

with enough silent passion to flood lakes.

The pleasant blessed pastures of Wessex of the South West,

Of the poetic rolling wet and green of Thomas Hardy’s nest,

Seeded poetry in my heart,

waiting to blossom at last,

for it was there in the old Wessex capital

that I had buried my longing heart

longing to return to me undyingly

just as I yearn to return to Sherborne

to fill the void in me and be reborn.

What stories could they tell

If stones could speak?

What fables could they testify

If fields could talk?

Such history that the Saxon abbey could reveal

Of secrets and intrigues and life and death,

Such tales that South Cadbury could convey,

Of Camelot and Arthur and Guinevere and Merlin.

Such myths and legends the South West boasts

Of Stonehenge and Avebury and Glastonbury and Cerne Abbas

and the mysterious moors of wild and windy Devon.

Sherborne speaks to me like no other place does

Dorset calls out to me like no other place does

“Come home” ring the bells at Sherborne

Live in exile no more, retake your place.

Such overwhelming yearning to return

Drives me insane and imminent collapse

Everyday, every hour, every minute, every second.

And indeed cloudy days and foggy days

Fill me with life and energy and optimism and hope

And likewise rainy days and wintry nights

Remind me of hearth and home I used to relish

On England’s pleasant pastures and rolling green.

To live in exile is severe suffering and punishment

I accept this retribution for an unjust past life

That I must have lived in my previous reincarnation

But then a famous son of Liverpool once sang

“It’s not always going to be this grey”

“All Things Must Pass”

And  I must go home.

Back there, up the stairs and down the hall
Lies a portal to anywhere
You want to go.
Where insignificant human 029395
Has reincarnated into a thousand different lives.

Hacker, athlete, vengeful god, and explorer
Of both space and time,
I have saved more lives
And cost more
Than anyone in this current reality.

I have righted more wrongs
And inspired more songs
Than Beowolf or Warf combined.

This inconspicuous lego-brick
Of pre-WW2 housing,
Quiet lives on repeat,
Orderly, silent, and neat,
Hides within it epic shit
Worthy of a bardic recording
And your best bit of green.

(restricted by the limits of tablet technology, this poem was recorded by voice and I was unable to upload the audio to the blog.  Just picture the dulcet tones of my chipmunk voice skittering through these lines.)

These Quiet Ajummas

conversation
was best waged
over
bromine bubbles
and water jets
that struck the loose skin
of those loud ajummas

those forward leaning ajummas
draped hot chiton
on distant children
shouting academic strengths
as if
they understood
the inner guts of a school system
they had never grown up
in
reciting hyperbolic heroics
for the esteemed canon
of a recreation centre’s
hot tub

but these quiet ajummas
who sat back
against the walls
toes tracing shy circles
in the sediment deep below
would hear delivered stories
of their own kin
and wonder
how shallow
their knowledge
was of their own children
before retreating
water dripping
from loosened joints
to wash away
the chemicals of a hot tub
conversation in the nearby shower

Abbotsford Recreation Centre
2499 McMillan Rd, Abbotsford, BC V2S 7S5