I know the important moments
are on their way
and I am that high iron fence
with the spikes painted gold
holding off the inevitable
SUGGESTIONS
“We are college girls from Ontario.”
“What part of Ontario?”
“We don’t know Ontario. We were told to say we were from there.”
“I see.”
They moved purposefully around the kitchen, lighting and extinguishing the gas range, checking the pilot lights, extracting pots from crowded cabinets, kneeling in front of the crisper, but no food was actually cooked or served.
“We don’t really know how to cook.”
“I see.”
“We are really nothing but suggestions. Our bodies end where our clothes begin. There’s nothing underneath.”
“I was wondering about that.”
“Yes, we were told to practise modesty, to make you laugh and smile, and not to bewilder you with fluids and nakedness.”
“Will this improve the evening?”
“It will. It will delight you.”
“I submit myself to your good intentions.”
They each took one of his arms, and they folded themselves against him, and pressed their heads against his chest.
“We love you.”
His tears came and they wiped them away with their colourful bandanas.
“I’m hungry.”
“So are we! Let’s go to a restaurant in Montreal, a city, we have heard, which has more restaurants per block than even Rio. We’ll go out every night, except when you don’t feel like it. Then we’ll order in.”
EVEN NOW
I did not know
how simple you are
how generous
I tried to capture you
with rhymes
and erotic
suggestions
Even now
you yawn
in my heart
bored and alone
rubbing ointments
all over your body
and touching yourself
while I tarry
ANOTHER POET
Another poet will have to say
how much I love you
I’m too busy now with the Arabian Sea
and its perverse repetitions
of white and grey
I’m tired of telling you
and so are the trees
and so are the deck chairs
Yes, I have given up a lot of things
in the last few minutes
including the great honour
of saying I love you
I’ve become thin and beautiful again
I shaved off my grandfather’s beard
I’m loose in the belt
and tight in the jowl
Crazy young beauties
still covered with the grime
of ashrams and shrines
examine their imagination
in an old man’s room
Boys change their lives
in the wake of my gait
anxious to study
elusive realities
under my hypnotic indifference
The brain of the whale
crowns the edge of the water
like a lurid sunset
but all I ever see
is you or You
or you in You
or You in you
Confusing to everyone else
but to me
total employment
I introduce
the young to the young
They dance away in misery
while I conspire
with the Arabian Sea
to create
an ugly silence
which gets the ocean
off my back
and more important
lets another poet say
how much I love you
PARDON ME
Pardon me, lords and ladies,
if I do not think of myself
as the disease.
Pardon me if I receive the Holy Spirit
without telling you about it.
Pardon me,
Commissars of the West,
if you do not think
I have suffered enough.
HER FRIEND
she doesn’t know
her friend has come
she won’t be able
to write down
anything he says
he won’t have a place
in her notebook
along with Kabir
and the Theravadins
many years later
she will remember
sitting with an old man
a curious nakedness
of thought
between them
that nakedness
that transparency
will lead her home
IT SEEMED THE BETTER WAY
It seemed the better way
When first I heard him speak
But now it’s much too late
To turn the other cheek
It sounded like the truth
It seemed the better way
You’d have to be a fool
To choose the meek today
I wonder what it was
I wonder what it meant
He seemed to touch on love
But then he touched on death
Better hold my tongue
Better learn my place
Lift my glass of blood
Try to say the Grace
THE GREAT DIVIDE
I never liked the way you loved
So devious, so dated
But still I fasted like a monk
And prayed to see you naked
I’d see you hurting everyone
A government of suffering
I’d tell myself ‘Thy Will Be Done
My will it counts for nothing’
I drank a lot I lost my job
I lived like nothing mattered
And you, you never came across
You never even answered
It was a blind and broken time
And kindness was forbidden
I guess I tried to hitch a ride
From acid to religion
But every guiding light was gone
And every good direction
The book of love I read was wrong
It had a happy ending
But when the system had been shocked
Beyond all recognition
The simple things that I’d forgot
Resumed their sweet position
I thought I saw you with a child
I thought I heard you weeping
And all the garden round you wild
And safely in your keeping
I don’t recall what happened next
I kept you at a distance
But tangled in the knot of sex
My punishment was lifted
Your remedies beneath my hand
Your fingers in my hair
The kisses on our lips began
That ended everywhere
And when I gathered up to leave
You drew me to your side
To be as Adam was to Eve
Before the Great Divide
And fastened here we cannot move
Except to one another
We spread and drown as lilies do
From nowhere to the centre
And here I cannot lift a hand
To trace the lines of beauty
But lines are traced and love is glad
To come and go so freely
And here no sin can be confessed
No sinner be forgiven
It’s written that the law must rest
Before the law is written
And here the silence is erased
The background all dismantled
Your beauty cannot be compared
No mirror here, no shadow
But now it comes, a grazing wind
Aimless and serene
It wounds me as I part your lips
It wounds us in between
And now the wars can start anew
The torture and the laughter
We cry aloud, as humans do
Before the truth, and after
I don’t know how it’s going to end
You always left that open
But oh, you are the only friend
I never thought of knowing
I AM NOW ABLE
I am now able
to sleep twenty hours a day
The remaining four
are spent
telephoning a list
of important people
in order
to say goodnight
Jikan
who was born
to make men laugh
bows his head
THE FLOW
You have been told to
“go with the flow”
but as you know
from your studies,
there is no flow,
nor is there actually
any coming or going.
These are merely
helpful concepts
for the novice monk.
You can start smoking again,
and what is called “your death”
and what is called “your life”
you can watch now
through the eyes of wisdom.
This is why
the Sages
