Rhymed and unrhymed, form or free, this is where the poetry lives.
Tu ma sauvé encore une fois
Cœur de mon cœur
Mémoires du passé dans vos chansons.
Le fil fragile, incassable.
La musique.
#305
(English translation: “You saved me again, heart of my heart, memories of my past in your songs, the fragile thread unbreakable, music.”)
When I am gone the birds will sing
as if I had never been.
It is a rather morbid thing
to think of in the dawn.
But looking at it rationally,
the birds have no interest in me.
They sang before I came to be
They’ll sing when I am gone.
The fact of it was there and yet
I was blissfully unaware of it
and now it makes me feel a bit
sad when birds are singing.
But no, I will not fall in this
egocentric black abyss.
I will reclaim forgotten bliss
in songs the birds are bringing.
#304
It isn’t you it’s me, I changed but you just stayed the same.
I don’t know how much longer I can play this silly game
and look the other way when you rage and act so cold.
My heart is getting harder and your temper’s getting old.
There was a time when I could handle all your flighty ways,
the long nights were a novelty that made up for the days
of unpredictability, of blowing cold then hot.
Back then it made me feel alive, alas, now it does not.
I know you’re never going to change, it’s more than I could hope.
So I’ll just have to be the one who has to learn to cope.
I think we need some time apart, a trial separation.
Perhaps a few months on our own, separate vacations.
When we first met I thought you were the only place to be
This snug nest ‘neath Northern Lights, this lovely Peace Country.
But now the nest is far to thin when nights are cold and black
This Snowbird needs to stretch her wings, don’t worry, I’ll be back.
#303
Time and space,
Space in time.
We take our place,
yours and mine
Tangled lines
within a web
human vines,
specious threads
overhead
stars align
fortunes read
give the sign.
All design
that ever was
repeats in time
again because
nature’s laws
are resigned
to ever draw
the spiral line.
Our space in time,
beside ourselves,
a nursery rhyme
that time retells.
#301
The heartbeat of the city
is arrhythmic, tachycardic.
Electric shocks pulse neon,
convulsing the night.
No amount of greenery and good intentions
will cure the bad habits.
But a little bit of nitro should do the trick.
#300
They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions,
But sometimes good intentions make for lousy travel plans.
Because, although the road is paved, someone forgot to mention
It’s also filled with detours leading back where you began.
The road to Hell is full of speed bumps, jagged holes and glass shards.
You sprint, you jump, you never thought a road could be so hard.
Then, somewhere along the way, you see this road you travel,
although paved, is harder to traverse than one that’s gravel.
And it’s never going to lead you where you really want to go.
I’m walking down a different path, to Hell with the paved road.
#299
The broken watch’s hands were frozen on its face
Like not to know the time was some kind of disgrace.
I pulled the back off with a knife, and gingerly removed
the hands and face and gears and bits that refused to move.
The gears and bits and face I threw away, they had no claim
upon my sympathy – but the hands – I pitied them their shame.
I put the hands back loose and free to rattle in the case
with a sign that said ‘Time is an Illusion’ for a face.
Now I have two watches, and when I need to make decisions,
one tells me what the time is, the other tells me what it isn’t.
#298
It’s all your fault you know.
The way you packed us up in the car
and dragged us across Canada and back.
If it’s Tuesday this must be Swift Current.
First the tent, then the tent trailer
then the bumper dragger.
I slept in the top bunk and hit my head on the ceiling
every morning.
It’s all your fault.
Those summers on the east coast,
lobster dinner in a Nova Scotia church basement,
Green Gables, Cavendish Beach,
the Reversing Falls, the Magnetic Hill.
The dip into the US; Maine, New Hampshire.
Stacks of snapshots and a few jerky regular 8 movies,
mostly of me and Mum standing beside
landmarks and signs to prove we were there.
It’s all your fault that my feet itch.
That I get that late night, headlight,
count the tar strip by the bumps longing
for the open road.
Your fault that when I’m on the coast I yearn for the mountains
and when I’m in the mountains I yearn t’ward the plains.
It’s all your fault, Dad.
Thank you.
#297
There are events that consume us,
that we point to as if they were big black dots on our
lifeline, and we say “after this or after
that, I will have time.” So we defer,
delay, detour around the stuff in between
the big black dots but as soon
as one dot recedes another appears and we
race towards it, blinders on, somehow knowing
that this event will be a turning point, a
special place where the light bulb turns on and
all the silly little pieces fall into place.
I am tired of big black dots.
I want to live between.
I want an interstitial life, sweetly rocked in the
swaying hammock formed by the lines
between the dots.
#296
I wrote down the year today
as nineteen instead of twenty.
as though some errant, swirling time warp
tapped me on the shoulder.
New memories came like visions
from temporal cognoscenti,
and transcended the divisions
between now and then and older.
Which made me wonder what would happen
if one day the time warp hit
straight on, full force, and pulled me
deep into the eerie vortex.
Would it be a hurricane’s eye
where once and future engrams flit
like flying cows and spinning barns
whizzing past my quaking cortex?
Would patterns form and fray and fade,
emerge, then merge again to form
the multiverse of maybes
that spawned my personal, perfect storm?
The brainstorm of the century.
The wormhole to what’s never been.
The one way ticket, first class seat,
to the nearest loony bin.
“Two thousand twelve, two thousand twelve,
not nineteen anything” I say.
I grip the pen as if an anchor
to my actuality.
“I have too much to do to ride
time’s crazy centrifuge today.
the future past is soon enough
to face my own reality.”
#295
Linda Studley 