space & time

There is no such thing
as long-distance grieving -
a part of me will always believe 
my father's father 
is just a phone call away
a simple question of picking up my phone
and dialling, and he will answer with a yell
as if I was simply in the next room,
just out of sight. 

It isn't until you have felt the shock

of cold in your fingertips

like a papercut

or the bitter taste on your tongue

like sealing a letter

full of memories

that you understand the depth

of the distance. 

ghazal for evening flight from Montreal to Vancouver

Five hour flight right before sunset
Stowaway sun takes five hours to set.

Entire plane gasps when we breach clouds
Twilight beats complimentary headsets.

A day that deepens but never ends
Always running, unable to reset.

The sun is a torch on fluffy clouds
Burnt cream on custard right before it sets.

The night is the colour of Shiva
Touchdown in Vancouver as the sun sets.

5 rules

1. generate a 5 letter random noun - this is the title
2. write a 5 line acrostic poem (each line starting with one of the 5 letters)
3. the entire poem should employ only one human sense (taste, smell etc)
4. there should be one household object
5. there should be one number

 
hotel

how the wind tastes
on the balcony of every Comfort Inn - five
times have I sighed tonight into my cup of
evening literature,
longing for more

river

reeking of 
incense-holders and ash,
violet flowers bob like
empty fishes in the ganges seven days a week -
residual life 

I sit in quiet contemplation of Moloch

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

I have transmuted
evenings into nights
and darkening eyesight into
these four walls 
a roof
a grocery bill that lengthens every month
though I remain one
I have spent the years of my youth practising
how to reach for the wallet on my hip
in one fluid motion
so I can brandish dollars before a raised eyebrow asks
if I need help with anything

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!

I have constructed safety 
knowing locks and doors and 
smart speakers and smart lights
and iphones and subscriptions can vanish, knowing
that we are bloated bags of blood
encased in a skin so thin
that a single misstep can 
make us explode into fine mist

Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!

I have nurtured love and love
has blossomed within these walls of glass and 
concrete that shimmer like teal seas, 
love with running money as its lifeblood and i have
loved over whatsapp and facebook
and written poetry in emails to friends
and cried over linkedin

Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!

I have felt wonder on the top floor
of the tallest tower in the city
felt the cool vegas night air 
in the summer seize my tongue
and deep kiss me with tobacco-stained lips
so that I lost my voice

Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!

I have tried to find myself in
nations
passports
banks
and governments 
in politics and economics and sexless silicon and
poetry and even outside my window -
i have contemplated canadian geese that fly with the sun
on their wings like a giant feathery boomerang and i have
scratched desperately looking for words by prophets
graffitied on the walls of my eyelids

Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!

breathe in 
breathe out. 

prospecting

the sun shatters
into tiny stars 
sprinkled on the wrinkled skin 
of the burrard inlet

as we emerge every golden hour
with pupils as big as pans
dredging days for sunset skies 
and temporary highs

that we hoard away
in rich veins of memory
and all the while summer softly 
shimmers away
 

Birthday Haibun ('Navreh')

 "Do you guys ever fight?"

I used to say no back when our bodies were separated by geography and immigration law - we were bubblewrapped in yearning, immune to irritation, every video call a gift. These pandemic days, the mundanity of unwashed dishes and laundry is incessant, like running water. We went from long distance to being quarantined together, and friction is inevitable. Yet every day I pinch myself awake, afraid for the first few seconds of wakefulness that I shall find a discharged phone next to me in bed instead of your sleepy form bathed in morning light. I tumble down a hill with you at the speed of life, nursing minor cuts but joyously alive, for the first time in forever. 

nursing pink sunburns

with pleasure; after winter

fiery spring days

Lycanthropy (a glosa)

as he and the dog plod, side by side, out of the city

into cityless time—the reliquary forest still cached

with ancestral smells, where the reviving man and

would-be wolf (loping ahead, nose low, feverishly

(from Run With Her by Steven Heighton)

The Honourable British East India Company men

are vulnerable to silver - Sir Thomas Roe 

decides that the future lay across the ocean,

as he and his dog plod, side by side, out of the cities

of the Genteelest of Britains into untamed land.

The transformation of the British man

occurs the minute he invades on horseback, from timeless cities

into cityless time—the reliquary forest still cached

with sacred peace—he descends his white horse

and eats it, falls to all fours, and writhes with bloodthirst

bent on swallowing every drop of incense from land laden

with ancestral smells, where the reviving man and

native woman lose the next three hundred years to a

would-be wolf - loping ahead, nose low, feverish.

tomorrow fades in dreams of pages (a villanelle)

The days go on and on for ages,

Every evening a tiny Sunday.

Tomorrow fades in dreams of pages.

Words and syllables leak into beds

Staining night sheets a satin blue.

But the days go on and on for ages.

Reading between lines for worlds that invite

every night to dip into fables.

And tomorrow fades in dreams of pages.

Bound to one life, finding

furtive freedom in fiction, where

the days can go on and on for ages

and the evenings have not sapped me

of rest, where there is meaning still, and

tomorrow has not faded in reams

of pages of newsprint and wages

that have to be wrought, but alas!

The ageless days go on and on,

and tomorrows merge into a marathon.

the first (a sestina)

after Bread by Michael Crummey: https://canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/crummey/poem6.htm

The first of something is precious. I

signed a lease with a lover,

entwined signatures, and made trips to IKEA for plants

and shelves and our first sack

of flour. She brought her ukulele

and old books

to replace my newer books.

The days now all taste the same: I

brew morning bitterness and strum ukuleles

while my greying lover

crosses out lists on a trifecta of screens; daily sack

of emotions transplanted

to tomorrow. But every day still plants

a first of something. This poem on this notebook

or burnt toast this particular shade of burlap-sack

is new. Every day rhymes but I

have never told my lover that I love her

at this precise second, playing a song on her ukulele

that sounds like every other love song on every other ukulele.

Every year snow falls in Vancouver, supplanting

gloom with magic, yet we can never predict when to don pullovers -

whether we’ll be caught inside bookstores

when the snow begins to drift down lazily, or if you and I

will have hit the sack

after a dinner of rotis and conversation, denting the sack

of flour we bought when you brought your ukulele

over from another country, when you and I

began a new life of plants

and books and lowered

angst (the slow burn that comes with long-distance loving).

Every day is the same and every day is new. I brought you a sack

of flowers for Valentine. Do you remember? Several years ago we booked

a vacation in Oahu, where we found this ukulele

in a reserve for tropical plants

and today, here we are, locked together. You and I

have been Facebook Messenger lovers

for so long that every night I remember that poem on flour sacks

and am grateful for ukuleles and slow plants.