We are just too nice to fight

Canada is so multi-cultural. It is beautiful.

Not really.

There is deep seeded separation inbedded in me. I am Jamaican, you are Ukrainian. I have been brought up not to fart, laugh too loud, fight or swear. I hate it but if it wasn’t for that would I start a war? What if I actually said what I meant and was allowed to hate?

The government is oppressive but it has to be or else it wouldn’t work.

I hate my Canadian being.

Is the key to my happiness to maintain my good standard of living? Is it to take the money and resources that are available to me in exchange for my personal information and money? Or do I abandon all to freeze and starve and get sick because I didn’t use my health care card.

But I couldn’t do this because it isn’t civilized. But is assimilation, and forced deportation and labour civilized?

I am intrapped in my own thinking. I play mind games with myself, to trick myself into thinking that what I have is nice and it is what I want and need. If I was given the opportunity to fight would I?

Sitting back and watching TV isn’t the answer. It has sedated me into a surreal existence. If I lived in a structure with tin walls, shat outside and carried my water would I be better off? I did and I changed. I was just as happy as I am now; now I have fewer ant bites and sweat less.

My access to a good standard of living has sedated me into living and supporting a system that performed human injustices such as deporation, residential schools, internment camps and wait…the injustices of today? Well I can’t see what they are because Jerry Seinfeld’s face is in the way. (By the way dam that silent ei combo in “Seinfeld” and what happened to i before e except after c. I would have gotten that word wrong on a spelling test, therefore, decreasing my mark to a C and labeling my ability in English as below average).

Now you ask me to chill…how?

Traveling: it allows me to confront hypocrisy.

Now I will move away from answering this question to show you how deep in my brain I am.

Am I crazy? No because I am with you and you aren’t crazy, that is for sure. I accept that comfort doesn’t equal happiness or chillness. You accept this too. However, I crave it. I want it. Are you sitting in front of your computer in warmth and clothes? Than you must want it too. When is the last time you checked the Canadian Tire flyer or travelocity.com?

I am alone, but always with you.

Down the road

Four balls of flesh sont situes en dessous des tiges vertes de la forêt.

The head looks down more than up as

Soft skin scraps against sharp stalks.

Les cones rouges et le nerf optique dansent et

les deux velos qui passent l’arret. 

The brain chooses item over flow and

Foils Trek’s boreal pursuit.

Les fruits et la chair deviennent la paix:

Eve a voulu la meme chose mais;

expectation can destroy la vitalite de vie.

Hi all students- how are you, a short story for you.

La Milagrosa

The wind pierced through my Joe Fresh twenty percent down filled jacket as I walked to Reggaton class. It was no where near the quality of the Canada Goose jacket that I needed on that cold Calgary night. Once a week I made my way to the 4^th street Havana Dance Company where I would follow behind Jose and his beautiful shoulders.

            I stood at the top of the stairs that led down to the studio, which created a night window for all pedestrians to see in. I felt excited and content: a rare combination of peace that I felt everyday in China, but in Alberta, only when my foot hit that worn, wet, soiled carpet.

            Coming to Calgary was based on emotion; the recruiter made me feel good by offering me my first teaching job. I also had to pave the way for “our” new life; one of which didn’t involve windsurfing.

            I don’t know if he didn’t want to or couldn’t come to Cuba that March Break. I gathered clothing to bring in donation, spending time picking fashionable items for the women, but when I stepped into the streets of Havana they were dressed way better than me. Jose’s mother and I enjoyed Coppelia ice cream at CUC cost. When I got back to my casa particulare, arranged for me by others, I gave the papers and the money to the mother. Jose had trusted me with copies of his passport, banking information and deeds to his business and condo. My hostess also took my passport for safe keeping.

            For two nights my hips swayed next to Raphael’s and the party flowed through me. At the beach, the five car Bahamas marketing spread that haunted me on my C-train commute was suddenly right before me. I was living the dream without him.

            Then Christ decided to join my party. He came in the form of hard small white roundish objects- in a bag. “Oh it’s just present for Jose. It is Cristo for your skin- made out of crushed egg shells- to put a cross on you.”

Panic ran through me. I wasn’t prepared for this prize. I prayed to God that night. I didn’t know appearance from reality. I prayed for knowledge the next day at Cristobal Colon. “La Milagrosa,” I said to myself, “you are a ’ miracle worker,’ am I being used?

            I thought I could reason the answer to this question, but a spirit stepped in to tell me otherwise. It informed me that my own Cristo was having dinner with Buddha next to a Black Spruce.

Snow Spread

Snow spread, leaves dead

River run, snowmobiles gun

I walk, you fuck

I love, you play

Green

A statement on top

What is underneath?

Is there as much frustration as it comes across?

What are the motives?

A calm life of delicately cut vegetables and unnamed wives.

Carrot Muffins

Everything slowly has its place

The eggs are hardboiled

The set is not finished

I wait

For what?

A human experiment

Wolfville, NS 1992

Berlin, Germany 1995

Ottawa, ON 1999-2004

Wendover, ON Summer 2004

La Pocatiere, QC Summer 2004

Ecuador and Venezuela, South America June 2005

Queen s University Class of 2008 medicine

Renfrew, ON 2004-2006

Guyana, South America Summer 2006 December 2006- June 2007

Hatteras, North Carolina October 2007

Argentina, South America October 2007

Venezuela, South America November 2007

North Bay, ON 2007-2008

Toronto, ON February 2008

China April-June 2008

California- July 2008

Oakville, ON July-October 2008

Hatteras, NC October 2008

Calgary, AB November- June 2009

Loree, ON- Summer 2009

Kapuskasing, ON August 2009

Finish

Logs

Every place has a place

Wonder into logs, a grandma, mother and daughter.

A beige truck and tractor helps the inhabitors that won t let go.

A piece of something on the edge of a curving 11.

A place where people tolerate each other s settled tongues.

A place to be onomous without answering questions and letting go.

At last I can maybe forget

A natural disaster in paradise- we can’t do anything

All the details are lost in the dark. The majors are magnified.

 

Majors during China: Sleeping away from a building, sticking to schedule

 

Majors during depression: Parents, Kingsley, Mary, Kim, Bridget, Kate, Ashley, Holly, John, hiking, walking the river, Ben, ultimate

 

Majors during tornado: neighbours, family, house, electricity, water, food, 

 

Everything has its place

Rose, lavender and tiny egg’s nest picture in the bathroom

 

The Wizard of Oz unfolds in an otherwise calm, peaceful, wordsworthrian way

 

Traffic re-directed, trees up rooted, flattened telephone poles as if a giant hand had pushed them down. Apple tree boxes like building blocks tossed around like a giant baby had been playing. They are strategically placed in the grain field.

Sheets of metal in odd places

Don arthur’s new place with the roof off

 

Black solid like air

 

Looking from the basement window at the objects flying around

 

Hydro trucks working through the night

 

I was thinking about the Wizard of Oz today. Whether I had dated the scarecrow and lion before and about my tinman.

 

Kurt’s kids were watching it

 

We missed it because my parents picked me up in Barrie because I was coming back from Burlington. I stayed in Burlington because Kingsley and I reconciled. Because he was having such a good time he was leaving 3 days late. I was having such a good time I didn’t go down before. Only when I had a ride with Maureen because Shelia’s son and daughter- in law are having a baby. I ended up staying 4 days. 4 wonderful unplanned days. It just happens.

 

Apple boxes dropped from the heavens and jumbled.

 

It made me think of China. And about all the clothes I bought in the last couple of days and how they didn’t matter.

 

It was cold right afterwards…

Thank you Beijing for being polluted and the West for being ignorant

I keep reading articles in the Globe and Mail about pollution clean-up. There is a critical and far removed tone or point of view to the articles.

Are we not that far behind China? We consume more on an individual basis. We drive, heat and cool our living spaces, shop at stores with 24 hr. energy consumption for stuff we think we need which has been produced in a country whose air quality, as a result, is less than ours, clean ourselves and stuff using large amounts of water and the list goes on.

I think it is great that there is so much pollution for this international event. Will the Western world wake up and see that we are all part of this world and contribute to its health and well being?

Screw freeing Tibet and yeah to a sense of oneness and collective responsibility.