Benjibopper

This is my friend Leah. This is a funny picture of her from her undergrad days, soon after she won a bigass award and tonnes of recognition for taking on some bigass factory that was going to pave over a beloved wetland near her home. Sometimes M and I drive by that factory, right through its gargantuan shadow, and we always comment on the 17-year-old girl who took it on, who became our good friend, and introduced the two of us.

Here's a poem I wrote about her a few years back, because she's so freakinwickit:


Parallel lives lived entwined entrenchedly
listlessly lying in sprinklers playfully
Eating like meeting a tattooed gourmet
wheeling and stealing into the chalet
Kissing in circles over hummus discussions
of barefooted boxers & blackbooted Russians
Not a thought about purpose or porpoise oppressions
just active in costume protests against our own obsessions

Squeals of closeness and objected assumptions
audible anger over the other's no gumption
Advisories precede rationalizations of the stupid mistakes we made
right before our boldest hearts suffered a barber's fade

The fall that follows falls short under the swallows
There's also beauty in a homeless man's wallow
With the ties of bondage broken too
the lonely freedom descends upon you
And me with the fear of the fate to come
resisting the ever-present urge to run

But fate is just whatever happens to us it's never wrong
Our nature's take us where we belong



Leah recently started her master's degree at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (part of U Toronto), and is leaving an amazing job where she works with kids to bring out the best of them in their art - it's even better than it sounds. We saw their show a few weeks ago - a combination of original artwork, art from found objects, and performance art, that was absolutely stupendous and I wish I had pictures of that for you.

Leah should have been considered for that 'greatest Canadian' CBC schtick. Instead I nominated Tooker Gomber, who is also really great, and who I also wrote a poem about. But, today's blog is for Leah.

--Bopper

Labels: 2002, friends, Poetry, Toronto