Benjibopper

Labels: 2008, nova scotia, philosophy, Poetry

Labels: 2008, Fiction, nova scotia, publishing

"the trouble with Flann O'Toole had to do with two things: his preoccupation with being such a disgustingly uproarious broth of a boy, and the fact that his middle name was Napoleon. An Irish Napoleon was a concept so grotesque it had to end up like O'Toole. O'Toole made potato whisky in a back room and seduction attempts upon the person of every female who entered the Elbaroom; he swore oaths regularly and broke promises unfeelingly; he was prone to fits of violent temper, but thought himself a reasonable man; he was likely at any moment of the day or night to keel over in an alcoholic stupor, but he considered himself a man of power; he was carried to his bed every night in a haze of obscenity and vomit, but he was convinced he was a leader in the community; he quoted poetry as he did ugly things." --Salman Rushdie [master of characterization]



Birth
At first it’s a slow leak,
nothing to panic about.
We watch the game
after a brief call to the midwife,
who is concerned by the snow
barricading her country home.

To bed for now,
in our basement bedroom.

4 am comes too early.
My between-contraction naps
become too brief and frequent.
Then pop.
Gush.
Bags of waters,
which protected this 9-month concept,
down the drain.
Still no midwife.

5 am the shrieking begins;
there’s blood on the floor.
A slightly panicked call to the midwife,
who says in the face of rapid dilation,
to stay low and calm -
no shrieking.

Just low moans,
at the buffalo frequency,
bouncing on your birth ball.

Fill the tub.
Muddy bloodied waters.
No problem,
as long as it’s warm
in the cold
and cool in the heat.

Stay low and calm
at the buffalo frequency.

Help me,
you whisper your scream.
We’re only 2 hours in.

Stay low and calm
at the buffalo frequency.

You can do this,
I mock confidence.
And then we’ll have a baby.

Where’s the midwife?
Your query
more rhythmic than contractions.

Friends come first,
with a breakfast to go cold
as they boil water,
like a 60s sitcom birth.
Filling our birth pool
by the fire they built
in our living room.

Where’s the midwife?

Stay low and calm
at the buffalo frequency.
Tepid water over contracting belly,
moaning low.
300 liquid scoops
cool the pain
until it gets worse,
and you push them away
as the midwife arrives.

I feel like I want to push.

No don’t do that!
quoth the ignorant partner.

The voice of experience
searches for cervix,
finds nothing,
says, it’s all natural.
You’re ready to go.

So up we go,
you staggering, punch-drunk
like a lopsided prizefighter
begging to throw in the towel.

Nobody can do this but you,
and guess what, you’re doin’ it.
You will get this baby in your arms,
she informs you, her lips taut
like the memory of a cigarette,
her voice all silken dominatrix.
Now push!

You scream your war cry.
Forget low and calm,
to hell with buffaloes.
You sweat methane.
Arm in arm we squat,
your full weight on me,
fire in our legs
and on our skin.
My back breaks,
as the pool is filled
with 37-degree water.

You climb in
but you won’t take my hand,
just ice-water.
Ice-water to forehead,
ice-water to lips,
to throat, then spilled
under a small slice of sea.
My hand is freed
For shoulder neck massage.

You wail, just short of ululation.
Your language is clear,
your cries reverential.
This is not the time to be crass,
though the neighbours think
you are being tortured.

The baby responds with a crown.
You can’t see it.
Anticipation fills the room,
like a back-alley yodel
you’re so close, Mama,
we all agree.
But you aren’t impressed
by the sliver of emergent hair.
I’m so far away.
Can I quit now?

Low moans,
buffalo frequency.

Seven more warriors cry.
Seven more uterine contracts.
Your baby’s face is slipping through,
and my hands are placed for the pull,
but the shoulder is stuck as we heave,
and it’ll surely break with such force,
our biceps one way
your contorted primal writhing
the other.

I can only whimper and cry,
as this marathon miracle 1st prize
passes through my hands, head-first
into the rivulet between your breasts.
Legs are spread to see
his swollen testicles dangling.
It’s a boy, my little baby boy!
But you already knew that.
My shoulders heaving tears,
your face a sheet of white shock.
What just happened?

The radio sings:
I’m Here
for You

A smile washes over my body.
He looks like me.
He looks like you.
A smile washes over my body,
blocks my fears
of tyrannical fatherhood.

We kiss,
each other and him,
our lips his cheeks.

Just sculpted lines between mother and child
have blurred and blended again,
leaving a singular hope.

Labels: 2008, love junk, nova scotia, Poetry

Labels: 2008, nova scotia, Poetry, politics

"White folks seemed always to expect you to know those things which they'd done everything they could think of to prevent you from knowing." --Ralph Ellison


For Cheb Khaleb
I've lost my teenager,
his bouncing strut disappeared.

I weigh 375 now.
My 39-year-old maid died
while sound-proofing my bedroom.

The priest next door inflicts on me
the cries of his wives as he beats them
until I drop to my knees begging
for new ideas.
Then I weep until sleep claims me.

I'm trapped in this inherited mansion.
I've lost my carefree teenaged dancer.
Too much Cuban ex drove him
from me to nowhere.
I replaced him with titanium gates.

I built a super-computer to track
the slow death of my self-made father,
self-made with help from my mother.

My teenager won't answer my calls;
skin cancer ate my father's face
while doctors swore things were fine.

My titanium gates have since rusted,
but I still can't see through them
and my teenager took my maps.

Labels: 2008, nova scotia, Poetry, politics

The lighting and sound aren't the best, and I st-st-stumbled on a couple words, but here's a video of me receiving the Atlantic Writing Competition best novel prize from novelist Alf Silver. Below the video is the text of the reading in case you want to follow along.





The fantastic voyage began on a sandy blue paradise for fishermen and their children renting snorkelling equipment to drive-by tourists in 1973. This is where and when Bumi was born, his face all small and crinkly, brown and wide-eyed wonder at the implausibility of being plucked from his mother’s womb while she lay bleeding on a dirt floor silently and stubbornly refusing to cry out at the pain of birth. He was the Bugis boy with a Javanese name, chosen by his Javanese mother. She had, for the most part, let her own traditions slip away as the years and the island colluded to make her their own. Rilaka became her new motherland, its Buginese language her lingua franca. Her firstborn’s name was a tribute to that natal part of her, and because it meant ‘earth’ in her faraway mother-tongue, it honoured the place of his birth in a multicultural chorus.

From the beginning Bumi’s eyes pierced harder than any other, glowering while his father forced him to try football, glowing brightly at the chance to help the man count market money from mainland fish sales. By age three he’d humbled his father by becoming a faster and more accurate bookkeeper, who also spoke better Indonesian, a skill his father exploited for price negotiations with mainlanders. By age five he bored of accounting and took to engineering, devising a cheap and effective net floatation device out of two-litre pop bottles washed up along the shore.

Bumi’s father, a wiry man with surprising strength and audaciously self-granted authority, went looking for the boy late one evening after Bumi failed to come home for supper. On their tiny island of a hundred people, any lost child not found in five minutes was assumed drowned. Bumi’s father, Yusupu, was not worried. Bumi was no likely drowning victim, the first four-year-old potentially smarter than the sea.

Yusupu found Bumi on the far sloping side of the island where no one had ever bothered to build or settle. It was simply too far away from the others. In recent years it had become a place where the women gathered to make clothing when they wanted to get away from the tourists.

Bumi was there cursing a foul black streak the likes of which Yusupu hadn’t heard in all his years on boats, not from his father or grandfather, nor any other man he’d known.

“Bumi! What’s wrong?” he shouted, half in anger and half in concern, a magical mix of fatherly emotion that keeps us from being a threat to ourselves from a young age.

“I can’t get it tied!” Bumi retorted, pointing in frustration at a small tangle of netting he’d somehow dragged across the village, and 30 empty plastic pop bottles. “My fingers’re too small!”

“Why do you want to tie them?” Yusupu asked. The sharpness in his voice was all but gone.

“You tie them at one end to make it float, then you can leave it and go play,” Bumi explained. “Then you come back and you have fish. So then you have more time to play with me, Daddy.”

Yusupu was not an exceptionally hard-working man, but he did spend six hours a day at sea – six hours Bumi felt would be better spent playing with him. While floatation nets have existed in many other fishing cultures for centuries, Rilaka’s more labour intensive methods were ingenious for keeping the men out of the women’s hair for six hours a day, and vice versa, and for making physically strong, hardy men for an island left naked in the exposure of rain and merciless sun.

Most human beings survive on tradition their whole lives, and Yusupu had much in common with most human beings, especially the men of Rilaka. His son Bumi was among the rare few whose novel ideas change the way a species like ours lives, and indirectly change the way all life lives or dies.

Like most human innovations Bumi’s idea had unforeseen impacts. The lighter workload and greater cash flow that came their way (once Yusupu caught on and got to tying what Bumi’s little fingers couldn’t coordinate) resulted not in more play-time with his father, but less. And the time he did spend with the man became much less pleasant.

Yusupu and the other Rilakan fishers had never before felt any need for alcohol, which was technically forbidden. Not being pious men, finding themselves with unprecedented time on their hands, and not being in any particular hurry to return to their families, they decided to stop into a little bar with a live musician near the seaport. The toxins in the liquor put the inexperienced drinkers in a collectively ill mood, and most of them disliked the numbing effect of too many drinks. Only Yusupu’s stubbornness pushed him forward until he had drunk more than his fill several nights in a row. His cohorts would keep him company and switch to coffee after just one glass of strong rum. For Yusupu, the new practice became his habit after the others had tired of alcohol.

It was a week into the experiment that Bumi learned what betrayal really felt like. He had heard many stories of betrayal from his Uncle Karsi, the world's greatest storyteller, and in them the dastardly deeds were swiftly repaid, vigilante style. From Karsi's words Bumi imagined that betrayal was merely a seed of desire for revenge. The first time Yusupu hit him forever changed his understanding of pain. There was no desire in it at all, just deep disappointment.

He had stayed up late, determined to see his father before dream-time. He had refused to come home, afraid that sleep would take him if he got too comfortable. Instead he stayed by the shore playing long after the tourists had returned to the mainland and the other children had gone to sleep. He drew pictures in the sand with a stick to pass the hours long past sunset, and even past midnight, bleary-eyed and obsessed with the single thought of his father. When the boats finally returned Bumi ran to them and watched open-mouthed as the other men helped his father over the gunwale. Yusupu retched and spit into the sea he'd always told Bumi was sacred.

"Daddy!" Bumi cried, thinking Yusupu was hurt. He ran to him and pushed through the other men to offer a hand.

Yusupu looked down at Bumi and sneered. "What are you doing up?" he demanded.
Bumi swallowed and looked up at Yusupu, who pulled back at his matted salt-and-pepper hair. Even hunched over Yusupu towered over the boy like a giant sea creature lurching onto the land. "Waiting for you," Bumi said.

The men laughed and one tussled Bumi’s hair. "He misses you," one of them told Yusupu, who smiled a shy bemused smile, took the boy up into his arms, and carried him home.

Yusupu kept smiling until he had crouched in through the door of their little house. Then he put Bumi down and took him by the arm, looked the boy in the eyes, and said, "Don't you ever embarrass me like that again."

He gave a half smile and slapped Bumi across the face. Bumi's lips quivered and a tear came to his eye. "Are you going to cry now, Son?" he asked. "Are you going to embarrass me further?"

Bumi swallowed hard, sucking a head full of tension down his throat. His body was shaking, but he didn't cry. He shook his head solemnly 'no'. He would not embarrass his father any further.

"Good," Yusupu said. "Now get to sleep."

Labels: 2008, Fiction, nova scotia, subway novel

White caps on black sand
on the northern California coast
where I learned how to drive with my thumbs

Green trees on sharp turns
on the way down to Big Sur
where Seeley gave his Thanks to Gravity

Foggy memories on monarch shore
on a timeout from the cause
where I learned destiny was following me

Condor dots on blind sun
on a moment to myself
where I learned how big the world could be

X spot on blue line
in between San Fran and Crescent City
where I earned a single moment of free

Closed eyes on rhythm waves
on the northern California coast
where I wondered what home would be

Labels: 2008, America, philosophy, Poetry

Your mouth tasted like a train
but you were the only place to go
when I needed a little sin
so please don’t ask me where I’ve been

I stood up in the underground
put pretty red paint over crumbling mould
cranked the treble through a whammy bar
sipped an overpriced cheap whiskey
called it a den of creative energy
for new talents to get our heads bobbing
but every morning I had to emerge
blinking against the dawn
every morning I had to come home
and report everything I’d done wrong

Your skin felt like a carnival
complete with games of chance
there was a good chance I’d lose
so just don’t ask me where I’ve been

You hit me in the knees
with that falsetto melody
hammered me with a violin
until I couldn’t think straight
it was all images of nudity
feminine forms dancing just for me
on each note your eyes shot at me
It was like controlling your dreams
I could get away with anything
and it would all be erased in the morning

Your chest pounded like a marching band
but the big game was cancelled
any remaining routines
left no trace of where I’d been

Labels: 2008, love junk, nova scotia, Poetry

An exciting development for me: I won the H.R. (Bill) Percy Novel Prize for my novel (Living in the Dirt/Drive-by Saviours) in the Atlantic Writing Competition!

This is hopefully a big step toward finding a publisher.

Check out http://www.writers.ns.ca/pr25Aug08.html for details.

I will receive my prize and give a reading at a Gala Celebration of Writers and Writing next month.

Labels: 2008, nova scotia, publishing, subway novel

You feel like Dante's innermost circles have risen around me
shown themselves to be playgrounds and creatively wacky theme parks,
pogo sticks on trampolines

You give me vertigo and soothe that fear with targeted foot rubs
slow my heart rate to a post sauna tingle, when the skin is crystal clean,
and satin smooth

It's a bizarro anticipation for what has already been, because spinning
old is new again, same old conversations make us sweat again, solitude scary
as birth again

Same sense of separation, don't fear; though fear is natural as conflict
In death, chaos, and survival know that you are adored, treasured, wanted
because

You feel like Satan's fall was never intended, that it never mattered
just a joy-ride, a bare bones pleasure cruise, under low hanging candy
and whipped cream

where there is no entertainment but what we create together
This is how you feel when I remember you here, when my mind is ready
and my body can be put at ease.

Labels: 2008, Canada, love junk, Poetry

"Like a personal trainer with a penchant for fat women, I got secrets," he said. "I hold them for the protection of those around me."

I looked straight into his pale eyes, smirked, and challenged him to reveal some shade of truth.

He looked back at me. His face revealed nothing in those lingering seconds until he said:

"You don't wanna know the depths of my shoes, and that mirror you're holding so over-confidently is one place you don't want me to look.

"You think you can warm this statue, wash it clean of centuries of bird-shit and lovingly peel away the thousand layers of cold hard stone, reveal a lederhosen-clad rich boy smiling at the rain, who will hug you, relieved to have found a safe new home.

"You can scrub all you want. You can cut and slice but you underestimate the skill and the bitter obsessive determination of this stone mason self-sculptor."

I reached for him and then stopped short. He was long gone.

Labels: 2008, love junk, nova scotia, short story

"Boredom...is really just another screen to deflect our attention away from the arduous yet delightful, joyous though painful process of allowing ourselves the stillness to remember what we feel and to begin assuming responsibility for our lives." --Derrick Jensen






Roadkill always makes me sad. All these lives taken for what? So we can ramble on down the road, recreate elsewhere, traversing the highway scars over the vast land, smack through the middle of someone else's home. All manner of forest creatures doing the same, rambling around and suddenly their goals, their destinations, their lives are no more.

On the way to Cape Breton a bird flew straight into our tires on a downward trajectory. Maybe it saw a mouse and, not knowing the creature's already doomed fate, went after it, joined it with a sickening thud.

We frowned at death. "That's the first time I ever did that - hit anything," she said.

I told her about the other time a bird flew into the side of my car. "We stopped and got out, walked toward it. It was just sitting there and we weren't sure it was dead. When we got close it flew away."

"Maybe this one did that too," she smiled hopelessly. We remembered the thud.

Roadkill is an understated tragedy of civilization. Another of our centuries long list of assaults on God and Gaia.



********************************************************************************



We were in an inflatable canvas canoe. Looking up into the tree at the end of the little island we saw an eagles' nest, 2.5 metres across. There were two jeuvenile eagles standing up on the edge of the nest.

What amazed me about those young eagles was that they just stood there, glancing around at the wide world, as we sat watching them.

They completely lacked ambition. They had no desire to work toward any dream. They felt no nagging guilt that they weren't labouring on the manuscript or the business plan. They didn't need to organize, tidy, or clean anything. They weren't dying to escape their one-horse town and see Paris or Bombay. They didn't even have a television to pass the hours until their parents returned. They just stood there, looking around, without anxiety or concern.

No one would judge them for their inaction; no one could hurt them.

Labels: 2008, non-fiction, nova scotia, philosophy

"For what what the world spends on defense every 2.5 hours, about $300 million, smallpox was eliminated back in the late seventies. For the price of a single new nuclear-attack submarine, $726 million to $1 billion, we could send 5 to 7.5 million Third World children to school for a year. For the price of a single B-1 bomber, about $285 million, we could provide basic immunization treatments, such as shots for chicken pox, diphtheria, and measles, to the roughly 575 million children in the world who lack them, thus saving 2.5 million lives annually. For what the world spends on defense every forty hours, abut $4.6 billion, we could provide sanitary water for every human being who currently lacks it."
--James A. Dunnigan and Albert A. Nofi




I loathe writing about vice. I find myself increasingly saddled with responsibility, deadlines, demands, external and internal pressures, and it's hard on my system. I can't drink anymore, can't tolerate fatty fried foods, don't have time for messy affairs even if I had the desire for them.

So forgive me if I numb my brain with occasional images of 7-foot behemoths smashing spherical material through nylon mesh, while I yell at the TV, "De-fence! C'mon!"

Forgive me if I swear at computer screens 'fuck you piece of shit you have one function in life why can't you do it?!'

Forgive me if I swear too much in general, grumble and complain and sometimes neglect the pleasantries.

Forgive me if I take work to bed and sleep in come morning.

Forgive me if I need a little caffeine in the morning, and if I come off a little cynical when you're whimsical, dreaming your dreams for two.

Labels: 2008, non-fiction, nova scotia, philosophy

For 10 million I could buy a mile of the new twinned highway and still have enough left to get me one of those smart bombs, just a little one, just big enough to blow up my strip of twinned highway. I'd have to squirrel away enough to buy a wide angled camcorder and film the explosion from a rented helicopter. And there'd have to be road blocks to make sure there was no traffic - I couldn't afford the lawsuits.

Or maybe I'd buy me one a those new private sector prisons, double my fortune selling recycled uranium-powered tasers to convicted panhandlers so they can take their antisocial disorders out on sadistic guards peddling refried baked bean sandwiches. I could have a nice little factory farm in the yard - the inmates could provide free labour while I watch the US Open. I could give free sausages to whichever con raised the best sow.



-

Labels: 2008, non-fiction, nova scotia, politics

In the roughneck tarpits of delusion
as they asked me to prove myself
worthy of some compensation
or sympathy

In the shot-down boredom of empathy
when I realized everything was corrupted
and there was no place safe to stand
or register

As I paid the price for my wager
the cost of my own existence
in this dodge-ball shotgun choice of life
or living

I said your name
I showed my ring
I drew your face
I smiled
I walked home

In the uninsulated time capsule basement
at the moment of no regrets
limbs entwined in the vulnerability of trust
or deception

Naming that naked moment of honest exposure
elucidating the consequences
of each and every opposite action
or reaction

As we laid bare the price of admission
for a forever existence together
and the smiling lips irremovable from our faces
or bodies

I spoke your name
I made a ring
I kissed your face
We smiled
We were home

In the daily face of insanity
departing from reason love and peace
walking into false transactions of cash
or truth

My pen hacks at conmen weavers
atop a chain of fool-hearted power
trying to catch a falling leader
or star

As I fumble for my credentials
letters planted in compressed trees
and they ask me who I am
or why I matter

I say your name
I hold your ring
I see your face
I smile
This is home

Labels: 2008, love junk, nova scotia, Poetry

This one here needs a tune:


If this is the end
let's get it right
If morning explodes
let's enjoy the night

I seen the signs
in the neon trees
If I stand and fight
be the end of me

If we're all going down
it's a sinking boat
If the water is rising
enjoy the coast

I don't wanna die
I have no choice
Terms are encrypted
in a dumb child's voice

Nobody knows
what lies under-covers
If it's disease and death
let them be my lovers

I did my best
my gods know it's true
I did okay
better than you

I asked very little
gave back twice as much
I got old
grew out of touch

If this is the end
let's get it right
If morning explodes
let's enjoy the night

Labels: 2008, nova scotia, philosophy, Poetry

"In 1993, approximately 614,000 American children were physically abused, 300,000 were sexually abused, 532,000 were emotionally abused, 507,000 were physically neglected, and 585,000 were emotionally neglected. 565,000 of these children were killed or seriously injured. What is the relationship between these numbers and our culturally induced isolation from the natural world and each other, from the social embeddedness in which we evolved?” --Derrick Jensen

I'm hypnotized by the sunspots
flashing across the snow
it's a warning
this isn't a nature poem

I'm confused by the refuse
driving across the province
it's a murder
it isn't a straight line

I'm angered by the decisions
directed at black Nova Scotians
it's the corruption
this isn't a protest song

I'm overwhelmed by their power
dazzling smoke and mirrors
it's their warning
they aren't above circles

I'm humbled by the morning
marching down the highway
it's this community
that celebrates our survival

Labels: 2008, nova scotia, Poetry, politics

“Areas of the world that are the most biologically diverse are also the most diverse in language, yet the rate of decline is greater even than that of species loss.” –Paul Hawken


I am free
of that society

Walls surround me
constructed by culture

I am free
inside my mind

You can be free
even in this prison

You can free yourself
but you can free
no one else

Walk with me
imagine pathways
past the walls
to freedom

I am free
but what good is free
If I'm alone?

Labels: 2008, nova scotia, philosophy, Poetry

“When Oscar Wilde allegedly gestured at the garish wallpaper in his cheap Parisian hotel room and announced with his dying breath, ‘Either it goes or I go,’ he was exhibiting something beyond an irrepressibly brilliant wit. Freud, you see, wasn't whistling Edelweiss when he wrote that gallows humour is indicative of ‘a greatness of soul.’ The quips of the condemned prisoner or dying patient tower dramatically above, say, sallies on TV sitcoms by reason of their gloriously inappropriate refusal, even at life's most acute moment, to surrender to despair.”
--Tom Robbins

Labels: 2008, nova scotia, philosophy, Poetry