overpasses

biking dark beside the highway,
langford bleeding into colwood and view royal
sensuous concrete streaming out
sleek jet propelled out of a molded hillside
by vast soaring columns
underneath shining rows of lights, sleek rows of lights
an overpass;
joy of a smooth concrete curve
meets the boyish pleasures of ducking under
and passing over

sensuality of a smooth cement tongue
arching over the road phallus
pressed down straight into mounds
of forest hillside womb dirt

then metallic car shoots underneath
road gliding away underneath its tires,
driver's steely eyes on the downward curving asphalt
tires longing for the occasional penetration of tunnels
but mostly making do with the foreplay of an overpass,
pantomime of cement dry humping,
cars shooting over the earth on a straight line,
destination quick approaching
earth receding in the rear view mirror

For my friends

If you want to be consumed
Than gather the sticks from your bedrooms
And gather round the fire, any one
For all need tinder, all desire wood
And burn, burn till the sticks have become coals
And your eyes stinging with smoke
Become embers in the night
And if you want to become king
Than learn the ways of your people,
You shall have to know their tradition if you wish to feel the crown
Upon your head and the throne against your back.
You shall have to dance in order to hear their praise;
A motionless king can expect no better than the grave
Regicides plotted guiltless in the shadow of the clock tower

-victoria, dec 1. 2007

beacon hill park, nov 25

while watching the fading glow of the sun in beacon hill park
late afternoon, over the olympic mountains,
snowy peaks hard over a darkening cloud bank
a pair of women, facing the colours,
wrinkles and glasses around their eyes
one in a shimmery green blazer, head in a loose black car
the other indistinct but turning bright eye
the one in green to the other
"life sure is good isn't it."
"uh huh, mmm", to the sun, eyes, alight
"it just keeps on coming."

and it was dinnertime and its only a month till christmas
and monday is tomorrow morning and month and duties and duties and

Jean Genet, on the mental life of the jailed prisoner.

Jean Genet, on the mental life of the jailed prisoner.
From Our Lady of the Flowers

We occupy our minds with giving ourselves splendid roles through luxurious lives; we invent so many that we remain enfeebled for a life of action, and if one of them comes, by chance, to be realized, we would be unable to be happy in it, for we have exhausted the dry delights (and many a time recalled the memory of their illusion) of the thousand possibilities of glory and wealth. We are blase. We are forty, fifty, sixty years old; we know only petty, vegetative misery. We are blase.
Your turn Marchetti. Don't invent ways of making a fortune, don't buy knowledge of a sure way of smuggling, don't look for a new trick (they're all used up, more than used up)...

---comment---

Move this to 2007 and North America, generations rising to maturity through the television and the movie theatre and say that we're a hundred, two hundred, we're dead, we're past living, we're the ones that are used up, finished, prisoners, our dreams, our myth mined by the cinema and presented back to us as banality, as storylines. Let this be the aim of our actions, not to seize upon and exploit our longings, our daydreams but to enrich and sanctify them as they emerge and tremble...

Utah!

You take land so rare, so fierce
and make it resound with the retorts of your guns,
the thickness of your gospel,
the lowing of cattle sounds to the peaks,
while your highways hum with the speed of a false haste,
cars and trucks rushing to another destination.

This landscape has been too much,
these red bluffs, vast vacant shimmering salt flat lakes
canyons and mesas out of the plains
unbreachable treasuries of earth
their question resounds unanswered

Too much for Joseph Smith, his trail of obedient wagons,
too much for the 15 living prophets
which have followed in an unbroken line of old white men
down to Gordon Hinckley whose flock numbers 13 million
freedom loving souls waiting for heaven.

I see it in your eyes, your retreat to dull certainty,
your capital, its empty core, vacant streets
for what would you do in such a place?
the strip malls, the chains hum with activity,
your televisions pulse while you
pump the hollow music of your organs
through the temples of the church
and the congregation listens mutely,
the dream of the end
echoing happily in their heads
jumping through these days,
the fiery hills left to the lowing cattle.

Heaven, the destination loudly proclaimed
an eternal bliss of filial activity
resounding with the shouts and echoes of familiarity.

it was all a matter of chance

what if whenever they rolled up
we felt annoyance instead of fear
their sirens calling or not,
dogs and guns or not
as comfortable with dying as
being treated like shit by guys with big thighs
as comfortable with losing movement
as being told you're illegal again
comfortable squatting in a dirty cell
they'd boil into a rage
while we calmly watched around the fire
their faces hot with perspiration
unable again to swallow the hollowness of their words
the impotence of their guns,
the squalor of their cells,
men who think that white walls make a cell clean,
while an air conditioner pumps stale air through the cells
and think that fear and solitary time can
transform annoyance into respect,

but as the fire flickers
heat transforms those hard foreheads
their chests deflate and the thighs are just thick
they're just hungry for respect, scared as anyone
just their gunsdogsrecords are their way of saying they deserve it
they've never gotten it here
and know it so damn it
you should've believed me when i said you could trust me
but thats not why you're an officer
wisdom's never been photographed either
but we all know it doesn't wear stiff pants

impotence tonight faced with a hysterical woman
all they've to offer is white walls and the
reassurance of a man with a gun and a badge
so into a cell she goes
tears echoing through the door

Too Tall in the Lagoon

lying in the cemetary, besides Tomas
and Shruwski, inhaling the last of
a cigarette and the afternoon sky
behind low, reverent graveside trees
you come again, there
picking over a rock pile as improbable
in the tidal lagoon as you were in the market in St. Louis
full of exhausted americans, (arms clutching bags and bags
oil in the corners of their eyes,
pushing out the tips of their fingers
as remote from the sun as the fuel black from their pores)

stepping carefully through the loose lagoon sand
lingering on the shells you imagined around your neck
as you lingered on the fruit in the market that day,
where a man called you beautiful
and told me i was lucky as he gathered our apples
in front of his stomach
"you are like my cousin," he said
"first she hated being tall and then he realized she could use it"
then we walked away and his eyes followed you to his cousin
and i saw how wearisome being a girl
in a world of dissapointed men
could be

on the lagoon its only me and the crows watching you,
knotted braid over your shoulder bright
open jacket hanging over your dress towards the sand
past your blue jeans and long witches boots
your eyes scanning the ground
harvesting with the crows

this is how i remember you today
while the light tells me its time to get up
and put the bicycle between my legs