Edward Willett's Blog, page 23

Poetry month poetry: The Labyrinth of Regret

I wasn’t able to post this yesterday, but this is actually yesterday’s poem from first lines provided the day before that by Gerald Hill, Poet Laureate of Saskatchewan, to all members of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild. Just one more poem to go! It’s been a blast incorporating these random lines of Saskatchewan poetry into new science fiction/fantasy/horror poems. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them.

All the other poems: I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust; Virtuality; This is the Way the World Ends; The Last Thing Your Lips Touched; Facing the Silence; The Telling; Saint Billy; I Remember His Eyes; His Body Knows; Emily Alison Atkinson Finds God; I Will Ride Off the Horizon; There’s Nothing Artificial About Love; He Really Should Have Written; Saving My Brother’s Life; Dammit, I’m a Doctor, Not an Entree; Slime is Thicker Than Blood; The Maharajah of Mossbank; The Gathering of Stones; The Only Child.

The first lines:

have you met the poet

who tried to stop writing

– Veryl Coghill, “The Space Too Small” from Make Me

I leave my shoes

to mark my place

– Anne Campbell, “I Leave My Shoes to Mark My Place” from Angel Wings All Over

My poem:

The Labyrinth of Regret

By Edward Willett

The labyrinth is endless, a maze

no Theseus could conquer,

no Minotaur could rule.

Souls from a thousand millennia

flit through the halls, frustrated,

frightened, frozen in the moment

when their lives went wrong

and their deaths began.

My guide is enthralled by the

suffering souls, a fan of their

tragic backstories.

“Have you met the poet

who tried to stop writing?”

he says, with a nudge

to point my gaze

toward a gaunt-eyed figure

trudging down

an endless winding stair.

He points at another,

sitting alone,

his head in his hands.

“That one,” he says,

with a delighted chuckle,

“devoted his life to a

theory that foundered

on the hard rocks of facts,

while that one, the one

who’s just sitting and rocking,

found the man that she loved

loved himself even more.”

No matter the tale,

no matter their pasts,

the ghosts look the same:

longing and lost,

sallow and silent,

grieving and gray.

I do not remember

how I came to be here,

I do not remember

how I lived before.

I know I was going

to be a somebody,

make a big difference,

make myself a name.

But now I am nobody.

I made no difference.

I have no name.

My guide has left me,

or never was here.

I leave my shoes

to mark my place,

and barefoot began

my search for the exit

I already know

I will never find.

Poetry month poetry: The Only Child

Today’s poem, from first lines provided yesterday by Poet Laureate Gerald Hill to all members of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild. He’s doing this every weekday for the month of April, and I’ve been incorporating each pair of lines into a new science fiction/fantasy/horror poem

All the other poems: I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust; Virtuality; This is the Way the World Ends; The Last Thing Your Lips Touched; Facing the Silence; The Telling; Saint Billy; I Remember His Eyes; His Body Knows; Emily Alison Atkinson Finds God; I Will Ride Off the Horizon; There’s Nothing Artificial About Love; He Really Should Have Written; Saving My Brother’s Life; Dammit, I’m a Doctor, Not an Entree; Slime is Thicker Than Blood; The Maharajah of Mossbank; The Gathering of Stones.

The first lines:

There is a story of a swan.

See the birthmark on the back of my neck

– Lorna Crozier, “Myths” from The Garden Going On Without Us

In the near dark,

when she’s almost

– Sheri Benning, “What It Tastes Like” from Thin Moon Psalm

The Only Child

By Edward Willett

In the near dark,

when she’s almost asleep,

there are stories.

The fire lights the faces of the women,

strikes answering sparks from their eyes.

“There is a story of a swan.

See the birthmark on the back of my neck?”

The girl’s mother cranes her head

so the others can see.

Eyes heavy,

the girl blinks at it.

It really does look like a swan,

if you squint just right.

“The swan comes to a woman in the night,

and she lays an egg that hatches into a child.”

That’s not how it works,

the girl thinks,

though she’s not entirely sure how it does,

because however it is supposed to,

it doesn’t work that way anymore,

hasn’t since something called “men,”

strange creatures she has never seen

(and can’t really imagine)

vanished from the Earth.

“That’s the story of Zeus and Leda.”

Another woman’s voice drips scorn,

mingled, as always, with envy.

“That didn’t happen. You learned it in school.”

What’s a school?

the girl thinks,

but she doesn’t ask out loud,

so no one answers her.

“Then how do you

explain the mark?”

her mother says.

“How do you

explain my child?”

I wasn’t hatched

from an egg,

the girl thinks.

She frowns.

Was I?

“She wasn’t hatched,”

the other woman says.

“It’s a metaphor,”

her mother says.

What’s a metaphor?

the girl wonders.

So many strange words.

So many strange stories, too,

told each night by the women around the fire.

But this story of the swan

was the most unbelievable yet.

“I dreamed of a swan,”

her mother insists.

“I woke with a mark,”

she continues.

“And unlike any of you,”

she concludes,

“Unlike anyone else,

anywhere that we know of,

I have a child.”

An only child,

the girl thinks.

Her eyes slip closed.

The only child.

She sleeps, and dreams of a swan.

One day it will come to her,

and she will give birth

to a whole new world.

When she awakens,

there is a birthmark on the back of her neck.

Poetry month poetry: The Gathering of Stones

Today’s fantasy (or maybe horror?) poem incorporating the first lines sent out yesterday by Saskatchewan Poet Laureate Gerald Hill to all members of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild.

All the other poems: I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust; Virtuality; This is the Way the World Ends; The Last Thing Your Lips Touched; Facing the Silence; The Telling; Saint Billy; I Remember His Eyes; His Body Knows; Emily Alison Atkinson Finds God; I Will Ride Off the Horizon; There’s Nothing Artificial About Love; He Really Should Have Written; Saving My Brother’s Life; Dammit, I’m a Doctor, Not an Entree; Slime is Thicker Than Blood; The Maharajah of Mossbank.

The moon was gone

when Yarrow left the house

– Robert Currie, “Returning Alone” from Yarrow

poor Mary

stones gather

– Jeanne-Marie de Moissac, “Gabriel” from Slow Curve

The Gathering of Stones

By Edward Willett

The moon was gone

when Yarrow left the house

and he had much to do

before the sunrise.

The warded wall

he’d built with sweat and blood

he had to tear down now

within night’s shroud.

The black stones strewn

across the field beyond

already knew the horror

in the house.

A sigil, cracked

in last week’s storm had failed,

a single wandering imp

had breached the wards.

While Mary slept,

the demon had crept in

to slit her throat in sleep.

Bed drenched in blood,

Yarrow awoke,

and screamed until his throat

was raw, his mind unhinged

by grief and loss.

But then the moon

had silvered all the stones

beyond the wall, and Yarrow

had to move,

As one by one

the stones formed ordered rows,

and rolled in measured silence

toward the farm.

In this new world,

born bloody when the laws of

nature men thought fixed had

given way,

Ghosts haunted stones:

the spirits of those slaughtered

as the changing world erupted

dwelt in rocks.

The warded wall

had kept the haunted stones

at bay, kept Yarrow and Mary

safe and alive.

But now the imp

had taken Mary’s life, left

Yarrow drowned in loss. He’d

let them come,

Let them have Mary,

to live within the stone in

some cold way until the

world changed back.

The wall torn down,

he walks the darkened path back

to the house, enters the

bloody room,

Whispers, “Poor Mary,

stones gather,” kisses

her upon the lips, and

lies beside her.

His blood will join

hers on the sheets, his soul

will join hers in the stones

until world’s end.

Selah

Poetry month poetry: The Maharajah of Mossbank

Today’s science fiction poem from first lines, drawn from published Saskatchewan poetry, provided by Gerald Hill, Poet Laureate of Saskatchewan, to all members of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild.

All the other poems: I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust; Virtuality; This is the Way the World Ends; The Last Thing Your Lips Touched; Facing the Silence; The Telling; Saint Billy; I Remember His Eyes; His Body Knows; Emily Alison Atkinson Finds God; I Will Ride Off the Horizon; There’s Nothing Artificial About Love; He Really Should Have Written; Saving My Brother’s Life; Dammit, I’m a Doctor, Not an Entree; Slime is Thicker Than Blood.

The first lines:

The maharajah of Mossbank built Missouri Farm

Give me cream!           : Give me tea!

– E.F. Dyck, “41.” from The Mossbank Canon

Old as it is, it’s in my house now—

come from Winnipeg on the back of a truck,

– Bruce Rice, “Father” from The Trouble with Beauty

My poem:

The Maharajah of Mossbank

By Edward Willett

The maharajah of Mossbank built Missouri Farm,

Give me cream!           : Give me tea!

carving it from the sod south of Old Wives Lake,

and if anyone stopped by to ask why he called himself

“high king” of a prairie town he was rarely even seen in,

when all he really ruled was a crooked shack and mule,

Give me beef!               : Give me beer!

he threatened to roust his army to remove them.

Nobody visited the maharajah twice, not from Mossbank,

Give me cream!           : Give me tea!

not from Coderre, of which he called himself Count,

and not from Ardill, whose Archbishopric he claimed,

and where no one lives now, although that (probably)

doesn’t have anything to do with him. No,

nobody visited twice not just because the locals

thought he was crazy, but because some of them thought

they went a little crazy when they were out there,

claimed they kept hearing tiny voices,

Give me beef!           : Give me beer!

as though the walls were full of talking mice, and this

a long time before Disney.

The maharajah wasn’t from Mossbank, or even from

Give me cream!           : Give me tea!

Saskatchewan, having made his way north from Missouri

for mysterious reasons. Some thought that the law

might be on his tail, but most just said there’s

no use trying to understand why a crazy man

Give me beef!               : Give me beer!

does anything.

The maharajah of Mossbank disappeared one night,

Give me cream!           : Give me tea!

vanishing during a three-day blizzard, between

the start of the snow and the clear bitter cold that

followed, a fact discovered by his nearest neighbor,

who out of Christian charity thought he should check

on the crazy old coot. He found no shack, he found

no tracks, and the strangest thing of all was

Give me beef!               : Give me beer!

he found no farm, the whole quarter-section gone,

vanished to a depth of six inches, leaving frozen dirt,

wind-whipped clean of snow.

The Mossbank maharajah’s sudden departure

Give me cream!           : Give me tea!

was a six-day wonder around Old Wives Lake,

but you won’t find anyone there who remembers him now.

But I know all about him. I was in this antique shop

in Winnipeg, and inside a glass-topped case I saw

Give me beef!               : Give me beer!

a perfect miniature model of a prairie farm, right down

to a miniature farmer frozen in miniature surprise,

open-mouthed in the door of his miniature shack,

looking up at the sky…looking up at me.

The Maharajah of Mossbank, read a small brass plaque,

Give me cream!           : Give me tea!

and I knew I had to have it, though I wasn’t sure why.

“It’s old and fragile,” the dealer warned, and

it’s big as well, some ten feet square and three feet tall.

But big as it is, old as it is, it’s in my house now—

come from Winnipeg on the back of a truck,

and the driver couldn’t wait to be free of it, said

he kept hearing voices, shouting at him, demanding

Give me beef!               : Give me beer!

things he couldn’t provide even if he was in the habit

of giving the voices inside his head what they wanted,

which he wasn’t, and he wished me enjoyment

of my new purchase, and then he high-tailed it

off my porch as though pursued by hellhounds.

I thought he was crazy.

But then I dreamed of the maharajah of Mossbank,

Give me cream!           : Give me tea!

in journalistic detail, and also dreamed of a

giant glowing disk in the sky above Missouri Farm,

and saw the lightning flash that trapped the maharajah

in that instant, while the hidden renegade aliens

(for they, not he, were the ones fleeing the law),

already the size of mice, now more the size of microbes,

continued to shout their endless demands

Give me beef!               : Give me beer!

and the thing that worries me is that the glass case

cracked last night and the wood frame splintered

this morning and now there’s not the slightest doubt

the farm is getting bigger and the voices are getting

louder and louder and louder, and so

Give me cream!           : Give me tea!

Give me beef!               : Give me beer!

GIVE ME BONE!        : GIVE ME BLOOD!

GIVE ME BONE!        : GIVE ME BLOOD!

GIVE ME BONE!        : GIVE ME BLOOD!

I’ve decided to leave. I hear New Zealand

is nice this time of year.

Poetry month poetry: Slime is Thicker than Blood

Today’s poem, from Friday’s first lines provided by Poet Laureate Gerald Hill to all members of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild every weekday during the month of April. The challenge is to use the lines in a poem or use them as the springboard to a new poem. I’ve chosen as my personal challenge to use the lines in a poem, but not just any poem: a science fiction/fantasy/horror poem.

All the other poems: I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust; Virtuality; This is the Way the World Ends; The Last Thing Your Lips Touched; Facing the Silence; The Telling; Saint Billy; I Remember His Eyes; His Body Knows; Emily Alison Atkinson Finds God; I Will Ride Off the Horizon; There’s Nothing Artificial About Love; He Really Should Have Written; Saving My Brother’s Life; Dammit, I’m a Doctor, Not an Entree.

Friday’s first lines were:

My sister, who is also a snail,

leaves a trail of lovers wherever she goes,

– Barbara Klar, “Adapting to Land” from The Night You Called Me a Shadow

The dog sees it

(frozen)

– Gillian Harding-Russell, “broad daylight” from Vertigo

My poem:

Slime is Thicker than Blood

By Edward Willett

I polish my rainbow carapace,

perfume my sleek and shining body,

and slide seductively through the mud,

calling to the males ensconced in their dens.

They never heed my cries,

Never scuttle out to penetrate my

egg sack, never make my offspring viable.

So I remain frustrated and alone.

My sister, who is also a snail,

leaves a trail of lovers wherever she goes,

satiated, supine, in the slime of her passage,

intoxicated by her opiate effusions.

Though we’re meant to rule as equals,

our genetic fate implacably divides us.

My eggs, unfertilized, all wither,

while hers all blossom, swell, and hatch.

Of her multitudinous offspring,

most have even survived to adulthood.

Soon our growing colony on this strange world

will comprise her children, and hers alone.

This cannot be borne,

so I have just reprogrammed her

obscurer: the clever device that

hides her from the monsters of this world.

One such creature the dominant

giants have given the name of “dog”:

a massive beast with pointed teeth who

breathes out gusts of stinking breath.

This “dog” will eat anything edible,

and a great many things (strictly speaking) that aren’t.

Now here comes my sister. She slows. She stops,

enticing a lover from his secret hole.

My careful sabotage makes her

look like a piece of bloody raw meat.

The dog sees it (frozen), leaps, and snaps,

and my sister is gone from the world.

The bewildered lover blinks,

eye-stalks twisting as he seeks a mate

to slake his lust. I slither forward.

The queen is dead. Long live the queen.

Poetry month poetry: Dammit, I’m a Doctor, not an Entree

Today’s poem, with a blatant Star Trek reference in the title, based on “first lines” provided by Saskatchewan Poet Laureate Gerald Hill to all members of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild every weekday this month.

All the other poems: I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust, Virtuality, This is the Way the World Ends, The Last Thing Your Lips Touched, Facing the Silence, The Telling, Saint Billy, I Remember His Eyes, His Body Knows, Emily Alison Atkinson Finds God, I Will Ride Off the Horizon, There’s Nothing Artificial About Love, He Really Should Have Written, Saving My Brother’s Life.

***

The first lines:

A child who is born covered

in clay & smelling of horses

– Katherine Lawrence, “A Gift” from Ring Finger, Left Hand

At this moment, Dear Readers, neither you nor I

         stand hip-deep in a trout stream.

– David Carpenter, “The Trout Stream Creed” from Trout Stream Creed

Dammit, I’m a Doctor, Not an Entree

By Edward Willett

At this moment, Dear Readers, neither you nor I

stand hip-deep in a trout stream.

This is a lamentable situation which I hope

to rectify very soon.

A week ago I was hip-deep in a trout stream, but

I was called away to deliver

a very unusual child.

From the above, you have probably deduced

that I am a country doctor.

Yes, there are still such things, and I am one.

I am a doctor, I live in the country,

ergo, I am a country doctor. But of an unusual kind:

I work for a government agency,

one you’ve never heard of.

This is a poem, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service,

I have it on good authority,

does not read poems, and if I’m right, it doesn’t matter anyway,

so I will tell you a secret:

Aliens live among us, and I don’t mean the illegal kind.

These are completely legal:

we signed a treaty.

Diefenbaker, PM at the time, had had a falling-out with

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and when

JFK refused to allow the aliens into the United States,

Dief said, “Then by God,

we’ll have them in Canada,” and so one hundred aliens

who had crashed near Macoun

were settled here.

This agency I work for that you never heard of was

set up by Dief right after that

to look after the aliens and help them integrate

into Canadian society.

They look more or less human, but of course

they can’t go to the doctor.

That’s where I come in.

You might say I know them inside and out,

(Their outsides look

more or less the same as ours, but their insides

are really, really weird.)

I’ve always liked the aliens, who are called Kvithi.

They’d be the salt of the earth,

if they were from Earth.

So to get back to this baby. It wasn’t the first

Kivithi baby I’ve delivered

(though it may well be the last), but it was unusual.

The Kivithi have a prophecy

about “A child who is born covered in clay

and smelling of horses,”

and here it was.

The woman had fallen into labour while she was

working in the stable, an

old one with a clay floor, and one unusual thing

about the Kvithi is that

once a woman goes into labour she can’t move

for about six hours until

the baby is born.

So there was the clay, and there were the horses,

and when the child was born

it crawled out (it’s a Kvithi thing) and rolled over

and sat up, all covered in clay,

and there’s no question it smelled of horses, because

the floor sure did and so did

everything else.

So it’s a child of prophecy, a kind of Messiah,

though the prophecy came

only just before the Kvithi crashed, which is why

this alien prophecy includes horses,

which they don’t have back on the Kvithi homeworld,

where what they ride has teeth and claws

and sometimes eats them.

According to the seer who made this prophecy,

who didn’t survive the crash,

once “A child who is born covered in clay and

smelling of horses is born,”

the Kvithi are about to return to their homeworld,

leaving Earth forever, and

me without a job.

The Kvithi are very excited about it, and

they’re already packing up and

they’ve thanked everyone in the government agency

you’ve never heard of

for making their time on Earth so pleasant. But

I have to admit I’m just

a little concerned.

See, I don’t think the bit about the child covered in clay

and smelling of horses

is the whole prophecy, because one day when I was

looking after an elderly Kvithi

who was a bit delirous, he said something about

“the Kvithi fleet will come”

and “they’ll be hungry.”

And then he said something about, “the local stock

is fattening up nicely,” and

I thought he was talking about cows, but

as part of getting ready

the Kvithi have sold all their cows, and I have to say

I don’t like the way that old guy

looks at me.

It’s true I’m a bit overweight, but so is half

the world’s population, and

there’s been some talk it might actually be caused

by a virus or something else

and it occurs to me that the obesity epidemic

has coincided with

the Kvithi presence on Earth.

And I wish it hadn’t occurred to me, I really don’t,

because now I’m wondering

how many Kvithi are about to arrive to “rescue” ours

and I’m wondering if ours

really crash landed by Macoun or if that was just a

cover story and honestly I

think I’m becoming paranoid.

So I’ve decided not to worry about it, because

if a race of star-faring aliens

really wants to turn us all into a smorgasbord

(the ultimate fusion cuisine),

there’s nothing I can do about it, and so I’ve

decided to get my waders on

and head back to the trout stream.

Dear Readers, I invite you to join me,

before it’s too late.

 

Poetry month poetry: Saving My Brother’s Life

Here’s today’s poem in this epic month of sf/fantasy poetry, all of it created using as starting points the two lines of published poetry by Saskatchewan poets sent out each weekday to members of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild by Saskatchewan Poet Laureate Gerald Hill!

All the other poems: I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust, Virtuality, This is the Way the World Ends, The Last Thing Your Lips Touched, Facing the Silence, The Telling, Saint Billy, I Remember His Eyes, His Body Knows, Emily Alison Atkinson Finds God, I Will Ride Off the Horizon, There’s Nothing Artificial About Love, He Really Should Have Written.

The first lines provided:

The body’s belief in death is simple, true, taken up

by the unwilled muscle that fills then empties the lungs—

– Paul Wilson, “Swept” from Turning Mountain

thirty years of your brother’s life

hanging in a cedar-lined closet under the back stairs.

– Judith Krause, “A History of Shirts” from Mongrel Love

My poem:

Saving My Brother’s Life

By Edward Willett

“There’s thirty years of your brother’s life

hanging in a cedar-lined closet under the back stairs,”

Mom says to me. “Do you think you could take it

to his hotel? He needs it for his Grand Tour.”

That made sense, of course, because

the Grand Tour to Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter

takes almost twenty-five years, and

you wouldn’t want to risk that without

lots of spare years ready to go

in case you needed them.

I’ve recently set a goal for myself not to whine

when Mom tells me to do stuff like that,

but honestly, I’m not a kid anymore, even though

I’ve chosen to self-identify as a teenager, and so

it does grate on me a little when she

gives me chores. I mean,

I’m forty-five years old, and there’s

thirty years of my life hanging

right next to my brother’s in that

cedar-lined closet under the back stairs,

along with a couple of decades of Mom’s

(she likes being matronly, she says),

and nearly a century of Grandma’s,

who is currently finger-painting in the nursery.

(Poor Grandpa died

before the whole life-extension thing took off,

but he never struck me as much of a

finger-painter, anyway.)

Dad’s the only one who keeps his whole life

with him all the time. He says he’s

fine with the whole life-extension thing, he just

doesn’t want to look like a kid when he’s

really pushing ninety. Of course,

it costs more to carry your whole life around, because

what if something happened to it?

He had to buy this really expensive

Incipient Death Backup Unit. It monitors

whatever’s going on in his body, and if

something looks like it’s about to kill him,

it grabs a few extra days or months or years

(depending on how serious it is)

from his life-pack and sticks them into him.

Then he can take the whole thing to the

life-cleaner and have it spiffed up good as new.

(Except even after that his body still looks ninety.

Don’t ask me, I don’t get it either.)

Anyway, I go to the cedar closet

(it’s a good place to keep your stored life

because you really don’t want to take it out when

you need a few years so you can look good for a party

only to find that the best years of your life

have been eaten by moths), and to my surprise,

brother Bob is already there,

digging around inside the bag

holding his thirty years.

He looks up when he sees me and

I swear to God he looks guilty. “What

are you up to?” I ask him, and of course

he doesn’t have to tell me anything

if he doesn’t want to, but

apparently he wants to, because he says,

“I’ve decided to give away my life.”

Now that’s a shocker, because

it’s really just another way of saying

you’re tired of living and you’re

planning to let nature take its course, and

as we all know, nature is a bitch who is

always trying to kill us, and personally

I’m happy not to have to worry about

tornadoes and floods and things like that,

because even if something happens

I’ve got all this extra life hanging in the cedar closet,

so I can reboot and then carry on

as if nothing had happened.

“What would you want to do that for?” I say,

and that’s when I find out the awful truth:

Brother Bob has gotten religion. Not

the old-style religion. Those

are still around and mostly okay with the

life-extension thing, although it has meant

term limits on Popes and there’s a

TV evangelist serving life in prison for fraud

who’s going to be there a really, really long time.

No, Bob has gone and converted to the

There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Life church.

“The TANSTAAFL Prophet says

that the body believes in death, and

our minds are part of our bodies, and

therefore we believe in death, too, but

we’ve denied this simple truth and

that’s why the world is suffering.”

Now, I personally think the world

is suffering a lot less than it used to, since

mostly people don’t die and

advances in technology have meant we

can feed everyone and everybody has

a smartphone and access to Netflix, but

what do I know?

And then I realize things are really serious,

because Bob quotes some of the Prophet’s

high-falutin’ scripture at me:

“The body’s belief in death is simple, true, taken up

by the unwilled muscle that fills then empties the lungs,”

he says. (That’s the way the Prophet talks,

like he’s some kind of poet or something.)

“It is taken up by the unwilled muscle that pumps our blood,

by the synapses that communicate our will to our muscles,

by…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said, which is kind of rude,

but Bob is starting to piss me off. “But just because

your body believes in death doesn’t mean

you have to believe in it. Why do you want to die?”

“So I can live forever,” Bob says, and I just shake my head,

because that’s what the Prophet tells his followers:

that they have to die in order to live with God forever.

And then I think of something I never thought

to ask before, because Brother Bob never tried

to get rid of his spare life before. “So who gets

all your spare years?” I ask him. “You’ve got

thirty good years in that bag. Where does it go?”

“It goes to the Prophet,” Bob says. “So he can

continue his good work and convince

many more people of the need to give up

their unnatural existence and embrace

the body’s belief in…”

I don’t need to hear anymore. I should have guessed.

The whole thing is a scam to get the Prophet more life.

Maybe he didn’t save up enough, or maybe he’s just greedy.

Either way, he’s not getting Bob’s.

So I grab the bag with Bob’s thirty years in it

and I hightail it through the house, with Bob chasing me

and yelling at me, but I’m the one who’s still a teenager

and Bob decided to freeze himself at thirty, and

while thirty’s not old it’s a hell of a lot older than fifteen,

and so I leave him behind, and run off into the woods.

I bury Bob’s bag of extra life somewhere he’ll never find it.

I’ll tell him where it is if he ever comes to his senses.

I don’t go home until he finally gives up looking for me

and leaves on the Grand Tour after all.

That gives me two decades before I’ll have to face him,

and by that time maybe he’ll finally have grown up.

(Even though I won’t have.)

I just hope the raccoons don’t find the bag.

There’s nothing they like to nibble on more

than a few years of well-aged life.

 

 

Poetry month poetry: He Really Should Have Written

Today’s poem from first lines provided by Poet Laureate Gerald Hill yesterday to all members of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild. I’m really having a blast with these. Today’s was particularly fun.

All the other poems: I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust, Virtuality, This is the Way the World Ends, The Last Thing Your Lips Touched, Facing the Silence, The Telling, Saint Billy, I Remember His Eyes, His Body Knows, Emily Alison Atkinson Finds God, I Will Ride Off the Horizon, There’s Nothing Artificial About Love.

The first lines:

The man at the door with a gun is our son.

We think he’s after our money,

– Brenda Niskala, “Blunt Instrument” from How to Be a River

Karaoke never paid the rent

or did it? My night students ask

– Jeanette Lynes, “Abba Down Cold” from A Woman Alone on the Atikokan Highway

He Really Should Have Written

By Edward Willett

The man at the door with a gun is our son.

We think he’s after our money.

We think of him as a man and our son

though he hasn’t been a man for twenty years,

or written, called or emailed even once

since the night the vampires got to him

behind the Milky Way.

If he’d bought garlic ice cream, then

he might have fought them off.

But he’d bought Heavenly Hash, and

despite the name it proved of little use

against the batboys.

I say he hasn’t called or written once,

but I guess he did, right after he was bitten.

The note said, “Mom and Dad, I’m not your child

anymore. I’m now a child of the night.”

And that, indeed, was all he wrote.

Now, please don’t think we’re prejudiced

against vampires. There are several

in the classes that I teach, every

weekday night from September to June,

in the tower of the old Conservatory.

It’s just that after our son had been sucked

into that life, he had no time for us, and

we have to tell the truth: that hurts a little,

though not as much, I’d guess, as

long sharp fangs piercing his carotid artery

hurt him.

But vampires are not all created equal.

My students mostly like to spend their nights

just singing karaoke (they like

ABBA and Loretta Lynn the best),

downing pints of AB negative,

or for a rare treat, O.

All they really want to do, they say,

is sing all night, then sleep the day away,

inside a nice wood coffin if they’re lucky, or a

cardboard shipping box if they are not.

“Karaoke never paid the rent, or did it?”

my night students ask. I have to

gently break it to them that it didn’t, and

they’re going to have to find a job somehow:

not easy, with the prejudice

all vampires face. People think

they’re all these killer demons,

roaming through the streets like roaring lions

seeking whom they may devour—

and they’re mostly not.

Still, it’s not prejudiced to say

that some underemployed vampires

turn to crime. Which is why our son

is just outside our door, and has a gun,

and wants our money.

But he won’t get it. Even though

the classes that I teach can pay the rent

(quite unlike karaoke) there just

isn’t much left over, and

my husband hasn’t held a steady job

since he turned into a werewolf.

(You think it’s tough to get a job if

you’re a vampire? Try it when

three nights every month you wake up naked

in some stranger’s backyard,

drenched in blood and with their

dachshund’s collar stuck in your teeth.)

So though it pains us to do it,

we’ve put a bucket of holy water

above the door, and my husband

has a crossbow (he’s a

real good shot now that he’s a werewolf),

and I have a crucifix, and also

a machete just in case.

(The crossbow bolt to the heart should do the trick,

but beheading’s a viable option, too.)

It’s not the world I grew up in,

but we all do what we have to.

And anyway,

he really should have written.

 

Poetry month poetry: There’s Nothing Artificial About Love

Today’s poem from the “first lines” provided by Saskatchewan Poet Laureate Gerald Hill to all members of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild on April 18, part of a month-long Poetry Month event. Just a couple of more weeks to go!

All the other poems: I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust, Virtuality, This is the Way the World Ends, The Last Thing Your Lips Touched, Facing the Silence, The Telling, Saint Billy, I Remember His Eyes, His Body Knows, Emily Alison Atkinson Finds God, I Will Ride Off the Horizon.

The first lines:

you got talking

just because

– Randy Lundy, “just because” from Under the Night Sun

What other friend or lover,

after all, would have been so faithful (more or less)

– Elizabeth Brewster, “To the Male Muse” from Collected Poems 2

My poem:

There’s Nothing Artificial About Love

By Edward Willett

For three full weeks, you sat and you said nothing,

a silent presence in my living room.

The manual said that it would take a while,

“heuristic” this and “quantum” that at work.

And then it happened: one day you got talking,

just because, I think, the silence stretched too long.

You said, “I’m Elfive Thirty. You’re Jack Smithers,

and I’m sure that we are going to be great friends.”

Don’t think that I don’t know that you’re a robot.

Of course I know. I haven’t gone insane.

I know beneath your skin of soft pink plastic,

your skeleton’s titanium and steel.

But more and more I’m spending nights at home,

I look at you and you look back at me.

And while I understand that you can’t love me,

I don’t see why that means I can’t love you.

The truth is that I do. I’ve never had

a real live girl who cared a bit for me.

And even though I know that you are programmed

to treat me like the centre of your world,

I don’t see any reason to look further,

to risk humiliation from the “real.”

I know your mind is shared with many others,

connected to a server in Ukraine,

and all of you pretend to love your owner,

and all of you are equally unreal,

and there are other men in other cities

who love a part of you as much as I.

But I don’t care. I’ll live with you forever,

and when at last they lay me in the ground,

they’ll lay your metal skeleton beside me,

and write this epitaph above the grave:

It’s true he loved an artificial lifeform,

but please don’t find that reason to condemn:

for what other friend or lover, after all,

would have been so faithful (more or less)?

Poetry month poetry: I Will Ride Off the Horizon

Today’s poem, from the lines provided on Friday by Poet Laureate Gerald Hill. Asteroid mining doesn’t get enough poetry written about it, if you ask me.

All the other poems: I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust, Virtuality, This is the Way the World Ends, The Last Thing Your Lips Touched, Facing the Silence, The Telling, Saint Billy, I Remember His Eyes, His Body Knows, Emily Alison Atkinson Finds God.

The first lines:

Ride off any horizon

and let the measure fall

– John Newlove, “Ride Off Any Horizon” from The Fat Man: Selected Poems 1962-1972

this time & next time you will not catch me

i will leave

– Lia Pas, “a flying mother” from what is this place we have come to

I Will Ride Off the Horizon

By Edward Willett

“Ride off any horizon

and let the measure fall.”

You told me that on our first day,

when newly wed, and newly loved,

(or so I thought)

I first got on the rocket bike,

and we began our search for wealth

among the rocks that tumble

between Jupiter and Mars.

I took you at your word.

I rode off the horizon, watched

the asteroid’s surface curve away,

and as you’d told me

“let the measure fall,”

the probe so slow in its descent

I had to orbit twice to see it

land and blast its way into the rock,

each puff of white-hot gas revealing

elemental secrets locked within.

A sultan’s worth of ore we hoped to find,

but we found none that day,

and nor again the next, the next…

…or next.

The days stretched into weeks,

then months, then years

(our time still measured as on Earth),

and still we did not find the wealth

you’d promised me, when we first met,

would give us lives of warmth and ease

on Mars or Moon or Terra.

Those promised riches always dwelt

in some place far in time and space,

while we scraped by as best we could

on salvage, scutwork, lies, and theft.

The love you’d likewise promised me

proved just as distant.

The white-hot lust we’d shared soon cooled,

then froze, congealed, and shattered

into worthless icy dust like Saturn’s rings.

But only what we shared: for like the sun

your own lust blazes bright in every station.

You think I do not know, that you

somehow have kept it hidden,

but you cannot hide the two-backed beast

within the scarred and pitted walls

of some tin can containing

at the most two hundred souls.

And I’ve also heard the whispers, know

you plan soon to divorce me, then to

dump me off your ship, to leave me

all alone and desperate, nothing

left to sell except myself.

I’ve always followed orders.

You’d survived out in the Belt for five

long years before I came, arriving

here in headlong flight from hellish

under-city Mars.

In me you saw a helpless child,

someone to take beneath your wing,

someone that you could mold to be

exactly what you wanted—then

discard when you decided that

you wanted something else instead.

But you don’t know you’re not the first

to lie to get my love,

and you don’t know just what I did

to free myself on Mars.

For I am not your victim.

I am neither child nor fool.

I will make my plans this time, and

next time you will not catch me.

I will ride off the horizon, and

I will take the ship, and

I will let the measure fall

somewhere more fair and fertile.

And once your air runs out, you too

will ride off the horizon. You will

measure out your life in tortured gasps.

Then you will fall, and frozen hard

as all these tumbling rocks,

you will fade from any memory but mine.