7.28.2004

automated fist.

.
AUTOMATED FIST
.

The mind of its own is permanent,
has tenure, stretches upward,  
an umbrella beneath a distant rain...
The mind of its own is permeable,
floats amid metallic spires,
dandles with the wind - like
a shrine's brightened extremities.

The mind of its own is pedantic,
covers itself with a simple skull,
with shadows and hymns,
and the roots of a city that once grew corn.
The mind of its own is motion,
clenching the horizon like a new moon,
like a fist admitting -- it cannot close...








7.27.2004

a milestone... memories bereft?

It's been little more than a year now, since this breath of experimentation began, and the bark upon the brain seems a little less fixiated,  and the circles around the eyes (swim goggles, you say?)  aren't quite as clear either.  Yet I wonder (STILL I wonder), are you really planning a visit to a place called KISKUNFELEGYHAZA (sans accents, mais it sounds like --- le meme chose!)?

Input country guess here: __________________________.

I believe my first ever blog mentioned something about the Tour and that Lance was about win, well a year later and it's happened again.  Hurray, Boo!!!  No not really any of the former or the latter... to tell ya the truth the tour was a disappointing cake-walk, the cycling / action was good and I enjoyed watching most of it but the outcome was never in question.  How is it that one team is so much stronger than all of the others?  Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....  there's always a question.  So now after another year of my own internal combustions, overhead cam-eras, this blog thingamajig hasn't quite progressed as planned... it's cool and I like but it hasn't become part of my daily agenda --- perhaps because I don't have as much time to spend on such inanimate objectives as I'd like to, and also because I guess I prefer to keep things (my life, for instance) as simultaneously simple and convuluted as possible.  How can that be?

I'd like it to be more pedantic, like this afternoon a gull flew against my window, the CN tower drowned (doused?) in fog, a shroud of noise from the building of buildings below, a crane, and a fast unscheduled walk through Queens Park (thoughtful monarchs avowed).  And yet I don't want to dull or devour the reader with quotidien simplicity, perhaps there is a balance amid mundaneness and my penchant for obscurity, oh yes the fever is rolling, the great awakening, the sonic concomitant (embodied by the weekend sun -- not weakening)...

Or maybe I just want to use this forum to explore my language, my relevant voices...  maybe something concrete like the building of buildings will cement its towering authority here.  Maybe I am not a single a pane of glass...








7.15.2004

the long wind

.
A blast of contuded oxygen?
foreign flecked assault.
Rain and dust peppering
the border between assumptions
and retrieval. Perhaps none
of the followers in this grand redundancy
need fear the pricing of information,
the breeze that rises from tills
through holes in translucent windows.
Circles of undoubt?

7.05.2004

Seeing the White Fence

There, passed by tractors and convertibles,
hands fluttering unbeknown to a naive eye,
flickering grains of refuge
left by the breeze of teenagers - their long skin
seeking those sands and suns of independence...

or he says, ego is self-contained,

renders the unamused.
Terrible lack of animosity,
here? Post-haste me your thoughts
my dearest betrothed... felled voluptious
tree,
innocuous branching of fate
that yearns like lengthwise pavement,
a heart (is that what I really meant?)
parallel to a grey de-summarized sky.
Only humanity could go more unnoticed.
Not really sky, I should think,
or light years away... not really
justice,
he said.

They say it rains when it pours,
that ditches cannot feel pain,
and freshly cut shrubs don't need
the rich impediments of a newfound spring
that they will be warm and speckled
where-ever they land --- like whiteness
on an innocent wooden fence, like a gate,
unopened, or dichotomies... ever-present
torrential streams. Blue-boxes
at the edge of a gravel driveway.

I do not check the Recycle Bin anymore
but I still adore you... how does one say

au revoir without really meaning it?

GOODBYE.
GOODER-BYE.
DO-WID-ZENIA.
Effing OFF... for now.

. HEARTfelt MIKA.

6.29.2004

x marXist the spot... Sopot? or Hel?

*
ELeCTION dAYLIgHT
*

pourquois les références vers la Pologne?
have you seen the zagging of epitaphs?
the Great Danzigian Bay, imperial wit?
yet they say, he is here to confound,
with inexplicable (yet understandable) French
inserted like a string of modified starches,
with 12-carat mischief clenched by a democratic hand.
There is always an abrasion to communication,
a diamond-held finger cutting the layers of a golden cake,
there is remant food (nourriture) housed in strange buffets,
and votes to be served... still? somewhere else,
maybe trailing a plane that circles a city skyline
it may be written, that words and pictures cannot be objectified,
yet here, plain, invalid here, I can pretend, I understand the message,
I can say, I have heard the people and their power.
*
I suppose the resulting anger was devoured by an inconstant fear,
by red lights ascending to the tips of bells and parliaments,
to benches stripped of their blue and green,
to orange juice squeezed from Caribbean Cafes
into glasses inured with feckless spots.
These are the times when the roomy tables of the New Proletariat
are infested by the ranting of political thieves, children smiling
in the background, daughters as pure as those lonely girls
on Bikini Beach (Wasaga not discounted), daughters as dour and aplomb
as the feelings for their one inherited brother,
the ones the reporters have named (gratitude Rich?)
the one that waltzes away, tabulates,
and spends each last pellucid moment of the everyday
scouring for safety.
*
Perhaps it's also true that their long, slim hairlines,
and slender mouths, have yet to spark riotous acts in suburban grottos,
have yet to tremble beneath the poor brinkmanship of indebted contractors,
have yet to waste their gorgeous (and stubbornly generous) ulcers
on small wooded ravines that tussle the roads straddling the city,
have yet to feel a day going by that couldn't be won...
*
Later in the evenings, whilst the elder Richard
ponders an inconstitutable sky, white yet puffy,
the clock passes the time of Szymborska's Universe,
and brandy becomes a flicker of pine-scented verandah,
and that daughter with bikini entrails,
with waxed poetic legs and polished germs --- seeks nothing
but the hypnosis of a good photograph, of the ridges that linger
on rouge'd pursed lips, that cleanse the teeth
of anything leafy or green. And in those ravines
where the city is safe, unusuable 2x4's are now discarded,
a discomfiture of metal and glass bubbles towards life,
escapes its 4x4 past, opens its mouth and gazes at the iridescent stake,
with tepid indulgence it sends a shiver of momentum onto the roadway...

6.22.2004

sadly, the sun has turned around again!

Physics, they said. Ergonomic heavens, and salutations from a smiling (solarity)
re-drawn by children in the last hours of the school-year. Hurrah! Hurrah!
What happens to the universe when the faint strands of grassy fields need
moments of watering? What happens to -----saturated------ apologies! I've
summoned myself to a momentous cause, to making the sky feel less debilitating
at five in the morning...

Sadly, un-sporadically, the day has dawned for the sun to turn, return,
to take back what it once wished was given away [like a cave man (woman?)
who decides a hut of straw is better than a cave]... alas I loathe this
celestial timing almost as much as the seventh hour of the seventh day
after finishing a marathon. One thinks then, what's next, is this Recovery
all that I've waited for?


Contagious congratulations (con-graduations) to the true Pillars of this post.
Les enfants (not really enfants, are they?) who move forward into the next biggest
challenges of their lives... to our f****ite (careful, Uncle) niece who's roamed
thru Nice, who is very nice and kind (and loves her Frances). Congratulations on
your awards and accomplishments, and get ready for all the new challenges and
successes of high school: those next "best years" of your life (at least until
university or unitl your 35 anyway)...

To our f*****ite nephew who's climbed the hills in Vaduz, who once said, the last
step's a doozie!
. Well, (to paraphrase Bob Cole) I can tell ya, the next step
IS a doozie!
Have fun in London with school and athletics, and remember that from
here on it's not one's talents that are not so imperative: it's all about Hard Work
and Determination!!!

6.11.2004

the resulting fire was conceded to the onrushing foam

Mon Etape,

où disparaît-il ?

ocean sphincter - say what? quoi? qui-vas-la?
okay juvenalia, sumpsimus retort, a bientot, "GO --- a-way!"

from AFM (EP, pg 138-9)

SONNET OF ESCAPE

Even the body's resistance transforms
a sky delivered without sight, eyes lean
with the weight of blood, gray-worn mountains,
or a Winter's breast disguised as motionless ice.
Sleep prepares for the pulse of dusk,
for clouds contoured like bells or parliaments,
like humanity bleached and absolute.
Even the heavy hollowness framing the body's
absence passes further than the protection
of a glacial shore. Beyond the valley melting
in its own distant remorse a solid singular stone
flickers with gravity, hue, and a fountain
of vacant colour straining to perceive...
Here, a narrow ray of flesh, a mineral
as grateful as any ore, unveiled, remaining
ever so briefly, like a spark
only those who've never been free - could feel.

6.03.2004

track & field reality: happy, skippy, and a little bit jumpy...

~*~*~

Today then, with a little conjuring from the wind,
and a little disguising from an adjustment in attitude,
the brave issuers of joy
will prevail. Today, the stops
and starts of hammers and nails
will not cause the world to concede its pain.
The swishing of moisture that once was home
will subside like oil in a field of unused locomotives...
nature has its way of returning the grain, the miniature
grroves that seize the day. Never mind the arses in AVPs,
the cold filaments of their egos...

I've never met an emergency that couldn't wait.

And mon ami Pat, congratulations on your ninth place
jump. it may not seem so ascendant right now
but perhaps, in the middling years it will become
more inspirational (optimistic?).

Get this day over with.

6.01.2004

Flush!! (a soldiers' armour in decline?)

+*+

FATIGUE and EQUILIBRIUM

for no-one in particular (again!)

*+*

At the sign beneath the airport
which says no smoking or firearms,
walking amid dust and reconciliation,
a mysterious gray passport draws no attention to itself.
From its eyes comes the conduct of a bland ocean, whispers,
while the limited carrying of foreign words ascend
like resolute ramps, like a conqueror whose downfall
from an endangered disease never felt more imminent...

Yet before the hero understands the ambiguous guard
staring at a stage made for a many-headed Paris,
the true face of dying light looks, not only of Athens
or Rome (or the views of an Empire
in decoration and narrative),
but of mysticism against those scenes through which
the blinds of another 'better life' seem transparent.

My favorite act in this perception
is a narcotic we've called enviroment,
as practical as a cannon
or a television screen: (easy to inflame).
Yet the one who engraves this flag-induced participation,
this cynical escape of gallantry, yields nothing more
than the staggering last stamp of a cause that resembles
a curse.

5.25.2004

the making of...

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

this is the making of
(the making of)
this poem. watch me now,
hands wringing with the inserts of time,
inked feet smiling so smugly - as cool

as an unwashed phrase.
eyes tickled by the tap
tap-tap of the ocean,
the crossed beginning

of toes,

of triumphant teeth, a melange
du jour
in the body's movement.
watch me now, as I was then,
in the making of, in the "ness"
of me -- tribulations

of veins and vesseled
ingredients. the tap
tap-tap

of camouflage,

uncoloured dreams -- this is
the making of (the making of),
who says you can't eat your own cake?

5.20.2004

the no-lookers

^

had it been the just gods wearing sunglasses,
the baggy shorts that loom with shadows
covering their knees. had it been the repository
of sandals amidst the sand-splashed cross-walks...
imprints, laughter and the dogma or climate,
perhaps here the pavement would never be dry,
the glossa of insects would hang from the roadside,

a sudden turn of fashion.

it was the past that crept by, while we,
the peasant cloaks divided our words
with photos of descendants whose time
had yet to flee their hearts.

5.13.2004

heatin' up in there.

at last summer, real warmth and sun.
enough to make the zig-man happy. Moi aussi, running
without tights, or a vest, imagine. Who'd ever thought
we fell such freedom.

good luck with your exams. Mika................

4.29.2004

UWAGA!

For some reason this is my new favourite Polish word...
it means attention, ATTENTION en francais, I think it might also mean
"look-out", beware, or take notice --- but that's just my guesses.

If, (when), I start my own little publishing thing, it will be called
UWAGA Press, and it will go hand in shovel with my other as-yet
begun operation ------ GuiltyAsThin Productions.
This replaces my former favourite Polish word --- Przsyprazsam (sp)
and of course the belaboured Prszypraszam Press, which along with
meaning "Excuse Me!" has yet to find its beautifully translateble
self.


Okay, so how about I write a poem now, perhaps I'll call it...

Change Due

Belly Dancers wriggle into the background,
a man whom I know, or more correctly,
who is from my town - lets twenty dollars
drop from his lap, his fingers are stretched
and uneven.

Somewhere -- in a corner vestibule
there is only the cold silence of a newspaper...
there is waiting,

`~`

4.27.2004

april is a cruller month

if, one goes by the institution of advertising, one might believe that Maple Crullers
will soon be available at our most infamous Canadian institution. perhaps, not
disproportionatley so, the bark that carries the thirst that is gradual and addictive,
has never been greater.


me --- you would think after a month of blog (Quebecois?) abstinence, I would
have something less innocuous to put here. Maybe tomorrow.

3.02.2004

not working hard enough

~~

I guess it is sometimes difficult to asses what is meant by "hard enough"
and of course, one needs to know what one is referring to... in this case
it's all about The Novel, that which is titled --- The Line of Control.

Seems like I need an extra few hours a day in order to get anything done,
perhaps a bit more energy too --- since all of the training and extra time
at the office are making me prose-lazy. That being said I have finished the
poem below, here is the latest version:


Descent and Extinction


Sagacity, when aloft, exchanges oxygen for fate. Heat.
The wheels of a jumpy airplane, lowering. At some point
everyone wonders, what will happen when we land?

Perhaps it is these clouds that are colder than the stillness
of snow-lined fields (in suburbia) — colder than war
for the sake of war, without marked runways or rhetoric.

Sometimes, as a distinct entity, or even as a whole,
we are caught within the white and black of our own ammunition
and we wander from moment to opaque moment…

Up here, without the natural selection of wounds or respiration,
reason seems like the hostage of a latched door,
an aisle, a rounded plastic window — partially fogged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Welcome to March mes amis. It's warm and grey here
yet I managed to bike outside on the weekend (in February,
in Canada -- wow who'd have thought).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Cheers, MIKA!

2.20.2004

confused? or inebriatedly fogged?

--

pourquoi,

2.15.2004

home? for an ex-change...

............................................................................

altitude and extinction

Sagacity, though soft, exchanges oxygen for fate, sweat.
The jumpy wheels of an airplane, lowering. At some point,

everyone wonders --- what will happen when we land?
Perhaps Jupiters' clouds are colder than we could ever imagine,

like the stillness of copper green domes (in February),
like war for the sake of war, without marked runways or rhetoric.

Sometimes, as a distinct entity or a whole, we are caught
within the black and white of our own ammunition,

and we wander from each moment to another moment - without sight
or natural selection. Up here, solitude seems like a codicil of thought

and waste, like the envied hostage of a latched door,
an aisle, a rounded plastic window ---- partially fogged.


*****Okay, so it is not the most uplifting shit to begin the week.
Sunday evening. Evening out the time between hope and happiness.
I have returned to that so-called reality, to TO. Soon I suspect,
I will be on the road again, Spain, vacation, property, properly....


2.09.2004

Madrid, part two!

Things are fine here. The siestas are welcome, though I'd rather exercise.
I've re-written the poem for X that was included before. Remarkable timing I must say...
I hope, mon ami, you understand Y, you say you remember but I have my doubts.


Past the Church, a Bridge

for no-one in particular — anymore…


The perception of steps beneath a steeple, us,
a rainy morning in August
and the doors are black and wet, closed.
God's will, you say, believing that everything happens,
(must happen), for a reason…

Yet the traffic beside us on Bloor Street
is another truth we cannot discuss,
is just cars passing exhaust
and silent directions. Right, right, then left,
then a yellow light and a chance for collision.

Everything here is defined by wide lanes,
by the yielding of stems and branches to the viaduct,
where, in the wind, we walk, pause,
with the jitters of subway trains going east and west,
with a way that reason cannot avoid.

2.08.2004

...Madrid!

working at last, researching, after a few days of not knowing the reason I was here. It is hard to enjoy such a beautiful city when one is a little jet-lagged (four hours in London will do that) and hasn't heard from Ms. Whyte as to the planned order of business.

alas, I did settle down in the hotel / apartment room (?) where they've put me. Luckily I'm not that close to any of the museums and I could waste a few hours travelling there and back. Will write more once I believe I've found what I'm looking for, or when something interesting happens and I get my Spanish legs. I did go for a little run today but the traffic was a little hectic until I reached the park.

I didn't get lost either! Cheers, MIKA.

2.06.2004

one of many corrections for X

X
X to the power of
X minus y
X squared

'deel' is spelled DEAL!!

I thought you had a better understanding of mathematics, derivatives, hope?

In light of understanding, or lack thereof, and in the presence of an equation that no longer makes sense... here, coincidentally, is a poem I wrote on the day of your... rescinding. X-it, if you must.



Below the Bridge Someone Holds a Sword

for no-one in particular — anymore…


The perception of a step beneath a steeple, us,
a rainy morning in August
and the door is black and wet, closed.
God's will, you say, believing that everything happens,
(must happen), for a reason…

But the traffic on Bloor Street is another truth we cannot discuss,
is just cars passing exhaust, and silent directions.
Right, right, then left,
then a yellow light and a chance for collision.
Everything here is defined by wide lanes,
by the yielding of grass and trees to the viaduct,
where I walk, pause, in the wind,
in the jitters of subway trains going east and west,
in a way that reason cannot avoid.