Son of an August Sun

"If a man wants something he’s never had

He has to do something he’s never done

That means making choices that he never made before

Doing something that opens a new door

Live a new way to have a new day."

This is it, folks; end of the line, and I'm getting off. I need something new, something better, something that feels more alive.

THERE WERE NO SIGNS

By walking, I found out where I was going

By hating, how to love.

By loving, whom and what to love.

By grieving, how to laugh from the belly.

Out of infirmity, I have built strength.

Out of untruth, truth.

From hypocrisy I weaved directness.

Almost now, I know who I am.

Almost I have the boldness to be that man.

Another step,

and I shall be where I started from.

This guy was so fucking cool. A Canadian Jewish poet, he was initially an avid Marxist and atheist but, by the end of his days, found himself philosophically split between Nietzsche and Judaism. He's been lauded as doing what the Beat Generation did for poetry before they did, though he was much more focused on breaking poetic prudery in regards to sexuality and obscenity, and didn't really venture into drugs.

When he first arrived on to the scene, he was mostly either ignored or criticized. So, he published more books, and sent angry letters and wrote pissed off editorials talking about how his critics were full of shit. These days, well, to quote Wikipedia: "He is remembered by many as one of the first Canadian rebels of poetry, politics, and philosophy. At Layton's funeral, Leonard Cohen, Moses Znaimer and David Solway were among those who gave eulogies."

He was a lone voice in the wilderness of the system, screaming sense at a community that didn't want to listen. He styled himself a prophet, and thought that was the true purpose of the poetry: to speak truth to a world that wouldn't listen, in ways they would; to show people how their actions create a future they wouldn't want to live; to help people wake up.

I don't always agree with him, but I always pay attention.

Newsboy

Neither tribal nor trivial he shouts

From the city’s centre where tramcars move

Like stained bacilli across the eyeballs;

Where people spore in composite buildings

From their protective gelatine of doubts,

Old ills, an incapacity to love

While he, a Joshua before their walls,

Sells newspapers to gods and geldings.

Intrusive as a collision, he is

The Zeitgeist’s too public interpreter,

A voice multiplex and democratic,

The people’s voice or the monopolists’;

Who with last-edition omniscience

Plays Clotho to each gaping customer

With halcyon colt, sex crimes in the attic,

the story of the twice-jailed bigamist.

For him the mitred cardinals sweat in

Conclaves domed; the spy is shot. Empiric;

And obstreperous confidant of kings,

Rude despiser of the anonymous,

Danubes of blood wash up his bulletins

While he domesticates disaster like

A wheat in pampas of prescriptive things

With cries animal and ambiguous.

His dialectics will assault the brain,

Contrive men to voyage or murder,

Dip the periscope of their public lives

To the green level of acidic caves;

Fever their health, or heal them of ruin,

Or with lies dangerous as a letter:

Finally to enwrap the season’s cloves,

Cover a somnolent face on Sundays.

The Birth of Tragedy

And me happiest when I compose poems.

Love, power, the huzza of battle

are something, are much;

yet a poem includes them like a pool

water and reflection.

In me, nature’s divided things—

tree, mould on a tree—

have their fruition;

I am their core. Let them swap,

bandy, like a flame swerve

I am their mouth; as a mouth I serve.

And I observe how the sensual moths

big with odour and sunshine

dart in the perilous shrubbery;

or drop their visiting shadows

upon the garden I one year made

of flowering stone to be a footstool

for the perfect gods

who, friends to the ascending orders,

will sustain this passionate meditation

and call down pardons

for the insurgent blood.

A quiet madman, never far from tears,

I lie like a slain thing

under the green air the trees

inhabit, or rest upon a chair

towards which the inflammable air

tumbles on many robins’ wings;

noting how seasonably

leaf and blossom uncurl

and living things arrange their death,

while someone from afar off

blows birthday candles for the world.

The Fertile Muck

There are brightest apples on those trees

but until I, fabulist, have spoken

they do not know their significance

or what other legends are hung like garlands

on their black boughs twisting

like a rumour. The wind’s noise is empty.

Nor are the winged insects better off

though they wear my crafty eyes

wherever they alight. Stay here, my love;

you will see how delicately they deposit

me on the leaves of elms

or fold me in the orient dust of summer.

And if in August joiners and bricklayers

are thick as flies around us

building expensive bungalows for those

who do not need them, unless they release

me roaring from their moth-proofed cupboards

their buyers will have no joy, no ease.

I could extend their rooms for them without cost

and give them crazy sundials

to tell the time with, but I have noticed

how my irregular footprint horrifies them

evenings and Sunday afternoons:

they spray for hours to erase its shadow.

How to dominate reality? Love is one way;

imagination another. Sit here

beside me, sweet; take my hard hand in yours.

We’ll mark the butterflies disappearing over the hedge

with tiny wristwatches on their wings:

our fingers touching the earth, like two Buddhas.

Bargain

In fourteen years

of married bliss

not once have I been disloyal

to my wife;

and you, I am told, are still

a virgin.

If you are set

to barter your maidenhead

for my unheard-of fidelity,

call me between three and five tomorrow

and it is done.

"I swear I'll run away

from every home I ever have,

so I'll build a new house

in every town I pass. Maybe then,

I won't always feel lost and trapped. When I was growing up, I was the smartest kid I knew;

maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids.