Nanaimo Area Trees

8. Punishment Parkway

I suppose the scenic route
is out of the question--
too much time

by lay-bys earlier
running our fingers
along the bunched steel

of braille mountains
worn through at the ocean
& where the /2/ passed through

amenable space you stand
at the edge of
the whole thing a ribbon

of iron control extending
even to the lichen's fluffy edge
so that to stray

is to fall into
the literal orchestra pit
after a Big Drop--

the vast
arbutus forest preserved
on either side of it

certainly terra incognita
before they put the highway through--
but Northfield was a labyrinth

out of Floyd Crosby's Poe
anyway so excuse me
if I never found it but

the immaculate moss meadows
argue that no one much
else did either--

there's a lot
of places dirt bikers
it turns out won't go--

but this future civil terrarium--
roamed by giant tapirs once,
by badgers as big as bears,

undisturbed by pneumatics, steam
or the shrieking factory whistle--
must now endure

the lapidary condescension
of highway patronage, the cement lobby's
largesse, the planner's passion,

the grim and anxious trucks
from which the lolling tongues of mammmals
taste the pre-Cambrian air.

Soviet Roadside Bus Stops

"The roadside bus stop serves a simple purpose – to show where the bus will stop and to provide some comfort and shelter for waiting passengers. One would think that the Soviets would have come up with one universal design for this community structure – simple, functional and cheap to mass produce. However, in many instances this was not the case, much time, effort and imagination went into many roadside bus stops. The sky was the limit with different shapes and design– blocks, domes, columns, towers, A-frames and archways, even ones shaped like birds, yurts and hats. If the bus stop was less bold and daring with its architectural design then the creators would often attract attention with decorating the structure with murals or mosaics. The themes that these decorated bus stops took usually varied depending on the region, often reflecting the local culture, history, or industries.

Sadly, with the breakup of the Soviet Union many of the bus stops are quickly deteriorating from their original glory. That being said some local communities have recognized the local treasures as worthy of preserving and have maintained and repainted them. They will appear in the most unlikely places – sometimes in the middle of the desert, steppe or countryside, sometimes with no homes in sight. They will make you wonder why and they will make you smile. The following collection of images was taken during 2002 and 2006, starting with a cycling trip through the Baltic countries to St. Petersburg and followed by several road trips around Central Asia..."

beautiful (glost) by Nathan Austin, not new but my first encounter, is available here as hard copy or PDF...

"Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language (1828): a protracted definition of an emerging nation-state; the narrative of its author's conversion; an attempt to restore a language to roots that precede the Tower of Babel. As such, it can be read as a map of a wilderness; but it is also a wilderness unto itself, haunted by countless ghosts, within which the reader becomes lost. These poems record of a series of encoutners with those ghosts."

7. Crazy Rhythm

To speed up
or slow down at will
like that
like Anita no matter
the lyric's "arcs"
or who you're playing with
or in what vehicle careering
depends on the services
over decades
of a drummer--
Roy Haynes & Sassy
would be another
example--capable of lowering
six whirring brushes
onto a linseed-darkened
dream sideboard
while defending a perogy
supper from a platoon
of gibbons--imagine
having such a pedal to press!
messing with the band
would just be the start--
to feel the tin-pan-alley world
snapping like a green twig,
but how tough after
negotiating now that speech
is king again the cabless dawn.

Harewood Trees

6. Ikea Deserta

Leave sleep to those
in charge of sleep,
the bus he knows the way;
the pussycat anarchists won't
blow up the viaduct tonight--
you can rely on me.

*

On mattresses masters bestir cosily
by threadcounts unmolested
noisily, easily, easily, noisily--
but otherwise untested.

*

Planet it up for the business
of orbiting dirty snowball courses
what tirebiters flicked at cops,
nothing is as still as this sentence
which I began a million days ago
lifting myself onto the bamboo hula
while laces dragged the Barents Sea
to wake folded in the folds of Forfar
in full dark stars coiling
mystic pools of social housing
& ghosts in full monologue
& all of it melting
not into green icing
but holes which are then patched over
with similar stuff
taken from elsewhere.

awesome Party Fun With Tape Recorders


"Home Recordings. Children singing, screaming and storytelling.

Remember when you were a kid? Did you have a recorder? Even if you never held a microphone to your mouth and screamed making funny faces, I'm sure you can recall a time when you jumped around like a silly little monkey hooting and hollering. Maybe you still do! We hope so.

All recordings are sourced from cassette tapes found in thrift stores and junk shops, tapes dubbed for us and one tape was even found in a gutter!"

from Paul Valery, "Crusoe"--

"In the rank heady odors of the lockers and caskets of his pantry Crusoe snuffed up both the drudgery of his past and the security of his future. It seemed to him that this great heap of his material wealth gave off an odor of indolence, that from it transpired some essence of continuity, as from certain metals a kind of natural heat."

5. The Dawn In Britain

Fax addresses
other fax in fax

"titivates with plumes
of voodoo jargon"

aka "speaks in tongues"
the mellow ameliorants

of mormon d'esprit,
lodge-blue, cop white,

pink snow, halfhard hotdog
bun cigar-angled

the raven's new year
accessory of choice

they get them "from the farm"
whatever that means--

we've seen the rendering truck
stagger under towers years past

bundled like newspapers
now that presumptive hogs

are rarely present--
the old neighborhood herd

thinned to unemployability--
dogs, cats & fish--

hence other people playing cards,
golf, the film on baby foxes

in both official languages
with the sound turned off,

its all to calm you down,
with at Xmas halfraw turkey

thawing by the "fire"
to sink your teeth into

while a song we all know
encourages wordless grunting

suffused with emotion &
the heavy wine of childhood.

Rage & Shame

"Lashing out in response to feelings of weakness is a temptation most human beings have, but it is more than a mere temptation for George Bush. It is one of the predominant dynamics that drives his behavior.

His party suffered historic losses in the 2006 midterm elections as a result of profound dissatisfaction with his presidency and with his war, and his reaction was to escalate the war, despite (really, because of) the extreme unpopularity of that option. And as Iraq rapidly unraveled, he issued orders that pose a high risk of the conflict engulfing Iran. When he feels weak and restrained, that is when he acts most extremely.

Bush officials and their followers talk incessantly about things like power, weakness, domination, humiliation. Their objectives -- both foreign and domestic -- are always to show their enemies that they are stronger and more powerful and the enemies are weaker and thus must submit ("shock and awe"). It is a twisted world view but it dominates their thinking (and that is how our country has been governed for the last six years, which is what accounts for our current predicament)..."

South Wellington Trees

sad to hear that pianist/harpist Alice Coltrane has died. All of her records are worth checking out, but listen to her here with John on Expression, for which someone has made a nice bird video...