Hope-
For them hope
is a rubber tyre
around their necks
Someone will douse kerosene
and strike a match
Dear Dr. Singh, how long does it take
for rubber to burn fully?
Does it burn slower than a human body?
Le fils de madame Locarno a écrit un roman.
Mon dieux dite-elle, à tous ceux qui l’interpellent
Cette vie fructueuse à Sas Fé, là, où les montagnes
Hérissent le dos un contre l’autre
Une énorme famille qui somnole
Depuis longtemps.
Ce livre
Bat les records, bouscule,
Ce village pas loin d’où
Hannibal a su prendre le chemin
Du col, brilliant exploit
Avec ses elephants trompetant la
Victoire.
Hannibal, superb général
Inspire la loyauté des gaullois
Et les tribus affligé par la
Puissance de Rome, un meneur
Charitable et juste.
Ce récit, l’offrande du jeune Locarno
Offre-t-il l’invasion de mots féconde,
L’exemple à suivre dans un monde
Pris en otage par un méfiance profonde?
Mais non, ça traite de drogue
Sexe, média, la mafia, une allusion
Au Pape sécurisé par les Cents Suisses
Et par le bord, toutes sortes de crapules,
De gonsesses, de pirates modernes
Rendu propres avec leur lavage d’argent,
Son oeuvre, une gloire qui tremble
(mais chic alors pour les redevances!)
Pas de 13ième chapitre où tout s’explique
De remors obscures, les abcès d’une garniture
Littéraire, un regard au moins vigilant
Ce qui pourait rendre intéressant, les yeux
Croches, un language moche, de gens
Qui fabriquent un pétrin orgueilleux.
C’est une bonne poire
Oui, cette mère, sa lecture à faire, plus
Excitant, son revu de Paris Match et les
Les manchettes qui sonnent l’alarme,
Un glas d’église morne, cette maman
Veuve depuis vingt ans se borne à répandre
La gazette du village.
S’avance avec son chariot de commission
Roues qui grinçent dans la rue, où les moineaux
Chippent des miettes sur des terraces ouvertes,
Sa canne qui bat le rythme d’un aveugle
Pourtant, Madame Locarno se porte très bien.
The woodcutter’s daughter was not the one saved when
he split open the wolf.
Hero to someone else,
heralded for his selfless deed, he wandered
away, seeking
greatness
and fame.
Crumbs eaten,
stones grown moss green
she practiced
new stories for the new father,
the dark haired,
browned eyed to his hazel,
silent to his singing,
sluggish to his dancing.
She stood at the edge of the wood,
cape in hand, a basket of
caribou bones,
howling for the wolf.
So poet, you think you’re a mystic?
With oars of words and boats of paper
you navigate the gentle waters
churning them this way and that
But deep waters run silent and
I wonder if your oars can reach
the depths that a tiny pebble does
But who am I to say,
for Laozi says it better
Those who know do not say,
those who say do not know.
Given it starts me reading,
Letters on a page open up with meaning,
With someone else’s words who was hoping,
To let others know what they were thinking.
My friends usually will be thumbing,
Might see how I’m trying to be living,
Through someone else’s thoughts that I have been reading,
Of paths that I have never taken.
In and out of boxes while my situations are changing,
A few will still remain with me brown and fading,
Memories often end up on other people’s shelves,
Covered in dust and
Forgotten.
Why do Jews have to be circumcised?
Christ was a Jew before the Christians arrived,
Yet Catholics tend to remain intact.
You can pray all day,
But you’ll never get your foreskin back.
Yes, I know about hygienic concerns.
While wandering through the desert
All that dust could create quite a crust,
But who has forty years to kill like that?
Then, Allah forbade mutilation,
But are He and Yaweh the same God?
I wonder what it must be like
To fuck with a severed penis.
~~~
Taken from K. Gandhar Chakravarty’s recently published book of poems entitled: Kolkata Dreams (2009)
Lost in the Land of Plenty
I live in a welfare hotel
and when the electricity
gets shut off again
in the room provided
by Homeless Services,
without the heater,
even with blankets,
it’s freezing cold.
I hurry to dress
so I won’t miss the bus
that will take me to school,
even though I hate it,
’cause they call me names
and make me sit in the back
with the other homeless kids.
But I’ll try to ignore
how the teacher treats us,
how the other kids treat us,
because I’ll be warm.
Bureaucratic Priorities
The mayor of New York proposed
a basic five-year action plan
to end chronic homelessness,
which so far has managed
to put more families on the street.
The city spends our tax money
while innocent children suffer
terrible horrors on the street,
exposed to crime and violence
and the city keeps counting,
instead of finding solutions
for children cruelly abandoned
by the richest city in the world.
The Counting of the Homeless
Instead of offering
sufficient services
to address the problems
of a specific group
removed from the normal haunts
of alienating society,
whether from dysfunction,
or dire calamity
such as fire, or loss of job,
the money expended
in counting the homeless
should be used
to provide shelter.
With nails that curved over toes. Her limbs, limp, her eyes vacant. She took her acoustic guitar to music lessons. She attended art courses at the Douglas Hospital for the mentally disabled. She had lived in shelters and foster homes. She visited emergency rooms at different hospitals.
Cognitive disorder associated to epilepsy, chronic. Contribution of sarcoidosis to mental state is unknown. Mental retardation and psychotic episodes greatly impair insight and judgment. She has basic ALD. Adult learning disability and anxiety disorders. Although she was on welfare, she received a settlement from the sale of her former family house. Less than a year later, she was penniless.
The kitten ran and hid under the bed when it saw me. The Persian cat with a broad round head, long silky hair, and a thick tail. Within a few weeks, it looked as sickly as my daughter did. Bony and undernourished, its hair unkempt and tangled.
The last Thursday of April, Susan, her nurse, called me from St. Mary’s Center Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic: “Can you stay with your daughter until I come to pick her up in the morning? I have a tryout appointment at a foster home in LaSalle. I don’t want Marisa to check herself into emergency. We will not be able to find her.”
“I’ll stay with her,” I promised.
Lemon-yellow apartment block. Alley view of walled gardens. Fragrant with new blooms of red tulip, daffodil, purple crocus. Hum of traffic on Decarie Boulevard. Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.
I arrived unannounced. Knocked on Marisa’s door. “I can take care of myself. Go home!” Her eyes blazed with anger.
Behind closed doors, acrid, pungent smell of cat litter. Here in these three overheated rooms of my daughter. Hardwood floors. Canvases. An easel. Metal rack of CD’s, black guitar, rickety table. Stale pizza crusts littered the refrigerator. “Did you eat yet?” I opened a can of chicken soup. Popped a toast.
White T-shirt, blue jeans, and running shoes. After supper, she lay down on her crumpled bed. Unhung paintings leaned against a walnut dresser. A landscape of turquoise, pink, and orange. Vibrantly embroidered floral motifs. Her rent check returned with insufficient funds.
I watched her stroke the cat’s knotted hair. Moon-pale, my first-born daughter. At times, I wished I could hug her as she hugged her kitten. I looked at Marisa and the cat. They didn’t accept pets at the foster home. New and unfamiliar world.
She lost all things that she dealt with daily. Everything in her house and kitchen garden. Red ochre stucco with long windows and narrow green shutters. Five years ago, she had a home. Interim divorce court. Her husband obtained custody of their two daughters ages five, and three. Five-month-old son.
The woman in those pictures is skinny, tense looking, and young. Her brown hair is short. That final summer, before her bout with chronic depression. Before Youth Protection Court declared her an unfit mother. Before I supervised her children’s visits.
Today, I bedded down on the living room floor, fully dressed. All night, Marisa tried to leave the apartment. In the dark, I yelled: “Don’t even try it!” Dozing, I awoke to see the door ajar. Down one flight of stairs. Cold cement steps under my stockinged feet. I caught up with her in the lobby. Hugged her close. Felt her gaunt, rigid body: “Come back upstairs.”
“I’ll hit you! I’ll hit you!” Her face, ashen, her eyes wild with rage. “Don’t do it. Don’t hit your mother!” I clamped her face with one hand. My fingers pressing her cheekbones. I held her there. “Don’t even think about it!” The sky, a curtain of indigo. Candles to light a room. Four in the morning. I hadn’t slept. Neither had she.
“The Noise/Silence of Lasting Peace” [after seeing Yoko Ono "Imagine" exhibit in the Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal] @ 2009 by James Cockcroft
End wars by noise
of revolutionary
multitudes.
Enduring silence.
1.
At Checkpoint Charlie
customs huts
The death strip - scraped earth
:wildflowers.
Sepia postcard of the Brandenburg Gate.
Organized bus tour. A one-day visit.
2.
Windows are bricks instead of glass.
3.
A summer day, lapis-blue sky.
My husband buys a rucksack.
“These East Berliners look unhappy,” he says.
I remember, his leaving bruises.
The Mauer, the Wall, cuts through houses.
Ripped-up cobblestone.
4.
People are forbidden to wave
to family and friends.
5.
White crosses under an old elm.
A Strasse becomes a cul-de-sac:
from a steel viewing tower
one sees the street life.
Blank faces of passers-by.
6.
People break the Wall with hammers,
take home souvenirs. 1989.
7.
We are a family, divorced.
8.
A piece of Mauer still stands along the river,
one kilometre long. Dandelions, graffiti art.
Centre of the city under construction.