by Jay Millar
A Short Review of Birds
Birds can be far more interesting than people sometimes.
Today, in fact, as I pore over the lists of confirmed sightings
I made years ago in the backwoods near Tilbury Ontario,
birds seem less capable of an outright violent attack in any
language, One simply remembers a shape among the leaves,
and it is never the bird in its entirety, a thing in itself, but a
suggestion, an attitude that leans toward the whole. Their
unusual forms of communication always correspond directly
to individual shapes, a series of objects open to interpretation
instead of a defining mechanism through which facts are stated.
They are a war with no violence, a peaceful tribe who carry out their
discussions for the benefit of all without any attempt to triumph
over their delicate presents. It is certainly a natural enough position,
for the voice of a carnivore becomes as important as the voice of
the small berry eaters. Thus no one is afraid to speak. It is
comforting that each species can exist in order that it might be
heard alongside all the others rather than against them, and
similarly, that each song or cry made by any one creates a wildly
varied universe in which everyone gathers in bunches separately
causing an overall effect similar to that of a community of writers.
Lysdexia in Sunlight
what mournful singing
in the happiness of change: they
beat their drums across the cloud-lit skies;
by calling out our names
they are assured of an answer in their wingspan
a note quite high, (not sounded at all within that realm)
something you can hear uttered just in front
of the beak, to layer existence before the sound
itself appears, a priori, but so what:
their benign overwhelming attention
can only be explained by
Mind, not by the songs they sing.
After the Rain
After the rain the stink of the lake resides of the lake.
The good clean stink in the the back of my throat.
After the rain one can until anything can happen.
And stare at the wetback surface sit perfectly still.
When the glass of water becomes the glass of water.
The only think left to think:
After the rain nothing can ever sit quite through it.
When a bird goes so still as the sky.
‘Gull sit on lake fine.
And it’s after rain.’
After the rain no one’s still day. Quite
so nowhere. It’s a mind ever goes.
Even the rain felt straight down to strike the surface.
Ninety degrees of the lake.
Notes on Flight
here
love them because
here they are
not here
every being faces
many directions
with a face
to the sky
my wife sleeps
her head
the top of it
points up to
them hello
miles and miles
away
east night first
then western crackle (&
the greens become several shades
of blue, music obviously)
layered in the orange
orchid tufts going
to sleep
no moon
almost present
a sliver to speak
as it shares stars
with shapes and
shifters
the quiet
songs
cloudsex:
soft lightning
stroking the wet
gas light
feel them
moving in the
trees
jokes on you in the morning
when they aren’t around it’s you
who aren’t so asleep or breathe in
the open eye WAKE UP
the feather ere
ates connexion
turbulence, a
worl(d) wind
the mind read
ily accepts
collage/com
pression in
time
mine breathe
you say yours can do anything, mine
mine breathe
if there are none look to the horizon
to see something of them, time held
on a refractory note until they gather
for you are inside the chest not the
head but in the chest where you are alive
look deep into their soft barricades
Float/Set
swimming at dusk, the water
feels like air, tho it cups the
balls more gently, holds them where
the careless gravity of the lake seems
to halt, and can float quietly, a
point of departure to wake up
those orange wisps and ochre folds
of cloud strings from across the water
that hang before the red sun wash and
that silence the lake is fumbling for
turns them into the circular motions
we make, both above and below the horizon
sound to hold our dark hovering limbs
Seasonal Drift
August contemplation of days, remember to
slow down days again. October… days,
they are, after all, only days: a surface
clouds at three in the afternoon
and a branch that suspends it (thought)
shrink each single motions grows until it
vanish into the perfectly capable blue
(sea monster) (heaven) (wing gust)
but it was the cool rain came down that
time of year, nice, we thought, to close
down the morning, the evening, and of now.
(the end) to be the darkened skies of
hold the holes of our dreams, all the
excitement, all the lust, now is cool and
heavy (closed) way down here in the
just imagine what behind the clouds
all our little veils falling from the trees
come about their way to catch our little
our thoughts, we are all angels, all
shy birds who watch each of us
clouds out the front room window in
the afternoon, from the inside out
when we remember how we were absolute
(happy) our dreams when they were our
selves, shadows of branches at dawn.
Flock
nothin’s what it seems
lies, illusions, pure empty beings
together in nothing we are
in love with not being
here
too
non-being slips over
into another wing
that’s floatin’ up the street eh?
away from the lake
into the what? a
fortress called forest
Leave Me Alone:
1 sound retreats forever into the wash
2 we have everything at every moment
3 the sound of the call is so pure
Birds Land on the Roof of This Room
and I am sad. They are so small and
I can hear the sound of their wings
folding as though there were no windows,
no wood, or air, between myself and them.
One roof over they squawk and shit
they hop about from feet to feet with
something great in mind, a terrific plan
to which I have not yet been introduced.
I listen to t
hem surely discussing
the weather, what to eat, where to get laid,
etcetera. Then they fly off. I sip my coffee and
I am sad. Being human thinks so hard some
times of all the things we could have had.
Notes to an Untitled Poem
ONE) everyone please breathe to begin; for it is the air that holds us.
TWO) defined by a freedom to choose your voice, not to find it; to choose the chorus, not to discover any of them.
THREE) I still believe and will continue to believe we have much to learn from the flocking birds, those who move together and sing to each other. Unconcerned. Suspicious. Migratory and Feared.
FOR no real community could ever be fully understood as a community by anyone, even those who belong to it. FOR there should be such flexibility within the ranks. FOR the mystery of play we have gathered. FOR the presence of any ghosts you desire.
FIVE thru NINE) if involved in a community, however diversified or small, one tends not to feel a faceless stick in a group of empty sticks, as one does sitting on the subway during morning rush hour, then coming up the steps of St Andrew Station at say 8:28 in the morning, a herd of cattle oppressed to the extent of blindness and disregard. Where no muse could possibly bother to penetrate our sense of hopelessness, the death of the imagination first thing upon waking, but lives do exist in the sense that one finally feels free to exist as they may, in a complete and utter anarchy amongst the ranks, free breath for everyone! (breathe dammit) an intoxication in and about the premises that allows for this cast of invisible ballots that has real meaning.
TEN) it is the role of those already established to exploit all those interested in becoming a part of their community, despite how evil this may seem at first, it is for the benefit of the whole, since the older members will forever be comfortable in their declining years. Such ‘exploitation’, as it has been originally considered, will eventually wear away to something equivalent to mere initiation. Watch to see who shall fall far from the nest through our notes.
ELEVEN thru THIRTEEN) It might be said (indeed it shall) that I never really understood any sense of community until I met my inlaws, who are in fact humans of the divine order, an expansive family in many ways, limited in others, but for all intensive purposes are a flock of large birds, Canadian Geese or Whooping Cranes, travelling among each other across a sky no one else will ever see. I would naturally come to understand them first, for they have been doing what all other communities I encountered set out to do without saying a thing. And while strife may occur among them, it is because they actually feel that way about some other person, and not because of some theoretical fakery caused by their own sense of failure, or because they are unable to accept the fact that things could easily be otherwise. A GREAT BLUE HERON FLIES OVER THE 401. What could be more beautiful?
FOURTEEN) history is the vehicle of the community, tradition the forgetting thereof, and the intensity of any layer will resonate against the intensity of all others at any given moment until the high note of the underworld commune breaks through. Watch us shift together to flock across your sky.
FIFTEEN) a community of losers such as sparrows, pigeons, or european starlings, all of them surviving on the crumbs of the establishment, are outsiders within the wings, they tend to be more open minded, more diverse and revolutionary; they have more will to sacrifice. It has been said it is wrong to bite the hand that feeds you but there are only so many ways to survive, and what if those hands have never offered anything let alone a meal? Flesh is food too, as is the mind. Consider the pigeons. Bite away! Will you never be cared for by those who have agreed that culture should be raped and pillaged for their own security? When will thanks be given for what has been given? The Real Planet lives in an atmosphere of doubt. At least someone can think about how the real planet is dying. At least some think about it differently.
Bravery must be Stupidity, but hopefully it will survive.
Endnotes
1 Such as it is, ORIGIN is a tricky phenomenon to negotiate, let alone come to terms with. It is your gift to be present precisely where you are not.
Alex Cayce lives in Windsor Ontario, where he is a member of The South Western Coalition for the Birds. His wife Alice is an artist, specializing in water colour and sketch. Her work often accompanies each of these texts. She has had exhibitions at the Jack Miner Bird Sanctuary and at the Point Pelee National Park Recreation Centre.
portrait of Alex Cayce by Alex Cameron
heartrants
H. Azel
If you have never thought there was
a hope for yourself as a writer
or artist or human being
it only makes sense to help someone else
who might escape your fate.
writing with other names or beings
builds the emotions at all times
for whom you are a release mechanism.
greetings, hello, love is real
erotic as the banal
‘Jay MillAr says fuck you
she loves you all anyway’.
greetings to these loves
you are & have been
quite like living with all this other
AS A PERSON IN A SHELL
i appreciate your various
attempts to spell the real for me
J.M.
ONTARIO1
The largest country I ever encountered is Ontario. Its many regions stretch from coast to coast, and I must admit, are rather pleasant to travel through. Each one of them have something special to offer. I must recommend to any one capable of travel: you must lift your feet up and make the effect real! However, be reminded that there is only so much of the mind to experience across any countryside. You cannot go any-where in this place without seeing all the beautiful women. Women walking, women smoking cigarettes, women talking on the phone, women riding their bicycles, women writing letters, women dancing. They make deals, go to work, take showers, attend parties (there are naked women all over the place wearing clothing, women who fall asleep in cars, laughing women, women wearing pants and sweaters). Here women write novels in their heads; there are women who speak out loud to cats. Sometimes the women cry. It is very lovely to see, but sad, too, in a way no one will never understand. These are just some of the women in our country. They are everywhere and they Keep Ontario Beautiful.
Travelling Through the Algonquin
As the moose crossed the road, she turned her head
sleepily, watching the two of us with soft dark eyes. It was
then that I witnessed one of the shapes of my love for you,
not in the moose itself, but seeing how we were to travel
much deeper into the Algonquin and into each other for that
whole week. The entire world was present, something to travel
around us and in us, and we would wake to discover we were in
it together, making it all happen. As we walk along this road
we listen to frogsongs, and it’s as though we are shielded from all
sound by an invisible bubble. Everything becomes more and
more distant the closer we become. The music of the loons,
however, passed directly through us, piercing our other,
inner selves upon a tawny fox peering at us from atop this
stone embankment, carrying us away as we glide by at a
quiet speed, invisible and indivisible to everything around
Notes Toward a Poem on Our Honeymoon
There are no details of the honeymoon I will ever
offer in any public space.
These are to remain buried on that fine line somewhere balanced between my consciousness and my subconsciousness as a recurring erotic dream, separate entirely from the world others inhabit, but entirely a part of our own. However, there was one day that we emerged from our cabin recluse and drove to Pembroke Ontario and walked up and down the main street looking at the small but human people
sitting in the restaurants and cafes. Later, sitting among them in a diner called ‘Cafe Guy’, we looked out the front window and across and up the street into a parking lot where a small twister was twisting, picking up dust and swirling it around in such a way it appeared to be two ghost-like bodies spinning together, wrapping themselves into one. Then it snapped, and was gone
Jewel
to escape with you is my imagination
How hard is it to open up the heart all the way? I often see the oblong rolling case of time distancing itself, lengthening through my solitary work as a writer, but then to see someone walk into the wind of it, that is altogether a human vehicle. Consider, for instance, the landscape of the north. We found movement possible there, an entire breath into a cavity where we are most alive. There are so many lonely places where death is always a factor, but in the northern regions, of which there are many, there is a calm sense of openness, an empty disregard for any of the closed human systems we have to choose from. It is a landscape of possibility, which makes it unhuman, and therefore easier to fill with what is human. These arms can reach wherever they are for those roads we have travelled into the light without any fear of the speed it presents et cetera. I am never really present in these southern places of entropy and despair, because of the knowledge I have of escape. And I have actually discovered no documentation of them in the literature. However, it is the story of my life (fear) that leads me (mind) back here (afraid) because there is always the possibility that I will never see them again. But as long as there are places to go while we are here death cannot exist. So I shall invite you to relive it now.
JOURNAL ENTRY, NOVEMBER 2396. Living in the Ottawa Valley this year was incredible. On our first day there we climbed to the top of the hill and looked, and it was no more than an observation of what we could be as ordinary onlookers. As the wind came up over the trees there was suddenly no need for the imagination (escape) as we had needed in the city. Here it was in any part of the sky. Our tents rested under huge pines that stood beneath the misshapen clouds all summer, stood there until the deciduous began to turn. And they were ours, and we lived in them. I remember the levels of spaciousness and warmth were so huge, lying across the sky and the land, something untouchable, for we were inside what had been built for us by ourselves, through whose air the leaves are now falling sadly (becoming birds), as we make our way back to the city. Everything we heard we will remember as the voice of a time which the mind sees while we wondered what was happening before there was such a thing as thought. Sometimes I can still hear them.