Book Read Free

The Ghosts of Jay MillAr

Page 10

by Jay Millar


  Your apartment is not a mess. The laundry is not

  A chore. The dishes are not boring. Your cat will

  Not die. Life is not tedious. You are not depressed.

  Today is not the same as yesterday/last week/a year ago.

  Life does not tire you out. You are not stressed out.

  The city is not dirty. People do not die. You are

  Not angry. You are not lonely. Days do

  Not repeat. Humanity is not pointless. Death

  Is not real. The city is not ugly. Life is not a

  Mindless repeat of the last. Boredom does not exist.

  No one shall ever come to any harm.

  Humanism (part vii)

  (parts i-vi are yours)

  we can open up all those vents

  only to find out how easily they close

  in on us in the end. we like it that way

  its so very irresponsible not to pay attention

  to those fingers basking in the sunlight

  every night i go home & run along your skin

  it makes me happy to be human with you

  owning fingers, & lips too, toes & pubic hair

  just imagine what

  those other hidden parts

  Our Honey Moon

  what the hell

  this postcard has no edges

  but this music definitely has longing

  & being inside the water has our songs

  as passionate as hate i love your songs

  now come to bed & sing of longing

  come here now have no edges

  in heaven’s postcard some other space is hell

  can break through & be Love as well

  Firelight

  makes

  all conversation

  song or story

  tell me the centre

  around everything

  in the mind-like dark

  look in

  get lost

  crawl upward

  a long spine

  to the tip

  of the skull

  scared of

  the stars that way

  no light can

  look out

  get lost

  Workin’ Stiff

  ride out the day

  get paid

  ride outa here

  get beer

  Jan 31 Mythologized on Feb 2

  We all sat at the table drinking beer

  drawing the cover to an imaginary apolitical magazine

  & were joined from time to time by other spirits with similar names

  who would disappear quietly scraping their empty chairs

  when the lights went down John got up to use the phone

  & Stef started apologizing to me all over again so i knew he was drunk

  our minds have been hinged upon that moment of the apology for months

  & it’s so fucking tiring

  i often fall asleep at that moment & dream the rest of the encounter for days

  i always seem to notice afterwards that moment

  when the slight tilt to his appearance comes

  the aggressive remarks flying out of the tabletop to the drumbeat of his voice

  would not help during the coming mornings

  to smooth over a year long rent in the collective position we had invented

  in the years leading up to my wedding

  & has continued since then to build aggressive positions

  between myself & my wife

  but that’s been saved for the latter portion of the evening

  he accuses me of various emulations on my part which i felt was ridiculous

  as i was perfectly aware of them

  & he began to float away then

  in the form of several well known minimalist discourses

  & i became suddenly very heavy

  & i drifted away from the situation & out into the street

  walking through the dark snowing evening a voice came to me out of the traffic

  the usual hallucination all over again that never realized before

  just how solid he had ever been

  butting his head with mine across a table cover with spilled beer & ashes

  now he lives only in my memory like everyone i ever knew

  & i hear his voice calling to me today with the casual

  disintegration of the past

  Within Finity

  sitting with her

  always like sitting

  with infinity

  as it has been for some time now,

  & it spins in a gold liquid,

  around, alive & dead.

  Ghosts are the ghosts

  of language & mindful of such

  this scarlet nihilism

  might crease the very thought,

  O crevice deep

  in the shadows where we are

  we give up the ghost into the air

  of ourselves, of the actual,

  on breath gathered

  in a random order

  gathered to be released

  & in which all possible

  moments are full of hope

  take this gold liquid

  o crevice, which is both

  Alive & Dead, &

  smooth our hands

  in the infinite breath of our relative

  crinkle of shimmering air

  sitting without a coffin

  within finity gathered

  inside the liquid & golden

  scarlet voice

  Canadian Visionary

  Poetry Americana for the cynics,

  critics, those who have lived life sadly &

  in part. Read Brits. Wake, up.

  Read the works of visionaries

  & hope. Canadian literature

  sleeping. Sleeps. And dreams.

  The dream/Read

  American poetry & suffer

  WHAT?

  Read. O read. O poem.

  What in the World is Coming to

  & we were dreaming of becoming in a world

  wracked by misery & desolation, hurt & death.

  & we were dreaming of becoming pure energy.

  & we were dreaming of becoming love when there

  was no love, of becoming hate to fill the void.

  & we were dreaming of becoming light.

  & we were dreaming of becoming a dream,

  dark erotic visitations to each other.

  & we were dreaming of becoming root.

  & we were dreaming of becoming magic

  incantations of a planet bathing us in warmth.

  & we were dreaming of becoming warm.

  & we were dreaming of becoming

  something in the deep beautiful blue.

  & we were dreaming of becoming

  Endnotes

  1 We only use 10% of our total brain mass for a reason.

  2 We only use 10% of our total brain mass for a reason.

  3 ’If it were not for this poem I doubt that I would ever ride a bicycle in the city of Toronto. It is the only thing I can remember to swerve in & out between the violent auto drivers. Whenever I drive a car I notice the televisionesqueness that haunts the mind, & I am sure that many people who drive regularly never quite know where they are, which would explain the high number of deaths occuring in our city as the transit drivers crush yet another sweet Taoist rider. Why must violence be everywhere? Please remove the cars from the city core & let us all breathe. Imagine! Yonge Street a six-lane highway right to the lake.’

  J.M.

  John Elliott lives in Toronto, Ontario, where he is Writer In Residence at Print T[h]ree (University & Wellington franchise). His wife Hazel is a choreographer, dancer and novelist. Together they have created many collaborations, including Saffron, Claire, & Aiden.

  portrait of John Elliott by Alex Cameron

  Typeset, printed and bound at the Coach House on bpNichol Lane, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2G5 The first edition of twenty boxed copies and four hundred
trade copies was printed in May of 2000.

  The paper is Zephyr Antique Laid.

  All artwork by Alex Cameron

  Boxes for limited edition hand-made by Don Taylor

  Editor for the Press: Victor Coleman

  Copy edited and designed by Darren Wershler-Henry

  To read the online version of The Ghosts of Jay MillAr, visit our website at: www.chbooks.com

  To add your name to our e-mailing list, write:

  mail@chbooks.com

  Typeset in Carrier Book. In January 1967 the graphic designer Carl Dair released Carrier, the first text typeface to be designed in Canada. In 1999, Rod McDonald reworked the roman, finished the italic and added a bold weight. He incorporated many changes necessary to produce a working text face for digital typesetting.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Book of Leaves

  B’urd

  Heartrants

  Perfectly Ordinary Dreams

  Short Ghosts

 

 

 


‹ Prev