The Ghosts of Jay MillAr (11 page)

Or the wind covers so much ground and won't even think of you. High wind, White sky. Or you miss it and close the window. Think of the cicadas and the beer. The middle of August. Or you don't even notice. Driving Across South Western Ontario. Or the open sky along the trees like a door. Or the doorway and the windowsill and the wind. Waiting for the cicadas who are not there. Remember the front porch, the two of us. Thinking. Or the breeze through the leaves. Or today thinks about becoming night. Hot, lazy, breezy and loud. Or you open the window against the flimsy crickets making the sky red. five minutes. Driving Across South Western Ontario. Or remember the cicadas at four in the morning in Windsor Ontario. Or remember the cicadas in the afternoon in Toronto Ontario. The sound of a guitar, the voice that goes with it. Talking with the wind. Or you think of the cicadas in Windsor Ontario and drive. Hear the flimsy crickets. Or the wind. Or You Point To The Sky. Driving Across South Western Ontario. You think and it's there. Or the sweat on your back. Or the heavenly traffic. The swish of the cars, this engine's rattle. Or the wind finds you and you think it cares. Awake at dawn in the basement. Or was it dawn talking. We were talking, couldn't see it was light. Falling asleep and the music. Or you tumble down the past, five years. Perhaps there was a pattern inherent all that time. Or the cigarettes and the beer. The smoke and the pattern. Driving Across South Western Ontario. Just imagine the cicadas and the crickets in Lucan Ontario. Or the clouds that were in the sky for breakfast on the patio. All the clear white near the horizon in Windsor Ontario. Tired and hungry. Stiff back, high country. Or nothing but a cup of coffee. The things that have just never been said until now. Or we pause for a moment and 125 km/hr. Somewhere in Ontario. The music might make you cry. The simple guitar and the voice. Driving Across South Western Ontario.

A Report to the Revolutionaries of That Period
²

For a world once filled with such modern
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it was certainly became void of any feeling. This was our interpretation of this strange place. Years we spent there, and in the urban centres that remained standing for all that time we noticed that those bodies severed at the neck did not smile. Not that the head was actually missing, but that it was never put to
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We should know. We were there. Our humble
[unreadable]
were constantly picking up strange frequencies. We discovered through the close study of arbitrary documents the species is famed for that these were some of the many areas that had been nicely
[word unknown]
in the past and were now lost forever, only to be minutely heard with the correct equipment - But why this one parasite in particular, referred to in subsequent reports as the
[word unknown],
grows as it does across the species, its source located in the
[word unknown],
and how, or why, everything comes to it by the strange habit of
[word unknown]
the fourth dimension, turning the very moments of the day into the solidity of a commodity, remains one of the culture's greatest
[unreadable].
For in their youth they had ideas, and they lived by them. Perhaps in the years to come, as
[word unknown]
learns the better of itself, all will be becoming as we once were, and will return to a
[word unknown]
notion of time. But now, deep within the various experiments of the present that have been
[unreadable],
many of our observers have returned somewhat affected, as though this buzz persists and amplifies wherever it can, and we are now left wondering if perhaps
[unreadable]
we missed the point, as it were, living so deeply in our forts of love and
[The remainder of this document was not readable]

Why Do They Call it a Towel

i never actually wanted to know what it was i was eating but every one was always so insistent on telling me to stand up straight, mind your manners, look both ways and then cross on that fine line between any-thing you could make your mind up to walk along, be completely suspicious and terrified of everything around you, dark green shit in the toilet, it's a rainy day in June and life is sweet and sour, something is rotting in the garbage can so i have to spend five minutes cleaning it out, there are all these moments that pass and pass along a little message, and then it's clean and everything continues, when i left the reading the other night i was followed out by the scraping footsteps of a lonely poet, drunk enough to be called a heckler, led away after asking one of the readers ‘What Do You Know?' William said ‘They're kicking him out because he never published a real book,' but he stood off to the side, looking over his shoulder and trying to maintain his balance at the same time, when i left Bob was attempting to read something, i walked past the heckler who flat out asked me with great concern ‘Where's the projection of the poem?' and i had to agree i couldn't find it either, he followed me out scraping his feet like a very demon behind me and i broke out into laughter, there are all these moments that pass and pass along a little message, who are all these people and what are they doing here? walking along Bloor street today the air was all around me, cool but humid, making my shirt stick to my skin and my skin to the meat that's sticking to my bones, why is it that i am the only one that's dying while everyone else just continues to rise, we all smoke dope, we're all perverted, we all long for the tall cool frothy peace of death in our own pathetic lonely ways, we all want to take it on like an afternoon nap, a nightcap in the morning, we are all cowards, ignoring the inevitable in interesting ways, all these moments that pass and pass along a little message, the library was closed but i got to talk with this guy named Skye, named after the island where i thought maybe he had been conceived, who was sitting on the steps eating a triple decker peanut butter sandwich and telling everyone who dared to walk up the steps that the library was CLO-OSED, and he told me his philosophy of life which is,

and i quote: ‘I'm 34,1 guess I'd better start thinking about an RRSP because unemployment can only go so far, that guy Mike Harris, he's an asshole/and i don't tell him that even tho Harris is a complete prick i don't think he's all bad since he is causing a kafuffle, something that might be good for Canadians at this point in our career, and Skye mean-while is heavily troubled by science fiction, it makes him as ‘what if?' too many times about any given situation, there are all these moments that pass and pass along a little message, and walking home i discover in an alley an entire collection of Russian music waiting for the trash and the kids hanging outside the men's club waiting for their fathers to finish their beer waiting for the game to end help me pick out which ones to take with me, ‘Take that one', the boy with the purple stains at the corners of his mouth says, ‘I made that', the cover of the album is purple with half a treble clef on it, it's called
USSR Bolshoi Theatre
and he says ‘I made that', and i believe him, i pick out seven or eight records and get up to leave and the oldest kid there says ‘Hey, why's he takin the CDS' and i explain to him that someone left them in the alley for me to find, some gentle soul who wants me to explore the music of the four corners of the earth, and i can see right away that he doesn't believe me so i ask him if they're his and he looks dumbfounded, he's playing a hand-held Nintendo game and i can tell he wants to get back to his game, so i ask him if he knows who's records they are and he shrugs his shoulders and turns back to his game and i walk off, there are all these moments that pass and pass along a little message, and i come home and start to write a little poem about the other morning when i was getting out of the shower thinking about how sweet life is when everything is wet and i asked you ‘why do they call it a towel?' and you said you didn't know and you were beautiful, beautiful as the tiny soprano voice on the purple record the kid had made peeling out that high beautiful note that hangs on the air in so many innocent ways, making me think there are all these moments that pass and pass along a little message

I came to be where I was 5 minutes ago

The first thing I ever tried to learn was how
unfolding as I began to write without fear or knowing what next
The Pail and the Shovel. An idea continued to perform outwardly
for hate, for revenge, because these were the things that happened,
it had become clear thro the ages, anything was permitted to be
Red Sunset over The Lake. A Tree Broken of Leaves. The Beach

Which is Now. And there were those who dried out
looked at from the side, a Space in which each poem is perfectly
it becomes a poem, nothing more. And still you were running
looping into themselves to catch the little mayflies in their beaks,
I am thankful it is your light, my eye, and all of that

5 minutes ago where I was I came to be

Recognising that there was the ridiculous nature of being
‘Pale grey horse of the abattoir, rising'. For this was the mark,
the many tricks like a trained gull. Hovering for glory, for love,
And we let them happen, for we were living in a time, when, as
written across a sky of such blank air. As Long As It Was There.
And The Cool Water. There You Go, running as if you had wings.

To follow those one-eyed pigeons of that notion. Literature
chiselled, perfectly sounded and polished still High Buff: from
an idea across the sand, until you stopped to see the swallows
Light As Air the Snap and Swallow. And for that, my love,
with which to see.

Critique of the Living