Girl in the box

Last time I was back in Canada visiting the family I found a box of my old life. It had hundreds of dusty and molding papers, photos, clippings, print outs, and mostly poems I had written.

I decided they would be worth keeping, if only for the humour and nostalgia in going over the thoughts and offerings of the teenage dreamer I was.

The plan has been to scan the lot, and then send the paper piles back for a boxed existence in my mother’s basement on some back shelf.

Last night I dragged out the various envelopes within, and sifted through. Most of the poems I found there were naïve and badly composed. They try too hard, with long adjectives and disjointed concepts. Who was that girl? I find it amazing that she lived in my frame, looked in the mirror and saw the young me.

So much has changed and I have forgotten how she felt. All that is left is the paper trail of her untidy emotions.

And then I found the following. It is dated April 22nd, 1994. I was 24 years old and Q was just over 1 year. We were living in an old row house in Toronto. The back window looked out over rusted train tracks and beyond that, lake Ontario.

The highrises around us were overflowing with the city’s poorest and most marginalized. We dodged used needles and condoms that littered the sidewalks on our daily outtings. I remember having at first thought the neighborhood was vibrant and gritty, when we had opted to move out here, for cheaper rent but still within walking distance to work.

We had recently lost our restaurant, investors had backed out right as the place was establishing itself as a fixture in the area. It was a few blocks over in the ‘trendy’ neighborhood of Queen West, and Q’s father, (my ex-locker partner and high school sweetheart) was on a slippery path to self destruction. It was the reason the business had fallen apart. Too much too young? Addiction: lies, behaviour changes followed.

This particular day, he gathered our comforter from the bed and carried it with purpose to the living room with it’s big bay window. Q and I watched him with curiousity, and I with a sinking feeling in my stomach. He hoisted himself up on a chair, and stretched from his tippy toes to nail the heavy blanket across the top of the window frame.

The smashing noise from the hammer was deafening and Q looked up at me, uneasy. I scooped him up and whisked him off to the other room to play. Then M walked by us. The light in the hallway had disappeared, shrouded in thick cloth.

M: “That old lady from next door! She keeps watching us! Well, I’ll show her…”

me: “What are you talking about?!”

Door slam. He was gone for the afternoon. I could only guess where, and did not want to take that mental journey. I lied down beside Q and his stuffed animals and sang softly, running my hands gently through his loose black curls, until he drifted off to sleep. Then I got up and decided to write, to put things in perspective and keep myself sane:

“His face was broad, the skin creamy and smooth and tight. This carefully beautiful face, created as if to make a mother question the sarcastic overtones of a ‘concept of God’.

Oh, he was no ordinary soul. A mother was sure. Why, one only had to ponder the enormous circumference of his eyes. Not uncommon was it to be stopped several times during the daily walks, with comments of praise and astonishment at the wonder of his gaze.

A mother again had to question her accomplishment. For even then she knew it was a twosome till death-do-us-part. Mother and child. Somehow she's known this while he played within her. Mompati - 'my companion', the name she'd given him after all the others on his birth papers.

And she felt comfort in that shred of stability, as everything else slowly fogged over around her.”

Shimmerescent friendships

There are some friends we have that form part of our being. They define and comfort and better us in ways that our souls know best. We just float along for the ride...

One such friend wrote a poem about me that I had to share. It's excellent and defines the way we know each other. She rocks. Real friends, so few and far between, really make life worth living...

Holli seems like she is chocolate brown dotted about with silver feathers yet her heart beats poor man’s cloth

Holli seems like she is air-conditioned monster car yet her shoes are pink trotro shouting repent

Holli seems like she is red wine and chocolate martinis yet her hair is kasapreko and juice

Holli seems like she is pink and lime green yet underneath she is all the shimmeressent colors of an abalone shell

Old Couple at Heathrow

Here they hover,

Two halves of a common whole

Strangers in their familiarity

Fussing and puttering; shaking

Settling at the table for tea

Together without words to string together

The regretful sagging bond that holds them

Year upon year in the face of inevitability

In the grizzly demise of self and spirit

Crumbs sit dryly on trembling lips

Mingle with the spots of age and the dissolution of vanity

Knobbled fingers grope and balance cups and napkins

Bruised veins betraying fragile surface

Muted mutterings, the fragility within…

But tender their need and knees

Barely touching under the table

Elaborate fans of printed news separating them

The explosion of paper’s bends and crackles

The only sound

But the communication is deeper
Disturbing
Defined.

Tuesday photo of the day - snapshot of Northern Ghana

Life in a typical Northern Ghana compound...




Heat ripples slowly, like the dry crusted back of the lizard,
Across the compound yard
Swirled up in mini tired hurricanes of sand

The air is unrelenting
It stings and burns and is uncharitable

Water stains grey skin a glossy brown
as it pours in rivulets down the limbs of the inhabitants
Like life in a dead zone, from the cool earthen pots

Life happens despite the heat
In defiance of the sun and the conspiring earth
that threatens to crack upon itself and tip inward with decay

Life thrives
Muscles ripple in response
Backs bend and thickened feet slap the scorching dirt
There is action

Voices cry out
in vibrant tones
From one compound to another
Laughter, tears,
Humanity persisting...


Photo borrowed from mt friend Krissy - a fellow Ghana traveler.

Grief is eternal but love is stronger

Today is a tough day. I sit at my desk, busying myself with the unimportant, while the undercurrent within me threatens to surge, up through my pounding heart,through my tight throat that fights back with jolted swallows - all the way up into my face, overflowing - my eyes, the tiny openings through which all the feelings will brim over.

Tomorrow marks exactly three years since Shiloh left us. Since I have not held his warm hand or fallen into the warm dark pool of his shining eyes. Of course it is unfathomable not to have my son here with me. It is the stuff of nightmares, and horror films pale in comparison. To even put in black and white the word 'death' - it is so difficult. So very unnatural.

So the only way to approach the reality that faces me is to remember. To celebrate the short time we had. To laugh and smile and hug those who are still here. We all miss him. We all will remember. Always.

I've dragged out an old poem because it is my best tribute to my amazing Shiloh.


For Shiloh

If you were a farmer you’d plant pumpkins

Huge orange nuclear blast pumpkins!

If you were a singer you would wear a white suit and carry a shiny ebony walking stick

You’d have a purple satin handkerchief in your pocket on display

And you’d wear a fedora to match the suit

You would tip the hat forward and wink at all the ladies as you took over the stage…

If you were a bird you would soar higher than happiness

And deeper than 6 oceans

You would grace the sky of my mind with indigo paint brush wings

Touch my cheek so briefly and float on past

Making speed look like a breeze

If you were pink candy floss

You would melt and still be crunchy in my teeth

Fresh and warm and comforting

But you would disappear if I tried to hold you

On my tongue

I would be left with the remnants of u

You cannot be held

You are more than man and mountains below u are small

Though I can’t see u

I feel your red sports car energy

With a yellow lightning stripe down your soul that can only be glimpsed as you

Pass in an instant...

Pablo Neruda is the world's best poet

I just have to share the amazing vibrancy of my favourite poet. He's a Chilean called Pablo Neruda. I discovered his poems in my first year of university and fell in love with the way he uses words. The only problem is that he writes in Spanish and then his words are translated with much artistic license by English writers. Some are much better than others. I actually have one of his poetry books where they list the original Spanish poem beside the translation and despite not knowing Spanish fluently, you can just tell the English version does not do justice to the expression.
Despite that, I would love to share his work in my small way as it makes me happy!

He has written hundreds of odes to everything from old socks to a tomato. This one is my favourite. (I've included two separate translations - which one do you think is better?)



Ode to a Lemon by Pablo Neruda

Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
the harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.
So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.



Ode to the Lemon

From blossoms
released
by the moonlight,
from an
aroma of exasperated
love,
steeped in fragrance,
yellowness
drifted from the lemon tree,
and from its planetarium
lemons descended to the earth.

Tender yield!
The coasts,
the markets glowed
with light, with
unrefined gold;
we opened
two halves
of a miracle,
congealed acid
trickled
from the hemispheres
of a star,
the most intense liqueur
of nature,
unique, vivid,
concentrated,
born of the cool, fresh
lemon,
of its fragrant house,
its acid, secret symmetry.

Knives
sliced a small
cathedral
in the lemon,
the concealed apse, opened,
revealed acid stained glass,
drops
oozed topaz,
altars,
cool architecture.

So, when you hold
the hemisphere
of a cut lemon
above your plate,
you spill
a universe of gold,
a
yellow goblet
of miracles,
a fragrant nipple
of the earth's breast,
a ray of light that was made fruit,
the minute fire of a planet.

-- Pablo Neruda.

For Quinci

If you were a fish
You would be a doctor fish
Protected by gorgeous turquoise scales
Opalescence reflecting
Deflecting everyone from your secret world
Within

If you were brown you would
Be smooth and varied and steady
As chocolate
Hardwood
And the mild earth itself
You would remember each footstep
That crossed your path

If you were memory itself
You would be immaculate in your intricacy
Not missing a single detail

But you are trapped in our mortal world
That topples you
My delicate one
The mundane routines
Banal in their irrelevance to you

Earth water and sky
The things that preoccupy you

Yet your skin your feet must walk
And carry you through…

If you were a bird
You would be an owl
You would perch above it all
your all seeing eyes
smiling at me and shrugging at the world.

African Triangle - a poem

Lush
Green
Siphoning
Sipping earthwine
nectar of putrid poverty
Cocktail of sadness and salty tears
Potholes of memories
Laughter trees
Emerald
Lime
Mango
Africa

Wet flesh
Sloppy yellow sliding down
Chocolate chin

Wide white grin
Dusty fingers sliced
through with the rabid juice
Cry to the red red blood soil boy
of torn GAP t-shirt
The widening gap of evolution
Stained yellow and red and smudged brown
Stain the universe with a foul history
No simple game here
No recess from school playground life
No life at all

The great white hope is not spelled U, N,
On the side of a great white monster speeding by
Spitting lumps of gutter mud
Off to dine wine meet greet retreat
Resolutions afar like rice among maggots
Fed to agencies without arms
Spread over tin ghettos like rust
Perpetuate, ridicule

Blue blue boy
Old old man.
Africa.