Terminator

Our gods of earth
swell in glass heaven
removed from filth
where vanquished
farmers must sow
Monsanto seeds.
The bone blades clatter
in chemical wind
bearing us
zombie food.

Banish heirlooms.
Deny all inheritance
from the land.

Our gods of earth
play Darwin
stringing dead beads
in the strands of life.
It spreads infertile rumours
over hill and wave
til fibres weave
throughout the web
and hybrid children are born
with a patent
burnt on their foreheads.

Backdated post: July 5, 1994

( Background )

Brenna fussing

Reflections: I miss the garden and meadow at Elmbrae terribly. I had already awakened to my senses at a time when my religion denigrated sensuality. I am reminded that Brenna frequently needed me to walk her to sleep, though compared to Marian she was generally an easygoing baby who liked her bed. I recall some of the incidents recorded in the notebook, but not this one. Most of my early memories of Brenna were blotted out by depression. This is treasure. My insecurity is breathtakingly characteristic.

Backdated post: August 14, 1994

Love and panic

Reflections: M------- and I had already been friends when we inadvertently outed ourselves to one another by attending the same ex-gay conference in 1992. After that we attended the same support group in Toronto for two years. The ex-gay model treated emotional love between men as natural and healthy. My sexual desires were effectively repressed and sublimated.

The mental health effect of denying physical and sexual expression is glaringly obvious to me now. This entry records a panic attack, but I didn't realize what it was until several years later. I didn't know this incident was recorded anywhere, though I recall it clearly. We dined that evening at a restaurant in Streetsville then went for a walk in the woods before hugging and parting.

The language of sex

Alright, I know this cliché has been done to death, but you have to admit these are two mighty fine bears.

This bronze statue standing at a bus stop in front of Macdonald Stewart Art Centre on the campus of University of Guelph has to be one of the sexiest of its kind. And Danny, well, all I can say is I'm awfully, terribly lucky.

Special Valentine's hugs and kisses to you, djjo. Warm wishes to all my friends, with special nudges to a few secret and not-so-secret crushes.

~~~~~~~~~~

From The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon, by Tom Spanbauer:

Most men, most sorry men, always tell the same old hard-dick ejaculation story, and always got to be the one who leans hard onto. Most women, most sorry women, tell this story—which really isn't a story: you talk, I'll listen, tell me when you're done. They always end up being the ones who get leaned hard on. Doesn't work that way when you're fucking. Good fucking is bartering, wrestling, swapping tales back and forth, and telling lies til you get to the truth.

~~~~~~~~~~

Let's tell some tales of love given and love taken. Let's get the whole truth out. The truth isn't always told in words. When you're fucking you say things you could never express in language. It's more like music, a song you keep singing with endless variations.

Sometimes you get stuck on the same old earworm tune that bores into you and bores you and you can't give it up until something shakes you out of your rut. Some people never escape and the song dies in their chests.

I kept telling the same story for years. Sometimes when nobody listens you don't know how to shut up. You just keep blabbering, blathering and slathering until someone echoes it back to you. Sometimes a man or woman keeps nodding to give you the idea he's listening so you'll keep telling it, but he doesn't really understand. Really, he's only afraid to be alone and listening to his own story echo through the head. Then your words go out and never come back. The two songs don't play off one another.

Now what about discord? A little bit can be a good thing. In fact none of our songs are exactly the same. Maybe, I don't know. Some people claim to have soulmates, like their songs are always in the same key weaving together. That harmonious feeling comes to me in phrases sometimes, then it opens my eyes like a cavern of riches, the sun shining in the heart of the earth.

I have kept carrying my tune, trying to compose new variations and see whether anyone liked them. Still I was mostly telling and hardly listening. I could hear myself not listening, but didn't know how to stop. It's like the tongue that's hinged at both ends, or the radio upstairs you can never turn off until it drives under your consciousness and you live as if the sound wasn't there.

When we met I told you I had this problem with listening. I asked you not to let me get away with talking all the time. You were true to that request. Sometimes we just had to stick something in my mouth so I would shut up. But I concentrated on your story, too, and it wakened something in me: the sense that two stories could flow through one bed, weaving in and out, but not inextricably. Our stories have always remained our own.

This peaceful feeling comes over me that someone has finally appreciated the words. Sometimes they die on my lips when I burst into a wide open universe of stars where music flows I've never heard before. Some of the music comes from you, but part is the great mystery that sounds whether we're listening or not. When two people make enough noise resounding together the corridors of space will resonate. The hum might startle you.

I'm sitting under that umbrella of darkness. My fingers keep telling because that's my way. But sometimes you reach the end of words. They're only the grasping symbols we scrape off the surface of bigger things. A poem is not a picture, it's a portal into something bigger. It happens when someone remembers not to smear language all over the glass, just leave a few strokes faintly glowing, to show someone else the way to look.




Self-portrait with BJ, a sculpture by Noel Harding at Macdonald Stewart Art Centre