Posted on No Comments on To The Stump In my Garden

To The Stump In my Garden

Day 7- Take a walk until you find a
tree you identify with, then write a poem using the tree as a metaphor
for yourself or your life.

To the stump in my garden that has begun to sprout

Mere days after its branches have been shorn:
Teach me whatever lessons you have learned

How to give thanks for your still solid roots

And how to recalibrate the hardened fibres of your bark

And make life once more.

Posted on No Comments on In Your Old Age

In Your Old Age

Day 3- Find the nearest book (of any
kind). Turn to page 8. Use the first ten full words on the page in a
poem. You may use them in any order, anywhere in the poem.

Senescence is the great equaliser.

great men, average men,

men of faith, men of none

living life with the promise

that some of its secrets will be revealed

but all you will ever learn

are verbs like forgetting

and dying.

Posted on No Comments on Light Pollution

Light Pollution

“the light reveals all
sins,” she always said. but the
dark shows me the stars.
Posted on No Comments on Back Home

Back Home

(Lyrics from Back Home by Andre Tanker)

 

i went away / i leave an i come back
home / i come back to stay / i must see meh way

It feels as though every time I leave, it takes
longer to come back.

first six months, then nine, now ten–

as if they have been grooming me to leave
forever.

I ask myself how people could leave for years
and years and never look back?


not even once?

But the truth is, it gets easier.

What is one year more when you’ve been gone for
five?

or ten?


or twenty?

i went away / i leave an i come back
home / i come back to stay / i must see meh way

 Each time I fear that she
will not take me back.

I think anyone who has ever left home for length of time can tell
you about that fear

that you have changed too much to go back to the place

that you cannot call it home without a sour taste in your mouth.

You don’t live somewhere without it changing you and can’t come back
without those changes

Whether is a yankee accent, or an expectation of something better.

i went away /
looking for another home / tried to run away / run way from my destiny /

Yuh see, we is d people who does come back sayin ting like
“Well back in Canada…”

in another world /
a world that was strange to me / tried to change myself / change my identity

But what we doesn’t tell yuh is how we don’t fit there either

Because whatever Canada or New York or England or other northern
promised land we have created

Despite the efficiency of public transit or the cheapness of “food”

We know that we will never really be more than our hyphenations

Than our exotic accents

Than our otherness.

Calling there home gives you that sour taste too.

You can’t live somewhere without it shaping you, and you can’t leave
without taking whatever idea of home you had with you.

i went away / i leave an i come back
home / i come back to stay / i must see meh way

Posted on No Comments on Alphabet Love Song

Alphabet Love Song

Alphabet Love Song
(For PC 37, 38, 39)


A B C D E F G H… H… H…

H has become too heavy a letter for me.
Home, heart, hurt…
Heavy because home is where the heart is
And being here has halved my heart hundreds of times
So each of you can take it home with you.
And with your heart in over 80 countries,
There can only be hurt.

A B C D E F G H I J K L

Hurt and longing.
Longing for those you may never see again
And for those whom seeing everyday is still not enough,
Longing goes hand in hand with leaving and being left
And we learn to get good at that here, don’t we?

But there is also love.
So much love that it makes all this heaviness,
all this longing and leaving,
worth it.
So much love that it makes sense that I’d need
90 heart horcruxes to deal with it
and I know that whether I’m in
Argentina or Australia,
Zimbabwe or Zambia,
That there will always be love
And there will always be home.