Luminescence
The stars are out
luminescence rises
from the surface of the pond
I think of Tommy
Tommy Tumescent and the Hard-ons
yes you could say
they were big in the fifties
yes you could say
they rose to stardom in the fifties
all pompadour and pointy toe
and to counter this puerile nonsense
I also think of iridescence
finesse
obsolescence.
Inchoate
inchoate
inculcate
incarcerate
incubate
inundate
indoctrinate
inseminate
incarnate
incinerate
inoculate
inanimate
inhabit.
I’m sitting in front of a pitcher of Blue Buck Ale in The Post Coital Beetle when Slim bursts through the door wearing a lime green cycling jacket, black spandex pants and a maroon cycling helmet balanced on the balding boulder that is his head. Little red and green lights wink on and off on his helmet and shoes; strips of high vis luminous tape decorate his spandex legs.
“Slim”, I say, “you look like a fucking Christmas tree.”
“Safety is job one.”
“All the world needs is another slogan”
Slim ignores this and announces that he has invented a new word.
“I know”, I say, “tumultaneous.”
“No”, he says, “a new one – chillacrity.”
Slim takes off his jacket; he’s wearing a tangerine fleece unzipped at the neck to reveal a tuft of ginger hair. His gut is putting a strain on the fabric; he looks like a soccer player who has stuffed a ball up his shirt in celebration of a goal and a pregnancy. I get a whiff of rising damp and realize that Slim is not wearing a tee-shirt – fleece on bare sweaty skin, a warm pub, this does not augur well. He is as close to animated as Slim gets.
“So, here it is, say you’re walking down a suburban street and you hear the frantic screams of a young girl. You look around, the screams appear to be coming from a house across the road. The door is open. What to do you do? Sprint across the road and into the house? No,…… you look right and left and slowly cross the road taking out your cell phone at the same time and phoning 911. You give the operator the address and note the snow shovel on the porch of the house. The screaming continues, you step over some broken glass, grab the snow shovel and slowly enter the house shovel first….you’re moving with chillacrity”.
The evening has just started and already I’m wondering if it will ever end.
Haiku written sitting in a pub in Toronto killing time
fish tacos, pale ale
menu says pico gallo
what the fuck is that?
talisman
miasma
chalice
charisman
polisman
phallus.
Fabric
rubric
Rubicon
Kubla Khan
scabrous
lexicon
toucan
Aga Khan.
when Loren
enrolled in Lawrence
she got a Rolex
a Rolodex
and a Grecian urn
from her uncle Lorne
a longshoreman
who worked on the shore.
Following the Sound on Monday Morning
policy barn
Himmelfarb
discrimination
poverty barn
robocarb
contamination
parity barn
Julliard
Illumination
purity barn
hydrocarb
dissemination
For John D.
fecund, moribund, quincunx
fecund moribundity
moribund fecundity
rhizome, rissole, piss-hole in the snow
phenom, pheromone, genome
lissom, blossom, possum.
This poem is all about sound, association and perhaps, memory. The first three lines are an homage to the sound of ‘un’. The phrase -“fecund moribundity, moribund fecundity” – was uttered by my friend, John Damery (John D.) during a discussion about the music of Neil Diamond – his oeuvre, his place in the pantheon. This was some time ago but it has always stuck in my head, it has a brevity and clarity that could only have been brought on by the consumption of 5 or 6 pints and the ingestion of greasy chicken. After a long legal battle (not really) he has recently granted me permission to use it in a poem.
The fourth line is the workhorse of the poem, the engine, the poem’s midfield general. It inverts the ‘mo’ from the first 3 lines to create the ‘om’ that dominates the last two lines. it also introduces ‘iss’ which makes an appearance in the last line. As for “piss-hole in the snow”, I defy anyone to find a finer example of bathos . The fifth line is all about ‘om” but note the clever inversion back to ‘mo’ in ‘pheromone’.
The sixth and last line has a slick softness to it like blancmange. As promised the ‘iss’ from ‘rissole’ and ‘piss-hole’ makes an appearance before morphing into ‘oss’ and in a final stroke of nothing that remotely approaches genius, the transformation of ‘om’ into ‘um’.
Notes:
quincunx (a word that flirts with obscenity):
an arrangement of five objects with four at the corners of a square or rectangle and the fifth at its centre, used for the five on dice or playing cards, and in planting trees.
rhizome:
a continuously growing horizontal underground stem that puts out lateral shoots and adventitious roots at intervals.
Both words were used in an article in the Irish Times on the poetry of Seamus Heaney, sent to me by John D; ‘Cartesian dualism’ and ‘Binarism’ were also mentioned (and Jesus wept).
rissole:
a compressed mixture of meat and spices, coated in breadcrumbs and fried.
My mom used to make them, although I remember them as being more like a hamburger patty without the bun…thanks, mom!
Photo: English Bay, Vancouver, A-MAZE-ING LAUGHTER, by Yue Minjun.
I am participating at the open mic at Words and Feathers with my poem “Auto”.
This is unusual for two reasons:
Check it out plus the other good stuff at Words and Feathers.
For John D.
fecund, moribund, quincunx
fecund moribundity
moribund fecundity
rhizome, rissole, piss-hole in the snow
phenom, pheromone, genome
lissom, blossom, possum.
This poem is all about sound, association and perhaps, memory. The first three lines are an homage to the sound of ‘un’. The phrase -“fecund moribundity, moribund fecundity” – was uttered by my friend, John Damery (John D.) during a discussion about the music of Neil Diamond – his oeuvre, his place in the pantheon. This was some time ago but it has always stuck in my head, it has a brevity and clarity that could only have been brought on by the consumption of 5 or 6 pints and the ingestion of greasy chicken. After a long legal battle (not really) he has recently granted me permission to use it in a poem.
The fourth line is the workhorse of the poem, the engine, the poem’s midfield general. It inverts the ‘mo’ from the first 3 lines to create the ‘om’ that dominates the last two lines. it also introduces ‘iss’ which makes an appearance in the last line. As for “piss-hole in the snow”, I defy anyone to find a finer example of bathos . The fifth line is all about ‘om” but note the clever inversion back to ‘mo’ in ‘pheromone’.
The sixth and last line has a slick softness to it like blancmange. As promised the ‘iss’ from ‘rissole’ and ‘piss-hole’ makes an appearance before morphing into ‘oss’ and in a final stroke of nothing that remotely approaches genius, the transformation of ‘om’ into ‘um’.
Notes:
quincunx (a word that flirts with obscenity):
an arrangement of five objects with four at the corners of a square or rectangle and the fifth at its centre, used for the five on dice or playing cards, and in planting trees.
rhizome:
a continuously growing horizontal underground stem that puts out lateral shoots and adventitious roots at intervals.
Both words were used in an article in the Irish Times on the poetry of Seamus Heaney, sent to me by John D; ‘Cartesian dualism’ and ‘Binarism’ were also mentioned (and Jesus wept).
rissole:
a compressed mixture of meat and spices, coated in breadcrumbs and fried.
My mom used to make them, although I remember them as being more like a hamburger patty without the bun…thanks, mom!
Photo: English Bay, Vancouver, A-MAZE-ING LAUGHTER, by Yue Minjun.
