Cosmological Clichés

            On Tuesday morning I finished memorizing Serge Gainsbourg’s “Le canari est sur le balcon", which makes me cry because it's about a girl who turns on the gas to kill herself but makes sure she puts the canary out on the balcony first.

            I edited a ghazale to read at Shab-she’r later that night.

            When I left for the Tranzac that evening it was actually crisper outside than I’d expected, but I was dressed for it. When I arrived only Bänoo and Marta were in the main hall. I called out, “Bad news Bänoo!” She looked concerned and asked, "What bad news?” I said, “None. It’s just that ‘Bad news’ and ‘Bänoo' sound good together because we all know that Shab-e She’r is just a front for your real work as an assassin for the League of Canadian Poets. Irving Layton and Leonard Cohen didn’t die of natural causes and there’s a reason that Margaret Atwood is over 400 years old!” I neglected to give the reason though and forgot to add that The League of Canadian poets is a death cult that sacrifices virgin poets, whose blood has kept Atwood alive for centuries.

            Bänoo said that Margaret Atwood is out of favour lately because of her defence of Steven Galloway when he was fired from the faculty at UBC after being accused of sexual assault even though an investigation found that he had done nothing wrong. I wasn’t aware of the case and so I just commented that Margaret Atwood’s generation would have a different understanding of sexual assault. Bänoo nodded and said that Atwood is out of touch.

            Having looked a bit more into this case since then it seems to be another case of online character lynching. Do we really want to evolve towards a judicial system where there is no longer due process and anyone that makes a sexual assault accusation is absolutely believed? Obviously in most cases if someone feels they were sexually assaulted it probably happened. But if something only probably happened it means that it possibly didn’t happen, or at least did not happen the way it is remembered. If we were to change our judicial system to one in which accusers are to be absolutely believed it would be a vicious can of worms. If most accusations of sexual assault are probably true but some are not, and if everyone that is accused is treated as a rapist are the innocent ones among the accused whose lives are ruined simply collateral damage in a larger war? If so then it would also have to apply to men accusing women of sexual assault, but it doesn’t because men would not be believed with as much fervour in the court of public opinion that rules in such cases. To paraphrase Atwood: if you take away men’s human rights you automatically take away women’s human rights.

            I got some coaching from Bänoo on how to say “ghazale”. She told me that it doesn’t really matter how I say it because she wouldn’t be offended. I’m not trying to avoid offending anyone. I just want to know how to pronounce the word. It probably goes back to Canadian Poetry class a couple of years ago when my professor, George Elliot Clarke argued that it's pronounced "guzzel". That didn't fit with the pronunciations I'd heard and so I went on a mission to get it right.

            The only Christmas decorations in the main hall of the Tranzac were white lights along the front of the bar, blue lights along the mirror at the back of the bar and twinkling multi-coloured lights coiled around the column at stage right. There were also matching lights on the left column but they didn’t count because they were not lit.

            While I had my head turned in my seat to look at the bar lights someone called, "Hello Christian!" David Clink was sitting three rows directly behind me. I hadn't seen him for a couple of years since the last time we were both at the Plastiscene reading series before it died. I asked him if he was going to do his annual medley of Christmas song parodies but he said he wasn’t.

            When Bänoo came to the stage to start the open mic list I told her to put me on the naughty list. She said, “Everyone is naughty here!”

            When Norman Allen stepped up after someone else for Bänoo to put his name down he said, “Me too!” Bänoo told him, “Only women are allowed to say that!” I assume she was joking.

            I was on my way to the washroom when I was greeted by Cy Strom, who was standing and chatting with Simon. I said "Hi Cy!” and reached out to shake his hand but Simon intercepted it because he also goes by “Si” and he’d thought I’d been talking to him. I asked Cy for the long form of his name and he said it was Cyril. He said his orthodox Jewish parents wouldn’t have given him the name if they'd known that Cyril was an Orthodox Christian saint.

            We discussed the Shab-e She’r attendance. Cy said that it hasn’t quite recovered after the move from the church. I said that I would think that the Annex neighbourhood would have lots of people interested in a poetry reading once they found out that it was a regular event at the Tranzac. Cy suggested that it might be a good idea for Bänoo to put a sandwich board sign on the corner of Bloor and Brunswick or to put up posters at the Future Bakery. Simon suggested that Bänoo plays up the diversity angle a little too much. I said that I kind of agree. I think that it’s great that Bänoo goes out and brings in diverse features and I don’t think that people are afraid of diversity but I think they are sometimes put off by the idea of diversity being presented as part of an agenda because it makes it sound like it’s a movement separate from the poetry.

            It was time to start so we took our seats.

            This was the 69^th Shab-e She’r and the first event of year seven.

            Terese Pierre read the land acknowledgement.

            The first open stage performer was David Clink who did a poem made of anagrams. From “Secure Rescue” – “Gary Gray was grown wrong … He needed to escape the boredom of the bedroom … He was apt to tap Pat on the shoulder … He knew the rule of the lure … He’d read Keats and eat steak … A demand on the damned … Why does evil live when it is so vile … Tarred his traitor … Gary used to teach how to cheat … He was grown wrong.”

            Karin Evan read “The River” – “She would sit by the river almost every day … watched the river flowing … The grasses made her a bit nervous … Perhaps there was a serpent … Sometimes when it was very warm she would lift up her skirt and wade … Something in the way it moved seemed to change … a light wind rippled through the grasses … her clothes changed and she felt free … There were buildings … cars travelling in every direction … It seemed as if she’d been walking forever … The power of the river was always close … It was enough”.

            Nick Micelli read his winter solstice poem, which he’s shared before at this time of year – “The longest night my soul goes down deep … I’m never alone … Deeper and darker … spiralling down … Says I to my sadness … by my bright conscious light … I’m enveloped in peace … wisdom piled high … My sadness walks with me … I honour my shadow … As the room fills with light there’ll be none left but me.”

             Sen said it was her first time here. From “Abyss.com” – “The never ending joints of information … the seductive buzz of the phone … I don’t watch TV anymore … The feed … pokes you one hyperbolic headline after another … attention is the highest trading currency of the web domain … The first hallmark of addictive behaviour … What does it take to surface from the ocean of information? There is a film about a woman driven insane by her ability to see the thoughts of others … I can stop anytime I want … Read a chapter of your book … see what happens when you don’t feed the buzz … Clarity is only a click of the ‘off’ button away”.

            It’s interesting that Sen compared reading online posts to mind reading, because I wrote an essay on that topic six years ago for my Digital Text course at U of T. I’ve never heard anyone else make the comparison before.

            Paul Edward Costa recited two poems.

            From the first – “After the dirt an energy displaced by our conflict settled … In the end there’s only those who can stay and those who are banished … The ones I chased that detonated simultaneously when I drew near … A year and a half later they went dark … I suffered a stroke that became my personality.”

            From Paul’s second poem – “After a while I stopped turning on the lights … A woman down the hall called all the contacts … Nightmare … has not bottom … absence without limits … arrives fashionably late … in the vacuous eternity.”

            Paul told us that he is a lot shyer in person than he is on stage.

            It was time for our first feature, Meena Chopra. The first of her published books that she read from is illustrated by her own paintings.

            Meena began – “Female abstract energy is nature … The entire universe revolves around that … She, the life-force … in abstract forms … The Canadian landscape … the mesmerizing Canadian fall … casting its enormous spell … Striving to capture the very essence of fleeting time … splendour synergizing every split second of my existence … all its lights and shadows … descending on my blank canvases … colouring my impassive words with its touch.”

            From “Outshine” – “She swallowed the ghosts, gulping bit by bit … threading and interlacing naked space … chiselling a destiny … the dream dimension streaking on the waves  … soaring the disrobed mountains … out of orbit … radiating, shimmering, enflaming … she outshines the ages and eons”.

            From “Dying Lack” – “ … a grey-blue sky … treading awe inspired instances … the clouds to burst ... catastrophic trumpet … Flooded and sunken she sighs in ecstasy … Falling down her lips … the clock runs out … time stalls … eyes twinkle … treading water forever.”

            From “To Her and to You” – “She enjoys being sketched … mingled in the sweet scents … She aspires mountains … craving to be bejewelled with stars … composing, humming eternity … She longs for an unattainable mystical brush … in a language that binds her to her roots and spreads her wings beyond eternity …”

            From “Dark Lagoon” – “She sits … watching a clear, flowing stream … the book closed … Her password is lost … engulfed by the silent, dark lagoon … Her eyes swollen … dimming dreams … syllabic consonants … blue … her story.”

            From “Damp Earth” – “She sticks to the tacky, damp earth … the dry course earth … freezes in time.”

            From “Kalishima” – “Silence drizzles … the grass is still wet … the sun sets … deserting daydreams … strolling untrodden paths … in enigmatic tranquility … the cinematic dripping moonlight …”

            From “Timed Out” – “The sun in one hand, the moon in the other … strolling the abyss endlessly … defining her schismatic favours …”

            From “Kaleidoscope” – “ Dodging the entire cosmos … she quests for the changing spectacles … panoramic terrains … limits have scraped her soul …”

            Meena read from her book written in Hindi and told us that the title translates as “Adieu to the Dawn”.

            From “Memories” – “All the stars engulfed in silence … Death of the night is still alive … Vacuum is casting a shadow.”

            From “A Stilled Sonata” – “I soared the night in the milky way … Infinite time ticked … a schismatic bottomless pit … in a stilled sonata.”

            Meena read a poem that she said she’d written in 1992. According to her Facebook page she was born in 1985 – “World full of soundlessness … Small fragments flooding in turbulence …”

            From her last poem – “Evening … shades of black … Neutrality spread all over our faces … Perhaps we are beginning a new end.”

            Throughout her reading, although Meena Chopra’s movements appeared to be very slight, the sequins sewed into her sari reflected the bright stage light and sent hundreds of little luminous spots in a sprightly, frantic dance around the room. The light show was often more interesting than her poetry, which though from time to time comes up with a strong image, like “catastrophic trumpet”, most of it is riddled with cosmological clichés, buckles neath a tedious overuse of present participles and suffers from too many repeated images and words. All of the work she read was of the same theme and written in the same style.

            We took a break, during which time the second feature, Casey Garcia and his entourage prepared the stage for his performance. Two of them, a young man and woman looked about the same young age as Casey while the other man looked about twenty years older. A smart phone hooked up to a small speaker was placed on the floor with the extra microphone lying beside it.

            After the break, Catherine Thompson was the open stage performer that Bänoo selected to warm up the audience for the feature and she did two poems.

            From “For Paris” - "Knees buckling at the sight of her blood ... hearing the hollow ring of my own head striking that surface ... a comforting hand on my cheek … Oh Paris, I weep for you!"

            Catherine’s second piece was a song with a soundtrack that had been uploaded to her phone - "One Christmas morning / bleary eyed and yawning / Sweet anticipation glowing in our faces … The love that’s all around us makes everything so bright … Papa’s photo of the family on the stairs on Christmas morning … Take another picture, take another memory …" At this point Catherine paused and swayed during an instrumental break and she told us the name of the saxophone player – “So smile for papa’s photo before you see the tree."

            Casey Garcia is 20. He grew up in Toronto but now lives in Scarborough.

            His first poem was “About Mom" - " ... It's been a couple of months since I wrote a poem I'm proud of ... My mom was at the side of the bed ... She was strong … By the 31^st she had to do some dirty work … She always drove me when no one else did … I haven’t written anything ... Sometimes I just don't think I'm there ... She says 'If I learned English then why are you scared?' The good thing about not having much is that it's easy to start over ... Never be scared … We were born into the struggle …"

            Casey told us that in addition to spoken word he also makes rap music – “I got my boys by my side … It’s about my pride … I don’t really wanna scrap … I can’t leave cause if I do I'm not a man ... I had to show no love to show that I was tough ... When we do it all together it's more for pain than pleasure … It’s a set-up ... Boys like us are always told to be quiet ... When brothers kill each other it's always 'boys will be boys' ... How we call each other with all these broken telephones … Pick your poison homey ... We're getting drunk off this apathy ... I'll keep my dick in my pants ... Masculinity ... I'll take my mask off and when I need some advice on how to be a man I’ll ask mom …”

            For the third or fourth time Casey reminded us that he’s twenty years old.

            From his next piece – “See it’s not perfect ... I'm learning to trust the process ... I never think of what the fuck I'll say ... cause everybody catch the rhythm when I spit in my poems … Misguided education … boxed in like closed captions … I’ll kill you if you fuck with my niece … My mama said that I talk a lot but don’t know how to listen … I just want to like me enough to kiss a mirror when I pass … I’m torn between picking up a mic and picking up a weapon … Fuck it! My Uber’s coming!"

            From another – “Who’ll be the king when the crowd gets too heavy … It’s been a while since hip-hop spoke to me with conviction ... just the usual buzz … When did industry mean more than reaching people in the streets … Rising murder rates … Who has the throne … When will the stages turn to churches? We’re still fighting … I’m tired of hearing half-hearted shit from half-hearted crooks …”

            Casey's friend Matt comes out to sit in a chair on stage and be his DJ with the smart phone.

            Casey tells us to make some noise if we’re enjoying it so far. He thinks that the audience should feel an obligation to reciprocate.

            During the musical part of his set Casey came down off the stage and performed at the audience’s level. He also danced a bit to the music and it seemed to throw off his ability to enunciate his words and so it was harder to understand what he was saying.

            From “Fool Me” – “Ya'll cannot fool me …"

            There was a technical glitch with the phone and so Casey started over.

            “I’ve been up till 2:00 or 3:00 … signing petition … suicidal … I think I’m high … This is paradise … Hung out to dry … all for you … Every brick here is another tombstone … Sacrifice all I knew … all for you …”

            From another – “I’m sorry … my heart is cold … None of that is true … Maybe none of that is you … Storm clouds block my shine ... Help me get out of my bed ... or maybe out of my head ...” Casey closed off the piece by singing the chorus from "Rainy days and Mondays always get me down” by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols.

            Casey told us that he couldn’t have done this without Matt. He closed off his set with a song called “Other Drugs” – “Tell me bout the beauty I cannot see … I know I've been hard headed … Hit me on the cellular ... Tell me when I'm way too much ... I'm numb ... acting way too dumb ... Feel alive when you’re by my side … mixing all these drugs … Hit that liquor store ... I need the antidote ... You were right ... My nightmares come true tonight ... I'm just trying to spend my dough and forget life.”

            When Casey was finished, Teresa hall called out, “That’s talent!”

            Casey Garcia may be young but he certainly has spunk, a message, stage presence and every now and then a clever rhyme or turn of phrase. The problem is that temerity and having something to communicate are not enough because everybody has a message and courage comes cheaper than one might think. The necessary ingredient that Casey needs to cultivate is poetry because his style is frankly formulaic and his level of engagement with his art at this point is like that of a Country and Western lyricist. He’s got to find new phrases and uses of words to speak his message. I would suggest that he keep writing but also that he start reading or listening to a lot of poetry.

            We immediately returned to the open mic and I was the first performer that Bänoo invited to the stage. I announced that I was going to read my second attempt at a ghazale but before I started, Cy, who was sitting near the back row, advised me to use the mic. I was incredulous because the last time I’d read there it had seemed to carry. I asked if he was sure he couldn’t hear me and he laughed and said he was quite sure. Simon, who was sitting next to Cy, agreed that I wasn’t loud enough. Finally I picked up my voice, adding more force and then he said it was fine. I put the title of this poem at the end – “When someone in power says things that are dumb / laughter is a revolution // The Santa capped drunk in July walks up Yonge Street / Just how far north is he going? ... Some people get really smart on LSD / a dumb guy once said to me … On this freezing day up in the maple tree / the blackbirds are going crazy // This fuming man is attacking in anger / I punch him back but only with laughter // During the recitation of this poem / Someone is snoring with their mouth open // Laughter is a revolution".

            Nadereh said, “Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays” and I think it was both the title of her poem and a greeting – “The 25th of December, the day the pagans called ‘Yule’ … Coincidence? Perhaps not … We need to get through the cold … So bring in the trees and the mistletoe and the lights too … Make sure it is out of joy …”

            Just to clarify, December 25 is one of the 12 days of the pagan Yule festival that starts with the solstice but it has no significance by itself within that tradition.

            Norman Allen read – “Betsy can see order in the chaos … The ancients used metaphors to speak to the mind … The gods are gone … I saw a woman at the bus stop who just needed a word … I’d like to see Jerusalem without police.”

            Christine told us that her daughter, who was also there, challenged her to get up and read and so she read a poem that she wrote in 1984. From “Africa I Long for You” - "You should not go on misconceived ... I'll return to the place where I once lived ... I will return to the drums ... I will return tomorrow … For now I cannot face my tribe.”

            Benjamin Rubin read two poems.

From “Written Invitation” – “God is alive only in your mind ... like the pleasing aroma of willingly made sacrifices ... Thoughts to words … words to print … food for the shepherd of thought … between the written and read.”

From “Nobody Somebody” - "I was nobody ... just a somebody … Why should they remember me? Not the sharpest saw in the shed … but sharp enough …”

Dana Seif read – “I grew up by the sea … I’ve been coughing up sand lately … I think the small of your back is where countries at war go to heal … Your belly button … When I kiss it I can feel myself floating on water … Fly me to Beirut … You make me want to learn all the Arabic poetry because it finally makes sense to me … Make us Turkish coffee … I think if they knew how happy you make me … Lake Ontario is far from being the Red Sea … You are a large body of water … I can see myself kissing you goodnight for a long, long time.”

            Maya recited “Summer in Our End” - "My mind is playing a game ... It's the butterflies I blame ... My mood changed ... Dazed on a warm night in June ... It's you I admire … It sparks my fire … Trees burning ... The blaze never contained ... Burst of drizzle … pouring down my passage …" Maya hesitated because she forgot the next line but then continued – “Drenched in the storm ... the thunder rages ... Longing to come inside the warm inches of my thighs ...” She stopped again and struggled for quite a while to remember the rest of her poem, but finally she gave up.

            Simon read three poems.

            From “In Love I Slant” – “In love I slant away from you … always coming back to where we rhyme … Someone who I did not touch … A language garrulous.”

            From “Beneath Within” – “Like some undersea living thing, she grabbed me passing by … It behoves a man to know submission.”

            From “EV 1995” – “A large young woman reached down and pronounced me hard enough for penetration … The needle hadn’t caused any pain ... The dosage she delivered rendered me properly passive ... I fell to patchy worrying and ultimate unsuccess.”

            Margaret Code read "Diwali Festival of Light" - "Leaves burned though not all on the ground ... Scurrying sari-clad Hindi women ... papier machet elephants … Hindu gurus and gods … collections of tea candles … A philosophical mood … A lot of skill and expertise … vegetarian food … Now we put our shoes back on and head for the bus”.

            Anna Gutmanis sang acapella “Hello Again” – “We were younger, we had the hunger … That was way back then and so hello again … I’ll be leaving, sure as you’re breathing … Till I do this song is for you … I don’t have much time … I am always aware of the bond that we share … I may wander way over yonder … It seems like a crime that I don’t have the time … Time does not change you at all …” Anna sounds a lot like Melissa Etheridge.

            Sydney White said that she watched the documentary, “The Disappearing Male”. She said there are only one-third of the male births that there used to be.
            From “Chemical Catastrophe” – “As things are now our survival does not require an election, but an erection … Our genitals are confused … Some get the wrong ones … We’re running out of species … Shouldn’t there be protests before we’re down to none?”

            People in the audience were cheering Sydney’s poem but I wonder if they fully understood that this is another of her conspiracy theories.

            The documentary, “The Disappearing Male” cherry picks certain studies while ignoring others that contradict its findings. I don’t know where Sydney got the idea that there are a third of the male births that there used to be. There are slightly less male births in the last few decades but there are still more males born than females. Only a couple of studies have found the chemicals that she has in mind to have diminished the male sperm count and even those studies do not jump to conclusions.

            Teresa Hall read two poems.

From “This Land of Freedom: Canada” – “We came into this land of freedom … in this ancient land … where battles were fought … Northern lights … She will embrace … your children’s children … this land of freedom.”

From “The Hawk” – “Come back my hawk … My soul has soared with yours … I long to touch your wings … dive into the vortex … I am left here standing on this dull and earthbound hill.”

Chai didn’t use the mic. He told us that he’d found his kindred spirit in a little fifteen-year-old girl from Sweden who said that generations have failed before her. He was referring to Greta Thunberg, who went on strike from going to school and camped out on the street in Stockholm to raise awareness about climate change.

            Chai read “Turn, Turn, Turn” – “ … and a time to every species … A time to plant, a time to reap … A time to heal but no time to kill … A time to mourn and a time to celebrate … Always a time to cut your carbon footprint … No forest to burn, burn, burn … A time to walk and a time to bike … No time for icebergs to melt … A time to swim and dive but no time for deep sea fishing … No time for luxury liners … Time to turn, turn, turn.”

            Chai finished with a short piece – “This planet was made … 70% for the fish … but two monkeys hijacked it.”

            Jeff greeted us in one of the Anishnaabe languages. He said, “For 15,000 years the city of Tkaranto has been a meeting place … I was born a stranger in my own country … held that way in a long, loveless embrace by foreign arms … My mother had forgotten … You forget to breathe … You’re held tighter … I thought one day that I could slip away … I don’t know how to love yet … I’m afraid of holding you too tight.”

            Ray read – “I miss you … and then some more I miss you … in ways that aren’t good for me … I miss seeing myself … There is nothing to reflect the me I’m used to seeing.”

            Our last poet of the night was Iman Ahmed, who read two poems.

            From “Stories Untold” – “I’m watching our people … the story told … brings your culture closer to me … Missing women from Manitoba to Darfur … The water reconciles itself inside of me.”

            From “Path of Light Delight” – “I’m only smell, light and sound … Wherever I land I’m on a journey.”

            I helped fold the chairs and put them away. I asked Cy if he was able to hear my poem and he said that after I’d raised my voice there was no problem hearing me. I wondered if people can hear Chai easily because it doesn’t seem to me that he’s speaking as loud as I do. Cy thought that it might be the fact that Chai has a higher pitched voice than mine. He said there’s usually no problem hearing me but this time there was the sound of a bass coming from the other room that was drowning me out.

            Iman and Jeff came up and both said they liked my poem. When I saw that they are a couple her first poem made more sense. Iman introduced Jeff to Cy and said Cy is “Bänoo’s husband”. I said, “Did you say husband?” and then I looked at Cy questioningly. He made it clear, “Bänoo and I are just shacking up”. But he said it didn’t seem appropriate to raise his voice in protest over the suggestion.

            I shook hands with Cy, gave Bänoo a hug, wished them a happy holiday and then headed for my bike.