RodMer Poem Package B Two Eggs Before Sun Up and Other Poems [24 poems, 865 lines]
by Merike Lugus & Rod Anderson	for on-line reading now in your browser

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All material is copyright. Some of the poems and stories in these packages have appeared in literary journals, anthologies, and in Sky Falling Sunny Tomorrow by Rod Anderson (published by Wolsak & Wynn, Toronto, 1989) and in Ophelia After Centuries of TryingOphelia After Centuries of Trying by Merike Lugus (published by watershedBooks, Toronto, 1998). Where the rights involved were other than first serial rights, we are grateful to the respective publishers (and particularly Wolsak & Wynn) for permission to offer this material on the Web.

For me, 5:00 am tends to be the time for apocalyptic dreams -- hence my poem, "Two Eggs Before Sun Up". It's become a pattern: an hour of angst as I helplessly watch yet another way our lives come to an end until, mercifully, my brain throws out a life-line, the memory of a hot cup of coffee.

			last night my fingers were alerted
			fiddled around inside my mouth	
			found a loose tooth in the lower jaw
			it jiggled like a peg in a mudpie
			and I thought   oh god   now it begins!
			hoping to squeeze by one more bargain
			I made a mental promise to really
			try and be a better person   tomorrow   if...

			but then my fingers found another
			prodding   prying   crawling in deeper
			soon on hands and knees we found another
			obsessed   terrified   too late I
			noticed rows of teeth like tree stumps along
			a gummy avenue leading down   down the 
			black throat of a leviathan

			inside the belly were hordes of
			people thin as moth's wings
			their powdery edges crumbling
			Egyptian queens   slaves   
			philosophers with cunning faces
			stern faced popes   beatific poets
			layers on layers   thousands on thousands
			mothers with infants   men  with tools
			arms raised mid-stroke   neither happy nor sad

			at their head stood a knight
			without horse   without a beam of light
			to guide the files of shadow people
			his armour was dull   his head empty
			I wondered what had fixed him with his gaping stare
			and wanted to run but couldn't
			made of mud I was corroding

			they say you should address the things you fear
			so I said hello to the lonely knight
			and realized he was dead

			and I wasn't

			to prove it I got up   shivering
			amazed by the fresh chill before sunrise
			put on a pot of coffee
			fried two eggs   sunny side up


  ........................................Copyright © Merike Lugus  1988 

"High School Diplomat" is based on the observation that even the most reasonable of divorces can complicate the lives of children.

			so pretty in the line-up 
			waiting for her diploma
			her body speaking two languages
				majestic for our benefit
				larkish for her friends

				later she looks small	
					I should have fed her more
						      	 back then
					but even then
					she never ate what others did
					I couldn't keep track of
					likes and dislikes, except
					for one steadfast menu
					parmesan chicken, saffron rice
					and chestnut, whether torte or purée
				who could argue with a stomach?
						      if it ached
				you let her escape to her room
				who could argue with a closed door?

			her father comes with his new wife
						       new baby
			the grandparents come
			and I come with my new husband
			we've come to say we love her
			she has lived with us in turn
					now stands stoically
			the centre of this brittle circle
			we
			         like continents that have drifted
			into separate and intricate politics
							and she
				skilled and tender skimmer		
				skirts along the shores
					how we watch over her
					she should not be captured
					bribed or hostaged

				she kisses us in turn
					  we know she loves us and
					   is only a bit tired
				I give her a small gift
					  she says her bag is heavy
					  I feel her friends nearby
				in her yellow eyes a narrow patience
				    	  
					I say we have to go
					     she grows more cheerful
					     happy we have come 

..............................Copyright © Merike Lugus  1989 

This poem, I think, speaks for itself.

	my friend with thin arms was mugged
	by three with thinner arms
	my friend says they didn't mean him any harm
	though the cold thing against his neck
	was a knife    though he faded
	like a tunnel into the night

	it was the end of a long day and honestly
	he says he was too tired to be afraid
	and because of that and because
	they took so little money and because
	sometimes thin-armed men are brothers
	my friend says nothing happened
	really

	but he worries what his running heart betrays
	he'd thought he was the muscle
	now he knows the tremor of the membrane
	he is a thin skin drum beating out his epitaph
	Here lies a passive man 

	now he spends hours in the dark
	fine-tuning his mind
	looking for that point where
	what's dignified intersects what's practical
	he senses that to grasp aggression
	really
	is to shift the whole enterprise of living
	in a serious direction



.........................................................Copyright  © 1988 Merike Lugus 


Published in  Ophelia After Centuries of Trying, 
Toronto: watershedBooks,  1998
First published in Poetry Toronto     (Nov/88)

Again, this poem, I think, speaks for itself.

	he fled by day, short of breath
	his eyes were open targets

				she moved in long strides
				never stumbling

				that morning in the market-place
				after rain had guttered chunks and
				blood of the day's losers
			    	she saw him standing
				dead-still by a strange fish

	its wound puckered like worried lips
	honeyed the steel hook
	slippery eyes goggled at
	the gravity of a first blunder

	breathless he turned to her and begged:
	there must be love-
	let you be the circle
	and I be the triangle
	and X be the distance
	and Y be the time (running, oh running)
	then love is the sum
	of circle plus triangle
	times X over Y

				she felt in him the sickening jolt
				the hollow twang marking the end
				of playful slack
				she said shhhh...
				and closed his eyelids with her fingers
				pressed her mouth on his
    				exhaled cool currents
				she said shhhh...
				this is not love, not yet
				before one can love one must breathe


................................................................Copyright  ©  1988 Merike Lugus 

Published in  Ophelia After Centuries of Trying, 
Toronto: watershedBooks,  1998
First published in Poetry Toronto  (Nov/88)

This poem was occasioned by a visit many years ago to Brighton on the south coast of England. A hundred feet off the beach lies the derelict remains of an old pleasure pier, like some sort of permanent ghost that just won't go away.

						The way through the world is more
 						difficult to find than the way beyond it.
									-Wallace Stevens 
				
				she looks out into the storm			
				from inside a dark room

		the old palace pier stands ghostlike
		on thin stilts like a ravaged woman
		stripped of glamour, silent 
			the crowds that took its pleasures
			have moved down the beach
			the bridge linking it to shore
				    has disappeared
						black creatures gather offside 
						rise and fall among the whitecaps
							    this place is wild 		
			how many women never went to sea
			but the storm was inside them
			torn sails, broken masts, waves
			pounding inwards like fists
				how many women escaped
				perhaps to an uncharted island
				to play enchantress for a while
			from island to island 
			vacancy to vacancy
												
		I am watching the reflection of a woman
		in the dark window pane				
		I see her staring at the old pier
		catch her thinking 
		of another metamorphosis
		as if I have not yet become myself
				I hear her whisper: 
				        		 this is not how I am
					   
			and the pier squats on its queer bird legs
			and creatures cling to oxygen


................................................................Copyright  ©  1988 Merike Lugus 
Published in  Ophelia After Centuries of Trying, 
Toronto: watershedBooks,  1998

This poem was the result of a long night spent trying to coax my muses to yield up the material for a poem. Writing sometimes feels like an invasion of the soul. Nevertheless, it struck me that the pattern of seduction, whether of a man or a woman or the soul, is much the same. Thus "Seduction" may be read as the confession of a seasoned seducer, but originally I intended it to be about the creative process. A greedy part of me was negotiating with my vulnerable soul to hand me over a poem.

			relax-
			I'm not here to steal your treasure...
			but your instincts may be right
				sometimes I tell lies
				just to slip through the crack

				better to close up    dig in deep
			in my obsession
			I might convince us both
			that the point of you
			is your opalescence
			that your destiny is light
			not the patient coping
			with irritations at the core
			
			I  may whisper that I love you
			insert my steel tongue
			slit you open
			assure you that every birth
			must be paid for in blood

			I may pocket the pearl
			and toss away the living thing
			all the while worshipping your
			muteness

			and I will forgive the contrite
			slightly stooped image in the mirror-
			everybody loves a rascal



................................................................Copyright  ©  1988 Merike Lugus 

Published in  Ophelia After Centuries of Trying, 
Toronto: watershedBooks,  1998
First published in Poetry Toronto    (Nov/88)

"Yora" is about our (the narrator's) persistent tendency to be exclusive, to exclude others from our circle. As Eric Hoffer argued in his great book, The True Believer ; the thing about belonging is that (a) you can forget your own personal frustrations by immersing yourself in a greater 'cause' and (b) you can enjoy the fact that while you and your friends 'belong' the heathen (infidels, gentiles, non-net-surfers, or what have you) do not. This poem is about the (b) part.

		Yora's always inviting strange people in
		last Friday Fabienne
		(who hangs those dirty African carpets in her kitchen!)
		and Murray (you know) who's just lost his wife
		and is such a bore about it
		and Murray brings his gardener's son Chico
		who plays guitar and wants to sing to us for hours

		Then I find out Yora's also asked
		that little kid Ahmed from down the street
		who already handles an Uzzi like his brother used to
		(you should have seen him cry the night his brother was shot
		always carries his photo in his pocket)
		so he arrives with his sister the one with the big eyes
		and the two of them gobble up all our food

		Koji is there talking a mile a minute
		not minding we can't understand a word
		and Indra comes too though she's shy at first
		sticks close to Elsa who starts to cry
		so I think Yora Yora
		you've really gone too far this time
		this is going to be a disaster!

		But Murray asks what's wrong
		Elsa says no she's just happy
		then Koji and Ahmed start this ridiculous Greek dance
		Yora bursts out laughing hugs them both
		and suddenly everyone is hugging everyone else
		just this large pile-up in the middle of the room
		not sexual or anything just hugging

		Elsa keeps crying softly to herself
		Murray puts both Yora's hands in his
		(I decide he's not such a bad sort after all)
		how white Fabienne's arms look around Indra!
		finally Chico has to put his guitar down
		with everyone pressed so close up to him there's no room
		but he goes on singing

		A few neighbours poke their heads in the door
		what's going on? I send them away
		they're not our type, would cause problems
		Yora wants to ask them in anyway - I don't let her
		she's so stupid sometimes


                      .............Copyright © Rod Anderson 1987 

There is a little of the cry-baby in all of us. Too bad (boo hoo) - but there it is. I guess that's what "The Victim" is about. Certainly much of today's litigation seems to stem from the assumption that if anything bad ever happens to you, it's someone else's fault. And, of course, we love popping pills.

			Phil took the pill
			the iron pill
			feral and ferric
			not as in washday
			but ironfist
			and pumping iron
			and striking when it's hot
			feral and ferric
			It's my life said Phil
			so he popped ten a day
			and his blood got redder
			soaked up the oxygen
			gave this ferocious high
			more than anyone had felt before
			but his lungs hurt
			and his skin turned reddy-brown
			a small price to pay said Phil
			and upped the dosage
			strode the world ruddy with health
			until his joints stiffened
			finally an arm dropped off
			oh my God why me? he cried
			so he sued the government
			who said yes they were to blame
			and his mother and father 
			who burst into tears and
			agreed it was all their fault
			and his employer
			who was fined ten thousand dollars
			and his wife 
			who should have noticed the rust marks earlier
			and the pharmaceutical companies
			the acid-rain makers
			the media the church the U.N.
			everyone said they were sorry
			no one would ever be allowed
			to take iron pills again
			but what good's that to me? cried Phil
			it's not fair it's just not fair!
			and he walled himself up in a stone prison
			and never said another word


.................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1987 

If any of you grew up in the catholic, anglican, episcopalian, etc. tradition where you had to sing the Te Deum Laudamus ('We praise Thee, O God") at least a couple of times a week, you will recognize the references to 'we praise thee' and 'let me never be confounded'. If not, no matter. Interesting that Te Deum and Taedium are so close. (Does this mean heaven has to be boring?) Marvin Minsky (of artificial intelligence fame) is one of my idols and anyone who wants to understand some of the process-related problems that the designer (like God) of any self-replicating self-conscious organism must solve should read his amazing book The Society of Mind. The epigram explains the basic point. Who can disagree? We must avoid infinite loops. And yet there's something awfully distasteful about the satiation protection mechanism. (I hope everyone still sings "Merrily We Roll Along" at sing-songs, or did that go out of fashion two generations ago?)

							Every mind must have a satiation
							protective scheme, "since otherwise
							it could get trapped into endlessly
							repeating the same activity."
									Marvin Minsky


			I'm bored, therefore I am
			for if I weren't bored
			I'd be hooked
			a brushstroke    one minor chord    your cheek
			and if I were truly hooked
			I'd forget everything else
			die of starvation and exhaustion I suppose
			and since I don't die for a while
			since I drop everything to eat and sleep
			I continue, I am
			thanks to boredom

			not that eating and sleeping last   good thing
			they pall, therefore I am
			not haloed in coma    hooked on IV
			it's boredom keeps me up
			my attention unanchored    darting free
			nibble here nibble there    and when the flash of pain
			tugs me   almost out of myself
			quickly the slack follows    gets me off the hook
			thanks, boredom

			one day mutation strikes    the guard is dropped
			ecstasy walks in the front door    takes over the house
			up in the bedroom    the owner lies confounded
			stuck in an infinite loop    like a saint
			brain-dead    or is it alive?    semantics
			ask the relatives    stooped in black over the body
			"Heaven protect us from such genes!" they pray
			evolution obliges    yawns and slumps on

			nothing in excess
				for excess satiates
			everything in moderation
				but that's dull too
			meritless we roll along    roll along
			of no great moment    never mind
			we praise thee, O tedium
			and now let's change the subject

......................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1988 

"Heritage" comes back to the exclusionary theme of "Yora". In our part of the country (the north shore of Lake Ontario), robins (and grackles and redwinged blackbirds) arrive from their southern winter migratory homes on March 17th (give or take a few days). For those in more southern climes, that will seem very late - but that's the way it is. Starlings, of course, we have year round. Their name refers to the specklings on their black coats - or maybe it means they're emissaries from higher astral orders who are really are landlords.

			march the seventeenth
			hundreds of migrant mouths
			flock across the border today
			mexican robins after our earthworms

			but not on our street no wetbacks
			the starlings own it have for generations
			in march are out in force
			immigration officers in every tree

			this street is private
			this town is private
			this world is private
			earthlings keep out



......................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1988 

Any of you who are students of the I Ching will know that a moving line is one of the lines of the hexagram that can change from strong to weak or vice versa, thus converting the hexagram into a second hexagram with added peripheral meaning to the first answer. Or maybe these are lines about moving. Or maybe they are lines to move you (but I don't think so). Line-growth is, of course, an electric utility term. There is always something liberating about new beginnings. Certainly we felt that when we moved to the country seven years ago. People find it when they switch jobs as well. A colleague once explained to me that for the first six months he found the move to his new firm exhilarating because he could move about freely (if sometimes a little lost) making connections, building up a network. But eventually the connections come pervasive. Every day there are phonecalls from hundreds of people to whom you owe favours. Everyone is connected to everyone else. And eventually you can hardly move at all -- like a lion trapped in a rope mesh. Break out!

			time to move
			our apartment's filled up

			thin black lines run from room to room
			cover the floors with hexagrams
			link up to city streets
			down to meeting rooms and restaurants
			everywhere little junctions
			snagging our feet as we move

			for a while we hacked out the worst tangles
			stuffed them in cupboards to rot
			the sticky things kept reconnecting
			blew all our fuses

			the new place is in the country
			and LINE-FREE! can you imagine?
			we checked thoroughly before buying
			not        a        line        anywhere

			but won't new ones form? you ask
			now that's urban mentality!
			let's put it this way:
			rural line-growth's so slow
			folks there hardly ever move

			anyway
			we're going to have compost


......................Copyright © Rod Anderson  1988 

"Malcontent" is a slight little poem about the insatiability of our greed. It speaks, I hope, for itself (and for me).

			everything I could want is right here
			you smiling
			this old house its door that won't close
			the lake downhill the winter fields
			the smell of the wood stove
			and dogwood seen from my desk
			you painting
			mysterious swamps in our woods
			the pup chasing squirrels
			moist blackness of earth
			chickadees blabbing about seeds
			stillness at night
			stars of course there are stars
			and you loving
			time 
			I would like some time



...............Copyright © Rod Anderson 1989 

Concert in the Forum" is my earliest poem that doesn't now embarrass me. Before that there were countless adolescent religious sonnets (ughhh!). The concert was indeed outside -- in the Roman forum. And I was a young teenager on a summer trip. Looking back now over 50 years I still remember the mood. And I'm still attached to the stone arpeggios shattering along old cold steps. The "discordant galaxy of timelessness" is a bit of a clunker and the "Music is life" repetition is rather too earnest (at least I took it out of upper case!) but if I start correcting things now, I'll end up erasing the whole poem. So you'll have to accept it as a youthful endeavour with its faults.

		The waves advance through the ruins;
		The waves of sound ripple forward in the dark
		Past stone structures, villas, tombs, and statues
		They lap against a leaning sun-dial,
		But you hide the movement in your eyes,
		No ripples there.
		Small eddies whirl off through the columns
		And trill the shadows of those distant porticos.
		You don't feel the sound brush past.
		It moves through the broken pillars and triumph arches,
		And stone arpeggios topple and shatter
		Along the old, cold steps where you
		Stand untouched.
		Why are you waiting there to-night?

		I see you twenty paces away
		Across an old Roman courtyard
		And the music blowing above your hair.
		But you and I are separated
		By a discordant galaxy of timelessness
		Unresolved by any twenty centuries
		Bridging Roman breath and mine.
		No air fills this space between us, and no life.
		For air and life recede from you like stars,
		Ivory kitharas, light-bowed and faint,
		Into a silenced sky ignorant of the ancient modes.
		I see but never meet your face,
		And you shall never hear the music.

		Music is life.
		You wrap yourself in your silence and wait;
		Sound cannot intrude on impenetrable vacuum.
		Music is life.
		Your marble face must have hardened in some previous age;
		You are cold and stone and remote.
		I begin to imagine the marble hardening in me. 
		Rejoice that horror cannot live in stone hearts,
		That we shall not know our loneliness when
		In the end we are called to your vacuity!
		Why are you waiting there to-night?
		No one will come now -- ever.
		The destiny of statues is solitude.

		For on the eighth day the world turned to stone.
		Music flowed by the leaning, crumbled listeners,
		Hollowed out their crevices;
		Music flowed from its containers
		And its vessels were left in emptiness.
		But their cold faces were set in silence,
		Their stone faces were separated in silence,
		And in stone they waited.


		..............................Copyright © Rod Anderson  1954
Published in the Trinity Review,  December 1954

"Susan" is about a friend's three-year old daughter who visited us one summer day. I was impressed by her speed of learning -- a skill that we manage to stamp out of so many children as they grow older. So I was imagining how one might celebrate a life where this skill flourished undiminished right until the end.

			Susan: peeling shrimps
			not so easy.
			"Like this?" she asks poking
			a three-year-old finger under the shell,
			bending close, eyes squinting as
			half a shell is carefully pulled away.
			"This is how, right?"
			she both announces and queries
			proud of her knowledge, still
			happy to have our confirmation.
			Peels five more,
			bits of shell yielding,
			now learning at light-speed faster
			than ever again
			knowing in each day's revolution
			only bedtime as limit.
			Concludes with
			"This is how you do it"
			handing each of us
			(envious, limited, no longer so alive)
			a piece of her success.

			Susan! if we could . . .
			"Like this?" she asks her lover
			running her tongue along.
			"This is how, right?" she jokes
			leading her brokerage colleagues through
			the decade's most daring coup.
			Later, reaching from her bed
			to tousle a grandson's hair,
			bending close, eyes calm,
			concludes to her wet-faced daughter,
			(bedtime the only limit)
			"This is how you do it",
			peeling the intravenous from
			her own body's cancerous shell.



   ..........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson  1985


Published in Waves,   issue #14/3, Winter 1986

In some children's book years ago, I remember a picture of Jason sowing dragon's teeth in the ground and each tooth rising up as a spear point of a soldier as a whole army proceeded to sprout to accompany Jason to the golden fleece. Well of course this "Jason" is more about that common type of nightmare which finds you embarrassingly naked at the front of a crowd of elegantly dressed parents, friends, and academic dignitaries, about to give a graduation speech.

			
				standing in the crowded room
				I feel my side teeth come unstuck
				so keep my mouth closed
				run to the washroom
				hasten Jason fetch the basin
				(years ago in school)
				I'm no hero look in the mirror
				my canines hang down ludicrously

				push them up
				they stick for a minute
				then plop down like a broken toy
				beside them all my bicuspids and molars

				I reach in take the right side out
				comes in one piece a giant wedge
				teeth on one side bloody root stubs the other
				then try to wedge it back in 
				but get it upside down try again
				too big to fit my mouth

				I've got it lopsided
				better to take the left side out too
				leaves me with eight incisors
				four up four down a hollow-cheeked rabbit

				someone knocks on the bathroom door
				I'm holding the wedges in one hand
				locking together like building blocks
				can I get home like this? will people ask
				why is that man carrying teeth in his hands?
				I try tucking them under one arm
				nonchalant like a football player
				would be better if I had my sports bag

				knock again hurry up I open the door
				keep my mouth closed make a run for it
				cross the chattering room the front door trip on the steps
				and the wedges fall
				they shatter to hundreds of teeth
				sprinkle over the lawn like a hail storm
				a smashed temple of marble chips

				I pick myself up running scared
				let's get the hell out of here
				but the tooth-sown ground fleeces my shoes
				saws at my feet till my soles bleed
				now wherever I look the ground is cut
				with sharp white bleeding mounds
				rising rising


..........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson  1986

While it's confession time, "College Dance" remembers an occasion in the early 50s (when girls indeed wore little plastic boots over their high heels -- where have they gone?). Actually, the last stanza is apocryphal. Hasn't happened yet. I'll let you know when it happens.

		forty minutes late picking her up
		I take the wrong turn, get lost, call from a pay phone
		where are you? she asks
		in a sensible voice like a mother
		I can see the night's off to a bad start

		finally arrive, she's waiting at the door
		smiling in a bright red coat
		lectures ran late, I lie to her parents, then blush
		she must have just cut her hair in bangs
		as we drive to the dance it shines like patent leather
		I can't think of a thing to say
		park my dad's car, she swings her long legs out
		clear plastic boots over high heels
		we trudge in through the snow

		all my friends are there
		Tony and Jack punch me in the shoulder
		she goes to the washroom
		I start to feel a little better
		get us two beers, she comes back
		we dance to some Glenn Miller
		she doesn't seem to know the same patterns
		I step twice on her feet so we sit down
		now it's going to be awful

		I wave at Tony and Jack and laugh
		after the second beer I think of something to say
		what are you interested in? I ask, real casual
		someone is changing the record
		I feel my tie trying to choke me
		men, she smiles, sipping her beer
		after that I clam up
		that's the dumbest line I ever heard
		am I glad she's the one spoiled the evening

		get two more beers, don't even glance at her
		her brown eyes look puzzled
		we drive home in silence
		I forget the turn again but she tells me
		at her door I don't kiss her goodnight
		guess that shows her

		today we meet at the theatre, thirty years later,
		her husband's an old friend
		the four of us drink cognac at intermission
		remember that night we went out, I joke
		ready to laugh at myself
		but she can't remember


..........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1996 

"Spring Rites of the Red-Breasted Merganser" really does portray what these silly male birds do each spring around Lake Ontario and Georgian Bay as they pass through during their migration north. The poem grew out of a remark an acquaintance made to me: "men don't know how to live alone". I'm still trying to puzzle the arithmetic out on this one. But I confess, I'm guilty. Happily married life is better. I like it.

						In his courting display, the male red-breasted
						merganser thrusts his head up and forward,
						his straightened white neck tilting toward the
						female to show off his bright red breast at the
						water-line. This position is unstable so then, 
						a little like a kneeling man trying to push an 
						egg with his nose, he topples over on his
						face. Unabashed, he repeats the display until
						the female swims away bored. Mergansers
						migrate through the lower Great Lakes each
						spring on their way to northern Canada. 


Spring and one morning our bay's full of duck
"Just passing through," one calls, "quick flight, flirt and a fuck"
but this layover time's a bore
and the girls are sore
they think six times per clutch
is just too goddam much
and we're to go still up hills and down lakes
for these jakes?

					So it's May day
					out in the bay
					damsel distress
					SOS
					dumb male mergansers
					can't take no's for answers
					ups and royals pains in the downs
					they'll go soft in their crowns

Why can't we just go migrating
without this compulsive mating?
a drake's as tiresome as a spoiled pup
frankly les femmes are fed up
swim off in the other direction
let's avoid the eternal erection
of those dumb male necks
what a recurrent sex!
stick it up, teeter forward, they're stuck in their ruts
stick, teeter, stick, teeter -- the girls think it's nuts
so layoff, ducky, down boy, down rover
it's all over

But two drakes yet hopeful in long detour
slap along wetly, overtake their amour
then turn, stick two necks up, surprise! in her way
"look baby look -- perchance you missed my display
so watch this stiff collum and for plinth eye this breast
bright red -- bleeding for you, baby, heart on my chest
or perhaps up my sleeve but for you, babe, for you"
"push off, bird," says the other, "it's me that she'll screw"
but she turns tail, exhausted, leaves both males at bay,
"Oh for godsake," she quacks, "why not try being gay?"

					So it's May day
					out in the bay
					male frustress
					SOS
					what was up's come down
					and Jack's broke his crown

Smiling, you put your scotch by the phone
"men don't know how to live alone"
your laughter softening the accusation
but not my protestation
"hey, just a minute," my indignity booms
"aren't there as many brides as grooms?"
but you say I've missed the point -- and what's dumber,
tried to reduce gender to number --
numbskullish I come about, take a new tack
but you've turned, stare lakewards, I'm stuck with your back

					So it's May day
					drakes at bay
					spring tristesse 
					SOS
					soreheaded Jack's up the hill and a grumbling
					Jill's not for tumbling



..........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1986 

Anyone that keeps fish in an aquarium is used to keeping a watchful eye for fungus. Is that fish in the corner succumbing? Will it infect the others? Here in "Aquarium" I imagine the shoe on the other fin.

		Back and forth in their deluxe tank
		swim the big mammals.

		C'mere! Press your mouth against the glass and watch.
		See? They just don't get the drift of it.

		Who'd have thought anything
		could be so slow and awkward?

		Maybe they wouldn't be, you say, if they were healthy
		but they've all got fungus.
		
		You're right! Look how they drag two lobes along the bottom,
		jerk their heads upright, gasping for air.

		Better change their water quick.
		Shit, they're not going to last!



..........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1987 

Woman in Blue" is about voyeurism, permitted for ornithologists, but not for people, except watching television. Or maybe it's about list-makers. Especially life-list-makers. Cane scribam.

	woman in blue
		pauses			at the book counter
smiles			to herself
	eyes hopping
			from shelf
				to shelf
	now hidden			now upside down		now
poking			at a small cluster			of leaves
	singing out			every title twice		sweet-sweet
			like indigo buntings
now quiet				have they gone?
	no			there!			back in her head
		peering out			slyly


		Don't stare at those eyes
		They're not for your life-list
		Oh for goodness' sake
		Will you put away those binoculars!
		Really!   You might as well be doing CARTWHEELS
		Greedy voyeur!   List-ticker!


		
	woman in blue
		looks up		over your shoulder
something		in the far			sky
	a hawk's wing?		no			it's nothing
			she
sings again			nothing
		sweet-sweet
			chew-chew
smiles					to herself
	flutters upwards			far above your sight
			to flickering
		green			and only sun-watched		crowns
	a few
		fallen
			leaves
below
	you	  kick at
				listlessly



		..............................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1985 

We're used to worrying about the end of science, the end of politics, the end of the environment. "Weather Eye" is my generalized paranoia poem about things ending.

			watch it carefully I hear it's
			given up whistling
			the old fresh wind is gone
			gusted out     turned kinky
			blows on the lips of a hundred bottles
			not in harmony of course
			no classical airs     wind serenades
			no consorts of recorders
			it's all this atonal blurring
			quantum tone-clusters
			keep your thoughts to yourself but watch it
			the way the wind is blowing now
			through galaxies     inside particles
			has tried everything    has had enough
			is blowing out     winding down
			is getting ready
			to leave



    ..........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1985 

Published in The Antigonish Review,   issue #77/78, Summer 1989

When we hear strange noises do we intervene? And when does intervention become intrusive? People have their own dignity and our rushing in uninvited with our notebooks can be unforgivable. Anyway, "Noises" is about something like that.

		noises
		from the apartment below --
		some son's rock discing
		the air into crumbled lumps of sound?
		or maybe the mother sobbing --
		her husband's out screwing in the next block
		I know he is     I've seen him in the elevator
		always smiling     it's not natural

		but too impersonal for sobs     too unrhythmic
		perhaps it's a simple epileptic fit
		probably they know what to do
		have it under control
		or the son's mutilating a stray cat
		has hooked it up to electrodes
		monitors its cries
		should I call the Humane Society?

		too unearthly for animal pain
		some departed ancestor      half mummified
		twists the thin crack of its ancient mouth       signals
		unspeakable horrors of the dark to come
		or maybe someone's run over by a truck
		can't get a doctor     don't speak the language
		someone's being murdered
		should I call the police?

		I do . . . we knock     break down the door
		two clean-cut policeman in their twenties
		(notebooks ready)   shuffle from foot to foot
		embarrassed     is it only this?
		oversized the son (it must be) in a wheel chair
		large guitar (electric) strapped across
		he bends over     pokes at  random strings
		metal rod clamped to his mouth
		dark whines amplify through the speakers
		backfeed his dancing brain

		the mother     red-eyed     sunken cheeks
		stares at me



..........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1985 

"Coffee Machine" is about my ongoing battle with things. It's not people that make me mad so much as it's inanimate objects. They conspire to irritate me, to break down, to make noises, to not fit together like they should, and generally to arrange themselves in such a way as to maximize my discomfort. Definitely things are out to get me. But I'm on to them. They'd better watch out.

			an automatic timer turns it on
			for a couple of minutes I sleep again
			then a loud DERP       I jolt upright
			DERP  it says again
			OK I heard you       roll over
			DERP DERP
			still at it       I start to get up
			DERPA DERPA DERP  all on the same pitch
			pull on a dressing gown       slippers
			stumble across the room        now I'm mad
			DERPA DERP DERPA DERPA
			this one-note conversation drives me nuts
			I stride into the kitchen
			am going to throw the thing across the room
			it clams up just in time
			switches to "warm":
			won't let out a single DERP more
			lucky for it




..........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1986 

"Carlos" may be about bravery, or perhaps cruelty, or maybe hypochondria, or all of the above. A chácara is a summer country house in Brazil. Petrópolis is a fashionable resort town up in the hills above Rio de Janeiro. It's where the Emperor Dom Pedro II built his summer palace. Cafèzinhos are the small cups of sweet black tar (and very good they are) that the Brazilians drink as coffee.

			Carlos is gone, she says by letter
			had this slight pain one day
			first they knew of it
			two weeks later, dead
			lung cancer

			I remember Carlos laughing
			showing us through his chácara in Petr&oacutre;polis
			city of summer palaces, buried emperors
			Ana, his wife, smiling
			serving cafèzinhos in small white cups

			Carlos knew the presidents of big companies
			collected the right politicians, generals
			famous oils to hang along his thick white walls
			dark jacaranda tables brooding in silence
			everything's in such good taste, I stammered
			forgetting whether it was gosta or gosto
			Carlos laughed
			he laughed because he never had any pains

			I have pains from time to time
			they're not important, I know that.
			right now this slight soreness when I cough

			Carlos would have laughed at that





..........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1987 

"The Laughing Sibyl" is my longest confessional. Not the more serious sibyls of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. Hesse's Hermine comes from Steppenwolf. I'm not sure I've got her right yet. And of course she never helps. Just watches and laughs. It was my friend Mel Bradshaw who suggested the name (after observing that I was afflicted with her).

						to Mel, who suggested I study her 

	I can hear it, you know -- your laugh, leading me around,
	smothering traffic sounds better than Sony earphones.
	You're no secret. I tell my friends about you. They
	get mad. Your laughter irritates them. No, that's not fair --
	it's the way I report it, no ear for details,
	just get off on the sound, forget where I am,
	mess up everything in the telling.
	Motorists honk, shout, hey, watch where the hell I'm going
	but I'm not going anywhere, I'm looking for you.

		Certainly not your sister, Delphica, I know that,
		her lips opening to prophesy in hexameter,
		frightened eyes looking the other way
		from the Sistine Last Judgment.
		Your lips, my oracle, open for other reasons,
		start to laugh before the fresco dries.

	How about Miss Breathour, Grade Five's teacher,
	She had long blond hair (really)
	and, as we sat there, folded hands on desks, 
	she smiled at us a lot.

		Probably I've misspelt her name
		she'll have long since changed it anyway,
		dances now with some white-haired husband,
		at the table her grandsons wait,
		talking of their investments.

	Oh grow up.
	I wear a shirt and tie, trousers neatly pressed.

		Is air a mixture or compound? I asked Miss Breathour once
		showing off something I'd just read,
		I'm afraid I don't know chemistry, she replied, smiling.
		(I just wanted to hear her say it.)

	When she laughs my face is soft butter.
	Once a girl said to me, don't look at me that way;
	that's what real girls said.
	I joked, pretended I hadn't meant a thing. My sibyl jokes too,
	she laughs and laughs at my red face,
	she thinks it's a panic.

		Or are you Hesse's fey Hermine whose smiling
		toppled me for the hardly new idea
		of laughter as deeper gravity
		(me falling serious twenty)?

	I've married you more than once,
	been rejected by you, heard you laugh about it later,
	had several affairs with you.
	Why do you still pass me as a stranger on the street,
	laughing, unapproachable?

		I'm going to start walking out alone,
		see no hear no laughter -- none, so ciao,
		you're an embarrassment,
		can't take you anywhere,
		I'm tired of apologizing for you.
		Let's have one grammatical sentence out of you,
		not just these zen-slap laughs.
		If you can't talk, can't learn to explain . . .
		but what's the use?
		Laugh away by yourself,
		I'm going out.

	I didn't say these lines,
	they just crossed my mind.
	Oh my god, if I'd actually said them!
	But I suppose you'd have smiled at that too,
	me bragging with locker-room stories, you come in;
	shake your head gently.

		Don't think I'm going to confess, oh no
		I'll tell people you've gone away,
		that I sent you away,
		tired of your incontinent humour,
		or is it a cover-up?
		I had this professor once who, after any question,
		leaned back, puffed on his pipe, hoped
		silence would pass for wisdom.
		I'm onto your teasing smiles, your piping laughter.

	Look, I didn't mean any of this.
	You know I can't walk alone,
	can't pass a day without your laugh. 
	Only you should have let me hear it in small doses,
	I couldn't take it in all at once.

		If you would just be mysterious and leave it at that,
		but you're downright smart-alec,
		anything for a laugh.
		You call this wisdom, love? It's a cop-out.
		Really irritates people, I don't blame them.
		I'm going to learn how to be irritated too.

	It doesn't matter what I write, does it.
	You walk through walls as though they were paper,
	stay by my side laughing.
	I know I can't describe it,
	just sit and stare,
	like watching a kaleidoscope's
	crazy colliding tumble,
	reach out my hand to
	touch and gently turn your dance
	or is it my head turning?

		Afterwards I say it was tiresome;
		friends nod wisely and agree.
		In the morning a rooster crows; 
		I get up, fold my hands,
		put on shirt and tie.

	OK, one last time:
	how am I going to explain you to my friends?
	yes I know what you'll say: never explain,
	no, it's that explanations don't work,
	or rather, what they explain is not important,
	am I getting close? I guess not

		But I want  to explain that your laugh isn't cold,
		that it's like watching coals in a winter fire
		flickering with predictions,
		that I can't look away,
		that your laugh's so open
		one just walks in through the front door,
		as if this were home,
		which of course it is.

	I look more closely and see you're not laughing at all,
	the flickering lights are tears,
	how is it I didn't see that before?
	they make me feel much better,
	I begin to smile thinking about them,
	you look so funny crying, I can't believe you mean it,
	somewhere inside I feel your tears splash down, spatter my face,
	my skin is soaked, I can't catch my breath, so crowing with laughter,
	oh this is much better!
	my friends are going to like you,
	it's my  laughter that'll annoy them.





..........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1987