Author: Steven Brown

Creative

A Triptych of Island Poems

Change of pace now from our old master carver. Far from the people, places and events that set your mind on edge lie volumes of bucolic material, opportunities for advancement in the field of trying to understand and failing, but enjoying the ride a little more. Let’s not get all university here. It’s always an enjoyable ride and if there’s anything to be grateful for it’s the vast variety of experience even if we’re locked in continuum jail followed by XX. It’s the gentleman amateur’s way.
Tonight’s contestants are three fabulous songs bolted together by time. Time has softened their contours but not lessened their ephemerality. If the poet captures a thousandth of what was possible let’s wave from the sidelines and shout, “Nice shot!” Efforts tell. Make poetry a part of your day.

BOUNDARY PASS

We never really exist
Life is with the immortals
Who see outside time
And have no being
And are just an idea
As you’re gazing on space
The wide open Pass
And the tall grass is shining
Just below in the vast

How many men have lived like me?
Dreamers, idealists
There has to be a place where we’re all stacked up
Okay, it’s an imaginary place
But there has to be a body-count of those who wished
But never were

Think of their places below on the slopes
All the diehard dopes
And all the dope we planted someone stole
And all the cutting we did to improve the view
And it’s grown over again
And it always happens

At the bottom of the hill
At the edge of the cliff
At a makeshift shrine
In the waving grass
We scattered the ash
That ecstasies abound
That it isn’t necessary
Or sound
To be an unrelenting catastrophic clown
Good advice

Haven’t seen orcas in a couple of years
They’re out there somewhere though, being successful
Recall one of the first times I came here
Ahead down the path comes this mysterious sound
The sound of orcas
Thought it was the wind or something in the trees
Phishoo!
Then the view opens up, this panoramic vision
And in the Pass a fine fresh pod of orcas splashing in the sun
Way out right through the middle of the Pass
The grass was high that trip too

Mean People Suck – A Time-honoured Tradition

There’s a lot of people out there who struggle sometimes for a very long time with a situation, and by that I mean a very unsatisfactory situation. There can be a lot of fall-out from this, and as those toxic fall-out flakes are floating down hopefully we take time to write something about our experience, confident in the knowledge this flake-storm won’t last forever and that a sense of truth, honour and decency will ultimately prevail. Here’s to Ultimately! This goes out to Helen Dye, a beautiful but tragically flawed human being who does a lot of damage but is one of my favorite works of fiction in my new novel-in-progress – Wilderness Park.

HEALTH SCIENCE

Why the weak, the mediocre, the lifers and fatties
The dopes, the incompetents, the numberless numbered?
Why the professionals, the experts, the champions of convention
The young and brilliant and beautiful
Why the intelligent, why ‘the record speaks for itself’
Why the prestige and the elite, the cruel elite in their brilliance,
Ease of manner
You open the door and enter the site
Look up at the ceiling and wide expanse of walls
Why the controllers, the compassionless non-empathizers
The robotic rote reaction, the cold, the incalculable
Why the merciless insect rationale the
Complete absence of the minutest decent impulse?
You can say goodbye to your wench
‘Perfectly justified’ never draws off the stench

Why the beast, the lack of remembrance
They’re wheeling him in now, the litterateur who bit it
The lover and conveyor unloved and degraded
Why the lies and psychopathy, the mean
Errant vacuousness and the disgrace
The ignoble dragging down, the callousness
The terrible unkindness of control, the paranoia
The emptiness of unreason and the stupidity (of the season)
The morass, the gutter, the lack of respect
Why the hideousness, the horrorshow horrors (let’s break her neck)
These are the professionals and before they go
Why the death? ‘I’m not afraid of being shy,’ the great one said.
‘I’m afraid of being morose.’
Go ghost, hasten to thy peace.
Did you think you lived to be treated like this?

Questions

Gag it I’ve been asking myself for three months whether I oughta’ lay this poem on you.  Every day the question comes up and every day I’ve knocked it down, I’ve ignored it, I’ve pretended it isn’t important, I’ve wondered about the poem, I’ve delayed doing anything about it, I’ve forestalled, I’ve procrastinated, I’ve lazed, I’ve feigned disinterest, funked it, belaboured it.  But after all that the question is still here. Should I?  Ought I?  I forgot dithered.  I’ve dithered.  If you can think of it you can do it.  Loneliness, desire, fear, determination, hope, doubt.

QUESTION MARK

You sit here in your question mark shaped room, a lonely soul who can’t get to the point separated by a gap at the bottom of this squiggly line.  There’s no entry

Imposter days, faking his way along
Parasites, living on the side of society
Contributing nothing, diminishing
Gentle love
Gentle love

He needs to get to that point in his question mark life
Needs to see what’s down there because he’s never been in there
It’s part of his world but why hasn’t he ever been into that area?
Been cut off, why can’t he go there?
He must and will go there
It’s getting across that gap where there’s nothing
That dot, that period under the curvy line–that thing never visited