RodMer Poem Package F Gravity Flow and Other Word Play Poems [24 poems, 771 lines]
by Rod Anderson	for on-line reading now in your browser

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Hi. Here is Poem Package F -- twenty-four poems by Rod Anderson.

You can also download this package in rtf format.

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). 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

This poem is, as you will see, an exercise in levity rather than gravity -- but, for what it's worth, 'gravity flow' refers to sewers that simply flow down hill (i.e., with gravity) without requiring pumping. And separation refers, of course, not to marital status, but to the separation (or attempted separation) of storm sewer outpourings from the more pungent effluents of the sanitary sewers. For those who live in Toronto, some of the King Street references will be decipherable -- but I hope you can follow things with or without knowledge of the undersides of Toronto. In preparing for the writing of this poem, I had several Works Commission reports spread out in front of me at the Reference Library trying to learn how sewers work (don't laugh, it's important). So terms like interceptors, distribution, head loss, line load, etc. all have technical meanings as well as the more obviously technical terms like elutriation and scouring velocity.

In 1987 when this was written, the Toronto Sky Dome was still under construction -- hence the cranes at its top. And much controversy was raging about the Canadian arctic nuclear submarines.

I also drove the length of King Street, from the height above the Boulevard Club at the west end to the various dead-ends at the east -- picking up local colour, as it were.

But then again, perhaps the poem's not about sewers anyway. Any of you who have quit your job in a rage (not that I have) will recognize certain portions. Or it may be about stubbornness, or earnestness, or appeals to patriotism, or ecology, or none of the above.

I hope some day to prevail upon Merike to produce some illustrations. One picture I always have in my mind is Fred being carried out past the elegant, fur-coated doorman at the King Edward Hotel and shouting out . . . (well, read the poem).

Late on New Year's Eve,
about an hour before noise-pollution time,
10:47 to be exact,

	as the Commissioner of Public Works
	(who knows a thing or two about the underside of politics)
	is about to toast Toronto's newly elected
	mayor-on-the-go up at Stop 33

and the streets outside lie cold and bare
(with 83% savings in snow-removal costs to date),

comes this clang
		     of manhole covers
					opening down King Street.
On the dry pavement they make a racket like the last trump.

Three sewers poke up their heads -
psssst!
		they signal with jets of steam:
							   coast is clear.

Then loud scraping sounds,
this is the hard part, boot-strapping,
the long
	   slow
		   pulling
			    of oneself up,
					    each sewer
through its own manhole,
resurrection in slow motion:
				wriggle, stretch, tug,
thank God they don't have hips.

	Finally they're up and free, hundreds of them,

	tubes		   all		King
		twisting	over		Street,

	giant snakes from the underworld,
	oozing unmentionable filth.

But then (just as last year)
the conga lines split
			and split again
						(snowball)
shuck off their gaskets (neoprene USP),
unsnap themselves into 	six-	foot	pipes
every thickness you can imagine:
skinny eighteen-inchers, twenty-fours,
thirties (from the last century), big fat sixties.

	Each pipe rolls to the curb,
	props itself against a lamp-post,
	wobbles to the vertical (discharging over its feet),
	bangs on the Syd Silver van (waiting as pre-arranged) and

puts on white tie and tails,
silk gloves, top hat,
spats to cover soiled shoes,

	and then, with concrete elbows linked,
	and singing their lungs out:
	"My father was the keeper of the Wellington Weir",

down the street they bounce in long rows,
wheel into the King Eddie,
tub tub tub through the swank lobby
past the Consort Lounge, left at the big white stairway
and up to the annual King Sewer Pipe Ball.

	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.

Why
	there's tubes here from every stretch and junction
Queensway to the Don!

	Roncesvalles boulevardiers with their walking sticks,
	Simcoe storms bellowing snippets of Beethoven,
	high-level interceptors from Dufferin,
	still secretive and sly in their old age,
	Atlantic ballplayers, Strachan pumpers,
	Church pipes with their incessant chant,
	the 60s crowd from Tecumseth-Portland,

	Yonge joiners checking out head loss,
	the new 80s look from Sumach,
	Parliament mains in the east corner
	belching out off-colour jokes about line load
	(while their submains laugh discreetly),
	University trunks in the west corner puffing on cigars,
	discussing distribution,
	skinny Bay laterals sidling up,
	trying to connect;

	finally, and not needing anyone's damn approval,
	the third-generation Jarvis clan,
	whose cedar forebears got sticky rich
	in questionable ways,
	standing tall at the balustrade,
	tossing back Tanquerays and farting.

Of course, there's supposed to be separation:
sanitaries up the stairway to the Vanity Ballroom,
storms kicking up down in the Windsor

	but you know how it is:
	where to put guests from
		the West Branch Trunk Combined Relief?
		visiting valves from Sunnyside Pumping?
		the two Ashbridge's outfalls by the window
		dressed to kill?

In fact it's one big mix-up:
at a blow-out like this even local sanitaries
have been known to throw up into the lake,
for what a party!
a good five miles of chug-a-lugging channels,

	(except the Peter Street bricks,
	ancient decrepitudes, they never come,
	hell they're over 140 and can hardly move),

And just look at the bubbly inflow!
	two
		ballrooms of supercharged tubes:

			vitrifieds and reinforceds,
			early Scots, then the Campbell Pipes from Hamilton,
			leaping weirs and sodden inverts,
			all fumes blowing at once
			like a giant organ of government.

You guys up at Stop 33 --
nobody better flush a toilet, 
this is the boys' night off!

	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	


	By two a.m. one of the submains is drunk.

"I'm not going back," he shouts
sloshing his champagne around belligerently.

"It's my New Year's Resolution:
I'm not going back!"
and he sways from side to side like a flagpole in a windstorm.

	"Of course, you're going back, we're all going back,
	civilization depends on us
					and so does the Commissioner."

But the submain shakes his orifice,
"I'm not going back underground!"

	"Ah Fred," coax his pals from the Yonge Street Junction,
	"don't be a party pooper."

"I won't go! I won't!" says Fred.

"No more sediment or screenings,
dewatering or infiltration,
no more biological slime,
or trickling-filter-sludge.
I'm fed up with the F/Ms, with BODs, GPDs, and STPs.
I've had it up to here with being reamed and scoured,
inspected, poked about,
photographed in my most intimate parts.

Not another patch, reline, not another regrout.
To hell with aeration and activation,
respiration, elutriation. 
Down with hydraulics and flow friction,
boo on clarifiers, boo, grit chambers.
And never ever again:
detention in detritus tanks.
Enough is enough!

	A thick trunk comes up,
	pokes a pudgy finger
	at the pearl stud in Fred's black parging,
	"Why it's Fred from King and Victoria," smiles the trunk,
	"now what's all this fuss, Fred; can't handle your work?
	is that what it comes down to?"

"What it comes down to," says Fred, pausing for effect,
"is no more shit."

			"What?"

"No more shit! I'm not taking any more shit!" Fred shouts.

			"Now just a minute, Fred, we've all got to -"

"No!
	no more tuffets of turds,
	no more species of feces,
	no more increments of excrement,
	no m-"
and then he starts to hiccup.

			His friends are embarrassed;
			they gather round, haul the tipsy cylinder home.

"There's too much already!" he shouts at the fur-coated doorman
as they carry him out the marble entrance to the street.
"Someone has to stand up and say no," he pleads
to the cop flagging down cars at Victoria.

			
			"There there," say his friends
			guiding him down his manhole
			and carefully back into his trench;
			"You don't make the stuff, Fred,
			you just pass it along."

"But someone's got to stop it before it's too late!" wails Fred.
And with that stubborn strength that all drunks have
he sits up sharply, snapping his reinforcing rods,
and putting a deep crease right bang in his middle.


	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.
	

	In the morning when everyone gets up for a pee
	the juices stop at Fred's crease and can't get through.

Pretty soon things have filled up as far as the Yonge Junction -
the interceptors can't carry it away fast enough.
King Street starts to flood.

	The laterals back up into Bay Street office buildings,
	businessmen slip on the stuff as they come into work
	trying to get a leg up on the new year,
	"What in shit's going on?" they cry

but Fred just sits there, twenty feet down
holding everything at his waist;
a promise is a promise.

	Emergency engineers are rushed to the scene,
	dig down through layers of asphalt;
	find Fred in the lotus position.
	"For Godsake lie down!" they cry.

"I won't," says Fred,
"I won't - so you'd better just stop making the stuff."

	Back the engineers go and file their report,
	the Commissioner blanches (floods are beyond the pale),
	sewage seeps into city hall,

	"We're in deep emission," declares the Commission.

The Mayor declares a civic emergency,

	300 MILLION GPD OUT OF TORONTO" blisters the Sun
	with no place to go but up.

Southern Ontario begins to sink under sludge,
everyone is shipped up to Hudson Bay.
The Prime Minister makes a special trip to Toronto,
canoes the lagoon to King and Victoria, 
calls down to Fred:

	"You owe it to your country to straighten up."

Fred refuses.

	"We're not going to keep this stuff here, you know,"
	wheedles the PM with his paddle
	poking disconsolately at some floating lumps,
	"it's all going south of the border."

But Fred won't unbend.

	By this time all of eastern Canada is submerged
	and the PM's lost his paddle,

people move to hill tops, Blue Mountain, the Gatineaus,
then have to be rescued by RCMP helicopters
as the sewage level rises above them.
The U.S. marines put up huge dikes at the border.

	In the Laurentians someone starts building an ark.

But Fred just keeps holding on,
Horatio at the bridge,
or by the sewers of Babylon,
bent over double,
this serious expression on his face,

	which is when the Minister of Defence
	deep in his submarine headquarters in the arctic
	gets the idea of laxatives.

	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	

a fleet of nukes into the harbour
peer out their clogged periscopes, then
pump gallons of Oven-Kleen down the Toronto drains and catch-basins
and finally I'm sorry to say

	the Fleet's enema is too much tickling even for Fred;
	he lies back involuntarily, holding his sides.

And at that very moment
comes this long slurping sound
and all the froth and flocculent,
the colloidal coagulant,
the grit and ungulent grunge,
slurries away at scouring velocity.

	And the eastern seaboard of Canada heaves into view once again,
	then the greased tip of the CN Tower,
	the cranes perched on the Sky-Dome, festooned with glump,
	finally Toronto's slippery brown streets themselves,

people get ready to resume life as before.

	A dove lights on a gooey antique street lamp
	at the corner of King and Victoria,
	a palm branch in its beak,
	looks down at Fred's tubular chagrin
	gushing and gurgling away his last resolve.

"I'll do better next year," Fred calls up, teeth clenched;
"somebody's got to!"

	But the dove looks down at the stubborn submain,
	winks, and like the stork delivering New Year,
	deposits on his manhole cover
	the year's first instalment of dovestuff.
	

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

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First of all, I hope you haven't picked this set of poems if word play seems silly to you, or makes you mad. There isn't any right or wrong about these things. We each have different tastes. If we all had the same, what would we do with the yellow (as they say in Brazil)?

I just said that we all have different tastes (no great insight there). The first poem "TTTT" won the poetry prize in the Cross-Canada Writers' Writing Competition , sponsored by Cross-Canada Writers' Magazine , run at that time by Ted Plantos. And yet it was only with some reluctance that my publishers (Maria Jacobs and Heather Cadsby) accepted it for inclusion in the book. It simply wasn't their favourite. And who can say who is right? Certainly not me. And what am I trying to say? Well of course poetry doesn't have a translation -- any more than music does. But I would say here the music begins with petulance, moves through asceticism (bed of nails stuff), then through hubris (height before the fall), dabbles briefly in slapstick (end-games of chess and other sick endables), and finally, I hope, achieves some sort of liberation in a "lighten up!" way. "Riddling" of course is used in both senses.

The letter spacing (which is rather critical here) may get messed up depending on the browser font display you use. To see it properly spaced you might have to download the 'rich text format' version of this package.

nails
pouTy ill-Tempered Things
jusT won'T sTay puT
no ma     er how I hammer   hem in
          TT                            T
why
one week laTer
 		            T          TT                       T
		      up    heir li     le heads sprou
						      like mushrooms

     T       T   T
by    wen  y   hey're a good inch up
my bed of nails
		       in full bloom
   				                  T          T                  T
				      and oh   he firs   sign of rus:

         T   T                     T
by fif  y   aller and rus::  ier
				    ornery
					                   I
					      some wi h no heads

        T        T          T        T
even  ually   hey ge    righ	           T   T			 T
				  up on |ip |oe			  |
						   look how far   hey can


see!
before falling over

my bed goes fla
ches  s collapse in end-games
end-  ables   u n s   i c k 

hang on wood!
don'T leT Them go!


no use					  TT          TT                       T
li    le by li    le my nails figh   free
riddling me
wi  h   heir   iny   ell-  ale   racks
							   T   T       T      T     T     T	
			

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

Published in Sky Falling Sunny Tomorrow, Toronto: Wolsak & Wynn, 1989
First published in Cross-Canada Writers' Magazine issue #11/1 March 1989
.......winner of the poetry prize in the Cross-Canada Writers' Writing Competition of 1988

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I've always believed that we make the small decisions in life (what tie to wear this morning, what route to take driving to work), but that the big decisions (what career to pursue, whom to fall in love with) happen to us by accident. Nor is this to be regretted. Long-range planning is for corporations not for individuals. They say good skiers (I'm not) don't try to plan out in advance how to navigate a set of moguls on a downhill run. Rather they just set out, keeping their knees loose, and make snap decisions as the threats or opportunities present themselves. It is more like a dance than a pre-planned agenda and the element of surprise is part of the pleasure. Enough already. These eighteen little lines ("every happens thing") did not ask for so much explanation. Let them have the floor. Actually, I like using this one at public readings. When you read it aloud quickly, people have to just let the words roll over them. I'd like you to do that. Not start analyzing the sentence structure to figure out each element of the puzzle.

		every happens thing by accident
		which good I guess too, for
		we poor so planly
		know-for-nothings, why
		we'd way the wrong go anystance
		haply to come our view

		but don't I be to mean explaint --
		it's only try because we fun to purpose
		upping end direction-wise to foolish apposite
		then slipping obverse up our laughter gulfing us
		when, beached, we find the finish differ line
		from thought we what and headly prompted down

		which wet roulette rings up the most astound
		so wonderwent its waltzy mutant chance
		to odd us even drily here and (where?)
		and oops I over fall and roll
		by dingo and by dinnerbell
		by you

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

Published in Sky Falling Sunny Tomorrow, Toronto: Wolsak & Wynn, 1989

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"Telephone Interview" is just jazzing around. You're allowed to find it silly if you want. The man is definitely getting the worst of it. Until he remembers her opening line and saves the day with his biblical reference. Bible studies have their use.

	Of course, I'd like a job appropriate to my size, she says.
	And how are you sized, if I may ask, he quips,
	(These placement consultants: suave as hell -- know all the questions.)
	Two feet, she says.
	Silence.
	Finally he stammers: straight up?
	When I'm on them.
	And otherwise?
	With a twist.
	Say, are you free tonight? he asks.
	I thought you were a head-hunter.
	We play both ends.
	Your play ends now.
	Hell, the curtain never rose.
	Poor baby! Don't complain to me.
	You can call me Job.
	Maybe, she muses, you'd be appropriate after all.

				

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

Published in Sky Falling Sunny Tomorrow, Toronto: Wolsak & Wynn, 1989

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"Summer Leave" is a journey from spondee, through trochee, to dactyl and back. Also a look at the glamour we attach to military uniforms and the profession of killing people.

		neat    feet    beat    reach
		penguins tango on the beach
		crack white-tie-and-tails brigade
		tippling gin and lemonade
		waltz with ladies, feel up flappers
		medals glint on black / white wrappers
		summer ends,     earth chills:
		gunfire in antarctic hills
		dead-drunk penguins homeward roll
		blow    up    south    pole

		

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

Published in Sky Falling Sunny Tomorrow, Toronto: Wolsak & Wynn, 1989

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You've probably all read admonitions to use only transitive verbs and no adjectives. Action! Not description. And for that matter, one-clause sentences. No more than eight words each. Preferably monosyllabic (Germanic grunts not Latin abstractions). Subject-verb-predicate construction. Boring! Not only that but, in some sense, obscene. It's a bit like saying, 'Cut the crap. We haven't got time for the interesting or the beautiful. Just get to the point.' Perhaps the viewpoint is valid in the business world. But it's too bad when it overflows into the personal -- when we lose the sense of curiosity and wonder that we were born with. Anyway, here's my take ("Syntactics") on the transitives' grab for power.

			... use transitive verbs, that strike their object. 
						Arthur Quiller-Couch

		Hot damn, we transitives make a gutsy brood!
		right from the start we
		scratched each other,
		punctured eyes, bit sibling fingers,

		left strangled snake-skins stinking our cradles.
		Now grown up smart we kick, smash, fuck
		the universe about -- so
		get the hell out of our way!

		Other words stare at us,
		piss in their roots sensing that hump of violence,
		they miss out on the action, haven't the guts,
		hang about, thinking up names for the animals!

		Copulas are embarrassed, what a laugh!
		silent, shuffling their goody-good shoes, 
		they're for everyone holding hands! what a cop-out!
		ha! we steamroller them flat.

		For it's time to make headway; prick, rupture,
		those limp neural folds we infest; while wimpy victims
		(come round at last) swing at each other with knives,
		feeling the vicious breeding in their brains.

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

Published in Sky Falling Sunny Tomorrow, Toronto: Wolsak & Wynn, 1989
First published in Implosion issue #3, April 1988

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"Slide Show" is a slight piece but I continue to accept it (unlike some earlier pieces that embarrass me greatly). It's about our lack (thank heavens) of discipline when we are distracted by the thought of a lover. Obviously the second stanza is for seeing rather than hearing. The third stanza perhaps can be heard or seen, as you prefer.

		I flip through my thoughts
		find between each one and the next
		a smiling interrupter

		I take you out
		dance around the room with you
		put you to bed
		all your images back in my pocket
		get back to work
		flip through my purged tray
		thought thought thought
		rascal!
		thou art still there

		furthermore
		you've scrambled the order
		lucky I caught you
		I purge the tray again
		start to re-sort
		thoughts come here! line up!
		laughing they come
		un deux toi

Published in Sky Falling Sunny Tomorrow, Toronto: Wolsak & Wynn, 1989

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"A Seven Carrot Stopgap" will not be everyone's favourite vegetable. Certainly it's not my wife's. But for the word-play-addict it may still have a place. You judge. A play obviously on all the uses of the familiar caret or chevron symbol in language, proofreading, heraldry, music, whatever. Interesting that the idea of something missing crops up so frequently (the French circumflex marking the dropped s, the lower rank of the single chevron, the editorial correction of omissions). Maybe the gaps really are ganging up on us. The atoms in our bodies are mostly made up of empty space. I think it's a hideous plot. The gaps are out to get us. Help stamp out lacunae!

	1. the carrot cabalistic
		as a sign the Daucus Carota  began
		somewhere, it says, in Afghanistan
		sacred, mandalic, its root the world-caract
		edible omphalos reminiscing
		yet something was missing

	2. the carrot circumflective
		so it pulls up stakes and travels round
		bent over, gravely acute, nose to the ground
		sniffing out lacunae under foot
		with a small cry: ô new carets sprout
		something has been left out!

	3. the carrot gastronomic
		it reaches the tables of Europe en route
		breaks carrot-cake crusts at the casse-croûte
		but the peasants have omitted some essence
		in the New World same deal
		la carotte habitante de Sept-îles

	4. the carrot heraldic
		the more was amiss, the more carets grew
		clinging to changed roots: croître croissant crû
		and everywhere their caprine device
		chevrons crescent on a field glistral
		heralding absence on some bend sinistral

	5. the carrot editorial
		the carrot has weird opinions of its own
		and lets them be known --
		the universe is full of black holes (Ed.) --
		suspicious, it carets each page with its  î spear
		look: an insertion should go here:       little 

	6. the carrot emphatic
		tap tap tap goes its root crescendo
		there's no answer: so now sforzando
		sound its notes of alarm (no longer marginal)
		ô ô ô in the middle of the night
		Ma(g)deline: something is not right!

	7. the carrot paranoic
		these gaps in the world are connected, conspire
		fumes the carotte: where there's cheroot there's fire
		and so late at night round the hearth and the stewpot
		it whispers of undergrounds, scorns our harumphing
		and who knows? maybe it's onto something



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

Published in Sky Falling Sunny Tomorrow, Toronto: Wolsak & Wynn, 1989

There certainly must be something underhanded about smiling. Under something, anyway. Subridere in Latin -- under a laugh -- like sourire in French -- and hence to smile. Try smiling at a stranger and see what happens. To be subrisive is to be subversive. Smiling should be stamped out and people that go in for that kinky sort of thing locked up where they can't offend people. Anyway, "Subrisive Activities" is about that -- and about some clandestine field research.

		A tall woman in a white skirt,
		key of C major, no sharps or flats, solid establishment,
		you smile furtively,
		her white eyes look startled, modulate up a fifth,
		from there stare out across the street,
		she strides by on the dominant.
		A small nervous woman tugging herself along the relative minor,
		chasing after a worried frown on a short leash,
		doesn't even see your smile.
		A third approaches in E flat,
		you smile, she stops, looks puzzled,
		clutches her purse tightly, turns away.
		A fourth in six sharps is angry --
		has been warned about you smilers
		(getting your kicks right out in the open);
		wants you locked up for life.
		A fifth, chromatic in her long black hair,
		looks up, smile back.
		Score one point.
		(This does not happen too often).

		At ten points
		phone in your data to headquarters,
		use the G-minor toll-free frequency.
		Then stop smiling -- it would distort
		the observations of other researchers.

		If someone asks what you're doing,
		don't blurt out your scale.
		The RCMP are already suspicious (have cracked the pentatonic).
		Just look embarrassed -- mistook your interrogator for a friend,
		can't see a thing without your contacts.
		Walk away fast.

		If you do get charged,
		pretend you did it all on your own hook.
		Do not mention headquarters.
		Bail money will be smuggled into your cell.
		Stick to the ancient modes.
		Get yourself a good lawyer.
		(Do not smile at her.)

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

Published in Contemporary Verse 2 , issue #10/3, Spring 1987

"Arbor Day" is a mathematician's picnic in the woods. Ordered sets, differential equations, matrix algebra, imaginary roots, reciprocals, exponentials, and recursion will be known terms to most people. Osculating curves are curves that not only touch tangentially but have the same radius of curvature at the point of contact. Integration is the opposite of differentiation and a calculus integral can be either definite or indefinite. Tensor, scalar, curl, skew, and vector are mathematical terms as well (you don't want to know what they mean). The expansion is an infinite series equalling some given value -- thus the expansion for π/4 = 1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + ... And of course the exhortation to multiply comes from Genesis.

		Two fallen birch limbs
		parallel on the black April ground
		paired white lines, sign of equality
		pointing somewhere
		on a dark matrix

		Snow has subtracted itself,
		aconite and snowdrops too, melted --
		nearby: an ordered set of trilliums
		violets will be the next term
		converging

		One of the white limbs stirs
		bends at the knee
		the second, a parallel turn
		keeps close, touches
		(osculating curves)
		a third limb appears to the right
		a fourth to the left
		simultaneous equations
		now differentiating rapidly
		aha! four legs, two figures

		the centre limbs stay interlocked
		(definite integration)
		crossed at the upper thigh
		rub softly against each other's intersection
		(real and imaginary roots)
		flex, relax, tensor, double up, stretch
		passa doble arborealis
		the trilliums watch, reflexive
		(Their faces turning pink)
		bend and divide in the low wind

		Reaching up -- a forest of stretching birchlegs
		spring-naked, white
		they kick their toes in the curl blue sky
		wave in skew circles, ronds de jambe
		inverted conics planting their apices
		in black scalar earth, vectorious
		tête à terre, pieds en l'air
		playful reciprocals
		they dream of expansion
		exponential, recursive
		would add more woods
		laughing, their thighs send down
		a sign to the fallen:
		go forth and multiply.
	
		

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

Published in Poetry Toronto , issue #139, July 1987

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"Dream of First Dawn" is my attempt at the very approximate North American version of the ghazal form. A ghazal is a collection of two-line poems. Technically the ghazal in India (say by Mirza Ghalib) must meet a lot of specific conditions -- for a definition, see Abhay Avachat's article.

But North American poets (Adrienne Rich's "Ghazals: Homage to Ghalib" and, in Canada, Phyllis Webb's booklet Water and Light: Ghazals and Anti Ghazals ) have not followed the precise requirements of meter, rhyme, repeating end-word, etc. Rather they have gone with the general idea of a collection of couplets that are not connected in a rational, linear, story-telling fashion but rather in some more indirect, intuitive fashion. So that is what I have tried here -- with apologies to the experts who really know the form. Arranging ice fragments to spell a word is a reference to Hans Andersen's Snow Queen .

		A large blue moth beats toward us in the dark
		Its wings shatter into sapphires: beating like night hail

		Underground, a tunnel curls tight upon itself
		Sleepwalkers press in file along its soft constrictions

		There is a prophecy that the stars will fade at dawn
		We stare through telescopes but see no sign of this

		You arrange ice fragments: spell or almost-spell
		Morning air steams over tall grass, slips along your skin

		A hot sun scatters our thoughts: thrown rice
		We laugh light-headed, watch them spin away

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

Published in Grain , issue XVII/4, Winter 1989

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In the 'many worlds hypothesis' in physics the argument is put forward that wherever there is a quantum uncertainty (does the radioactive particle decay this second or not?) both possibilities are realized but in parallel universes -- that is, at each such instant the universe bifurcates. Whether you subscribe to such a theory or not, you have undoubtedly encountered times when two options are presented and for a few instants, before the decision is made, both potential states sit in your mind as possibilities. It is this moment of stasis -- the mental coexistence of the two mutually exclusive alternatives -- that I deal with in "Bifurcating Worlds". This and the next poem are in a female narrator's voice. Some people object to a male writing in a female voice as presumption (how could a mere male know?). But if we follow this argument to its logical conclusion, then tall teenagers should write only about tall teenagers, short accountants about short accountants, veterinarians about veterinarians, etc. and we would all become imprisoned in our own particular silos. The artist Franz Kline once said: "If I paint what I know, I bore myself. If I paint what you know, I bore you. Therefore I paint what I don't know."

		Lean forward, kiss him
		now or within the next five minutes, she thinks,
		checking her watch against the airport clock,
		time shifts to the left towards violet, things rush up,
		(over there other conference delegates -- waiting,  pendulant)
		I'd have to take him for life, she tells herself,
		find some place suitable on my bedroom walls
		to hang this sweet and slightly vacant week-old smile

		which maybe I could, God knows I've lots of gaps
		his ten-year shorter age would fit,
		and yet I'll not make up my mind this fast
		(five days of talk, we've smiled but hardly touched),
		I choose to wait ;until his flight is called,
		will watch our first kiss then (and last)
		divide, and time lurch crazily red, recede,
		sending the world right and him off solitary to others.

		For an instant this diamond suspension, world still unsplit --
		the minutes hang miniature puzzled frowns about, I smile at them,
		touch each one quietly, hands inch across my face,
		five four three two one -- they've gone,
		I see that's how it will be, that simple!
		Poised at the count of five, I hold my breath, comfort them,
		whisper it's not their fault, not to worry:
		men always come at me like this, out of sync.

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

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"Venus Genetrix" came from an afternoon watching a young mother coping with her two young children. In the days of Caesar there stood in the Roman Forum the temple of Venus Genetrix, the "ancestress" of the Julian family. In Boticelli's famous painting Venus rises out of the foam on her white shell unencumbered with any children. Venus as mother is quite a different story. In mythology, Venus was married to Hephaestus, the blacksmith -- hence the reference to Alan's volcanic eyes and his gin shattering on the anvil of the black tile floor. A poem, in short, about coping -- and sometimes, in the middle of it all, wondering if there isn't an easier way out there somewhere under the moonlit sky.

		Val has just run over Kate's finger,
		wheeled her red tricycle back and forth,
		methodical steamroller, squishing the small pink
		wriggler securely into the garden mud.
		I see it from the kitchen window, horrified,
		come flying out like one of the Furies,
		can't believe she's gone this far,
		think of running over Val's hands with our Porsche,
		send her to her room instead,
		pick up Kate, who stops bawling, wants to nurse,
		afterwards burps mouthfuls over my shoulder,
		I feel my blouse stick, soggy down my back,
		wonder when Alan will be home.
		In summer we used to make love on the beach.

		Val is throwing things about her room,
		Quickly I change Kate's diaper, put her into her carriage,
		go up, tell Val for godsake to calm down,
		her dolls are lying all over the floor,
		stupid dolls, she says, I order her to pick them up,
		she does so sulkily, sees that I'm about to blow,
		two are already missing -- out the window,
		I shut her door angrily.
		At the freshman dance I wore white (like a Venus, Alan whispered).

		He phones me now to say he's taking
		a New York customer to Winston's for dinner,
		will be home late, (the last time we had people here
		Val hid a frog in the caterer's oven,
		it jumped about in frenzied whirls, never turned into prince,
		ended its breathless ecstasy drowned in the soufflé).
		Kate's starting to cry again,
		I go downstairs, pick her up, walk round the kitchen,
		she falls asleep during the spin cycle,
		I sneak with her up to her room,
		lower her into her crib, gingerly, like docking a satellite,
		her breathing pauses, starts up again,
		miraculously her eyes stay closed,
		I bring Val downstairs with me, my hand over her mouth,
		whispering to her we'll play a game.
		This morning our neighbours told me they're going overseas.

		Val and I play fish with her new cards,
		you've got threes, you've got threes, she squeals,
		splashes laughter all over me when she wins,
		hugs me, asks can she visit Marie next door,
		it's too late, Marie's asleep, I say,
		too chicken to tell her yet that Marie will be leaving,
		can I stay up till . . . ? no, I say, he'll be late,
		then a story, OK, so I tell her about
		a mermaid trying to ride a red tricycle,
		Val smiles, kicks her legs in the air, I kiss her goodnight,
		and for once she skips, gay as a woodnymph, off to bed,
		I clean up the kitchen, harvest two broken dolls from the garden.
		Next year I'm going to do something part-time.

		I sip the coffee, look at real estate ads,
		Alan comes in, slams the garage door, his eyes volcanic,
		the customer didn't place the order,
		he gets the Tanqueray gin from the freezer, the dark bottle
		drops by mistake, shatters upon the anvil of our black tile floor,
		haven't you had enough I ask, not you bloody too he shouts,
		afterwards smiles apologetically,
		sorry babe he says, kisses my hand, I laugh,
		we go upstairs, in bed he's all over me,
		looks at me disgustedly when I don't come,
		after he falls asleep I hold his head against my breasts,
		stare out the window, a gibbous moon stares back.
		Far off a tide turns, tugs at a large white shell.
		I remember the clear light, the thighs of the young gods,
		oceans of frenzied foam.

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

Published in More Garden Varieties , Toronto: The League of Canadian Poets, 1989

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"The Bearer of Complex News" is about our demand for simplicity (even when things are, in fact, complicated). In the business world particularly, executives are known for their short attention spans. Time and again messengers get shot for sticking too closely to the truth (they should have over-simplified it). The story line in the poem is a reference to the Tristan and Isolde legend (with love potion and stuff) in which Isolde ultimately flees from her husband King Mark. And for those who remember A. A. Milne, there's a brief reference at the end. Einstein once said that "everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." I'm afraid he wouldn't have cut it in today's business world.

		the king called for his messengers seven
		keep it SIMPLE, said the king
		so the seventh messenger began
		Sire, seven hours ago --
		STOP! said the king
		wiping a speck off his bare throne,
		too much detail already!

		the seventh messenger swallowed hard
		looked at his feet
		remembered their leisurely preamble
		with a chambermaid

		there's a little background --
		put it in a ONE-page memo, shouted the king
		a capsule document, executive summary,
		you know my attention span
		get to the royal POINT!

		(too late to mention the potion now)
		well? said King Mark impatiently
		the seventh messenger took one last breath
		Her Majesty's gone, he blurted
		gone? gone WHERE? cried the king
		I thought that might be detail, whispered the messenger
		and then there were six

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

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"The Oyster" goes back some 50 years. A little imitation of the great Ogden Nash. And yes, all oysters are indeed sexually unstable (is that why they're supposed to be an aphrodisiac?) though the rate of sex-change varies from monthly to annually depending on the species.

			The oyster other oysters vexes
			By monthly interchanging sexes.
			This indecision I disparage;
			It nullifies the oyster's marriage.

			Thus lives this mollusk day to day
			A very maladjusted way --
			Each month its duty to surrender
			To the pangs of switching gender.

			This lack of family life when young
			You'd think would make him quite high-strung;
			Contrariwise, his life is led
			Placid within the oyster-bed.

			There's nothing boisterous
			About the oysterus.

..............................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1956

Published in the Trinity Review , 1956

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"Hillbillet-Doux" is just jazzing around. Hilaire Belloc wrote good stuff ("You wear the morning like your dress") -- but can you take his name seriously? That was probably the seed.

			Hillocky bulloch
			Hilaire Belloc too
			Hulky Beluga
			Hilarious blue

			Hollyhock billycock
			Holiday brew
			Hellbender belltender
			Hullabaloo

			Holdover bowled over
			Happy balloon
			Holy balonia
			Humpy buffoon

			Hankering pankery
			Hug bugaboo
			Hungering bunkwards
			Hiya love you
		

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

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"Word entropy" might be about the word "entropy" or about the entropy of words (their becoming more shuffled and confused with the passage of time) but it's really about what words "catch on". Entropy is indeed a measure of shuffeldeness and it always increases. Thermo-dynamics is not time-symmetrical. Heat does not spontaneously flow from cold bodies to hot ones. Decks of cards do not spontaneously shuffle themselves into order. The second law can be stated in a gazillion different ways -- but one of the simplest is that entropy (messiness) always increases in a closed physical system. This is the so-called time-arrow law, much fussed over by philosophers and science writers (and rightly so). But entropy is indeed, in physics, the partial derivative of a more fundamental quantity called "free energy" which, however, never caught the public imagination. Rudolph Clausius coined the word "entropy" in 1865 from the Greek tropos (turn or direction). "Quantum" is indeed misused in the sense of a large change -- though in the common user's defence it does indeed mean discontinuous change.

	entropy 's really caught on
	going gangbusters

		why's that?

	can't you see, kid?
	nice scientific clang
	(tropos -- a good Greek turn out of Clausius)
	nice simple meaning
	shuffledness -- we understand that
	give us a clangy word
	for what we already know
	and we'll use it, baby

			and misuse it
			saying quantum steps for giant strides
			that should be infinitesimal
			but pax, pace, let that pass
			what's this 'we already know'?

	well sure, McClure --
	the second law thermodynamical's merely Murphy:
	everything getting worse
	shuffling the deck, raising entropy and Cain
	going world busters, big bangdusters
	final blow-job by chaos
	anyone can see that

			and the arrow of time?

	same thing, Bing
	look at two states
	(state and superstate)
	the worse lies to the future
	we knew that already
	entropy's just a classier way of saying it
	dream on, crooner
	today's words gotta have synergy

			so look at free energy --
			entropy's merely its partial derivative
			free energy's fundamental
			why not use that?


	free energy? are you kidding?
	no such thing as a free lunch
	even free love's out of style
	nope -- you scientists goofed on that one
	but that's not the main problem, video fans
	no hype, it's just too . . . ordinary
	one thing we hate is the blahs
	potential  OK, kinetic  better
	(faster than a speeding bullet, that sort of thing)
	but sorry, just free  energy
	it'll never sell

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

Published in Matrix , issue #25, Fall 1987

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"Legal Overtures" -- what can I say? The whole poem is a sort of shaggy dog turning on the point that the law firm in question has four names not three. Along the way we digress into short-order counters, kinky perversions, and other matters.

		Morning! Mangle Miniac and Meximont
			I want Mangle.
		Mangle's out.
			I'll wait.
		Won't be back for many a day.
			Miniac, in that case.
		Miniac? Yes, sir. You said Miniac?
			I said Miniac.
		Right away, sir. One Miniac coming up. Coffee, sir?
			I hate coffee.
		Right, sir. One Miniac and hold the coffee.
			And I hate people who like coffee.
		You'd hate Mangle then.
			I do. I hate Mangle. I hate the bastard.
		Do you mind my asking why you're here, then, sir?
			I also hate people who change the subject.
		You also hate people who change the subject?
			See what I mean?
		What I see is your Miniac, sir. Watch it, sir. He's very hot.
			Is this all there is? My case needs someone mature.
		Miniac is pretty small, sir.
			Small? I can hardly see him.
		Do you want something with him then? Something on the side?
			How about a Meximont?
		Doesn't come on his side, sir. Any other position?
			Let me out of here. You're all nuts. There ought to be a law!
		Down the hall, sir, and left. No Laws here.
			I can see that. Good morning!
		Thought you'd never get to me, sir.
		

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

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"Hamlet, his Application for a Players' Festival Having Been Hoist by the Canada Council" may be relevant in this time of government cutbacks. Even the DND's petards are to be hoist it seems. Craft of course is used in two senses. And bow is to suggest its homonym (a reference to Frazer). 'The play's the thing' are naturally Hamlet's words and the uncle of course is Claudius. The whole is a play upon Claudius's line "Thanks, Rosenkrantz, and gentle Guildenstern", which Gertrude immediately reverses -- the two characters being so indistinguishable (as Tom Stoppard showed us).

			When ship of state rams royal art's frail craft
			Its golden bow no longer kills the king
			But toys him in a wake of frozen grants
			Licking its gilded stern -- the play's the thing.

			I'll not say uncle! Council hath its turn:
			O frozen grants, O gentle gilded stern!

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

Published in DIS-EASE , issue #1, 1989

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"The Care of Wisps" is not a horticultural guide.

		You should do something for that wisp, she said
		What wisp? I asked, wooking round

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

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"30 Lipped Feet (A Trentaine Quaintaine)" is the acid test. Six lines of iambic pentameter (hence a trentaine) about something quaint, or maybe nothing at all. If you can tolerate this, then you are an addicted word-player and nothing much can be done about your condition, I fear. The dictionary reference is imaginary. Where does one complain about ill-shod feet, that is, about shoddy shoes? Should we, as Shakespeare says, trouble deaf heaven with our bootless cries? "Forequaint! Forequaint!" can be sung sort of like "Rejoice, Rejoice!" but only if you are in good voice. Notice the subtle (;--) (almost subliminal) use of alliteration in the final couplet. On used to be able to see this nonsense poem also on the Barefoot Press website but that was a long time ago.

							quaint: vb obs  to parry
									(in third position)


		Conquaintly how those begfoot bearers raint
		Who pedalled shoddy footwork on the slaint.
		Show-doled acquaintants beef or get requaint?
		Bootling but cries this quainted world complaint.

		Forequaint! Forequaint! their luptuous lips exquaint
		So doth misparriage forfeit fetal's feint.

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

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"Cheat Advice" is something we all need -- and why not learn it from our betters who once ran the Empire? Watering stock, for non-business types, is fraudulently inflating the value of traded securities by various stratagems popular in the 1920s and not entirely unheard of in these days of Enron and WorldCom. Sticky wicket and pitch are of course cricket terms (what other game is there?).

			The late Sir Culning Forstork stuck
			His finger in his mouth
			I've made my million watering stock
			By gad, I'm heading south

			But in the south the natives stuck
			His head upon a picket
			I say! -- Sir Culnet's dying words --
			But life's a sticky wicket!

			So keep the home pitch watered, chaps
			And on high stakes don't linger
			Refrain from natives, stay at home
			Watch where you stick your finger

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

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There are four seasons so I don't know why the word "seasonal" is usually taken to suggest Christmas, but there it is. "Seasonal Elements" is a brief spondaic tour of the seasons from spring through to winter. The third stanza is a slow drag waltz (not Viennese). The stand at the bottom is silent.

.........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1993

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"Ochre Roads" is more a visual anagram. We now know, thanks to Mitchell Feigenbaum, and the development of chaos theory in the 1970s, that within chaotic regions there are little windows of order and within the domains of order lie little pockets of chaos.

				Ochre roads		Chord a rose

				OcRhE RoaDs		Cord ha oesr

				OcRhD EoaRs		CoHr Ad Oesr

				OcRhD aEoRs		CoHrA dOeSr

				OcRhDaEoRs		CoHrAdOeSr

.........................................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1991

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