EROTIC POETRY OPEN MIKE

THE VIENNA

NELSON BC

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 13 2010
730PM - NO COVER

HOST - TIMOTHY SHAY

HOW CROW MAGIC WAS SAVED TWICE

for Megan Williston

A TRUE FABLE by Timothy Shay

Illustration by Jessica McVicker

“…and I take the one who finds me

back to where it all began” –Leonard Cohen

Let’s say these were their names, although we do not really

know their names, or a specific location. There was no date.

Just us and the people we were part of. Old Uncle, Crow Boy

and Buffalo Alone.

Old Uncle knew more than anyone. He knew the seasons and

the songs the seasons sang. He knew the language of grasses

and leaves and he consulted with the stones, (notorious for

their very slow talking). Old Uncle knew Medicine and Medicine

loved Old Uncle..

Crow Boy was learning from his Old Uncle. He understood the

medicine of feathers and had learned the intricate rhymes of

flowers. He could read the maps that crows purposefully traced

in the sky so he was never completely lost, even though his

natural temperament leaned toward rapt distraction. Crow Boy

knew some crow magic. He knew why to hop. He knew about

the value of glittery things and so looked down and sideways a

lot. Because he was learning to be Night he could sometimes

see much better when Coyote was crying for the Creator.

Crow Boy and Buffalo Alone played together, daily. Buffalo

Alone was really only alone in her thoughts. Always moving,

her forearms and shoulders were delicate yet powerful in the

same moment, and her legs were strong and looked like they

wanted to jump. Her eyes were vessels for the magic of the

continent; they changed colour like the smooth submerged

stones in a rushing creek, at one moment jasper, then

obsidian, then jade or hazel wood smoke or morning or

evening or…it was her eyes and her burden of care and heart,

deep in the well of those eyes, that Crow Boy would never

forget and would always search for.

In a village circle Buffalo Alone appeared to be the dream

while the others appeared to be the dreamers. She was always

separate even when in a gathering. Crow Boy and Buffalo

Alone met daily and walked and talked. There was a place by a

stream where they would eat and the water there was made of

ten drummers. When they listened carefully the voices of the

moss sounded like singers with too much food in their mouths.

Sometimes Bear would join them and gift a story to them for a

gift from the meal. They often laughed. At night Buffalo Alone

always crept closest in the circle to the Grandmothers and

Grandfathers when they told their stories by the fire.

One afternoon, a secret prayer the crows used, to make

themselves be everywhere at once, hopped into Crow Boy’s

head. That evening he was seen in two places at once by

reliable witnesses and when Old Uncle sent out Buffalo Alone

to find him, Crow Boy saw her coming and became a tree for a

few minutes until he got uncomfortable with standing still and

wiggled as if there was a wind when the wind was already

gone for the day. Buffalo Alone said, “Crow Boy if that’s you,

your Old Uncle wants you to come to his lodge”..

Crow Boy expected to be scolded. Instead Old Uncle made a

little feast of meat and ash cakes and all three ate. After

awhile Old Uncle told a story about a time he saw when Crow

magic might be lost and without it the smoke of the world

would choke and kill the light. Crow would not be able to find

enough bits of light to replace the dark of night with new light

at dawn. So all parts of crow magic would have to be saved

and sent there on a journey. A bundle with pipe, sumac, red

willow bark, sage and cedar, feathers, food and several excited

pebbles in it was assembled by Old Uncle and handed to Crow

Boy who had become uncharacteristically silent.

Buffalo Alone was so silent she became a doorway in the lodge

wall where there had not been a doorway. Old Uncle pointed to

the new doorway and Crow Boy walked through and into the

night woods where there is no path.

In the morning Crow Boy found himself walking across a long

meadow. He ate some berries and a bit of dry meat and then

an Otter walked up to him and said here is medicine for the

journey and took his own shiny skull out of his head and

handed it to Crow Boy who thanked him with a little gift of

cedar smoke to help him renew himself.. Then an Eagle flew

past and screamed some wisdom at him and he is still

thinking about it. The day continued until all the grasses in the

meadow started chattering at once and leaned one way

pointing until the chattering became a chant to ‘sleep there,

sleep there’. In the little cave he slept as if he was suspended

under water. The Otter skull told him how to do this without

drowning. He thanked his medicine.

When he woke up, there was the sound of a baby crying in the

blankets. He thought for a moment he heard himself calling

for Buffalo Alone in a frightened voice just like when he was

very little and got lost because of an important daydream.

Someone was talking and saying they had seen an ugly baby, a

baby that was too long, too skinny and had barbaric looking

black hair past his shoulders. They laughed and said the baby’s

mother had denied it was hers. It looked like a monkey they

said.

When he was very little there were familiar eyes floating in his

bedroom at night. He wondered whose they were. One morning

he asked his father about the eyes. His father told him they

were the boogeyman’s eyes and that the boogeyman would

get him. He spent the remainder of his childhood securely

wrapped like an egyptian mummy in blankets with only a tiny

breathing hole for his mouth, wondering where the eyes of the

boogeyman where in the room at each moment.

Then he was a young man and had just received a camera

from his family for Christmas. He went for a walk to the edge

of the prairie town. He could see across fields of snow to the

Rocky Mountains a hundred miles distant. A tiny black speck

began to grow inside the field of this vision and grew and grew

until a shiny young crow landed on his right knee. He

attempted to feed her a Dad’s oatmeal cookie but she wasn’t

interested. She just looked him up and down and directly

into his eye. She hopped to his left knee. He removed the

camera’s lens cap, put it by the crow’s feet and snapped a

couple of pictures. The first two photos on the new camera.

The crow looked at him quizzically and he heard “work with

me” inside his head. The crow turned and flew away in the

same direction she had come from, toward the mountains, and

slowly became a speck again, disappearing finally intro the

prairie’s vast panorama.

For years after, interchanges with crows increased, he learned,

found ancient places, had dreams, received valid warnings,

danced for the crows deep in the forest, was led to a cave and

drummed himself small until the river made him see a sacred

song. He felt included, at the center, aware of Creator and

Grandmother and crow and then he met someone he called

the Old Uncle, first in a campfire, then in dream after dream.

Soon he felt that he was almost always in Old Uncle’s dream

lodge…and he understood he was now a cave filled with nearly

forgotten energies.

But he worried…he had family, he had a job, he had social

obligations and a good safe circle of friends. The more he

dreamed and listened to Old Uncle the more he felt himself

walking toward the deepest forest. A forest without paths. So

he stopped dreaming. He stopped visiting the cave. He called

crows “crows” rather than brother and sister. He chose

fattening meals, political arguments and social pleasantries.

As he ran away he fell repeatedly onto the dropt weapons of

the many other frightened runners. He got very sick. His heart

tried to die. He lost all balance and slept, dreamless, day in

and day out. All that was alive became ugly and distant. He

wrote poems to death, wills, codicils and funereal lists, and he

thought the Creator couldn’t be alive anymore. He began to

despise joy. His train seemed to be leaving the station.

In the small town he often saw a young woman who drew his

attention with something mysteriously more attractive than

sexuality or even heart love. She would enter rooms and his

head would turn toward her of its own accord as if he’d heard a

call. She seemed to experience a similar recognition. They did

not speak to each other more than once or twice and only to

say polite hellos. He did not know her name but he wondered

about her. This went on for two years. He knew she had some

sort of work associated with the hospital as he’d seen her

there wearing a light green work outfit while he was waiting for

one of his endless tests.

One evening she attended a poetry reading. He was there and

when she moved to leave at the end of the evening he made

sure he was near the door and gave her a pamphlet of some of

his poems and learned her name. They had coffee a few days

later in a cafe. He talked and talked. He felt better and better.

He felt he had found his way home. He knew he loved her

disproportionately to this recent experience with her and

naturally this seemed to frighten her. Energy began to flow

through him like a sapphire blue flame. He had forgotten

the intensity of real goodness so went quickly to his Doctor to

make sure he was not just experiencing some new kind of

ecstatic death throe.

He showed her some ancient artefacts and his old photo of

Crow and each time they spoke or wrote he knew he would

someday remember her because he must have known her so

well before. Her presence was a gift and he felt delight again. It

was her eyes and the wild wind driven hair. It was her calm and

silence. It was her apparent secret sorrow. All his crows woke

up cawing and hopping whenever he saw her. Poetry and

sacred incantation were suddenly restored like the

sky is by sunrise.

Buffalo Alone turned then, and said to him, “I wish I had a

bedtime story..... I wish you could tell me one, just a short one,

maybe a story with a picnic in the plot? Or a bear.”.. so he

began again and that is how crow magic was saved twice.

In Concert
PAULINE LAMB
with a solo performance of her original music
plus the presentation of a suite of poems by
TIMOTHY SHAY
accompanied by
PAULINE LAMB
FRIDAY JAN 29 2010
@ THE VELVET UNDERGROUND
DOORS 8PM COVER $10

TWO COW POEMS

for megan shay

COWS I

She sees three eagles around a dead dog
And pours out her sorrow to the stunned ears
Of chewing cows
Shallow bovine empathy and the soft cud
Of big brown eyes blink
A logic of speechless inclusion

These at least will not interpret
Translate or judge her baffled soliloquy
But let it rise slowly like an old yellow moon
Staring across blank winter fields.

COWS II

Three eagles a dead dog
And several opportunistic birds

If she is one eagle
The one who fails to carry
the canine corpse away

Who are the other two eagles
Who is the dead dog?

And what of this restrained crowd
Of cows. What do they know?

Timothy Shay

THE SPIDERY ARMS

OF SHRI TARA DEVI

for Megan Shay 10VIII09TS

She arrived an agent of Maha Kali Ma

in her blue lotus projection of Tara.

Spider woman yaga shadows crowd

the close corridors like a vapour

of missing birds

where my bodhisattva walks.

She came with the prescribed tests

and trick questions;

A ventriloquy of hunting whistles

whisper her lessons.

This alphabet of footprints

where my bodhisattva walks.

She came to the fatty feast

of primordial meat.

Roasts, drippings and sauces of blood

papers and tablecloths stained with spilled sauces

shooting like stars

where my bodhisattva eats.

He answered all the trick questions

and hurled himself at the tide of tests

and now in success he is alone,

his spine a curved path

where his bodhisattva passes

She went as an agent of Maha Kali Ma

sweeping the dirty path as it disappeared behind her

so he could never follow

into that jungle where his bodhisattva’s heart

is the wrought iron gate before the forest of eden

She came as a detective of yaga agency

dealing the two faced cards of royal houses naturally

juggling blackholes and stars

which light my bodhisattva’s scissors

of detachment

She came disguised in smiles and left in smiles.

Being so surprised

somehow makes him seem half restored

as he squints to observe his bodhisatva

in her favoured form dancing

amid the glints of dust

hovering in a shaft of sunlight

as we grind the bones

to a dark gravy paste

and speak of the perfect application

of foreign spices.

We laugh like an old joke.

Again, his bodhisattva teaches him

it is all a punch-line arriving.

So he is almost an old man

when her eyes flag him down.

Hold him up beside her highway of ambush

while yellow straw

and gophers animate the receding horizon.

-Timothy Shay

PANDORA’S

GINGERBREAD

for Megan Williston Shay

“Its big stone jar of evil habits

Has smashed in a million pieces.” -kabir

Pinatas are usually pleasing

paper images of happy donkeys

and jubilant wagging dogs

stuffed with candy

which they deliver

in a beneficent shower

once the object of beauty

which contains them

is sufficiently beaten

by blind people with sticks,

torn and broken wide open,

ruptured membrane of tiny blessing,

sugary internal organs scattered

like a casting of seed.

The idea of reward emanated

from the destruction of festive beauty

might be relieved if piñatas

adopted designs

like “Hitler’s yelling head”

but then, why would candy

blow out his mouth

if not to lure

more gingerbread children

to the vaulting ovens of memory.

Timothy Shay 13 XI 09

BODHISATTVA OF RAGS

For Megan A Williston Shay

She is a bodhisattva of rags

walking as a scarecrow appears to walk

on the horizon of lead trajectories

and barbed fence lines

the river ice breaking up into lifeboats

moving inexorably

to a warm southern ocean

She wonders how to turn away

from her old vow as if it were the lost iron anchors

of a sunken fleet forgotten in sand and seaweed

in tidal dance like

a windy green forest for Dungeness crabs

orange as taxis in ultra marine night

Her sorrow is all encompassing

like a martyr who flings her body

on the blazing crematory flame

in a disciplined display of clenched detachment

she recalls the surrender

of a passing history of weather

blowing like smoke rings or halos

across the bent fields of sad memory

She lifts up ghosts and heals them

hides notes under fieldstone

to mislead the generations

hefts the karma of isolated families

like a basket of wizened apples

in the marketplace

She weighs the sense

of their belonging nowhere

drowned grains of black tea

gathered by the frail fingers of slaves

She juggles trance and circumstance

huddles in the arms of blue northern winter

and her icicle fingers gather

dry hollow sorrow

like stale yellow corn cakes

She makes them edible

with a thin syrup of golden hope

She is the bodisattva who collects

the tatters and rags of destiny

calls out from her wooden wagon

creaking across the flatland of her isolation:

“rags and bones and sometimes string

rags and bones and sometime spring

feathers and songs with a semblance of joy”

She dances with whisky

in a hollow leather shoe.

Timothy Shay 9 XII 09

"Maybe you should just do it tonight so you can sit in a box all day tomorrow."