morning song
for grandpa kenneth

on climbing those musted stairs
to your huddled and strange apartment
strange when held against the frame
of your legend
i did not knock for i heard
you growling

blind old man, furious irish red man
blue eyes glinting, broken
bottle glass
screaming grandfather breaking
your woman's will
bending her back, demeaning her
like some campfire mongrel
through your whole minute soused life

she is
safe again, again married
to a gentle englishman

you would have spat
"bloody chirpers"
you who saw england grow poor and
refused to believe it
you screaming, dear grandfather wailing
"the goddam queen has it all hoarded
in the bitchin' tower of london
and woman
don't ya tell me different!"

but grandfather you have reached
six feet down, down
in south ontario's dark earth
no emerald isle
just somewhere near ancaster
your liver finally saying
"end it"

and grandmother, you true atlas, you
threw him from your back with a long sigh
released finally
from clipping his toenails
from pretending not to notice
the constant tintinnabulation
of his poisoning
glasses

grandpa kenneth walking down a road
all his life singing
the sun is rising as usual looking
blurred, grandpa removes his worn leather coat
hacks
marches away from the sun ranting along
to the popular tune

"ooooooh shay can you see
by the dawn's marnin' light".

-Timothy Shay

PRAYER

To be not bemused
by great wit conceived
on the lap of decay
at the breast of disease

To not be a slave
of the buy and the sell
in the City of Sadness
the temple of Hell

To not be contrite
on Gargoyle Street
when burned and abandoned
minus retreat.

-Timothy Shay

POWER FAILURE .I.

While driving, the ruts on the road
gain significance.
In space travel; meteor storms, craters.
In dream; a darkness that has no opening.
Awake; the dull thud of woodpeckers
the light buzz of mechanical insects
busy as they devour your inheritance

Alone in the late night
in a very high tower
I watch the rain descend
I have written this many times before
from one of several
turrets towers or garrets

It rains habitually
a riot of fishes leap through
the sudden thick territory
of airborne water
deserted by fragile sports fishermen
the fishes leap and leap

In my high tower I see them
as I imbibe warm yellow tea

Alone, one bullseye
on the water
a big fish's fingerprint abandoned
wrinkle in the sheet of morning
before the dusk of
inconvenient power failure.

-Timothy Shay

INTERCESSIONS AND

MY ATOMIC DREAM

I went to bed and saw
stiff sliced stars of late october
out the upper window
and thought of how
there are no intercessors
no paraclete or dove
except by simple synchronicity
or secret act of human love

Yet intercession is what we seek
to buy and what we hope for
is the tiny god in the lottery ticket
the true icon among a thousand counterfeits

We seek intercession
by the promise the oath the turning over of
leaves
we beg political favours of our political gods
halos badges wings uniforms khaki and gold

And when i slept my mind
attended an office party
in Nelson BC
Someone in the happy autumn crowd called
Is this an earthquake?

And running to the institutional window
we all saw the great orb of light
orange as an over ripe pumpkin
and the infamous cloud
trademark of my childhood
expanding in harsh torrents
over kootenay mountains
and someone in fear or reverence said
That's it.

Later, awake i knew more deeply

The lack of intercession
its comforting fiction against
the anarchy of our wandering.

-Timothy Shay

KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD
YOUR HANDS UPON YOUR SPIEL

for DW (rip) in his voice:

Can't stand the idea that reading
good poetry
might infect the purity of
my simplistic verse

Hate the yapping audience
because they can't see
that just like old dead jim
i've got words to be heard too
fuck em fuck you
i don't give a shit
they don't listen because they're stupid
probably don't even read classic lit
like 'waiting for the sun'
by the ancient pop god
i'm waiting to become.

Stupid
probably don't even read
my naive virginal verse
though it stands untouched by
the tough test of
the clear-thinking others

Inexperienced
standing alone in a wilderness
of language beside the
fearful swamp of
small town anonymity

Stagnant
as dull as an asphalt bus loop
talking to myself
in the shrinking language of
synaptic collapse
language of the disconnected
disenfranchised and

I'm the distraught
lizard prince of the water-treading terrible



-Timothy Shay

POOR TABLE MANNERS

The starving are aware of us
the starving with pustulous eyes
and abacus ribs
walk toward us
toward our safeway store
and they see us now
complacent as we graze
on mandarin and beefsteak
see us complacent
yawning whiskey
see us complacent
as we keep them safe
the starving in our television box

The starving
their wilted children
cross the ocean
where some g-d has split it
they rent the house next door

It is your turn to have them over for dinner
the starving who trudge closer

-Timothy Shay

THE OLD GLOBE

Some dreams i have
are dreams of things
i do not want to happen:
of labyrinth
lost child's voice
calling through a thick maze
of green hedge

O vacations spent
consulting lawyers
in humid hotel room
above the breeze
of distant beach

The places i didn't visit
cafes where i would not eat
where no one eats

I dream this through
a greasy window
then enter
place my order
and eat and eat and eat
of the synchronous tragedy
tapestry of elizabethan horror
pit bulls in the pink throat
arrows to the kingly eye
rain on the stage
at the old globe

The old globe

-Timothy Shay

SKYHALL FIFTH MOVEMENT

i have built a shelf
for my small vision

i have dragged all the flagstones
from my garden
cemented them with care
to the basement wall

here in this stone cage
my tiny vision shall rock
to sleep

sheet metal locusts
learn to fly
march to sting us

here will i assure
my small vision
the deepest of sleeps

we have been instructed

distance awake
is tuned for performance
angels trumpet
tactical jazz

strategic feet stretch
tap persistently
in skyhall above us

-Timothy Shay

SEASON OF HISTORY

I gave up all my notes
instructions to myself
insurance of orderly activity
I leave them to one side
search instead for wild roses
or the ghosts of dark camps long deserted

I direct rambling dreams
and command the crows
to march the sky with a precision
which carries them nowhere

Some ask the world
to leap as fools leap
into ash and conflagration
the dangerous christian notion
of hand-made armageddon

But instead I rest here longer
wrapped by wooly winter blanket
though it is june
and soon the summer will be
upon us
with the hot breath of
a circling beast
then quickly gone before the
shortened evenings of autumn
dance their silhouette around the corner
a subtle tai chi mourner
before the shell of tumbling winter.

-Timothy Shay

RECORDS for Emma Shay

It was important to the beach
that I be there each morning
bent and walking slowly
in search for a remnant of stone history

It was important that the baby learn
to walk, to hear
in the circled realm of screeling birds
birds she would grow to love
to record methodically
in her little lined book
as we record the junctures of
our indecisive lives
the anomalies that teach
a hunter's wariness

The beach yields visions and secrets
my child's eyes pinned
like butterflies to the collection
of rolling sky

-Timothy Shay

MONSTERS

When i named the monsters

in my fragile length of life

and when i observed a multitude of stars

that had been seen before


I felt i was a conqueror

yet my smallness was that

of drifting dandelion seed


And the polytheism of the trees

the aromatic pulse of living compost

belittle that part of me

the conqueror

and namer of tiny monsters


-Timothy Shay

BLACK POEM


I dreamed of my father
young and thin
how black his car was in '55
how black his hair
raven and oilslick
vaseline and weekend brylcreem
i dream of my father
of how i could not
imagine his copulation
of how i could not imagine
copulation then
small
contained by suspender and crewcut
filled with the memoryless
locomotion of young child learning...
of fathers tall and black smoke long
across the grey industrial end:
the meat factories and their
cacophonic carcass scent
spread like death or old mustard
on our somnolent suburb
while father in his black socks
(most easily seen by me)
mounted his black car
on its asphalt
and searched out my mother
from deep in the twinkling jungle
of a woodward's store
Yes i dreamed of my father
young and thin
a dapper man without a grin
(my tiny anger growing even then)
as with keyhole saw he cut
a tiny plywood dog
planted it sullenly on the lawn
memorial to my live dog
dead
goldie deep in the flowerbed
run over by transit in '54
twenty feet from darkwood door.


-Timothy Shay

ACHERON
[from 'STYX & STONED' ms.]


We take the old wooden boat out on Semiahmoo Bay. The water flat and grey as is
the sky. Father with his decrepit fishing equipment and seaweed green pack of
Export 'A' cigarettes sits in the aft and I sit at the safest distance from him, in the
bow. The old boat successfully motors to the middle of the vast water adjacent to
a large American refuse site. Its distant avalanche of household effluvia tumbles
into a listless salt water.


We cast out lines. Rain begins with the plain intention of consistency. Incessant.
Our small boat motor sputters and dies. Our lines lay as limp as shattered spider
webs across the opaque waters. There is a sudden absence of gulls. My father huffs
and huffs and smokes and swears at the devil. At me. At the sea. Pulls and pulls
and pulls the starter rope until it breaks and curses again and ties ancient
boyscout knots, does mechanics with pen knives all to no avail as I begin to bale
and we notice the place where the forgotten oars should have been attached. We
drift and do not speak.


A foghorn bellows, GOGGGG,,,GOGGGG and fog moves in like forgetfulness, the
rain does not cease, the tide rises and we move like a tiny burdened ferry into the
wide mouth of the river Acheron. Before us, its great iron railway bridge looms
like a gate and as we pass under, each rivet in the girders seems to watch us like
the eyes in some old oil portrait.


We pass under and drift almost within reach of the old crab shack with its heap of
bait in bins but instead drift sideways around the corner of the small tributary
Ennui and finally brush up against some fecund sweetpeas, fermenting
blackberries and other low bushes. The beach is lined with broken oyster shell.
Father is out first, in a hurry, behind a bush for a piss and is simply gone forever. I
pull myself out, am momently conscious of the boat leaving on the exhausted tide
then hear the singing. The singing in the reeds...


-Timothy Shay

wounding the robin


there have been the potentially perfect days
when off on a search for her voice or her gesture
as seen in natural cycle
nothing could displace it, could make it less
than it seemed
until the instant and a low flying robin
is sucked beneath his speeding car
and observed, in rearview mirror:
autumnal feathers flutter to asphalt
while the robin stumbles through its favourite air
to dark tree shadow and slow stuttering death

and then
the magic dissipated, points out imperfect clouds
the inkblot of them on watercolour sky
the sun now a throbbing robin's breast
trees but turned up birds claw and
again he has not found his portion of godhood
in this morass of imminent death
and dust that must be rinsed daily
from aching crooked hands and limbs

and again the road shows its curves
where the map says it's straight.


-timothy shay

ANGRY POEM

[tongue in cheek for w.w.]


ANGER IS GOOD, I LIKE ANGER,
GREAT ANGERS ARE TOOLS, OR
GREAT TOOLS ARE ANGER, OR
ANGER ARE A TOOL GREAT, OR
GREAT TOOL, AND EVEN DOING
DISHES, IT IS USEFUL, TO BE ANGRY

TO BREAK THROUGH THE ELITE
PORCELAIN OF THE KITCHEN, AND
BIG PEOPLE CHANGE COMPLACENT
WORLD, WITH HOLY ANGER, THE
BIG STICK WACKING TRUTH HOME

AND I AM ANGRY ALWAYS
SO ANGER MUST BE GOOD
AND THE ONLY THING WRONG
ON THIS TENSE AND KNUCKLY PLANET
IS THE PEOPLE WHO REFUSE
TO GET USED TO MY GOOD ANGER
AND UNLESS THEY PULL THEIR
SOCKS UP, PRETTY QUICK,
I'LL SPEW MY PAIN AND REPRESSION
ALL OVER THEIR STUPID HAPPY FACES
AND THEN
I'LL STOMP MY FOOT REAL HARD
AND DISAPPEAR FOREVER INTO THE DIRT
JUST LIKE MY FAMOUS UNCLE

by WILLY STILTSKIN

HABIT

And now you act
like i am a habit
to resist, perhaps despise
the once tasty caligula
melts to a tepid pool
of collapsed cream cone

A tendril of secret toxin
a suction cup adhered
like the titanic's union
with the deep green
bottom of things

Remember
that last tasteless suck
on smouldering cigarette butt
and say goodbye
your habit is leaving you
your reason and healthy resistance
melt him like some
warty thing
exposed to a sudden bucket
of perfect holy water

-Timothy Shay

HABITS


I had a belief in eden

and lay naked under

the nearby forest waiting

for you

you did not come

and nothing occurred

except the usual setting

of the sun



Fingernail of moon

scratched the summer sky

as alone

cold like clay

i reached for apples

in the twined branches

across my neighbour's

rambling fence


Habit of eating

Habit of stiff love

Habit of waiting

for this juicy place

to burst

with uncontrived sweetness

sticky and warm


Moon a sugar heart

surprised face:

two small figures tumble

bucket tumbling after.


-Timothy Shay

HIGH MOUNTAIN POEM

In the high mountain, in alpine meadow
o angelica i have fished in the clear waters
waters to be celebrated
i have seen the red slashed trout
rise as if to leave
their element
and winged join the rippled clouds.
the grizzly has surprised me
stepping from out of the forest
as if in some nature movie

O angelica
i have felt the paralytic fear
in face of the unchallengeable
i have stood still as a rooted tree
in the high meadow
heady herbarium
where the air is touched with constant ice

Angelica, forgive me
the bear, the lake, the lesson:
in high mountain, in golden meadow
nothing is out of place
the rockslide in its fallen state
is simply there

There is no chaos
only here in disguised streets
and numerous babels
do we sing songs of the rise, the fall
do we report our catastrophes widely
making all the victim.

-Timothy Shay

...B L U E P L A T E...S P E C I A L...


I've poisoned my family
with cheap lead-glazed plates from brazil.

The neighbourhood filled with the smug
drugglers and their paraphenalia embroidery.

We always wanted to eat well
we got jobs that consumed our days
joined associations to
devour our evenings.

We made things more difficult
than they needed to be
in order to bring order,
to supersede the brief accomplishment
of previous generations.

And now on the ashes of our ancestors
we plan the next chapter
of brutality, the raw meat song
secret, covert, behind pink lips,
perfect bleached bone smiles
framed in a fresh skin of upholstery.


-Timothy Shay

MEAT



I will go now to the kitchen and eat meat


It rains and rains

I must stay inside and eat meat


I cannot cut wet lawns or trees

The persistent shower of rainwater

from the trees as I make them fall

soaks me to my fragile skin



I will stay inside

in the gloomy kitchen

I will eat bacon and tuna and eggs and burgers

and little lost snails boiled in garlic



Today I will not swing through the forest

dangle like a vine

a dead snake in the garden

like meat looking for an eater.



-Timothy Shay

HOMELESS IN PARADISE

In the afterlife

the one with the knife

will have to carve the roast beef

and the one with the song

will sing all day long

while obese angels flap sallow wings

(And how the skinny angel sings

without his methedrine)

ts

REVOLUTIONARY NOTATION

I am that final product trundled forth

from the iron bowel

of the industrial revolution

My great grandfather

invented the famous machine

which spewed forth

shovels for the masses

the working classes, human jackasses

Eatng dry paycheques and skim milk

simple fodder

to perpetuate starving columns

of mindless son, submissive daughter

29.IX.2005ts