TO MY TEACHER

[song for a.p.]


When you are the curtain of night
or the red clay vessel of day

I love my teacher
I love my teacher I said

Bacchante mosquitoe
feasts on my blood

I love my teacher
I love my teacher I said

When a purple mound
of phosphorescing sage
beckons like a baptism
an aromatic bed

I love my teacher
I love my teacher I said

New rain sweeps
cricket voices up
and on a dry wind
they land again
chirping at our feet

I love my teacher
I love my teacher I said

Here in a cave
of immaculate dust
by a puddle of clay
pink hands swim up

I love my teacher
I love my teacher I said

I love my teacher
I love my teacher I said


-Timothy Shay

EVOLVE

Threatened
or poisoned
or slowly eroded
soft flesh
atomized along
frictional paths
through time
bombs and
the unfurling
bestiary of nature

In one instant
rise and
subside like the
tide of empire
of my heart
upon your
misty touch

Birds screel
metronomic

-Timothy Shay

DOG SLEEPER

The evening gone
morning arrives
these winter nights
are stiff and cold
as buried bone
and time is
one colour
no tick or tock
or slow sweep just
unnoticeable

Like a dog's dreams
not recalled
just the other half
of what he does
run and doze and run
sleep
in sun on porch
on porch in sun.

-Timothy Shay

LIGHT SONG [for ph]

when death calls out
along the route
to your destination
sing another song
straight and strong
no regret
no hesitation

when your love
is big or small
don't forget to call
up and down the halls
of declaration

and when all this is done
moments lost moments won
and sinking like the ship of sleep
you founder
don't forget to smile
leave this room
with class and style
before the light
we know you heard
the thunder

when your love
is big or small
don't forget to call
up and down the halls
of declaration


-Timothy Shay

FINAL FROST

Early spring
the pussy willows tentative
begin to emerge from
their dark prepuce.

Willows move
like a woman's body
bending on an ochre hillside
planting spinach in fisted hillocks
at the first dawn
of a lengthening spring.

Each year a new white hair
with the return of light
an ache or the sudden presence
of displaced ancient memory
seeds stir
just beneath that final frost.


-Timothy Shay

CODA : FAT

Fat and beyond control
the refrigerator a
beckoning midnight friend.

She tells me i've
grown/fat
and out of her life soon
because of so many reasons:

Fat
being the new one
a sort of bulbous addendum
to her list of infatuations exploded.

-Timothy Shay

FAT

Often feel like a tiny monk
depicted in a hokusai woodcut
but just a speck in a different
huge and rolling landscape

And my road is still
made of earth and
small stones
after all these years
and yes the dog tagging along behind
is still black
assuredly black

My fingers are little
people in a chapel
they all grow old
develop fat knuckles
too much greasy turkey
too many flaming pudding

There are several scrubby trees
somewhere on the lard-white slope
over there and
i should have macheted them
replaced them with bamboo
last spring
but now it is this winter
of deep snow
trees or bamboo obliterated

Fat slope.

-Timothy Shay

THE FAST

Write a ten minute poem
hardboiled like a sandwich egg
have a love affair
with astronomy
after lunch
bring peace
to a supervisor's eyes
reorder all wrongs
and add pink icing
say we are not hungry
and join others in not eating.

-Timothy Shay

FART

[a bad one circa 1985]

Another night so demoralized
the king
of assholes
sits and ponders the reasons
behind his recent resurrection
to this state of robust good health

He had consciously and with
effort
progressed downhill toward demise
until some crass sentimentality
caused this stumble
this relentless resurgence
of electric life

The king of assholes
consults his hemorrhoidal books
types farts with
his shit brown typewriter.

-Timothy Shay

THE FARM

I purchased two piglets
fenced them in
lush rooted pasture
fed them yellow corn
nutritious
left over porkchops
poems from my table

In the crepuscular evening
i named them
one was hitler
the other rockefeller
of course
they got fatter and fatter
they desecrated the pasture
filled it with pits
furrows and stripped roots

They became eccentric
vicious in their old age
finally a greater power
removed them and
after the bleeding
all that remains:
bone coloured cloud
sunbleached excrement

The one true history.

-Timothy Shay

OLD WIND

i am the last decent citizen
in a region deflated
by perrenial political rivalry

i lean out the window
of any among many
clapboard houses abandoned
in this sad district

it is spring or autumn
everything golden or green

as you drive by
my long white beard
waves like laundry
from a second story window

wind and sorrow are constant

-Timothy Shay

FORGOTTEN TIBETAN

"the clear light is spoken of in the Bardo
Thodol as such a dazzlement as is produced
by an infinitely vibrant landscape in the springtide."

-Commentary -Tibetan Book of the Dead


1) THE CAT

woodstove burning, house warm, four a m,
slight incense of consumed birch bark,
the winter night is above and below.

the cat, in orderly fashion, departs the house
to urinate,
returns momentarily, scratches at the door,
the master, psychic or perhaps habitual,
opens the woodporch door
and the cat
like a miniature wayne gretzky
skates in,
a flurry of snowy powder and wild eyes.

2) INNER VISION


your what?

inner vision.

your liver can see?
it could go blind
you could end up with blind liver!

help that liver.
ya, the one with the white cane,
help the poor slob across the street...


3) PERFECT SILENCE

we keep a perfect silence
the curtains never move
a window stands so open
so do all our graves
we learn to hate the sorrowful
learn to love the slave.


4) DEAD MIND THESE DEAD EYES


fuckem let it roll and drop it all
start all over again alone
in some gray misty zone
forget all the deluded others
walk a road, any road,
all the same; ginsberg avenue, villon crescent,
chaucer boulevard, bardo thodol, bardo thodol,

and when awakened remember this chant:
five hundred pages later and still no chant,
almost dead and maybe
if i invent one when i wake
it'll work
after all, who's tibetan these days.

dead mind these dead eyes
fuckem, fuckem, fuckem, fuckem
to the gleason moon to the little platform spinning
while medicine men who charge you only a buck
to teach you the lost secret of ghostdance, laugh.

i live at thirty three rue bardo thodol
haven't heard a good song in years
just the same old pete seeger pap
knee deep in the big muddy we turn turn turn
ecclesiastes said it better, earlier.

it was a good season
the fresh thodol was sufficient
to bake up a batch of bardo
and in france who needs a bikini?



5) ORACLE OF HEART

having become the picture
of a perfect zen monk
i carry this monastery
and call it heart
fine name
for one
who has forgotten the true song
of childhood
can oppress with the weight of
sampson's fallen marble
fine name for a semblance of buddha
whose meditation is spasmodic
not as dependable as the moon

fine name, heart heart heart
i have named my cat this and
if you wish the monastery
mimic the cat.


-Timothy Shay

OLD YELLOW CROSS for pl

As i stood by the old yellow cross
i heard the goddess who'd gone before
still singing softly while the rag crowd
and bone men rattled about me
beneath that symbol of eyelids and ears
sewn shut to the singing
sewn up against eternity and this
symbol of death continues to rise up bilious
a sickened slash across the distance
from then to now

Forgive me my lack of guts
before courts of zealots and jeweled holymen
testosterone needed
to run the miracle mile of rhetoric
wrestling with love turned to the thick
gorge of power

I have no more strength
the goddess of song has appropriated it
owns my listening
keeps it like a seed protected
from the desert of the
old yellow cross
its fat black book of a thousand
cancred pages
and before me her footprints a flowery stigmata
across the secret room and
those abused thorns now a number of sunrises
or the piercing voices of joyous birds

The goddess of song on sabbatical
winter next door
a soft veil and silent voices
while the barbarians with their symbols;
the cross the star the moon, rage on
catering to the
insatiable blood appetite of a rude and dieing god.

-Timothy Shay

SO QUICKLY EATEN UP

The beauty he searches for
is quickly eaten up
even in the traditional borderland
by paradise
the high mountain meadow
its shrinking flowers and
colourful icy air
He sees
it is slowly eaten up

At night the new metal stars
speed by
create the impression of many nights
and long nights and nights
like the busy dark streets
of any falling city

The beauty he searches for
has long not been observed
The beauty he craves
found only on old postcards
in tales of earlier storytellers
enlightened by their skirmish
in fresher times than this

The flowers
The icy air
The quintessential farm maiden
pink cheeked and apple eyed

So quickly eaten up

-Timothy Shay

A BONE TO PICK

after armageddon
they will probably
start to make a lot of things
from bone

they will need to
there will be so much bone
available
that the bone market
will be flooded
with phone calls

-Timothy Shay

RAIN

rain comes down and
cbc radio plays the stuff
they always play
opera
dancehall music
cape breton fiddle

i have run out of candles
and started smoking cigarettes
after a decade of abstinence
i am beginning to feel sick
of talking about myself
all over again

but i am exhausted
and recently read a tiny news article
from the british press
concerning a man in a new bathing suit
who baked himself to death
while luxuriating on a golden beach

highlight of his first paid vacation

i am so sad i have to smile
i am so angry i have become
somewhat pleasant
these big muscles are only useful
within the cage of labour

-Timothy Shay

HOMILY


Listen
all i desired was change
big change, exploding daffodils
and other kinds of wild thrill
but remnant of my adamant generation
what became of
your naked bugling charge primordial?

Your costume gypsy and horse drawn
from the secret markets of the starvation army?

Your heightened voices filled with ideal songs sung
the wild geometry of a thousand placards in flux
above neat trimmed lawns obscured by pink and brown
feet mudpacked and glass cut a root or desire for a root?

All i desired, and now blue collared
i bend and perform exactitudes
shoveling and sweeping
ditch digger of my father's low prediction
in tug o war with the masters of subsistence.

We all fall from great heights
by the machination of simple gravity.

Listen, that was all,
we could not become
perpetual bearded hitch hikers
forever stuck
with three hohner blues harps
thumb out
on the outskirts of wawa, ontario.

-Timothy Shay

Dear Eric

return quickly

you moved to the wrong place

new york will soon sink

in backed up sewage

toronto in its puffery

return to the spine of the continent

bring your partner

i have the plans

Love Noah

THE ARRIVAL OF

WELL BEING

IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD

The last onslaught of cold.
Squirrel and blue-jay reappear.
He has heard of a pulp mill
coming to destroy the fresh air
on his hillside.
Where he lives this is considered
a stroke
of good fortune
a wonder that raises
low property values
provides buyers drawn by jobs
and he can sell and move to the city
buy his tomatoes at the
safeway supermarket
turn the central heat on
send his children
to a military academy
nine months of the year
and sleep above the howl
and behind the ongoing ohm
of the air conditioner
cosmetic obscuring
the writhing vortex
of siren and solitary death.

-Timothy Shay

IX. FISHBLOOD

[from 'DEADMAN'S FLOAT' long poem/sequence.]


By the old gray crab shack
below a deadly railway bridge
alex and i gathered
slimy wide-eyed cod's heads
while nearby crab fishermen
ignored us and ate their lunches

After enormous toil
with dull boy-scout pen knives
we extracted the staring eyes
and impaled them
on big sharp hooks
where the eyes danced
like translucent ping-pong balls
and tossed in the water
they were supposed to lure mudsharks
dog fish from the slimey green depths

After no luck and
much drizzle
we watched a man
who said he was going to catch dog fish
so first using four lines
he caught forty chinese bullheads
then he bent and dissected their
frantic oil-slick writhing
into three hundred
obscene bleeding chunks
which he scattered religiously
on the groaning waters
of semiahmoo bay
and the man said
this always brought the black
sand paper skinned mud-shark
to the surface
and in the blank drizzle at four pm
it did
and the man cut the four foot shark
he caught
into a myriad of square
bright red chunks
and he baited several
star shaped steel crab nets
with his new bait
and set out all
in a military row
over the side of the boat dock
into the green seaweed bed
where the slow crabs live
and he said
this always brings them to the net
and it was a war at four
on stained deck
in smoky brown rain.

-Timothy Shay

PRE-STORM SONG


I walked on
the overgrown path
beside anderson creek
at the base of the hunchbacked
old mountain
and the blackbird was silent
as it flew like a thread
from branch to limb
to moss covered rock
ahead of me always
up the long ravine
becoming the map of our journey
and the day wore on
until there was no colour.

Slowly we became night
A sacred voice laughed
sounded like wind.

Branches clatter like loose teeth.

-Timothy Shay

EVECTIONAL

From a clump of poems bound by
a rusty paper clip.Date unknown

Seeds are organized
filled with their one instant
of self and
in a half dream
snow steams
winter becomes over
and as in waking
the sudden removal
of bedclothes
the shock and
wide eyed goosebump
but awakened
as a brown hill should be
sprawled before
this fresh sun
that has once again moved
to organize
the forsaken passions
of yawning earth
its sleepers


-Timothy Shay

CADUCOUS [.I.]

From a clump of poems bound by
a rusty paper clip.Date unknown

When the garden slipped
into an abyss of winter
When the snow shrunk
into the watery ground
When the wetness and
fecundity fainted
thirsty before a perfect sun
and then the light diminished
retreated from cooler cloud

It was at this time and all time
i felt the falling away:
Heresy of the seasons
an absurdity in the logic
of their geared procession

And i recall
sleeping naked on a very cold night
and wearing sweaters on utah deserts

-Timothy Shay

'And, behold the man clothed with linen, which had the inkhorn by his side, reported the matter , saying, I have done as thou hast commanded me.' -Ezekial 9:11

WE DID NOT KNOW
commentary

From a clump of poems bound by
a rusty paper clip.Date unknown

The ditches we swam in
were filled with leeches
We could not know
the perfect metaphor
the prognostic wisdom
or see in that swarming mud
the prince of metropolis or
the sucking lie television protects
We did not know

-Timothy Shay

WE DID NOT KNOW

From a clump of poems bound by
a rusty paper clip.Date unknown

I did not ask to play doctor with laura
on columbia avenue
filled with blossom of sour cherry tree
loud mother noises
calling even through our secret closet
i did not ask for she invented it

I did not call for little miss smith
to spin pantyless in square dance dress
while brown cattle outside devoured the garden
further trampled unmended fence

And the moon turned red
with risen field dust that night
so little miss smith's elder brother shaking
heard the voice of jesus
out in the backfield constellation of cowpie
and prayed sprawled out
while dark dust settled
and still no inkling of the day nor the hour

And i did not invent the dance
or the sideshow vision
but am cursed by absurd memory
of little miss smith coughing spaghetti
across the table
into the crystal sugar bowl
and us all laughing pleasantly
my mother calling her
'farmgirl'
after she'd long gone home.


-Timothy Shay

DANGEROUS

From a clump of poems bound by
a rusty paper clip.Date unknown


Spikes, rose thorns
wild
rose thorns: Who are these
wretched anemic men and bloated
yellow women ravaged
in this dustbowl of mucous and mildew.

Dangerous, sporadic
spikes, thorns, nails
a list of crude blunt instruments.

Palisades, fist clutch
dark age
age of dearth.

Dangerous with red spikes
walleyed genetic disorder
inhaling toxic sweat, rooting
for some suitable dictator.

Dangerous.


-Timothy Shay

WICKED CROCUS

BAD BAD DOG

From a clump of poems bound by
a rusty paper clip.Date unknown.

A convicted liar
imprisoned by accusation
sees crocus and sullen dog stretch
as early sign of spring

The worst of winter is over, boys
the neighbour's wife has allowed
the wicked neighbour to return
He has given up his herpes
the cowboy had and his habit
sudden mexican vacations
O the worst of winter is over,boys
we have seen some blue sky today

And the dog does not obey
our gentle request
our dictate or our admonition
feels his oats, wicked dog
wicked neighbour
they know the spring is coming, boys
start the fresh history now, spring arrives
the bathing suits are ordered
all firewood is burned
Spring is coming wicked world
bad bad dog.

-Timothy Shay

WALTER DECONSTRUCTS
From a clump of poems bound by
a rusty paper clip.Date unknown

humour, lament,
tragic slapstick
usual victim, banana
bum shattered
picture glass
window, cardboard
floor falls
bounces stories
through next
tenement window
gleason's fat
supper ambulanced
lewis wears
famous cowl
pronounced dead
arrival
disney's wonderful
canada world
pronounce
dead arrival
funny eh?

-Timothy Shay

EYELESS STORM

From a clump of poems bound by
a rusty paper-clip. Date unknown.

Already his house collapses
so soon and before the eyeless storm
so sudden like the drug of sleep
in the deep silence
of the soundless ocean
between lovers after love.

Already his dog becomes vicious
complains the primitive shelter
is not enough
the dog food just bland
hard porridge
not meat
the cat too fast
the collar not spiked
no mailmen to eat
in the depth of the night.

Just darkness filled
with enigmatic quivering howls
nature in orderly violence descending.
The storm without an eye.

-Timothy Shay

THE SEARCH

From a clump of poems bound by
a rusty paper clip.Date unknown.

To search is
the object of the search
The copulation
not the explosion
nicely fills a room.

-Timothy Shay

HONEY

You need a house,
a car, a coat,
a child, a chicken,
some carrots,
bamboo and ornamental
hedges to
glisten with bees
as late august fails

A house for winter,
a car and coat for storm,
a child for song,
a chicken at dinner,
some carrots to
dangle.

-Timothy Shay

"every man in the

chambers of his imagery"

-Ezekial 8:12

DREAM

And although the dreamer
never completed a thing he started
he dreamed and it was a rich dream
filled with textures
material could not aspire to
and it was a good dream
as he was a good person in it
and there was no
beginning or ending
no required completion date
or firm agenda
just the soft walls
of his distant joy:

The progress he felt culminate
in habitually sleeping very late.

-Timothy Shay

BIRCH BARK TOYOTA

I drive the seasonal Toyota

down a long highway

It is night

Toyota white as the ghost

of a birch tree

We travel home

It is two a.m.

I am thinking of the

perfectly enclosed room

I am pleased

I am in the picture

I am driving and I see

John on patmos

shortly after an anachronistic

session with some angelic host

He is exhausted

not from his sightseeing

but from the greasy mechanics of

shaping the clay of ancient words

around the theatrics of technologic eternity.

I drive the quick white Toyota

The road a slow motion carnival ride

The sandman in the back seat yawning

in a way that beckons

in an attempt to have me yawn or sneeze

but my body moves perfectly

My foot commands the accelerator

My hand with magician flicks

twirls the wheel

guides the now mythic vehicle forward

to its destination

while suspicious eyes of animals

deep in the lonely forest

pierce hedges of scotch broom and ditch weed

The sounds of creeping night moan

Shut outside my

sacred speeding microcosm

my metal animal

brother of locust and

gaseous wormwood

a perfect machine whirring through landscape.

Thank you for my microcosm

Thank you for the perfect machine

Thank you for highway visions

Thank you for rewarding me

with both sides of the centre line

each night past midnight.

-Timothy Shay

MIRACLES GRANTED

TO DOUBTERS

I have destroyed

and refused to build the perfect homestead

of grain-fed subservience

even though the elysian countryside

has often set a spark of affection

at my straw-man feet

I have not yielded to the silence

within the descending morass of

goosedown quilt

Instead I have broken myself

in the useless affairs of men

my anger forever growing

before the clumsy antics

of business and politic and

like an old detestable dog

I snarl at the shadows cast

by the history of my tiny memory

I swear I will not learn

the necessity of visciousness

I will say no to murder

no to assassination

no to execution no

soldier death industry death

hate death greed death and

even gnawed upon I will not learn

the dark art of poker faced retribution

I have only asked for something like

the visible miracles often granted to doubters

I confess now

I have prayed

concerning my choice

Of numbers in the big national lottery

-Timothy Shay

ARCHIBALD

For several months I prepared
the wood for winter
Strenuous work and days
always too short.

Leaves are falling
the little voice in my head
says, 'Archibald".

This whisper has gone on
all season and
I know no one
named 'Archibald'.

Perhaps my dark psyche
searches for Lampman
seasonally
before the quiet books
of winter.

-Timothy Shay

BLUE COLLAR SYMPTOMS

There is no more mystery
all things
simplistic or symptomatic.

The machines and their eight hour day
continue
and from my ancestors
i have inherited the right
to calloused hands
This is easily identified
as the bulk of their estate

My belly grows cumbersome
with night shift meals
This is my only hobby:
the fattening, the sacrifice.

-Timothy Shay

DECLARATION*
from The Song Of James and John**

We have hunted the low area of 1876
for the murderers
hearing their voices we sometimes
confused one for the other

Here in the humid summer of cayuga
my great grandparents in their youthful bodies
wrestled and sweated until worn down
from oneness they collapse, separate
in the unholy closeness
of the late afternoon

I have seen the site of his grave
in shade past the gate
the keeper of bones produced a map
and we found the unmarked hollow
where the brittleness that was isaac's youth
sleeps in a palm of earth.

And rebecca hunt, great granddaughter
of north dwelling empire loyalists
great grandmother your perfect breasts of youth
now mushroom or dust ruffled
by the turn of seasonal birds

At this threshold a winter sky undulates
and now the flys are dead of cold
I'll build a fire by the woodpile
pull out the galvanized tub
heat up a bath of water to near boiling
then one by one i'll butcher the white chickens
the thirteen white chickens

With a yard full of ancestors warming the air
all will go well, the day will be fair...

-Timothy Shay


* Declaration is an addendum segment, a kind of commentary on the main body of the poem, circa 1991.
**The Song of James and John is a long poem sequence I wrote in the late seventies with additional segments introduced intermittently to 1991. It is a pseudo-historical poem, (I hang both main characters in the end while historically only one was executed), based
on an irony filled murder story from late nineteenth century Ontario, Canada. The poem was published in a prairie literary journal, (all twenty-one pages of the first edition). It was also sold to CBC Radio, but never produced. During the 1970's the long poem and narrative poem sequence saw a moment of prominence and popularity among Canadian poets.

THE WATERFALL OF SHADOWS

And alone, i am that rock
or green fern, that corner
by your cornerstore, your weekly cornerstore
fifty two times yearly that trek for milk
for bread, a neighbour's small dribble of smalltalk
from block to block on usual street
leaning to wind like laundry does
you've been seen to walk

I am that rock, midnight's siren
asking no more than vacant night air
to fill and overfill with larger vision
a sense of wisdom still
and ugly as lichen, but fitting
in as lichen fits the texture of
punky wood, chameleon against the smatter
of mica in the granite, darkly freckled granite

And i see the new blue stone, a prospect
on the edge of the effervescent
the ever present waterfall of shadows
where i have seen you all, the missing
dancing, as i drive my thoughtless car
your shadows populate my rear window
or your scarlet tail lights before me
befinned and out of time
fishtail back and forth across the yellow line
draw me to the water, the fall of sudden shadow,
the corner where i lost you.

-Timothy Shay

BESTIARY

The lunchroom a bestiary
of lip smack and rushed indigestion
my lover off in the distance
slipping around icy corners
in the parchment yellow toyota

Hallways filled with the patter of the paid
sly pink creatures
planning projects innocuous or dangerous:

The destruction of the world
The banishing and exhile of time
The installation of more and more
self important business commissions
in lieu of responsible government

Even the nazis are rising again but
smarter this time: no dramatic uniforms
no unnatural attention-getting goosestep
no sir
no ma'am
no glistening lugers or frenzied speeches
no accents no borders no time
left

We are already flattened in a flesh-market
wounded in a war-machine;
steamrolled by the iron tank
of imposed necessity
purchased by the clones of rockefeller*
their ticking cadre of faceless
post-lithic computer operators

The lunchroom wastebasket
a monument to george washington carver

Peanut butter sandwich rinds
smile up from their black hole
into the crepuscular light
leaked from another mechanical night
of peaked industry.

Timothy Shay*

*NOTE: The writer, Shay, and capitalist financier
JD Rockefeller share a set of great great etc. grandparents:
Captain James Avery, 1620-1700 Pequonoc Connecticut and his
wife, Joanna Greenslade, 1622-1716.( As much to Shay's surprise, as yours.)
In fact this is true proof that trickle-down economic theory doesn't work.
Shay, lifetime poet and subsistence janitor, a testament to this.

WAITING

A white dog on white snow
the snow white toyota
waiting

The ferry man in his
small shelter
by the long dock
on that famous river
it snows lightly

In the rainbow cafe
the orange
of the ancient waitress' makeup
melts winter
with the loud sound
of soap opera

Through the window
he sees the waiting
ferry slowly
fill the picture


-Timothy Shay

LUNCH IN A GRAVEYARD

What i know is everything
i have tried to know;
the long history of my dead cat
the grass growing over
my father's stupid flat
contemporary tombstone
on a windy bluff
without trees not even
a good location for dreams.

I have eaten lunch
in defiance of my grade school teacher
i have consumed old cheese
with strong onions as a sandwich
in a public place
no one dared send me home
with a note this time.

Miss brandt, miss brandt
i breath copiously on your grave
on all graves
and know that my breath
is no offence in this
meeting-place of emptiness.

-Timothy Shay

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY

POEM / RICHES


It was a noble idea

This raising of children

As fodder for holocaust



As chow for the great jaw

Of cataclysm



I laugh now and imagine

Religion's ideal fuck

The monthly moment fuck

Fuck of clamoring procreation

Feeding a hungry reality

With the craft

Of manifest prophecy

Fulfilled by the mummified masses

Of zombie devotion:



Vaginal cannons

Blow babies

Across invisible borders

To each new and necessary war

And maintain race religion business

And maintain wealth and wealth

More sad wealth.



-Timothy Shay (reposted)

PREMONITION CIRCA 1981

We remove the planet from
its envelope
We recall priestess and priest
as they stone the perfect goat

Blood, bruise, smooth incision
a decision of those footsteps
we have always heard
as merely our own
not the ancient echo that they are
the eternal thumping of the frightened
grouse
suddenly vulnerable and powerless
as all things alive will be
even deep in the once green wood
the romantic wood of
cornelius kreighoff
with walks and leaves
a forest of erotic imaginings
in careless solitude
now crisp and dried up

And fire
the dropped veil
the sooty embrace of naked industry
smothering the mother deep in a bed
of reassuring language warm language
Sing us a sentimental wild rice song
burn sweetgrasses, plant banyons
wrap ribbons around poles, make
round eternal sounds
visualize interstellar cures
a la ponce de leon

A fountain, an ark
a poet who must once again memorize
who embellishes the true history
with spirits and gods
A fountain, an ark of flesh
a door beyond the waterfall of shadows

The dip and swish of a yellow canoe cutting
the once trout filled waters
of queens bay
shirtless in unnatural december.


-Timothy Shay

picnic by the stream

by the stream
the myths crouch in angle
prone to noon sun
still and perfect on the clay bank
dignified as great pillars
of fallen empires

ravens circle in play
no other reason
ravens circle

spendthrift birds
their season employed
as spots against sun
their shadows
torn bits of frenzied night

by the stream
the myths yawn
in crepuscular light
await the culmination
of pillar day and shadow

night descends
like homeric death
ravens again become one
with what
they've always been.

-Timothy Shay

love poem from chaos

out of me you proceeded
out of me your gods proceeded
out of me your ordered hills
precise fingers of streams
disciplined procedures of weather
weepings and horselaughs

out of me all this marched
and circular back it marching comes

timothy shay

COFFEE WITH
THE ACCIDENTAL GODS

street urchins with
too much pubic hair
greet me on the street
at dawn, demand cigarettes
but i leave mine
squashed in my back pocket
nearly indiscernible
and i say 'no'
and look serious
as i make a beeline through
the beggars
to the expensive coffee shop
where the hardworking
waitresses
fill my cup before i ask
and i go out onto the patio
and wake up quickly with
dark coffee and
a group of mental patients
minus meds
i listen as they detail their
epiphanies visions paradigms
solutions and the tiny details of
observed synchronicity
by which they measure hours

until they begin
like half affable gods grown cranky
to disagree
at first with courteous apology but
quickly escalating to ferocity and
bedlam reiterated,
i think
'too much hot weather
too much ozone exposed fruit picking'
high atop an apricot tree
like burl ives used to say
'popcorn poppin in the apricot tree'
and i get up and leave

gods have always insisted
on managing their own affairs
on warring and piecing
it together again

we simple holograms
dare not intercede.

COMMENTARY:

not urchins, just grown men
with skateboards
and possessive of my drugs
i know none of them are gods
so i go and do my job
smoke cigarette after cigarette
and revel in my
fantasy of sanity.


-Timothy Shay

CORNED BEAST NOTES

This Month Featuring

THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE

REGIONAL-HISTORIC ROOTS OF

THE KING OF TOMATOES

AND HIS FAMOUS PLASTIC CROWN:

Introduction:

Occasionally the Corned-Beast-Speaks Blog of poetry and random opinion will feature obscure footnotes regarding The Corned Beast, the blog’s namesake. In most cases only the initiated will discern the true meaning of these particular posts, again demonstrating one nature of history; its vast movement of object and verbiage conjunct with time…History, dissected, shuffled, fingerpicked like the chicken at ???’s Café, stops making sense, becomes random and somehow more human. Like us, meaninglessness in search of meaning.

Evidence:

Once upon a time The King Of Tomatoes found a crown of plastic retro-tomatoes on the kitchen wall of a derelict house. The Crown of Tomatoes exuded a bright red ketchup-thick aura of absurdity. Wearing it the self-styled King of Tomatoes felt like riding a horse, wearing sunglasses at night, and bellowing. It was indeed a magic crown… 1994

From All the News That Was Fit to Print, Nelson Daily News Thurs Mar 1 2007:

“Fanatic Sons of Freedom Doukhobours opened a fresh series of protest meetings against alternative service regulations this weekend according to reports from their Krestova headquarters. Visitors to the Slocan Valley have brought back stories of self-styled “Sons of Heaven” Doukhobours decked with crowns of oranges and long veils parading on horseback. The object of the parades was not evident but they recalled that for many years an aged Doukhobour in the Grand Forks District decorated himself with a crown of oranges, but he did not ride a horse nor wear a veil. [Originally published in the NDN Monday March 6 1944]

-Bob-the-Goat

CALYX SEGMENT

my bones clack and are brittle as dry hard cigars
i am an old man
yet fiddleheads still twist between my toes
grope for warm sun through mossy light

i am a shadow in the forest
handcupping sweet mushrooms
from the hungry eyes of strangers

i am the loudness of the stream's gurgle
and yet i am soothe sound to cover gentle
the breath of this jade day's tiny inhabitants

and i am that final judge
of bloody gavels and trumpeter angels...

-Timothy Shay

NO DRAGONS
IN AMERICA

do not tell me
there are no dragons in america
no silences disrupt with mythology
no soul swallowing
ravens from that happy hunting ground
america america
your monsters
the fabulous misrepresentations
of progress and manicured lawn

do not tell me
that dreaming it
is worse than it

a cold sweat on a hot day
a hotter day next week
to swallow
a difficult yogic maneuvre

your automobile will not always work

-Timothy Shay