The Highway

the highway leaps half-formed
out of my shaking fist;
sometimes you set out for Rome
but end up in Ceylon, Siam, or Budapest

your voice is a seashell echo in my ear
and the earliest wash of dawn is a blue violin
while my boots chew
on the loud roadside gravel
and the frost manufactured
overnight

my mouth, the sky, the grace of youth,
and other things, too, which you have touched:
they shuttle past in the faraway
commuter lanes:
they never stop for me

the highway, its nerve endings reach up toward me;
in the cold the asphalt draws tight, shivers and cracks
as tractors lumber across frozen fields soundlessly;
I know every morning there are birds
that chirp and twitter outside your window

the highway is a hypodermic pushed in, into the vein of the land
to draw blood; it bruises the whole arm,
the precise pain communicated
from cell to cell, a shared grief
which then becomes dull

your every single breath only needs the right vibration
to transmute into a sigh, a moan, or a scream;
the frost looks back to see if anyone
has followed

I drive off the road and you tumble into my arms
in the middle of nowhere,
some farmer’s barbed wire
in my teeth and the fender

forever is only ever a precise measure
when it comes to love;
in the middle of now here
the highway draws its knees up
under its chin

You veer into me, hundreds of miles per second
the way forests collide with the sky
over millennia,
the way starlight fades away as morning,
pulls into the rest stop where we lay;
and, breathing, we wake to see how we are divided

Reciprocity

Every step I take toward you
is a step going farther away;
Every moment descends upon
all that is cannot take.

If I were not gaping and gasping
I could find the breath to weep;
If I were not so seldom awake
I could finally get back to sleep.

The days all bear their patent
the fish are all tagged and traced;
The birds are misguided flying
by satellites in outer space.

Let me say that since you left me
my heart has not healed or mended;
Let me take my love and bury it
so that all grief transcends it.

There is red fire deep in the sea
and thunder within the rocks;
There is no road going but one way,
that lifts but never drops.

Do their songs now lull you to your sleep?
Have you given up the fight?
Do you let their dumb machines eat up
all of your famished light?

Yet still the stars will hook your eye
with little barbs of silver;
Yet still I’ll wander far and wide
myself now to deliver.

The weather is manic-depressive
the day takes sleeping pills;
The plebeians all protest for mercy
but are still over-taxed with bills.

Is your name now pinned to their board
in the asthmatic summer haze?
Is the city smog baptismal,
for these flowers forever chaste?

High are the hopes that nourish well
all the roots of their great Money;
High are their pinions and adverts hung;
my love hangs colloidal inside me.

Now the river will carry the earth
though the Devil at our door grins;
Now temptation dances its finest;
at the end it only begins.

Taiwan, November

under the bridge, a heron
in the air, the bats

by themselves, the lovers
in the earth, soldiers

about the ponds, mosquitoes
on the grass, a dog

in the sea, subtropic islands
left behind, my home

curtains in the trees, thick roots
from the school, the young

in all the windows, Chinese
falling, autumn dusk

in my heart, a startling peace
by my side, no one

ZhengZhi DaXue

The wind takes its time
crossing the empty parking lot
Green mountains bolster the sky
Every time you come to me
I cannot help but cry

The new flagstones are locked in place
a skin over the sleeping fire
Summer is no more
Sorrow takes up permanent
residence in my very core

The rain doesn’t mind falling down
now, and every other day
Bright stars retire early
In my dreams I meet you
broken, bent and thirsty.

The weeds grow where they can
without ever being choosy
Cell phones eat up airspace
Legends grow more and more dim
evaporating without a trace

The river swells with the floodwaters
running to get no place
Coins fill all our pockets
All the mysteries I know
are bent out of their sockets

Insect tribes don’t question
what drives them to succeed
Everyday I learn and never teach
The answer is around every corner
and always out of reach

Whisper in a Vacuum

You're here, somewhere inside of me,
and maybe now you've learned to listen,
because I can't hear you anymore,
all those sermons you would give,
a tide pulled away from my shores.

I remember how you came to me,
a vision in a summer dress, moving
with clumsy, girlish grace through
that hot city park full of drunken natives,
finding me laying on that bench, forlorn.

What I wish now is to return to Montreal,
alone. Then, I'll truly let go. Give up on
all the old fears; I have no more need of them.
I'll pull into that city, dress myself up in French
and then, with a little twist, transform into you.

Lullaby Machine

Step One: Relax.
Climb the stairs
up to your old room
now rented out to another.
The memories run shallow, quick, & loose up here:
like a comet skimming the cutaneous stratosphere.
What do you recall?

Yukon afternoons when the sun set at 3:00;
the colour and life of L'avenue du Mont Royal;
biking in an autumn storm in Vancouver;
kissing the girl who broke your heart,
all those years ago.

Step Two: Reflect.
Undress your body
and the brain's sensoria are overcome:
you cry and cry, and take it all in.
Does it feel as if the walls are closing in?
As if you're being squeezed out
by forces unseen and torque mechanical?

Once there was myth alive,
radiant stitches of colour in a night sky,
shifting, dancing out a story.
Now you can only rush, impatient,
to get all the little things done on time,
under the soft limns, deadlines encroaching.

Step Three: Recall.
Lately, you've been having flashbacks:
dreams, random visions of the past, nostalgia;
as if the story of yourself is being starved
for nourishment, and now turns upon itself,
eating out its insides, emaciated and withered

It's time now to awaken
and hearken to the Rhythm.
Too long have you slumbered,
sedated, arrested, overcome.
You don't have to worry, no need to fret;
for your chafed spirit can never succumb

First Day of December

today is a fair and lovely day
and i go sit in Da-an park,
up on the hill for my lunch break;
i should be preparing homework

for my students, and i'll rush to do it
later, i know; but i need this now,
to sit in the grass, drink my milk tea
and just to think of times past, of you.

all around me are flower sculptures
and all the Taiwanese mill about,
taking pictures of one another
up against these elaborate arrangements

of lavender and hollyhock. They say that
twenty years ago this park, this vital green
didn't exist: it was all just bleak housing,
like the rest. This city's zoning philosphy

is outrageous. From here, i can see
the 101 building, tallest in the world
and which i feel secretly connected to.
today there's a sad feeling of resolution

like reading the last page of an excellent
novel, or moving back to a city after
years of absence, knowing everthing's
changed, and all your friends are gone.

my cell phone informs me it's time to
start heading back; my peaceful interrim
is about to come to an end. I'll go and teach
my kids, shout when they push me too far

and hope, yet again, to still have the magic
to make them laugh. then i'll go home
and work late on my novel, trying to lay,
brick by brick, the towering words to my own

literary monolith. Here, in the gentle breeze
three white butterflies dance and caper,
settling on the flowers, then twitching their wings
as if stretching out the kinks, ready for another go.

the memory of you is strong today,
like a smoking machine in the street that
eats up the peace; like a song of searing mythos
that burn my mind opaque with its radiation.

it'll be my mother's birthday in a few days.
She's turning sixty. Next month my sister
turns thirty. I remember how you spoke
of the Goddess, with an alchemist's strength

of faith. i believed in those things you said,
but in the working years i've easily lost sight.
later in the park gangs of women will come
to do line dancing; then, late at night, single

men will cruise each other for sex. I've thought
many times in this park about religion,
and i think now i can say that my stories
are the only religion that can bind me for now

i trust they will lead me to the doors
that open to the unnumbered floors
of my consciousness, that i might one day
look out of my sleepy god's eyes,

and see out past this city, out to the sea
which scares me as it calls to me
and which eats up all histories, private
and national, given enough time.