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At the news of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ death, I pulled out my very first Mac and held an interment ceremony. This is one of the original 128k RAM Macs. No hard drive. It boots from a 3.5 inch floppy disc. I bought it in 1984 after I saw one at a trade show. I hadn’t even seen the superbowl commercial yet. It still works. What appealed to me was the GUI screen. I had been learning to program in my spare time on a UNIX mainframe at U. of T. and I was sick of command line prompts. Basically, I wanted to play. What I most appreciate about Steve Jobs is that he thought equally well with both sides of his brain. It’s an example I try to emulate in everything I do. (I took this photo with my iPhone 4 and posted this blog on my Mac Pro Quad Core tower.)

After a month of driving to from in and around western Canada, I’m wondering what to do next. While on the road, I did as I intended, writing poems as I went. Maybe not as many poems as I would have liked, but enough that I have the raw material for a chapbook. Maybe that’s what I’ll do next. I’ll sift through my nearly 6,000 photos and blend them with my words. But what should I use for a theme? What organizing principle? I don’t want to collate a bunch of unrelated poems and throw them at the reader with another bunch of pretty pictures. Themes like “travel as metaphor for life’s journey” or a “celebration of a romantic wanderlust” are too obvious and hackneyed. I don’t want to impose something on my month’s output. Something will emerge if I sit patiently with it for a while.

what a fucked up thing
to nail Jesus Is Coming to a tree
beside a highway in north ontario
a via dolorosa which is latin
for road through the middle of nowhere
and prompts an eternal question:
if a soul declares its christ
in a forest and there is no GOD
to hear it…
a tree-spiking evangelist is
no concern of mine no souls
harmed in the posting of this
sign only a narcissism fed
by an imaginary friend on a tree
or what about the lady ahead of me
in line at tim horton’s
who goes on and on about
The Conway Twitty Tribute Show
how she brought the show to town
packed five hundred into the hall
could have booked a second show
only HE wouldn’t let her
more interested in the stampeders
three hundred tickets left unsold
for that one, no wonder HE got
fired from managing the motel
don’t you hate how some people
go on and on as if you should
know what they’re talking about

“As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.” – Luke 21:6

as we drive into Lanigan
population next to nothing
a pull out and a sign
and on the sign a map
and above the map in bold-
faced caps the word LEGEND
I’m not thinking cartography
and imagine a bright marquee
flashing The Legend of Lanigan
like The Legend of Zelda
every place has its legend
here we see its traces
here the dusty gravel roads
here the façades like on a wild
west movie set here the rusted
rolling stock by the railside
legend is what archaeology
destroys and I with my hammer
chip away at Lanigan

I hate to drive through the prairies.
It’s boring. It all looks the same.
I love to shop at Wal*Mart.
All across this great country,
Wal*Mart is the place for me.
(if performed, this verse should be repeated at least 300 times, once for each Wal*Mart in the country)

Imagine our world is dying.
Imagine survival depends on journeys
to distant suns settling strange planets
colonists voyaging for generations
whirling in cigar-shaped tubes
tribes of ten thousand adrift between
the stars. Now imagine these crafts
of our salvation are designed by
the Ghermezian brothers: worlds of
endless shopping salted by breaks
in water parks, wall-climbing,
water slides, roller coasters, kiddie
rides, bumper boats, pirate ships,
Omnimax, ice rink, mini-golf.
After a thousand years of play and after
settling into orbit around their prospective
home and after opening the hatch
and after stepping onto terra subpono,
how will our descendants, bloated on fun,
rise to the threats of an alien planet?

1.
You can tell I’m not from here
the way my jaw drops to let out
a gobsmacked wow
the way I pull out my camera
wield it like a geologist’s hammer
try to hack away a piece of beauty
and haul it home with me.
You can tell the ones who are from here
the girl in the grocery store fr’instance
the one with the hunting knife in her belt
the dulled-edged look of her eye
or the boys with the pick-up truck
the ones who strut their ordinariness
and roar away at first light
to fish as a reason for drinking.

What was the wildest thing you saw
in all of wild Canada? Was it
the roaring waters of Rearguard
Falls? Or the black bear swimming
across Mud Lake? Or the pine beetle
chewing its way down the North
Thompson River Valley? Or the protesters
haranguing politicians on the steps
of the Victoria Legislature? Or
the drivers speeding across
Vancouver bridges? Or the junkies
hunched around their pipes
on Upper Johnson Street? Or
the wild style graffiti in
the parking lot off Herald? Or
the puffed up chest of Robson
flaunting his white nipples
to the sun? I nod at each suggestion
but answer with my own. The wildest
thing I saw was Tamiko when she
thought I forgot to pack the gift
we bought for our daughter.

self-congratulating signs
litter roadsides all
across the country
harper masturbating
on our shoulders
what a good boy am i
tearing down mountains
raising up valleys
wrapping ribbons of highway
around the nation
knotting a tight bow
like mickey mouse ears
a great big beautiful package
three lanes each way
squirting goods from a to b
k y gel efficiency
but nowhere
not a single stop
no pull out rest area
place to stretch and gawk
no snow caps and treetops
and rocky river beds below
no place to whip out
my long lens and shoot
shoot shoot

and now it’s time to say good-bye
we liked the fantasy of living here
an almost perfect daydream imagining anew
a new house
a new view
a new routine
Paul, who made the leap from fantasy,
gives the grand tour: this is where
I worked my first job
we had our first date
our boy was born
the drunk driver spilled diesel during the salmon run
you can get great Vietnamese food
we take the dogs for a morning run
I got my tattoos
that Korean guy killed his wife and kids
the woman gave us the evil eye
when the dog pooped on the path
the cruise ships berth in transit to Alaska
my cell phone thought it was in Washington
and almost cost me some dineros
I found the body
I get kombuchi
we fell in love
and when the day has faded
and when we’ve settled into our not-house
and when we’ve nestled beneath our not-sheets
we remember our own this is wheres
the ones that belong to us
the ones that we belong to

Eighteen years since Clayoquot Sound
Today the trees keep falling
Inky tears drip on the page
A pulpy sheet for writing
More organic, they exhort me
Grow your words like corn stalks
But I press them out precise
Planed and stacked like lumber
i’d throw a wrench
drive a spike
fill the gas tank with sand
if i knew how
or where
after that what would i write on?
the water?
the morning dew?
the snow?
maybe i’d fling my words to the wind

i bear my camera
like a cross
framing good
excluding evil
turning a cool
compassionate eye
on injustice
but mostly conquering
death
with my obsessive
recording
recording
recording
when i return
this will all be gone
through photos
my grief will find
its consolation
but when I’m gone
no trace of me
will remain in my
recording
recording
recording
only a deep hole
an absence in the cave
of my vision

Wobbly-legged, we rise from lunch
and chardonnay, the capstone
on a noon-time tasting.
Best to pause, recover
equilibrium, gaze across
the vineyard rows, reminiscent
of corduroy or shopping aisles.
In the middle distance, a farm,
hot-houses where flowers grow,
row on roses, all of it—
grapes and blossoms—handled
by Mexican workers shipped
north for the growing season.
With cool weather on the threshold
they’ll be packed back where they belong
year-over-year (eight months here
four there) a rootless life.
I hear the wives of two have left.
What they say of absence is a lie,
a violence done to soldiers
and now to migrant workers too.
In the far distance, on a high hill,
an observatory, a keen eye
gazing at ancients suns, honing
the science of avoidance.
Wobbly-legged no longer,
we return to our temporary
home—a rental in the city—
past the church where five or six
smoke crack on the brown grass,
past the skateboard park
where a kid tokes and grins,
past a mall where we ease our
discomfort with fresh souvenirs.

Can’t you snap the cap of the toothpaste tube?
Keep the invader microbes from breeding there?
I admit: I’m supposed to be large-hearted,
above the nit picking details of domestic
living, but this issue grates me so.
How will I make it with you through this journey
if the toothpaste gapes on the countertop
moldering night after night in the open air?
Our lives depend upon the civil give and take
of spouse and spouse, all of it your fault no doubt,
as I hold in high esteem the simple act
of snapping the cap back on the toothpaste tube.
My electric shaver went on the fritz.
Having served well for fifteen years,
it’s started buzzing in a way that sounds
like a bumble bee in throes of death.
I’ll make do (I tell myself) with a blade
and shaving cream from the drug store.
Ha! So many choices! Such advances
in shaving technology! all to render me
smooth and sexy in ways formerly
unthinkable, with my five-blade razor
oozing lubricant, and canister of gel
that hockey players use. I’ll wage a war
on my face, wash the hairy casualties
down the drain, hide all evidence
that I might once have been an animal.
In the same aisle, you find tampons
for your feminine hygiene needs,
a polite way to say your ovaries
still go through the motions, lunar
egg-popping with attendant mess.
And for all the uniqueness an ova
suggests (what with DNA etcetera)
there’s a surprising universality
wrought by the global napkin trade.
Absorbency here is the same (I suppose)
as it is at home, or in Scotland
or Nigeria. Is this solidarity
through free markets? Communing
through the woman’s body politic?