I took the e-file to Covey’s, the Printer on Prospect Street, Fredericton, on Monday. On Tuesday, Jared set up the files for printing, and I received the book on Thursday morning – nice and early. What an incredible turn around. The writing time-frame is interesting too. Geoff painted and posted. I wrote. The whole thing came together in less than a month. It just shows what inspiration, collaboration, and hard work can do. Here is a poem (# 17) from the book.
17
This year’s snow is not last year’s snow. Tell me, if you know, where did last year’s snowfall go?
These flowers you paint, they are not last year’s flowers.
Time flows and the world renews itself. It may seem the same, but it’s not. Nor are you the same. How could you be?
You too have renewed yourself, grown, like these flowers you paint, these flowers that will wither and perish to lie buried beneath fresh snow.
You cannot walk in the same river twice. Nor can you paint the same flower once it has withered and gone. The flowers you paint can never be the ones you painted before.
“When I stand still and contemplate the path that led me here.”
I see purple arrows painted on the corridor floors their sharp ends pointing to the treatment room where the machine’s stark metal throat waits to swallow me.
I shed my Johnny Coat and lie on the bed. I mustn’t move as they adjust me tugging me this way and that, in accordance with the red marks painted on my belly and hips.
Then they raise my feet, place them in a plastic holder, cover me with a thin cotton sheet, and leave the room to take refuge in the safety of their concrete bunker.
With a click and a whirr, the bed moves up and in, the ceiling descends and claustrophobia clutches.
The machine circulates weaving its clockwork magic: targeting each tumor, scrubbing me clean, scouring my body, scarring my mind.
Comment: It all happened a long time ago now, but one never forgets. The desire to reach out and help and comfort any and all sufferers is still with me. This is the link for my book, A Cancer Chronicle.
Some have it, many don’t. Some find it floating one morning on their pillow, short or long, all gone, a dream faded in the light of day.
A woman’s crowning glory, or so they say yet I admire the bald skull, its stiff stubble stubbornly growing back beneath head scarf or cap.
The lucky ones wear wigs, often made from another person’s loss.
The bravest flaunt their baldness, battle flags their shining skulls, blazing like badges of glory, shiny medals awarded in this never-ending war against our own fifth column and the enemy who devours us from within.
Comment: Yet another of my friends is suffering from cancer. When will it ever end? This is my tribute to all who fight, or who have fought, the enemy within. Meet him head on. Never surrender. D o not give in.
“I work in a match factory.” “Do you put the heads on?” “No. I put the gloves on. They’re boxing matches.”
A golden oldie, still vibrant, from the Goon Show, BBC, 1950’s.
Your gloves are off now and they lie on the table where you work. How long have you had them? Fifteen, twenty years? Like good wine, carefully stored, old friends are better with age.
A second chestnut from the Goon Show: “Have you put the cat out?” “No, dear. It wasn’t on fire.”
And that’s another good reason why the water tower, and its full renovation, is so very, very important.
Bible and Water Tower, hand in glove: “And Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like any of these.”
Comment: A gorgeous photo, colors and textures, light and dark, from my friend, Geoff Slater, the line painter and muralist. He is working on restoring the mural on the water tower in St. Andrews-by-the-Sea, New Brunswick, Canada.
Mayday, Mayday, S O S, this is a plea for help, I guess.
Dit-dit-dit- dat-dat-dat, the world lies dying and that’s a fact.
Add another dit-dit-dit and that’s morse code for we’re in deep shit. What can we do to get out of it?
Very little, as I see it, if the world can’t be bothered to see it.
Another half country of forest gone, right whales diminishing, they won’t last long. Rivers flooding, forests on fire, what have we done to earn Gaia’s ire?
Human beings long-forgotten, but profits are up, maybe that’s what’s rotten. We’re near rock bottom I would guess. Mayday, Mayday, SOS,
We’ll soon be gone our works forgotten. No more humans, the world in a mess: Mayday, Mayday, SOS.
Comment: Well that’s how I see it some days and this is just one of those mournings. Say it in paint, say it in rhyme. Nobody’s listening most of the time.
Rant, I say, rant and rage away, rage, rage against the death of friendship, and loathing built now on what was once holy oath and undying love. This is a blood sport where even the spectators are spattered with the refined frenzy of friends turned into fiends and foes, and this is a protest, a rant against love that doesn’t last, that doesn’t stand the test of time, against families that break up, against a society that breaks them up, driving wedges and knives between people once bound by the puppet strings of love, against relationships that can no longer continue, against the rattling of dead white bones in empty cupboards where skeletons dance their way into legal daylight and the spectators call for more: more blood, more money, more blood money, and the engagement diamond is a blood diamond now, a tarnished garnet, and where is the Little Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, that spire inspired needle that will stitch their world back together, and stitch you back together when you’ve been shocked out of your own ruby-sweet rose-tinted world and torn into little bits in their oh-so-bitter one, the biters bitten and those bitten biting back in return, a new world this world of snapping turtles, turtles standing on the back of turtles, and turtle after turtle all the way down until this carnival world puts down its dead clown mask and turns turtle in its turn.
Comment: My thanks to Brian Henry for publishing this on Quick Brown Fox.
Sometimes you wake up in the morning and you realize that you can do no more. What is it about family split-ups, the ugliness of a disputed divorce, the glue coming unstuck in an already unstable marriage, a financial settlement that satisfies nobody and impoverishes both sides of a divide?
And how do you bridge that divide when you are friends with father, mother, children and the wounds are so deep that everyone wants out, whatever the costs and whatever it takes? And what is it about the deliberate wounding of each by the others, leaving permanent scars that will never heal over, no matter how hard one tries?
And what is it about lawyers, when too many guests gather around the Thanksgiving turkey and knives are out for everyone to take the choicest cuts leaving nothing but a skeletal carcass, no flesh on the bones, and the guests all hungry and their empty bellies rumbling for more, more, more.
My thanks to Brian Henry for publishing this on Quick Brown Fox.
They divided us into houses, Spartans and Trojans, and encouraged us to compete with each other, single combat, and then team against team, house against house, eternal, internal civil war.
We divided ourselves into Cavaliers and Roundheads, Monarchists and Parliamentarians, Protestants and Catholics, and we continued those uncivil wars that marred the monarchy, brought down the crown, and executed the Lord’s anointed.
We fought bitterly, tribe against tribe, religion against religion, circumcised against uncircumcised, dorm against dorm, class against class, territorial warfare. We defended our bounds, bonding against all outsiders to guard each chosen ground.
With it came the denigration of the other. Not our class. Scholarship boy. Wrong end of town. Wrong accent. We don’t talk like that here. Speak the Queen’s English, you… and here … we inserted the appropriate word of vilification.
Our wars never ended. We carried them from prep school to junior school, to senior school, sometimes changing sides as we changed schools or houses, always clinging grimly to our best friends, protectors, and those we knew best.
After school, all those prejudices continued to hold us down, haunted us through university, red-brick or inspired spires, Trinity Oxford, Trinity Cambridge, or Trinity Dublin, each gilded with the white sniff of snobbery that gelded us.
Alas, we carried them, piled in our intellectual rucksacks, through university, into grad school, out into the wide world, infinitely small minds based on prejudice and pride, continuing our tribal warfare, unable to understand anything at all, other than us or them, shoulder to shoulder, divide and conquer.
Comment: My thanks to Brian Henry for publishing this on Quick Brown Fox.
Septets for the End of Time ~ Why do the people? by Roger Moore
1
Divide and Conquer
They divided us into houses, Spartans and Trojans, and encouraged us to compete with each other, single combat, and then team against team, house against house, eternal, internal civil war.
We divided ourselves into Cavaliers and Roundheads, Monarchists and Parliamentarians, Protestants and Catholics, and we continued those uncivil wars that marred the monarchy, brought down the crown, and executed the Lord’s anointed.
We fought bitterly, tribe against tribe, religion against religion, circumcised against uncircumcised, dorm against dorm, class against class, territorial warfare. We defended our bounds, bonding against all outsiders to guard each chosen ground.
With it came the denigration of the other. Not our class. Scholarship boy. Wrong end of town. Wrong accent. We don’t talk like that here. Speak the Queen’s English, you… and here … we inserted the appropriate word of vilification.
Our wars never ended. We carried them from prep school to junior school, to senior school, sometimes changing sides as we changed schools or houses, always clinging grimly to our best friends, protectors, and those we knew best.
After school, all those prejudices continued to hold us down, haunted us through university, red-brick or inspired spires, Trinity Oxford, Trinity Cambridge, or Trinity Dublin, each gilded with the white sniff of snobbery that gelded us.
Alas, we carried them, piled in our intellectual rucksacks, through university, into grad school, out into the wide world, infinitely small minds based on prejudice and pride, continuing our tribal warfare, unable to understand anything at all, other than us or them, shoulder to shoulder, divide and conquer.
2
Rage, rage …
Sometimes you wake up in the morning and you realize that you can do no more. What is it about family split-ups, the ugliness of a disputed divorce, the glue coming unstuck in an already unstable marriage, a financial settlement that satisfies nobody and impoverishes both sides of a divide?
And how do you bridge that divide when you are friends with father, mother, children and the wounds are so deep that everyone wants out, whatever the costs and whatever it takes? And what is it about the deliberate wounding of each by the others, leaving permanent scars that will never heal over, no matter how hard one tries?
And what is it about lawyers, when too many guests gather around the Thanksgiving turkey and knives are out for everyone to take the choicest cuts leaving nothing but a skeletal carcass, no flesh on the bones, and the guests all hungry and their empty bellies rumbling for more, more, more.
3
Reconciliation
Rant, I say, rant and rage away, rage, rage against the death of friendship, and loathing built now on what was once holy oath and undying love. This is a blood sport where even the spectators are spattered with the refined frenzy of friends turned into fiends and foes, and this is a protest, a rant against love that doesn’t last, that doesn’t stand the test of time, against families that break up, against a society that breaks them up, driving wedges and knives between people once bound by the puppet strings of love, against relationships that can no longer continue, against the rattling of dead white bones in empty cupboards where skeletons dance their way into legal daylight and the spectators call for more: more blood, more money, more blood money, and the engagement diamond is a blood diamond now, a tarnished garnet, and where is the Little Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, that spire inspired needle that will stitch their world back together, and stitch you back together when you’ve been shocked out of your own ruby-sweet rose-tinted world and torn into little bits in their oh-so-bitter one, the biters bitten and those bitten biting back in return, a new world this world of snapping turtles, turtles standing on the back of turtles, and turtle after turtle all the way down until this carnival world puts down its dead clown mask and turns turtle in its turn.
Roger Moore is an award-winning poet and short-story writer. Born in the same town as Dylan Thomas, he emigrated from Wales to Canada in 1966. An award-winning author, CBC short story finalist (1987 and 2010), WFNB Bailey award (poetry, 1989 & 1993), WFNB Richards award (prose, 2020), he has published 5 books of prose and 25 books and chapbooks of poetry.
Over 150 of his poems and short stories have appeared in 30 Canadian magazines and literary reviews, including Arc, Ariel, The Antigonish Review, theFiddlehead, the Nashwaak Review, Poetry Toronto, Poetry Canada Review, the Pottersfield Portfolio and The Wild East. He and his beloved, Clare, live in Island View, New Brunswick, with their cat, Princess Squiffy, but they live on the far side of the hill from the St. John River, with the result that there is not an island in view from their windows in Island View. Visit Roger’s website here.
Mitla is a sacred burial place in the Oaxaca Valley. The caves in the hills above the town are said to lead directly to an underworld from which demons and devils emerge at night and by means of which humans can communicate with the souls of the dead. Mitla, in fact, is often called the city of the dead. Legend has it that if you embrace a certain magic column in the Palace at Mitla, the time left for you to live can be measured by the distance between your fingers as they reach round the pillar and almost touch. The pillar, they say, grows and shrinks according to the length of the seeker’s life. Petrus, a rock, in Latin, evolves into piedra, a rock or stone in Spanish: upon this rock will I build my church.
1 We walk on tiptoe round the garden peeling free the sunlight cloud by cloud
sometimes the heart is a sacrifice of feathers bound with blood to an ornate altar
petrus this rock cold against my chest piedra centuries of glyphs alive in your face
if our arms meet round these all too human columns what will become of us?
2 beneath your skin the woad lies as blue as this evening sky yellow light bends low in the fields below us each darkened pool a warrior fallen beneath the scythe
the moon paints a delicate circle its great round open eye stands out above the rooftops tonight it bears an eye lid carved from cloud
our teeth are diadems of whiteness we tie shadows to our heels and dance in triumph through street and square
3 daylight bends itself round rock and turns into shadow we flourish in blocks of fire
dreaming new selves from roots and branches we clasp each resurrection with greedy fingers will the moon rise again tonight and will we watch?
dark angel bodies with butterfly wings our shadows have eloped together
we can see them sitting side by side bumping knees at a table in the zócalo
4 church bells gild the barrio‘s rooftops our fingers reach to the skies and hold back light we draw shadow blinds to shut out the day night fills us with stars and silhouettes
we dream ourselves together in a silent movie closed flesh woven from cobwebs lies open to a tongue-slash of madness
the neighbor’s dog wakes up on the azotea he barks bright colors as dawn declares day and windows and balconies welcome the sun
can anyone see the dew-fresh flowers growing from our tangled limbs?
your fingers sew a padlock on my lips “Listen to the crackle of the rising sun!”
rogermoorepoet 