I HATE LOVE
by Di Brandt

It just hurts like hell and
where does it ever get you
watching the heart open
against wishing against
the old wound's wisdom
again again the prairies
folding your desire
like postage stamps licked
and sent the air full of
messages contrary to logic
contrary to the space that
exists between us that's
what you said you're too
far away and me not remembering
the geography the days of
the week not remembering
distances only the light
falling slanted and radiant
around you in the kitchen
your arms strong and tender
in spite of the words said
and not said in an afternoon
where does it ever get you

BENDS
Erin Moure

What the heart is is not enough.
That I can open it and
let you enter
an ocean so dense
you'll get the bends if you surface.
That you will be open to the love of every being:
I crave this,
it makes me possible, anarchic, calling
your attention,
your fingers on my ear or soft neck,
the light on each side of your face, altered
as you speak to me

Oh speak to me
I have a friend who says the heart's
a shovel, do you believe this?
My heart is a wild muscle, that's all,
open as the ocean
at the end of the railway,
a cross-country line pulled by four engines
Whatever it is I don't care, it is not enough
unless you see it
unless I can make you
embrace and breathe it, its light that knows you,
unless you cry out in it, and swim

HAMMER
A hammer is rising. A hammer
thrown up at the end of the day by a carpenter
with blood on the handle where his blisters have been.
A hammer. It lifts as well on the wave of steam
pouring up from the pots of a kitchen - a tiny kitchen
of an apartment, and that of a restaurant
serving a hundred customers at once.

A great cry of tedium
erupting out of papers and fluorescent glass
carries the hammer higher. It goes up end over end
on a tune broadcast to a million people.
And it climbs
on the force of a man's arm alone
flung straight up from the sickness that is his life.
It rises out of the weight of a body falling.

Nothing can stop it. The hammer has risen for centuries
high as the eaves, over the town. In this age
it has climbed to the moon
but it does not cease rising everywhere each hour.
And no one can say what it will drive
if at last it comes down.

STUDENTS
The freshman class-fist printouts
showed birthdates so recent
Wayman was sure the computer was in error.
One young man, however, was curious
about Wayman's mention near the start of term
of his old college newspaper:
"You were an editor when? Wow,
that's before I was born."

The wisdom of the students
hadn't altered, though.
Wayman observed many clung to
The Vaccination Theory of Education
he remembered: once you have had a subject
you are immune
and never have to consider it again.
Other students continued to endorse
The Dipstick Theory of Education:
as with a car engine, where as long as the oil level
is above the add line
there is no need to put in more oil,
so if you receive a pass or higher
why put any more into learning?

At the front of the room, Wayman sweated
to reveal his alternative.
"Adopt The Kung Fu Theory of Education,"
he begged.
"Learning as self-defence. The more you understand
about what's occurring around you
the better prepared you are to deal with difficulties."

The students remained skeptical.
A young woman was a pioneer
of The Easy Listening Theory of Learning:
spending her hours in class
with her tape recorder earphones on,
silently enjoying a pleasanter world.
"Don't worry, I can hear you,"
she reassured Wayman
when after some days he was moved to inquire.

Finally, at term's end
Wayman inscribed after each now-familiar name on the list
the traditional single letter.
And whatever pedagogical approach
he or the students espoused,
Wayman knew this notation would be pored over
with more intensity than
anything else Wayman taught.

Hornby Island
for Billy Little, who shared loved spots
and fond friends

Here on the headland by Downe's Point
we case dreams to rise
synchronous with eagles and gulls,
all make-believe, egocentric,
near to fanatical,
else aim true to roam deep
with Leviathan in the ocean's mind,
free from perplexities and profundities
such as bind the scheduled self

Here is the arbutus grove
whose trunks and branches tighten
like nerves, twisted witnesses,
victims of shapely winds
which blow in always unseen,
sweet from the south
or coming cold from the north,
from every direction
the prevailing force of nature

Wish I could emulate the arbutus
slough off my thin skin as easily
as these natives trees their bark
from abrasion, disdain or design,
unveiling the bare beauty
of strong, hard wood beneath

Over on Fossil Bay
the rot of herring roe
strewn amongst broken clam shells, dead crabs
on dirty grey sand, exposed bedrock,
thickened the morning air,
but gave no cause for bereavement:
these millions of botched birthings!

And none also for the Salish,
no open lamentation for a race
almost obliterated without trace
from their native habitat
save a few totems, some evidences of middens,
a score of petroglyphs of their guardian spirits
carved a thousand years ago
on smooth flat rock by the shore,
of killer whales, Leviathans again,
to guide their hunts,
the destiny of their tribe.
Having retraced them
gently with finger tips,
they now guide mine.

Exile in a Cold Land

In a winter air when bare trees
inlay calligraphics in the sky,
snow flutters perhaps
from a grey distance,
and trailed by his own voice,
a lone man walks,
afraid of being smothered,
immured in a white universe.

Night by night he threatens
to jettison the stars,
evict them in tumbles
as snow from a frozen sky,
else dreams the thin-sheeted ice
cracks beneath his feet,
fragile as a brief handshake.

Surprised

Apex, high anchor
of an April sky mishandled
so to splash the night, sans moonlight

upon us freely to the lees -
well never see, listing

in frog pause, steep Chablis
of Narcissus sleeping nearly

how our wonder is undone, unravels
aimlessly
how we've lost

you, locating Leo.
Or one said, "Ride
the dipper. It's nothing,"

and then above the racket
of the ratchets clacking
under our ascending car, peak

of that propelling climb
"You're gonna die."
But didn't.

But done before we knew it. And hard
on the heels of mesh and meld
weld personal
a cooling song

of all things wants apres

delirium
her rudimentary handle on
the far light, its libation.

Us in Everything

What to make of light
is issue

against the nay-
-sayers, turners-away
but for them at length

who swim too in its puzzlement

raising their glasses
into its assurances, modest vocabulary

of qualities in and around and upon
definities of objects and ethers, clarities

of isolation

but of itself
what is it, despite our successes

aslant here in the tulips, there
in the white flash blindness

commencing and concluding the opened
atom's invitation? Some simple telling

image drowns
in any human eye for it, a smile's
infusion, eddies of pollen
on the windshield

signals the singular singing again
of the invisible making us see and seen.