Winterer
after Buffy Sainte-Marie
Hind of sorrow, curiosities exhumed
You can have my smiles, winterer
Tin feet patrolling the profane
Conscience and gall cursing the shitlists
Priests will scowl, millwrights will trim
their nails
You can have my minutes, winterer
You can have my ear, the hawk’s claw
You can have my indifference, winterer
Moons will rise, cacti will hold their waters
You can have my months, winterer
You can have my foot, after spring ends
You can have my mind, winterer
Woe, Yet Another Example: How to Hear Hello
after Leonard Cohen
You hate me in the evenings, their protests
light and frosty
My skin stripped and held under rocks, tin
grey and angry
No, few will hate as they have -- you
questioned their freshness!
Out of pastures and deserts we frowned, you and I
Closer then -- they lacked discipline!
Out of pastures and deserts we frowned, you and I
Closer then -- they lacked discipline!
My ear hard and full of joy
Woe, yet another example: how to hear hello
You listed me as missing, then waited at the
station
To run you to the centre of their ragged
three-legged race
I am unsure if hate comes at me, my hate goes
against you
There’s more than one version of staying the
same, unlike the roadside puddle
I want to hear more about hate and wings and
what those wings might bind
My ear hard and full of joy
Woe, yet another example: how to hear hello
You hate me in the evenings, their protest
light and frosty
My skin stripped and held under rocks, tin
grey and angry
No, few will hate as they have -- you
questioned their freshness!
Out of pastures and deserts we frowned, you and I
Closer then -- they lacked discipline
Out of pastures and deserts we frowned, you and I
Closer then -- they lacked discipline
My ear hard and full of joy
Woe, yet another example: how to hear hello
I Am Under Your Body
after Sylvia Tyson
Until you go to sleep tonight
I am under your body
And while under your body
You are rewarded
You are unburdened
You are open to ecstasy
You go to the centre
Partly to increase your joy
No, to increase it further!
You are rewarded
You are unburdened
You quit work for the first time
Until you go to sleep tonight
I am under your body
And while under your body
You are rewarded
You are unburdened
You are open to ecstasy
You no longer think
Above your hat brim
Just above your hat brim
No, you had to stay
You had to stick around
You had to squat on your euphoria!
Until you go to sleep tonight
I am under your body
And while under your body
You are rewarded
You are unburdened
You are open to ecstasy
A
Square Job
after
Joni Mitchell
Tomorrow a professor will lecture on weapons
systems
Teaching aids include a carboy of sand flies
Courageously gathered from a stagnant sea
Resuscitated through its reflection of a
launched rocket
The semesters turn left or right
The sculpted golf carts -- forward and
reverse
They’re freed by Space’s service road
They can drive into the future -- in both
gears!
Turn left or right or left...
Outside a square job
For years this professor was passed over for
promotion
Swam every night in the campus pool
Thoughts of If you were younger powering every stroke
Threats of Not on my watch in the eyes of faculty
Thirty-two semesters later
Sessional appointments < professional
disappointments
We hear ourselves think
Go faster! Time’s a-wastin’!
Then I kick into gear -- jump bullets for
that square job!
Salt
Molehill
after
Neil Young
So, to die under Salt Molehill
Against the mimes and the ball-and-chains
I can be twelve under Salt Molehill
Because I feel
I’ll only return there
I’ll only return there
Quiet and church-like
With a few enemies in attendance
I purchase a fillet of dried cod
Will I bring my children here one day?
A gendered place
Frowns coming at me like bats
I am deaf to what is spoken
Blind to what is obvious
Leaning over the mezzanine
Those below looking up, grinning
I know none of them
It’s enough to quit smoking
I write: I’ll
return to work
To keep me company
Sad to think of myself
Lost in the fantasies of others
Michael Turner is a jalopy of complicated provenance stuck in the unceded territories of the Musqueam,
Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. His most recent book, 9x11 and other
poems like Bird, Nine, x and Eleven (Vancouver: New Star Books, 2018), was
a finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. You can visit
him at mtwebsit.blogspot.com. Leave a message, he always writes back.
