Twilight Liturgy

Twilight Liturgy

The roar of a distant highway
intrudes like a timid visitor,
peeks between mullioned fields,
then asserts with the cough of a semi.

Elsewhere, a freight train,
as if only just alive,
shoots a warning complaint
of weary, forseen disagreement.

The crickets stall on a false start,
the promise of coming chirrups
that sputtered and choked;
it is yet too cold for their throttling hymn.

The night begins its liturgy
in low, muttered phrases of song.

Thunder's Ghost

Thunder’s Ghost

By peace and obscuring walls,
by field and forest halls,
by silence of a sacred type;
your voice, lost in the muskeg,
calms the building squall.

Your breath, in the morning,
leaves me low beneath the weight of oceans.
Your heart, a heavy Albertan sky,
that hides me under stone and loam and silent water.

Yesterday, in the rain, we were
the low sky and the earth,
eager for the touch of current.
Today, the storm, unbroken, passed
and we, by token, formed of stone,
deny the thunder’s ghost.

Estuary Hymns

Estuary Hymns

When summer drops, out of the green Spring folds

and scatters in a flight of waking bees.

When owls rise in warm twilights

to add their baritone praise to the chorus of growing pains

just behind the dark of every tree –

In this spot, at this time, on this night

(no heron mars your sight) you know

what lovers know when their temples flush,

or crickets when their ankles rub,

or the night when it sees,

or the sea when the tide – swells potent to the moon.

Bottling

Listening to Jackson C. Frank - Blues Runs the Game

   On our journey through the American Southwest, on the eve of the wedding day, I sat with two friends on our motel-room balcony. We smoked our pipes and talked about life; one of us strummed on his guitar and at one point I shared a poem I had written; a bottle of homemade mead was passed around; and the crickets chirruped in the warm Phoenix air. I will not easily forget that.
   Last night we bottled the Stout and the IPA. There were just three of us in the kitchen, listening to music, sipping wine, and doing the good work of bottling. It is good to be with people. It is good to have friends to sit with. I am thankful for the good grace of friendship in my life.
  
Listening to Lightning Dust - NPR Tiny Desk Concert

   This morning at St. Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church, I became a catechumen. If you would like to know why, please ask me. I will do my best to put it into words. When the brief ceremony was over, the priest said, "welcome home" to me. Maybe that explains it better than anything else I could say.
   A year ago, I would not have understood myself. Five years ago I would hardly have recognized myself. Ten years ago, I would have greeted myself as a stranger.
   This morning at St. Herman's, a kid ran up to me and headbutted my leg. I was confused until he proclaimed, "I'm a Pachycephalosaurus", at which point I understood him perfectly. I understood because I am the same person now that I was when I was five years old and I loved dinosaurs so much that I wanted to become a paleontologist. You might not recognize me shrouded in a beard and smelling like I just walked out of an incense shop, but if you were to sit and talk to me over a glass of homemade wine, in five minutes you would find yourself talking to the person that you had always known. I still think Pachycephalosaurus is flipping sweet.

Will

Juggernaut

Listening to Frank Black - Ole Mulholland

My literate consumption behaves somewhat like a large, concrete, hexagonal block. It seems to be tremendously difficult to get rolling. In fact, I frequently need extensive help to get it to do so, particularly after I have exhausted myself at the task for some time. Once rolling, of course, assuming that the block is on a flat or downward sloping plane, it will continue to roll, juggernauting anything that stands in its way. The block will continue in this way until it reaches the necessary upward slope. At which point, the block slows and stops, refusing to move for some time, until another kind soul helps me to get it rolling again. Actually, that sounds more like my car, Marlin, stuck in Red Deer this past summer. Ah well, such is life.

Navigations

Listening to The Breeders - Night of Joy + We're Gonna Rise

We have come to the point in the conversation where a resolution seems imminent. I see how these tangled problems and hypotheses could have a conclusion, but then I see that they all end in the same place. All these interactions and relationships of joy and necessity can find a common point of termination as this year fades into the coming year. I told my boss that I was moving on in January, I told my roommate that I was moving at the end of the month, I am currently finishing the final papers of my degree, I am tenuously considering moving closer to the Orthodox Church. How much of your life is wrapped up in those four things; how many of your relationships depend on them? There are a lot of things that carry through; I am moving in with some of my friends from Trinity and I still have the same family, but the fundamental character of much of my life is currently in flux. What are my navigations for the coming year?

Listening to Patrick Watson - Big Bird in a Small Cage + Where the Wild Things Are

Now I'm sitting in my friends' kitchen, in the middle of the night, eating chocolate, contemplating Pascal, and trying to think of ways to win someone. Trying desperately to remember what love is. Trying to remember if I feel love for anyone. Because sometimes, the way my heart beats, I forget. It sounds melancholic, but right now I'm writing up a playlist entitled "Melancholy" so it might be honesty. While I'm being honest, I'll reiterate (as I so often do) that I have a tremendous hope. While it would seem that I am tossed, with random uncertainty, on the ocean of life; in truth, I rest certainly in the hands of God, wherein lies all possibility; it is the world that tosses like a tempest around me. What a contradiction am I! And how can we ignore the soul when such inner contradiction is present?

Listening to Peter Bjorn & John - Up Against the Wall

So these creatures that we have become, that toss and turn in desperate uncertainty, can find no home (no rest).

 Wild Roots

Our wild yearning and our hands
feeling in the dust for supple earth
our shoulders borne with weights
our feet seem raw or wrecked with callous
from beating down to the South and West 

The wild horns that push from our skulls
the scales and fur that tear our clothes
the burning tears we try our
level best to ignore

If we could feel the sun
as it glares upon each violent turn 
if we could hear our hearts
hammering like nails into our chest
if we could feel our scales fall
 from eyes and see what really bides

Our features would deepen in
each appropriate line
our burdens would weigh no longer
on our straightening back
our feet would mend in gentle skin
and strong roots would form
grow down towards the water
we would be still then
above the flowing water

The Hollow Sky; The Hollow Sky

   I started on a new writing book, earlier in this semester. I got maybe six pages in, with some revelatory poems and ideas, and then I lost it. I lost it while I was traveling to the airport to go to Barrie ON. and when I returned to the West coast I had lost the impetus to write. I tried a couple of poems on the new typewriter and then I just stopped, consumed by the busyness of school, work, life. That isn't a great way to live, not writing. So I've been dancing on the edges of writing poetry again. I've been sketching and creating; I've been writing down my thoughts. I feel as though I am pregnant with words, but they have not come to term yet.
   The Undercurrent is entering a new phase of it's existence. It is growing beyond a singular vision, which is frightening and beautiful. We are making a blog called Undercurrent B-Sides, which is something I never thought we were going to do. We have been swirling in the maelstrom of controversy surrounding Trinity's impending CLAC unionization. At some point, when you begin to actualize ideas, they interact with the "other" and come back to you changed. You may not recognize what is coming back to you; you may be confused and angry; you may try to keep what you have made contained, keep the vision singular. But that is death. We tie up our own identity in the things we make, and when that changes, we feel that identity threatened. But since when is our identity self-contained; we negotiate it with the other. So we allow our identity to be pliable. Eventually this project will eclipse us and move beyond us, but until that point, we allow a part of ourselves to be negotiated with the "other". And that is life.

October Invades

Waiting on Hope

Held deep within my chest, my very being,
the smallest seed is nestled, waits for spring.
The Gardener has tilled without me seeing,
made fertile ground where all I saw was sin.

And, seeing not the soul nor its true state,
I balked to think my being could be transformed,
but in my chest the sleeping seed awaits
and sends its roots and tendrils to my core.

Then, at the time appointed for its growth,
it breaks the fallow surface of my skin;
the hope that lay beneath has been exposed
and we are startled by the change within.

The Gardener, the one who placed the seed,
has planted hope and possibility.

So October invades, and with it all the death in autumn. All our hopes that rest in lesser things are getting burnt up like so many dead leaves. That security in summer money flakes and peels to reveal something rotten; crack that sitting stump, to maggots and a stench of death. And when that chill October wind sets home our loneliness, we know our hope is not companionship. Your house, your job, your car; shed autumn fire until they sit like blackened skeletons or funeral pyres. Mostly just that curious idea that your hope for a future rests in one other person. When down beneath the crust of dirt that's quickly freezing over, there's a deeper current and a seed that's buried in good earth. That seed is hope in the One who holds all possibility in his hand.

Undercurrent

Burial, Dreams, and Wild Seeds

Listening to The Pixies - Silver

Strange dreams, a time of endings and new beginnings, exciting and terrifying uncertainty, the dregs of mead bottles. I'm sketching new fonts for a secret project. It's super secret.

Listening to The Reverend Horton Heat - Psychobilly Freakout

Those dreams though, they tend to haunt you through the days. Deeper meaning in them is elusive, but the idea that they are merely pastiche is unthinkable.

Listening to Neko Case - Middle Cyclone (album)

Burying people is one of the things that we tend to have to do as humans. Comes a time and we have to put a person that we knew in the ground and know that we won't see them again on this side of the divide. There are orphans and widows left behind and we do our best to see them through, to do right by the buried, but it must haunt us. It's not just that our own mortality becomes that much more apparent (and it does); we knew this person and, as our dubious honour for having known them, we get to lower them in a wooden case about six feet under the ground and then throw dirt on them until we've erased any trace of them. And somebody has to do that; bodies have to go in the ground. So we do it, because it's our job, our duty to put our friend in the ground. That's all a bit macabre, but I just gave you whiskey sonnets and you know what you're getting into.

Listening to Neko Case - Vengeance is Sleeping

I miss you all and won't use names. It feels like some kind of cheap desire, this feeling. I keep turning up old dirt and finding names printed on buried keepsakes; half disintegrated, but jarring a wash of longing. Blind passion that does not know what my own mind knows, the residue of half-love with a half-heart (a half man carried that desire), distant flirtation that knows itself least of all, the border of knowing and unknowing, other to my other to your self. I am careful not to arouse expectation, but I carry hope deep within me. A hope that my cogent mind cannot direct. It's a hope that defies my own defined expectations (that arise unbidden). And who put this hope in me? Who planted this wild seed that defies the dirt my heart is buried beneath? Who waters it and whispers to a struggling sprout ("grow stronger than you know how")? Let me reiterate: I have hope.

Whiskey Sonnets

-Sometimes, when you are drowning in whiskey, you feel like writing poetry. Sometimes you write sonnets.-

                        .I.
The velvet curtain slowly pulled apart,
reveals a heap both pitiful and meek.
And whelmed within you see in dirty dark
two amber eyes among the filthy reek.

Not poverty that slays the man, but vice;
vice bitter, vice betray, and vice belays
the entrance underneath the makers eyes
to worship and to in his presence stay.

So cure me Lord, why don't you strike my doubt
for perfect sonnets never will atone
and if I'm made to suffer in this gout
then let me never suffer on my own

I'll fall against the grain in sinful pain
or see it carried out in rains of grace

                         .II.
The whiskey burns and smoke floats down my throat.
Sweet melancholic fire concedes to rise,
both West and South behind my quivering mouth
and back and forth behind my eyes.

But dost inebriance intrude too far
to squelch the murmer of the truly true,
oblivious ignore the fatal scar;
under no sun this foul weed it grew.

Let no drink grow too proud and tall
to smother what I've held as good and right,
no spark induce my lungs to fail,
no pleasure that my body will not fight.

Conceal every vice in temperance
and burn hellfire in my indolence.

Sinking Ships and Bursting Levees

Listening to the Breeders - Night of Joy

All the things that I have had no time for in the course of twelve hour days and nine day weeks have begun to pile up like a pregnant tide, ready to pour in and overwhelm irrisistably. Sandcastles will melt down to their elements and vast dykes will provide only temporary resistance. To solve this problem I must row out in a sinking boat and do battle with the ocean rising or seek higher ground and try to knock the moon from its tidal orbit. A flood is coming and I fear my levees wont hold.

Listening to Marcy Playground - Sex and Candy

We all go down with sinking ships, not just captains, skippers, first mates. We all bleed the same blood when one bleeds, scrapes a knee. We all die the same small death when one discovers mortality. And if we choose the way of grace, we thrill when one new babe is born, we welcome home each sea lost sailor, rejoice when one soul bows the knee.

Listening to Son House - Grinning in Your Face

Proverbs 14:10 (NIV)
Each heart knows its own bitterness,
and no one else can share its joy.

Diving Bell

Listening to Smokey & Miho - Ocean in your Eyes

We make acquaintances, exchange pleasantries, get lost in a slipstream city, burning down the wind like a phoenix on the breeze. We know, of course, that these are the most temporary connections of all, tenuous fingers gripping fingers. And yet, if we ever lapsed in these conventions, we would shrivel into dusty gouls. It is the very fluid of our veins.

Listening to Eels - Bride of Theme from Blinking Lights

Everything is gated here; framed by cords or hoses. They crown each entrance and exit with a subtle dignity. We walk like indentured princes, holding our heads in the knowledge that we own nothing, but feeling our birthright coursing in our veins and knowing: we were born to be kings.

Listening to Tegan & Sara - Living Room / Terrible Storm

Interim, between unknowns. I can't tell what we were doing and sure no clue where we are headed. Like Tom Joad we put one foot in front of the other. But for now, we wait.

The refinery dominates much of my consciousness. It informs even the things that I write; as translated, of course, through the lens of the literature that I read. I don't subscribe to the school of thought that claims we cannot experience the "poetic feeling" without a form to interpret it through, but I do think it's the form that makes the "poetic feeling" legible. I finished Sinclair Ross' As For Me and My House in all its glorious bleakness and this informs my writing. I have been motoring through Stienbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (see what I did there) and you should know that his apocalyptic, rambling style is unavoidably infectious. And this city, this air, these people, this rich earth, those pregnant glances, the stench of shit, the trembling and tenbreous, the beating of a vengeful sun, the goading and grating, these deep mornings, a hand clenched in a pocket, wind, and you most of all. Each one of you. You invade me and change me more than you know. But I intend to let you know.

Will

Ghosts and Living Things

It's a new home under the same old sun. There might be ghosts under these floorboards, in this space where I too reside. The trees are empty of any new life as though time and season have no meaning here. The sky is bigger, as if declaring its own importance; and to us it is (important). We can't avoid this place changing us, but the change I want is under the surface, beneath the floorboards, the roots of the tree, and the rich black earth under the sun-baked crust. It's a new heart under the same old skin.

Sniraffe

The Language of the Dying Suns

Listening to She Keeps Bees - Dig On

   I finished another paper last night. Ending it, I was listening to Bright Eyes' I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning and at 3:30 in the morning I was in that place where I too felt like going wild. I'm close to this first finishing and am excited to not know what to do. I have hope. Let me reiterate: I have hope.
   I find it difficult to post on a poetry blog because I have been in a drought of inspiration. I get crazy in times like these and I will write about anything. I will write because, of course, I would die if I did not. The community poetry blog is a good format though; in the same breath it allows you to show your poetry to other people, critical people, and to place a more realistic level of importance on your writing. It does not allow you to be esoteric, you must engage.

listening to Shakey Graves - Roll the Bones

   I just thought I'd share that. One of my loaned books was returned to me last night with a letter and more poetry. That is the best way. So long as we keep writing letters and putting poetry in them, our language will not be one of metal or binaries. I had hoped to leave this particular book in this particular person's care for a time, but I cannot pass up a letter; letters are the best. But let me say it again (til our language dies and we are left speechless on the shore of an unknown ocean (and even then)): hope remains.

Will

Notes from Under a Bare Pine

If I must make one post in the year 2012, I suppose it makes sense that it would be in the heart of paper writing season; right where I have no business writing anything extraneous but have the greatest desire to do so.

Listening to Codeine by Trampled by Turtles

It's nothing to do with the Buffy St. Marie song, of which The Litter did an incomparable cover, but Trampled by Turtles is putting down some sweet bluegrass vibes here.
The semester is going; it evaporates and I am left with the dross of all the things I didn't do and the refuse from all the things I did.
Hope is persistent. It cannot be ignored.

Listening to First Love by Emmy the Great

It isn't Leonard Cohen, but it somehow escapes being simply derivative. This song exists on a different plane from that abominable pastiche of Sweet Home Alabama from He-who-shall-not-be-named.
Newness enters the world and I couldn't tell you how. Bhabha claims it's all hybridity; that we are made new as we encounter the other. I'm inclined to agree, but the places that this idea leads to; the places I am led to by hybridity, identity as negotiated, losing a progressive view of history (with our comforting origin and telos), and knowing otherness in proximity. These are frightening and beautiful. (what's wrong with a few sentence fragments here and there; they'll be resolved eventually (it really just serves to build tension))

Listening to If I Wanted Someone by Dawes

If I wanted someone? Want? Desire is fickle. I'm not sure what I want, but this sentiment rings with some truth in my ears.
And suddenly we are paralyzed. We go from melting glaciers to falling, exhausted, under a bare pine. We had the world coursing in our veins for the shortest time, climbing through the substance of nothingness with blinding voracity. And we are muted, lost in a hollow of snow. Silent and brooding before a mountain that is stronger than we are. But hope is persistent, it cannot be ignored.

Will

Student Playlist #3

Atlas Sound released their album Parallax this past month and I was so intrigued by the name of one of the songs, Modern Aquatic Nightsongs, that I had to give it a listen. Well I wasn't that impressed; I guess I had an idea of what an aquatic nightsong should sound like and Atlas Sound just didn't capture that.

Flash forward a bit and I'm looking for a theme for a playlist to go into the latest Mars Hill issue. All I can think of is the fact that Atlas Sound just didn't capture the meaning of aquatic nightsongs (if you want a band that does that, you'll have to go with Future Islands). I made the playlist and submitted it and it was going to be in this issue, but had to be cut for space restrictions. Here it is anyways; these are my November Aquatic Nightsongs.

November Aquatic Nightsongs/Nautical Midnight Music

Dolphins Into The Future - On The High Seas

-This is purely to set the tone for the rest of the playlist. If you'd like, you can skip to the next song about 3 minutes in because it doesn't change much from there.

AA Bondy - Of The Sea

-This is closer to a ballad of the sea, but it's definitely a November song.

M83 - My Tears Are Becoming A Sea

-So you might be thinking M83? Last I remembered they were just mediocre shoegazing electropop. Well they're still shoegazing electropop, but they're anything but mediocre with their latest album.

Seu Jorge - Changes

-For the soundtrack to The Life Aquatic, Jorge recorded fourteen David Bowie covers. All acoustic and all with a slightly nautical feel. This just exemplifies how these songs play out.

Buck 65 - Whispers In The Waves

-Gord Downie collaborating with Buck 65. Need I say more.

Future Islands - Tybee Island

-I'm just discovering these guys. Hailing from Baltimore, they've been putting out a plethora of music since midway through the last decade and their latest album is turning heads. Specifically turning my head.

Underwater Seacreatures - You Forgot

-What do you mean Grooveshark doesn't have any Underwater Seacreatures? Yeah. That's how lo-fi they are. You want chillwave? Underwater Seacreatures is gonna give it to you.

Harry Manx & Kevin Breit - Sisters

-This instrumental piece is on here courtesy of Tim Andries. Sends chills up my spine. Is it really an aquatic nightsong? Well I'm making this playlist now, aren't I.

Mad Rad - Underwater

-Makes me feel like I'm at a midnight rave under the sea. People and fish all grooving together in a dark ocean.

Freelance Whales - Generator 1st Floor

-It's a sunrise song, but that makes sense because hopefully some rays are peeking over the horizon by now.

Corn and Cut-Offs

A week before classes started, I was doing some landscaping in Coquitlam. I can't remember how the topic came up, but I told one of the workers on the site that it was going to be my last day. He seemed to think that there was plenty of work out there and that I would be better off staying. '"Oh no" I said, "I'm going back to school." To which he replied, "good for you" and paused, "what grade?"
But in all seriousness, I do occasionally reminisce about grade school. From this side of the great divide, it appears to have been made up of eating lunch, holding hands, and playing hooky. In truth I was probably under a lot of stress, but at the very least I could hang onto the fact that my work would have no real lasting effect on the course of my life. As long as I got into university, I could do whatever I wanted with my highschool time. That is no longer the case.
We have been gradually dividing the week up into special days, flash-in-the-pan traditions that will only last so long as we have time, money, and memory for them. Monday is Burger Monday, wherein we travel to the Fort Langley Pub and partake of their Monday burger deal and a couple of pints. Tuesday is either Ben Cooper Day or Cut-Off-Jeans Tuesday, depending on the weather. Wednesday is Creeper Wednesday, rule number one of which is, "no actual creeping." Thursdays are Peppermint Thursdays, where peppermint tea is consumed and I endeavour to listen to some White Stripes. The weekend has not been allocated. We are creating a structure here which, to the casual observer, might seem meaningless or even unnoticable, but which gives meaning to an otherwise arbitrary separation of the week.
Three minutes ago a corn roast started. If I actually owned a pair of cut-offs, I would be wearing them. Regardless, I'm still going to go get my corn on.

Will

Student Playlist #2

I've submitted a student playlist to Mars Hill in hopes of getting it published. Here's the finished product regardless. Enjoy,

Will

These songs are all terrible for studying to, but who's studying anyways?

1. Son House - Levee Camp Moan

- Son House had a job on the levee and a good looking woman, but after nearly ten minutes of this song, you'll be guaranteed to have the blues. This is the heart of the Delta blues.

2. Breathe Owl Breathe - Dragon

- A tale of a princess and a dragon who are pen pals. If you try to study to this, you'll be doing an injustice to your work.

3. Tom Waits - Green Grass

- I always hesitate to recommend Tom Waits to friends. If you think you can handle him though, this is one of his most subdued songs in recent years.

4. Buck 65 - Corrugated Tin Facade

- A haunting song off of his best album. Sorry K-os and K'naan, but Buck 65 is my favorite Canadian rapper and he's a CBC radio host to boot.

5. Johnny Cash - The Mercy Seat

- Covering Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Cash characteristically makes Cave's lyrics say exactly what he wants them to. You may want to listen more than once.

6. Blind Willie McTell - I Got To Cross The River Jordan

- That's right, more blues! Make sure you listen to the 4:37 version from his Library of Congress recordings because the recordings close out with a 1:51 refrain of the same name.

7. Josh Garrels - Zion & Babylon

- I still can't believe that I was lucky enough to see Josh Garrels live at TWU a few years back. I also can't believe he still doesn't have a Wikipedia article. Somebody get on that!

8. The Eels - Climbing To The Moon

- If you're ever feeling a little insane (for me it's the months of March and April), throw on some Eels and you will start to feel positively normal.

9. The Unicorns - I Was Born (A Unicorn)

- I don't know about you, but I love it when bands have theme songs. These guys are also from Montreal, so it's pretty much guaranteed that they will rock you.

10. John Lee Hooker - The Waterfront

- This is one of my favorites from John Lee Hooker. It's such a pure distillation of the blues and it's a perfect closing song.