Colin Morton (cmorton@cyberus.ca) is a full-time writer in Ottawa. Checkout his http://www.swifty.com/lc.





Black Box


Not one body intact

The searchers at the crash site found
not one body intact

I have to report that a spokesperson said
the searchers at the crash site found
not one body intact

Witnesses at the scene were stunned and silent
I have to report that a spokesperson said
the searchers at the crash site found
not one body intact

In all my years I have never seen anything like it
witnesses at the scene were stunned and silent
I have to report that a spokesperson said
the searchers at the crash site found
not one body intact











A week of dreams



a bus trip to visit family


a fishing party in a flooded bowling alley


leavetakings


a fish caught and eaten out of hand


a long stay in a short hotel


books burn in two places


buying a pack of cards










The Good Place


What kind of place is this so proud of being no worse with recovery just around the corner leading indicators say? Did I lose my way take a wrong turn back there somewhere? Were they misled who brought me here and said it's all yours? No worse than the neighbours anyway it'll all look better in the morning. A good place for a medicine wheel don't you think? Here on this rise above the river a good place to honour the six directions though few of us know how and those who might teach have mostly succumbed to a pretty soft life though aimless and scared of the dark coming earlier each night. Good jobs to come home from some of them no worse anyway they lead decent lives dream of leading decent lives anyway once recovery comes and it's just around the corner leading indicators say no worse anyway. A good place for a medicine wheel once the playing field is levelled these firetraps torn down where decent people dream of leading decent lives when (and it's just around the corner) recovery comes. Did I lose my way back there somewhere on my way to this place which in truth is no worse than it might be if all who've been told it's all theirs start pulling thinking it's enough anyway no worse to have a piece of the action our own piece of what might have been just around the corner anyway no worse than what we left behind or did I lose my way is it not all mine after all? Is it just around the corner the good place will there be any left when I get there?

- pub. _Poetry Canada_, 1994







Colin reports: "The following poem was performed with the jazz group Sugarbeat last weekend at the Ottawa International Jazz Festival. People really appreciated the poetry-music interaction. I hope they also work at some level on the electronic page."



I Can't Get Started


As if anyone could find
let alone define the life of night
of dark of blue the true
sound that could spell an end and again a beginning

As if you signed your name
in every word you said

As if any name on a treaty signified
any mark any seal
any assignation

In the rainy square outside the railway station
any pact any peace declaration

Anywhere you say I'll meet you there







Nefertiti

I dreamt you with
the Statue of Liberty's face
half-buried in sand

Bent my ear as if
I knew how to get the truth
out of oracles

Learned about what
you'd expect from a stone

Walked all the way home with a burn and
a mouthful of sand




-=-=-=-=-

The Gap


In the holes between memories
In the blind spot missed in the rear-view mirror
Through cracks in the walls
Under doors that don't quite latch
Between hands that don't quite touch
Filling the distance that opens with every goodbye
The gap spreads, the vacuum we always abhorred
But where we've been heading all along.

I have glimpsed it on occasion, still do ~
More often, perhaps, since the time
I gazed in and nearly lost it
Drawn down in the undertow ~ the current
Of so much separation can drown ~
The parting, the forgetting, the trembling
And settling of the earth that leave holes
In and between us. And we never

Learn. Here I am again gazing, half
Mesmerized by the dark invitation
To step out of the loop and forget, to let
The spaces between words spread out as far as the margins
as if nothing could say
as much as silence.








-

The coastlines of the archipelago


In Arctic Waters

On the cold floor of the Barents Sea off the shores of Novaya Zemlya, 3000 km north of Moscow, engine oil oozes from the casing of a scuttled submarine's nuclear engine. The salts in the sea water have corroded its structure, so it oozes a grainy slush, no longer oil. Slowly bleeding rust into these same waters lie barrels of irradiated waste, nestled gently on a bed of stones.

The man who gave the order to scuttle and dump wore the uniform of an ex-state from which he still receives a dwindling pension. On the day he gave the order his plans included eternal watchfulness, at least for the next 20,000 years. They must have. The watchers must have been in his plans.

But already his sense of time has begun to implode. Each month he waits in line outside a government office to pick up his pension cheque before its value erodes away in the mail. He has even thought of selling his gold retirement watch to a Western tourist if it comes to that, though he prays every day it never will.

He did not think to pray on the day he gave the order to scuttle. He was cold. His boots pinched. He was far from home. His only thought was to get the damn job done and radio back the news of his success.






All that is solid


The founder whose bronze head rolls in the street
said it best: All that is solid
melts into air

All that looked solid once

like the wall round his contradiction
since gone under the ball
and brought home in pieces
curiosities

set up in family rooms
as if to remind us

.


We work the streets for all we're worth
forgetful we were other once
will be again

till one day we look up
and a new flag
waves from the pole

.


First everything goes soft
then fluid
a sign to flag and return to
as if ...
.


We're caught mouthing words
we once thought foreign
accessing the fax
at the corner store


My machine talks to your machine
and logs off with the information
in advanced decay

Tomorrow the shadows on the screen
will have shifted

and when the error message reads
General system failure
we won't believe it

any more than the shoppers now
locked out of State No 1

.


Millenium will come and go
while we reset our watches

.


Everyman's football
the founder's head
rolls in the dust

but he wasn't the one who betrayed us
to these boulevards of rubble
where old landmarks
dissolve in the rain


--



Colin Morton

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