Isn't it just fine
living in North America:
I have my daily bread
my education debts
and my so-called
hellish assignments
and later a gruelling job
and later maybe a house
and later still a family -

but I am a first-world person
who can become a third-world problem;
if everyone lived like me,
there wouldn't be much leftover
for slum-bound masses
and their children, thin, raggedy,
begging on street corners
while their youth dies
on parched lips
and empty stomachs.

My later is their never,
my constant their lack;
and still, even though
I well know
my self-preservation
keeps me from breaking
routine and giving my life
to others,

there is nothing quite like
the selfishness of living.

Being a professor

I can imagine
being a professor
must be hard.

It must be;
otherwise I don't get
the uncombed hairdos,
the mismatched outfits,
the mis-stapled handout
and the bare-bones PPT.

It must be tough,
all that research for a living -
it's gotta be -
it must explain
how some papers disappear
for weeks on end;
it must be the cause
for the fourth cup of coffee
at ten in the morning;
it must be the reason
for the spaced-out looks
they sometimes wear
walking through the halls.

A good professor, though,
is gold and worth it all:
the papers you cried over at 2 a.m.,
the tuition fees that empty your accounts,
the jostling in a fifty-year-old elevator
that might stop mid-ascent
as you try to get to their lecture.

But yes; I suppose it must
be quite the life.

On the way to Atwood

February 14th, the plan was to see
Margaret Atwood speak.
We ate dinner and
I donned my literary garb
and all the way driving to campus
I sported a heroin-grin
in anticipation of what I call
"a Canadian literary icon."

"It's going to be big,"
I said, and he just chuckled
at my saucer eyes
and reverence.

We parked, walked,
and he said,
"I don't even know what she wrote,
Margaret Laurence."
I chide him: AT-WOOD
NOT LAU-RENCE
and he laughs sheepishly
while I observe
that Laurence is dead
and that a talk by her
would be disconcerting
as I'd imagine her body
would be in some stage of rot.

In Mac Hall there's a crowd,
but the gates are closed
and, while confused,
an usher regretfully informs
"We are at capacity"
because if a fire were to start -
which I half-wish it had
(for it would bring Atwood out!) -
the audience would potentially die
burning, an oh-not-quite-so-poetic
death.

We stand there with the news,
I with the weight of it,
he uncomprehending why this
Atwood event can't be attended
by a standing audience
like they do in concerts.

He disappears and I try to find
consolation in talking to others
who have also been rejected.
A few minutes later,
he comes back says he sneaked in
but that they kicked him out:
"How bad do you want to get in?"
"Not bad enough to create
civil disturbance."

And there it was,
the whole evening,
as we turned our backs
and headed home,
he to play clarinet,
while I sit in the sofa corner
reading and trying to swallow
bitter disappointment.

But it was the 14th,
so the night ended
with us sandwiched
watching the horse show
off CBC online,
drinking tea,
and I felt luckier
than those who got in
and saw Margaret Atwood.

Chili

First, cut the onion and garlic
and fry them until fragrant
then, add the vegetables,
multicolored, one by one,
stir and toss and stir
then add beans,
black red white
and top off
with spices.

The recipe sounds simple
but the flavor in chili
comes from kitchen-play:
from-behind-hugs
and shared tasting
off little spoons,
the warmth of company
as the stew bubbles,
thickens, and entices
taste buds to try.

At the dinner table,
nothing beats two steaming bowls
sprinkled with parmesan
eaten in appreciative murmurs
of the heat on the tongue
while snow falls freshly
to the ground.

Looking Educated

University students
spend their most scholarly hours
dressed in rags, sitting bum-sweating
in front of a computer screen,
or lying on a bed strewn
with review sheets;
these are the critical hours
that are graded later
by profs equally disheveled ,
crouched at haphazardly adorned desks
scrunching brows in utter befuddlement
at a student's use of the word "tangentially"
(as, tangentially, that essay was about
Ernest Hemingway's tendency
to "tangentially" stitch
short stories together as if they were a whole...)
but no, the point is: scholarship is not glamorous,
it's not somehow funky, suave or eye-catching,
it's tedium and lots of it to get through,
and I wonder, sitting here at my desk
half-dressed in old T-shirt and underwear,
if I can look down at myself and pronounce,
"Why, don't I look educated today."

Questions of substance

If I ask myself "why"
I often find no answer
or none, at least, that makes sense -
so "why" is discarded among
the balled-up paper fists
and the skins of onions rotting
in the garbage.

So might, instead, "how"
be a good substitute?
But still, if there is no
origin of process,
no blank slate,
no square one, then
"how" trickles off
into the shower drain,
thick with dirty suds
and matted hair.

Then maybe "what"
is all that is left, and
what is left is
a thing
that chokes
and wounds
and cannot be touched
or seen or smelt or heard
only felt,
like the slow sinking
of stomach into
pelvic bones and
the chest-ache
of breath caught
too thinly.

Pesto

If I had a mortar and pestle
I'd crush it all -
nuts and all -
and derive satisfaction
from the physical pounding
on the helpless lifeless
foodstuff
in the bowl.

I could hear the crunch
of pulverized almonds
the squelch of sticky garlic
and watch the bruising
of delicate basil leaves;

then the action becomes
socially acceptable
and the fury becomes
an exerted manifestation
of aggression towards
lifeless plant matter.

Mortar-less,
pestle-less,
and restless,
I settle
for the expediency
of a food processor
whining and grinding
its way against
the fibers of my nerves.

Rush

Rush everything
rush
the bus the cars
the walking people
deadlined essays
catching the crosswalk
elevator doors
two-at-a-time stairs
up down through doors
through halls
through rooms

and save the last
breath
for the next hurried rush
always the next
and never for now

Boxers

I don't mean the sweaty men
who throw punches
at each other across
a jeered-at arena.

I mean the little bit of fabric
that covers male buttocks,
male hips, male thighs,
male nuts and bolts
and whatever else is
down there.

Women's panties
are made to make women
look sexy;
Men's boxers
are made to -
to what?

They don't hold anything in place,
they don't serve aesthetic purpose,
they don't entice flocks
of excited vixens ready
to rip their sexy, heart-patterned,
dick-slitted, cushy cottoned,
elastic-banded, un-form-fitting
piece of loincloth from men's crotches.

And yet boys flaunted them
in high school,
red-yellow-pink
above too-baggy trousers,
ghetto belts and
Converse sneakers
as if to say:
make way, baby,
my manhood is here
to stay.

Twins

They called us twins:
we had the same kind of haircut,
the same long, thin torso,
the toothy grins.
To us it didn't matter
that I was much younger,
she my aunt,
I half-this-half-that,
she half-here-half-there.

It lasted maybe
a couple years.

Then my figure rounded
while hers thinned,
my hair grew longer
while hers fell out,
I developed breasts
whereas she had one -
the other the culprit
of her sleepless nights
and chemoed cells.

No one called us twins
anymore,
it seemed inaccurate,
wrong,
when I was just
beginning living
she was just
beginning leaving.

I miss who she was
and I know she missed
who she used to be
and now that I am older
I know why she missed
the girl who would ride,
carefree, on the back
of her boyfriend's motorcycle
so long ago
in San Francisco.

At 24 I have had
more than she ever had
and feel guilty, a little,
that I could not take
my twin with me
through the sensations,
experiences,
youth
and all that makes this
worth living for.

They called us twins
and I wish it had lasted longer -
I wish it would last still.