(Poem) What's that sound?

This poem was written for the Jen Mesch Dance Conspiracy performance at the Centennial Centre for Interdisciplinary Science (CCIS) building at the University of Alberta on March 12, 2015. The poem was inspired by radio-telescopic recordings of the sounds made by the planets in our solar system.

All the celestial bodies referenced here are in the video linked above. Enjoy!


What’s that sound?
Yes, that one
The ringing echoes
of the orb that wears the crown
This is Radio Free Jupiter!
Pugnacious punk ambient radiophonic red-spot rock ‘n’ roll
ringing through the solar system
like it was hers to begin with
Big sexy gas giant, switched-on solar circuitry with storms to burn

What’s that sound?
No, that one
That rumbling in the shadows
that frosty splash of sulphur ash aside the colossus
Hadal contrabass counterpoint
Volcanic blasts splattering at the swirling gaseous canvas
spread across its sky
Ionic artspace, Jackson Pollock studio, Jovian circuitry, silver and gold pockmarks
with guttural undulating undertones

What’s that sound?
No, that one
That swirling urgency
that plaintive pulse
from the dark side of the ringed one
singing and sobbing
Miranda is bleeding, scratched and forlorn
Saturnine by nature and temperament
forever howling at the canopy of night

What’s that sound?
Not that one, that one
For whom does that bell toll?
Ringing like arctic blasts
through a hundred haunted bell towers
Is this the solemn chill that calmed the waters to somnolent Sri Lanka?
The dissonant chimes that calls the Milky Way to prayer?
Váruna, Ouranos, sawing sideways through cosmic currents
buzzsaw of the beyond, slicing space with morbid grace

What’s that sound?
Yes, that one
That splash of blue ocean
amid the black beyond
delicately orchestrated typhoons
of silver strings
rhapsody in cobalt and ultramarine
Holst never stopped to listen to the blue voice
The Mystic, it turns out, was also the romantic

What’s that sound?
The slow hiss
Hubble’s dilemma
That pulsing spectral omnipresence
the gears of the cosmic wheelhouse
locking and grinding
forever stretching the perimeter
of the Eridanus Supervoid
Hello darkness, my old friend

In space everybody can year you scream
hear you scratch and rage against the void
skip along the stone paths of the Kuiper Belt
and sing along with mournful Sedna’s
Skeleton Woman blues
pausing at Señor Gomez’s burger bar
before a night swim in the gently lapping magenta lagoon nebula
Sounds like a nothingth of an eternity in the universe
where superlatives reign supreme and dark matter matters

What’s that sound?
Which one?

I looked in the mirror, Jim. And this is what I saw.

First of all, can somebody smarter than me please explain to me what the hell is going on in this province?? First we were suddenly broke and hemorrhaging money left, right, and centre thanks to sagging global oil prices. Then, somehow, inexplicably, the province was running a surplus. And now gas prices are back up to nearly a buck a litre. And wasn't the whole gas price slide a punitive measure by the OPEC bigwigs against the psycho KGB cowboy in Moscow and his pals in Tehran and Damascus? I don't get it.

Whatever the case, our boom-and-bust economy is now, apparently, bust again, and our esteemed crown prince now tells us, in a nutshell, that it's our own fault. According to Jim Prentice, we all have to “look in the mirror” and take responsibility for the province’s precarious financial situation. OK Jim, I take responsibility. But what I want to know at this juncture is how much responsibility I, personally, should take. After all, I'm not from Alberta originally and have only been taking advantage of government programs and opportunities here since mid-2008. Does that mean I'm less responsible for our present mess than someone who's lived here all their life, while at the same time more so than someone who just arrived?

If we were to portion out blame equally, among all Albertans, we would technically be looking at about 7.6 seconds of penance per Albertan per year. Given that there are now 4,146,000 of us in this province, and 365 days in a year, that's literally how our wages of guilt would be monetized. You know, like the flat tax our esteemed leaders still stubbornly stand by.

But that's based on the assumption that everybody currently living in Alberta is equally culpable for getting us in the pickle that we're in. Which, as I previously mentioned, strikes me as unfair given our current rate of population growth. Alberta's population grew by 3.8 per cent in 2014, which means that of the aforementioned 4,146,000 people, about 150,000 just arrived from elsewhere, and frankly it would be unfair to saddle them with this burden of economic shame. Especially given our provincial leaders' heretofore urgent tone with regards to impending labour shortages here.

This reduces our pool of culpable Albertans to around 3,996,000. That raises our individual burden of guilt to around 7.9 seconds. Still totally manageable. That said, I don't think our dear leader would see it that way. Clearly Alberta's urban centres bear more of the blame than rural areas, given their pesky demands for better roads, better transit, more schools, more . . . everything, frankly. As of 2011 (the most recent statistics available), 83 per cent of Albertans resided in urban areas. That takes us down to roughly 3,316,000 people who are really blameworthy. So if you've lived in an urban area in Alberta for more than one full year, you now officially have to feel bad for 9.5 seconds a year.

Not so fast. At least 20 per cent of the remaining population is 18 years old or under, and clearly they can't be held responsible for the mess we're in - much as we'd like to blame them. So that takes us down to about 2,652,800 culpable individuals, or about 11.9 annual seconds of penance. And that's more substantial - more time than most of us stand with our heads bowed and our eyes closed on Remembrance Day.

And of course we haven't even begun to talk about the province's urban Aboriginal population, from whose ancestors the land now called Alberta was stolen in the first place, or the province's ethnic Japanese, Chinese, Ukrainian (that's at least 10 per cent of Edmonton), and Afro-Canadian populations, who at various times have faced fierce discrimination. Or women, who, it turns out, earn less than 65 per cent of their male counterparts in this province, putting Alberta nearly on par with South Korea, the OECD country with the worst gender wage parity. And while we're at it, LGBTQ Albertans, who still suffer from de-facto top-down discrimination through the provincial government's refusal to mandate gay-straight alliances in schools, get a pass as well.

So who are we left with? Basically a coterie of overpaid straight white men who live in urban centres and occupy positions of power. In other words, people like you, Jim. Perhaps you need to, ahem, take a look in the mirror.

Home is where the food is (a 107 Ave serenade)

Source: Faces of 107 Avenue

Adobo creative suites

Masala motion pictures

Mad about saffron

And high on wild rosewater nocturnes and the sweet Rumi-nations of old Tehran

Footsteps springy like fresh injera

With a fire-roasted coffee and frankincence chasers at my heels

Striding sing-song down the Avenue of Nations

Calibrating my olfactory GPS; new-world coordinates in old-country code

The dhows of Gwadar, Suquṭra, Muqdisho

Safely moored on a verdant bend in the North Saskatchewan

Bringing sustenance and satiety to shivering winter citizenry

Cracked cardamom pods, frim-fram shawarma sauce

Weaponized wild rice and a backup bottle of chili sauce for that extra zing

Here on the Ave this is kind of our thing

Some say home is where the heart is

But the heart falters when the stomach lies empty

Others say home is where the money is

But money for nothing? Have these chickpeas for free!

Home is where the food is

Where continents and condiments collide in cast-iron kitchen pots

With fierce chillies, midnight meat sweats, and moose nose stew with bannock sliders

Treaty 6 treats with Tagalog tagalongs

And palak paneer amid the backdrop of a bigos and kubasonic boomtown

It’s everything that’s good to eat

Right out there on the street

Yeggs benedict for breakfast

E-town empanadas for lunch

Prairie chicken Kiev with a side of doro. Wot?

It’s all here. It’s all us.

Give me a home where the free-range buffalo roam (out at Elk Island)

Where the kheer and the cantaloupe come out to play for dessert

Where seldom is heard a discouraging Urban Spoon word

And the skies are as wide open as our doors, as big as our portion sizes

And as vivid and alive as our spicecraft and foodscape

Welcome home

After the Artery - 6 ways Edmonton's arts community can continue to survive and thrive

Source: John Lucas, Edmonton Journal

If you're a member of Edmonton's arts community, you're probably ready to slouch down on the nearest park bench for a good long cry right now. That's assuming you haven't already done this. We're not even two months into 2015, and the year has thus far, for a lack of a better term, sucked balls. It all started with the heartbreaking demise of the venerable Roxy Theatre in an early morning fire on January 13. And now artistically inclined Edmontonians are reeling from the loss of yet another iconic art space, The Artery, which yesterday announced it would be closing its doors for the last time at the end of March.

Both of these occurrences would be heartbreaking enough in isolation,  but the sad fact of the matter is that it's nothing new in this town. The list of performance and visual arts spaces that Edmonton has lost, or is on the verge of losing, has begun to resemble a list of names chiselled on a war memorial. Last year saw the demise of the Avenue Theatre. In 2013 the Haven Social Club, a jazz-focussed basement dive much loved by MacEwan University music students, bid the city farewell. Further back in time, the legendary Sidetrack Cafe, which once upon a time played host to the likes of Canadian icons k.d. lang, Colin James, and Blue Rodeo, bid the world adieu in 2007.

The list of dead venues in Alberta's capital city has become so extensive that the Edmonton Heritage Council has recently embarked on a Dead Venues Project as part of its Edmonton City As Museum initiative, an admirable attempt to keep the city's indie/alt-rock heritage alive. While tributes are always welcome, such archival projects are cold comfort to Edmonton's artists who continue to see venues yanked from under their feet. No area of town has been harder hit than Old Strathcona, the once-spirited heart of bohemian Edmonton, which, thanks to skyrocketing commercial real estate prices, has seen much of its arts scene migrate to more economical pastures, with the Catalyst Theatre (soon to be relocating to the Maclab Theatre at the Citadel) being its latest economic refugee.

All this, of course, is happening at a time of great economic uncertainty in the province as a result of plummeting oil prices and a bewildering budgetary Chicken Little sky-is-falling performance on the part of our newly minted Progressive Conservative Pharaoh. (For the hammiest theatre show in town, just pop into the Alberta Legislature when the house is in session.) For people immersed in the arts community, as well as in post-secondary education (and I'm eyeball-deep in both - lucky me), this means cutbacks. Yes, that Alberta speciality. All this in spite of the fact that the government somehow, inexplicably, seems to have come up with a budgetary surplus (because, you know, we're broke) and that cutting funding to the arts to balance the budget makes about as much sense as shaving your head to lose weight.

The irony, of course, is that Edmonton's arts scene has never been more vibrant than it is at present. On any given night in this city there's a bewildering array of performance and visual art on offer in the city, albeit in a slow but steadily contracting constellation of venues. Edmonton is well known for its big-name festivals - FolkFest, NextFest, the Fringe, the Street Performers Festival, the Poetry Festival, and so on, but that scarcely scratches the surface as to what's going on. As a relatively new Edmontonian (a resident here since the fall of 2008), it's taken me quite a few years to fully appreciate the quality and quantity of artistry in my adopted hometown - even in the middle of winter when it's an uphill task to persuade winter-weary residents to trudge through minus-twenty temperatures to check out a poetry slam or a modern dance spectacle.

Yes, Edmonton's arty folk are a stubborn, tenacious bunch who can probably survive anything. But why must their existence always be such a perilous one? The problem is an economic one (as well, let's admit, of economic priorities on the part of the city's mandarins). Regrettably, artists get screwed in both good and bad economic times. In bad times, funding for the arts invariably gets cuts. In good times, real estate prices inflate to the point where theatre companies, club owners, and other artistic stakeholders can no longer stay above water.

So what can be done to support the arts in this city so as to curb the tide of venues going under? I'm no expert, but here are a few ideas.

1) Go see more shows.

This might sound flippant, but seriously, go see something cool. On a random Tuesday evening, even. Edmonton may not have the prestige of Paris or New Orleans, but the flip side to that is that artists in this city are far more accessible than they are in larger centres. There are improbable art galleries run by medical doctors who really love the arts. There's a devoted (and I mean VERY devoted) heavy metal scene. There's typically three nights a week of wild electronic music at Bohemia. And there's no shortage of theatre, dance, and whatnot. Go to yeglive,ca and find something cool - and go to it! C'mon, you're too young to spend every evening crocheting scarves and taking Instagram photos of your cats!

2) Get to know your local community league.

Edmonton's outsized artistic scene owes a large debt to the city's longstanding network of local community leagues. While not an exclusively Edmontonian phenomenon, Edmonton's community league system is, as far as I know, unique in its extensiveness and civic clout, thanks in no small part to steady funding from the municipal government. If you're an Edmonton-based artist, volunteering for your local community not only gives you the opportunity to lobby on behalf of your fellow artists at the neighbourhood level (i.e. where it really counts), but also gives you affordable access to community league facilities, whose purpose it is to serve as a local venue for stuff the community wants. Not an opportunity any artist would want to pass up.

3) Think outside the box in terms of venues.

Capital A "Art Venues" may be in full-tilt contraction mode in Edmonton, but with anywhere between 18 and 22 cranes punctuating the city's skyline like boreal giraffes, buildings are most definitely not. Moreover, with more per-capita green space than any other Canadian city and a larger land area than Toronto (with about a third of the population), the city is not lacking in places to perform. They just might not be traditional performance spaces. Edmonton's perennially overachieving modern dance scene has, out of both necessity and ingenuity, turned the city's great outdoors into its venue, with the undisputed masters of this being Mile Zero Dance and its artistic director Gerry Morita, whose venues have ranged from Churchill Square to the river valley park system to the delightfully trashy Aurora Motel in the city's unloved industrial west end.

Others are doing the same thing. I myself have had the honour of being invited to contribute a spoken word component to the latest instalment of Jen Mesch Dance Conspiracy Takes Over The Science Building. Dancer/choreographer/science nerd Jen Mesch is another Edmonton artist with a penchant for improbable locations, ranging from Edmonton's river valley to actual caves. And the University of Alberta, with its picturesque cliffside setting atop the river valley and its motley assortment of fascinating structures, is a cornucopia of potential performance spaces - including some actual performance spaces like the amusingly toilet-shaped Timms Centre.

4) Forge stronger ties with arts communities elsewhere in Alberta.

Edmonton is essentially an island city. At least that's how it feels much of the time. But while it's a relatively isolated city, it's not really that far from other pockets of civilization. Calgary is a three-hour drive to the south, and is no slouch when it comes to the arts. And it's a treasure trove of great venues. Edmonton's once vibrant underground punk scene may be history now, but Calgary's still has quite a bit of life to it thanks in no small part to places like Vern's Tavern, a venue that helped launch the careers of bands like Sheepdogs and Marianas Trench, and continues to provide an open stage to the weirdest, most obnoxious acts around - bands like "witch punk" Riot Grrrl revivalists Hag Face, my current YYC faves.

Even closer to Edmonton is the increasingly energetic live music scene in Red Deer, which, thanks to Alberta's explosive population growth in recent years, now has a population close to that of Reykjavik, Iceland. It's not a scene I know well at all, but reliable sources tell me that it's getting steadily better - at least on the musical front. Even further south in Alberta is the oddball town of Lethbridge, where heavily bearded and headscarf-clad Hutterites and Mennonites rub shoulders with heavily bearded and keffiyeh-clad hipsters from the University of Lethbridge who frequent events like the Lethbridge Electronic Music Festival and more regular arty happenings at Owl Acoustic Lounge.

Anybody who thinks of Alberta as simply Edmonton, Calgary, and a hillbilly hinterland needs a Lonely Planet update. The problem, of course, is that the province of Alberta has a larger land mass than France and a far worse transportation infrastructure, which means that unless you plan on sleeping in your car (which is only a viable option half the year in this province, and even then not a very attractive one), you need lodging in whatever municipality you find yourself in - particularly given that your typical artsy event ends after the last Red Arrow of the night leaves the station for Edmonton. A network of dedicated artist crash pads on either end,in said cities, perhaps modelled on New Orleans' Musicians' Village, would solve this problem.

5) Forge stronger ties with communities within the city.

Edmonton is distinctly unlike places like Vancouver and Toronto in its relative lack of distinct ethnic enclaves. With the exception of the South Asian community in Mill Woods (an area also replete with new Canadians from elsewhere around the globe) and the East African community on and around 107 Avenue (forever the starting point in the city for whichever immigrant community is the most recent), Edmonton's multicultural population is a true salad bowl. There is nearly as much Ethiopian food in Edmonton's Little Italy than there is Italian, and the city's Chinatown is decidedly more Vietnamese than Chinese. And given China and Italy's past predilections for invading Vietnam and Ethiopia respectively, it's poetic justice in a way.

That said, Edmonton's artistic mainstream (i.e. white people) could all do a better job engaging with the city's many and varied ethno-cultural communities. The spoken word/slam poetry scene is excelling on that front thanks in no small part to Titilope Sonuga and her heir apparent Ahmed Knowmadic of the Breath in Poetry collective - slam poetry at its least obnoxious and most inclusive. Edmonton is also home to what may now be the country's largest urban Aboriginal population, and with it one of Canada's most energetic Aboriginal arts scenes - ranging from Métis country music to raw rez hip hop and stand-up comedy. It's out there. You just need to seek it out.

6) Fight the power.

Yep, put on your best gold Flava Flav teeth, hang a clock around your neck, and fight the power that be. But in all seriousness, the city of Edmonton would have far fewer historic buildings standing were it not for its citizens' willingness to get organized and fight the forces of organized redevelopment. Much of Old Strathcona would have been razed back in the 1970s were it not for the grim determination of its residence to save its innumerable architectural gems. Today the city's venerable McDougall United Church is the latest historic building on the chopping block, and while its future remains very much in doubt, a campaign to save the building has recently shifted into high gear.

Sometimes you just have to be like Arthur Dent in the Hitchhiker books and lie in front of the bulldozer. And call it a work of art. Because sometimes it is.

Skindiving in Tokyo Bay

Photo by Natalie Kelsey (deviantart.com)

The sea wall shoots straight down

Beyond the threshold of the eyes

Beneath the inky evanescence above

And the silky nothingness below

That centrifuge where the mind stops minding

And the extremities embrace the moonless chill

And in the unblinking undertow

Yamashita’s gold glistens, then vanishes

Yet another bioluminescent blur

Beyond the precipice of the abyssal plain

Where spider crabs bide their time

And searchlights dissolve like sugar photophores

The curve of your back

Your pearldiver skin

Freezeframes in front of me as I fumble

Dusktreading and night terrorfoaming

Over angry tectonic ridges, rusted warships

And the barnacled skeletons of young men pressed into death

By imperial dreams and decrees

And yet still you urge me forward through the cross current

Beckoning with a supple serenity to surrender

To the will of the waves and the boundaries of reason

When one climactic zone transitions to another

Do we change our name or simply inch forward as we are

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

それ . . . あれ

Why don’t you turn around to face me

As I flail about amidst the black surge

Edo-wan at dusk is lonely beneath the skin

At odds with the detritus below and the neon crescent wrench

That grasps it tight at night

When the denizens of the depths recoil from reach

Why don’t you relight, ignite, send a pulse, a flair

At least make clear

That your crystal tips and grey-eyed equanimity

Were no deep-sea deceit, midwater mindfuck mirage

Minding your own business on the seabed is no trouble at all

When you were there all along and doing it anyway

Skindiving in Tokyo Bay

Past the shored-up satiety of Odaiba

Past the rusted-through remnants of the showy and the Showa

Past the echo-bait of subterranean human mazecraft

Past where the plateau pauses, then drops into the deep beyond

That place where the sawn edges of the Pacific parted ways

Leaving only memories of electric Taisho and the swordsharpeners of the Shitamachi

Blades brandished to keep the merchants at bay

Skindiving through the black machinery of now

Moorings loosened and discarded

Caution fed to the crabs, eyeless in the cold abyss

Reaching out to your lips with ease and understated grace

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

それ . . . あれ

Shreds of red sky refract through the surface zone

Twilight ignites with new dreams and tender memories

Sexy exits, sleek décolage
Runway lights through the depths signalling a bridge beckoning to the abyssal plain below

Beyond the Minamibōsō boundary and into the open ocean

Where no one will dare follow

Where drunken tengu sharks swim sentinel

Round the rusted hulls of prison ships and drowned memories

That place where chemosynthesis keeps me warm

Where all our junctions jut out to face the spectral surface

The weight of four million square feet of sensory overload

Rolls my eyes back as my back imitates the nautilus, twirling and fading into you

And through the midwater zone

Curviline contours shade in and out of sight

Beyond the convection of currents into the discrete vocabulary of night

Ribbons, cloaks and shields tumble to the depths

As my senses lose all defences

And sea and sky turn black and fiery phosphorescent

I’ve seen you here in the sightless jagged caverns of the hadal zone

Shimmering self, alive as angry weight attacks my eardrums

Sparks flying upwards, depth charges blowing holes through my sense of space and self-imagination

No choice at all but to follow the pinpricks of light and crawling cloudbursts of belief

Maps of the universe splashed across the void

In violent disarray

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

それ . . . あれ

The depths breathe and churn

Viperfish stir from their sleep

Shipmarks dissipate in distant darkness

We venture on inch by endless inch

Your tenderness and spark my only beacons

Your sonar my only sight

Nothing left but to face the light

And dive deep through rifts and currents

Ocean sinew unconstrained by mind or pressure

And then the tsubo markers of the ocean floor open outwards

With soft landings in sheets of silt ensured

Alone together enveloped in empty space

Freezeframe, endgame, freeze still, stay the same

There’s no pain in paralysis

Grasping hold of the moment and never letting go

Even as the silt and sediment scratch the membrane, erode the nerve endings

Hollow reeds bending and snapping

Broken on our piece of seabed

All my fibres, all your curves, connected and alive

Safely sheltered from the angry currents above

Beyond the ridges and rift valleys that tear at our senses

Leaving only echoes of their teeth-grinding tension

Growing softer and more distant

As we settle in for the long night

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

それ . . . あれ

あれ

あれ

あれ


This poem was written for the Mile Zero Dance's show Without Borders - and specifically for a dance-spoken word collaboration with the amazing dancer/choreographer/human being Jen Mesch. It was performed with Jen at dc3 Art Projects in Edmonton on February 20 and 21, 2015.

A Poem About Heartbreak

I could couch this poem in any manner of metaphor

Take your pick

How about plate tectonics?

Crust rent asunder – the substrate to your super-narrative

How about butterflies?

Forty-eight hours to live and wreak havoc on everything around you

Or bullet ants

Woven into an Amazonian initiation glove

Temporarily tranquilized by shamanic smoke

Only to wake up in a biting stinging frenzy of self-actualization

But no

You don’t deserve literary devices

Poetic subterfuge will simply edify your ego further

Truth is

You’re your own natural disaster

Unworthy of insect similes or geological symbolism

After all the ant dies when the glove is discarded

The butterfly falters and fades, leaving only melted wings and empty cocoons in its wake

Plates collide with continents

But you get to go on being you, insouciant you

You and your Gospel of Luke and your daddy-issue flotsam

Yahweh, Vader – take your fucking pick

It’s all the same to the plebs left behind

The unseen casualties of your catastrophegraph

Now just another set of muddy footprints

On my weather-worn tatami

Yet another prick through the packing sheets of snap-crackle-pop monogamy

Calculated breakups in the name of destiny fulfillment

No arc, no character development, no shimmering soliloquies

I’m not your plot device – and you don’t get your pick of mine

And if your dreams of love and heroism simply shrivel on the vine

Then this shitty little poem about heartbreak

Has fulfilled its fuction as assigned

(Poem) The Sacred

Photo by Allison Nichols, December 30, 2014

The sacred heartbreakers are codebreakers, armed with usernames and passwords
They enter, scramble with our circuitry and steal our SIM cards
Leaving us to writhe and reel through the consequences
Of their consequence-free cosmos
They leave us wondering why the hell we invited them in in the first place
And in doing so remind us of why we live and breathe
And of the sacred faults in our holy programming
We are alive - and that's kind of our own problem
We feel, we crave connectivity - and that's most definitely our own problem
We seek to share with others the fiber of our fabric - and this is definitely a terrible idea
And lest we forget, the sacred heartbreakers remind us of the futility of feeling
And hoist down our hearts from their swingsets on the ceiling

The sacred serenades emanate through iTunes and AM radio
Country boys from Kainai and Cowley through the Crowsnest Pass
All telling us to head on down to the riverside
With that ever-elusive gurrrrrl with five R's, double-D's and those jeans painted on
Leaving us wondering what river I'm supposed to turn off at
And whether the Oldman River Dam is a good scenic place to have sex
Why not? The water gushes, rushes and electrifies
Together with the towering turbines amid the fescue grass of the southwest
While the wind drowns out the drone of Chantelle J, Mountain Radio
Stopping here was the best idea ever
And lest we forget, that J-shaped scar from that twilight tumble
Will snap us back in a second without a fumble

The sacred coping mechanisms are always alive and ready
Kicking into action whenever we need them the least - and the most
They embarrass us in public, forever reminding us
Of how fucking underwhelming our better angels can be
Especially when they're drunk, stoned and overdrawn after a month off their medications
These mechanisms are inevitably embarrassing
Until they remind us of our own humanity, and the humanity of others
Whose better angels' behaviour we're quicker to forgive than our own
It's not our fault we're all walking disasters
In scripture we were rigged for reptilian recoil, and in science built to bloom and bust
And lest we forget, the universe's coping mechanism is simply to keep on exploding and rebuilding
Is that any better than any of ours - or more fulfilling?

The sacred fallen ones teach us a lesson in humility and focus
Provided we're awake enough to hear it
That guy who fell on his ass on the black ice ahead of us
That sad figure who disappeared in the labyrinth of Lagos after a sweet e-serenade from the son of Sani Abacha
And that nameless crazy lady down in Georgia, Alabama and windswept Wakayama
All telling us to pay a bit more attention than we currently are
And what we might do differently
Buzzfeed tells us to feel smug, but experience dictates otherwise
Reminding us that we're all someone's cautionary tale, their sacred stupid-person
And lest we forget, we all have a rendezvous with destiny
Just around the corner - you'll see

The sacred walk is the one we all feel compelled to start anew
Every time we buy a new calendar at the mall kiosk
Switching Doctor Seuss with Penguins, Puppies with Monster Trucks, all as arbitrary as ourselves
And each new skeleton we grow every seven years or so seem to irk onlookers all the more
Even as we're supposed to be striding through the Serengeti stronger and more springingly than before
The sacred walk is one to be taken as lightly and lotus-footedly as possible
Shedding the scorns and scars of bygone barfights and blunt force trauma
Marking our own time, righting wrongs and wronging rites of passage
Refusing to scream for attention through the unforgiving lens of McLuhan's bastard Zuckerberg baby
The medium is the medium
And lest we forget, see Thermodynamic Law Number Three
And absolute zero is wherever we make it be

The sacred ones are our fellow voyagers
The wondrous weirdos that latch onto our lives and hold on for dear life
And in doing so become us
Their joy is ours, their pain is ours
Their neuroses and infantile indignation become the burden we grit and bear
Part of the package deal lest we not be party to their dance parties and dazzling states of grace
We are the ones that made it, the infinitely improbable
The monkey that made his name in musical theatre, the swan that survived the storm
Still pretty ugly yet mighty pretty; barefoot, pregnant and full of rage
Full of resolutions and revolutions, depending on your whereabouts amid that yawning gulf between Tofino and Tegucigalpa
And lest we forget, those eight bright Edmonton lights stubbed out in a terrible December flash
Now seared immortal in our tribal memory cache

Here we all are, those who stand, those departed
I love you all - and on this I've only started.

- Pincher Creek, AB, December 31, 2014