departure lounge

to fly is the thing

to spread out your wings

and depart--

that is the art

so here we are at the gate

a few awkward minutes left

waiting to wait   

before you leave me here

on the scraped grey edge

of the sky

i don’t know why

i said i’d see you off

or even why you asked

i guess you needed

a witness

i guess i needed

one last glimpse of your ass

as you walked

up the ramp

and checked in

to the hollow museum

of my past

i don’t kid myself

that you’ll call

so don’t kid yourself

that i’ll answer to you.

after so long kidding each other

it’s a relief to be through

a gift to be simple and true

i’ll miss you

like i miss the radio’s hum

that itch in my ear

where a sound used to scratch me

to sleep, all white noise and numb

to leave is the thing--

who cares about landing

when flight

is the point?

so here we are

at the departure gate

and you’re shedding feathers

i’m as far from the horizon

as i’ve ever been,

still home

but home free.

i don’t know why

i said i’d see you off

but i’m glad i thought

to check my phone

the moment you looked back.

i’m glad when i looked up

you were gone.

how to kill a bird

dan takes the twine
ties the ankles tight because
we've heard the bird will run
even
after the head is gone
     then, not knowing
what comes next, we two fool kids
throw the line over a limb
cowboy-style we guess because
all we know of death
we've learned from film.
     only
          now
my childhood business farming eggs
is flipping fictions for
real-life execution.

once a chicken's old
it ain't no use, the crusty neighbor says.
once you stop paying your way
we slay, toss your feathers away
forget you had a name--
ashes to ashes, clay to clay.

     pause.

     consider the stump:
axe-scarred and waiting
for a neck thumb-stretched
and shaking
weak hand covering that yellow
eye that won't stop blinking
don't dare to wonder
what a chicken might be thinking.

the first swing

is a miss. hatchet swish and thunk
a chunk of wood. you flinched.
infirm of purpose.

didn't think you could, dan says,
tugs the rope. gulp down hope
and try to cope. once more
heft handle in hand review
the plan: neat swing clean cut
string it up to bleed out
the true red cost of food on table.
i'm ready, able
to swing. no tremble
this time. we are but young
in deed.
     dan yanks the bird away
head still under my hand
up and out the leg-trussed body arcs
spasm and sputter-vein frenzy
swift death to the myth of dying easy
i freeze in my
murderer's pose
unbelieving.

like any pendulum
splendid dependable
weight on a string
the corpse swings back
     trembling
over my penitent head
and i am baptized in blood
dissolved by the rain of what i have done
and reformed into something
     a little taller
          a little older
               a little callused
where the hand
held the axe.

Had a Band

i knew them back in high school

just because they went to my school

but it’s not like we were friends,

i mean, i knew they had a band

but they were stoners, they were skids

and we were only kids

so we laughed at them because they didn’t

know how to play

Free Bird.

I had a guitar that i

would play out in the yard;

i was starting to get good

and they were only two-bit hoods

but they were making up their own riffs,

a bit like old Black Sabbath

only faster, and we all knew

they had stolen all their gear; and

somehow

that was cool.

At the talent show that spring

we did the “Battle of the Bands” thing

my band went on first

so they would have to eat our dust.

We played U2 and R.E.M.--

we covered all the latest bands

we had a drummer from the army

and a teen tour jazz guitarist;

i played bass

because somebody has to, right?

We were cool; the crowd was dancing

we were not quite like the real thing

but we’d learned it note for note

and we were trying to emote

someone else’s emotions--

we were calculated fictions

and everyone believed us; we got a reasonable facsimile of a

standing ovation

when we stopped.

They were up next.

The crowd held it’s breath.

We looked at them, they looked at us

And they laughed as they took to the stage.

They started with a bang--

a song 38 seconds long

entitled “Ms. Kelly, the Librarian,

is a Servant of Satan.”

A fight broke out somewhere,

the vice-principal appeared

and flicked at the house lights--

which, of course, started more fights--

while the band ground our ears down

with exquisite mountains

of menacing sound.

Well, the cops did what cops do

and the ambulances ambled through;

three kids and a teacher

were hurt when the bleachers collapsed.

The band was expelled;

word is, they were sued

by Ms. Kelly, the librarian,

who suffered a breakdown

next Sunday at church.

I never saw those four guys again,

but later that week i wrote my first song

and it sucked,

but at least it was mine.

Why You Fly

i heard elvis costello singing ‘alison’ today

steel guitar and a mandolin

behind him on the stage, 

his voice finally finely crumpled

by the million collisions of encroaching old age.

he leaned back from the mic

to sing ‘the bartender turns the juke box

way 

down 

low’

and his voice filled the room

with the strength of his convictions

instead of the strength of microphones.

all the amplifiers in the world

can’t bring a mouth that close to an ear.

all the powers of this electrified world

can’t bring my fingers any closer to you

than when they brush the strings

of this guitar.

i wanted to sing

straight into your heart

but i let the machinery keep up apart,

conquered by fear that my faltering voice

wasn’t power enough.

‘i know this world is killing you,’ he sang,

‘but my aim is true.’

i turn off the lights, unplug the sky,

recede to human size, and

say for once what i mean 

which is simply

‘i love you.’ 

that’s my only song.

I’m sometimes confused,

words come out wrong

and my fingers are stupid—

they grope for chords

i’ve known since childhood:

i lose sight of the truth of a minor and c,

i lose sight of love

and find complexity—and with it always

soft sorrow and tension, 

high harmonic structures,

upper dimensions, 

paths curved in time,

time curved in possibility.

my life takes the form

of a series of lines intersecting connecting 

the silk of the sky 

to the dust of the coal mines;

the smiles of lovers 

to the handlesof coffins; 

the math of the seasons

to the men taking off 

in their amplified rockets

bound for the heavens

and lost to the earth,

humming songs from childhood

to shield their human ears 

from the thunder of engines

those machines that compel us

to rise from our beds

pay homage to power

and leave all that matters for darkness, vacuum,

pinpricks of starlight perfected.

they hang there, weightless, these lost men,

observing the empty heart of the sky

while all they love--

the smoky rooms

the steel guitars

the fragile courage of the human voice

the futile optimism of the always-open ear--

all these wonders spin away beneath them.

they hum to themselves their childish tunes,

prayers unheard beneath the roar

of engines firing, turning them finally earthward.

‘my aim is true,’ elvis was singing; ‘my aim is true.’

when i come down and the roaring stops,

i will touch this silent soil

strum that long-lost simple chord

place my lips close beside your perfect, optimistic,

ever-forgiving ear, and say

‘i love you.’

‘i know,’ you will answer.

‘that’s why you fly.

and that’s why you return. 

i know.’

Overpass (cut and paste)

i see you on the overpass:

invisible, i might tree the breeze.

invisible, lovers reveal the wind.
i could fly i could...
     love sees beneath the cold

look down. you'll see all the rain in me
just ghosts, just everything
every car
bitter black sorrow
all ink running together

without you beside me i'm tangled
by line by rain and leaf and wind
and invisible ink. just
the black beneath bridges,
secure inside.

i could be spring
but even then you wouldn't see.

birds learn to disappear into the world.
notebooks pour paint
like a high into the night.
overpass spills ink
to purple the blue fingertips
of these low places.

On Eclecticism: The Joy of Being a Mess

"There are two kinds of music: good music, and the other kind. I play the good kind."

~Duke Ellington

I used to worry that I didn't have an identity. I was playing guitar in a rock band, playing bass in a blues band, writing as half of a folk duo, and then going home and churning out strange little string quartets and orchestral pieces on the computer. I was flitting about from style to style and sound to sound like a slightly detuned hummingbird. I was never sure who I was going to be when I picked up a guitar. And it worried me.

Because, you see, I could listen to any cut from any one of my guitar heroes and hear their personality shine through like a beacon. I could spot Bill Frisell a mile away. Jimmy Page is always and forever Jimmy Page. Frank Zappa?--no matter how far out weird he got, there was always that thread of continuity, what Zappa himself called the Project/Object, running through his music like an overloaded hydro wire that somehow connected Igor Stravinsky, doo-wop, funk, and the glory hole of your local truck stop bathroom stall in a way that sounded unmistakably Frank.

And then there was me, soaking up and imitating styles like an echolalic sponge, and never even having the good grace or self-discipline to get my imitations right. I was, I down-heartedly concluded, a duffer and a dabbler, a poseur and a fake. Not shredder enough to be a shredder, not bluesy enough t be a blues player; I was half-assed in every possible direction at once.

I tried to find a direction. Really, I did. I told myself I would only write pop songs. I told myself I was part of a piano-guitar-voice trio, until death do us part. I told myself I was working on an album of solo acoustic fingerstyle stuff that fans of Bruce Cockburn might like if they were willing to ignore the fact that Bruce was already so much better at that than I would ever be. But I couldn't stick with any of them.

And then I realized that all this compartmentalization was just me cutting off my nose without even the satisfaction of spiting my face. I wasn't trying to make a shitload of money. I didn't need a marketable image. And if I looked back at the heroes I referenced--Zappa, Frisell, Page, and Cockburn, not to mention Brian May, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Ani DiFranco, Vernon Reid and Pete Townsend, among many others--none of them were compartmentalized, either. If you listen to their widely varied output, they don't seem to have a marketing strategy other than "do whatever the hell you like, as long as you do it well."

Neil Young was once sued by his OWN RECORD LABEL for making an album that didn't sound like Neil Young. Ween has basically been an entirely different band every time they've made a record, but they consistently crack me up and fill me with joy. Listen to Adrian Belew play for the Talking Heads, then listen to his solo albums and quick-cut to his hilarious Bob Dylan impersonation on Zappa's wonderful "Flakes"--the guy's all over the map, and I adore him for it.

And bands that find their sound, find their formula and grind out album after album of the same shit, year after year? Well, when something dies it soon enough begins to stink.

We all know AC/DC hasn't done anything worth listening to since Who Made Who, or maybe earlier. Bon Jovi, bless his slick black corporate soul, has made the same bloody album every year since Slippery When Wet, but people are so dumb or so stuck in their ways or so die-hard committed to their love of mediocrity that they continue to buy it. Fifty million Bon Jovi fans, I humbly suggest, can most certainly be wrong. Or at least be wasting their time.

Gradually it dawned on me that my only job as an artist was to sound like me. But still the doubts persisted: what does "me" sound like? Do I sound enough like me? What if "me" changes from day to day--is that bad? Weak? Demonstrative of a lack of conviction?

Basically, I was a neurotic twit. But I got better.

Projects came; projects fell away. Collaborators brought out different facets of my musical personality, helped me understand truths or partial truths about myself. I stopped trying to impress other people. And then, one magic day, I stopped trying to impress myself, too.

Now I just listen to the noises in my head, and try to duplicate them in the world. And if that means a slow Dixieland blues today and a jangly pop confection laced with jazzy #11 chords tomorrow, well, that's just fine. It's all me. Even if I'm trying to imitate Bruce Cockburn. Because, you see, here's the secret:

I never perfected that Bruce Cockburn imitation. 

So all those mistakes I make? They're uniquely mine, and I love them fiercely. All that wandering doesn't mean I'm lost--I'm just enjoying the ride. The mess that I am defines me, and I wouldn't trade it for any polished imitation--not of any other musician, and not even of myself--now that I've figured that out.

why who how where when what

Like most teachers, I was at work yesterday setting up for the start of another year. In the photocopy room I found myself discussing courses with a colleague. She asked me about my 3U English class this semester: was I starting with the novel, the short story unit, the obligatory Shakespeare?

I gave her the straightest and simplest answer I could (straight and simple answers are decidedly not the spécialité de la maison: Shakespeare, probably, I guess. I dunno. Truth is, I hadn't really thought much about it.

She looked around nervously, waiting for the lightning bolt. I hadn't thought about it? But the semester starts in three days! Why the hell haven't I thought about it?

Because I'm thinking about other, more important things.

Because WHAT I'm teaching on a day to day basis is the least interesting and least important aspect of my job.

Because the real sequence of questions for any serious teacher goes like this:

WHY do you teach?

WHO do you teach?

HOW do you teach?

WHERE and WHEN do you teach?

And only then, at the very end, 

WHAT do you teach?

What matters most is the intention--the WHY. A good teacher must be aware of their motivation, their goals, their inspirations, their aspirations. A good teacher must understand themselves and their relationship to their profession and their students if they are to be effective. Kids can smell insincerity. Adults going through the motions at the front of the room teach kids nothing except to go through the motions themselves. Adults who love what they do, love learning, love sharing--they teach children to love learning too.

Next on the list is WHO. Contrary to what the stylish nonsense of standardized testing would have you believe, there are no standardized children. They each come to school with a different set of motivations, goals, triggers, passions, expertises, and challenges. In effect, they each come with their own WHY. A good teacher needs to learn WHO is in the class in order to teach each student the way they most want to be taught--as much as is reasonably possible within the increasingly narrow confines of budget, time, and sanity.

Which brings us to HOW. You know what you're doing in the room. You know who else is in the room with you. How are you going to get through to them? There are no "guaranteed success" teaching tips or tricks. There is no one textbook, or activity, or strategy, that works for every kid, every time. So the good teacher, once aware of WHO is in their care and WHY that child wants to learn (or not learn!), has to grapple on a daily basis with HOW to bring a diverse group of children each to a place of receptivity. This, really, is the majority of the job for most front-line teachers on a day-to-day basis: how to make the subject matter at hand sensible and appealing to the children in our care. This is the art that elevates the craft.

WHERE and WHEN are really just a subset of HOW. Children cannot learn effectively in hostile or uncomfortable environments. Part of the job of a teacher--and here we must also include the surrounding host of administrators, architects, cafeteria staff, government funding models, community support groups, soup kitchens, urban planners, furniture manufacturers, and child and family welfare agencies, among others--is to create an environment where children feel safe, comfortable, and engaged. Every day teachers struggle to help students who have not slept properly, not eaten, never been read to at home, are worried about money or their personal safety or that of their family members, worried about whether the heat will still be on when they get home from school, worried about whose couch they'll crash on tonight. Schools run breakfast clubs, walk in closets, drug addiction counselling programs, and a host of other programs designed to make the WHERE and the WHEN of learning possible and palatable. 

The last question, the WHAT question, certainly bears consideration in the grand scheme of education. WHAT equals CONTENT, after all--could there be anything more important than that? Sure, there are vital philosophical and sociological issues at stake in curriculum development: what we choose to teach, and what (more importantly) we neglect to teach are societally formative decisions. If our schools do not produce the next generation of physicists, cabinet makers, accountants or soccer coaches, who will do these jobs? Should our schools teach healthy active living at the expense of literacy? Advanced mathematics at the expense of poetry appreciation, ethics, or small engine repair? If we ignore Black History Month or celebrate Diwali in our classrooms, have we made the world a better or worse place? What if there are no woman novelists on the reading list? At first sniff, the WHAT question appears to be the most important one.

However, those decisions are largely out of the hands of front-line teachers; the big framework type decisions are entrusted (rightly or wrongly) to policy mandarins at Queen's Park several telegraph relays removed from the classroom. Most teachers have little part in curriculum design, even though many would have excellent insights. Most curriculum designers have no part in day-to-day classroom education, even though many would probably find it enlightening. As a consequence, the general outline of WHAT I teach is prepackaged and piped to me in a PDF file: the learning outcomes for my courses are not up for discussion.

This disconnect does not make classroom teachers powerless; it certainly does not absolve us from thinking about WHAT. Nowhere in the English 3U document does it say we have to teach Shakespeare, or even read a novel. So when I do either of those things with my class, I should have good reasons besides "that's what my English teacher made me do in Grade 11, a millenium ago." Funny thing is, though, the rationale for choosing a text, an activity, an assignment, never comes from the WHAT. It comes from the WHY, the WHO, the HOW and WHERE of education.