Television

The most important thing we've learned, So far as children are concerned, Is never, NEVER, NEVER let Them near your television set - Or better still, just don't install The idiotic thing at all. In almost every house we've been, We've watched them gaping at the screen. They loll and slop and lounge about, And stare until their eyes pop out.

"Mike Teavee..."

The most important thing we've learned, So far as children are concerned, Is never, NEVER, NEVER let Them near your television set -- Or better still, just don't install The idiotic thing at all. In almost every house we've been, We've watched them gaping at the screen. They loll and slop and lounge about, And stare until their eyes pop out.

>≫≫I Want To Die

Heavenly cursed and heavily sinned I No more i like to add them, so, I want to die And I want to become a holy ghost Whom the people would like the most. Like the retreating soldiers I like to come back To my own permanent and eternal home You may call it a suicide or martyrdom. In my real home I see the news Coming from the lipstick coated lips

I Am Waiting

I am waiting for my case to come up and I am waiting for a rebirth of wonder and I am waiting for someone to really discover America and wail and I am waiting for the discovery of a new symbolic western frontier and I am waiting

Evolution

Buffalo Bill opens a pawn shop on the reservation right across the border from the liquor store and he stays open 24 hours a day,7 days a week and the Indians come running in with jewelry television sets, a VCR, a full-lenght beaded buckskin outfit it took Inez Muse 12 years to finish. Buffalo Bill takes everything the Indians have to offer, keeps it all catalogues and filed in a storage room. The Indians

The Colonel

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings

For The Union Dead

<i>Relinquunt Ommia Servare Rem Publicam.</i> The old South Boston Aquarium stands in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded. The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales. The airy tanks are dry. Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass; my hand tingled to burst the bubbles drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

To Television

Not a "window on the world" But as we call you, A box a tube Terrarium of dreams and wonders. Coffer of shades, ordained Cotillion of phosphors Or liquid crystal Homey miracle, tub

The Old Photographs

I sit and look at photographs of relations that used to be, Some I remember from childhood, some related more distantly, Their faces often smiling, or serious and stern, Some looking very peaceful and gentle in their turn. There are a few in sepia tint, but a lot in black and white, And looking at their expressions, one does start wondering quite What it would be like to meet them, and ask them how things were, When they were living in those days, to me it's just a blur.

The Chipmunk

My friends all know that I am shy, But the chipmunk is twice and shy and I. He moves with flickering indecision Like stripes across the television. He's like the shadow of a cloud, Or Emily Dickinson read aloud.

Animals Are Passing From Our Lives

It's wonderful how I jog on four honed-down ivory toes my massive buttocks slipping like oiled parts with each light step. I'm to market. I can smell the sour, grooved block, I can smell the blade that opens the hole and the pudgy white fingers

Salmon

I watched them once, at dusk, on television, run, in our motel room half-way through Nebraska, quick, glittering, past beauty, past the importance of beauty., archaic, not even hungry, not even endangered, driving deeper and deeper into less. They leapt up falls, ladders, and rock, tearing and leaping, a gold river, and a blue river traveling in opposite directions.

Walking Through Autumn

September Powerlines along my path bristled with electric fire, scorching the raised brow of September' Just past a green patch of sumac, I found my neighbor Terence, waiting, letting his dog wander the meadow.

Winter And Hope

First snow atop the hill sends a chill to the spine it melts down all hopes for the morning sunshine men, women, pets and cattle bit dismayed, amidst lull and calm iced winds, blades cutting through yet into a storm it has not brewed hordes of men hurry and store piles of extra wood and grass

The Needles Of Time

The needles of time, it is so really right, You can’t get it back, it just passes by. When you’re in a rush, you find it slips by, When you’re doing nothing, it always respites. You can get it back, But you need patience, of course, To invent a time machine, So you can fly through time.

Poem With Refrains

The opening scene. The yellow, coal-fed fog Uncurling over the tainted city river, A young girl rowing and her anxious father Scavenging for corpses. Funeral meats. The clever Abandoned orphan. The great athletic killer Sulking in his tent. As though all stories began With someone dying. When her mother died, My mother refused to attend the funeral--

Late September

The mail truck goes down the coast Carrying a single letter. At the end of a long pier The bored seagull lifts a leg now and then And forgets to put it down. There is a menace in the air Of tragedies in the making. Last night you thought you heard television In the house next door.

Bar Room Tales

Apprehension of the unknown, In the atmosphere of bar room tension, Men sitting on long stools, with no time for fools, On the counter, pint glasses full and half full, Their on the pull, for women of their dreams, Conversations of soccer and racing results, Jockeys slated with outrageous insults, Clinking of glasses with the batting of long eyelashes, Ladies looking for love, with disco music blaring above.

Ahead By A Century - For Gord Downie Of The Tragically Hip

He walks among the stars A star in his own right His spirit is restless Adjusting to new home He is a leader Among great leaders Somewhat terrified Until Soul's welcome

Toad Dreams

That afternoon the dream of the toads rang through the elms by Little River and affected the thoughts of men, though they were not conscious that they heard it.--Henry Thoreau The dream of toads: we rarely credit what we consider lesser life with emotions big as ours,