Progress
Gene-targeting and molecular cloning. The shrine
of the genome has been broken into — GloFish
the colour of Skittles, or an Apple product line, happily
swim in aquariums. Insulin-producing bacteria
are grown in large fermentation tanks to provide
medicine for diabetics. Frankenfruit are popular
at Whole Foods. Grapples. Tangelos. Seedless
watermelons. We need to take bioengineering
between species to the next level. There are
glow-in-the-dark-cats, featherless chickens,
web-spinning goats, sudden death mosquitos,
super cows, Enviropigs, but why not gene-splice
chameleons with butterflies? Imagine summer fields
thick with fairy creatures changing colours. How
about lemon-scented honeybees? Flying iguanas?
Why not unicorns? Why stop there? Demand
Big Pharma give us an altruism patch, one to create
more empathy in politicians, say, or a nasal spray
to make children more resistant to fear-mongering
and body shaming. What about you? What would
you want if you could simply overhaul your genes
with a micro-injection? A Mensa level intelligence,
a cat’s vision in the dark, a custom-built SPF 70
front-loaded into one’s epidermis? In the future,
chromozones will be upgraded like cell phone plans.
This is what progress looks like. It’s coming fast,
although time augments us all the more subtly.
The way a marriage translates a person. Or a year
writing a book you eventually throw away. Careless
days at university. A small room. Your first time
making love to someone else: a nosebleed and
shared laughter over it, then intimacy, tenderness
at another’s touch. The imperfect perfect.
All-Night Arcade
I am playing Galaga in my imagination
in the last century where all around me
kids packed tighter than bees in a hive
labour to master rows of arcade games,
crowding to witness if anyone makes it
to a new level, beats an old high score,
wipes out an army of extraterrestrials.
Time and space stand still for the price
of a quarter. Pixellated blooms burst in
neon cascades across our beatific faces
while the world drags on into the ruins
of the ’80s. Ronald Reagan is shot.
The great hurts and loves of this world
enter into us. Childhood one more urn
in History’s mausoleum. Psychedelic Furs,
My Bloody Valentine, the Jesus and Mary
Chain. Mix-tapes for a generation who
witness the Challenger explode,
the Exxon Valdez spill, the Berlin Wall
topple with an empire. In our twenties,
the arcades vanish. The circumference
of the planet enlarges. We leave home
for school or to work jobs in big cities,
summers in Europe, but time is theft,
and we soon ascend to the next round,
a millennial collect-a-thon with all-new
obstacles to jump over, skill challenges
to undertake. More enemies, less lives.
Nostalgia is a verdict for not living well,
which is why in my forties all night long
I sit here watching myself as a teenager
play a video game with time running out,
a pilgrim trying to get to the golden city
at the last level, knowing when the game
is over, neither he nor I will continue.
Confessionalism
Ashbery is a bore. W. is a hack with a rhyming
dictionary. M. is the best poet we have. I stole
the milk money in grade three. Killed a grizzly
bear with a Boy Scout knife. I have no idea how
to wear my hair. I won the Boston Marathon.
I can recite all of Vonnegut verbatim.
Elegies are morose, but so are shopping malls.
I am banned from Rome and Prague for life.
The soul is a nice daydream. I once met with
a university professor to talk poetry on LSD.
My books are all ghostwritten by my twin.
I am paranoid delusional, and believe a cabal
of poets is out to get me. I won the lottery
three times. I’d rather read the Brontë sisters
than Dostoevsky six days out of a week. There
should be a surcharge every time someone uses
the words “filigree” or “palimpsest” in a poem.
All my conquests are illegitimate. Barren trees,
huge uprooted lungs, standing amidst winter
fields, breathing cold air, are amongst my
favourite things. I love how you like this poem
despite its narcissism. I lived in a Buddhist
monastery for six whole months. I summited
Everest. There are women in this world who
harden when my name is mentioned. I was
pen pals with Jack Gilbert. Larry Levis too.
This has all happened to me. This is all true.
Trigger Warnings
A lightning strike kills three hundred reindeer in Norway.
Bodies draped over a green mountain like an existential
diorama. I’m calling my personal transformation a remix.
Even when there is no path, there is a secret path, said
my daughter, at age two. Marcus Aurelius wrote, “What
stands in the way becomes the way.” Well, my friends,
sobriety is no yellow brick road. Live a good life. Do not
hurt anyone. But something has to be the new dope, or it’s
back to the old neurotoxins. I have a disease of eternal
longing. What if I want the leaves to change? To brighten,
but not to fall? Like everyone, I hide insurance in a box,
pass the hours with circuitry and tweets. I want to hoard
the cosmos, not fears. Did you know an octopus has
three hearts? Our sun will burn out in five billion years?
Why is the Saviour always appearing on a potato chip,
or a piece of toast, or in someone’s dreams? Why not
rematerialize on a talk show? Please, I need a remedy
or a destination. An alphabet to reclaim. A personal
continuity editor. Am I the hero or the villain? I wish
I could just watch reruns, and be happy. My emotions
glitch, and suddenly I need a reboot. The world is full
of trigger warnings, and there I am pulling the triggers.
Anxiety is walking down a sidewalk on a summer’s day
feeling caught in a giant centrifuge. It adds a dash
of metaphysical clarity to life. It summons you, bones
and flesh, to witness the sad strip malls, and nail salons
sitting like jails on street corners. Either make peace
with the heart hammering the bent nail of one’s spirit,
or not. Look again at those pictures of dead reindeer,
and there in a corner, see your animal self among them.
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
I hear that song “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out”
but it rings less true than it did once upon a time.
The older we get, the more we turn to silhouettes,
so when I hear the chorus, I feel only at a distance
from the telltale guitar of Johnny Marr or Morrissey’s cries.
His voice singing, there is a light that never goes out,
a requiem to teenage years that never quite existed
except in old music videos or the pages of Rolling Stone.
No, the older we get, the more we turn to silhouettes
where our memories, mere shadows of sense, emerge
on the other side of a train platform in a black-and-white film
or like a sweeping beam of light that never goes out
cutting through a fogbank warning ships off rocks,
the shoreline obscured, invisible, too far away to imagine.
No, the older we get, the more we turn to silhouettes.
Our leather jackets with band patches and buttons
hang in the closet or attic. We raise our children
saying our love is a light that never goes out,
while slowly they watch us turn to silhouettes.
