The door was everywhere,
\nand in everything; I stepped through it
\nback to the house alone.
\nSunlight gleamed
\noff frosted ground, and breath
\nrose in clouds from my face.<\/p>\n
May the world and its authority
\ncollapse in these words.<\/p>\n
At that time, going
\nfrom street to shelter
\nto place of my own,
\nI rented a bachelor apartment
\nfrom a Hindu man on 49th
\nbetween Fraser and Main\u2014<\/p>\n
the nearest intersecting side-street
\ncornered by a baby blue Kingdom Hall
\nand a pastel pink Universal Buddhist Temple,
\na big Guanyin out front.<\/p>\n
I had work with a guy who made
\nthe round of homeless shelters
\nlooking for able-bodied
\nsocio-economic types like me;
\nit was out by Iona Beach
\nwhere the city flushes
\nits sewage into the ocean.<\/p>\n
It was bagging firewood\u2014two of us\u2014
\nwhile he split it with a machine saw.
\nThere was a steady breeze
\nand it stank.<\/p>\n
I drank loads of water
\nand outworked the other guy
\nand besides his suspicion and the smell
\nthe only disturbance
\nfor those few days
\nwas a crow eating my lunch.<\/p>\n
But I lost my footing, got paid and hit
\nthe liquor store. After drinking through
\nthe whole of the following day
\nI sat in the evening cross-legged on my bed
\nready to conceive
\nof things exactly as they seemed.<\/p>\n
The room was next-level,
\nwith a fine stainless steel sink and a pleasing
\noverall narrowness. My stomach and the crown
\nof my head tingled.<\/p>\n
It was a good solitude,
\nmy heart ticking like heat in a trash-heap,
\ninterlocking histories cutting
\neasy through my life.
\nTinctures and seeds scattered around
\nthe unknown by the familiar.<\/p>\n
Silence.
\nThe last job solved
\nand fitted over mine
\na clear, clean sadness.<\/p>\n
I had a magazine
\nwith pictures of paintings of
\na man\u2014flesh and blood and clothed
\nup to the neck,
\nhis head just an outline
\nframing forest, backyard with clothesline,
\nhighways: unblinking faces that take anyone in.<\/p>\n
And on the neighbouring page I leaned out the window and smoked, carved Liz, milk-white Irish The taxi waited while I found out, after much ringing I turned off the radio, went back to sleep <\/p>\n <\/p>\n NED BAECK<\/strong> lives in Vancouver. His poems have previously appeared in The Continuist<\/em><\/a> and untethered<\/em><\/a>. His first full-length collection of poems is forthcoming from Guernica.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The door was everywhere, and in everything; I stepped through it back to the house alone. Sunlight gleamed off frosted ground, and breath rose in clouds from my face. May the world and its authority collapse in these words. At… Continue Reading
\nthe lines, You who are going in circles,
\nplease stop.<\/em><\/p>\n
\none of my own into the wooden sill with a kitchen knife
\nand drank till my wits began oozing;
\ndaubed and numb
\nI walked out to get a taxi.<\/p>\n
\nwith long black hair, bright green eyes,
\nruthless words
\nand many appointments,
\nonce or twice invited me to her window
\nso she could bathe my buzzard life in moonlight
\nand open my heart to its luminous cures.<\/p>\n
\nof the doorbell and calling up to her second-floor window,
\nthat she wasn\u2019t home, or was but not alone, which is the last part
\nI remember till waking up in my dark narrow room
\nto the radio emitting the sound of waves
\nbreaking. And amidst this the broadcaster saying evenly,
\nThe waves of Corsica, like a report from the ether.<\/p>\n
\nand by the next afternoon was hitchhiking
\nto Kamloops: money gone, apartment, job
\nand belongings abandoned,
\npretty sure I still had it
\nthough I might mess up anywhere
\nI got to\u2014<\/p>\n
\n
\n