Gathering Place Poets

JOHN-WARD LEIGHTON

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contents:

Sooner Than I Can Imagine

God ! I Love That Song.

Sun, Sun, Sunny Day

Coyote

It's Snowing

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Sooner Than I Can Imagine

Poems planted by the wind

Starting on the bare, bare ground

Thrusting into your grave with blood red root.

Bursting into the now with leaf and stem.

The well-kept trees say nothing.

It's left for the dying flowers

to sing the Requiem.

There are windows on the tombstones

those of freshly murdered instants.

Waiting... for our eyes to make contact.

Waiting... for our hearts to remember.

The young faces from those instants

staring into the camera, some smiling,

as if they knew these images

would transcend the mean reality.

I see images of you, Dad

in all those yellowed photographs.

Alive again in the fiction of memory

The years have flown but if I close my eyes

The fiction will make you young

that mere fraction of a second

will make you live again.

The ceremony beside the box

that held all that was not in mind

is now the fiction of your demise.

Except I hear you still

your footfall gives me pause

to realize you have borrowed someone

to remind me of you.

I see you daily

in my shaving mirror.

Knowing that some day

sooner than I can imagine

I will join you.

I startle myself with your voice

your words fall out of my amazed mouth

and I laugh and hear you in the echo.

Soon I will embrace you and kiss you

maybe...

Sooner than I can imagine.

written 12 June 1994; revised 2 February 1998

epoch studios

Vancouver, B.C.

contents

God ! I Love That Song.

My fan blows in the song

of junkies in the street

singing for their connection

to meet.

So they can renew their lives

and take the shine off

their banjo eyes.

The song falls

on deaf walls

cause their connection

is one of broken balls.

He has been led away

with his hands in chains

there will be no white dust

for their fevered brains.

God ! I love that song.

The chorus continues

to the edge of sleep

my eyes now see

the blackest deep

until the crack of dawn

and I awake to the cries of

Sean... Sean... Sean...

Enraged I yell that Sean is gone.

Silence from the street

but the junkie's

cold turkey brain refuses to believe

and hollers Sean again.

God ! I love that song.

Finally the police

lead the poor devil away

his hopeless chant

was stilled this day.

Eight hours he had howled

his need outside locked doors.

Poor crazed man

he fights the police

until a copper's club

restores the peace

and stills his junkie song

Sean... Sean... Sean...

written 2 february 1998

epoch studios

Vancouver, B.C.

contents

Sun, Sun, Sunny Day

They weren't neat, and they weren't clean,

Only slightly stupid and pit bull mean.

They fought over drugs in that cheap hotel

Right in the crosshair of heaven and hell.

She slammed the door and went on her way,

He didn't have the jam to make her stay.

He didn't fit in with her plan,

She would have to find another man.

She wasn't having any of his bullshit jive,

He was useless to her dead or alive.

He dove head first off the hotel sign

A five point five on the incoming lane.

He twitched amid his brains and gore,

He couldn't look up to check the score.

The cop gagged and tried to find a pulse,

Then signalled that it was no use.

He was bagged and tagged and put into the old meat van,

Then they wailed him off never to seen again.

No one in the crowd knew his name,

He was just another loser who'd left the game.

She returned just before the sun that day,

Three tricks, three dicks, one fix, some pay.

Some dreams from her junkie fit,

All that she knew was her life was shit.

The tag had just been tied to his toes,

But she didn't know and she didn't care,

She wanted her tickets to the Rolling Stones,

That was hidden in his room somewhere.

The blood ran across the road and into the drain,

The fireman washed away the stain.

His tortured life disappeared that day,

Why, I could not say.

No matter, the sun will still rise

And the rush hour is on its way.

It was just another dumb ass horror

For a sun, sun, sunny day.

written 21 November 1989

epoch studios

Vancouver, B.C.

contents

Coyote

He's beating time,

To tunes he learned as a boy,

He's playing with the rhyme,

Just like it was a toy.

Think twice before you go,

Said the yellow eyed imp Coyote Joe,

Cause, you gonna miss me when I'm gone,

And your sad ass gonna play a bluesy song.

But, poet said don't you never mind,

Cause I'll write us down that lonely road,

Through every twist and wind.

So, he wrote many a secret double locked page,

All the better to hide his dreams and rage.

For he had joined his father's warrior clan,

And hidden dreams are not the concern of men.

In the blackness of the night he wrote,

And his closest companions knew him not.

Like coyote that master of stealth,

He left no clues to his real self.

He would sooner die than reveal his tears,

His many stone faces would hide his fears.

In the ritual displays of a warrior's skill,

He practiced the precision of the manly kill.

No one can pass through the fire without being burned,

No heart can pass without a wound.

He would hide out in bottles of green and brown,

Sometimes, so full of courage, he would fall down.

Always, he had to feed the beast,

For dream-less sleep at very least.

And if he lost his soul along the way,

The dark magic of the bottles would save the day.

Then on a night that was cold and dark and wet,

And he was as stupid drunk as he could get,

He faced the many colored demons,

With the black and white of reason.

He had nowhere to run in his plight,

His only choice was to stand and fight.

Coyote Joe was finally back,

That sly gray bandit who'd robbed his traps.

He said "If you want to make it rhyme,

You can only do it one day at a time."

And so one day, and one day more,

In the secret heart he keeps the score.

Like Coyote he is all alone,

Coyote in howling song,

He runs the ridge of written page,

And sniffs the scent of imagined sage,

Running in the fullness of the moon,

His heartbeat in happy song.

He leaves his tracks on pages white as snow,

Is there a limit to how far he can go?

Coyote, what lessons do you have for me?

Coyote, what's behind those yellow eyes?

Coyote, what can you really see?

Coyote, what is your surprise?

Coyote, will I win, will I fail?

Coyote, am I only chasing my tail?

I hear your bark and lonely howl,

Like something on the rim of hell.

It would seem that I'm not yet free,

Tell me Coyote...

Are you me?

first written 5 January 1990

revised 21 February 1998

epoch studios

Vancouver, B.C.

contents

It's Snowing

My room is warm and dry.

I sit before the tyrant and type.

My bed is covered with laundry and cameras,

there is a fetid smell in the air

my mind turns vaguely erotic.

She stands naked and petulant,

she wants to get on with it.

She dumps my gear on the floor

and snuggles under the covers.

She giggles as I curse

and struggle with the knots

in my boot laces.

In frustration I take my pocket knife

and cut the offending laces

and one sock on, and one sock off,

I join her under the blankets.

We embrace,

I hold and touch her

she is stronger than I imagined,

she is moist and fragrant

as I kiss and lick her venus mound.

She pulls my hair and squirms.

She moans, "I love you."

I kiss my way back to her face

she takes me into her wet mystery.

The dance begins,

she leads and then do I,

we are gentle, we are brutal,

we encourage with cries and moans,

we are one until we are two.

Now out of breath

covered in sweet sweat

and seminal discharge

we whisper clichés of reassurance

because there are no words

for how our hearts feel.

I brush the tears from my cheeks

there is a sudden chill on the room.

She has left the dream.

It's snowing.

first written 5 January 1990

revised 21 February 1998

epoch studios

Vancouver, B.C.