Tarot Question
Shall I stay?
Shall I go?
Which will make
The spirit flow?
Do Graveyard’s skull
And bones disguise
God’s holy light
In bleary eyes?
If I remain
By my free will
Will Spring transform
This Wintry Mill?
Yew Street Basement
Here is a still life: the wheel thrown pot
Amidst the grids and graphs and charts
Scales and rule, calendar and clock
On the steel top desk in the pulp-test station.
There is still life in the centered cup
That holds the instant coffee I must drink
To keep apace the thrumming frequency
Of the sprawled electric death machine I serve.
There is still life in the ceramic mug
The elemental spirit of the hands
That mold with Nature’s art the water’s flow
The glaze of fire, the earthly body’s clay.
Still life
Soft frozen
In stone
With thumb
I feel.
4-12 shift
1
Your love is more than I deserve
Let me learn to treasure it
Without greed
Like the sinner loves his God
Who punishes
And cherishes his pain
Let me cherish pain
To purify my heart
That it may be transformed
Into a worthy sacrifice
To you.
2
Love me dirty, love me lewd
Keep your clothes on in the nude
Turn me inside out with lust
Send juices flowing through the crust
Of frazzled nerves and leathered skin
That locks my languished spirit in.
3
The worker’s goddess is his wife
The only meaning in his life.
To dignify his slavery
He raises her to high degree
Surrounds her with a million things
Home and kids and diamond rings.
When he’s about to lose his head
He remembers her in bed.
Lost his soul to please his Lord
Wielder of the mighty sword.
January 8, 1972 graveyard shift
Winter Dance
The spirit flows freely when the vessels are cleansed by pain
The heart pours forth music from suffering it cannot contain
The pleasure we treasure when scratching the itch of desire
Can move us in circles but lacks the refinement of fire.
La da da da da, da da da da
La da da da da, da da da da
Love is our crime and our trial and our punishing scourge
We trespass our limits and violate time when we merge
That explosive fusion erases the rest of mankind
And when it is finished the vacuum leaves nothing behind.
La da da da da, da da da da
La da da da da, da da da da
The sins of the father are visited upon the son
And each generation will bury the preceding one
When Adam and Eve stole the apple from off the green tree
They crucified Jesus for all of eternity.
La da da da da, da da da da
La da da da da, da da da da
January 8 1972, graveyard shift
Song
Pursued by a question
I found a closed book
That said on its cover
Don’t open and look.
Like Eve at the apple
I gazed a long time
While the serpent of doubt
Egged me on to the crime.
I spread forth the pages
I took the sweet bite
But the morsel turned bitter
As the words came to light.
I couldn’t stop reading
Despite the hot pain
In the slash those words burned
From my eye to my brain.
I love you, they screamed
To the man sent away,
It was just for the others
That I made my display.
But I know and you know
And they know it too
All trapped in a lie
We must live to be true.
January 6 1972, graveyard shift
Smokebreak
Now I remember
Your dancer’s head suspended
Your hands composed and slender
Your tongue tip
Tracing tender
Tendrils on
My lower lip.
January 6 1972, graveyard shift
Husband’s Song
I wish that I could love you
With a boundless energy
I wish that I could move you
Like the storm wind moves the tree.
I know that every morning
You meet the other man
Who takes you on a voyage
To a distant foreign land.
Though I often try to follow
I’ve lost hope for the chance
To slip free from my burden
And join your silent dance.
When you two are departed
And I’m left here behind
I search the mirror for my face
With fear I’ll lose my mind.
I wish that I could love you
With a boundless energy
I wish that I could move you
Like the storm wind moves the tree.
December 21, 1971 Day Shift
Solstice
Sap down, morning dark
Rooster sleeps, infant coughs, wife groans
Stove cold, pipes froze, truck stuck
Uncoffied and late to work.
Screen Tender empties sewer samples
“Goundwood down for cleanup
Pollution controls suspended
Today we flush the system out.”
Thousands of gallons of woodpulp and bleach
Zinc hydrosufite, sodium sulfate
Slosh through the flume into the saltchuck
Pablum for fish, heavily spiced.
In the Towncrier photo the Forestry Superintendant
Stands proud on the butt of a thousand year old fir
They’ve finished logging the old growth grove at Goat Lake.
It was one of the last virgin stands near the coast of B.C.
Cruised, felled, limbed, bucked
Skidded, yarded, loaded, trucked
Dumped, boomed, sorted, tugged
Towed, spiked, barked, lugged.
Ripped, slashed, cross-cut.
Pulped, shredded, screened
Bleached, tested, cleaned
Blended, thickened, died
Rolled, pressed, dried
Wound, rewound, finished.
The Times is all that’s left
For breakfast.
When darkness holds dominion here tonight
We’ll find and cut a sapling hemlock tree
To celebrate renewal of the light
And hope for rebirth of the land and sea.
23 November 1971, Graveyard Shift
Grinderman’s Blues
It’s three o’clock in the morning
On a rainy Saturday night
I’m up at this ungodly hour
But I’m not even stoned or tight.
I’m a gruntin’ and a groanin’
Though I know that it just ain’t right
I’m stuck on this fuckin’ grinder
Until the dawnin’ light.
I’ve got those heavy, tombstone, graveyard grinderman’s blues
And when that mornin’ finally comes
I drag-ass home to sleep
My bedroom window’s boarded up
The daylight out to keep.
But in my mind that grinder churns
It never stops or slows
Instead of wood against the stone
I dream I push my nose.
I’ve got those heavy, tombstone, graveyard grinderman’s blues
When I wake up it’s dark again
And I need a piece of tail
But my wife she says, go chop some wood
And empty the garbage pail.
So I do as I’m told, I pick up the axe
And go out in the evenin’ chill
Cause heftin’ and heavin’ those logs for the stove
Is good practise for work at the mill.
I’ve got those heavy, tombstone, graveyard grinderman’s blues
In a corner of her backyard in L.A.
My mother-in-law waters the young Bougainvilla
She bought to hide the green steel hatch
Of the bomb shelter her son no longer uses
To make out in with Shirley Jingles.
From their underground bower of bliss
They would gaze at a frozen sunset
Framed in a grainy picture window
Sized colour photograph.
Shouldering an ancient pike pole
I walk the flume on day shift
Poke, pry jammed chunks
Freeing the flow of wood to the grinders
Where butchered forests are chomped into gruel
To feed the mighty nine and ten
That roll forth tree-trunk spools of newsprint.
Not now…
The season of apocalypse is over
The sun will not eclipse again
Until this decade ripens.
Just planting and harvest
Just nuts and bolts.
November 6 1971