We are wrong when we say of the dead
They are no longer with us
Because the room where she lived
Is full to bursting
With the presence
Of her absent self

I don’t blame the heart
That decides
It has suffered enough
And refuses
To start beating again
The lungs
That refuse
To start breathing again
The brain that refuses
One more minute
Of fear
Worry
And loneliness
I don’t blame the one
Who lies down
And never gets back up again
I’ve longed for that moment
Often enough
Myself

I knew her for exactly
Sixty days
But what does it mean
To say that my knowledge of her
Is in the past tense?
I still know her
And she still is
Her
The only one of her
That ever was
Or is
Or will be

It’s just that
The days in which I came to know
Her
Are no more
I will not have another day in the presence of
Her voice
Her mannerisms
Her weeping and laughing
Just sixty
Only sixty
No more

And now begins
The long count of days
In which I do not
Hear
Her voice
Witness
Her mannerisms
Join
Her weeping and laughing
One
Two
Three
And onward
Until I too
Am only present
As an absence

She lost consciousness on Sunday
Machines kept her breathing
Until Wednesday
And then they didn’t anymore
Wednesday was her move-in day
Her end to homelessness day
Her welcome home day
And I had to call her housing support workers
Oh no
I had to tell them
Good god
I had to tell them
I’m so so sorry
I had to tell them
She is dead

I am just writing to say
That I understand more now
About how good people do terrible things
And are subsequently and justly judged
As bad people
About how oppression is sustained in part
By those who desire to end it
About how at least some war criminals
Mostly those in the rank and file of war criminals
Were just doing their best
And still deserved to die

Discussed in this post: 17 books (Hermeneutics of the Subject; The Question of German Guilt; The Dark Side of Democracy; Border & Rule; The Vulnerable Observer; Entitled; Looking for Spinoza; Against the Loveless World; Girls Against God; Selected Poems; Patterson; An Africa Elegy; Ceremonies for the Dead; nedi nezu; No Heroics, Please; You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense; and Scribbled in the Dark), 5 movies (The Sacrifice; Earth; The Wind that Shakes the Barley; The Turin Horse; and You Were Never Really Here), and 4 documentaries (The New Normal; Las Marthas; Roll Red Roll; and Challenger).

Continue reading →

I didn’t answer when you called

I thought about not calling back

But I did

Major emergency

Your first two words

Major emergency

EMS come and gone

Police awaiting coroner

Coming from an out-of-town job

They cover a surprisingly large area

Said the bureaucrat

Whose boss later said

How saddened they all were

Because although

We’ve all seen death before

They

They felt

They felt this

They felt this p…

They felt this project

Was extra special

Person, I said

I think you meant to say person

Discussed in this post: 14 Books (Phenomenology of Perception; Ethical Loneliness; How Europe Underdeveloped Africa; Canada in Africa; Tomorrow’s Battlefield; Lamarck’s Revenge; The Wild Places; Noopiming; Laurus; EEG; Fatelessness; Wicked Enchantment; Postcolonial Love Poems; and Ban En Banlieu); 4 Movies (The Wolf House; Hagasuzza; The Handmaiden; and Cargo 200); and 3 Documentaries (Welcome to Chechnya; Cheer; and The Painter and the Thief).

Continue reading →

I have spent seven years

Trying to memorize the contours of your body

Your textures, shapes, and spaces

With my lips and fingers

And the palms of my hand

But no matter how hard I try

I cannot hold you

Cannot kiss you

Cannot recreate you

When you are not here

.

I have spent seven years

Trying to memorize the sound of your voice

The pitch, and timbre, and intonation

Seven years spent

With the smell of your hair

And the space at the back of your neck

Seven years

Trying to memorize

The way you look when you are astride me

And the taste of your sweat

Seven years

To recall the way you fit within my arms

When I first get home

And the burst of your laughter when you are delighted

And I am ridiculous

But when you are gone

You’re gone

And I cannot bring you back

Not one part of you

.

My darling

I am impossible

Without you

In my dream the social services

Are kicking out all the Indigenous people

And calling them too aggressive

Because their anger reveals

That they have not yet been fully colonized

It’s an unconscionable sin

To refuse to open your heart

To Whiteness and conquest and pipelines and Jesus

All wrapped up like a charitable gift

.

I get ready for work and reflect that

It’s such a fine line

Between killing the Indian in the child

And just straight-up killing the Indian

And Canadians have never much cared

To firmly distinguish between the two

As long as one or the other occurred

(although, to be fair, Liberals incline towards the former and Conservatives incline towards the latter and moderate centrists look for ways to do both)

.

During a meeting at my work

My boss lectures the community residents

About things she doesn’t understand

“Fuck you, White lady,” an Indigenous man says on behalf of them all

A few days later she tells me

That maybe he doesn’t understand community living

Maybe he’s got to go

.

I work hard to make things right

I work hard to prevent further harm

I work hard to pick up the pieces

But it’s hard because my hands

Are covered in blood

Discussed in this post: 8 books (Process and Reality, The Assassination of Lumumba, Anarcho-Blackness, Mutual Aid, We Will Not Cancel Us, For Joshua, Waterlog, and Permafrost), 1 film (Gwen), and 4 documentaries (Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, Killer Inside, Class Action Park, and You Cannot Kill David Arquette).

Continue reading →

Okay, this year I read 140 books. Sadly, I was unable to maintain my monthly reviews (2020 got a bit busier than expected) but I hope to return to doing those in 2021. I’m not going to write a review of every book in this post but will, instead, highlight my most and least favourite books in each category as well as my overall favourites this year.

So, let’s start with the best of the best. My favourite reading of 2020 is not a single book but the works of a single author: Robert MacFarlane. I read three of his books this year—The Old Ways, Landmarks, and Underland—and each one was remarkable and filled me with a sense of beauty, wonder, longing, sorrow, acceptance, and comfort. They are difficult books to describe. Are they travelogues? Memoir? Nature writing? Contemplative meditations? Literature? Yes, they are all of those things in different ways and all at once. At one point in Underland, when visiting cracks in the earth and pits in the Dinaric Alps—a breath-taking place, but also a place used by the Nazis to engage in mass executions of civilians during the Second World War—MacFarlane asks, “What is the relationship of beauty and devastation in a landscape such as this?” It is a question that he is constantly circling around in all of his work and, for those of us living through the sixth mass extinction of life on earth, it is a question that we must all confront as we seek to live our very brief lives responsibly, thoughtfully, and, yes, even joyfully.

Continue reading →