There is a little red book
in which I etch occasions
that seemed to matter to us
for the sake of a future
encounter with engraved instances
that will make a boy or girl
with something of my genetic
structure unknowingly sad.

This little red book
is a little red bird, lost
in the sky, not knowing
its course of flight, not knowing
if it’s about to see
heaven or worms.

My scratchings are barely
legible on the inside of
the tiny bird’s heart,
the little bird’s tiny
racing heart.

If anyone wishes to know
what I am remembering,
he must find the bird,
capture the bird,
kill the bird, dissect the bird,
cut the pages of the little
bird’s tiny heart, and try to read
what is written there.

Dear Death,

I had a book with empty pages
that I used to write you letters.

You never answered my long questions,
but I continued writing letters

to you, Death. I kept writing you
long and boring, heartfelt letters.

You never answered my stupid questions.
And now you take my book from me?

Summer

Spiders spin webs around flower pots.

Squirrels grow teeth the length of wood sleds.

Bees make honey in soda pop traps.

Birds perch aimlessly on dented eaves.

Skunks barely fit into their holes.

Taxi drivers leave crossword squares unfilled.

Teachers crouch to teach children things.

Worms burrow deeper.

I walk on the dying grass.

Tapping stones together means
you are not a couch potato
memories are dividing themselves
into other memories
atoms of memory
memory of atoms
the yellow of beauty
the groan of wood under your boots
along the boardwalk
echoing across the Thursday lake
to where Andy can feel your heart
unravelling like a giant spool
miles away from your garage
that once meant something to you
but for now there are more amusing things
like parks encased in parks
and ice on your mind
layers of jutting hope along the shore
a discarded subway token
your smile reminiscent of chickens; a proton
positively charged
a streetcar full of moon
quieter hours
and a curb
waiting to congratulate you
while you rest your borrowed ankles.

Zero day

In a place where there is no milk
he blinks
what the rat told him
is true
black is the queen of colours

there is a bend in the road
where the empty shell of his brother lies
blanched and drying
under an alabaster sun
and he says it doesn’t matter
but it is anchored
in his mind
“zeru”
a brother with frosted eyelashes
transparent
through the seasons
ghost
a pearl
pressed against the blackness
of their mother

the breeze undoes him
cracked lips
he approaches the edge
his chest fills with the sounds of the cellist
heard only once
pride comes in waves
as he lifts the little shell to his lips

the first drop is metallic
followed by sweetness
tears find their way into him
there is no cure
for snow in the blood
his brother is gone
taken
for his bird-like limbs

mediators stomp
the dirt complies
bells jingle
bringing on the ecstasy
he watches as the spirit of zeru rides on their shoulders
and wishes his skin was not king.

A bitter of angelica & artichoke with carbolic strengthens & pacifies her body.
Or sixpence spent brings up a blood-sweat & blister pops by tonic & suction cups.
She’s not bilious but swollen lymphatic.
Cracked bone cage filled with paraffin & palm spilled salt.
She’s undressed & under wraps — O spirewort! O collywobbles!
A rapscallion pins her down.

Posset of Foxglove

Red stripes & white. Angel strapped to his humbling chair.
Spun & blood-let. Gooseflesh bristling.
Her eyes twitch a dream of the tree killer.
Torn holes & poison poured to roots for a view — trees dying where they grow.
Moon slit slipping in & slipping out of white pine. Star whorl.
Mane whip. Her petticoat in a maiden heap.
Foxglove sleep on a merry-go-round behind barbed fences & ivied walls.

Flower Water of Saffron

Swallows saffron & canary wine. A somnolent myth saves her.
Or entreats an iodine salve—ward against skin tap & fat scraped off bone.
Wakes up a wisp of leaf.
A shrivelled lung.
Lifts her head & weeps.
Wades deep into heavy water & floats her dead man.
Or sinks into his gaping pool.

Tincture of Mandrake

Black bile & melancholy before a sponge soaked with mandrake.
Or hemlock held over mouth & nose.
Before twilight loosens her body. Before spasms—stiffens from an injection.
Barbituate release.
Before Cerletti & Bini & the dogcatcher’s truck.
A dog roped & current through a frantic heart & sectioned brain.

Trust in me.

There’s a tyrant of a ghost
who visited my apartment

on Dufferin Street,
strangled me with a towel.

“I was born before the gold rush,
before the flood,

before once upon a time. I want to be
known in harrowing grief.”

In a nightmare, my herm-
aphrodite muse whispered,

“To lose a finger is to grow
a hand, a new sensorial world.

Allow the book to die inside
the museum of your skull.

In discarded bone, write the book
back and forth for centuries,

begin when granular words
lock into traces. Alchemical maps.

Maps of unknowing. Blossoming
maps with no locations.

When the granular
trace shapes itself into a key,

shuttle back and forth
from door to door, never crossing

into a house. You will become
a rib cage of music when the book

envelops you like a moat.
The book is the home

for a wandering idiot. No one
envies a poet in the 21 century.

Who is sufficiently haunted
to map the eruption of history

from a threshold in this country
of liars and thieves?

The best of them send you apologetic
emails for their ecstatic flights.

Drown the book to unearth
its dark intention. Draw it up

like a fossil made radiant
with geometry of light.”

I closed my book of nightmares
and bid my muse

adieu and began to write
about the great, wild West

or was it the great, white North?

O glory floating out of brass,
subsuming!

Stranger

Stranger, fixed like acid
on blotter paper,
swallowed by the nameless
night plant with petal
hieroglyphics.

Stranger, shadow without
trace, circulating
absence, repetition
of walking without feet,
drowning without water,
barking to the hereafter
dawn.

Stranger, entombed in eyes,
sagging shadow,
forgetful of who
she thought she was, forgetful
of what she might have been
had she not lapsed.

Stranger with no country, fallen
through a cloud, disengaged
from the eyes, fallen
to the ground, prostrate
to the hidden, forgotten.

Asher Ghaffar is a poet residing in Toronto. His first book of poetry, Wasps  in a Golden Dream Hum a Strange Music, is published with ECW press.

Ottawa is a vocal city. The art of government expresses itself loudly through heckled speeches in the House of Commons and sound bites gathered by frantic scrums of journalists on the steps of Parliament Hill. But another voice has stepped up to the mic in the nation’s capital—the city’s slam poetry community is thriving and turning up the volume of oppositional rhetoric in the country’s most political city.

If the role of the poet is to reflect the world around her, then it is inevitable that politics would pencil itself into the poetics of Ottawa wordsmiths. But it’s ironic that in the nation’s capital, home to our national symbols of government and politics, it is poetry of all things that is politicizing young people. Slam poetry is the competitive aspect of performance poetry, aimed to inject verse into non-literary venues to an audience more diverse than a room full of poets. It has been an important grassroots arts movement in the US, and in Ottawa, audiences are responding to it as a forum for subversive political views that are often drowned out by feedback from the government scandal of the day.

From sharing the monkey bars with Justin Trudeau in the first grade to emceeing the launch of Ed Broadbent’s 2004 federal campaign, Ingrid Joseph’s life in Ottawa is steeped in politics. “I have always been a political person,” says Joseph, 31, better known around Ottawa as Oni the Haitian Sensation. “I was going to become a diplomat, but I’m not diplomatic.” So, becoming an outspoken poet and a driving force behind the city’s slam scene was the next best thing.

“Slam is coming up to the surface in Ottawa,” says Joseph. “I take slam poetry everywhere I can.” She has capitalized on the opportunity to perform her poems for parliament, Ottawa City Council and the CRTC, vocalizing her verses on demilitarization, AIDS and racism. “I have always used poetry to advocate for something,” she says. It is her raw, direct use of language that makes her messages accessible, particularly to a younger audience, and is why she has been invited to perform at politically motivated events aimed at youth. At Rush The Vote 2003, an event aimed at fostering political awareness in Canadian, Joseph performed her poem Academic Fuel.

“…If you/ disagree with the things you see/ Get involved with the politics of your country/ It’s your future and we need leaders/ Like devoted people not disbelievers…”

“I see absurd federal and international things that the average Canadian citizen doesn’t see,” says Ottawa poet John Akpata, 31, winner of Ottawa’s 2004 CBC Poetry Face Off. “When homeless people from across the country are protesting at 24 Sussex Drive, or there is a rally for Palestine on Parliament Hill, I can ride past on my bicycle. I can directly inject myself into an atmosphere of politics so I can criticize it and reveal the truth about it because of the juxtaposition of my life as a poet in a political town.”

Akpata is driven to write political poetry as a reaction against the heavy media coverage of the happenings in his hometown, which he sees as often being grossly inaccurate, leaving the public ill-informed. Frustrated by this political spoon-feeding, he believes that using poetry to offer a different perspective can empower people and initiate change. “When you express yourself it gives other people opportunity to do the same,” he says.

The relationship between politics and poetry that slam offers in Ottawa may not be what the government has in mind to fill the poet laureate seat when it is vacated by George Bowering later this year. “I don’t think that Paul Martin wants me to write poetry for him,” says Akpata. “But if I create poetry pertaining to Paul Martin and I walk up the street and say it on Parliament Hill, he’s going to hear about it. There are venues available to me here that other people just don’t have.”