Poetry

I like simple aphorisms that make me happy when I say them out loud. I’m not alone in this. I’ve noticed a few sites in my world that started with a simple but idealistic precept — that individual change can be fun and in aggregate can be funner(tm) — have matured and born fruit over the past few years. One is the self-explanitory site changeeverything.ca. Funded by the best damn credit union/bank in the world, Vancity, the evolution of this online community/blog was guided by Kate Dugas.

Then there is the Learning to Love you More website, associated with a book of the same name, instigated by Miranda July (the writer/actor of that excellent Me You and Everyone We Know film). The exercises suggested by the site are designed to encourage participants to engage in simple but intimate ways with their neighbourhoods, the physical place which includes plants, animals and other people. Trish Mau introduced me to this site and she has been completing some of the exercises judiciously.

Then I went to the Creative Activism show last night which was also the inaugural opening of the Toronto Free Gallery (just down the street from me). I got to make a ‘city repair’ request of Urbane Repairs representative Martin Reis, who was sitting behind a desk typing up request slips, claiming to be able to make the ‘city fun’ and ‘do in a week what takes the city 5 years’. I hope my request for a bike lane and local traffic only on St. Clarens between College and Bloor gets some prompt attention.

And just this morning I ran across this lovely site (again associated with a book) Things I Have Learned in my Life So Far which uses typography and video as a creative frame for recording social/environmental interventions that demonstrate what the site contributors have learned so far. Beautiful, thoughtful videos are the result.

So to conclude, there is a trend here: The pithy aphorism comes off the page or out of someone’s mouth. It becomes action, it touches others, touches a place. Then gets recorded, uploaded. Finally it inspires someone else to try her own hand at a living action and to share what she has learned, adding to the community cultural bank.

A very good model indeed.

The first appearance of archy

One morning Don Marquis arrived in
his office to find the following
message on his typewriter, all in
lower case. Archy, a cockroach
reincarnated from a poet, had laboriously
typed the message to Don by climbing upon
the typewriter and jumping on the keys,
one at a time. The message is all in
lower case, because Archy could not
operate the shift key.

The Coming of Archy:

expression is the need of my soul
i was once a vers libre bard
but i died and my soul went
into the body of a cockroach
it has given me a new outlook on life

i see things from the under side now
thank you for the apple peelings in the wastepaper basket
but your paste is getting so stale i can’t eat it
there is a cat here called mehitabel i wish you would have
removed she nearly ate me the other night why don’t she
catch rats that is what she is supposed to be for
there is a rat here she should get without delay

most of these rats here are just rats
but this rat is like me he has a human soul in him
he used to be a poet himself
night after night i have written poetry for you
on your typewriter
and this big brute of a rat who used to be a poet
comes out of his hole when it is done
and reads it and sniffs at it
he is jealous of my poetry
he used to make fun of it when we were both human
he was a punk poet himself
and after he has read it he sneers
and then he eats it

i wish you would have mehitabel kill that rat
or get a cat that is onto her job
and i will write you a series of poems
showing how things look
to a cockroach
that rats name is freddy
the next time freddy dies i hope he won’t be a rat
but something smaller i hope i will be a rat
in the next transmigration and freddy a cockroach
i will teach him to sneer at my poetry then

don’t you ever eat any sandwiches in your office
i havent had a crumb of bread
for i dont know how long
or a piece of ham or anything but apple parings
and paste leave a piece of paper in your machine
every night you can call me archy