Love Outlandish
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Dempster, Barry, 1952-
Love outlandish / Barry Dempster.
Poems.
ISBN 978-1-894078-70-2
I. Title.
PS8557.E4827L58 2009 C811’.54 C2008-907011-9
Copyright © Barry Dempster, 2009
We acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program.
The cover image is “Jocasta” by Tony Scherman.
The author photograph was taken by OMN Photo Art.
The book is set in Minion and Bliss.
Design and layout by Alan Siu.
Printed by Sunville Printco Inc.
Brick Books
431 Boler Road, Box 20081
London, Ontario N6K 4G6
www.brickbooks.ca
“In a way that leaves
a scar, I
no longer wish to love.”
— Franz Wright, “Progress”
“Informers inform, burglars burgle, murderers murder, lovers love.”
— Jean-Luc Godard, À bout de souffle
Love Outlandish
Devotion
Mating
A Bestiary
Picnic
Yes
It All Starts
The Phone Rings
A Piece of the Rocky Mountains
The Goat
Valentine’s Day
The Conversation
Blue Rose
Yoga Class
Lack of Light
Glowing
Touched
Willingness
True
Come Live with Me
Pieces
Nude Scenes
I Saw You
Spanish Espadrilles
You’re the Last Thought
Dancing
Sex Appeal
Embouchure
One Minute
Whiteout
Stormed
Sick with Desire
I’d Like to Lick Your Thumb
Oozing
Imaginary Hand
Between
Found
A Bad Night
The Argument
After Watching Miami Vice
The Silent Treatment
The Long Argument
Saving You
A Distal Winter’s Night
Rise Up
Take Care
Twelfth Grey Day in a Row
Howl
So Special
The Heartbreak Hall of Fame
The Last Photograph
Rumble
Hard Song
After
Lost Love
Crumbs
How to Hide a Broken Heart
Lucinda Williams Is in Pain
Nice, Nicely
The Third Presence
Acknowledgements
Biography
He has his cacti, some of which
resemble minarets, others
something alien and many-
armed. She has her horses, furious
prancers, weekly rides through the forest,
miracles underfoot. So many
people, passions: stamps lovinglyh
teased from tongues, wine bottles dusted
like babies’ bums, Sunday painters
fevered with sunsets. When does joy
become obsession? A friend flips through his
jazz collection, the plastic clatter a mix
of bebop and angel-speak.
A neighbour has planted herself
in her garden, a shape-shifting bloom.
And me, with my film books, my poetry,
my ton of trivia, how did I find
space for you, love
outlandish, first and final thought?
I am gathering images of you and
pasting them on my nakedness, like one
of those street poles in Paris
where possibility is many layers thick.
I am designing a diorama:
a drum roll, a daguerreotype,
an annotated list of dreams
come true. Just like the guy who’s mad
for Elvis, a houseful of Andy
Warhol walls and blue suede shoes.
Or the gal with cookbooks on her shelves
instead of food. It’s not necessities
that keep us alive, but drawers filled
with butterflies, art deco prints,
Royal Albert teacups, the variety
of smiles that have transformed
your lips into collectables.
It was a left turn at Bad Luck, then
a sharp right on Despair, my father
racing to my mother’s rescue,
steering wheel spinning, tires skidding,
his happiness sliding out of control.
He picked up her hand which lay in her lap
like a heap of mousy bones
and, lifting it to his lips, kissed the abyss.
The strawberry freckle on her left
ankle, the wrinkled cleavage, the bald spot
where even the hairdresser ran out
of miracles, he sat and memorized
by the hour. You are my wife, he
explained, tracing a vein that ran on
and on like a coastline. Love
in absentia, like chrysanthemums
still glowing on Mona Lisa’s cheeks,
glissandos between Monk’s shadowy fingers.
The body decorative, the body
destroyed, he held her long after
her death date had weathered, held her
in the cluttered corners of his own brain.
Nights when TV was doing its damnedest
to distract him, I’d hear him talking
above the din, telling her how it felt
to be skinned alive. Love you, love you,
the old refrain, his hand sitting beside
him on the couch, squeezing air.
I didn’t know the red-winged blackbird
could flick his voice into a tinkle,
the sound of a Lilliputian dinner bell.
So I watched him in the rushes, the way
he shimmed his beak with air and, sure enough,
that ting, silvery and skittish.
Once, twice, head cocked like a puzzle piece,
listening for an even smaller echo.
Could a mate be far away?
Just an inkling of her had turned
his throat into a perfect stroke,
crystal on crystal.
Why do I bother opening my mouth
when it’s the same old screech every time?
Asking for love twisted into a cry for help.
So complicated, all the sex stuff,
the cad whistling his head off, begging
like a limp dick to be reassessed
in a kindlier light.
It’s not like I’m lurking in marshes
polluting the mist,
but feeling predatory nonetheless
with my too-tall hopes.
Take me in your wings, I shriek,
my voice disguised as a nest of broken twigs.
The cats just howl, an all-clear orgy call.
And the dogs snort and snuffle
as they prime each other’s bums.
Lord knows what the bug-eyed flies do –
probably some variant of buzz.
Gets me thinking cross-species thoughts:
what would it feel like to hold
a spider in my rented arms,
or kiss a snake?
Would it turn a red-winged blackbird on
if I wore bells on my fingers
and let the breeze play through?
What’s a man to do
when his loneliness can’t sing?
One blotch of shadow seeps into her cage, then another,
until the wood chips and the water bottle begin to
disappear. Won’t be long before night makes her
invisible as well, whiskers, ears, even the white
of her coat. No more humans looming, sticking
their fingers between the wires. No more
children’s crushing arms. Just her and the darkness,
cuddled to a oneness, like breath and air. Oh,
the luxury of stretching into space, bits of her
streaming from the cage in tiny squares. Is that
a feast of carrot in the corner or her own heart
finding yet another expanse? The softness
of the question mark tickles her throat, a moan
like her lover makes when he’s everywhere at once.
The one thing she hates to eat is modesty, even
the word turns her stomach. She tosses
back her head and barks just long enough to
flaunt her limber oesophagus –
a darkness more delicious than zebra flesh.
Don’t get her wrong, she’s no
narcissist, no fancy swaggerer. She knows she’s ugly, the jungle
version of car exhaust. But nevertheless
perfection: fast, furious. Scavenger, assassin,
swindler, whatever it takes. Isn’t survival the
ultimate love affair with the world? She’ll eat
sandstorms if she has to, or good old bleached bones.
At the measly lake, lapping up her own reflection,
it’s she herself giving the water its sweet, sweet taste.
All he can focus on is Velvet’s magnificent tail,
a flurry of black sparks transforming the trail
from mere muck and shit into a parade
of darkness. If he trots close enough, her hairs
prickle his nose. If he rears his head, it’s like
he’s breathing through her follicles. Talk about
erogenous zones, his nose a superior penis, sniffing
the shyness from each blade of grass, inhaling
the whole of Velvet’s body, a cloud of oat sweat,
cunt, and sugar cubes. The satisfaction of the snort,
nostrils wide and oily. He is smelling the dust
behind her knees, the indent in her muscle
where the saddle squeezes, the furry patches
inside her ears, his sinuses a wish list of thrills.
Baby, he says to the walls of his stall, to
the tiny dust clowns swirling around his hooves.
A bull needs all the practice he can get,
with his thick rope of a tongue, and those
cumbersome lips. Without finesse,
Baby could so easily be a belch.
Ride me, tie me, might do for some, but every
smart bull knows cowboys are anything but crass,
soft and sentimental as the fuzz on a cactus,
in love with the idea of wild. He knows a bull
can never be just an idea, but maybe, Baby, with
the rider’s thighs wrapped around his flanks and
the rider’s nerves melting into sweat, this one will hold
on through the foreplay, come instead of go, a real man.
She pisses here, pisses there, from the creaking
thorn tree to that clump of tall brown grass,
it all belongs to her. And, of course, the
mongoose in the middle. She’s crazy about
that mongoose, the ache of him in her glands.
Not to mention the grit and pebbles, and
the tufts of weed, and the blue butterfly that just
happened to cross the piss line. And the slightly
Essence