The ocean engulfs Deciduous reverie In sweater weather
(sad how this haiku couldn’t fit: apple cider brewing on the stove for the next 5 months, balcony hot chocolate in quilt watching hummingbirds drinking)
October 27, Dundarave Beach park, colonial west vancouver, unceded and occupied MST lands. A windy day, with 1m waves and driftwood. Deciduous trees in green, yellow, orange and red.
don’t think about every amazing Philip K. Dick story or novel that has been made into a good or bad movie
don’t think about allegory
don’t think about maga and carney and the c/a/n/a/d/a project
don’t think about south africa, or ground penetrating radar or residential “schools” or marked graves or mass graves, or “Indian Day Schools” or the “Indian Land Trust” [which is maybe worth C$600b to C$3t] or the great canadian genocide [ongoing, as well as historical]
don’t think about what “Indians” means
don’t think about Indigenous women making up less than 4% of the population here, but 48% of the federal prison population [it was 24% a decade ago, and 12% two decades ago]
don’t think about how “remigration” is straight out of the nazi playbook
don’t think about Nakba, or October 7 or eight decades of slow or brisk genocide of zionist psychopaths in Palestine, or zionist settler paramilitary death squads, or how canadian settlers are…on someone else’s land
don’t think about Gaza or the manifest destiny of greater israel
don’t think about the flotillas and the beatings and torture and sexual assault, or how the canadian and swedish governments did sweet fuck all to maintain how they are appeasing the zionist psychopaths, so they chose to not support “their” citizens who merely seek an end to genocide, when our elected leaders cavort with those fuckers
don’t think about antifa and how we were all antifa until 80 years ago, and now with most wwii vets dead, we’ve let nazis and fascists exist under cover of civility politics
don’t think about how mairikkkans are afraid to physically stop, let alone shoot or kill masked terrorists in their streets kidnapping people, under the guise of homeland security
don’t think about how naive it is to think that if we protest peacefully the fascists will just stop, but they don’t think like us, and when 80 years ago we had to kill them as fast as possible to stop a global fascist takeover
don’t think about the global fascist takeover happening right now, shhhhh
don’t think about how so many people think antifa is an organization with a leader, whose girlfriend has been taken into custody by ice
Before my guardian angel came crashing to the ground in a heap of bloody early summer cottonwood fluff, he clipped the top of his left wing on an abstract steel sculpture recently implanted in a park in what used to be his typical oceanside flight plan from up there wherever to the balcony of my apartment where he would normally perch, occasionally to torment the odd pigeon or seagull that’s not quite tuned into the abstract, ethereal vibes that constantly inhabit my balcony, whether angel-boy is there or not.
And before the crash to the ground, perhaps it was yesterday or last month [who knows, what with Pacific Angel Time and all] he hit a patch of vertigo while hovering in the cliffside updrafts in the Grand Canyon. When he panicked and plummeted he was fortunate that the mildest gust tossed him enough so he could land on the cliff edge rather than down down down.
I used to be somewhat self-conscious about having a sub-standard guardian angel. I mean is my karmic balance so out of whack that I don’t rate a qualified guide? Did I piss off some early muse as a cocky teenage poet full of self-defined genius and overwhelming erotic allure and hyper-critical insight into the stupidity of the previous poetic generation that I —and only I— had the power to erase them from the canon?
But as I got older from being such a teenage cock, I started meeting others who, when properly motivated by what I learned to cultivate— a safe trustworthy ear, would admit to having suspicions of cosmic incompetence “guiding” them into co-dependent, dysfunctional ultimately imploding, self-destructive relationships with uber-egotists. So maybe I wasn’t alone. Maybe we’re all in this trap, thinking there are reliable wings to catch us, when really they’re not necessarily any more reliable than our own common sense.
And then I began asking who sets the standards for quality, or even competent, guardian angels. What committee was empowered and by who and what about the applicants— was there a sufficient pool to draw from or do dead 1970’s glam-rock drummers get to apply?
And once I’d cultivated enough doubt and suspicion of my supposed guardian angel, I came to see him more as a companion, a mostly unobtrusive friend who thankfully lacked the capacity to annoy me like some inconsiderate roommate who never cleans his pasta pots. And wouldn’t you know, I began to see him more as my sense of awe lifted. He’d sit on my balcony rail, ten stories up, often lost in his nearly-patented daze staring at meandering lava lamp cloud formations— as if he had some major life decision dilemma looming over him. Maybe he did.
There were even days when he looked so down and I was amidst an optimistic, inspired streak, that I felt it was actually my presence around him that made all the difference, that kept him from sliding off the rail to kiss the pool deck below at terminal velocity. Those were the days that if it weren’t for the groove I was in, I’d be cynical enough to think that the Great Chain of Being was actually one of those chains attached to a rubber plug in the bathroom sink, that every time it slipped out of your hand the chain would seek the plumbing depths by diving, jingling, down the drain, desperate to drag the plug with it, only to be ultimately frustrated when the plug merely did its job.
So when I heard the crash and saw the bloody cottonwood fluff, I knew I was on my own. And the air, it doesn’t taste all that different after all. But I still miss you, angel-boy.
Copyright 2002, Stephen Buckley 2002.10.16, 915-945pm
Harry Bailey, almost at the very end of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. #antifa, through and through.
pssssst, here.
like, everyone I know is antifa
at least if they aren’t, they should fuck off:
I’ve started talking to people about my favorite fictional character who was antifa. Harry Bailey. People generally know who he is. I talk about how he saved so many people’s lives on that transport ship, because George Bailey was there to save him as a child. That’s what anti-fascism means to me on a real empathy level.
The president even gave him a fucking medal for his heroism because he saved other antifa, by killing fascists.
And thennnn they get to badly argue why It’s a Wonderful Life isn’t an antifa film, because is sure fucking is.
And we all watch it every Christmas.
It’s also anti oligarch, and pro community housing and credit unions. Fuck Mr. Potter…
focussing on Palestine, genocide, climate change, citizenship, slavery and indentured work, broligarchs (25% wealth tax/year, dropping to 5% when they’re down to $78m), neocolonialism and landback and reparations, science is real, disability rights, general fascism and actual democracy. The big details are below.
We refuse to stand by while the government and Canada’s richest corporations hoard wealth, gut our public services, fuel climate collapse, attack migrants, exploit Indigenous lands, and prop up a genocide in Palestine.
They think that if they can overwhelm and divide us, we won’t fight back. But climate justice, migrant justice, economic justice, Indigenous rights, and anti-war movements are uniting to prove them wrong.
On Saturday, September 20th, we’re drawing the line – for People. For Peace. For the Planet.
From rallies to strikes, marches to gatherings, this September 20th, communities will mobilize across the country and demand that Prime Minister Carney and the Canadian government pick a side: injustice, violence, and climate destruction- or a just and safe future for all of us. Read our full demands below.
let your eyes soak it in:
this boat, contrasted with the foreground Arbutus tree, is grounded, stuck at a king tide line, feeble and impotent and incapable of change. that’s the c/a/n/a/d/a project. OUR job is to intervene!
You lay on your side naked fetal in a field of wild flowers and summer afternoon heat. I had no wings —though I imagined them— yet I hovered over you covering you from the elements. When I stood your halo pulsed.
We went to a Shuswap Medicine Wheel in the summer of Oka. The eagles soaring above often appeared and disappeared out of and into nowhere, despite our search for continuity in their flight. My sweat lodge lasted days [liminally]. When you emerged from the moon lodge I asked how it went. Your eyes looked at mine into mine through mine around mine all over mine, and you said —ambivalently— that you couldn’t say. You aren’t able to say? You aren’t allowed to say? You shouldn’t say? You aren’t moved to say? As we walked to an after dinner meal Your visage was substantial and weighty yet light and fluid and opposed to gravity. Your halo began to envelope your neck and head, pulsating.
You lay on your side naked fetal in a field of wild flowers, bees, and summer twilight. I had no wings —though an eagle appeared above— I hovered over you covering you from the elements [the cooling sky]. When I stood your whole body aura was pale and rose and fell with your breath. Time —clearly— was counting down.
We were sitting on a boulder in March on the west shore slope of the Maritime Museum marina, facing the setting sun grinning into crispy winds and the intermittent spray of the life in the sea. Your ears were reddening. Your fingers icy. Your resolve was firm. Squeezing your eyes closed, inhaling deeply then holding your breath you willed your body temperature to rise miraculously beyond where the wool sweater expected. Your glow spilled out your eyes and cocooned your whole body, capturing parts of me —and the boulder— inadvertently. I’ve never since felt that rich golden hue.
You lay on your side naked fetal in a field of wild flowers on a northwestern shoulder of Mount Baker, chirping insects, and midnight blue sky. I longed for wings —the moon began to creep up over the glacier— I hovered over you covering you from the elements [the cooled sky]. When I stood I watched you wake, yawn stretch sit up hug your knees grin, feel the glow emanating from your bones, close your eyes and fade into light, leaving me to walk back down to the forest alone, grinning, yet with tears of loss streaming down my face.
The last time I ever saw you was the following winter in the pub at SFU where we sat together sharing a huge hot chocolate with Baileys, reading our respective books, pausing and watching the winter wind pelt —then sprinkle— the rain onto the windows. The moon wouldn’t rise that night behind the overcast darkening sky. Because of this, you looked up out the window and back at me. Borrowed time. Ineffable memories. The flux of moments. Your waiting. My wondering. The feeling of loss of contact of fleeting contact and days gone by. You stood, packed your gear, and walked out into the rain, to face south, look up into the brooding sky, take the pelting rain on the chin, let the wind whip your hair wildly and stare until the clouds thinned then parted and the moon returned to you.
Copyright 2002, Stephen Buckley 2002.07.24, 1:15-2:50am
The c/a/n/a/d/a project pretends to be friendly and polite. Sometimes we are nice, but we are rarely kind.
We ignore our, and other genocides.
We are steeped in white patriarchy in our systems, culture, institutions and sport (Hockey Canada rapists included here)
The tri-cities used to be predominantly white decades ago, so it’s no surprise the whites are emboldened to spread their racist filth out loud, in public.
But GENERATIONS ago, the tri-cities was Indigenous land, which is mostly lost on white people despite Coquitlam being an actual Indigenous word. Colonialism is a core, unexamined identity here.
White people: our jobbbbb is to intervene and confront racists we encounter. There are no bystanders, but enablers and appeasers.
A light shines on a wall, where there are bumps in the plaster, that combine with the spreading light to look like a young boy is a comet. Is he your inner child?
ok several things happened last night in the chain, linked above:
they forced england out of Ireland 103 years ago
they forced england out of India 78 years ago
Czechoslovakia transformed into other things since say 1991
the c/a/n/a/d/a project needs to go, same with mairikkka
because of 1-3, we can do 4
because of 1-3 we can get rid of israel, which is why that since 2023.10.07, zionist shills worldwide pushed the existential narrative that “israel has a right to exist” and “but do you condemn Hamas?” even though international law is on the side of the occupied (including in North America)
Christians, Jews, Muslims and so many others coexisted in Palestine for centuries before they introduced the zionist cancer (with apologies to cancer)
this Mastodon post above, and so much more, happened–read it, and the chain that followed, to see a variety of views about what we need to do with Palestine…and the 2state fuckery is not it
and Rachel Gilmore first alerted me to slash-and-cut-carney pondering recognizing Palestine…so while the c/a/n/a/d/a project is inching forward on Palestine, it’s for almost alllll the wrong reasons.
kthanksbye
oh and fuck off american eagle master race fuckery too, and all you dine with
Statistics Canada data shows only 36 per cent of police-reported sexual assaults ended in charges between 2015 and 2019, and fewer than half of those ended in a guilty verdict.
and what percentage of sexual assaults don’t even get reported? someone left that enormous number out of this article, as a testament to failure
too drunk to be credible, but ok to provide consent
5 hockey players know enough to coerce her to “provide” consent on video?
the bar is so insanely high for beyond a reasonable doubt, that it’s no surprise that racist genocidal colonializing upper class white supremacy men a few centuries ago, created our legal system
these 5 hockey players…a pox upon anyone who pays them to wear skates
hey, here’s a list of unionized goods and services for you to prioritize in your spending
you don’t have to be a political economist to know that with threats from #mairikkka (invasion, tariffs), climate breakdown, #BigCarbon, the wicked #CarneyCuts coming up to federal programs…one amazing thing to do, with very little effort, is to buy things made here by union workers
we buy things anyway
we want to improve our economic resilience
we want to support other people in our communities
we want to buy things that benefit workers, which unionized workplaces help accomplish
but it’s hard to do all the research to make sure our money doesn’t help impoverish others or bleed out of the country (the database website doesn’t note foreign ownership, but some of the brands will be obvious to you)
and it’s hard on your own to do all this research and filter by product or service, by city, etc.