immemoriam

Jeremy Stewart

I

cannot do nothing
in dreamland I spit
tase your fears
drive off
fall from the wheel
of seasons
with lists I wish I wrote
not even those
horsey medicine mix-up
if we had known
deciduous thoughts
a situationist art school
in remotest hinterland
haunted used bookstore
your ashes in twelve golden discs
becoming-gone
in green pourings
after the end where I began
in dreamland
on herringbone floor
awake in dreamland
with dreamlanders
alone among dreamlanders
after my death I was alive
grue and bleen pourings
invented a language in
which to talk to myself
while a rotary dial I
answer “hello,” you
snored roundly
over Strauss’ Metamorphosen
you know zero about
me and understand
less


II

grue violets burst and disperse their seeds
trace wire transfers branch to branch
arms flung around horse
we might as well all of us
be forgiven crimes
you in the back
think you are free of guilt
ushers will escort you out
what you hate in what you write takes
revenge on all you loved
singing saw sang songs
unface darkness in a lamp-out room
blank shirt or negative-coloured
bleen map of anthill
I should be happy I escaped
plans for a cathedral
shed or treefort
perfectly invisible or more so
becomings-what already
in logodaedaly
if I want to live
survive becomings-unaffordable
why did I not form healthy habits
want to live but now
judgement impends
somewhere else would I
I would have meant such else
that unchanges you
smooth seam with creased hand
how long can you deny
what fortress do you defend
not to change
the place it hurts
body is where it hurts
who is the smallest meteorite
interstellar mote


III

what music will they make
me listen in hell to
fans overhead in dreamland spin
describe a gidouille
when that else of life overwhelms writing
do you lose those poems
or are they stored somewhere
for your return to writing
in some form
does the loss of poems accumulate
as anti-matter writing
with own invisible gravity
calculable as mass
of unwritten time
in future writing
you would have loved my children so much
in dreamland



Jeremy Stewart is the author Hidden City (Invisible Publishing) and (flood basement (Caitlin Press). His work has appeared in Canadian Literature, Geist, Lemon Hound, Open Letter, and elsewhere. Stewart lives with his partner and children in unceded Coast Salish territory/Vancouver, BC.