Progress

Gene-targeting and molecular cloning. The shrine

of the genome has been broken into — GloFish

the colour of Skittles, or an Apple product line, happily

swim in aquariums. Insulin-producing bacteria

are grown in large fermentation tanks to provide

medicine for diabetics. Frankenfruit are popular

at Whole Foods. Grapples. Tangelos. Seedless

watermelons. We need to take bioengineering

between species to the next level. There are

glow-in-the-dark-cats, featherless chickens,

web-spinning goats, sudden death mosquitos,

super cows, Enviropigs, but why not gene-splice

chameleons with butterflies? Imagine summer fields

thick with fairy creatures changing colours. How

about lemon-scented honeybees? Flying iguanas?

Why not unicorns? Why stop there? Demand

Big Pharma give us an altruism patch, one to create

more empathy in politicians, say, or a nasal spray

to make children more resistant to fear-mongering

and body shaming. What about you? What would

you want if you could simply overhaul your genes

with a micro-injection? A Mensa level intelligence,

a cat’s vision in the dark, a custom-built SPF 70

front-loaded into one’s epidermis? In the future,

chromozones will be upgraded like cell phone plans.

This is what progress looks like. It’s coming fast,

although time augments us all the more subtly.

The way a marriage translates a person. Or a year

writing a book you eventually throw away. Careless

days at university. A small room. Your first time

making love to someone else: a nosebleed and

shared laughter over it, then intimacy, tenderness

at another’s touch. The imperfect perfect.

All-Night Arcade

I am playing Galaga in my imagination

in the last century where all around me

kids packed tighter than bees in a hive

labour to master rows of arcade games,

crowding to witness if anyone makes it

to a new level, beats an old high score,

wipes out an army of extraterrestrials.

Time and space stand still for the price

of a quarter. Pixellated blooms burst in

neon cascades across our beatific faces

while the world drags on into the ruins

of the ’80s. Ronald Reagan is shot.

The great hurts and loves of this world

enter into us. Childhood one more urn

in History’s mausoleum. Psychedelic Furs,

My Bloody Valentine, the Jesus and Mary

Chain. Mix-tapes for a generation who

witness the Challenger explode,

the Exxon Valdez spill, the Berlin Wall

topple with an empire. In our twenties,

the arcades vanish. The circumference

of the planet enlarges. We leave home

for school or to work jobs in big cities,

summers in Europe, but time is theft,

and we soon ascend to the next round,

a millennial collect-a-thon with all-new

obstacles to jump over, skill challenges

to undertake. More enemies, less lives.

Nostalgia is a verdict for not living well,

which is why in my forties all night long

I sit here watching myself as a teenager

play a video game with time running out,

a pilgrim trying to get to the golden city

at the last level, knowing when the game

is over, neither he nor I will continue.

Confessionalism

Ashbery is a bore. W. is a hack with a rhyming

dictionary. M. is the best poet we have. I stole

the milk money in grade three. Killed a grizzly

bear with a Boy Scout knife. I have no idea how

to wear my hair. I won the Boston Marathon.

I can recite all of Vonnegut verbatim.

Elegies are morose, but so are shopping malls.

I am banned from Rome and Prague for life.

The soul is a nice daydream. I once met with

a university professor to talk poetry on LSD.

My books are all ghostwritten by my twin.

I am paranoid delusional, and believe a cabal

of poets is out to get me. I won the lottery

three times. I’d rather read the Brontë sisters

than Dostoevsky six days out of a week. There

should be a surcharge every time someone uses

the words “filigree” or “palimpsest” in a poem.

All my conquests are illegitimate. Barren trees,

huge uprooted lungs, standing amidst winter

fields, breathing cold air, are amongst my

favourite things. I love how you like this poem

despite its narcissism. I lived in a Buddhist

monastery for six whole months. I summited

Everest. There are women in this world who

harden when my name is mentioned. I was

pen pals with Jack Gilbert. Larry Levis too.

This has all happened to me. This is all true.

Trigger Warnings

A lightning strike kills three hundred reindeer in Norway.

Bodies draped over a green mountain like an existential

diorama. I’m calling my personal transformation a remix.

Even when there is no path, there is a secret path, said

my daughter, at age two. Marcus Aurelius wrote, “What

stands in the way becomes the way.” Well, my friends,

sobriety is no yellow brick road. Live a good life. Do not

hurt anyone. But something has to be the new dope, or it’s

back to the old neurotoxins. I have a disease of eternal

longing. What if I want the leaves to change? To brighten,

but not to fall? Like everyone, I hide insurance in a box,

pass the hours with circuitry and tweets. I want to hoard

the cosmos, not fears. Did you know an octopus has

three hearts? Our sun will burn out in five billion years?

Why is the Saviour always appearing on a potato chip,

or a piece of toast, or in someone’s dreams? Why not

rematerialize on a talk show? Please, I need a remedy

or a destination. An alphabet to reclaim. A personal

continuity editor. Am I the hero or the villain? I wish

I could just watch reruns, and be happy. My emotions

glitch, and suddenly I need a reboot. The world is full

of trigger warnings, and there I am pulling the triggers.

Anxiety is walking down a sidewalk on a summer’s day

feeling caught in a giant centrifuge. It adds a dash

of metaphysical clarity to life. It summons you, bones

and flesh, to witness the sad strip malls, and nail salons

sitting like jails on street corners. Either make peace

with the heart hammering the bent nail of one’s spirit,

or not. Look again at those pictures of dead reindeer,

and there in a corner, see your animal self among them.

There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

I hear that song “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out”

but it rings less true than it did once upon a time.

The older we get, the more we turn to silhouettes,

so when I hear the chorus, I feel only at a distance

from the telltale guitar of Johnny Marr or Morrissey’s cries.

His voice singing, there is a light that never goes out,

a requiem to teenage years that never quite existed

except in old music videos or the pages of Rolling Stone.

No, the older we get, the more we turn to silhouettes

where our memories, mere shadows of sense, emerge

on the other side of a train platform in a black-and-white film

or like a sweeping beam of light that never goes out

cutting through a fogbank warning ships off rocks,

the shoreline obscured, invisible, too far away to imagine.

No, the older we get, the more we turn to silhouettes.

Our leather jackets with band patches and buttons

hang in the closet or attic. We raise our children

saying our love is a light that never goes out,

while slowly they watch us turn to silhouettes.