don’t get up on the table
you know you’ll fall
never look natural
be all showgirl

do everything you can
to keep yourself lovely
we all need you to shine

you’ve already won the beauty contest
you’re everyone’s dream girl
you’ve got a free ticket

you came glimmering in
it’s your exit that’s dark
and where’re your shoes?

you dance off-balance
but enough men stand by
one of them will catch you

every one of them worries
how you’ll get home
your soul “burning with desire
for charm and beauty”
and a boyfriend who’ll find your shoes

this doesn’t have to end in tragedy
this is a club in Toronto
not a back alley of Hollywood
it’s not even midnight
how wonderful you’re here
dizzy from dancing
still able to smile

they’re all thinking you’re they’re baby
they’re all thinking you’re the one
but they don’t know Susie
the way I know Susie
I know Susie doesn’t know Susie

It’s wonderful to be the perfect woman
but I know that you’re more beautiful
without the persona

I can tell from the pictures
you’re not really there
they turn out more clearly
when I look at the negatives

you yearn for memories that flash and burn
you hint darkly of strange companions
you have a schoolgirl complexion
and a grown woman’s complications
you may still be here in the flesh
but you’ve already made a fresh start
somewhere else
a secondary detour with someone else
the naïve guy still waiting in the wings
the prince charming who’ll find your shoes
it doesn’t take much plot
when there’s a femme fatale
at the centre of her own story
I’ve read the book
and I still want to dance with you
you’re the opposite of Cinderella
you take your shoes off to swing
if I hold you tight enough
maybe I’ll cure what ails you
but for now
flattery is what matters
you want a man to hold you up
someone who agrees with your skin
and the shape of the dress you’re in

you imagine yourself in a movie
“the beautiful slave girl
in the lovely misery
of surrender”
this way you’ll be his forever

You’re like Marilyn Monroe in Niagara
we’re always aware of water
rushing over the falls
and despite the scenery
we spend all our time in a haunted house

something is cracked and broken
there might be ‘yes, yes’ in your eyes
but all I hear is No! No!
like some girl in need of rescue
but your cry for help is just part the show
there are no simple joys in your future
and none of us have 3-D glasses

I want something superfluous safely removed
I want to rinse out irony
wash away artfulness
rinse glamour, rinse vanity, rinse void
rinse alcohol, rinse tobacco, rinse guilt
rinse away your mother, rinse expectations

“any talking machine will reproduce noise
but the charm of sound” comes
only from your own breath

shake off the tight corset
on the showgirl figure
you’re fully developed
in your natural shape

I’m not just throwing you a lifebuoy
some new kind of soap
I’m not offering you the Keeley Cure
Or Wonderland

I don’t want a rendezvous
at the Cactus Motel
or true romance

just give me
the real intimacy
of a Saturday dance

rooms
from a line in the mind

He waits inside the house
hunched over his desk
scratching at paper

lays his arm beside the page
and sticks the needle in

They’ve read each other’s work
as if it were their own
written words that the other
has not yet remembered

She listens for a tonal shift
the beat of a new language
he is not yet ready to hear

There is a room in the house
he does not visit
described only in coded messages
set in formal structures

Outside the window
a field of books scattered in the rain

she walks toward the gate
light converging through a prism

He invites her into his study
in the house where every room is empty

you’ll hear her voice
in random words he speaks

He finds himself writing where everyone can see
typing for the whole neighbourhood to hear
bodies press so close
someone else’s fingers strike the keys

She sits down to finish his line
while he gets up to dust the room

She begins a longer poem

He cleans the rest of the house

Their dance continues
rules changing as they play

They consider each other slowly

optic nerves relax

erotic noises calm

They turn to face each other

laughing at their own reflections

bowing to gravity
from Dancing with Gravity

she is half the world when she bends, hair falling to the ground, face obscured

she is a hemisphere mapped in five lines, arching over emptiness, holding nothing

she is a sketch of an idea, the anatomy of a watermark, anonymity on blank paper

she is without choreography, without lights or stage, with only her whispered music

there she was, there she will be: her whole body bowing to gravity, not yet in motion

Elizabeth’s Song

I’ve been hurt enough to write a blues song
but never as deep in the blues as you
an off-duty waitress still at the bar
and me just another guy in the queue

I knew right away that I’d seen your smile
when you served me here before
and we both know the singers who come here to play
and all the words of their heartbreak folklore

and now your sweet mouth is red from drinking
and when I ask you why you just stare
a delicate hand on your tender heart
shy silence lost in a tangle of hair

Though I’m holding your hand s you
warming you with compliments, not flattery
you look down into your glass of claret
like it’s the last rose from his bouquet

Write Me a Letter

Write me a letter and let me know that you’re with someone else and we’re always going to be good friends and great dance partners – our heads together in the dark with our eyes closed listening to the music we make up ourselves; remind me that when we’re together our worlds overlap like wonderfully round and full circles in a Venn diagram of proximate but not intimate happiness; remind me how we’ve always had a crush on each other and that we always will; remind me that that is what makes our friendship hum in it’s own time and space; make this clear to me so that I don’t fall, so I can stay on this broad plateau of joy and amazement that I could be so lucky, to be so happy-go-lucky when I’m with you; remind me not to fall over the edge, to stay in this open and sunny and musically live place where I’ve had enough tequila to be intoxicated but not so much that when I kiss you it’s only because you’re so lovable and not because I’m in love; remind me that when we dance behind an old house on Spadina with the car door open so we can hear Bob Dylan singing Beyond the Horizon like we’re in a low-down version of a Gene Kelly/Ann Miller movie that it’s our comedy not a romantic comedy.

The Mirthless Men

There isn’t a straight-man left in Canada.

Everybody’s a comedian
and not a single one is wise.

Where’s a funny-man’s comic foil -
the set-up man whose sly question
makes a stand-up joker look so sharp?

Have we sold out local humour
for the laugh track on some channel
that’s glad to deride a poor man’s hope,
mistaking someone else’s reflex hee-haw
for the redemption of a hard-earned laugh?

In the silent era before spoken word
humour was not on the side of the empire;
it did not stir up our deepest fears without reason.
The screen was black and white but the stories weren’t.
Who will bring the good news from that vaudeville
where humour found good people in their bones?
What a joy for me, what happiness for you,
when an eyebrow raised invokes a smile.

adapted from Psalm #14
from the series momentum

Talkin’ Song

The night travels with you
as you walk
Water running down familiar streets
Cars playing their part
in the dark jazz
Lights reflecting in the rain
like lost notes in the air
You carry the streets with you
Tucked inside your coat
Faraway and right beside you
Lost, then found,
Lost, then found all over again
Pull your coat tighter
Don’t run for the bus
Don’t stop walking
Keep the night right near you
Like an old friend
Like a bad memory
Keep going down the hill
Looking for a lost love
Listening for notes you haven’t heard yet
Keep walking
Deeper into the music

new found objects of pulse and percussion

vibrations listening to vibrations

symbols of cymbals

everything unsteady uncertain about to become something else

drums wandering in from another modality

letting the drummer converse with them in her language

while the bass takes itself for a walk down to the bar

where the guitar plays tunes only it can dance to

until the bass pleads like a gospel choir to be heard

and the drums turn to crickets and reeds and creaking furniture

they’re sawing all their instruments in half

in full view of the audience

and we believe they’ll put them back together

before the end of the set

she’s playing pick up sticks on the tom-tom

he’s tightened his bow until it stops on the strings like jammed brakes

he’s playing with a coat hangar wire from behind his guitar strings

tuning in the vibrations like radio waves

they’re making it all up as they go

both eyes closed
not looking at her left hand
arching her body over the drums
letting the tension toss her
tugged along by a story

he’s loosening the strings on his guitar
trying to find a melody in pure sound

he’s driving the same beat
all the way down the bow

they’re twisting it up
throwing it off
plucking

magpies in their own thick forest

wooden upright
wooden sticks
acoustic

After a performance by
Germaine Liu (percussion), Jim Sexton (upright bass),
Ken Aldcroft (guitar) in the leftover daylight series
at Somewhere There, December 2010

growing long in the neighbour’s front yard

what my son called –

finding his own way into the story –

an orchestra of frogs

waits for us

around the corner

our arrival

galvanizes their song

if we forget they’re there

we can be surprised again

and so

with joy

we do

for Brodie (with thanks)

you might mistake these willows

for dancers

their hips bent provocatively

into the tall grass

enjoying their own voluptuous shapes

floating on the lively surface of the stream

this grove of willows

turns in on itself

like a circle of women at their own kitchen party:

the young one bending away from the group

but still swaying to the same beat

the two lovers, quiet, parallel,

shifting positions within the group

the older, heavy-limbed one

who’s been dancing like this for decades

their light green leaves

like hands waving free

these willows are not weeping

they are reaching out in ecstasy

moving like joyful empty canvases

across the well-ordered sombre landscape

barely claimed by fences and solitary houses

the strongest force unseen

briskly lifting the edges of the familiar

for Madeline Power (1922-2007)

standing in the frame of a doorway

looking out from his well-lit kitchen

into the dark yard beyond

where summer is still emerging from the mud

Imagine the bare branches of a large tree

stretched across the night sky

stars visible above the streetlamps

beyond the scattered light from the open door

Imagine one possible star

light shooting out in streams

like a divided searchlight

sparks flying out into the night

from that distant campfire

Imagine that particular comet

like a Victoria Day sparkler

writing its signature on the indifferent sky

for that one man

standing at the edge of his home

dreaming himself into the dark

Imagine yourself

in that silence

Imagine you are imagining an artist

Paterson Ewen in particular

balanced on two sawhorses

routing out the trail of a comet

across the expanse of two sheets of plywood

Imagine you are imagining him

imagining himself in the centre of that wonder

making it real by his activity

brushstrokes etched in the indifferent wood

going against the grain

simply by revealing it

Imagine his playful work assumes the exact shape of your longing

the artist constructing just enough skin

between himself and the world

Imagine the man gazing back into his kitchen

seeing it from the dark yard

he willingly entered

only moments before

for James Fitzgerald

coming up from Davenport Road

seeing the surface of the pond

at surface level

cross-ripples shimmering

motion radiating everywhere

the pond’s seeming stillness

holds the reflection of trees and sky

then breaks into pixillated images

a turtle emerges

leaves flutter down

distilling the wind and water

you’ve already shed that skin

what do you want now

history or hysterics?

no retreat no surrender

Nicholas Power