Zoom Poetry

Organizers of, and participants in, Word Play literary events used Zoom technology to overcome restrictions on the size of public gatherings and hold a poetry reading Sept. 24.

From his home in the Hart, Marcus Sinclairus of the College of New Caledonia was moderator inviting participation from poets across a wide region and from as far away as the Kootenays.

Andrew Burton of Prince George read a new poem, “308 Friday Night.” It projected into the indefinite future the lockdown conditions of early spring, of endlessly similar weekends wasted in isolation and almost complete lack of connection:

Friday night is drifting away to die its bitter end in chaos

Marked by the backbeat of work and weather. . . .

It’s a place remarkable for what it is . . . .

We’re leaving Chaos Week No. 308

And turn our backs on the rise of No. 309.

Burton commented, “It came out of days and days of sameness of being isolated by Covid, things coming around again, the horror of sameness.”

Connie Freitas described progress of work on a new poem, “Neuterous Uterus.” “I showed up to hang out with you people,” she said.

Sinclairus read a new poem, “Oh, shit! Namaste.”

I have a big bay window in the front of my house.

It makes me a people watcher.

I watch people push baby strollers by.

My favourite people to watch are dog-walkers.

There are three kinds:

The responsible ones who take poop bags with them;

The forgetful ones who look through their things for one,

but they never return;

The third type is the sneaky dog walker: They scan the area and

then leave. But just because you can’t see me doesn’t mean I can’t see you.

Maybe I’ll follow you home and shit on your lawn.

But I held my zen posture. I said, “Namaste. I’m sorry I ruined your day.”

Erin Bauman, the panoptical poet, told participants she had been published in Eccentric Orbits: An Anthology of Emerging Poets-2019.

Sinclairus returned to the microphone and read “Hypnosis,” the key lines of which were:

Then is now, and now is then . . . .

Sinclairus continued from this into a poem embedded in a journal kept years ago:

Eight signs of pleasure is eight doses of pain.

I stay inside when the sun shines,

But go out in the rain.

Seven’s the number

But there’s three in a row.

Now I know there’s nothing to know.

Six times this plus that, equals more.

It always changes when you walk through the door.

Five minutes to get there,

But more to get back.

New words for old stories.

I don’t give a fack.

Four horsemen ride so low to a gunfight

Their darkness is concealed by the twilight.

Three little mice live in the past

It looks like the fisherman has overcast. . . .

I read my poem, “The Word from Our Social Betters”:

There’s no time, no money for friendship

Love is unsustainable

Kids aren’t cost-effective.

You’re here to WORK, not enjoy life.

‘

Who do you think you are–

Wanting holidays?

You’re not in school any more!

Your boss doesn’t give a damn if you get a summer vacation.

“Those lazy Greeks!”

“Indolent Germans, with their six weeks of holidays.”

Pampered municipal workers with their bloated, gold-plated pensions.

“We’ll fire you and throw your overpaid asses out on the street!”

YEE-haw! YEE-haw! YEE-haw!

Burton returned to read “On the Barrows”:

. . . Friends and foes

Are now food for worms . . . .

. . . . Offer homes for new life.

Sinclairus said his old journal is half full of poetry, He found it after several moves. Another poem from it was “Untitled”:

Wise men accept

Good men bring

The madmen wept

And dead men sing

Dancing on graves we create the ash.

Rogue waves tie the captain’s fate

to midnight mass.

Bones bury bones, leaving dust behind

touch lyres’ tones, no place to find.

The gateless gate and the pathless path, a fateless fate for the empath

The first true love loved far too much.

Doves cry their heartache and fall out of touch

A hurricane’s beauty and Nature’s shore

A soldier’s duty to storm her shore.

It rains down ghosts from the highest lows.

The foolish fool boasts what he cannot know.

I see you falling

That you’re trying to fly.

Angels keep calling from an ocean of light.

I started to pray.

Nobody lives.

Nobody dies.

Everybody gives away their truths and their lies.

We’re thinking we’re here,

But we’re already gone.

Can you feel what I’m thinking about you today?

Everybody gives away the truth in their lies.

There’s no reason to fear the holy bomb.

Bauman said she was sometimes influenced by the sensibility of DC Comics. An untitled poem of hers read as follows:

After the museum of the worst things that have happened,

I went back in time to fix society . . . .

I wanted to go back to help,

But ended up in Valhalla.

Reminiscing with fellow poets, Burton said he grew up with pulp fiction, astronomy stories, and science fiction. He admired and read widely in the work of Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov.

Bauman said she had written two science-fiction poems for the periodical Eccentric Orbits, edited by Ken Goudsward. She read from her poem, “The Flash”:

Change can happen in a flash.

What is it all for?

Not enough time helps to focus on what matters.

Bauman said she had also been doing research on the figure of Captain Starbuck,”a horrible, womanizing guy.” She briefly described the literary challenge of remaking Captain Starbuck into a woman.

In connection with Battlestar Galactica, she read “The Cylon Poem,” including the lines:

To him the face of God is madness

What does it mean to breathe

While the course of anything is determined by whether you go right or left.

It’s all happenstance.

Then I read my poem, “The Time Police”;

It’s ridiculous!

A Slow Food Movement?

Whoever thought of that

Must have had too much time on his hands.

His sketches are brilliant, visionary.

His paintings are beautiful.

“He’s probably living on welfare or EI!

When is he going to get off his butt and find a real job?!”

He fancies he’s a writer, a poet.

He’s probably never done a day of hard work in his life.

He’s wasting his time on things that aren’t at all useful of practical.

Work must be unremitting, unreflecting.

Nothing is more dangerous to society

Than the over-educated idle.

A man turned a business-lunch conversation to philosophy for five minutes.

The Time Police came and took him away.

Good riddance!

Andrew Burton remembered how his English mother kept telling the family stories about the way things were done “During the War.” He read his poem, “Getting There,” which included the following lines:

The ghosts of lost souls

Opening up the southern gate

The young wanting sleep.

You understand the need to be

Setting out on the road.

To hear the call of what might be.

To hear the call to redirection.

Share in the getting there.

Now the hall of memory.

Sinclairus said he hopes the Word Play events will continue, with Zoom technology when necessary, for the duration of the pandemic. They start at 6:30 on the last Thursday of every month.