Cuba Poems

Last month, my girlfriend and I had the pleasure of spending eight glorious days under the hospitality and sunshine of Cuba. Below are some of the views I took away from our travels. 

Varadero

Three-street town

with warnings

for falling coconuts

and police that 

patrol beaches of 

rum-drinking tourists,

flopped up on shore by

a turbulent sea of occupations,

spotting foreign breasts 

partially submerged 

in the turquoise surf

that makes all the 

travel magazines,

who warns her with 

a persuasive wave

of his own conflicted hand,

as the sun hides its face 

behind a cloud,

turning the beach

and the waves

the same colour grey,

and just for a moment,

I closed my eyes 

between cresting waves,

feeling the salt water

on my tongue. 

Births

Thirty-two

on a beach in Cuba

wind blowing my hair

like a revolutionary

stoic at a rally

dying handless

in Bolivia

telling us

all about it

the face that 

matches the name

that generations 

of youth 

can name

because they 

know the meaning

in his frozen stare.

Postcards

piazza de San Francisco 

books on display

used and rare,

cigar smoke

flavours the air,

trumpet player

blows his notes

to drown the tourist talk,

as they begin to flock

and steal his smile

for a peso.

Tour Guide

This is where

they make them,

she has said 

five times already today,

in English, German, French

and a couple in Spanish - 

gets four cigars a day

which she sells 

to pay her way,

around the railings

and into the rooms

scooping handfuls of 

tobacco to sweeten 

her deal,

no cameras allowed

no secrets revealed

as she leads you 

through the shop

where busy hands

fill manual presses

exporting to the world

little ashtray messes 

sheepish smiles

from the rollers

barely looking up

for fear of missing 

their quotas -

to, low and behold,

the H. Upmann sign

dangling from the 

bright blue building

appears above a 

police officer looking

tactical without moving, 

the best is exported

the rest we keep here,

she says with a sigh

pretending not to notice

the Canon beside  

 

Malecon

Waves crash over

the ramparts of the Malecon,

belching sea grass 

on the feet of camera-packing

tourists, who walk past

the lone fisherman

in the morning sun,

liking the way

shadows fall on him,

taking a picture as he 

catches breakfast 

for his family.

Snap, a piece of art, you say?

without wondering if he took away

something to sell or eat,

fashioning a raft of dreams

while staring at the sea who 

won’t give them up easy,

save for white water frozen

in foreign motherboards, 

hanging on walls in black boarders.

Snap, a souvenir 

like the leather etching of Che

you didn’t buy,

walking through the family business

hearing pride in the voice

of the owner,

who leads you by the hand, almost,

before you walk away,

leaving both of you with nothing,

and it’s not the same feeling,

because you’re on vacation

while she lives in the post card,

you get to be temporarily blinded

by a curious February sun,

as you relay to your friends,

that you just couldn’t believe it,

the fisherman knows

you never tried to see it. 

The Vixen and The Crow

Ten pesos 

gets you into

the red phone booth

(a bit of London in Havana),

tunneling down to 

the Vixen and the Crow,

where jazz notes tickle 

the air and tobacco smoke

blurs the faces of 

the players and all you 

can hear is the sound,

as you punch the mint

leaves making them drown

in your mojito 

the ten pesos also provided,

the waitress brings them 

anyway, while you 

can’t believe the girl

in the green dress,

mixing her flute

in the jazz en trance. 

The Violinist is Ruining Dinner

To say he was in a hole wouldn’t be capturing it purely. In the notion of a hole, there’s a sense of an opening. Religious people call it heaven, devoutly; people who are dying call it the light at the end of the tunnel. Nobody really knows.

He sat principally among the lost. The sort of person you’d find wandering through the mall with no money in his pockets nor plans to spend any. Just sort of weaving in and out of people during the course of their shopping. They looked happy, he thought, as he meandered through the food court where the people resembled livestock. The escalator, his target, was on the opposite side of the food court, which meant he had to keep on weaving if he wanted freedom in the form of a conveyer belt.

He called it people-watching, an act which he resumed upon his ascent from the food court. His eyes went from the snake-like lines of sweaty, impatient, people, as they claimed tables with winter coats folded over the backs of the chairs; to the set of doors to the street, in constant motion from the steady stream of pedestrians escaping the clutches of the mall. Some lingered beside the door while they smoked the last few hurried drags of their cigarettes, before flicking them inappropriately close to others‘ feet as they walked past, apparently oblivious to the ashtray care of the city, placed right before them.
And quickly this view faded into the ceiling tiles of the food court, the closer he got the second floor. Foot traffic on the second floor were less hurried, more spread out. People resembled aircraft leaving each other enough room to fly safely. There were benches in the middle of the halls where people sat slumped over in their involuntary wait for a significant other or a friend on a mission in the store in front of their tired, impatient faces. Checking their watches to pass the time, letting out a sigh, or getting up for a quick lap around the bench. Returning to their sentence, this time picking up a discarded daily to thumb through, turning the pages so that they gave off an audible crutch in their passive aggressiveness.
Stores gave off a magnified glow, a sparkled shine that came off just as nicely as the mannequins, standing in eternal, fashionable, repose. Even if you had no intention of shopping in the store, the glow would pull you in and make you start to wonder and dream and picture yourself not as you normally were, but who you could be. If you had that scarf, you’d smile better in pictures, the ads seemed to suggest. But this wasn’t the part that he hated. He hated the part not where you could spot these subliminal messages, but the part where they worked....on you. There he’d be, wondering through ails of capri pants, an article of clothing he thought was ridiculous in the highest order. And who would buy those flip flops, they look as though if they flipped once, they’d flop. Ah, yes, but that’s why the store was giving them away three pair at a time for a sale price. He shook his head and backed away from the bin. Then, after successfully talking himself out of buying three orange pairs, he threw them back with the others and quietly left the store, behind the coat tales of his own shame.

His thoughts were scattered today, and amongst all the people watching, he was watching out for something to buy his girlfriend for Christmas. A similar question he could see on the faces of other men, as he saw them talking to customer service reps, overhearing size measurements, even an overly-long description of the curve of his gal’s hips. The rep seemed bored listening to the guy, who by this time had incorporated gesticulation into his portrait. Others seemed to be handling the product and then placing them back down and then spending several minutes pacing in front of the damn thing, only to scratch their heads and pick up their iPhones like it was a life line.

Nobody knew what to buy. They just knew they had to buy. And they had to make sure they got the right size, colour, edition, collection, this or that, at the best price they could find, and hurry home to make a mockery of the thing by wrapping it with the dexterity of a four year old. Addressing it to her with hand writing that didn’t hold up any better.

The only people who appeared to be enjoying themselves this afternoon were the old ladies that shopped in twos and threes and had fashionably grey hair and wore broaches and too much perfume, the kind that was both over-powering and strangely comforting, simultaneously. They marched down the halls leaving a trail of their laughter and the tears of others, overwhelmed by the perfume. Each of them had the look of the friendly neighbour who brings over a basket of whatever and casts the first smile. Leaving you with a basket of stuff you don’t like and questioning whether or not she was looking over your shoulder checking out your stuff. Flying in under the cover of “Oh, just thought I’d say hello and welcome you do the street,” like it was her official job to do it. You can find these people at bingo halls and talking through movies at the theatre.

And here he was, in their midst, in communion with their capitalist spirit, hating their guts and their deep, patriarchal wallets, at the glorious monument to punishment and slavery, the holiday shopping mall.

And there he was, standing in front of a window display. His eyes traveling down the sleeves and up the zippers and around each button of the sweaters. Whirling around the laces of the seasonal footwear and back up to the head, taking note of the toques. Yet for all his concentration on the fake people trapped in the display, he couldn’t tell you want it was he was looking at, or for. To begin with, he was here on a mission for his girlfriend...his girlfriend, and these were male mannequins. They were even standing like men, arms crossed, showcasing biceps, or one hand with jacket flung over an effortless shoulder, with one leg slightly bent and his opposite hand coming to a rest on his hip. At least they didn’t pop the collar on his golf-shirt, or the button-down covering it. All the jackets had fur-lined hoods and the shoes had little green alligators and the vests gleamed in their puffy, polished, surfaces, reflecting the spotlights off their breast pockets and through the streak-free glass and into his eyes, making him blink and rub them until he erased the dream-state from his internal blackboard and began to walk away looking stoned.

In defeat, he took a seat at one of the benches outside of a Sony store. Throughout the store he can see sales people making hand-gestures in front of 1080p flat-screens. “It’s so huge, they’ve actually changed the way they design couches,” he heard one close to the door shout. A smile grew across the customer’s face and then, from the bench, he witnessed the confirmation hand shake that said, with a smack of a coming-together of mutually sweaty palms, “I’ll take it.” He sat with his thoughts at the bench and began painting a portrait in his mind about what his living room would look like with a giant TV sitting in front of a coffee table with four piles of stacked milk-crates for legs. An absurd wall hanging if there ever was.

And just as he began to imagine the rest of the hole, the crash-landing of what looked to be a five year old boy, at the opposite end of the bench, broke up the puzzle into pieces that rolled invisible-to-the-boy away from the worn leather of his loafers. As the boy settled in, he turned his head toward him just in time to witness the boy’s proud posture sink into a slump of disappointment. What should a child know of despair? After quickly dismissing the thought and interpreting it as the mere witnessing of a tantrum, his eyes returned to the Sony store and the salesman, who by this time was wheedling a satisfied, commission earning, smile, and a dolly which had placed on it, the customer’s TV. The two men appeared to be discussing a rendezvous point at which to load the electronic beast into a sporty utility vehicle, equally as large. After seeming to agree, their image got smaller and smaller as they made their way down the hall, boarding a down-escalator, which created the appearance they were sinking into the floor. The mall had swallowed new-TV guy, and sales guy was playing tour guide to the ground floor.
The child then blurted out, to the man or to the people walking in the hallway, he, at that moment, honestly wasn’t sure which was his intended audience, “My Dad’s got an even bigger one!” Knowing that the child’s reference was to the family TV, he curbed the desire to laugh. A lot in what was funny about children was accidental. He instead thought about whether or not he should say something in return. He landed safely by asking, “Does he let you play video games on it?”  Without a breath to gather his wind, the boy shouted, “NO! He yells at the TV!” Then he trailed off in giggles. Seeing no rational way out of the conversation, he opted for getting up and continuing to meander through packs of shoppers, in between groups of people moving their way down the halls like molasses down a spoon.

A few stores down the hall, his wondering eyes settled on the glass of a lingerie store. It’s display cases didn’t have mannequins, but instead, floor-to-ceiling photographs of actual models. The women looked the general way that lingerie models looked, pouty faces, arms akimbo, throwing bedroom eyes over shoulders, obstructed by perfectly placed strands of hair. Their eyes seemed to lock onto him and follow as he got closer, as if questioning his guts to go in and look around. He could get her lingerie, couldn’t he, he thought, as he began to feel the pace of his walk diminish noticeably. The trouble with his sense of humour was he was more likely to walk in and tell the first salesperson who asked that he was looking for something for himself. Tumble right through her state of shock-induced silence with a story about cross-dressing or finding pleasure in the texture of the fabrics. At some point he would have to laugh and assure the woman that he was joking, only to find his surprise when she would tell him about a time a tranny came in. They would bond over his joke and her unusual experience and then she would ask what he was looking for exactly. And then he was just another guy lost in the mall, trying to find hope in trusting the gut instinct that all men carried a general interest in lingerie, or at least enough to go and look. But standing outside the store, he didn’t know what to do. His only actual experience in buying lingerie, came with the question, “Did you want to get her something comfortable, too?”

It wasn’t because it was Christmas that made his choice of a gift important. Rather that it was their first Christmas together. The first holiday that couples usually decide to smile brilliantly in tasteful photos to pass around the family, with some vague message of best wishes written in cursive on the bottom, under the smiles and the perfect posture and the way all of his fingers were inside his pocket, except for a fashionable thumb on the outside. When they thought of the idea, almost instantly it become a contest of how silly could the photo be. Then they wouldn’t be taking it so seriously. The photo would be like the guy who gets a violinist to play table-side, while he’s drowning his date in course after course of rich, over the top food, with a silver high-hat of champaign off to one side of the table, who starts to realize how weird it is when the music stops. His attempts to swoon clouded by a constant reminder of a presence over his shoulder. And as he would gather himself and attempt to speak, the violinist would strike the string once more and a fresh tsunami of Tchaikovsky washed the trail of words from his mouth to her ears, away, leaving nervous laughter. His plan would be working against him. This was hardly the romantic setting he was hoping for. It had turned into a sort of game, with each side calculating their moves: the violinist watching their faces, the girl casting a not-too-subtle glance up at him, as if wondering if it was her turn to speak. He, feeling the sunburn of the violinist’s presence on his back, wondering if it was rude to turn around and tell the player that his gig was over.

He left the lingerie store with the sales person still laughing somewhere behind him. He left the lingerie store because he was weird about having to walk through the mall with a bag from a store like that. Gift cards were easier to hide, but what would that say to her. So he could only take away the lesson that, perhaps, lingerie wasn’t the route to take this Christmas. It was cliche, anyway, he thought, continuing down the hallway in search of an idea.

The skywalk between the mall and the Bay looked like the impact crater of an olympic apparel bombing. Rows of mannequins draped in red and white stitching, mittens, scarfs, t-shirts, sweaters, nearly every type imaginable, tattooed with Canada in bold letters. Patriotic beavers and geese printed on beer steins and camping chairs, everything save for a giant foam finger. It was more appropriate to ring a cow-bell, anyway. And there they were, maple leaves and all. And right away he was standing in a dream beside an alpine run, falling snow peppering the scene. A united nations of flags flapping in the mountain wind and cheers and awe from the crowd floating away in puffs of air. Rising excitement as the skier passes by in a flash of full tuck position. Cow-bells hits lurched from their shells and into the air, spreading out over everything underneath. A wake of fresh-caved snow from the skies edges wafts out over the crowd at the bottom. And...

A person who’s head was more concerned with his cellphone than his direction, ran into him as he was locked in his day dream and the collision brought him back to earth, away from the ringing of cow-bells and the cheering and the praise. He gathered himself and stepped back from the displays, this time feeling a certain fatigue begin to settle over him. This was tiring, he thought, standing there slightly wavering back and forth and beginning to pant slowly. Maybe he was exhausted by all the dreaming, by all the wonder and possibility. Those sorts of things can be easily overwhelming, but they had never before, so he had no basis of comparison. But he could have coffee and keep looking, he thought, already thinking about how he would get down to the street from where he was on the skywalk.

He opted for continuing to the department store and silently walking through racks upon racks of dormant women’s clothes. A few broach ladies were browsing and the hangers made a chink sound each time the women pushed on to the next item. Discount hunting with a vulgarity usually reserved for seduction porn. He passed the wig department - a room that looked like a typical hairdressers, save for columns of wigs of differing colours stacked around - and continued down the ramp. Clearance items sat on roll-away racks that took up most of the ails, so he had to excuse himself and not breathe as he waded through the broach lady perfume hurricane, which obstructed his route to freedom.

He welcomed the cold fresh air as he stepped out onto the snow-swept street. It was windy and grey and the wind had corralled the falling snow into the corners of the buildings that were lining the street. The four-lane street was pregnant was rush-hour automobiles with fogged up windows and passengers dressed like they were attempting to cross the Arctic, leaving trails of exhaust, the smell of which reminded him of a time when he was young, and he compared it to that of warm mayonaise. A day’s worth of Christmas shopping foot traffic was evident in the brown slush building up on the sidewalk.

A coffee shop was half way up the block, so he joined in the line of pedestrians and began walking, trying to avoid stepping through the puddles that littered his path. Christmas music spilled from a set of speakers anchored to the wall above the overhang. He had yet to think of a viable idea for his girlfriend. He just needed to refresh and think of something. It was excuse enough to come back out with a steaming latte and he quickly searched the area for a place dry enough to lean on for a minute, while he drank and thought about what he needed to find. He was standing at the end of an open street market. It seemed to be meal time because the pubs were slammed with people chatting and drinking up the early evening. Outside, a street vendor was desperately trying to sell off the last of his hot-dogs, as light from strands of festival coloured bulbs burped green and red and white at their faces. He stood at a particular spot were, during the summer months, artists would scratch portraits and other drawings on the sidewalk, and passersby could watch them and leave tips.

He lost himself in thoughts of the perfect gift, but came back when he noticed that another man was kneeling on the ground next to him, fiddling with a small black case. His downward glance was quick, too quick, and he missed the part when the case opened and the man pulled out his instrument.

At this point, he was in his head, imagining the table where they would have dinner, wine in the glasses, flame on the candles. He would lean in to say something and then the man with the instrument ruined everything. Just as he was about to reach inside his coat pocket, the bubbling romantic silence of the moment was lacerated by the piercing  rub of horsehair on steel string, that was the violin.      

Pretty Well

We’ve done pretty well
for a generation speaking Jesus and paranoia
in equal breath,
on scale of hope and fear.
Looking at a full glass and thinking
only of its emptiness;
holding ourselves in the present
of touch-screens and text messages -
we don’t see the cars about to hit us
as we walk and talk and
plan the day away;
planning to stay away only
if we can take it all with us
so it won’t grow in our absence
and we miss the chance to ride
the wave of opportunity and
end up paddling through the flat-water
of the world’s settled past.

...Imaging a heaven and explaining our existence
from mountains and caves where miracles took place;
flocking to Paris and headstones of the famous,
trying to capture their spirit
and praying it gives us life;
finding family-comfort in electronic friends -
bonds held together by the language of zero and one.

...Capturing moments in pictures
and calling them life
in a world where smiles stay frozen
and laughter is white noise;
in a world where the soldiers don’t stop for Christmas
to find joy dragging trees in from the forest
to make it feel real,
while pacifying the childrens’ wonder with
cookies and carrots for a man
who sneaks into homes to leave things behind.

...Harbouring the belief that tight circles of exclusivity
can bring the world together;
believing “yes we can”
because it came from the mouth of a black man;
believing that freedom comes
when we take it from others;
believing that bombs seek
while we’re taken aback by what they destroy;
believing that we can prolong life
and ease suffering with machines
that carry the heavy load of breathing
while we pray to the tiles of a floating ceiling
picturing the empty space in our minds
we call the promised land
and the homeless guy in the alley we call an angel.

...Waiting on the world to change while
we practice our dance moves in burning rooms;
playing in the field of our dreams
while trapped in an attic;
preserving the tears of black rain
and shadows burned into concrete
so we are reminded of the scars we can’t erase
and the people we can’t bring back;
constantly pruning the trees to suit our view
instead of changing our view of the trees.

And we’ve done it all in a world
where we attach great hope to discarded pennies;
bestowing upon them magic powers
when dropped into the right water.

By The Edges

my hand gripped loneliness and wandered through the orchard,

watching apples fall from trees...

the wind tasted like your lips

and it swept across my face and turned back the leaves

they made laughter on your tongue

and the music showered down on me in windfalls. 

a basket for the apples 

and I'm walking around under the guild 

of aimless thoughts of you

a gathering of moments that have fallen to memory.

bound by picture frames with silent smiles 

and now I have to hold you by the edges. 

Roll My Stone Away

ain’t no sunshine through the window

ain’t no grass beneath the trees

they got no leaves on their branches

sitting by the window taking chances.

my breath upon the glass

your image makes it past, by automobile

snow tires on for wheels.

no footprints through the winter

no hand knockin’ at my door

I’ve called your voicemail before,

wasted my time to hear your sound

scatters the silence

a tactical violence.

you always find the right place to hit me

and I always fall apart.

All the men and the horses

couldn’t gather your remorses,

I’m just a man in a cave

can’t roll my stone away

can’t roll my stone away

Love Song

Let us go then, you and I

before we stop and watch the sky,

like paranoid xenophobes who believe in Cable.

Let us go, through alarmist 20/20 stories

and try to reclaim certain past half-glories

of knock-off Hilton Hotels,

and Gulf-coast restaurants with oil shells.

Stories that forecast a terrible financial year

and holiday toys that generate fear...

to confront new parents with overwhelming questions,

“Is my child safe at all?”

Oh do not ask and ignore the war

just close your eyes and walk to the store.

The paranoia that haunts the people behind closed window panes,

The paranoia that yells at the television behind the closed window panes.

Licked its tongue into the ears of each new generation

lingered in the service help on airplanes and trains,

let sink into the offspring, the words that fall from the mouths of parents,

slipping past the public schools, shouted out loud multiple times,

and seeing it was a monday morning, ran from the back of the yard

to the bottom of the pool and fell asleep.

And there has been plenty of time

for the paranoia that pushes on the window panes

and creeps along the street.

there has been plenty of time to plot your bombs for the faces that you hate.

and time to murder and time to flee

plenty of time to take my life from me.

And time for all the hatred of the quiet hours

to rise and fall and break your plate,

time for felling trees and salting earth

and yet no time for peace or regret

but for another pause to place a bet

before the rapping of you and me.

From the rooms the call girls come and go,

collecting unemployment, though.

And there will be time to wonder about the answer for the cancer.

But no strength to turn back and ascend the stair,

with chemo thinning my head of hair.

They will say, “Oh my how he’s getting thin,” and

“Can’t believe he thinks he’s still gonna win.”

My morning jacket, straight, and locked, the IV

in my trigger hand cocked.

Do I dare

disturb the nurse?

            With each minute passing there is time

            to witness all my progress slowly reverse.

For I have known them all, already

all the scars and scrapes and burns.

I have measured out my life waiting for my turn.

I know the voices in the bathroom mirror

lying beneath the visions of a smile in a picture,

painted a while back, but becoming clearer.

And I have known the prizes already, known them all -

prizes on which we fix our narrow gaze,

and when I am blind and repeating all the words, them all.

When I am kneeling before the toilet in a bathroom stall,

then where should I begin,

to clean up the upchucked entrails of all my meals,

perhaps by chasing individual dreams on wheels.

And I have known the arms already, known them all -

arms nuclear, biological or concealed

(but in certain circles tight, as plain as light)

Is it briefing the press

that makes me so digress?

Arms that get marched along the street, in the cold war heat,

that bloom red and orange flashes on the screen.

            And then did you see it?

            And how long can it be?

Shall I say, that I have gone to war with love in my heart

and simply shined my shoes and played my part?

I should have left my gun beside my head

and shattered the silence of the neighbours’ bed.

And the afternoons, the evenings interrupted violently

smoothed over by politics

blanketed with stars and stripes

closed casket lays in state, in front of you and me.

Should I, after the generals, the press, the public and the flowers,

send lady Justice to feast on military powers?

From the rooms the call girls come and go,

collecting unemployment, though.

But though I have searched and asked and questioned and prayed,

and seen the lives of peasants falsely portrayed -

I am no hero - and there is no great platter.

I have seen the crystal ball of our future shatter,

and I have seen the committee act out charades

and in short, I was betrayed.

 And would it have been profitable at all,

after the wars, the famines, the killer bee.

Living underneath mosquito nets and pricing antidotes for you and me.

Would it have been worth it

to have scarred the face that wears a smile

to blow giant radioactive holes in the universe

and fill them with questions, removed, dismantled and buried.

To say: “I survived, but I feel as though I died. Come back to tell you the soothsayer lied.”

No note left behind to say,

“that is not what I meant at all, not at all.”

NO! I am not a savior, nor was meant to be.

I am a servant, one that was made to

disrupt the food supply, slow the progress of you.

Advise the Prime Minister, no doubt an ignorant fool.

Bound and gagged and forced into use,

segregated, exploited, no statue to get loose.

I grow old, I grow old,

I shall lose my CPP to corporate mould.

Shall I use the rest of my conscience to flee

I shall go AWOL and make my speeches free.

I shall show you where my brothers died upon the beach,

I still hear them screaming each to each.

They do not think I will scream for them.

I have seen them riding in planes as silent as the clouds

climbing through blue skies painted black.

When prevailing winds blow orange flames across my back.

We have lingered long in forgotten pages

of our diary, 

until human hands grab us and set us free.

Why I like typewriters

What can I say, I like typewriters. I like feeding it pages and hearing the clicks and creaks of its movement and the punch of its keys. I like seeing a stack of my first draft physically continue to rise because it's sitting next to the typewriter. It's not lost in the some electronic world of binary code, dependant on expensive equipment and a stable electrical supply to access.

Look no further, it's on the table right in front of you! Just be sure to keep the open flames away from it.

If I was cynical I could boil down my love of typewriters to some form of hipster bullshit. Like fedoras. People always ask my why I'd put myself through such a task of writing a novel on a typewriter, when I could just use a computer. I could tell them that every writer has a method for how they write. Hemingway wrote standing up on a typewriter, Capote wrote lying down on a sofa with a pen and yellow legal pads, and Annie Proulx begins long-hand before switching to a computer. Everybody has their method. (As for myself, I write all first drafts of any project - novel, short story, poem, whatever - on my typewriter, then transfer them to my computer for editing.)

My reasons are simple. First, I feel that writing on a computer directs my attention to how a story looks, rather than what it's made of. In other words, I spend more time on presentation than substance. Whether it's the constant back-spacing, or ignited rage at the red underline, I find computers to be distracting during the creative process of the first draft.

With a typewriter, I don't worry about mistakes or typos because there isn't an easy way to fix them, so I don't worry about them until editing time. I believe this allows my train of thought to flow more easily. And the longer I can maintain that flow, or "juiciness", the more productive I am. This also allows me to maintain focus on my story and its details, rather than the details of font size, save as, and et-cetera.

Typing on a typewriter is like playing a musical instrument along to a metronome. The sound the keys punching paper through the ribbon sounds like the tick-talk of keeping time. In a sense, the sounds the keys make sort of help keep the tempo of your thoughts as you get them out onto the page.

My second reason relates to editing and crafting a finished product. I'll admit, I'm a writer, not an editor. My strength is in the creative process, not in revision. But I want to improve. And typing on the typewriter helps with this. Because you can't fix mistakes with a typewriter, as I've already said, the first drafts are littered with typos. Due to this, after I've arrived at a first draft, I then retype, word-for-word, the entire story onto a computer, where editing is easier.

This forces me to concentrate on each and every character I've typed into the story. From there, I make a series of additions and subtractions in the formation of second or third drafts until I'm happy with the story.

Typewriters might be old school, but I've found writing a story in this way really helps smooth out the process of creating the story, and sharpens my editing skills. What the hell, I'll feed a little paper for that!

America (2011)

America I’ve given it my all and you left me with nothing.

America five-hundred dollars credit, September 30, 2011.

I can’t afford my own peace of mind.

America when will you let me take off my clothes?

When will you be empathetic?

Will you ever stop sending our best eggs to die in deserts

and middle eastern streets?

America what plans are you concocting while we sleep?

I won’t let my emotional life be run by your atomic bomb.

America I feel sentimental about the West Memphis Three.

I studied Castro in school and downloaded music and I’m not sorry.

You should have caught me abusing Napster.

America I’ve checked into Hotel California.

America live fast die fun.

Forever young.

America when will you stop funding the human wars?

America free Tookie Williams.

America save the Arab-Americans.

America Mumia Abu-Jamal must not die.

America WE ARE TROY DAVIS.

America why are all your hospitals so full of tears?

When will you be worthy of your millions uninsured?

Leave my Medicare alone.

Go fuck yourself with your HMOs.

I just bought myself a gun so I can feel safe in my bedroom.

America look who’s wearing the strap-on.

America this is freedom of expression.

My ambition is to write despite how hard you make it to keep a pen.

America this continues to be serious.

It’s serious on the news in the streets in the schools in the churches.

Everybody thinks this is serious except for YOU America!

They mean food when their stomachs growl.

They mean medicine when their coughs do the talking.

They’re trying to speak when they go quiet.

America are you paying attention?

America you’re becoming quite greedy.

ME wants Big Oil.

ME like skyscraper and concrete landscapes.

ME have foreign Tar-Sand dreams.

America China is still rising against us.

America you don’t know who to go to war with.

America it’s them bad Terrorists. Them Terrorists and them Freedom Fighters.

Them Terrorists wants to blow us up again. Them Terrorists fly our planes.

Them Terrorists is suicidal and crazy. He wants to blow us up with envelopes

out our own mail boxes.

America all that’s left in Oklahoma is the Tree.

America but it is you and I who are still perfect.

America I am Canadian and this is the view I get from the television set.

America that wasn’t icing sugar you used to sweeten the Winnipeg sky in 1953.

America when will you fuck off and let me be?

America when I was eighteen years old I was watching the news with my mother and it showed us images of kids running out of their school with their hands held to the back of their heads and they were following the police officers while guns were firing and the injured kid crawled across the library floor and dangled outside the window for all the cameras to see and still inside were two kids with guns and bombs and trench coats who walked around their school and killed all the jocks they could shoot and then they killed themselves.

Then there was Virginia Tech.

America then ten more innocent holes in the Beltway.

America you still don’t understand what happened to Ron Kovic when he came home.

The Old Man can’t fish in the Gulf of Mexico.

America my name is Forrest Forrest Gump and people call me Forrest Gump.

America shit happens.

America I’m imagining there’s no heaven and I like what I see.

I won’t find your Jesus until I’m ready.

I believe I’ll finally find Neverland.

America I’m a super freak I’m super freaky.

America I’m going to keep on rockin’ in the free world.

America how many times will you turn your head and pretend you just don’t see?

America the answer is blowing in the wind.

Easy Rider.

Freedom Writer.

America I found Forrester and he’s pissed

because nobody remembers his book

because you took all the books out all the libraries and you closed the libraries.

America for a fisher of men you’ve thrown many of us back.

America this is the view through Garry Gilmour’s eyes.

America is it becoming clear?

I didn’t say anything America.

...Nevermind.

One Morning in September

The first thing that people noticed was how low the plane was flying, and then how fast. Every news crew in the country had their cameras pointing at the already smoking North Tower. Sirens bounced off the exteriors of the buildings lining Wall Street, the sounds of people expressing their shock and awe became almost ambient noise as panic and uncertainly began to take hold of the fearful people scattering on the streets below. Many watched the destruction through the lenses of their video cameras, unsure of what they were seeing unfold, but certain they would want to remember.

The nation was watching and wondering why these two staples of the New York City skyline were being attacked. Thick black smoke continued to escape through the sides of the North Tower. Cameras rolling. People running away from the building but unable to take their eyes of off it. A city of Salems and Lots looking back and running scared. Then the cameras saw the plane and it hung low in the sky, too low in the sky, and was blasting through the air with speed. People would note the roar of the engine screaming mere meters above their heads. Police and fire crews responding. The authorities begin to climb the stairs.

Five hundred yards away from the North Tower, Ben is watching through his camera lens at the surprising and paralyzing moment thrust upon his morning view. Ben was thirty-five stories up and like many in high rises that morning, was wondering if his building was next. With a shaky hand, he panned his camera across the large smoking hole in the North Tower, followed the trails of smoke up toward where it collected and formed a giant blur at the roof. Smoke pouring out the windows, smoke pouring out over the Hudson River. The practicing New York Giants saw the smoke rising from lower Manhattan and with the same curiosity as Ben, some of them grabbed their cameras and began to tape whatever was happening. Every movie camera in the tri-state area was trying to get this on tape. Spectacle doesn’t quite say it. The second plane was flying low in the sky. Air traffic controllers watched helplessly as the plane abandoned its flight plan right before their eyes.

In the clarity of hindsight you would have thought more people in the towers would have brought parachutes with them to work especially those who worked on the upper floors. Instead of watching helplessly as people flung themselves to their deaths to escape the smoke and flames, Ben’s camera would have seen a rainbow of parachutes blossom through the smoky sky, navigating their wearer’s way to safety.

Instead there were arms waving white flags and people desperately gesticulating in a vain attempt to call the world’s attention to the people still trapped inside. There were arms flailing and legs kicking out for the support that wasn’t there. There were bodies that sounded like sacks of cement when they hit the earth.

The streets were frantic. Police, Fire, EMS workers scrambled to assist. Smoke pouring out over the Hudson, blurring the eyes of Lady Liberty. People screaming. People standing with their mouths agape hoping the right words to say would crawl voluntarily from their mouths so they wouldn’t have to think.

A blur of cellular phones pointed at the smoking North Tower.

The plane was closing in. Faster. Roaring. Thunder sweeps across the streets of lower Manhattan mixing with the whirlpool of sirens, horns, screams and camera flashes. Annie Leibowitz aims her camera through the windows of her twenty-third street loft. Pictures go in her book of significance.

A man on the one hundredth floor has stopped waving his flag. He looks through the smoke and sees his children and the life they would go on to have without him. Below the people look like ants scrambling away from an unwanted footstep, scrambling for safety, scrambling to heal. Scrambling. His shadow grew as he approached the sidewalk.

Planes in the sky check in with the towers. The men in charge of national air traffic scratch their heads when repeated communication with United 93 go unanswered. Clear skies all across the country today. Nothing to worry about. Boss Man’s famous last words as he left the control room for the coffee room. Coming back to a view to chaos. The world imploding. Plane flies low. Roars. Screams. Bulge of orange flames appears a second after. A firey hole punched in the steel and glass skyline. Clear blue skies. Nothing to worry about. Smoke columns visible from outer space. Masking liberty island.

Twin Towers are burning like candles on the birthday cake of a new world priority. Beware. My suitcase means something to you. You should find my stare menacing. Why are you ignoring me? You won’t be doing that for long.

The towers burn like candles.For an hour the Towers burn and Ben’s camera records the entire thing. The sirens, the screams, the running, the yelling, the heroes, the collapse.

A people’s redemption in the hands of the heroes who crawled through rubble and pulled out angels. The shadow of a solitary fireman quietly taking stock in silhouette becomes a symbol of recovery efforts to rise again. Falling Man frozen in the shutter of a stranger becomes the symbol of the thousands missing, and efforts to name those without names.