sometimes I wonder (revisited)
Sometimes I wonderif she ever existed.
—found poem
Sometimes I wonder
if she ever existed.
Only a smile now
a gesture
copper hair flashing
she fades even in dreams
artist in the supermarket
She stands in the aisle like reverse Stendhal:frozen, her hand extended over the mound of apples.
Apples push into her like the fists of a lover
knocking at a locked door, urgent, juicy, plump.
It's always like this: fruit overwhelms, vegetables
scream longing; fresh trout imagines a sizzling grill,
beef lounges in a marinade, ready to sear.
She wants to paint, to cook, to knead warm
transit
Night. City street after rain.Early autumn leaves cling to the pavement
like wet hair on a waiting face.
Amber and blue incandescence
lies in pools for walking entrances,
performances and exits,
as the occasional soloist mimes
man walking alone on the street
concert
engine idle just beyond theancient boathouse
river calm and waiting silent
to the weed beds
and the spaces vast, beyond
ease the throttle slowly forward
hear the engine twist
inside the music
The part I sing in our quartethovers above or below the melody;
often it sounds like the French horn.
The Lead's note sounds familiar;
the Bass is the solid foundation;
the Tenor lilts above all, thrillingly;
my part, the Bari, fills it all in.
cocoon
Inside the silk threadsis what will come:
beautiful wings,
gleaming reds, yellows, blues,
curves and strength,
the freedom of flight
instead of plodding,
gnawing eating.
lotus eaters
This is the first in a series I started a while back. I should write a few more on this . . .everyone on the street was
somewhere else
listening to music
words from another time
another place
after
She used to purr when she leaped onto the bed;I prefer to think of her arrivals.
I could read her expressions through the fur:
glad to see me (and usually was):
relaxed eyelids, fur sleek off the face;
impatient with my stupidity:
Mauve and Gold
If a god were eating strawberriesWhen that sunset happened,
I know he'd stop in mid-bite
With red sweet juice dribbling
Down his chin onto his toga
And just stare and do a god-thing:
driving home
The sun set just before we turned west onto the roadthat curved into the pure black landscape silhouetted
against the absolutely clear tangerine and indigo sky.
As our headlights revealed and dismissed the familiar
meanderings of this riverside route and its clusters of cottages
On being mistaken for myself
Photos never lieexcept when they must,
with a minimum of mendacity,
tell welting whoppers
about how egregiously old
the old codger has become.
I have studied photos
taken years ago
that make me look
what was left
First they took away the all moneypoured it into the government trough
and they fed the war in Afganistan
but still that wasn't enough
so they crucified the artists
and they stood around and laughed
Review: Shakespeare’s Dog by Rick Chafe
I liked this production a lot. It is fun, complex, has a beautiful, functional set lighting effects and costumes, and some wonderful performances.
Aside from the superb technical aspects, the plays works on two levels: the dog plot, and the human plot. We are more familiar with the human plot: Will Shakespere, Shakespee, Shagspere, Shakespeare wants a career as an actor, and sees that his only chance to do so from the backwater of Stratford Upon Avon is to perform before the great Sir Richard Burbage, who is supposedly bringing his renowned acting company to town. But the stronger plot is the dog plot: the play’s narrator, and the audience’s confidant is Hooker, Will’s dog, who is accused of killing a local deer in the newly expropriated parklands of a local lord. The punishment is to have his pawpads removed with a razor, or more likely, to have his legs removed. If he does not do the right thing, and turn himself in, all the other dogs will be crucified, and his owner (Will, of course) will be punished. Dramatic stuff.
All of this will conspire drive Will and Hooker to London and a life writing plays.
Much of the fun of the play comes from the conceit that Hooker is more creative and more philosophical and poetic than Will, who is really just a naive romantic.
The dog population consists of two oversexed female dogs and three male dogs, one very old and thoughtful, the other, a rival to Hooker. The female dogs are hyterically played by Marina Stephenson Kerr and Ardith Boxall, whose imaginative costumes, complete with tails, are lasciviously wielded and gave the actors wonderful business possibilities. Arne MacPherson’s Hooker is multidimensional: he can spout some of Shakespeare’s most famous lines as if it makes sense for a dog to say them. And that’s a great part of the fun of this play; we hear many of the best lines from Macbeth, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet come out of the dogs’ mouths as well as the humans’.
One of the most striking cribs from Shakespeare was the script will writes for the famous producer, suprisingly played by Barry MacGregor. In it, he quickly scribbles what would turn out to be the rough draft of Hamlet, in which Hamlet dies in scene I. The balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet comes out of a brilliantly zany scene between Anne Hathaway and Will.
If you like Shakespeare, these lines will give you a great chance to enjoy all the entendres. Aside from that, the whole thing is a great rollicking two act evening. Well done.
Shakespeare’s Dog
The National Arts Centre English Theatre
2007–08 Season
Peter Hinton, Artistic Director
World Premiere!
Shakespeare’s Dog
By Rick Chafe
Adapted from the Governor General’s Award-winning novel by Leon Rooke (1981)
Directed by Larry Desrochers
A National Arts Centre English Theatre / Manitoba Theatre Centre (Winnipeg) coproduction
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Manitoba Theatre Centre
The cast
John Shakespeare: Frank Adamson
Mary Shakespeare/Moll: Sharon Bakker
Marr: Ardith Boxall
Wolf: Toby Hughes
Will Shakespeare: Harry Judge
Ralph Chadrey, Onion: Greg Kramer
Sir Richard Doyle: Barry MacGregor
Hooker: Arne Peterson
Joan Shakespeare: Daria Puttaert
Terry: Marina Stephenson Kerr
Anne Hathaway: Helen Taylor
Davey Jones: David Warburton
Stage Manager: Paul A. Skirzyk
Assistant Stage Manager: Samira Rose
Fight Captain: Greg Kramer
Directed by Larry Derochers
Set and Costume Design by Brian Perchaluk
Lighting Design by John Bent Jr.
Fight Direction by Robert Borges
Performance seen: March 29, 2008, 7:30 pm Running time: 2 hours, 25 min, including 20 min intermission.
the builders
In ancient caves eons past
the hunt was crayoned onto walls
in elegant soft coloured stone on stone
the glorious drama of their lives
In ancient pyramids millennia past
kings and pharaohs lay entombed as gods
the epic stories of their lives carved
into stone walls illumed in gold
In ancient cathedrals and mosques centuries past
the lives of saints depicted in statues or words
haunted guilt and drove civilizations
to mythic hopes illumed on vellum
Straight up almost to the clouds a century ago
commerce strove to supersede hope with cash
and drive industry and economics
into laws debated in courts and flayed on the backs of the poor
More recently sports palaces have mushroomed
into circuses and dominated sense each
stereotypically more garish than the last
splashed onto paper and the media every hour
Soon caves will be in vogue
and all will fall into a tepid swamp
as insects start to etch the hunt
in hives and webs and domes around the world.
Jay-Gee closes
We walked down the almost empty main street
in bright cold March sunshine
bare pavement rimmed by bulging snowbanks
we stepped over one opalescent ice stream
that made this patch of concrete treacherous
The silence was Shakespearian
no birds in the bright cold
sparse traffic
why did the final gasp of a shoe store
seem like a wake
Out on the edge of town
the massive Trojan Horse gleams golden
festooned with cheap imported goodies
at low low prices
Soon Jay-Gee will be as empty
as the minds of the worshipers
of the Trojan horse
[For a backgrounder to this post, see Platinum River for March 30, 2008. ]
sky
I’m in bed
that tiny wedge
of deep blue sky
ignites my day
sleeping beside the giant
he throws his reeking bones to our back yard
when he stands and yawns and stretches
the ground shakes and our masonry cracks
birds stay away and the woods are silent
no foxes prowl the neighbourhood nor racoons
he empties stores of all provisions at once
then his great guts growl and gurgle as he digests
they welcomed him when first he came with promises
there was a band and speeches and a sickly eagerness
he would protect us and help us grow our crops
he eats our crops and attracts flies and sycophants
his farts pollute the air and our fishing creek
is now his sewer some of our children are missing
on the other side of town they love him
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