The Restless Doghouse

I have a wicked side.
It sleeps in the doghouse.
It pants a lot.
It mutters things under its breath.
It ingratiates itself.
It reminds you of a human infant.
It growls at passing neighbours.
It is incapable of looking up.
It is grateful for the leftovers.
It naps a lot.
It has shameful dreams
about running, and pouncing,
and shaking.
It grows restless in the doghouse.
It growls at passing fancies.
It ages seven years
for every
one human year.
Scientists don’t know why.

The Getaway Plan

After catching a glimpse of your bodies in the mirror,
I felt a sharp little shiver shoot down my spine.

Ignited by the flares of a dozen flushed nerve endings,
it aimed to find safer ground by way of my buckling thighs.

The rogue endorphins liberated themselves from my body
through a double barrel pair of charcoal tube socks.

Looking up from my smoking craters of footwear,
I watched as the distraught shiver accidentally skidded

into our newly-renovated kitchen island.
Then with a theatrical flourish of banging backdoor,

I saw it duck down a dimly lit alley,
where an ominously tinted luxury vehicle

idled by the crumbling curb,
its passenger door dangling obligingly ajar,

like the slackened jawbone of
a dumbstruck believer.

The Hangover Cure

I awoke this morning with my headache lodged
beneath the lid of an antique player piano.

Admittedly, I do not recall much about last night,
except that a half-drunk Manhattan on ice

was needlessly heaved at a short-fused bluesman.
After numerous attempts to liberate my head

with brute force and tougher talk, I gave up.
Instead, I belted out a song of automated apology

into the tuneless dawn, as if this change
in key might somehow let me out.

The Gospel Record

I was rotating somewhere in the background,
running a long fingernail along the worn grooves
of my forehead, waiting for the music to come.
"You take requests?" asked a voice from up on high.
It was a girl, riding upon her boyfriend's shoulders,
waving a flaming lighter beneath the heavens.
"I'm not a house band," I said. "I'm more like
a home theatre system. I need to be programmed."
"I see," she said, and I watched as her blue flame
disappeared against a stretch of uninterrupted sky.
As night fell, the voice and the light were replaced
by the murmur of white noise constellations.
Above me, radio signals were loose in the stars,
muttering for release from the cluttered ether.
"I know the songs have always existed," I said
solemnly rotating in the darkness. "But all I ever
receive is blank static - like the rise of water around
an island, or the rush of wind inside a tunnel."
"You can't complain," said the girl, who had just
reappeared, only this time standing upon the
shoulders of her giant boyfriend. "Inspiration,"
she explained, "is a murmur loose in your brain."
As my audience wandered off a second time,
I noticed that the ground beneath me was worn.
I had been rotating for so long that I found myself
unwilling to seek alternative grooves to inspiration.
So, I vowed to observe my patient rotations
whether I was delivered the music, or not.

The Fourth Wall

I’m a descendant of the first cave painters
who thought to include human beings in their art.

You see, up until then, prehistoric murals
were mostly just bison, bison, bison.

The theory was – if you drew them on the wall,
you drew them from the land.

So, once my ancestors began to
include themselves in their own scenes,

the land became strewn with
artists, artists, artists.

Soon the scene was all played-out,
leafy greens were over-priced,

and the bison felt excluded,
so they left. My bad.

The Ornamental Cannon

I used to think that meteor showers were glorious occurrences,
that is, until a comet dropped from the sky and blinded my dog.
What happened was, we were walking through Tecumseh Park
when a fireball ricocheted off the barrel of an ornamental cannon.
All at once, three-fifths of the detonated rock illuminated the
Thames riverbed in a shower of red and white sparks, while two-
fifths of the remainder headed straight for my unprotected calves.
Then I felt a slack on the leash, and I realized that my dog had
heroically heaved his body between my legs and the meteorite.
The local ambulance crew appeared on the scene almost at once.
As it happened, they were speeding toward the park with such
haste that they rebounded off the barrel of a vandalized slide.
"I'm fine, fine," shouted my dog. "I can still smell goddamn it!"
Despite his protests, he was rushed to the local hospital where
I dutifully sat by his bedside, describing every inch of his dimly
lit room, until the needles and the sleeping came. At daybreak,
an eager reporter from The Daily Procter came by to interview
the heroic blind dog that had selflessly saved his master's legs.
But to the reporter's dismay, my dog denied the entire glorious
occurrence. "Well, what about the witnesses?" asked the reporter.
"Bark," said my dog, with a dismissive flick of his paw. "People
will remember what they want to remember." "But what about
the ornamental cannon," asked the reporter, "it bears the marks
of an explosion." "Weapons will bear what they want to bear,"
said my dog. "Besides," he added. "I wasn't even in Chatham
last night. I was holding defensive positions with the Shawnee."
In front of the dubious reporter, my blind dog continued to drone
on and on about his role in the War of 1812. "General Procter
had retreated up the Thames with such haste," said my dog.
"That he'd left more than half of his men and supplies behind
with Tecumseh's last chance at honour." "So," said the reporter
who's eyes rolled like looping meteorites, "were you very scared?"
"No," said my dog, "my job was to fetch the scattered supplies
from the river. Our last remaining cannon could not longer fire,
and the enemy knew it. Their artillery thrashed at the Thames
until the shoreline resembled a pot of boiling water." Then my dog
turned his head away from the reporter, and I knew that he had
just shared everything he cared to. "This interview is over," said
the reporter, and he left the room in something of a huff. My dog
sniffed the air and said, "Good, he's gone." We sat alone for a while,
and I asked him, "So, were you really in that War? Or were you
out walking with me, saving me from the ornamental cannon?"
My dog turned his bandaged eyes towards me, "Victims will
explain what they want to explain," he said. Then as a heavy rain
thrashed against the hospital window, I rested a reassuring hand
upon my dog's unsuspecting paw. "I get it," I said. "Sometimes,
I find it very scary to tell people how much I love them, too."

The Pill Bottle

Standing topless in front of the old mirrored cabinet,
I stared at the open bottle of pills until the voices came.

“You cannot continue to view your illness with contempt,”
said the bottle of pills. “It’s not something beneath you.”

“The illness,” it added, “is an adversary worthy of your nerve.”
Instinctively, I sucked in my gut and stood up a bit straighter.

This sudden shift in posture caused the pill bottle to rattle,
and my ears were filled with the peals of well-rung bells.

As the room fell back into stoic disquiet, the childproof cap
on the counter gave voice to the silence. “The path you seek,”

it said to me, “is a unique expression of your symptoms.
And it will lead you to something that’s been missing.”

I rolled my eyeballs in their sockets, scanning the bathroom
for any misplaced lotions or decorative soaps, but nothing

seemed out of order, except the pill bottle. “What you need,”
said the bottle, “is less estrangement from your various

selves.” Then almost as if they were searching for something,
the dozens of pills left in my bottle leapt from my hand,

and threw themselves towards the peeling linoleum below.
Standing topless in front of the newly painted wall,

I stared at the open pane of glass until the constellations
came. Careful not to crush the wandering doses at my feet,

I turned to face the bitter pill of the moon, as it called out
to me in a booming voice. It said, “To be estranged from

what makes a person human is to diminish all remaining
humanity.” Then an alarm on my watch face began to chirp,

chirp, chirp, and I knew it was time to discover whether
or not my pills still worked after they fell onto the floor.

Haiku

The sheet on the cage
flutters with the squeaking fan -
a nap without dreams.

The Coup

Yesterday, as I bent over to steal my neighbour’s
newspaper, I was struck in the head by a precocious

carrier pigeon. The wayward bird entered my suggestible
brain by way of my softened left temple, where it eventually

came to a fluttering rest somewhere within the vicinity of
my right frontal lobe. The bird has since crafted itself

a comfortable nest out dried twigs and dopamine.
What’s more, it’s apparently caused irretrievable impairment

to my problem-solving skills, not to mention my risk-taking
tendencies. In other words: I have since grown up.

The Cancer Patient

- A Belated Father's Day Poem

I rarely wore the silver watch my father bought me
because it felt so heavy on my wrist.

During the early morning hours of the recovery ward,
we patted the back of his hand and walked towards the park.

We ended up climbing some playground equipment
made of interconnected bars and chords.

As we contorted ourselves through the darkened apparatus,
I imagined ourselves as heavy hunks of cancer –

Where we each took turns politely excusing ourselves
from the depths of a patient’s grateful body.

Then, I saw that my watch had lost a heavy hunk of its silver band,
and I felt an unexpected rush of nostalgia for the thing.

At long last, the accessory felt like an extension of myself,
and it reminded me of those fortuitous times

when losing a piece of something you love
can help your family hang on.

The Custody Hearings

This morning, I was streaming a video of the dog that I lost
in the divorce. The dog had somehow learned to play the piano,

and had gained a following on the internet. All the while,
the webcam embedded within my laptop gently hummed a tune

in my ear. It reminded me about a medium, a message,
and about something else I can't quite make out without the

assistance of my court-appointed interpreter.

The Rail Rider

I held up my hand to shield my eyes from the sun,
until it looked like I was saluting a distant horizon
of dust and heat and blur. As I squinted, I could just
make out the outline of an old, abandoned railcar.
I tried to run towards it, but I had seemingly become
rooted to the spot on the lawn. Whether my lack of
movement resulted from a new development or an
old affliction, I did not know. It was hard to be certain
of anything, in times like these. As I stood there,
immobilized, I looked down at my feet. I watched as
the ubiquitous dust devils swirled about like little
portals several inches above my inexplicably green
lawn. The lush, verdant nature of my lawn had long
been the subject of neighbourhood gossip - well,
at least since The Drought. The success of my lawn
was a bit of a mystery to my as well. In truth, I never
really tended to it, or even watered it. The tools and
the hose had long since fallen beyond arm's reach,
which incidentally, was why I had become so interested
in that railcar - I needed the migrant workers who'd
once ridden its rails to tend to both myself and my lawn.
Despite the fact that the railcar had long since become
overrun with vines and weeds and greenery, I still held
out hope for its continued relevance. In many ways,
I had drawn some pretty sobering comparisons between
myself, and that abandoned railcar. Whether my lack
of attention resulted from a new trend or an old habit,
I did not know. However, what was certain was that
my neighbourhood was suddenly overrun with migrant
workers. They seemed to be on parade, walking single
file down the street. "Over here," I shouted at the line,
but no one came. I tried to wolf whistle, but I accidentally
inhaled a dust devil, and I nearly passed out from a
choking fit. When I came to, the parade had gone,
but one migrant worker stood before me, holding hat
in his hands and staring at his feet. "Beg your pardon,"
he said. "But I'm powerful hungry. Can I mow your lawn
in exchange for a meal?" I nodded, grateful that someone
finally would. He immediately set to work pushing the
antique lawnmower. As the grass clippings began to fly,
I said, "I thought you'd be here sooner. I mean, that railcar
has been abandoned for quite some time. I thought you
rail riders would have made your presence known before
now." The man put the lawnmower aside and began to rake
up the clippings. "We know what we're doing," he said.
I nodded, grateful that someone finally did. Then the next
thing I knew, the carefully raked piles of grass clippings
began to swirl about in the evening air like lush, verdant
dust devils. Suddenly the air smelled free of dust and heat
and blur. Then the worker looked me right in the eye,
and he stepped through the swirling mess of clippings
as if he were walking through a portal. I tried to follow
him, but I remained rooted to my spot on the lawn.
He did not reappear for quite some time, and I fell back
into my vigil of watching that old, abandoned railcar.
I tried to wolf whistle again, and almost at once,
the migrant worker stepped out from within the green
portal. "Where've you been?" I asked. "I was riding
the rails," he said. "That's impossible," I said, "I was
watching the railcar the whole time and it didn't move
once." The worker fixed me with a pitying look, which
put me on the defensive. "Well," I shot back with unexpected
venom, "at least I'm not some wayward bum!" The worker
smiled knowingly, and blew a wolf whistle of his own.
Almost at once, my ankles, my calves, and my thighs
were soon overrun with vines and weeds and greenery.
It was not long before I was completely bound, torso,
shoulders, and head, in an angry outburst of lawn.
As it migrated up my body, the only part which remained
uncovered was a small slit across my face through which,
if I squinted, I could just make out the outline of a yawning
green portal, moving towards me in the afterglow of an
indifferent and setting sun.

The Simple Times

This morning, I woke up and tried to write a poem,
but my MS Word document seemed esoterically

stuck on a little known font called “Hobo Code”.
Every delicate word I typed resembled rough carvings

on a fence post. For instance, after I crafted a haiku
about a lowly bowl of rice, all that appeared on

my screen was a circle with an X in the middle,
which apparently symbolized “Good Eatin’ Within.”

I have since taken to the road, where I sweep out
drafty barns in exchange for laptop access.

The Ringer

I woke up to the sound of bells, so I decided to follow
the ringing. I had just rounded the hairpin turn into the foyer
when I noticed that my mismatched slippers had brought
me straight to the site of my broken doorbell, which incidentally,
sometimes doubled as my doorway. The bell rang again.
For a moment, I wondered who in the world had the power
to ring my broken doorbell. But then, I felt a little sad
for a second, and I couldn’t quite think of anyone I’d even
wanted to see right then, powerful or not, so instead, I decided
to become captivated with my slippers. Sometimes, when I was
alone, I’d convinced myself that my slippers were mismatched
on purpose. You know, like as a wry statement, or something.
But in the end, I always remembered how you’d accidentally
sold one bear slipper and one duck slipper to that old German
widow at the last Anglican Church bazaar. I think our doorbell
broke that very day, too, come to think of it. I think it was also
the same day you left me after bumping me in the head with
a well-placed swing of our door. I heard bells on that day, too.
Yawning, I looked up and rubbed my eyes with the back of
my hand, and certain facts finally became clear. I was suddenly
convinced that the ringing wasn’t coming from the broken
doorbell at all. In fact, the ringing sounded somehow a bit too
methodical to be coming from the doorbell, broken or otherwise.
The ringing sounded soothing and oddly ritualistic in nature.
There was a droning quality to those ringing bells that
made me think about big wheelbarrows during the plague.
“Bring out your dead!” shouted a voice. “Bring out your dead!”
With bated breath, I reached out for the stiff doorknob,
and found that my mismatched slippers brought me straight
to the site of my trash pickup, which incidentally, sometimes
doubled as my driveway. As I looked up and down the
street, I was only mildly surprised to see a black bear pushing
a big wheelbarrow full of bodies. “Bring out your dead!”
shouted the black bear. The black bear had a white duck
perched upon his left shoulder, and it rang a cracked golden
bell every three paces or so. “Here,” I said, as I flagged
them down, “over here.” The black bear made eye contact
with me, nodded knowingly, and steered his wheelbarrow
into my driveway, past my mismatched slippers, and straight
through my doorway. I decided to walk back inside and see
what they had to offer. As I took in their selection I asked
the bear, “How come all of the dead bodies are cut into halves?”
“Quack,” said the duck, with a ring of his bell. “What he
means by that,” said the bear, “is something along the lines
of, Sometimes, being in love feels like falling apart.” I thought
about that for a second, and then I said, “I see.” But I didn’t
really see at all, so instead, I decided to become captivated
with the bodies. Sometimes when we were together, I’d
convinced myself that I my relationship with you ended on
purpose. You know, like as a conscious choice, or something.
But in the end, I always remembered how you’d emphatically
argued with that old German widow at the last Anglican Church
bazaar about the genuine need for an honest to God schism,
every now and then.

The Convocation

Last night, I met my soul at a
graduation party. The pair of us
shared a joint on the concrete balcony,
and everything was all right for a
while. We discussed fixed election
results, superfluous bachelor degrees,
and how tempting it can be to
outsource a coming revolution.
However, it was not long before my
soul returned to the kitchen, and I
was left alone, looking for something
that resembled an ashtray. Beyond the
foggy windows, I knew that my soul
was lost somewhere within that
heady throng of promises, hugs, and
camera phones. As midnight came,
I simply stood there, and let my
breath dance around me like
cold smoke. I did not search out
my soul again that night. I figured
there were other people it needed to
catch up with, you know, before
it was too late.

A Haiku for Spring Cleaning

Ripples in the sink,
as the old knife slips away;
the power of soap.

A Haiku for Eviction Day

A cold alleyway,
my lightweight dolly sounds like
an awkward drum roll.

Five Poems

Five of my poems
now appear in BafterC,
Vol. 4 No. 1.

It is published and sold through
Book Thug.

Hooray.

A Haiku for Better Days

A sad Sunday meal,
the last of my stale pretzels
resemble wishbones.

The Hypnotist

The woman behind
the suggestive Hypno-Specs
has hollow
gear-shaped eyes.
They tumble & swoon
beneath her furrowed
forehead
like a pair of
rabid, unlicensed
poodles.
Above her spinning sockets,
her eyebrow-lines perch,
barren and drawn
and arched,
like a gothic wrought iron
gate
guarding a haunted
Spirograph
factory.

The Doors

Ryan's poem The Doors
will be appearing in the forthcoming
issue of
The Toronto Quarterly.

Hooray.

A Poem for Stop Loss Day

Ryan Bird is a Soldier
of Love

who still wakes
up drunk
with post-traumatic
dreams

about
high school

dances--

the gut tender
shellshock
of
improvised explosives

still pungeant
on the roadside
air,

like a day-old
peace
lily

corsage.

The Tourist

My sunglasses now envelope
the whole of my head.

Something wicked this way
reflects.

It's high noon in the town
of Hotspur Ridge,

and my temples resemble a set of
swinging saloon doors,

filmed in nostalgic dustbowl
sepia.