DAVID HASKINS

Reading Glasses
Timmy’s, Yonge and Richmond

Looking up to rest my eyes I see
in every blur of passers by – you,
a purple puff of silk around your neck,
your slender figure, grace in every step.

Anyone can be anyone in this city.
I am stateless, persona non grata
among people going about their business,
reading on a bench, stopping in for coffee,
chatting with one who assembles sandwiches.

Then again, you, crossing the street,
carrying a bag this time, a purse next,
always somewhere to go that isn’t here.

Could you not once come in,
sit with me, watch the evening light
becalm the street?  We could talk
about a movie one of us has seen.
Nothing between us but the faint scent of sandalwood
We’d grow old for an hour; I wouldn’t mind
if you checked your watch.  Under the table
our knees might not touch.

I take off my reading glasses.
In an  instant, we were never here –
only sounds of cars and cash registers,
an Antonioni slow fade to black –
(poets were all film-makers in the 60's, you said)

Outside you walk past, not turning to look.
I see you, harbinger of forgiveness.



Editor's note:  This poem was performed at Conrad Didiodato's book launch on Father's Day and was well received by the guests assembled there.

DAVID HASKINS

I Am Not Your Man Leonard Cohen interviewed by Jian Gomeshi
16/04/2009

Before I was old, you didn’t ask me
how I felt about dying.

Now, being both old and a poet,
I ought to know.

I answer with words you don’t use -
the alliterative “can’t command the consequences”;

I want the truth to sound like me.
We are all caught in this charade of slogans.

I can’t abide glory, but glory pays the bills.
Trophy, atrophy. Rest is how the rust gets in.

Beyond the horizon everything comes together
into nothing but survival. Hallelujah.

If you fall prey to pretty virgin words
you can lie, really lie.

The teller and the tale.
Shape-shifting. Myth making.

“Get anything interesting?” I ask.
The crew want lunch.

— David Haskins

This poem was one of four that won the Leonard Cohen poetry contest run by rootsmusic.ca. It is posted on http://www.rootsmusic.ca/2012/02/07/roots-music-poetry-winners-announced/

DAVID HASKINS - Winner of Individual Poem Award at the Literary Awards

Urban Fox


In the filtered light from a street lamp

at the end of a cobbled alley

she hunches down to watch me

and seeing I mean her no harm

slinks to the farthest corner

her stealth drenched in shadow.

Long ago the city fortress

called us from the starved land.

Now it brings the wild among us,

miles from forest, field and brook,

this ragged waif plagued with mange,

opportunist fallen from grace.

A disenfranchised citizen-savage

scavenger of human refuse,

she prowls the markets of south London

to feed her mewling kits, their den

warmed with hair she pulled from her skin.

She shows no pride in owning the night -

like a beleaguered spy come in from the cold

or some old drunk nestled under cardboard -

depending on no one’s kindness,

as fearless as the rats she beds down with

and, if she has to, eats.

I want her to be the fox the prince’s

horse and hound and redcoat riders

hunt around my Tiffany shade,

never run to ground or torn apart

when blood rises in the teeth of dogs.

Or the glass-eyed fox my late aunt draped

around her neck at Sunday service,

the perfect tail curved down one shoulder,

head and front paws down the other,

watching me reach up to touch

the soft seductive fur without

interrupting her solemn prayers.

I don’t belong in this survivor’s street;

for now she knows she has the upper hand.

One day she’ll chew her black boot off

to free her from a leg hold trap

and all her cunning will bleed out slow

the wild, waning in her slit eyes

the mysterious sisterhood of fox.

Originally published in The Saving Bannister 25, published by the Canadian Authors Association, Niagara.

Editor's note:  Congratulations David for winning the Individual Poem category at the Hamilton Arts Council's Annual Literary Awards Gala!  Well done!

DAVID HASKINS

Occupation Day.

 

 

 

I am not standing

in the eye

of a hurricane

 

not standing

where the shit goes to

when the city flushes

 

not standing

in my new shoes

in the wading pool

where an infant drowns

 

not standing

with my African son

swapping family stories

in different languages

 

not standing

on the threshold

as the sun lights you like a girl

pools your departing footfalls

 

not standing

where we shall next meet

a wire cage

lives locked in ether

 

I am still standing

standing

still

as a building

as a street

as a helmet

knocked to the ground

 

 

October 15, 2011

DAVID HASKINS

Writing Poetry is Like Gardening -

If you didn't like it, you wouldn't do it. And once it's done, it's never done. There are always dead blooms to pick off, branches to trim, new plantings to try. When your garden has been temporarily rectified to your satisfaction, then comes the nagging suspicion that you should take out the grass, put in a pond, uproot the whole thing and create a new space, one a bit closer to the serendipitous design of forest, rock and stream that you tried to capture in your small yard.

Despairing, you leave the poem, your garden, at home and take your holiday, camping somewhere deep in the wilderness to get reacquainted with what in perfect hands the garden, your poem, might have been.

Irving Layton would put on his hunting outfit and go for long walks in the countryside around his abode, hunting poems. Then, when the poems found him, he would rush back to write them down 

DAVID HASKINS

A JOURNAL ENTRY BY DAVID HASKINS

Night.

In the darkest hour before dawn, the bright moon, a soccer ball of glaring light, is caught in the black tangle of the locust tree. As the sky morphs into blues, the ball sifts slowly downward, deeper into the trap the branches have sprung, all the while fading with the night’s darkness, until it is merely a thin transparent skin, helplessly dying in the growing light. A morning breeze stirs the branches awake. A plumped up squirrel skips out from behind a high crux, flashes its tail and creeps upside down toward the earth. Waves of new pink rimmed clouds are drifting in. By the minute, the window’s palette changes with the breaking day. The slothful moon informs the painting like a memory.

DAVID HASIINS

The Reason

I am the cancer wanting more.
I fill my gasoline tank with war.
I drink poverty in coffee and politics in coke.
Children are stitched in the seams of my shirt.
A dirty old man pockets my coin.
Manhattan’s canyons are my cocoon.
My daughters are raised by a refugee.
My house is built out of forests that breathe.
Fourteen cameras watch my door.
I am the cancer wanting more.

If not for me they would earn no wage,
grow no flowers, sell no leaves.
That’s why there are continents, master and slave;
why religions, righteous apartheid;
why pandemics, generational genocide.
All the four horsemen ride through their homes,
but I sleep well in my temperate zone.
I take pride in the stuff I own.
I want to help them to turn the page;
If not for me they would earn no wage.

Someone who knows the taste of rats
will have to put them on the boats
and let them in. I am not of their tribe.
I meet them on vacation. I do not bide
at the back of my tent blind from disease
awaiting my killers or my next meal.
I am evolved. Success orphaned me.
Someone will have to do something more
deserving of a parade than winning a war,

Someone who knows the taste of rats.

David Haskins performing at ArtWord/Artbar - Hamilton, Ontario

David Haskins first poetry collection was Reclamation (Borealis Press, 1980). He has published poetry and fiction in books, anthologies, and literary journals across the country. He has won first prizes from the CBC, the Canadian Authors Association (Niagara), the Ontario Poetry Society, and Arts Hamilton. His work has been broadcast on CBC and posted on several internet sites. He lives with his wife on the shores of Lake Ontario.