tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55265458911530541662024-03-08T15:57:08.836-08:00Dan Goorevitch11 Eaton SouthI was dialyzed between February 6, 2001 and November 3rd, 2005 at 11 Eaton South and other locations in the Toronto General Hospital before receiving a kidney transplant on my 54th birthday, November 5, 2005 in Fort Myers, Florida, the home of the delicious Mangrove Snapper.Dan Goorevitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12299775235564806246noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526545891153054166.post-85754192298901131862008-02-03T10:28:00.000-08:002011-12-21T18:23:02.203-08:00Bubbles and ButterfliesYou caress the bubble but it doesn't burst.<br />You squeeze it. It cannot burst. So you eat it<br /><br />And as it passes out there's a world in there.<br /><br />Not some New York skyline with snowflakes<br />But a man, yourself, as he should have been.<br /><br />He is taller than you, stronger than you,<br />He is warmer, kinder, more generous<br /><br />He has a keener intellect, a finer humour.<br />He laughs at himself and accepts his foibles.<br /><br />He is the you you should've been but aren't<br /><br />So you flush him. But he finds his way out<br />Of the pipes and into the river where he bubbles up<br /><br />With millions of other bubbles he heads for the falls.<br /><br />He falls and stays intact. He wanders up and down<br />And through all the earth, this homunculus who will outlast you,<br /><br />Capable of every thing but one:<br />He cannot free himself from the bubble.<br /><br />You stand in your living room and a butterfly<br />Puts his wings between your fingertips<br /><br />And your feet leave the ground.<br /><br />At first you laugh but, as your head passes through the ceiling<br />And you wonder if you're air or plaster, awake or asleep<br /><br />(You fear to let go but you're curious to go on)<br /><br />You rise up above the clouds, above the stars even<br />To the untouched waters over heaven<br /><br />And you find yourself in a pink spiral<br /><br />A tunnel. How strange. Above the space, you thought,<br />There would be more and more space, ever more freedom<br /><br />But it's a tunnel, and it's narrowing.<br /><br />The tunnel gets dark and you're afraid to let go<br />So many miles from home and then you smell the stink.<br /><br />The stench is appalling but you think it will pass.<br /><br />It gets worse. You can't let go now. You can only hope<br />Things will get better. But it gets worse. And it gets hot.<br /><br />Surely it can't last and if I let go I'll die here<br /><br />In this heat and this stink, alone. At least I have<br />Someone with me, the butterfly. But who is this butterfly?<br /><br />It puts its wings between my finger. It <span style="font-style: italic;">wanted </span>to take me here.<br />But I have nothing else and fear to die alone.<br /><br />So you hold on. The heat gets more intense. It is searing<br />And then it gets twice as hot. You can't breathe.<br /><br />Now it's so hot it's beyond heat. You feel ice cold.<br /><br />The butterfly is letting you down into a burning lake.<br />The lake is silver, like mercury. Like a volcano<br /><br />It bubbles. Perfectly round solid bubbles and you see<br />Either reflected on the outside or inside it (you cannot tell)<br /><br />A man resting peacefully, each under his own fig tree.<br />He drops you.<br /><br />You feel your feet hit something solid, your knees buckle<br />And instinct makes you reach with both hands to break the fall.<br /><br />You let go of the butterfly.<br /><br />You are on your feet, crouching, in the centre of<br />Your living room. You know, for the first time<br /><br />The fear and love of God.<br /><br /><br />© Dan Goorevitch, 2001Dan Goorevitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12299775235564806246noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526545891153054166.post-24128329061014399242008-02-03T10:10:00.000-08:002008-02-03T10:15:53.909-08:00A Poem for Paul SmithOverhead the flickering bulb<br />buzzes, pops and hisses;<br />the clock-hands move:<br />three petty tyrants,<br />unhurried, self-assured.<br /><br />What is this pressure<br />at the base of the ear? Silence<br />in the muddle—the middle<br />of the stream, crossing<br />to the other bank?<br />What paralysis grips?<br />What agency demands this<br />vacant stare?<br /><br />You ask me to write a poem<br />in answer to a question I ask again:<br />“What can I do for you?”<br /><br />Looking back and looking forward,<br />the present consumed by seemingly<br />inconsequential things which, taken together<br />mount to matters of great weight and urgency:<br />a huge library to dispose of,<br />the question of who gets what,<br />the agony of weighing the value of a friendship—<br />more presence than you bargained for;<br />less time for reflection than assumed—<br />strange that!<br /><br />And they say time flies!<br />It doesn’t. It creeps. <span style="font-style:italic;">It steals</span>.<br /><br />And now the wet expanse shows no sign<br />where a child, stick in hand, wrote his name:<br />the grey clay cleft has nearly closed completely<br />as if some wondrous maiden—some mud—some mudder<br />of millions, suddenly, miraculously:— a virgin again!<br /><br />Three four, six, nine<br />skips across the water,<br />lapping, at the nearer<br />and the farther shore,<br /><br />our names, my friend,<br />in water or in sand—<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">only a moment more.</span><br /><br /><br />© Dan Goorevitch, 2005Dan Goorevitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12299775235564806246noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526545891153054166.post-4563936610650106462008-02-03T10:00:00.000-08:002008-07-24T13:35:21.095-07:00CrushingWith a crushing weight on my chest<br />I enter the crematorium.<br /><br />Faint moans and screams,<br />Gaunt women in threadbare cotton shifts,<br /><br />Long diaphanous hair streaming behind<br />And a young blond man in full Nazi regalia giving chase.<br /><br />Mouth open, drooling, his cold blue eyes sparkle.<br />Entranced! Bewitched! In love!<br /><br />How do I even know you're here?<br />Here is a door but no other side<br /><br />No grass, no birds<br />No kind or comforting words<br /><br />Just cell phones and a mean looking mother—<br />His long legs privatizing the aisle.<br /><br />A girl, about twenty-six months<br />Looks from face to face<br /><br />Picking up the world they see—lonely—<br />On a bus full of people!<br /><br />She looks; he won't return her gaze.<br />She pleads<br /><br />and in her eyes now grows<br />His look of utter hate returned to him.<br /><br />He looks for the door<br />But finds no other side.<br /><br />With half a laugh to whom it may concern<br />Her mother laughs and says<br /><br />"She's so intense!"<br />Hoping he isn't offended.<br /><br />He isn't.<br />He's broken.<br /><br />He wobbles to the exit<br />his heart like her heart<br /><br />a chamber<br />with a door<br /><br />and a world<br />inside it struggling<br /><br />unprepared<br />as the rest of us.<br /><br /><br />© Dan Goorevitch, 2001Dan Goorevitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12299775235564806246noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526545891153054166.post-73498315662467057472008-02-03T09:20:00.001-08:002008-02-03T10:00:26.715-08:00The Dark Ages<span style="font-style:italic;">to Patty</span><br /><br />In the dark ages<br />—I read it in a book—<br />there was very little art.<br /><br />In that book,<br />an illustration:<br />A broad necklet<br /><br />made of some<br />milky substance<br />and from it<br /><br />a golden pendant<br />with twin stones<br />of sapphire shone.<br /><br />Now,<br />here you stand<br />to go<br /><br />In your white<br />leather coat,<br />your hair<br /><br />—and your eyes—<br />out of a dun night<br />glow<br /><br /><br />© Dan Goorevitch, 2001Dan Goorevitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12299775235564806246noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526545891153054166.post-83547174775254805762008-02-03T09:20:00.000-08:002008-02-03T09:31:05.997-08:00For The Sake Of ArgumentFor the sake of argument let's say you have no identity.<br />For the sake of argument let's say you're an image<br />you make and remake, a lump of clay, thrown on a wheel,<br />hollowed out as it rises until its walls, too brittle,<br />crumble, or if not, sustain an astounding grace<br />but disappoint after the glazing, or if not, enthrall,<br />delight and excite until you drop it in your reverie.<br /><br />Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you are a masterpiece<br />sitting in the British Museum until, like Sumer, like Egypt,<br />your museums are destroyed and you,<br />like all the masterpieces that surround you,<br />are desecrated by barbarian hordes who, living in poverty,<br />watching your television shows, their envy and malice<br />feeding their power and violence, put an end to you.<br /><br />Let's say, for the sake of argument<br />you are an insect caught in amber<br />and it is only the wind that seems<br />to make your dry limbs shudder.<br /><br /><br />© Dan Goorevitch, 2003Dan Goorevitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12299775235564806246noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526545891153054166.post-37508969744799442482008-02-03T09:15:00.000-08:002008-07-24T13:37:36.906-07:00God exists for secrets such as this<span style="font-style: italic;">to Maral</span><br /><br />Shave the fur from the purring beast<br />and see the skin and veins beneath,<br />the musculature and its armature,<br />the indwelling city:<br /><br />skyscraper, sewer, roadway and market, telephone, electric plant.<br />All the world is full of dreams and dreamers dreaming, loth to wake.<br /><br />We have ourselves as dreams to dream<br />and sleep and wake, and never know the difference.<br /><br />God exists for secrets such as this<br />to take a battered arm to kiss,<br />to bind and dress these wounds of ours,<br />to bathe them in these pregnant hours<br />we blind with that cannulating light<br />that beats in us as pure delight.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">© Dan Goorevitch, 2001</span>Dan Goorevitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12299775235564806246noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526545891153054166.post-70705749014802044852008-02-03T09:10:00.000-08:002008-02-03T10:02:08.248-08:00HarleyI've touched the silky lining of death's cunt.<br />She's cold but her hole is hot.<br /><br />This hand-me-down I call my self—<br />even this—even this is a rental.<br />They'll take the blood out of my body<br />and they'll wash it and wash it<br />and return it to me clean.<br /><br />and some fool on a motorcycle<br />will leave me something in his will,<br />one of his two laundries.<br /><br />I'll buy a Harley<br />—pick up a fat broad<br /><br />—fuck her drunk—dead drunk—<br />She'll be my motorcycle mamma<br />—I'll be her daddy—big daddy—<br />—big daddy with the beefy cock.<br /><br />or I’ll write poetry about mortality instead<br />and be frustrated by unrequited love<br />and my benefactor's remains will be kept quiet<br />by daily anti-rejection medication<br />until something else fails<br />and this rental falls due to the next tenants.<br /><br />Maybe some part of me will remain<br />to be passed on to someone patient.<br />Maybe by then they'll be able to pass on<br />my hard drive with all its subdirectories and files<br />and he'll write poetry about mortality<br />and be frustrated by unrequited love<br /><br />but i hope he buys a harley.<br /><br /><br />© Dan Goorevitch, 2000Dan Goorevitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12299775235564806246noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526545891153054166.post-52972214267897014072008-02-03T09:09:00.000-08:002008-02-03T10:02:29.926-08:00ZenyThere's this nurse—her name is Zeny<br />—face as bright as a newborn penny!<br /><br />Zeny, Zeny, dialysis nurse!<br />you'll bust a gut riding in your hearse!<br /><br />No one departs for the great hereafter<br />on her shift 'less he dies of laughter!<br /><br />Not a few—not all—but many<br />cry Ze...ny! Ze...ny!...Ze...ny!...Ze...ny!<br /><br /><br />© Dan Goorevitch, 2001Dan Goorevitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12299775235564806246noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526545891153054166.post-5971956889954710082008-02-03T09:07:00.000-08:002008-02-03T10:10:10.251-08:00Who Will Bury The Dolls?A people have been hacked, hewed,<br />shaped, chiselled, filed, sharpened<br />kept cocked in the chamber<br />between hammer and flash;<br />Dolls of the line, Kali-like<br />children’s toys,<br />her girdle of cut-off hands,<br />her bracelet of skulls<br />now a handsome set of grenades.<br /><br />Between the boot and the mounds of carcasses<br />bloated with gas stomps the goodly peasant<br />tramping down what the supervisor insists<br />be called no name but “dolls”<br />and the ships carrying desperate threads<br />to port after port and back to the scissors.<br />No port to land, no land to settle. What irony!<br /><br />The reason why there’s a day of solidarity<br />is because there <span style="font-style:italic;">is </span>none (couldn’t you guess?)<br />Not with those who look the other way<br />Not with those who preen and weigh their golden hair<br />—superpersons to the rescue (moralswise)—<br />burnishing their bona fides like drunks and their stories<br />stomping nothing but audience:<br />the peace- and warfulness that passeth underCanading.<br />Primitive nations at war? need the latest technology? Candu!<br /><br />Similarly, the humiliation. Embarassment:<br />No place so no peace for the weary travellers<br />and our little dolls all grown up now.<br />Vegetables and bitter herbs all blown to bits<br />Raisins and virgins raining all day up in heaven.<br />We should hardly be surprised<br />—The objects were created to specifications<br />to finish the job.<br /><br />But who will bury the dolls?<br />Will it be he who wanders<br />up and down and through<br />all the earth, the ungrateful one?<br />I see him now, two-faced and two-sided.<br />On one side hangs the figure,<br />the pièta, crowned by thorns, his cross<br />dug deep into the earth. In that earth,<br />rooted on the other side<br />upward begins to twist the trunk<br />of a hornéd gloating goat,<br />his eyes gleaming with satisfaction<br />as saint after saint<br />writhes against the ropes on their wrists<br />the piercing arrows of love and hate<br />and the wooden stakes that rend them.<br /><br />Purple and yellow of bruises,<br />branches and needles banging,<br />the sky a dull ruddy anti-glow.<br /><br />Eerily calm, Medea stalks the stage<br />a child under each arm<br />their shirts soaked in blood.<br /><br />Son enters stage left<br /><br /> DAD<br /><br />“Where have you been?”<br /><br /> SON<br /><br />“Fuck off!”<br /><br /> DAD<br /><br />Why can’t you be like your brother?<br /><br /><br />Like Job?<br /><br />Like Israel?<br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />Seething.</span>Dan Goorevitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12299775235564806246noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526545891153054166.post-68611031158486722572008-02-03T09:05:00.000-08:002008-02-03T10:02:53.284-08:00The NewsSILVER SNOWFLAKES<br />under the streetlamp<br /><span style="font-style:italic;"> —you live til the moment you die!</span><br /><br /><br />© Dan Goorevitch, 2001Dan Goorevitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12299775235564806246noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526545891153054166.post-65771435807137851772008-02-03T09:04:00.002-08:002008-02-03T10:03:14.225-08:00Angels and Devils<span style="font-style:italic;">to Andrea Jarmai</span><br /><br />Beneath the hackneyed prose of the petition<br />you sent me I sensed a vague stirring<br />which in some circles passes for thought.<br /><br />According to the author the ravening wolves,<br />the multinational pimps,<br />would halve the rainforest to chips.<br /><br />At the risk of tainting our messages further<br />I posed a question:<br />What is the price of chips to the price of planks?<br /><br />I’d rather err on the side of the angels you wrote<br />and it only takes a second to err<br />which surprised me<br /><br />that you should let your seconds spill from your pockets<br />piling up in years indifferently devoted to correct<br />or erroneous efforts. This is not the poet I heard.<br /><br />I responded with undisguised fatigue:<br />One hardly knows these days, Ms. Jarmai<br />the angels from the devils.<br /><br />Mr. Goorevitch, your chided, you are using a euphemism<br />I told you I have three little ones at home<br />and you woke them when you called.<br /><br />Next I responded by telling you<br />I am unread uneducated and illiterate;<br />my triplet sister reads and writes for me.<br /><br />You had no answer, not for quite a while.<br />I was working on a letter at the time<br />on behalf of my mentor’s widow.<br /><br />I see now that he was a “native artist”<br />something he never referred to<br />in the fifteen years I knew him.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">I didn’t have a bedtime, he said,<br />We’d run around wherever we pleased<br />and come home when we got tired or hungry...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">All artists have this in common:<br />A perfect childhood<br />suddenly cut short…<br /><br />The young person dreams a better world than he lives in<br />then he learns to bring it out<br />That's his art.</span><br /><br />When I became involved in politics he feared<br />there would be one less voice calling for a different world<br />made from the inside out.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Why must you rage against the despoiler<br />When you yourself are able<br />To recover your innocence?</span><br /><br /><br />© Dan Goorevitch, 2004Dan Goorevitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12299775235564806246noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526545891153054166.post-17060876670923626812008-02-03T09:04:00.001-08:002008-02-26T19:06:35.759-08:00The Fire BellSomeone should put a rope around his neck<br />next time he's on a ladder, just<br />kick it out.<br /><br />This is what the devil really looks like<br />not some pointy-eared,<br />hairless, smiling<br /><br />pitchfork-holding<br />flamed engulfed Power, but<br />this tiny unhappy man<br /><br />with shifty eyes.<br />He places the bell touching my wall<br />so it will clang but not ring.<br /><br />Active, he<br />takes advantage of opportunity<br />to exercise his pathetic misanthropy.<br /><br />We all know the song:<br />"If I had my way<br />"I would tear this "building down"<br /><br />and so would I<br />sanction Amalek - root and branch,<br />run for mayor, get elected<br /><br />set up a hook in Nathan Phillip Square,<br />impale the litterers.<br />I'd take the vote away from women too!<br /><br />Somewhere out there a house painter<br />is leaving paint on panes of glass on purpose.<br />Somewhere out there<br /><br />some poet saying "Jehovah" sent her<br />to tell us "El Shaddai" rejects<br />"the stiff-necked"<br /><br />for rejecting Jesus.<br />In the afterlife,<br />so many editors<br /><br />of small literary magazines<br />will burn in her quarries crammed<br />with flaming rejection slips,<br /><br />hewing monuments and new tablets,<br />their whole bodies so many pitched thumbs<br />throbbing after the hammer strikes the bell.<br /><br /><br />© Dan Goorevitch, 2003Dan Goorevitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12299775235564806246noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526545891153054166.post-40062355667909025262008-02-03T09:04:00.000-08:002008-02-03T10:04:04.431-08:00"Doctor"One day you find yourself in a lazy-boy recliner<br />green vinyl edition<br /><br />and an obese bull dyke with a condescending smile says<br />"I'm your kidney doctor."<br /><br />You've been suicidal and she helps you<br />by snapping when you complain the room is drafty.<br /><br />"What are you telling me for?"<br />concern for her patient's comfort being beneath her.<br /><br />Suddenly you have a reason to live:<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">to dance on her fucking grave</span>.<br /><br /><br />© Dan Goorevitch, 2001Dan Goorevitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12299775235564806246noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526545891153054166.post-83627896333664108652008-02-02T09:15:00.000-08:002008-02-03T10:05:03.739-08:00In Częstochowa<span style="font-style:italic;">to Grazina</span><br /><br />Once upon a time<br />When the river Warta<br />Ran thru the town of Częstochowa<br /><br />a woman stood on the tips of her toes<br />alone in a vast room<br />meticulously arranging her medical supplies.<br /><br />There are things one remembers from childhood—<br />a picture of a Scotch Terrier (on a writing pad)<br />a yellow-haired girl sweeping a hearth (in a book)<br /><br />or (a photograph): a toddler (me) pulling a violin out of a tin can—<br />more real than what we say “actually happened”<br />and so it was that, reaching above the dialysis machine,<br /><br />silence was her accompanist, and she, rising and falling<br />betwen moon and undertow, turning<br />in her banks, over rocks, measure after measure—<br /><br />Listen you—<br />You in the powder blue—<br />Cinderella, laughing,<br /><br />bringing the waters of the Warta<br />here intact from Częstochowa<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Dei gratia nova:</span><br /><br />© Dan Goorevitch, 2003Dan Goorevitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12299775235564806246noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5526545891153054166.post-4076013451560307942007-10-28T10:34:00.000-07:002007-10-28T11:20:31.211-07:00The PartsThe parts of a busted doll<br />Strewn on a table<br />No longer strain to integrate the greater self.<br /><br />The makers who passionately made her parts<br />No longer feel the urge to dash her brains<br />Against the nearest wall but, with shaking hands<br /><br />Ascend with the patient corpse<br />Through skylight to midnight's electric storm, chanting:<br />"HAMELECH! IMAM! SHANTI! SWEET JESUS!"<br /><br /><br />There is a picture of poor mad Ivan<br />Holding his broken son, the eyes<br />Bulging, searching, vacant...<br /><br /><br />Gilt frames the edges of the family photograph.<br />Wake up at seven—the alarm clock will help you<br />To glue the shattered shards to make a cup<br /><br />Of coffee<br /><br />Dash out the house<br />The little plastic pieces<br />Trailing in your train.<br /><br />Some get trapped in the door and<br />One weeping like a lost child<br />Roams the house alone to find<br /><br />A tiny purple flower on the nervosa,<br />Showers of wicker; a solid orange column<br />Breaking between blue windows.<br /><br />A latch, painted in place,<br />Amazingly works<br />Like a real object,<br /><br />The doorknob an image<br />Is solidly felt<br />And really turns<br /><br /><br />The image is dim.<br />An old man.<br />Walking in a daze.<br /><br /><br /><br />© Dan Goorevitch, 2001Dan Goorevitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12299775235564806246noreply@blogger.com0