The Ghosts of Jay MillAr

by Jay Millar

  A Short Review of Birds

  Birds can be far more interesting than people sometimes.

  Today, in fact, as I pore over the lists of confirmed sightings

  I made years ago in the backwoods near Tilbury Ontario,

  birds seem less capable of an outright violent attack in any

  language, One simply remembers a shape among the leaves,

  and it is never the bird in its entirety, a thing in itself, but a

  suggestion, an attitude that leans toward the whole. Their

  unusual forms of communication always correspond directly

  to individual shapes, a series of objects open to interpretation

  instead of a defining mechanism through which facts are stated.

  They are a war with no violence, a peaceful tribe who carry out their

  discussions for the benefit of all without any attempt to triumph

  over their delicate presents. It is certainly a natural enough position,

  for the voice of a carnivore becomes as important as the voice of

  the small berry eaters. Thus no one is afraid to speak. It is

  comforting that each species can exist in order that it might be

  heard alongside all the others rather than against them, and

  similarly, that each song or cry made by any one creates a wildly

  varied universe in which everyone gathers in bunches separately

  causing an overall effect similar to that of a community of writers.

  Lysdexia in Sunlight

  what mournful singing

  in the happiness of change: they

  beat their drums across the cloud-lit skies;

  by calling out our names

  they are assured of an answer in their wingspan

  a note quite high, (not sounded at all within that realm)

  something you can hear uttered just in front

  of the beak, to layer existence before the sound

  itself appears, a priori, but so what:

  their benign overwhelming attention

  can only be explained by

  Mind, not by the songs they sing.

  After the Rain

  After the rain the stink of the lake resides of the lake.

  The good clean stink in the the back of my throat.

  After the rain one can until anything can happen.

  And stare at the wetback surface sit perfectly still.

  When the glass of water becomes the glass of water.

  The only think left to think:

  After the rain nothing can ever sit quite through it.

  When a bird goes so still as the sky.

  ‘Gull sit on lake fine.

  And it’s after rain.’

  After the rain no one’s still day. Quite

  so nowhere. It’s a mind ever goes.

  Even the rain felt straight down to strike the surface.

  Ninety degrees of the lake.

  Notes on Flight

  here

  love them because

  here they are

  not here

  every being faces

  many directions

  with a face

  to the sky

  my wife sleeps

  her head

  the top of it

  points up to

  them hello

  miles and miles

  away

  east night first

  then western crackle (&

  the greens become several shades

  of blue, music obviously)

  layered in the orange

  orchid tufts going

  to sleep

  no moon

  almost present

  a sliver to speak

  as it shares stars

  with shapes and

  shifters

  the quiet

  songs

  cloudsex:

  soft lightning

  stroking the wet

  gas light

  feel them

  moving in the

  trees

  jokes on you in the morning

  when they aren’t around it’s you

  who aren’t so asleep or breathe in

  the open eye WAKE UP

  the feather ere

  ates connexion

  turbulence, a

  worl(d) wind

  the mind read

  ily accepts

  collage/com

  pression in

  time

  mine breathe

  you say yours can do anything, mine

  mine breathe

  if there are none look to the horizon

  to see something of them, time held

  on a refractory note until they gather

  for you are inside the chest not the

  head but in the chest where you are alive

  look deep into their soft barricades

  Float/Set

  swimming at dusk, the water

  feels like air, tho it cups the

  balls more gently, holds them where

  the careless gravity of the lake seems

  to halt, and can float quietly, a

  point of departure to wake up

  those orange wisps and ochre folds

  of cloud strings from across the water

  that hang before the red sun wash and

  that silence the lake is fumbling for

  turns them into the circular motions

  we make, both above and below the horizon

  sound to hold our dark hovering limbs

  Seasonal Drift

  August contemplation of days, remember to

  slow down days again. October… days,

  they are, after all, only days: a surface

  clouds at three in the afternoon

  and a branch that suspends it (thought)

  shrink each single motions grows until it

  vanish into the perfectly capable blue

  (sea monster) (heaven) (wing gust)

  but it was the cool rain came down that

  time of year, nice, we thought, to close

  down the morning, the evening, and of now.

  (the end) to be the darkened skies of

  hold the holes of our dreams, all the

  excitement, all the lust, now is cool and

  heavy (closed) way down here in the

  just imagine what behind the clouds

  all our little veils falling from the trees

  come about their way to catch our little

  our thoughts, we are all angels, all

  shy birds who watch each of us

  clouds out the front room window in

  the afternoon, from the inside out

  when we remember how we were absolute

  (happy) our dreams when they were our

  selves, shadows of branches at dawn.

  Flock

  nothin’s what it seems

  lies, illusions, pure empty beings

  together in nothing we are

  in love with not being

  here

  too

  non-being slips over

  into another wing

  that’s floatin’ up the street eh?

  away from the lake

  into the what? a

  fortress called forest

  Leave Me Alone:

  1 sound retreats forever into the wash

  2 we have everything at every moment

  3 the sound of the call is so pure

  Birds Land on the Roof of This Room

  and I am sad. They are so small and

  I can hear the sound of their wings

  folding as though there were no windows,

  no wood, or air, between myself and them.

  One roof over they squawk and shit

  they hop about from feet to feet with

  something great in mind, a terrific plan

  to which I have not yet been introduced.

  I listen to t
hem surely discussing

  the weather, what to eat, where to get laid,

  etcetera. Then they fly off. I sip my coffee and

  I am sad. Being human thinks so hard some

  times of all the things we could have had.

  Notes to an Untitled Poem

  ONE) everyone please breathe to begin; for it is the air that holds us.

  TWO) defined by a freedom to choose your voice, not to find it; to choose the chorus, not to discover any of them.

  THREE) I still believe and will continue to believe we have much to learn from the flocking birds, those who move together and sing to each other. Unconcerned. Suspicious. Migratory and Feared.

  FOR no real community could ever be fully understood as a community by anyone, even those who belong to it. FOR there should be such flexibility within the ranks. FOR the mystery of play we have gathered. FOR the presence of any ghosts you desire.

  FIVE thru NINE) if involved in a community, however diversified or small, one tends not to feel a faceless stick in a group of empty sticks, as one does sitting on the subway during morning rush hour, then coming up the steps of St Andrew Station at say 8:28 in the morning, a herd of cattle oppressed to the extent of blindness and disregard. Where no muse could possibly bother to penetrate our sense of hopelessness, the death of the imagination first thing upon waking, but lives do exist in the sense that one finally feels free to exist as they may, in a complete and utter anarchy amongst the ranks, free breath for everyone! (breathe dammit) an intoxication in and about the premises that allows for this cast of invisible ballots that has real meaning.

  TEN) it is the role of those already established to exploit all those interested in becoming a part of their community, despite how evil this may seem at first, it is for the benefit of the whole, since the older members will forever be comfortable in their declining years. Such ‘exploitation’, as it has been originally considered, will eventually wear away to something equivalent to mere initiation. Watch to see who shall fall far from the nest through our notes.

  ELEVEN thru THIRTEEN) It might be said (indeed it shall) that I never really understood any sense of community until I met my inlaws, who are in fact humans of the divine order, an expansive family in many ways, limited in others, but for all intensive purposes are a flock of large birds, Canadian Geese or Whooping Cranes, travelling among each other across a sky no one else will ever see. I would naturally come to understand them first, for they have been doing what all other communities I encountered set out to do without saying a thing. And while strife may occur among them, it is because they actually feel that way about some other person, and not because of some theoretical fakery caused by their own sense of failure, or because they are unable to accept the fact that things could easily be otherwise. A GREAT BLUE HERON FLIES OVER THE 401. What could be more beautiful?

  FOURTEEN) history is the vehicle of the community, tradition the forgetting thereof, and the intensity of any layer will resonate against the intensity of all others at any given moment until the high note of the underworld commune breaks through. Watch us shift together to flock across your sky.

  FIFTEEN) a community of losers such as sparrows, pigeons, or european starlings, all of them surviving on the crumbs of the establishment, are outsiders within the wings, they tend to be more open minded, more diverse and revolutionary; they have more will to sacrifice. It has been said it is wrong to bite the hand that feeds you but there are only so many ways to survive, and what if those hands have never offered anything let alone a meal? Flesh is food too, as is the mind. Consider the pigeons. Bite away! Will you never be cared for by those who have agreed that culture should be raped and pillaged for their own security? When will thanks be given for what has been given? The Real Planet lives in an atmosphere of doubt. At least someone can think about how the real planet is dying. At least some think about it differently.

  Bravery must be Stupidity, but hopefully it will survive.

  Endnotes

  1 Such as it is, ORIGIN is a tricky phenomenon to negotiate, let alone come to terms with. It is your gift to be present precisely where you are not.

  Alex Cayce lives in Windsor Ontario, where he is a member of The South Western Coalition for the Birds. His wife Alice is an artist, specializing in water colour and sketch. Her work often accompanies each of these texts. She has had exhibitions at the Jack Miner Bird Sanctuary and at the Point Pelee National Park Recreation Centre.

  portrait of Alex Cayce by Alex Cameron

  heartrants

  H. Azel

  If you have never thought there was

  a hope for yourself as a writer

  or artist or human being

  it only makes sense to help someone else

  who might escape your fate.

  writing with other names or beings

  builds the emotions at all times

  for whom you are a release mechanism.

  greetings, hello, love is real

  erotic as the banal

  ‘Jay MillAr says fuck you

  she loves you all anyway’.

  greetings to these loves

  you are & have been

  quite like living with all this other

  AS A PERSON IN A SHELL

  i appreciate your various

  attempts to spell the real for me

  J.M.

  ONTARIO1

  The largest country I ever encountered is Ontario. Its many regions stretch from coast to coast, and I must admit, are rather pleasant to travel through. Each one of them have something special to offer. I must recommend to any one capable of travel: you must lift your feet up and make the effect real! However, be reminded that there is only so much of the mind to experience across any countryside. You cannot go any-where in this place without seeing all the beautiful women. Women walking, women smoking cigarettes, women talking on the phone, women riding their bicycles, women writing letters, women dancing. They make deals, go to work, take showers, attend parties (there are naked women all over the place wearing clothing, women who fall asleep in cars, laughing women, women wearing pants and sweaters). Here women write novels in their heads; there are women who speak out loud to cats. Sometimes the women cry. It is very lovely to see, but sad, too, in a way no one will never understand. These are just some of the women in our country. They are everywhere and they Keep Ontario Beautiful.

  Travelling Through the Algonquin

  As the moose crossed the road, she turned her head

  sleepily, watching the two of us with soft dark eyes. It was

  then that I witnessed one of the shapes of my love for you,

  not in the moose itself, but seeing how we were to travel

  much deeper into the Algonquin and into each other for that

  whole week. The entire world was present, something to travel

  around us and in us, and we would wake to discover we were in

  it together, making it all happen. As we walk along this road

  we listen to frogsongs, and it’s as though we are shielded from all

  sound by an invisible bubble. Everything becomes more and

  more distant the closer we become. The music of the loons,

  however, passed directly through us, piercing our other,

  inner selves upon a tawny fox peering at us from atop this

  stone embankment, carrying us away as we glide by at a

  quiet speed, invisible and indivisible to everything around

  Notes Toward a Poem on Our Honeymoon

  There are no details of the honeymoon I will ever

  offer in any public space.

  These are to remain buried on that fine line somewhere balanced between my consciousness and my subconsciousness as a recurring erotic dream, separate entirely from the world others inhabit, but entirely a part of our own. However, there was one day that we emerged from our cabin recluse and drove to Pembroke Ontario and walked up and down the main street looking at the small but human people
sitting in the restaurants and cafes. Later, sitting among them in a diner called ‘Cafe Guy’, we looked out the front window and across and up the street into a parking lot where a small twister was twisting, picking up dust and swirling it around in such a way it appeared to be two ghost-like bodies spinning together, wrapping themselves into one. Then it snapped, and was gone

  Jewel

  to escape with you is my imagination

  How hard is it to open up the heart all the way? I often see the oblong rolling case of time distancing itself, lengthening through my solitary work as a writer, but then to see someone walk into the wind of it, that is altogether a human vehicle. Consider, for instance, the landscape of the north. We found movement possible there, an entire breath into a cavity where we are most alive. There are so many lonely places where death is always a factor, but in the northern regions, of which there are many, there is a calm sense of openness, an empty disregard for any of the closed human systems we have to choose from. It is a landscape of possibility, which makes it unhuman, and therefore easier to fill with what is human. These arms can reach wherever they are for those roads we have travelled into the light without any fear of the speed it presents et cetera. I am never really present in these southern places of entropy and despair, because of the knowledge I have of escape. And I have actually discovered no documentation of them in the literature. However, it is the story of my life (fear) that leads me (mind) back here (afraid) because there is always the possibility that I will never see them again. But as long as there are places to go while we are here death cannot exist. So I shall invite you to relive it now.

  JOURNAL ENTRY, NOVEMBER 2396. Living in the Ottawa Valley this year was incredible. On our first day there we climbed to the top of the hill and looked, and it was no more than an observation of what we could be as ordinary onlookers. As the wind came up over the trees there was suddenly no need for the imagination (escape) as we had needed in the city. Here it was in any part of the sky. Our tents rested under huge pines that stood beneath the misshapen clouds all summer, stood there until the deciduous began to turn. And they were ours, and we lived in them. I remember the levels of spaciousness and warmth were so huge, lying across the sky and the land, something untouchable, for we were inside what had been built for us by ourselves, through whose air the leaves are now falling sadly (becoming birds), as we make our way back to the city. Everything we heard we will remember as the voice of a time which the mind sees while we wondered what was happening before there was such a thing as thought. Sometimes I can still hear them.