i.
pace across city streets under the full light of moon
like the coyote in winter, coat the colour of dirty snow
not knowing one day beyond
the next, moving with unconscious,
habitual desire, carrying only
the fear of loud noises
and an intimate knowledge of the cold.

ii.
return to a time
when you thought about
something
other than pain
or the tapping of trees
on your window.

iii.
strain
for intinction
in the cry
of every magpie
and crow.

iv.
make love
to anyone
with a kind
face

v.
watch yourself
sleep
from a distance

vi.
lay your head on soft
skin

vii.
wait without speech—

A VISIT FROM THE PRIME MINISTER, KANDAHAR

you stand at attention.
he walks between the
soldiers, row by row,
stopping to ask the odd
woman or man where they
are from, how long
they have been away,
whether they have visited
the new tim horton’s
yet. you are surprised
by the way his belly
protrudes, like a swollen
dog’s stomach. pale winter
of his face swaying like
fishflesh on the bottom
of the ocean floor.
he wears a vest of many
pockets and as he passes
by you cannot imagine
whose lives     what life
the pockets contain.

Tapping stones together means
you are not a couch potato
memories are dividing themselves
into other memories
atoms of memory
memory of atoms
the yellow of beauty
the groan of wood under your boots
along the boardwalk
echoing across the Thursday lake
to where Andy can feel your heart
unravelling like a giant spool
miles away from your garage
that once meant something to you
but for now there are more amusing things
like parks encased in parks
and ice on your mind
layers of jutting hope along the shore
a discarded subway token
your smile reminiscent of chickens; a proton
positively charged
a streetcar full of moon
quieter hours
and a curb
waiting to congratulate you
while you rest your borrowed ankles.

Zero day

In a place where there is no milk
he blinks
what the rat told him
is true
black is the queen of colours

there is a bend in the road
where the empty shell of his brother lies
blanched and drying
under an alabaster sun
and he says it doesn’t matter
but it is anchored
in his mind
“zeru”
a brother with frosted eyelashes
transparent
through the seasons
ghost
a pearl
pressed against the blackness
of their mother

the breeze undoes him
cracked lips
he approaches the edge
his chest fills with the sounds of the cellist
heard only once
pride comes in waves
as he lifts the little shell to his lips

the first drop is metallic
followed by sweetness
tears find their way into him
there is no cure
for snow in the blood
his brother is gone
taken
for his bird-like limbs

mediators stomp
the dirt complies
bells jingle
bringing on the ecstasy
he watches as the spirit of zeru rides on their shoulders
and wishes his skin was not king.

A bitter of angelica & artichoke with carbolic strengthens & pacifies her body.
Or sixpence spent brings up a blood-sweat & blister pops by tonic & suction cups.
She’s not bilious but swollen lymphatic.
Cracked bone cage filled with paraffin & palm spilled salt.
She’s undressed & under wraps — O spirewort! O collywobbles!
A rapscallion pins her down.

Posset of Foxglove

Red stripes & white. Angel strapped to his humbling chair.
Spun & blood-let. Gooseflesh bristling.
Her eyes twitch a dream of the tree killer.
Torn holes & poison poured to roots for a view — trees dying where they grow.
Moon slit slipping in & slipping out of white pine. Star whorl.
Mane whip. Her petticoat in a maiden heap.
Foxglove sleep on a merry-go-round behind barbed fences & ivied walls.

Flower Water of Saffron

Swallows saffron & canary wine. A somnolent myth saves her.
Or entreats an iodine salve—ward against skin tap & fat scraped off bone.
Wakes up a wisp of leaf.
A shrivelled lung.
Lifts her head & weeps.
Wades deep into heavy water & floats her dead man.
Or sinks into his gaping pool.

Tincture of Mandrake

Black bile & melancholy before a sponge soaked with mandrake.
Or hemlock held over mouth & nose.
Before twilight loosens her body. Before spasms—stiffens from an injection.
Barbituate release.
Before Cerletti & Bini & the dogcatcher’s truck.
A dog roped & current through a frantic heart & sectioned brain.

Trust in me.

There’s a tyrant of a ghost
who visited my apartment

on Dufferin Street,
strangled me with a towel.

“I was born before the gold rush,
before the flood,

before once upon a time. I want to be
known in harrowing grief.”

In a nightmare, my herm-
aphrodite muse whispered,

“To lose a finger is to grow
a hand, a new sensorial world.

Allow the book to die inside
the museum of your skull.

In discarded bone, write the book
back and forth for centuries,

begin when granular words
lock into traces. Alchemical maps.

Maps of unknowing. Blossoming
maps with no locations.

When the granular
trace shapes itself into a key,

shuttle back and forth
from door to door, never crossing

into a house. You will become
a rib cage of music when the book

envelops you like a moat.
The book is the home

for a wandering idiot. No one
envies a poet in the 21 century.

Who is sufficiently haunted
to map the eruption of history

from a threshold in this country
of liars and thieves?

The best of them send you apologetic
emails for their ecstatic flights.

Drown the book to unearth
its dark intention. Draw it up

like a fossil made radiant
with geometry of light.”

I closed my book of nightmares
and bid my muse

adieu and began to write
about the great, wild West

or was it the great, white North?

O glory floating out of brass,
subsuming!

Stranger

Stranger, fixed like acid
on blotter paper,
swallowed by the nameless
night plant with petal
hieroglyphics.

Stranger, shadow without
trace, circulating
absence, repetition
of walking without feet,
drowning without water,
barking to the hereafter
dawn.

Stranger, entombed in eyes,
sagging shadow,
forgetful of who
she thought she was, forgetful
of what she might have been
had she not lapsed.

Stranger with no country, fallen
through a cloud, disengaged
from the eyes, fallen
to the ground, prostrate
to the hidden, forgotten.

Asher Ghaffar is a poet residing in Toronto. His first book of poetry, Wasps  in a Golden Dream Hum a Strange Music, is published with ECW press.