MeaN D o Gs Poetry by
M A RG A R E T SULLIVAN
MEAN DOGS Poetry by
Margaret Sullivan
Salt Spring Island, British Columbia TWENTY - TWENTY
Cover art, book design paintings and collage by Jeff Lederman
Copyright 0c 2020 Margaret Sullivan all rights reserved I S B N : 9 78 - 1 - 7 7 7 4 7 185 - 1 - 9
Mean Dogs 1 Forgiving 6 The Word Has Never Failed Me 8
Because I Ask You 10 Owls 12
I
I Come in Waves 13 Radio Silence 15 Undiscovered 16 Slip Away 17
Driving Questions in the Landscape 18 The Other Heaven 20 Homes and Libraries 22 Love Song 24 The Woman as a Record of the Girl 25 The Picture 26
Lives to Tell It 28 Water 29
Warehouse 30
October 14 32 Tarot Reading 33 An Image of Heaven 34
36 Quiet Power 37 The Father of the Child 38 Pirates 39 Full of Magic 40 Secret Poets 41 The Girl Wandered Unprotected 44 Setting Off Fires 45 Pictures 46 Some Silence 47 We Attempt to Break It Down 49 Throw Your Head Back 52 Things Overflowing 53 We the American People 54 Divorce & Christmas 58 Rome 59 It Doesn’t Matter 60 June 1st, 2020 61 It’s the Longing 63 Grandfather 65 Biography of the Poet
1 Mean Dogs Bring back my heart I brought back yours I won’t continue this, dissembler I won’t if your cloud-like whispers would beg me I won’t not even languished with flowers It’s off and I won’t Give me back my soul User of my secrets Manipulator of my truth Give it back to me, liar Who once said I see all that is Calls me blind Give me back my heart Who once wept at my tender sadness Now, half embarrassed, is ‘put off ’
Give me back my ruined hope You, who teaches me of intimacy And takes it back in a trite explanation of love The sand that would rest on my face Has fallen from your hair My roads have wound their way into your roads But you’ve torn your path from my path You’ve killed my essence that lived in your heart Now the cry of my pain takes its breath from your air Think of it as the wind that tortures you in winter It howls and frightens you at night Give me back my art, Traitor Who once dreamed my stories Who once danced my songs, sang my poems Now blankly states, “You’ve made it all up”
Give me back my pride You, who would accuse me of your own miserable failings Give me back my mind, Idiot Who said I never gave him anything Who contemptuously claims never to need me Give me back my self, Vulture Who preys on my sadness Who mocks my struggle Who throws in my face my mangled weary goals You took these from me and You can bring them back, cool neurotic liar Ignorant and arrogant Ruiner of my heart, criminal of my passion Stay away from me assailant My hatred is a weed
So wrong be your streets And lost your way Dark your mornings Darker your nights Fail you your sight in hostile alleys Lose your way on moon gone nights That you won’t frighten my heart That you won’t with your beauty That your beauty untelling won’t whisper me back Give it back to me, conqueror Hero of my broken soul Strangler of my dreams Breaker of my heart Breaker of my heart Give me back my heart You who once wept at my tender sadness took back yours And slept peacefully that night
cool neurotic liar, collage 24� x 30�
6 Forgiving It’s like being unforgiving It’s like being thrown out of the litter It’s like being the coyote at the edge of he town waiting It’s like waiting for the shift to change at the bar It’s like waiting for someone It’s like fresh troops of waitresses
fresh troops of mail deliverers fresh troops of school teachers fresh troops of bus drivers fresh troops of bosses
It’s like wandering around without your shoes It’s like wondering where it’s all going It’s like being completely conspicuous in every small gesture It’s like being unable to move It’s like a piece of random information It’s like a piece of hope
It’s like the letter you were waiting for It’s like the complete answer It’s completely beckoning It’s completely horrifying It’s like finishing everything you’ve ever started It’s about all the trouble you’ve gone to It’s like coming home to find a new dress laid out on the bed It’s about the things you’ve always wanted It’s about the things you never wanted It’s like running away from home It’s like never ever coming back It’s like wanting to get back It’s about being forgiven
8 The Word Has Never Failed Me “If there is no longer anywhere one has to go, then return brings good fortune” The Book of Changes Death whips around me like cars to a billboard I am delivered in cynicism like a billboard to its cars I didn’t say goodbye, I said “I’ll damage your sleep and everyone in it” My mouth is a ridiculous thing Whatever name is called, that would be mine I could have been anyone in my family There is not natural goodness in saying natural things And it is not persuasive words that crack a heretic I called over my left shoulder as a gesture of retreat and as a record of events
the spirituality of clothing the attention from boys the wedding fantasies of a thirteen year old her bedroom furniture his mother glared at him so many times there were 10,000 expressions she could hold
some of them took him back some of them took him aback some of them came up all the time
I had the important thoughts about him while in a room and in remembering the thoughts saw only the room I called upon the word because it has never failed me and I thought Oh, what hand what hand did put this here what did arrange these delicate things and leave me behind
10 Because I Ask You The moon is building the moon is building up Have you seen this line before? No, you haven’t It has only just been written If you think you have it may be because I ask you Every poem could be a poem about poetry and every painting, a painting about painting This implies that we know everything and are about to die There is a building I know that demonstrates this clearly When I have questions about the ultimate holocaust I see this building and know It stands as if we had all already died
You know buildings like this Every bit of politics is like politics about politics Then there is science which tells us facts like that the moon is building the moon is building up
13 I Come In Waves Deeply folded again and again I come in waves. Don’t push me Not in a dark bed like lightning not wound up behind a dike no burst fear, slam of rage no arrow to a chosen mark no angry wound to hate around You are grown over I know through the very edge of you to the slippery floor of your closing to its yellow stubborn wax looming hospital walls your roof of black enamel Damn the dark mine of your heart to enter is poison no birds fly out
Death to the last dog in your pack back to the end of the road with you off with the drowned ones the ones who came too many You can’t go away can’t be made to only the lap of my cleansing might wear you away or dampen your hollows I only come to you in daylight I wouldn’t want to see you dream
15 Radio Silence There was an accident of the tongue There was a low heeled girl in white socks There were two doors cradled like wings that opened It was a school bus gone out of control There was the sound it made There was a driver who was late There was one with a mission There was a picture in his mind of what it looked like to him It was a sand filled highway There were two coats wrapped around two hubcaps for pillows There was a gradual settling of dust There was a gradual quiet in the radio There was sleep, water and a chance for renewal There was one willing to cut out her tongue for the other There was one willing to forsake all others There were tracks to be ground out There was the horizon smoke of forever dogging their golden trail
16 Undiscovered I am calling you I am calling upon you I have a call into you I have a calling I asked for a second Chance I’ve always come second I’ve been on fire It’s a different fire I’ve poured my heart out Into the fire This is the summer of the eagle This is where we hoped to wind up What we fought for What we settle for
My flowers soon fade into memories
That nourish my worn winter days This year I’ll keep that softness close to my heart I won’t let it slip away
18 Driving Questions in the Landscape Driving questions were positioned in the landscape of her youth and her training They offered themselves in the form of male voices In a click of her story, she recalled them There were many questions for which she had responsible answers There were many symbols representing her daily life She established a pattern of ritual Beckoning as prayer Far easier to remember In adolescence the questions changed At what altar did she sacrifice? Arranging objects on surfaces Became a special interest
Someone she once knew was just standing and waiting as she whizzed by in her car She thought of the edge around their words and the parts of their words that were made into flesh She said, “There he is. I know him. I wonder if I will ever see him again?� The question itself seemed to pull her away It held the sound of a sponge being pulled apart under the water a weed being ripped out in one unit loose hair in the brush gathered up and pulled away
20 The Other Heaven My Love and I have made some natural assumptions We planted them in the surface of our table our artefacts, our notes and drawings and letters our shared baths the saintly out of doors This is proof to us that we were shot through with intention, that we were born in a bed of invention It is the tendency for all of us to wish to lie closely in bed, in the water, in the grass in a car, on a floor This keeps the world together The invention of desire in this bed of invention is where we have made ourselves
My Love has a voice of pure longing I sleep under his eyelashes He can appear to me in the smell of his hands He waited and his flesh waited He waited without any help from time or from the other heaven My Love and I lie in a bed of pure dreaming The one we invented
22 Homes and Libraries Many libraries I’ve halfway known Many I’ve just read about Some of them pretend to be mine I hide in carrels and pretend Many books are not my own Many belong to the library, which means They belong to everyone I mine my shelves with them I pretend no one notices the clear shiny covers The letters and numerals, Dewey or Congress The card in the back I pretend they are mine And they are For four weeks at a time There are moments of silence in the library I’ve broken them all I’ve built dreams in libraries and dreamed in them
I’ve measured my words I’ve measured my life, not in coffee spoons, but In due dates and library fines At six the bookmobile came to the schoolyard to give us life at twelve it was a place to sit alone at fifteen I could check out serious titles I could feel interesting at nineteen, they let me work there, giggling in the stacks, the real home turf At twenty-one he came in but never checked anything out at sixty-four he came back to bring me home to Salt Spring Island Yes, I hear there is a good library here I’ll have to check it out
25 The Woman as a Record of the Girl This is a poem that could have been avoided dust thrashes in the air strangling our view of the abandoned home We are very close at hand ‘What is tumbleweed for?’ you ask and ‘where are the chickens?’ It doesn’t matter that there is movement implied It doesn’t matter to open the door This is a picture that is complete If you love me, you will leave it alone The fingers of resentment the total total chaos the fingertips of rage oh, what is smashed oh, the dry encounter Torture is irrevocable like sex what was, what was never a tiny little girl hoarding tears in the corner at a birthday party Please, leave her alone
26 The Picture Our course ran together our blood coursed together he fingered the pulse his gloved finger damned the line it made which starved the eagle in it his desire is not-desire there is nothing in our path My love is a strong box in my legs Who swallowed the key? Who swallowed the key? My love is a halo around my eyes Who knows it but me? We have the loyalty of drugged lambs We have the manner of black lambs set down in the road How did we recognize our mate? He could have been the one on the left
Out in the hills there is food there is meaning there is time to acknowledge it But her thoughts drive a getaway car
28 Lives to Tell It I lay my heart to this ceased throbbing it fills my core, as well here, caught at some point in endless ways under whatever fate befell it this shadow life constructs it back and lives, for us to tell it
Water means to tell the story of oneness But water presents itself in pieces A wave is itself and can be counted And beads on a windshield have names Fire? It’s no different There was a year in my life That I didn’t get to have It was taken away from me because I was too distracted I could try to get it back But the longing for a quiet life has made my mind dull Today I took a minute to look up I found the clouds assigning their parts in the play
30 Warehouse Somewhere in a broken city a construction worker takes a fall someone’s daughter watches on but doesn’t offer help nor at supper does she mention it to her family, too old for itself she only offers compliments she does not laugh unexpectedly Some of us are born into families our selfhood engulfed in another’s fear another’s arrogance we, the shivering foam of doubt others are born into the world a warehouse gathers its inventory and distributes it in the proper compartments
a woman struggles with the lock on her door she is angry someone, some obscure handsome saviour should open it for her carry her inside, her rent paid but without her hard work
32 October 14 I remember that October 14 morning when our whole house was in fifty tall boxes your face caught the gloom from the Mayflower like a dandelion under your chin down at the bottom of your purse wrapped in newspaper was the beret your Uncle Will wore in San Francisco in 1958 once I offered you eight records for it I just had to hold your hands I think it must have been a while that we stood like that in the front yard because when the car honked its last “come on� we were still staring into our faces like one grown up person to another
33 Tarot Reading My heart is the lonely red moon on the card of evil night thought and dissension overplay the themes are of loss and despair Two lovers who live apart are like two lonely pale windows whose intrigues provoke whose mysteries are fear The soul of my lover is a day something is stealing its light away dark clouds are closing closing it out
34 An Image of Heaven She saw it as an image of heaven She thought of it as a good way to get even It took her a long time to see it for the problems it could deliver She thought of it as something most people don’t get to have She thought of it as spilt milk, water under the bridge She thought of it as a blessing in disguise She thought of it as a way to see into the future It was a bargain with the devil She saw it as a serious threat to her stability She thought of it as an anchor to a heavy object She thought it was like just another person trying to get to know her She thought it was a bad joke from the Universe She strove to ignore it It felt to her like an inability to express her feelings
She recognized it in her true friends She tried to remember a time when it wasn’t the case She thought of it as a bed she had made A bed she must sleep in She thought of it as a fairly good reason to live She felt like a mother with actual children She remembered it in a day she had been knelt to in the street It stayed with her as a haunting in her pelvis She thought it was a night that would last forever
36 Quiet Power Children understand authority Undisturbed untroubled I knew authority even before the diagnosis Unquestioned questions After the diagnosis All of this was happening from your end of the parlour where the view is kept for safe keeping You won’t react You will not go off The bomb who is not a bomb Never goes off It waits With understanding
37 The Father of the Child I offered the heart that promotes the soul and he took the heart that pumps the blood and the blood he drank in a sloshing cup The waste, the disinterest The table is complaining under the pen! He takes my money Is there a metaphor for this? the stomping ground always looking sideways the knowing foot, the hooded mouth take up your weapons then put them right down the bitterness like standing water pain like the saints were standing by The Madonna, she bites her lip
38 Pirates Feverish attempts to find sleep a gang of pirates storms into the bedroom not more pirate tales! I cry true tales and tales of you, they say I keep rubbing my eyes until they hurt scratch the spider bites until they bleed and I listen to the pirate tales Yellow rags, bracelets clanging, he goes first Once was there a lass she made her family a lovely picnic but was only criticized the souring lettuces the napkins not ironed she had certainly better improve I say to a pirate, then what happened? even though I am tired of drowning In the resentments of victims and martyrs
39 Full of Magic Is this the first fear? will remembering any remembering show me otherwise I’ve had questions I’ve been fourteen I’ve wandered around alone I’ve been full of magic But you leave me overcome filled with wonder perfect as flowers powerful and frightening You, not me You said you would never go away Your streets succumb to you They are all yours
40 Secret Poets In the late afternoon secret poets drive taxis and wait on tables Smiling through straight faces They keep their hearts in the sky At night their souls are cats who might come back Morning hits, some of us are released in wool suits We rush to be conquered by summer Outside our apartment complex, the others are already waiting To some of us they whisper, ‘It’s OK. Don’t be afraid’ Some of us feel our souls returning We have just seized another chance
41 The Girl Wandered Unprotected The girl wandered unprotected and recalled that in her development the seats in her support team were held chiefly by saints with glorious halos and impossible lives and she determined from this that each of these saints represents a piece of human tragedy and that resembles the spiralling mix of the world just going to hell and in the mix, encased as a relic is a picture of every single mistake she had ever made How shall she pay allegiance to all this? She observed that when her people were in trouble television programs made new songs to describe their pain she made a list in her mind of the themes and their various versions
Some networks had few songs, but would describe enslavements of groups in decorated letters Venezuela had a floral roundness at the baseline and burst into flames on top Bosnia was constructed of brilliant yellow blocks Some letters were flags at cross-purposes every bit of chaos and tragedy sang a melody and wore a graphic identity As she thought this out a person in a commercial drank a sip of orange juice and found that the world is not just black and white It comes in many bright colors She asked, could it be that the lives of saints and political events are encoded in songs and colors in a universal strategy? Could these colors and sounds appear to me in nature, in chemistry, in articles of clothing? Could this clothing be worn by someone like her and set her up in a world
of cornflower for Saint Dymphna and her incestuous father of fleshy pink for Saint Agatha and the interrogations of female war prisoners of metallic black for Saint Dominic While asking these questions she would cling to her bed at night and hold visions of cities floating beneath her But no color or song was attractive think of one good reason for her to stop over a city and set down her feet there wasn’t one person to help more than another In time a man came to her she made a list in her mind of what was important about him the colors and songs were loud and exaggerated Did she make a decision on this basis?
44 Setting Off Fires Inciting stirred minds Precipitating storms Setting off fires Zoning purgatory for an influx of tourists Making soaps and candles Remembering the bad tempers Losing the lost loves, Forgetting every song Taunting oblivion Gaming with madness You’ll get over it somehow With only a couple of ulcers to show for it
45 Pictures The soul of my love takes place in pictures There is color there is depth there is motion My own takes place in words In all of my mind in all of my brain in every word and sound Pictures do me no good Aside from the irregular appearance of a field of daisies or the shape of his mouth of his hands of his shoulders or the pictures in his soul’s expression
46 Some Silence Some silence is cold as the wind off the coast of Maine Its thrashing leaves a hollow path It is as numbing as a hostile parent Its secrecy seems political I know another silence It tells secrets It descends everywhere like morning rendering its world pure and new It draws us together in quiet and separate places And when we slip away together That silence is where we go
47 We Attempt to Break it Down We attempt to break it down we see it in raw numbers our ancestors in percentages one third from here, seven percent from there our breathing patterns our blood counts our blood means business we are just like them we are anything but them they were mercurial, so now I am mercurial they were hysterical I am hysterical they were brilliant and witty we are brilliant and witty they had their secrets I have known secrets they were all depressed we are all depressed
they were terribly sorry they didn’t mean a thing some were angry and judgemental some made me angry they struggled, but they were accomplished I have struggled they were in control I am out of control they took matters into their own hands they handed me over single handed, look no hands I attempted to break it down the percentage of secrets the pattern of feelings the raw number of realities from here and from there
49 Throw Your Head Back See yourself at one of those parties Be very funny Say funny unexpected things Watch how people laugh Is it because you are funny Is it because people do not expect it? You do not know anyone at the party Start with the Mommy Talk It works when you are afraid That will sum you up For everyone People will find you normal You occupy a normal role Then they can become comfortable They understand your role You had better stay in it This will help you become who you are unafraid
Do not become sarcastic That is so shocking Nobody likes it when a Mommy is sarcastic Not children We are all children You cannot laugh a good laugh A whole complete laugh Laughs get caught Right there behind your neck You cannot throw your head back You are wearing sunglasses A glamorous scarf Thin, functionless Women have piles of them Very expressive Considering what they are You can recognize the designer The price of a baby’s snowsuit, a picnic table Wrap your hair in it Protect yourself
There is wind upon you In that sea green convertible Some friendly Some unfriendly winds Put on those sunglasses They go with the scarf And the car And the world you created Sing it out loud Living in a world all sad and jaded Living in a world that I created Laugh out loud Your neck feels better It’s the stiffness The stiffness keeps you from throwing your head back And you cannot laugh out loud You cannot laugh unless you can Throw back your head
Wrap your thoughts around your greatness and mimic as you’re on your way the ripe clouds’ pathway ever slowing the sun’s own brightness, full and glowing, great rivers that take the world where it’s going; The beauty in things overflowing.
53 We the American People In this instance Wake up Thread the needle Be aware of the many things that we are not aware of We should know about all of it We should know About Seattle About Portland Conscience Brutality And I cry Yes I cry All I do is cry and cry
54 Divorce & Christmas It seems intolerable Everything is broken divorce is shattering for others What’s Her Names all over afraid of running into What’s His Names All of them are setting out to show us to show us just how intolerable and shattering it is It caused me to lose every Christmas Don’t try to make sense of it right now It will seem like your mother’s fault-your father’s fault-all of their faults But I am the one I’m the one who broke it There were Christmas crackers in the food mart Eight to a box, the way I used to have it
I hesitated I probably only need two Three if someone comes Five left over is not to be tolerated Five left over would be wasteful and lonely I love the red and green, the holly themed paired cardinals in evergreen a glass sphere to hang somewhere in the bathroom the rear view mirror over the kitchen sink under the threshold I chose the white and gold however big box and awkward, neutral, not like Christmas colours and sizes I could get away with but the box just slid all around the groceries and fell to the floor Maybe I should say some kind of a prayer
Poinsettias mandarins and dates along the festive dairy cream in pine cone embossed bottles he noticed the crackers buried under the egg cartons What’s that? they will scare the dogs they will howl and howl the neighbours omg should he call an ambulance or something his voice was packed with fear resignation anticipation of some kind of a scene or whatever verges of soft weeping verges of loud threadbare sobbing resentment empathy rejection acceptance oh no! not again! what now?
Buck up excuse yourself say, never mind just put it back and say never mind Finally a sign of Christmas anyone could tolerate
58 Rome It’s all in a day’s judgement It’s called judgement day but it doesn’t happen in a day it is not a city that wasn’t built in a day It’s like the domino theory dominos fall and it is supposed to mean something but it doesn’t mean anything they fall due to cause and effect one falls and it causes the other but there is no cause or any effect around here dominos do not know anything we don’t know on any given day they can be set up to fall anywhere on your Grandfather’s humidor top on the nuns’ dining table after you cleared it away you can set up dominoes for a fall on the floor beside your bed any day
59 It Doesn’t Matter It doesn’t matter that I see you every day It doesn’t matter that every day is allegedly just another It doesn’t keep me from seeing you as if I never had every day It is all new to me this time of #58 Two lakes joined together to keep the other alive
60 June 1st, 2020 The soul of my city is a cup something is drinking its life up dark forces are clouding crowding it out The heart of my city goes around in a car something has driven it too far dark smoke went ablaze burning it up The mind of my city is in its buildings something is desecrating its many temples dark powers are crashing crushing it up Maybe if it weren’t named Black Maybe if White weren’t named Right Maybe if the serpents had stayed under ground instead of crawling through the arms and hands of my city
61 It’s the Longing There is nothing left Things are strewn about It is time to give up Once. And for all Don’t call your mother Don’t call your father Don’t even call your friends Don’t listen. Don’t hear You should not cry You should keep on keeping on No worries No questions It’s the virus it’s the relationship it’s the job It’s the longing What if you didn’t Behave by the rules What if just touching your face Was enough
63 Grandfather Grandfather walked me fearlessly anywhere as he was the calmer of loud horses the charmer of mean dogs and love met us everywhere in candy stores once someone’s house in soda fountains once hotels love, older than his father met us everywhere as he was knower of war veterans and friend of cigar store men Night-time, wandering his rooms and drawers his books and closets where love graced me through the laughing skies Daylight, loving his morning steps down the creaking hall his farm smells, his cigar smells his sawdust smells, his cellar smells where love lived in a mountain all its own
Bi ography of t he po et
Margaret Sullivan has been becoming a poet by climbing up pecan trees sliding down levees fighting with Spanish mosses sustaining judgment from nuns sustaining judgment from girls with tanned legs quoting poet after poet winning spelling bees playing flutes believing in ghosts believing in certain saints believing in certain people praying for change praying for things to stay the same catching crawfish catching lizards catching fireflies catching fire catching butterflies letting them go letting it all go
like silence, water or still air: what’s beautiful is what’s not there.
w It is the tendency for all of us to wish to lie closely in bed in the water in the grass in a car on a floor
r
This is proof to us that we were shot through with intention that we were born in a bed of invention
Keeps the world together some natural assumptions the saintly out of doors
w