FISHTHOUGHTBLOOD                                                                                                            JON BOLDUC

When I was a boy,
Father taught me to ice-fish.
Here’s a memory;

Father drills a hole,
the auger bounces, vibrates, roars,
shaving ice– soon
the  blade connects with winter water,
           –the engine fades off.
I fish  floating ice chunks from the hole with a skimmer
while
Father sets the trap, ties the sinker, and hooks the minnow
thru its side.
He lowers the line
gently into the fishhole; the bait plunges to the lakebed.
Father reels up the slack, pitches the three legged trap
above the exposed black water
and we wait for a trout, or a snarled toothed pickerel.

Father,
I have learned

to fish for thoughts
with an ice–trap. When the flag
springs up, I reel
slippery ideas up from deep darkness.
As they flop, I pull the hook out from their lips,
knock them in the head,
throw them in a pail; gut them, I spill fishthoughtblood on the white snow.

After the low sun sets,
My friends and I fry caught fishthoughts
in my dim cabin.

Hughes,  Plath, Ginsberg, and Eliot
talk around the fireplace
as the pan sizzles, as the oil jumps. Soon
we feast on flakey poemfillets;
we talk about the  dark english rain,
the crowded zoos, electroshock therapy, bald mediocrity.

After we have eaten
and finished the wine,
and all my friends have gone home
I look down at empty plates

and somehow,
“the page is printed.”

Lovers as Places

There’s a place inside of me saved for lovers,
a space to be filled–

sometimes a parking space,
lovers, like traffic, zip out, zoom–rush hour.
Sometimes a vacant lot
lovers, like weeds, peek up from broken glass.

sometimes a perch on a hill
sometimes a rocky island
the places change as lovers come and go–

I’ve always asked, in silence,
“What place is your heart?”
“Will you stay?”

But you, lover
you
are the most
beautiful place I’ve been

I have friends who went,

to Bethlehem, to Paris, to Spain.
Left for London, Beachy Head.
Those friends came back,
back to Halifax, Portland, Bangor–

My friends go.
They go
to the bar for a pint.
They go
to the South for the summer.
They go
to plant trees in Alberta–

The friends who go
are the friends who went.

But I have friends
who are
gone.

Friends
who are
gone
cannot go
to the bar,
to the South,
or to Alberta.

Some friends have left–
through some door,
in the night, in the day,
in a car, on a bed,
on a stretcher, in the street–

and yes, they are
gone.

Where will I go when I am
gone?
Will I be with my friends?
Perpetually traveling
to the South, to Alberta,
to the bar for a pint?

No. I will not go.

I cannot go, once I am gone. When I go, I will be
gone.

I could go anytime,
night or day,
In a car, on a bed,
a stretcher, or street–

Yes, I could go. And when I go, when I leave–
I will be
gone.

So,
Friends who have
gone
where I cannot go,
they must know–

that we all will go, we all leave–
soon, yes, soon. Now,
in the pause
between
moments,
in the  quiet space
of a last

breath–

we

all are

gone.

I stumbled down the street one night,
streetlights beckon'd me;
an endless drop; a void that pulled
me towards eternity

I saw nothing, only shaky thoughts
in my somber, drunk'n mind
of all the happiness I forgot
all the somber lies

A crumbling tunnel of dirt and rust
a light that calls you forward;
a misery in your gut that cuts
with thoughts consumed, abhorrent

I stumbled down the street tonight,
streetlights beckon'd me;
an endless drop; a void that pulled
me towards eternity

Why are you acting as rabbit
when you could howl like a wolf?
You’re always hiding. Always regressing.
Never really going anywhere.

You channel these thoughts, yes. You manifest them. On a page.
On a stage. Like a smiling circus clown,
like a trapeze artist, flying, stumbling
through the realm of obscurity. A forgotten juggle. A lost tape.
It does not matter.
Why?
Why do you do these things?

Why are you so scared?
They are not grand thoughts. They are not ideas
meant to change.
They are private insights. Jittery. A look into the eyes of  some scared soul.

Your poems are minutiae, insignificant details. They are
the trembling lip. They are the shaking hand. The confused daze.
They do not know who they are,
but they know that they are small.

You want to be a monolith, but you refuse to build,
you refuse to haul the black stones. You do not have the power.
You are a caricature. You are as scared as Paris,
as two-faced as Iscariot- you could kiss with passion.
You could rule with love. But you bow out. You take
responsibilities with you, and slink into the dirt you
arose from. You are clay. You are dust.


Why are you dust? You don’t have to be.
Why aren’t you angry- you should be roaring!
Why are you quiet- you should be singing, singing
with the cicadas- chirping with the birds,
howling with the wolves; you should join the tumult,
the uproar;
but you sit. You play with your toys like a petulant child
and scream when they break. That’s the only noise you ever make.


You could be a wolf. You don’t have to be the prey.

Death-song

War garbles a tune, spits up

blood.

Bodies, empty pits

of eyes and entrails

break like a birch branch.


White waste flits down like snow.

An archetype, copied, laboured forever

melts into a meticulous concoction.

The apocalypse sets in with a daze, drawing

drunken curtains over the survivor soul.


The crow is a warrior,

with his black machine gun eyes.

Easy.

God coughs, the countryside,

elegiac to start

hacks with a demon.


The smoke pulls, harsh, and takes the tab.

It's all a waste of white ash.

On Loss

We’re always losing something.
Seconds, days take some french exit.
Time quietly shuffles out the back door.
Doesn’t even say goodbye.

Once we realize
our moments are gone,
we want them back. Maybe we can replay
them and take a second look, but the record skips and the tape jumps
and the film is splotched and some teenager spilt
wine all over the keyboard
long ago;

So we jump
from memory to memory like patchwork
realizing we don’t even remember the important things.

We don’t even know why we thought what we thought.
We can’t even explain ourselves to ourselves.
Our consciousness can’t muddle through it’s own muck;
our mind doesn’t even know how the mind works.

It’s not just an existential crisis.
We lose the small things, too. We lose cellphones.
Wallets. Innocence. Virtue. We pass some
tests, we fail some tests, we replace and are replaced
we stop loving  and are no longer loved,
but eventually, bigger things. Friends. Family. Lovers.
Ourselves. Our potential.
Eventually, we slip away from the most important thing.

I’ve heard a bit about death. It’s a lot like sleep. You don’t even know it’s happening.
It’s a lot like
slipping into the unconscious;
it’s a lot like putting your head down; you don’t thrash about. You see the holy gates,
maybe. Maybe you’re pulled from your body
like a handkerchief. Maybe you don’t lose anything;
maybe you get found.

If this is melancholy, I’m sorry. I’m allowed to be melancholy. Likewise, you’re are allowed  to be melancholy.
You are allowed to question-
you are allowed to dance, sing, shout, cry
know, love, forget;
You are allowed to lose. You are allowed to remember. What’s stopping you?
Who’s holding you back? No floodgates; you aren’t a flood.
There’s no sweeping metaphor; no sweeping generalization. You aren’t
a path, you aren’t constrained, chained bound or gagged;
confess if you must;
drink wine if you have too;
do some metaphysical exercise; transport your mind to some realm
explode, manifest, conquer,

Prepare to lose it all. Or let it happen. It’s a choice.

If I could, I’d help you through your heartbreak. Guide you through
it all,
make you smile. Make you happy.
But I keep losing things.
I keep playing all the songs I used to enjoy.
I keep reading all the things that used to make me happy.

Moments come and go, hours gently float away
Night will wash the palate clean, clear-coat the day;
I will love, and I will hate;
I will sing, and I will dance
I will grieve, and celebrate
I will shout, and by some chance,
I cease to be.
I will not be me.
I will go somewhere;

a dark room.
Somewhere where I am safe.
Nowhere at all.

Somewhere, sometime, somehow, a vauge
mirror you cannot avoid