behind the white cloud
unoticeable rays
silently moving to bring sunshine
sweet devotee
dissolving melancholy
all sweet breeze

Jean C Bertrand

I'm the victim of my own
          actions
                    when you say you love me

I'm the enemy of my own
          heart
                    when you try to hold me

I'm the phantom of my own
          reality
                    when you dream about me

I'm the closed door of my own
          life
                    when you try to free me

I'm the past of my own
          future
                    when you decide to leave me

i forgot to mention a teaspoon of garlic paste...
        with all things in the asian cuisine,
you need some sort of piquant addition,
                 in that "recipe" / more like an organic
chemistry experiment, the quantaties are hidden
from view... so the whole 'teaspoon of garlic paste'?
it's not necessarily true; by my estimates.
wait... this is not what i was going to write
about...
               now, i do understand the divorce
of state from church... i get that,
          it's plain to see... young politicians, old popes,
or thereabouts...
                    that concept is perfectly understandable...
what i don't understand is the modern
quest for:                 the divorce of subject
                            from object...
             in cartesian terms of three little words:
cogito ergo sum...                that's truly unfathomable!
it only leads toward a confusion that's the algebraic
equivalent of an x, i.e.

              i think = object   i am = object
                                        x
                i am = subject   i think = subject

or is that?

              i think = object    i am = object
                                        x
            i think = subject    i am = subject...

yeah... that sounds better a second time...
       but how on earth are you going to do this, and this is
an ultra-secular        heimlich maneuver,
                       there literally is no logical ergo follow-up
mechanisation of this, so-called social-science "procedure";
    because what is happening, right now,
is this grand debate about being objective
            to the point where, your emotions are worth zilch,
summed up akin to: a penny for your thought.
            it's pretty much a realisation that's happening
in islam...          a second wave schism,
      with the first wave being that from the divorce of
state from church... even though the fact
that the vatican is a church-state...
                                      so that worked out, just fine.
i really don't know how this new divorce is going
  to play out...
            but trying to divorce subject from object,
or object from subject, it a bit like trying to divorce
      cogito from sum, in the foundation of
         cogito ergo sum... how's that going to happen?
and, more important to suggest: will we see limbs flying?
is throwing a decapitated head going to be the competing
sporting event at the olympics, alongside shot put?
well... **** me... good luck!
           the subject is the object of its subjectivity...
   as the object is the subject of its objectivity...
                                and yes, that's ownership inclusive;
a bit like a copyright.

They Were Children Together

I remember her white poet shirt and clean clear face.
She is on stage at the Mansion House, a St. Catharines bar:
Songs she wrote and songs learned from the radio
Brag of coarse and earthy evenings.
She sang, “…when I’m drunk I’m a nihilist…”

She jokes that her life is a documentary limerick.
She has two children.
She’s the eager daughter of rich peasants.
Impulse, defiance, insults, she defends as truth and a joke.

“I’m going to tell him you’re his father,”
She said to her best  friend while I listened.
“You don’t have to pay.
I told my parents you’re the father”
And while he cried she said:
“You could make everything all right for me.”


Paul Anthony Hutchinson
www.paulanthonyhutchinson.com
copyright Paul Anthony Hutchinson

(this poem was published May 2002 in Shadow Voices)

The free ones and the ones who have fates are all mixed together
Tired happy and excited or

Wry, humble, eager.


Paul Anthony Hutchinson
www.paulanthonyhutchinson.com
copyright Paul Anthony Hutchinson

I saw Stewart and Maud under a locust tree in Kensington market.
They had new bicycles. She leaned her sweaty, curly head on his bicep.
They had baguettes, flowers, asparagus and apples from the farm booths in their packs,
Buzet and Minervois from the liquor store, library books. They had life-loving things.
He says that for him this new life is instead of being an artist in Paris:
Backpacks, bicycles, the look of young lovers. The little possessions
That don't feel like a car or a house.  They are wearing bright white t shirts
And denim overalls. His children are confused. They have little money.
He joined the many who have refused to be punished for a mistake.

My friend Stewart lives with a university student.
You get to their Annex apartment up iron stairs bolted to the
Outside of  a building of old brick coloured like a driftwood campfire. The bed's iron.
She's been an adult for seven years. Iron, bricks, flowers, white iron bed,
Stewart has the skills to make it good, he's done this before, made the Muskoka
Chairs, the harvest tables, and sold them, repaired window frames and doors,
Advertised in supermarkets. He likes to breathe, to drink water, to cut wood and dress it,
To study, to read, to live well with a woman, to write in the evening, to make life like art.



                                       Paul Anthony Hutchinson
                                       www.paulanthonyhutchinson.com
                                       copyright Paul Anthony Hutchinson

my father wasn't a bit of a gambler,
                       fifty pence per bet....
   that's all it took...
      gambling was innocent fun,
      or as some might have it:
                   a play on prophetic told you so.
           e.g. lexington grace at nottingham
                           2.10 fillies' novice stakes
              then there was maiden stakes with
                 the prediction first-runner
                      lord commaner.
handicap: the winner? thaqafa.
fillies' once more... a handicap...
                                      la casa tarifa.
etc.
                        i was never too much
into... munch into gambling...
       don't know, maybe i thought:
there's much more to money than
this?
                but i guess that's how it goes,
     the poor get gambling,
the rich get philanthropy - you do
the μαθ.
                    all i have is:

9 6 7 3 5 4 2 8 1
2 1 5 6 9 8 7 4 3
4 8 3 7 1 2 5 6 9
   3 7 2 4 8 6 1 9 5
   5 4 8 1 7 9 6 3 2
   6 9 1 2 3 5 4 7 8
      7 3 4 9 2 1 8 5 6
      1 5 9 8 6 7 3 2 4
      8 2 6 5 4 3 9 1 7

oh **** me i was dry and out, and probably
  will be with the next few days to come...
                       my last interest / concern?                  
            what people like.
my first interest / concern?
          what people could frankly do, withtout.