VICTOR COLEMAN ON GERRY GILBERT

I RAG & IRAQ

for Gerry

We’re not in the race

we’re in the gender

Give me a woman who starts a war

& I’ll grant you

absolute retribution

for the rest of the millennium

Not knowing how to spell it

won’t keep you from the fight

but the light is quite dim, & the blues

begins to sound like bloodshed, news

Oh soldier, take yr gun

to the woodshed where it belongs

in your mouth. Put it away

‘cause it’s useless in the face of song

The cat might look askance

at a man’s ability to dance or lose

wch provides certain clues

to a needlessly macabre stance

When we lost the big community

it was the money slowly running out

Betraying one another with abject impunity

abt the differences that brought up all this doubt

like sheep with sight penned up – blind lions –

olfactory deprivation across the board

January 17/June 24 1991

AZURE BLUES

Gerry says, ‘I’d never put it there!’

His life©raft an object that won’t own the water.

Words rent in sky (thanks, Landlord!). Begot the potter.

Easily the father of our children. Voice pops so close

to the mike. Alphabet scoop.

Vancouver, November 1990

NEW ERA

for Taki & Manon

make a left at the alley

between Cordova and Powell

and drive right by the blue plastic bubble

called New Era Recycling Depot

and you'll come to a bamboo grove

on your left and then a parking lot

and on your right a vacant lot

across from which a tiny Tuscan cottage

and a big brown wooden gate

through which you enter

The New Era

Babyland, July 1995

from Moon Over Viagra

Much good fortune in retrospect

Plenty faux French food

Much drunk annoyance

Say, attention, stewed

No moon tonight, but thought

came into play, a cloud

around the moon that wasn’t there

an aura, light, like Gerry

Recycle the sound, echo

without saying

the original

art