Sylvie Hill

A Man Of Integrity.

I fell in love with a man who said his parents offered him tuition.
And he turned it down, working night-crew to pay for university himself.

I was a bitch. Never had anything handed. So said: “that’s dumb, take it!”
“No,” he said. “You’re dumb,” I cried! To which he returned with a shrug and smile:

“My dad is a doctor with the military and my mom stayed home for our family.
My dad doesn’t bring home much money and there are 6 mouths to feed.”

In an instant, despite my immature retort, it occurred to me that I loved him.
A wonderful family next to mine falling apart, we were more similar than different.

He worked hard, and sold his records back to his brother in bedroom ‘garage’ sales.
He made his own way, was full of integrity, punk rock ethics and admirable.

At 21, he taught me milk wasn’t healthy, x-rays damage, don’t believe the State.
His father introduced me to Madame Bovary and Unbearable Lightness of Being.

If I be single and not fucking in rows, it is that I’ve been graced in love by Quality.
I await a man with values and conscious, like him – a Man Of Integrity.

Sylvie Hill 2017

Dove Soap Fucking Stinks

Mainstream ideas, selections and futures
Stink like a bar of Dove soap from Jean Coutu.

The wrapped bar stinks up my entire fucking house.
And normal people say, “Oh, it smells so nice.”

Like Fabreeze. How do you like the chemicals on your brain?
Like a lot of processed food, do you enjoy disease on your frame?

THINK!

What is “pleasant” by society’s standards
Is endocrine-disrupting “womanly” perfumes.

What is “normal” by woman’s physiology
Is synthetic hormone contraception in ruse.

What are “milestones” are capitalist structures
Designed to keep you enslaved against nature.

AND THIS IS WHERE THEY GET YA…

Dove soap campaigns for the “natural woman”
And “natural beauty” with no artificiality

They use fat, flat, skinny, black and white ladies
On campaign commercials to get your money.

And their soap, Goddamnit, stinks up my flat
Is that a trick, kill off brain cells, become stupid

And buy into that

Crap.

Sylvie Hill 2017

Check out London, UK artist Ashley Reak‘s mix of my spoken-word poem, “The Gentle Art of Ignoring” off his new upcoming album, “Growth Spurts.”

:: REVIEWS

“‘The Gentle Art Of Ignoring‘ incorporates freestyle jazz sax and piano which might otherwise have you reaching for the Valium but with the masterstroke addition of words from Sylvie Hill makes it one of the many highlights.” Louder Than War Review

“‘The Gentle Art of Ignoring’ with Sylvie Hill is the most outright jazz track on the album, and her sassy vocal delivery and confident Canadian accent brings another sharp dimension to an album which displays almost infinite dimensions, but there’s just so much to take in.” Read review.

“…whilst elsewhere there’s some nifty and smoky chamber lounge jazz grooving through the Laurie Anderson playing tag with John Lurie and James Chance like ‘the gentle art of ignoring’.” Read review.

***
The Gentle Art of Ignoring

On your marks!
Get set!
Ready?
GO!

Race to ignore the traffic sounds
Beneath, in the streets and reach toward
The landscape beyond, fight to see trees
Or squint and see the heritage houses covered in ivy!

It is not a gentle art to “ignore”:
It is VIOLENT and takes energy
To divert our thoughts, beliefs, bodies
Beyond the reality of these NOISY fucking cities!

On your marks!
Get set!
Ready?
GO!

Bolt to Nature, for what is “natural” is indeed
Where you notice your body retreating
RELAXING, your body and being floating
A branch scratches calves, humbling with its markings.

GO! Buy that boat you’ll only use sparingly!
GO! Get the tent you’ll use only at vacation!
GO! Purchase hiking boots, which replaces therapy!
GO! Spend gas to get peace that’s temporary!

On your marks!
Get set!
Ready?
GO!

The Man in the Suit has won “his place” in City
By devastating his nature and his being
He expends efforts, sweats violent urges
Covers up his wish to surrender…

Because can you really enjoy a thunderstorm?
You hear it.
Or the hot sun heating your skin
You feel it.
Or the long Canadian winter
It depressed us.
You can pump your paddle & fight the current
Upstream, but you’ll never win.

Nature – the forests, deserts and our ecosystems within
is where we rage our harshest devastations.
Rumi says we’ve got a voice inside with no words, do you listen?
Sorry, what did you just say? Too busy fighting
Modernity, Technology, the Traffic outside my building,
promising “an investment” for me in what – my insanity?

See the man with the hands down on ground
Trying to feel the Earth, dirt, create roots somehow
But his position is back-breaking in spite of his class
He is on his mark, set and ready to take it up the ass.

Humans may have evolved to stand up right
But they are Devastators, few are getting it right.
The trees though, they stand tall and straight
Until a natural, noble force breaks them.

Or until Human Devastators cut them down
Much like they’re doing to themselves right about now …
Fighting so hard to ignore the sounds, a shout
Saying: THIS IS NOT WHAT I WANT!!

Get me out.
I’m clawing my way out.
Thought I had evolved
But I can only grow if I crawl now.

© Sylvie Hill 2014

This poem was coupled with Juan Carlos Noria’s (dixon) painting – “Devastator” / 40x40cm / spray paint and synthetic enamel on canvas / 2010. It didn’t make it into Russell Square Station: Mine the trash (2015), but it was the thread into a different focus beyond the one-night stands and desperate connections inspired by London, UK muses.

Due Date (March 19)

And as we age and expect grace
Some do so in accents and phrases
And among people of best society
With dirty minds on clean linens
And with the approval of demons
Or those of privilege and rank.

And is this the best Life?
I may coin T.S. Eliot; it is the human condition
That we live out our lives of our stock
Each to his need and breed
Breeding potential as was encouraged
Discouraged by all unseeded
Or unheeded by those who should have grown us
Grown by those we’ve outgrown indeed.

But we are here after four decades and some
And climbing to 50 or descending to hell
Ageless beauty is character without skin
Feeling ‘in your skin’ and resolved to make due with …

SH

WHILE CHILDLESS WOMEN ARE SCREWED
(For B & her missus)

Your vagina works,
Great for you
So now you get a year off
To tend to your offspring do you?

Vagina’s good here, too
But I’m not due.
Will not be giving birth
To babies – will poems do?

In today’s Society
A woman’s worth
Is determined by
Her ability to give birth.

She will get time off.
She will get one year.
She will be paid fairly.
Then return to her career.

She will face zero stigma.
That’s what bellies are for.
She will get a party, gifts
A year off and out the door.

While the single or
Lesbian couple or
Sterile heterosexuals
Or stressed uteruses

WILL NOT HAVE THE LUXURY
To nurture a part of thee!
Only birthing bodies warrant leave
While fertile childless minds atrophy.

Do you know how hard it is to create
A book, poem, painting or a state?
To nurture a WORLD, give back and help relate:
You rip from uterus, we tear our hearts and grow your brains…

Imagine AMAZING WOMEN
Allotted their Life’s adventure!
Taken up in ONE YEAR:
Not baby but passion, self-care.

Your vagina works,
Great for you
So now you get a year off
While childless women are

Screwed.

Sylvie Hill 2017

Chance Gift

Just as a Mother does not leave her child behind
Nor can I drop my rhymes!
Yet my Mother has left me aside…
Shall I then give up these lines?
Time has made me regret.
Memory has made me forget.
But I recall reasoning it on the tarmac
Your character would shake this womb
And a baby needs a healthy home.
If I had been dramatic and deranged
I would have chanced it so you’d remain and stay
But to control a man is not my way.
Neither being ready it seems, I would say.
What am I waiting for, for what is this day?
I made a story out of a man I hardly knew
And upon me my poems now prey
Parasitic like a growing babe
While all the men who’ve felt my rays
Next move to family and marriage
I must say it would be nice to get paid
For rendering service and inspiration to them!
You do not see me pushing a stroller
Nor do you see a ring on my finger
But I am bound and I am tethered
To the spirit and whatever of a former connection
If only because his attention was projection
Of my own selfish need for twin reflection
And do we ever really know or love another?
I’ve yet to fall in love with myself first
It’s what happens when our parent-creators dismiss us.
We go searching for meaning in ruts and rubbish.
Oh how I’ve laughed behind their backs
When they’ve said, “Sylvie Hill, I’m damaged.”
As if I’m intact, I think, as I piece them together and fix them.
Then off they go working the world with renewed confidence!
While I retreat back into my paper, poem and pens.
Not questioning a tree that shades me
A thunderstorm that ________ me
Or melancholy that keeps me intelligent
Questioning how to ever let go of Chance’s gift.

Sylvie Hill 2017

In the stillness, intention

You gave it dark
And in the stillness
Red embers glowed
Your temper
Shoveling coal
Scheming
And steaming
And fuming
And there you go
You blow
As I lay silent
In moon’s glow
Like Bloomsbury’s
Lamps lit yellow
Our ships docked
For conference
I jumped ship
Intoxicated
You grabbed me
I drank too much
I drowned me.
Sea sick
Your smelling salts
Scent of your cologne.
Next morning
We were off.
In memory:
We meet in ocean.
In stillness
We conference
Just us
Disregarding navigation
Preferring to be lost
Just for the moment
In waters calmed
By expectation
Your big brown eyes
Our connection
London town
New Zealand
San Francisco
Ottawa
All forgotten
For brief conversation
A code red
Upon an island
Where I go to
To remember
— intentions.

Sylvie Hill 2017

You Have A Drinking Problem.

This is a love letter
Because I love you.

You’ve always been saying
I associate you with alcohol.
That “I haven’t been drinking”
“I don’t drink as much as you think —
or at all.”

You fight me every time
Saying “you don’t get me at all”
Yet every time I see you?
Pints in hand and a drawl.

So I’m giving you the option:
Alcoholism or is it Mental Illness?
Drunk dick: rude and negative – or
Bipolar? Depressive? Caustic.

This is a love letter
Because I love you.

You’re dying.
Your health is suffering.
Your liver from drinking
Your lungs from smoking

Your spirit dwindling
From not expressing what you need.
Your heart rotting
In pornography.

Get help, and get it fast.
Do the things you know you must:
Fitness, diet, sleep, relaxation.
A shrink to break through into this.

This is a love letter
Because I love you.

I used to think I was weak
And couldn’t put up a proper fight
But weaklings get off on reactionary
And the strong walk away toward peace.

Some men drink
and it causes issues.
Some have issues
That cause them to drink.

You talk in riddles.
Your hands shake.
Self-care my darling
Or I’ll be seeing you at the wake.

Sylvie Hill 2017

But I Will Have My Joy!

It was already a too-long conversation.
Light-headed, I had not eaten.
He’s used to it: gets adrenaline rushing.
On a shit diet, drama and Captain Crunch.

I was happy for the conversation
To coach and help him with his investment.
After all, I had been there so I have experience.
I admire a man who seeks this woman’s opinion.

But in our exchange when he asked about me
I had a long list; he was ready to listen.
But in speaking my woes it’s like he drifted…
I swiftly cut myself off and ended it.

He quickly kept me going: “you’ve got my attention!”
My god, what frustration to blag on, intense like this!
What feel this has: a therapy session?
Just like when we dated, I remember now why it ended.

I get off on “You talk too much” and “Get a grip.”
On truncated synthesis of my blathering analysis.
I get off on changing the subject
to something more intriguing that dramatizations.

For I have come a long way and the longest:
was when he said “approach with caution”
the decision to leave Ottawa and live in Montreal:
“It’s not something you want to rush into,” he said.

Rush?! I’ve been dreaming of leaving since twenty six!
I’ve stood with pints in hand at 1 am on Elgin!
I’ve laughed at surroundings: Pizza Pizza and the dry cleaner?!
This town is where you stop off for hot dogs on le way to cottage!

If you know me you know I’ve longed for London!
Been inspired by vibrant men making it in United Kingdom!
Found more personality in a 13 year-old Belfast kid!
And relished tales from an old boss who lived in Belgium!

These are the stories that ignite me less than safety!
Your stress, and meeting deadlines does NOT impress me!
Beyond your taxing day job where is your creativity?
What do you leave behind with your talents and feeling?
It was already a day gone past.
The next day thinking of that draining conversation again.
He was kind offering an ear and friendship
But beware of too much talk and analysis.

And while he said: “Take time to think about it.”
I reassured him it’s been months, I have, and asked for it.
Then next he said: “because you’ll still have your problems”
And that loneliness can follow like darkness.

Do you not think I know this?!
She who went from London to Paris?
A moment with my suitcase in the flat on Rue de Turenne:
“Wow here I am, in Paris, clothes and my frustrations.”

BUT I WILL NOT BE ALONE in a new city I will live in, I said!
I WILL HAVE MY JOY, and the pounding of my heart in my chest!
Is it not enough to say “Oh, hello Soul, I feel you then!”
Accompanied by your own smile, fulfillment and expectation?

Anonymity in a City can breed depression
But it is freeing if it allows you to create your true self.
Yet bring me to a City where they respect academics.
…and I will emerge the Me I am: a professor in Literature yet!

Oh yes, do bring me to a City where they love the arts.
And I will resonate my poetry books, vibe and my heart.
Bring me to a City where my professionalism wows.
Step aside: I’ve fierce ambitious, work-ethic is intact, when do I start?

I have long talked about this too long.
To know breaking off from here is not wrong.
I seek immigrants from other countries to our own
with stories and foreignness ready to forge.

I am interested in people with stories and lore
Like a Montreal-based Brit mate, French husband contemplating a job in Singapore.
I am interested in people with traits from afar
Who visit our Canadian cities that they feel are interesting and nurture.

Let me bask in the glow of the appreciative newcomers
To a City in which they need to make a living.
Let me radiate all my talents in a place that sees them.
Let me never be alone in the Joy I will feel to express that.

Let me feel my depression – and watch me spark to action.
“Just step outside” I once said, ending up in Marché Jean Talon.
Let me work hard for Canada in a multi-cultural City
And play well and romantic after-hours at cafés with students, and:

… Cyclists on bike paths
… Families picnicking in parks
… old ladies at the concerts

and my character developing to what I find interesting
to share with Ottawa friends who I know will come visit me…

Sylvie Hill 2017

These are not things that interest you (Once, but not soon)

These are not things that interest you
That my eyebrows are fading
That my hips are aching
That my mother dislocates her dentures
when eating cucumber sandwiches at the cottage
like at that time that you cared and wrote
“What happened?!” twice when she and I
took to having some fighting.

These are not things that interest you
That I found chocolates painted like jewels
That I make chia pudding now
That I’m planning some career moves
That if you asked me So what is it you want to do?
“Can I move there and work with you?”
Make me your sister, we’ll be good.
These are not things that interest you…

Once, but not soon.

Sylvie Hill 2017