Sylvie Hill

From When I Grooved

Lately as I thought:
Can’t imagine another love
and that all who came from
the first to the last
shared something in common.
First and last – bald.
Two carpenters in the middle.
Beards or British.
Foreigners, spoke French.
Chin hair beneath the lip.
Does one just build upon?

Lately I have no dreams.
Absolutely no time to think!
Too sane, logical to scheme.
Trying to engineer this.
But when I do, it’s of my spring
your autumn on your beach.
If we had held friendship
better than our drinks
I’d visit for more than a month.
Sit at your bar. Just let me read.

Lately I have no concept
of a future beyond survival.
Wishes are washed-out delusions
Come on, let’s be practical.
By instinct, do we know our future?
In the same way that a storyteller
feels when the end is nearer
and prepares to bring on voices
to make the conclusion epic?
Do we deep-down know
When we really shouldn’t bother?

Oh, do not call me depressed.
I’m far too awake for that, my brother!
Call me loveless, uncared for at roots.
Disregarded by a family – with zero tools.
It’s OK but don’t expect me to hoot
about having a safe and secure cocoon.
For this, to tell you the truth,
Lately my vision for a lover is moot.
But what fine poems and many tunes
tell of stories from when I grooved.

Sylvie Hill 2016

The Nigger in the Alley
(made me think of Street Coffee)

“Give us your car keys, nigger!”
3 Jamaicans loudly at whitey in our alley.
Armed robbery took his wallet.
But thankfully, he’s home now safely.

It made me think of you at Street Coffee.

Back from Paris hung my bag off my seat
And I was starting in on a salad to eat.
When you whipped up fast and all in a frenzy:
Grabbing my bag, and cursed me, meanly.

It happened with us at Street Coffee.

“Don’t do that, you muppet!” he shouted.
What a weirdo! What’s he on about?
He explained: bag thieves in operation.
Sigh, yes, he did just offer me protection.

And I smiled when I hit up the vegan.
Seeing the sign: bag thieves in operation.
If I was ever robbed by 3 Jamaicans
Could I call you over there in New Zealand?

It was the first/last time we met at Street Coffee.

Whatever happened to your Nigerian?
Did she know with whom you lied and were laying?
I was armed: had you wrapped with my wirey frame.
And you robbed me blind, without saying my name.

Driving us wild while the city lights
Stole a hearth frame to alight
On a box of Brittany cookies I’d leave behind.
He took it all. I took my flight.

Sylvie Hill 2016

Who Do You Love On Duluth?

I am in love with the city
Not the man even though I’d fetch him
With a fractured rib after a bicycle accident
from Westmount, Montreal “Walk? Come on!”

That early morning stroll about
Man, it was only eight thirty out
Avenue Duluth: everyone asleep in this town
After a night of being alive and on prowl.

“Of Montreal” I want to be of her streets
like Moinneau coffee with Sophie under trees
and a tea at the station at one a.m. thirty
Leonard Cohen playing at Café Neve over chocolatine.

I’m too knee-deep in transition for a relationship
And you see them Irish girls as they threaten
But from Ottawa to Montreal to Ireland
We two rot, stew and are wanting it.

Christ, let us forge in the smithy of our souls
the desperate cry of our ages for more!
Skin wind-swept by Atlantic shores
Your body broke, Montreal calls you forth.

And New Zealand, ah,
you won’t catch me there!
Simple friend, young gentleman
Plan fast for I’m bound for Rue Rachel.

I’m about to make you feel quite bad
If I go and whisper how “it’s so grand”
Why can we sleep and wake together once
But not solve each other’s obvious problem?

Sylvie Hill 2016

I remember those days when a young man’s cock would be so hard it nearly erected up to the ceiling, and surely, it made for a great towel hook. A wet, heavy wet towel, it hooked. He was 21. And, in thinking of that, sometimes I weep tears of joy in reflective moments, remembering how many beautiful men I’ve seen naked. Those fabulously stupid nights of too much drinking and smoking at Zaphod’s and Babylon and Dirty Oak and Aloha Room in Ottawa. Then in grad school, 26 years old and you’d get off three times a day or more, like — on your own. When you woke up, for a study break before lunch. After lunch before you started researching your essay. Then for another break. They’d practically replace your smokes. Then your boyfriend would come over. How did our bodies do that?! Why didn’t anyone tell us (or did they??) that this would not last forever?

We’re getting old, man. We’re slowing. Our hormones. Where are they going? Bodies changing. Do women just rot due to an anatomical disadvantage that if we were attractive at 60, we’d have one warped civilization of strange offspring? Do men get better? Oh, you silver fox, eh? Will us women be moot by definition of what a “woman” is in society? Will men understand our menopause or fall victim to sheepish societal behaviour and simply resent it or go chase the secretary?

No wonder a few of us are talking about communal living. Intergenerational interactions, please and thank you. Someone tell me about menopause or tell me about their new romance all unexperienced. We get so bloody siloed here, eating our shitty food imported from the USA and not writing letters anymore.

Did anyone tell you that your orgasms would change? And for the different and until we accept them we’ll say with our psychological immunity that “oh yes, dear, they are better.”

But why didn’t they tell us our bodies would get softer and our bones all the more brittler. “Just ask your doctor.” In the 15 minutes together. And the shrink is confined to a paradigm of Freudian old man lectures. By Christ, no one told us the status quo was for nutters. Now we get old with paced out erections and frail tail and pubic bones fragile for fast fucking. Oh, my how we know so little as we’re aging.

Sylvie Hill 2016

Leonard Cohen is Ready To Die (and so was I, so was I)

Leonard Cohen is ready to die
Without having read the headlines
I saw it said, and so was I, so was I.

Condo living, milestones surfing
But none of it for me, fitting.
Give me fruit stands at Mont Royal station
— at eleven.
Tea with Chris at midnight on the strip
— he buys.

And that smoke under the Montreal sky
And my smile that stretches mile-wide
At the joy of Parc Lafontaine passers by
At memories of Avenue Laurier (as in Paris) with Goulven.

Leonard Cohen is ready to die
And so was I, so was I.
But for a short life lived on high
Thanks to London muses of whom I’d write.

The feeling like I’ve done it all
What else was there to boring Ottawa?

If our Papa Poet be He ready to pass on
This Poetess best get She to Montreal!
And fill in the City with my vibes and ALL!

A flat at Rachel or Duluth at L’Esplanade?
Give me merely a fig from the metro stop in my hand.
The energy of subway travellers and bises bises.

If Montreal be one Poet shorter in these years
Praise be to Cohen, and rid me of my fears:

So I can leave here and live a reality
That is worth recounting and one for which facing Death

I would be smiling, inviting and ready
Rather than pleading…

Sylvie Hill 2016