Sylvie Hill

Have You Seen This Man?

Have you seen this man?
He is MY MAN, stood
In a Canadian river, on wood
In a suit and antlers
With Canadian geese
In flight, passing.

Have you seen this man?
He is a GENTLEMAN, waiting
In a Canadian lake, in wood
Geared up and ready
For a Canadian lady
In flight, coming.

He cocks his head
He’s listening.
He tilts his face
He’s understanding.

Have you seen this man?
He is MY MAN, good!
In a Canadian setting, on wood
In a suit and antlers
Prepared and steady
For a Canadian lady.

He is set for battle
He is ready for her war
Feet planted in the deep
Calm in his nature.

In a gas mask, sure
It’s to protect him from airs
That have infected too many
In this world.

Fuck London
and their fast and furious!
Give me a man un-embattled
from the place I call home.

© Sylvie Hill 2014

Art: Marc Adornato | Railbender Grand Opening 2014

Trench

My trench is more deep than it is wide
In it, I’ve hid from battles, so I wouldn’t die
So I was surprised, quiet, when he came inside
Since when were you on my side?

Since then, I’ve dug me a deep depression
Into which I hide with only one preoccupation:
“He would dive into anything, without hesitation”
Does this make you shallow or deep like ocean?

When he dove in, we were oblivious to the surfaces
Upon my back is a long scar, and I did not see his chest’s.
These bodies naked, on top and entrenched
Scars leave deep grooves, stories, resentment.

Trenches are the result of long-running rivers
Or erosion left behind by disappearing glaciers
Like you: your ‘let-it-flow’ left scars here and here
Like me: did my glacier-reaction mark you, dear?

My doll, the “war” that was between You and I
Was mostly against my own rules that I let fly that night
It’s about you taking what I hold dear, and prize
That I turn away from this all, and resign…

… because it’s one thing to war and pillage the other side
But kind of odd, don’t you think, to rape from your kind?

But that was the problem, deep and profound
I am not a part of your London town Underground
Nor would I ever now choose or want
to be a fast, furious ‘One of Us’.

So I may look weak, with a mess and debris
flying from the places I grow my wings
And I may turn away from friends and outings
That’s my built-in deep depression, which protects me.

Yet, trenches protect, fortify castles
Provide irrigation channels in agriculture
Give access to structures that help things pass
Protect power sources during natural disasters.

Trenches help in our defense
And to defend and safeguard, we build trenches.

Scars uncover buried matter
And bursting matter makes scars…

that save us.

© Sylvie Hill 2014

Art: dixon / Trench / 36x78cm / spray paint and synthetic enamel on cavas / 2010

The Distance I Need

I am above the city
In my home in a tall building.
Walking a tightrope, on edge
Noisy traffic below on city streets
Does not bring me peace
I cringe,
Needing Wakefield trees
Waking with birds
Sound of leaves
I am above this city:
Isolated.

I am above the city
In my condo in the sky:
Walking a fine line, on edge
Below in the city streets
It’s a courtship of greed
I flinch,
Needing not new gadgets to please
New home décor
Or money things
I am above these things:
Isolated.

The devils are in the details.
Power disguised in politicians.
Battered victims hidden in freedoms.
Beauty queens, allusion of success.
Devils dancing, life-giving rituals.
Bearded companion, bent, silent.

I am in a highwire daze.
I wave my arms like a bird,
May seem free, but I’m falling
As I balance it all to get
The distance I need
to understand things below
In Cities.

© Sylvie Hill 2014

dixon / “The Distance I Need” / 21x30cm / spray paint and acrylic on paper / 2010

The Ferryman’s Pipe

They may call me a Masochist.
But who brings you treasures like this?
From the bottom of the river floor
from the South Bank of London,
Amidst the big pile of rubble
of rocks and used condoms
He walked and crushed them
Saying “you can find lots of stuff
like clay pipes,” and in an instant —
handed me one.
This one.

They may call me a Masochist.
But who brings you treasures like this?
I SAY it’s from the river bed
But I pretend he plucked it from his pocket
so that I would have something of him
to hold, to rub, like a worry rock
whenever I am sad and feel forgotten.
Like the pipes of times so far away
So, too, will this chapter dissipate.
But no matter if I cry my own river of tears
look at how much treasure has appeared!

They may call me a Masochist.
But who brings you treasures like this?
Some women bury their treasures deep
in the freezer: embryonic miscarriages
of a time, passed, forever.
How odd is this lady
To keep her dead baby
in an ice-box like I keep my stained nighty?
Do you wince as I admit this
Or will you go out and buy me a new dress
And leave stories and things behind
on my island?

They call me a Masochist.
For musing on a sadist
who can treat people poorly
and explode, vitriolic.
Someone who’ll justify the anger
by finger-pointing blame at you
making you responsible, entirely
for your own death sentence.
But surely there have been battles greater
than this, with sailors sailing high seas
encountering pirates and misfits.
Would you have called the men
of trade, explorers or gits
corrupt, insane or masochists?

Ah my love, you forget upon my arm
like a sailor tattooed, is written the poem:
‘I am not afraid of storms
for I am learning how to sail my ship’
and often times it has indeed been wild
but for that I am an Adventurer,
not a masochist
or vile.

For I’ve got stories about how one man’s pipes
sang songs like sexy sirens, seducing me right
Because I listen, am I masochist
or just sailing through the night?
Here, let me tell you about the Ferryman’s Pipe…

© Sylvie Hill 2014

Si

So I’ve Washed My Hands Of Us.

Cairo, you’re hot as fuck!
I saw you laid back
On your back
With a banana on your shirt
Wanted to crawl up from your knees
Past your belt
To your face
And lay on top you in the dirt.

Cairo, you’re hot as fuck!
Enigmatic smile
Of sadness
Makes all the girls wanna
JUMP UP, come running to save
Your fuckin’ soul!
As girls do
With deadhead skaters
And stoners.

Cairo, you’re hot as fuck!
Floating in the Nile
With a helmet on
Hands pumping paddle
With a mischievous smile.
You’d love ‘em and
Break women’s hearts
Leave the girls
In the dust.

Cairo, you’re hot as fuck!
Full of fuel and wanting to
Set fires to schools
That flunked ya.
You’re a different one
I know your kind
The artist brain
And that anti-establishment
Frame of mind.

Cairo, you’re hot as fuck!
First time I saw you
I was deep in lust.
But conflicted, preoccupied
With the Muse
London town.
When you added red,
French authors and Jacques Brel,
When you mentioned Mike Patton
And the skate vid,
And your A/V expertise
Of family vids and
about Gaspar Noe’s acoustics,
And the Serge Gainsbourg
And the dock-reading binder list,
And a mom who read Bovary
Well, I was hooked,
thought:
Gentleman,
To boot.

But Cairo’s in conflict.
And I am searching treasures
still at the bottom of the South Bank
in London.
I don’t want to drag any man
Into this
not with the blood
and the ink still fresh
in my hands.
And here you are
Just two hours:
I told you it could happen.
That you’d become a character
In a story at a time
When I’m not so together.

Someone crossed my boundaries, Cairo
I must make a deal of quality, and fuss.
I’m hard to understand like pyramids
So I’ve washed my hands of us.

And when you said that song was awful
Just like London who’d say “that’s bloody terrible!”
And when you blankly stated
“I just didn’t like the song at all is all.”
It reminded me of when London would say
“Just because someone doesn’t say what you’d like
doesn’t make them a dickhead.”
And it underlined how London said:
“If I can’t tell you what I don’t like when you write
then we will have a problem.”
And all this made Cairo, to me, really hot
And to cool me down, I disconnected
And washed my hands of us.

© Sylvie Hill 2014

Art: dixon / Paintings for Articulate Baboon Gallery, Cairo / 2010

This Is What Guys Have Done

When you make excuses to not get to yoga
Cause your pedicure’s old, heels cracking,
He lifts your legs, and creams your feet:
This is what guys have done.

When you couldn’t find anything to wear
For the dinner party with his bosses
He takes you to your closet & proposes “ensembles:”
This is what guys have done.

When you couldn’t find a direction for your essay
Paralyzed in fear that you couldn’t be logical
He takes Side A, makes you think in debate:
This is what guys have done.

When you said that you don’t do it like in the movies enough
That you wanted more smooching and touch
He pitched an entire afternoon to dress you up, then down:
This is what guys have done.

When it was your birthday or a holiday
And your parents didn’t get you anything
He gave you that thing you saw in-store from passed months:
This is what guys have done.

Guys have done groceries, deciphered ‘To Do’ Lists
Made the place behind the oven sparkle like magic.
Cleaned the toilet, mopped the floor
Carted laundry back and forth.

Made you dinner, poured you wine
Got you tea when it was ‘that time.’
Got you a film, bought you dessert
Kept calm when you went berserk.

This is what guys have done:

Drank and drugged, not cared, or gave a fuck.
Not called her back, or messed around…

But have you seen what they’ve done

For Love?

Yes, when they are done, they are gone and,

Turn off.

© Sylvie Hill 2014

ART: dixon / “Heart” / 50x50cm / spray paint and enamel on canvas / 2006

I Am A Woman, Growing Old

And I woke up one day
And I was old.

The skin on my chin: pulled
like a baggy scrotal sac on him.
Sagged, like the labia between her legs
Raggy, like his inner 47 year-old elbow folds.

Old. We are getting
Tired and less tight.

The hairs on her head: greying
Drying out, products betraying
Made her think she could be young again
He pays good money for his hair dying.

Unknown. Did we know:
This was how it was going to roll?

Women lose their figure
Men look more regal.
Women no longer reproducing
Men can keep procreating.

Like PMS meant for us to ‘forgive’
One bitchy time out of the month.
Suggests us women should be nice
Every other day and all around.

Like society suggesting she’s less ‘rounded’
Because she’s never been a mother.
Forgetting the time it takes to be
the Yoga Teacher, the Poet & the Potter.

While men still have the power
They don’t want to extinguish it.
If aging makes me less a woman
Does our strength lay in relinquishing?

As young girls, surrender was sexy
With wisdom, it’s pathology.

And after all your make-up’s gone
And the hair and dye has fallen out and off
And cataracts, and whiskers in places
And the skin leaves its aging traces…

When all the cosmetic cover ups
And padding, and fabrics that suck in and tuck
As toenails get thicker and arthritis pains
And hips are replaced with canes…

Will it matter so much
What you look like, dear?
What’s more attractive
Is the story of how you got here.

And I woke up one day
And I was old.

And I wanted to reach out for the phone
To tell you aging women have it hard!
To tell you that the Yoga Teacher and the Potter
Have beautiful men who love them!

They thrive, I know it, because they’re supported
I am on my own, without even parents!
But we don’t talk so much no more
And so, I am left to my own devices.

So instead I watch the Yoga Teacher and the Potter
They have ideas and good guidance.

The one teaches #selfcareisnotselfish
While managing her aches and brain pains.
The other one told me about the Californian desert
While making pots and cups and singing in bands.

And there are ones who lost a daughter
Another who lost her son
The one who fucked off Cancer
And the one with the Maui garden.
And the one who says “get out of your head at once!”

So I will wake up tomorrow
Feeling all the more wiser
With a way forward into my 40s
A new woman with more answers!

And I woke up one day
And I was old
Only because I’m awake
to our world gone cold.

And the worst part about it
Wasn’t the way I looked
It’s that I was still,
in life
too immature
to realize it’s ALL one big struggle!

So for aging men and aging women,
I’m up, throwing on my shower cap
Shower, underwear and my blazer!
After all, I must try to look my best on my start
Over the other side of the hill
On my Death March.

No, no, don’t give me your sympathy
At least I know where I’m going!
This is Mm Mm Mm so good for me
It said so on the packaging
Right there, see:
Right here, next to
the expiry …

© Sylvie Hill 2014

ART: dixon / “Truth vs Lies” / enamel on canvas / 30x80cm

Old School Beaver

Oh, don’t kid yourself!
I’ve got slinky panties.
They’re just not practical to travel with
To Bloomsbury:
London’s Center of Academics
Education and Medicine.
Screw Dalston!
I am a nerd.

Oh, don’t kid yourself.
I am expressive in sex.
I just don’t show it with a stranger
In Bloomsbury:
Telling me I’m annoying
And looking witchy
Too drunk to rickshaw!
I am a loser.

Oh, don’t kid yourself!
I’m called “fast” in these parts!
Compared to London, OK not at all, but
In Bloomsbury:
Places of students and studies
And trees and B&Bs
By God, I’m not Big City,
I am a geek.

You did not kid yourself.
You knew who I would be.
Come off spending a week in Family Paris
To stay a week in Bloomsbury:
With floral-print dress, scarf, bell-bottoms
Practical Canadian footwear
Fuck off Brick Lane!
I dress sensible, whatever.

So don’t kid yourself!
I like the snap, slip, smack of the G-string.
They just chafe when I’m sight-seeing
Around Bloomsbury:
Buying rarities at Collinge & Clark
Walking around like a believer
Practical, nice, hopeful, cute celibate me,
The Canadian old school beaver,
That you chopped down
Damn, with your wood
And hipster attitude.

Sent me home with my tail
Between my legs
And you? You’ve seen more behinds
than a toilet seat
in your lodge-den of iniquity
lodged your man
in my beaver dam
irony is
for the entire week,
I was clad
in rabbit fur…

© Sylvie Hill 2014

dixon / “Old School Beaver” / 20x20cm / spray paint and enamel on canvas / 2005

The Real Villain.

I say one funny thing about a pick-up line
He gets mad, says: “I don’t tell you mine!”
In person, I keep it platonic.
He spends the time telling me how he likes it.

I post news of having published a book of sexy stories
He starts Tweeting that I must be wild and risky!
In person, I keep it neutral.
He spends the time telling me I’m beautiful.

I perform poems of sexcapades
The guy in the audience asks why I hate men!
In person, I’ve loved what men do bring me.
He spends the time telling me I don’t understand a thing.

I teach books that were banned because they were sexual
Most if not all the guys being dicks haven’t read them!
In person, I try to educate.
He spends the time telling me I’m obsessed.

A guy got a blowjob first night from a girl at a tavern
Says, “Nice mouth, but I wouldn’t date her!”
In person, she gives him what he wanted
He spends the nighttime, alone, masturbating & forcing it from her.

(A girl named Nora Barnacle gave a hand job to Jim Joyce
He spends the rest of his life writing about her.
He commemorates their first date, by setting Ulysses
On Bloomsday, June 16, 1904.)

My boyfriend liked me civil and polite
But I’ve got a side with a mouth on me like a sailor!
In person, I can speak my mind
He spends the time wishing I was quieter.

So many fucking stories of women speaking their desires
And then men recoiling, uncomfortable and unsure!
In person, I am respectful and ask him what he likes, what to try.
He spends the time asking how I came to know this move and why.

I stood under moonlight at the cottage with my Heineken
He asked me “Why Hoxton? Have you been molested?!”
In person, I can share with you HEALTHY goddamned reasons.
He spends the time wondering why I’m so intense and passionate.

What else,

Right: When I am an active participant and use his cock
To get me up to where I can join him, together, to come
In person, I’m all about collaborating and helping
He spends the time in bed whining he feels alienated.

He says: “Don’t use me like a dildo!”
Ruining the moment, our connection, my ego.
It took a French Canadian well-hung postman-carpenter to laugh me through this
and to dismantle the inherited complex and let go.

And yet another partner wouldn’t change his shorts in front of me
But apparently, I’m too wild cause I may forget to close the door to pee!
I inherit his complex of shame and guilt
Takes me … going on 3 years now to feel comfortable in a kiss.

But it’s the chick’s fault she knows what she wants?
Has had loving experiences and has healthy lust?!
It’s the chick’s fault because she’s had sex before?
Right, she’s supposed to act like your virgin, but a whore.

One man, he got it –
nah, he fucked just so his housemate could hear us.
Sex was for his homoerotic frat applause & to make him feel good,
and to show his future wife he’s apparently awesome.

So that leaves the other One man who got it –
and he was 21, so very young
With the maturity and intelligence and brilliant mind
that comes often through being punk rock.

You can’t tell me ALL the men have superficial intelligence.
That they’re trying to make me an honest woman is rooted in ironic pretense.
You can’t tell me ALL the men just really like me, and in fact just really jealous.
When really we both know, they may be plagued by pornographic expectations.

So there ya have it! I’m fucked.
Without even being fucked or fucking, too!
If you’re a woman, and appreciate making love,
Apparently:

… you’re screwed.

And even the ladies will look at you skewed
Say “that’s private, Shirley” and admit to being a prude.
You think I’m divulging details and truths?
My God, all you judgmental onlookers,

… why the fuck do you think I seek out UK Muses.

But here we go again, it’s a reason in my break-ups
“I liked you because when we met, you wrote so much.”
Right. Think a second about what you just read.
You think a guy I am dating would want you in our bed?

So while it’s perfectly OK for guys to watch porn
It becomes an issue for a chick to write her poems.
They’ll leave a legacy and at worst – an “impression”
I was told it would take a special guy to figure out how to deal with them.

Yet, we all think Leonard Cohen is great!
And we definitely LOVE that Henry Miller!
Yup: we revere the men who talk, write, breathe and live to fuck cunts
But a Canadian lady with an academic, poetic and human interest in sexuality is a nutter.

Even you, Muse, you scoffed in email
Said: “Yes, yes, you talk dirty yet you’re really a dainty lady, I know, sheesh.”
Why do men sound so bloody betrayed?
They should only be mad if they had hopes on getting laid.

They should only be mad if they had hopes on getting laid,
and were mistaken.
Ladies, and gentlemen, I present to you –

Superficial intelligence:
The real villain.

(Go deep
baby, come
please:
find the real me.)

© Sylvie Hill 2014

Art: dixon / “Superficial Intelligence” / 100x100cm / enamel on canvas / 2004

You’ve Got The Ugliest Eyes.

When I told her that he asked me to hold him
Then said, “But don’t tell anyone I asked that, please”
And I cuddled him in my arms like a baby
He was 31, you made the ugliest eyes I’ve ever seen.

When a man fixed my knapsack, hiking
And tightened the straps, belted me in like a little girl
I felt protected and loved, like he was my Dad or saviour
I was 38, you made the ugliest eyes I’ve ever seen in the world.

When I told her what had happened in the morning
She scoffed said, “well, you delivered yourself on a platter!”
I was not looking for a fuck, just tender connection!
At 39, and she made the ugliest eyes on the planet.

These men I’ve known, with strengths and beards
Were sometimes weak, cried or seemed vulnerable and scared
And whereas I would pet them, wipe tears, you’d just stare
Classic: you’ve got the ugliest eyes by far.

These men I’ve cared for sometimes did dumb stuff
And I persecuted them for their apparent perceived wrong
Cried “You’re a Liar!” when their actions were beyond them (or partly my fault)
All Men loved, have the ugliest eyes when they go numb…

And when I looked in the mirror
I saw my eyes

They judged.

© Sylvie Hill 2014

Art: Don Smith – beginning of “Helping You Helping Me” (2014) — with Don Smith.