From David Waltner-Toews, I knew it. Years ago I wrote a poem, The Sanitary Dream Engineers, that was included in my book The Fat Lady Struck Dumb. Poetry anticipates science! The Sanitary Dream Engineers This is the stuff of dreams the leftovers from your day, all the things you couldnt fit in anywhere: the really bad TV show, pictures of a government minister handing the keys of your house to the bank manager, your fear of being lost with a full bladder in a bathroom less labyrinthine building, soldiers storming a bus full of hostages, a cryptic message from the President, the meeting you missed with your Department Chair, that egomaniacal academic colleague you criticized, the shoot out at the post office, someone murdered, perhaps by you, while you were talking to Princess Di on a cell phone, the student whose dress you accidentally saw down, those squirrely feelings you=d buried, like nuts and diamonds, suddenly unearthed, in mud and melting snow, and a bright blue sky, the crow banging his reflection at your office window, day in day out, so perfectly adapted to your daily routine, all those things that should have been in your poetry, the things that are so clear at two in the morning, just as they are being trucked away. You see the guy in coveralls dumping several perfect poems into the fine paper bin. You are too sleepy to stop him. You lie awake the rest of the night, with your legs crossed, trying to remember your dreams. You think of a garbage truck disappearing down an empty street. Sometimes you toss the name of someone essential to your happiness, written on the back of a grocery list, into the recycling box. The engineers do not sort for you; they take everything. When you meet that person the next day you will not know them. Sometimes it is the name of a deadly virus, the number of cases of foodborne illness in Canada, an important message from the person whose name you cant remember, or the weight of a hand touching you in kindness, or abuse; sometimes it is a couple of lines, a turn of phrase, that inadvertently ends up in the trash, or an idea that might have saved the world your family your marriage, or a lint-covered lump of sugar you could have given someone in passing, or something bitter to ponder in the routine sweetness of a day, something to clear the mental palate. As you get older, more and more gets thrown out, all the recent stuff. The drawers and closets and cubbyholes are full of 1066 and All That, the number and street of the house you lived in when you were five and ran away from home, Wendy, whose pony tail you dipped into the inkwell in Grade Five, what you should have said to the school bully, the walking dandruff rabbit mite, Cheyletiella, the sheep fluke Dicrocoelium dendriticum, the easy way to castrate a bull. These are the things that will still be with you when you are ninety. That publisher you met yesterday who promised you a big advance? His name is already hauled away. Oh my friends who aspire to write poetry, this is your aspiration - to be a cell phone, a soldier, a dress, a bladder, a lonely urinal no one can find, a case of food poisoning, a banker. Each morning you will turn the empty coffee mug in your hands, searching for meaning in the dregs. You will stick your nose into it. This is the desire that wracked your spirit, the vision you were offered, unasked for, what is no longer there, what you have lost. Tonight, the sanitary dream engineers will take even that away. Tomorrow, you will have to begin again at the bottom of another cup of coffee. From A Fat Lady Struck Dumb (Brick Books, 2000)
Posted on: Thu, 17 Oct 2013 21:06:30 +0000
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