out of such love
i have taken to building
my niece a bookshelf
and i’m really excited about this project
so i’d like to tell you how
i’m building the first shelf out of a memory
of nights her grandpa sat on my bed
and we read aloud to one another
from a book called
kevin o’connor and the light brigade
a beautiful red hardcover,
with skeletons charging on horseback
under a navy blue sky
on the jacket.

there’s already books on this shelf,
red fish blue fish, and hop on pop,
and a book of paintings, and few words
telling the life cycle of salmon

the second shelf, i’ll build from pocket-sized poetry
books her grandma kept on the bedside table.

here there will be sonnets, and haiku
that aren’t too revolting,
every living thing and whatever stories of myth-time
call her attention,

she might sit on my knee
as i sat on her great-grandpa’s
and hear the music of speaking
when the words call forth her voice.

the third shelf i’ll make from the masking tape
holding together my first copy of lord of the rings
and here she’ll find her way with a golden compass,
riding sandworms with beowulf and odysseus,
or she might travel to the moon
in the shell of a giant snail
and learn the language of trees
or she might dive into a pool
find herself in another world
where all that moves has words.

the fourth shelf i’m making from the bindings of old
journals, so here she’ll learn about free enterprise
and ceremony, bad teenaged poetry and ravensong
rising into thin air -
everywhere being is dancing on this shelf,
the book thief goes trainspotting
and finds the kiss of the fur queen
where some birds walk for the hell of it
and orange is not the only fruit of american gods.

by the time she's tall enough to reach this shelf,
she’ll be old enough
to do as she likes with the books.

old enough that when she asks me why
the last book on the last shelf is
oh the places you’ll go
i’ll tell her
‘cause that shit’s fuckin timeless.

inside its cover, she might find a note
reminding her to see a bookshelf as a garden-bed for stories,
to learn the greasy fingerprints, the watermarks,
the dog-eared pages,
the rips, the tears, the notes in the margins,
the musty scent of aging paper, the missing bindings,
the broken bindings, the bindings that open to hands
like the hearts of old friends,
to learn the books made for generations of fingers,

explaining that i built a bookshelf
out of a memory and a dream
that someday i might hand down
a red hardcover under a navy blue sky
with the words
take this book into your hands
and know you are holding your grandfather’s

and i do this for my niece as i would were she my own daughter
for though i long to be a father
i can say if i’ll ever have children of my own
though i have friends who say it’s a cruel thing
to bring children into this world, given the state of things
and i can’t say that they’re wrong.

after all, i see this world
the grass never as green as billboards advertise
under a sky made purple and orange
from all our gas-light, while radio activity
blankets every silence, as our daily bread soaks
in pinstripe and machine grease

still i can’t help but long to see a child of my own blood
discover this same world with eyes and ears
and lips, guts and fingertips,
discover humour and sorrow and rage,
stench and tension and shattered glass
and all this song washing over them

so i tell these friends
i don’t feel have much say in the matter.
i’m just another bastard of chance
caught halfway between muscle and memory,
a child of paradox and strange turns,
an incoherent mumble in a megaphone mouth

so i am torn between creating a pulse and being repulsed
and even as i long to whirl with another body
in the act of long division, i want to say, ‘fuckitall’ and run
to the hills where i might breathe,
and forget this all exists.

and in spite of all the terrible things
that might be the motivation,
this desire to run is strongest when i hear other people
from my generation, speaking so seriously
about their interlocking posts on facebook.

then, i wish to become an ascetic.
i wish to climb a mountain, find a cave,
lie on my back day after day, meditate,
and ask,
God? or
Mother? or
Universe?

is this really your plan?

and people will climb my mountain
so i will rush my cave to greet them
clad only in rags and a ragged beard
and they will probably ask me
do you have wifi?
and i will masturbate furiously into the palm
of my hand, raise it on high, and say
yes
here is my network
it is unsecured

then, as semen trickles down my wrist,
i will rotate my ass towards them
spreading my cheeks with my clean hand
(lest i get internet in my outlet)
and, pointing to my anus, i will tell them
you may plug in here
if you need to recharge your batteries

in this way, i will keep others away from my mountain
out of my little hotspot of cold, hard reality

but when the tsunami of cancer and heavy metals
and electric rapture washes over these hills,
when the motherboards suffer a meltdown
and the power plants have all withered
then they will return to me
desperate for my internet
and they will call me a public location -

i will pop up a warning that reads
i am but an extension cord
electrifying the navel of fleshliness
just a meat popsicle, cooking inside out -
do not call me your touchscreen:
i have no apps that will aid in your survival,
there are none that guarantee mine.
and let’s be real: the only way i could survive
alone in the wild all this time is if i wrote it
into a poem so i might have an excuse
to say to my fellow humans
your network is the key to your survival,
but your network is a resource
that these bodies produce.
your best chance of surviving comes
from the reproduction of lines
spoken many times before, being remixed
for a new generations of users.