The highway may have many lanes, but you can only travel in one direction. I choose forward. There are things to see, things to accomplish, there is only a future.
My past, the parts that hurt, is behind me. What’s ahead is unknown.
There will be times, there always is, where you feel you are running on empty. You are not. If you keep your heart full of love and your mind full of gratitude, you can move forward through anything.

I wrote this passage in a journal about two years ago, as I was preparing to drive to what is now my home. I was leaving behind a city, one with many solid memories, but was departing at the end of a September full of grief.

There is something about September that gets you thinking. It could be that flipping the page on a calendar alerts you to what is about to come. At any time, summer’s heat will succumb to frost, and the leaves will turn and then fall. Autumn is close, winter arriving soon thereafter.

It is the life cycle we have become accustomed to. It is organic, and true.

It might also be that the most influential years of our lives are marked by this month. The return to school was as natural as the killing frosts. Even as parents, our clock is more set to the ninth month, and the return to school, than the other 11.

September spells change.

Almost two years ago I made a major change. After shedding material possessions that were simply weighing me down, I packed my car with what would fit: my art, a few books, clothing, a computer, stereo, and some of my records. These were the things that would sustain me, but not all that mattered.

As I wrote in my journal “All I really need doesn’t require space in the car; only space in your heart and your head.”

I arrived in a new city with hope, plans and dreams. It was time for a change, and I knew it. I knew I needed it

Two years isn’t a lot of time, but in that period I have accomplished goals, or found many of the things I believed I needed, or was looking for. There are still a few wants, or desires, but I am more patient now than I was even then.

It’s not that a made a list (I probably should have) but I’ve managed to check off a few boxes. I am comfortable with a new city, but becoming even more comfortable with my self.

I have learned to approach things differently, and while shedding many of the patterns that may have held me back, I have managed to continue (if not further) the practices that keep me growing artistically and, above that, personally.

No longer do I place the same limitations on what I can and cannot do, and perhaps I have discovered why I am driven to certain extremes. These extremes are no longer uncomfortable. These extremes are where I live.

It’s funny how September forces you to reflect. I did today, and I did so with love and with gratitude. That’s not a bad way to either end a season, or begin another.

 

Crisp white shirt and a coffee stain,
to my chagrin, or much disdain.
I tried not to dribble, but I did.
Again. The sun shines brightly, on
a beautiful day, and I now carry
a souvenir to remind me of
my errant ways. I tried to slow down,
attempted to change, and now must
move about wearing the residue of
my mistake. Mishaps, careless errors,
or unforeseen disruptions, don’t we all
carry around with us a shadow of
what was. Not always is it this obvious,
rarely this Instant, the stains of the past
remain, as do the costs. Only some of it
will come out in the wash.

 

Like millions of Canadians, I spent last Saturday evening hunkered down in front of the television. It wasn’t to take in the athletic efforts of our better-than-expected Olympians, though it was a national celebration.

We were all watching the final performance of The Tragically Hip, a band that has turned out to be more than an institution. Over three decades, The Hip has become a part of our cumulative national identity.

More than 11 million of us (a third of the population) took in the live concert broadcast on television, radio, and across all social media channels. The numbers don’t include the crowds gathered at listening parties in bars, concert halls, and outdoor venues (at least 25,000 people outside the arena at the center of it all) to see it unfold on the big screens.

That’s a lot of Canadians. The Hip meant that much to all those people.

If you live outside of Canada, you’ve probably never heard of The Tragically Hip. Despite putting out 14 albums, and garnering significant radio airplay, sales, and all the big awards here, The Hip never made a dent in markets outside our borders. That’s sad.

But we sure loved them. The Hip were often referred to as Canada’s house band, and from the early days they toured from coast-to-coast. The early music was a lot of the same bluesy sort of beverage room rock & roll many of us grew up with. The sound evolved with the band, both in structure and atmospherics, and always featured the up-front vocal style, and lyrics, of front man Gord Downie.

Downie himself was truly front and center on this tour. Last spring it was announced the singer had terminal brain cancer. A short summer tour was offered, and tickets sold out quickly.

In the weeks leading up to the tour, even more so during the days prefacing the final show, media was full of stories and memories about the band, and the impact it had on the country and its people.

Everyone seemed to have a favorite song, or lyrics that spoke loudly, or took them back to a where and when. Downie’s lyrics were layered with Canadian landmarks and landscapes. The references were not always obvious, but you could taste a nationality.

Good art always takes on the tone of the times, and, often, the culture it is produced in.

What impressed me most over the past weeks and months, was the continual reference to Downie’s lyrics as pure poetry, and the man himself more as a poet than a singer. I’m sure it had little to do with the fact the band’s latest recording was titled Man Machine Poem.

The singer is a wordsmith, true and whole. He took what surrounded him, captured the essence of the environment, and turned out daring (occasionally oblique) lyrics with a twisted and torrential rhyme and reason.

Yes, without the music, it read well as poetry. There was some beautiful stuff.

So in all the hype over the tour, and the certain tragic end of a heartfelt and creative soul, admirers and supporters of the band not only referred to the songs as important, but as poetry.

Everyday fans of an everyman’s band were talking poetry. They weren’t talking about lyrics and anthems and just words that rhyme. They were talking about poetry, like it was what they believed in, and like it was something you could. Like it was something hip.

Poetry, these days, rarely gets that sort of respect. That’s sad.

I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again; poetry is the life force that can break down barriers and unite. It should be spoken more.

“It should bring people together.
Lovers, warriors, politicians and their prey

might better understand themselves and each other
if they thought more in poetry, than in whatever else

they might be thinking.”

We all learn about poetry, and learn it early on with nursery rhymes and latter music on record or the radio. It’s wrapped up in melody and often hidden in the music, but it is poetry. But nobody really talks about it that way. Poetry is just not as cool, or not spoken about like there is even the potential for cool, like music. Music is cool, but it’s just songs and discs or downloads (or vinyl).

The country united last Saturday, to say farewell to a band that has given them something to remember. Music can indeed unite a nation, but I’d like to think poetry had something to do with it as well.

“I am not sure if most people talk
poetry
enough.

Doesn’t it have to rhyme?
Not all of the time . . .
not for everyone.

If not a poem, then
a poet
is mainly misunderstood.

But how? The language is so direct,
it cuts out the crap, rarely are there ums and awes,
and

any hesitation is purposeful.
Poets do not stumble on words. Poets respect words, poets

breathe words.
Words are currency, for a poet. Why not for everybody?” 

   Why Only April
   © 2014 j.g.lewis

 

                                              Scant silken stream
                                                                        dividing line
                                                                  between reality
                                                                 and sensuality
                                                                                     softly
                                                                    floating upwards
                                                                        filling space
                                                                   between the ribs
                                                                                        inhale
                                                                              sandalwood
                                                                  lavender or patchouli
                                                                                 jasmine
                                                                               at night
                                                                   ease the mind
                                                                           wipe away
                                                                 remains of the day
                                                                             you can’t stop
                                                                                     time
                                                                              but you can
                                                                                 make it
                                                                                    bearable
                                                                                  scent
                                                                    the swiftest route
                                                                              to memory
                                                                               or comfort
                                                                               as you retreat
                                                                                       from
                                                                                  negative forces
                                                                   the essence of the moment
                                                                                        returns
                                                                                         a gentle
                                                                                    equilibrium
                                                                                    meditation
                                                                                   moments
                                                                                  for the self
                                                                                     marginalize
                                                                            negative influences
                                                                                           neutralize
                                                                       behaviours and patterns
                                                                                            creating
                                                                                   an environment
                                                                                              of hope
                                                                                       and awareness
                                                                                strengthen the senses
                                                                                                    soften
                                                                                             your world

                                              ©2016 j.g. lewis

There are opinions, thoughts, and people beyond this simple screen.

Voices travel through the gravity-defying glass and steel skyscrapers, and swiftly across the streets of sweet suburbia built over farmlands and ancient burial grounds serviced by the multi-lane highways butting up against old-growth forests.

Lessons are found on the sidewalks amongst the gypsies, punk rockers, tattooed love children and well-heeled pensioners, as much as they are in education’s hallowed halls or the food courts and washrooms of cash-strapped shopping malls.

Like a breath, wisdom is found in the breeze — most times gentle — and travels through us all, picking up the scent of humanity and carrying the emotions we live with day after day. These words are honest, and forthright; pollen for poets, snack food for thinkers, and dreams for disenchanted youth.

There is an attitude that cannot be denied, and there is a new place to find these thoughts.

The Urban Howl will capture the mood of the moment, expressing ideas and desire of those who, like us, want something more than what is dealt out by politicians, franchised into mediocrity, and allocated by a society that has lost its way.

Are we dreaming? Hell yeah, but isn’t that what this life is all about?

So much is happening in this vast virtual world. For months now we’ve been waiting for the stars to align, the right phase of the moon, and for the clock to stop ticking. We’ve been transforming as we wait, while the world changes, as it does, and as it always will be.

We want to capture that change, acknowledge not only what is happening, but also what can happen. It can happen right here.

http://theurbanhowl.com

The Urban Howl offers a platform for hope, for knowledge, and for curiosity. It is as open-minded as it is open to interpretation. There are no boundaries to this community, and writers and readers from across this big blue planet are welcome to participate. Come and join us on the frontline of a new magical paradigm.

The screen has edges; our world does not.
© 2016 j.g. lewis

http://theurbanhowl.com/2016/08/09/iwant-j-g-lewis/