The tap drips in this apartment I live in.

Day and night dripping, dripping.  No matter where I sit I can hear the sound of the tap. 

It is one of the loneliest sounds in the world.  When people come to visit which is not often they sit, fidgeting, pretending not to notice

then finally get up and try to shut it off.

Trying to stop it merely creates a different sound.  The apartment is downtown.

Day and night I hear the sound of the traffic. 

It is sometimes quiet, a hum in the

background and other times it is a roar loud enough to wake me from sleep.  There are 

a few trees outside the aparatment. When the wind  blows, which is often in this city it

makes a different kind of roar than the sound of the traffic but the two pitches blend to one sound, a high keening sound that puts my nerves on edge and makes me unable to

work.  I pace and pretend to read, listening to the sounds, hoping for a phone call or a knock on the door to break the roaring silence.  I can hear a few birds in the trees outside the window and the sounds of children playing

in the street.  From across town I can hear

trains shunting in the yard.  Occasionally

a horn honks or a siren passes.  Infrequently the street door of my apartment building

bangs and I listen for the footsteps that

I hope will end with a knock at my door.

It is as silent as it can be here.

 

The next move I make could be the wrong

one. I could get up and pace.  Check the time. Cook breakfast.  I could phone someone, arrange a meeting.  I could move to another city.  Maybe get a job and settle down. 

I'm over thirty.  Maybe I'll like having

children.  I could perhaps travel, see the

world.  Write a film script.  Join a rock band.

Maybe I should call her.  The next move

I make could be the wrong one.  Things will

be different now.  I quit drinking several

times last week. I probably won't feel like

seeing other women anymore.  I'm over

thirty.  Maybe a rock band.  Or travel. 

I could start jogging.  I've considered acting

as a career.  I could call her. Just to say hello.

The next move I make could be the wrong

one. I am restless.  I pace, drink, stare out the

window.  I am ambitious - I want to pick up newspapers and see what I have done.  

See my name on marquees, in lights.  I want

to see people reading my books on buses, 

in parks.  I want to hear laughter, weeping, applause.  I need controversy, gossip.

I am restless, human, I want my voice to be

heard.  It is as silent as it can be.

 

I hear voices.  There was a recurring dream

as a child.  A shapless texture of voices

calling my name, the colour of the dream was red.  Voices calling my name and the sound spun forming a red cone of sound, calling my name.  Murdoch, Murdoch.  Once during

school I ran away to another city with friends. 

I made them call me another name.  I am not 

Murdoch here.  Don't call me that name. 

I can hear her calling my name.  I always felt

uncomfortable when she said it.  She made

it sound formal, almost angry.  I hear voices,

calling my name.  It is as silent as it can be.  The next move I make could be the wrong

one.

 

I hear voices, the sounds of children playing

in the street outside.  I could see the pin

through the bars of my crib, lying on top of 

the bureau. I couldn't reach it but I was able to

move the crib by jerking my body against the bars, move it an inch at a time.  When I had

moved about a foot by straining my arm

I could just reach the pin with the tips of my

fingers.  I have the pin in my hands. I must see

why it is one of the things I know I must not

touch.  I play with it, turning it in my hand,

catching the light, trying not to cry when

I prick my finger.  Moving the crib had also

brought the wall socket into reach.  I tumble over the bars of the crib, cying, jubilant,

carring with me the secret of forbidden

electricity.  I am slightly older but still forced

to take naps which I hated.  I stayed on the

bed until the door was closed then

immediately got up and began to prowl

around teh room.  We had a pet mouse named

George who was kept in a small cage in the

room where I took my naps.  I stalked around,

sinister, secretive, knowing that if the door

was opened I would be spanked which

made the exploration better.  I came upon the

cage and saw the mouse try to hide under the

shavings.  I reached my hand in.  He struggled

and tried to bite.  I held him a long time until

he didn't move anymore.  He laid there with

his legs splayed out and his eyes bulging

open.  I prodded him a few times, hoping he

would move.  The realization that what made

him scurry and struggle was ended came to

me.  I was in possession of another secret.

I am six years old, walking on a hot afternoon alone down into the industrial area near our house.  I must have been there before because

I knew that in the place where they parked

the big trucks would be pictures in the cabs of naked women.  There was a song on the radio at that time that I liked and as I went to see

the naked women I sang the line over and

over, smiling in possession of another secret.  Bimbo, Bimbo, does your mommy know, you're going down the street, to see your little

girlio.  I hear the sound of children playing.

I am eight years old.  The sky is gray and hanging low but he air is warm.  We had divided into teams on the playground. 

There was no ball and the only goal was

territory claimed.  Gradually my team

deserted and went over to the other side.

I couldn't quit, surrender.  I could see them

all standing by the corner of the school,

waiting.  I ran at them, into the middle of

them, all of them. Hands were grabbing me

and I fell back.  The bell rang.  They looked at

me differently after that. I can hear the sounds

of children playing in the street near my apartment.  It is as silent as it can be.

I hear voices.

 

My father's arms are bigger than mine, stronger.  His chest, hands, thighs are bigger, stronger.  My father rode rails, worked in logging camps, went hungry, fought a war. 

My father build a home with his hands and arms and chest that are bigger, stronger, more capable than my own.  In the evening, for pleasure, my father would take me to ride our horses.  He rode with his back straight, never fell off, was never frightened.  He trained horses with a whip; it was a frenzy like sex;

I felt sick watching the horses cower in front

of him.  He wore pearl button shirts and his

hat to one side, one pant leg tucked into his boots the other left out.  Women liked my father.  I saw him kissing a woman behind the barn who was not my mother.  Men liked my father and were slightly afraid of his arms, his

hand that are bigger than mine, faster.

My brothers and sisters loved our father and sometmes the love was as close to hate as

a child can feel for a parent.  Every morning

the year we lived on the big farm my father and I, no one else, wold get up at six and the three stupid eyed cows would be waiting to

get milked.  My father would milk two and

I would struggle with one and they never

put their foot in his pail or knocked over his stool.  Nat King Cole would sing Ramblin'

Rose on the radio.  My father and I knew all

the words and would sing along.  My father

lost his eyes; he went blind.  He lost his business and mortgaged the home he built

with his own hands that are bigger than mine, stornger, to buy the farm but the land was

dead or something went wrong and we

moved to a house that my father had not built and that he did not own.  He paid rent on

a house he did not build with his hands.  It is

as quiet as it can be here. I hear voices, footsteps, his boots echoing on the hardwood

floor in the hall.  We would sit tense,

breathless.  No one would breathe and he 

would stand in the door staring at us from 

nearly sightless eyes.  Sometimes he 

would turn without speaking and go back

to the darkened room he called his office.

Sometimes he said "You're nothing but

a bunch of cocksuckers."  Once, when I was young he told me he loved me.  Later, years later, I was sitting at the side of his bed and

his nurse came in.  He said, "this is my son," and the pride was unmistakable in his voice.  His hand was gripped hard over mine.

 

Much of what I am now is because of what 

I could not dare to be.  This poet thing, haunted, restless, wielding nothing but a pen

to stave off nightmares and ghosts was my choice to become.  There were no other choices.  A child is born like a tossed dice, 

a turned card.  Geography, year, status, 

a whim of luck or fate.  I was born the seventh child of eleven and the crap shooters know that seven come eleven is the shooter's point, the score at which the dice change hands.   Mine was the shooters point and the dice

came into my hands.  Much of what I am is because of what I could not dare to be; the die was cast.  The black and white ivories spun

and came up October, 1953.  Male.  Good health.  Father, self-employed trucker, haunted.  Mother, housewife, haunted.  Calgary, Canada.  Restless, a dreamer. 

Much of what I am is because of what

I could not dare to be.  The die was cast, not

into bronze or steel but into flesh, my flesh.

There was much that I would not dare become.  A pilot, an accountant, Prime Minister.  What was left was this world of mine, awaiting description, awaiting the transformation of nightmares to dreams and

then making those dreams real.  I claimed

a world that was never offered.  The hosptial

I was born into is less than a mile from where

I sit.  Slightly more than a mile in the other direction is the house I grew up in, still standing, the one my father built with his hands.  When I walk out in this city it is familiar to me as breathing; this city and

I have grown together and not as expected. 

 

Let it begin here, at this point of ending. 

There has been completion, of a kind that

would otherwise be unobserved but for the

degree of consequence.  Losses and gains in this place I have come to are only measured

by the price exacted by time itself which we know is cyclical, immeasureable except for the

notches which we ourselves make like those

in a gun.  This living is a bit like the Neal Cassady way of dying who, accepting

a dare, which we all do simply by being alive,

marched out of San Miguel de allende north

on the train tracks counting every tie

as it passed.  Shirtless, addled by a lifetime

of similar dares and contests he counts off the

passing ties; the number grows unbearably

high and even Cassady himself succumbs and

reaches that number which is to all of us

a secret and one too many and dies.  The tap drips in this apartment I live in. I listen to the

sound it makes, marking time as it passes.

Time: cyclical, immeasurable, complete but

notched into irregular sequences denoting at

once beginnings and endings.  A bead of water

forms on the lip of the tap clinging by its own

surface tension until full formed, then falls.

At the instant of its falling I am this thing,

sitting here, listening to its sound marking

the passage of time: cyclical, immeasurable,

complete.  In the sound of its falling, I hear

a cacophony of sound, the voices of my life

continue to echo in my ears long after they are

spoken.  Into this silence that roars I answer

with the sound of my voice.  Losses and gains 

are measured by the cost exacted in time.

The losses are many, daily and I pay them in 

their turn.  What I have gained is the sound of

my voice.  Like Mercurtio's wound it is not

much but it will do, will serve.

 

  

 

It is autumn now, at the time of this writing,

this sitting, staring out windows, this pacing.

The wind rattles the few leaves left on the 

trees.  In the corners of the buildings the

leaves, caught in eddies, scatter and return.

In their scatter and return I see my own and

remember.  I park the car and walk down the

driveway across the field.  The house is gone.

the barn, the chicken shed, the rusting cars, 

the heap of wine bottles, all is gone.  All that is

left is the trees and grass.  The wind rattles the

few leaves left on the trees and flattens the

grass.  The sound is like voices or the shadow

of voices of people who had lived there and

who now are gone.  The leaves, caught in

eddies, scatter and return.  There is nothing

here.  I kick through the matted grass looking

for some kind of sign that will tell me yes I

was here and the others were here ... there is

nothing.  All that is left is the trees and grass and the whining hiss of traffic from the

freeways that cut through the fields and grew

as the city grew making an island where we

lived.  The leaves, caught in eddies, scatter

and return.

 

The tap is dripping and will not stop.

It is the most alone sound in the world and

the traffic roars without end outside the

window of the room where I sit.  The next move I make could be the wrong one.  It is

a lame and obvious image.  A dripping tap. 

I'm writing poetry here.  This might as well

rhyme.  Go and fetch the manager and tell him

to fix the fucking tap.  Cut the poetic bullshit

all it needs is a stupid rubber washer adn the

tap will stop dripping.  The next move I make

could be the wrong one.  Is it too early to start

drinking?  Is it too late to stop?  The next move

I make could be the wrong one.  I'll shut the

window so I can't hear the hiss and whine of

traffic.  I've listened to taht fucking sound too

god damned long.  I'll fix the tap and close the

window and tell the fucking kids to play

somewhere else.  It is as quiet as it could be

here.  Don't just sit here.  Get up, pace, drink,

light another cigarette.  Look in the mirror at

the wrinkles in your eyes.  I hear voices.

Maybe I could call her.  Maybe she would

be glad to hear the sound of my voice. 

What will I tell her?  I wrote a poem today.

I paced, drank, stared out the window,

listened to the tap drip, the sound of traffic.

 

It is autumn now, at the time of this writing,

staring out windows, this pacing.  The wind

rattles the few leaves left on the trees.  In the corners of the buildings the leaves, caught in

eddies, scatter and return.  In their scatter and

return I see my own and remember.