Si Transken Poetry

On Si Transken:
Si Transken is a survivor of incest. Her father sexually abused her during her whole childhood. When she ran away from home (sic) when she was 15 she began to discover – or more vividly also see – how many other predators there were out there in the wider world who’ll take advantage of young women who are without supportive kin and who have no money. She waitressed in greasy spoons and at 18 (when it is legal to do so) she began waitressing in strip joints and disco bars. In these contexts the wages were just as bad as in greasy spoons and all night coffee shops but the tips were much much better. And the music was so loud that she didn’t have to really listen to the men’s comments. Having survived those contexts she has incrementally found various healing contexts and healing world views. She identifies now as a Buddhist, an ecofeminist, a creative writer, a social justice activist and as an academic. Si teaches in the social work program at UNBC and has published in a variety of contexts. The 15 poems in this collection explore her thoughts about violence/ healing and our relationships with our bodies,our relationships with our sisters/ comrades; our relationships with the levels of government which are supposed to protect us; our relationships with nature/ animals, our relationships with our own creative spiritual energies – and sometimes even more importantly our relationships with our own righteously rude sense of humour!

GAZING AT STARS
It’s comin on Christmas. They’re putting up trees…
the memorized lists of lines from wistful songs are floating
amidst snowflakes, the mythology of our cultures,
the advertisements from capitalism demanding we own
everything, buy everything, possess everything.
It’s comin on Christmas. They’re putting up trees…

it’s the time of year that stressed students crack
& a few inevitably flick-splash poison at me,
largely, & yet unforgiveably, because
i’m at the front of the room, vulnerable,
unable & unwilling to slap back – a large red target.
it’s the time of year that the murders of women
come to public mind & us activists review, review, review
what has transpired since he killed the 14, since
the hundreds of other men have shot, stabbed, beaten,
run over, axed… the hundreds of women & girls.
It’s comin on Christmas. They’re putting up trees…
it’s the time of year i think of my mother being beaten
& chosing again & again to remain because God
blessed that union, because she’s got no where else to go
because she’s now almost 70 & it doesn’t matter
much any more because it’s the only life she’s known.
it’s the time of year for us too-few progressives
devoted to acts of kindness to hold each other centrally
& reverently because the new year isn’t opened to us yet,
our fears are bundled, the old years are hanging
heavily, the possibilities are just at the edge of our grasp
but incredibly enticingly visible.
Si, November 2006

SO WHAT.
thank the goddesses of practical mercies there aren’t any emails, phone calls, messages or other problem-saturated situations or requests on my immediate screens & horizons. i’ve been saving up & winding out for this
melt down, skulk about, soft crash landing.
46 years of rushing, thrashing, leaping, trying to catch up
& claw up one rung at a time
with so few helping hands -- i’ve made the ribbon at the marathon & crossed to the other side.
so i’m catching my breath now, waiting for
the foot swelling to go down, washing off the sweat, noting the muscle soreness & knowing it too will subside sometime not necessarily soon.
but on this immediate side of the public ribbon
this long distance running multiply-competing
asthmatic anaemic athlete is craving some seasons of plateau, realization, pause in the gulping of hard dirty air, appropriate medicalization of all the injuries sustained inevitably on such a course that was as much a forced march as a race & sometimes it was more of a fear juiced flight from accidental bullets than anything rational, noble or intentional.
thank the goddesses too for always reminding me along the way that not too many people care too much one way or the other except for in how they too can share the prizes or avoid the losses.
Si, Dec. 06


Tits, Ass and Sass
Humour, wittiness, irony, playful sarcasm, satire and merriment are done differently and unpredictably in all the roam & root of our cultures. Difficult to analyze or categorize these jesterly states of grace. Big-frontal-lobed beasts are peculiar in displays.

Humour's the scarce resource strip club waitressing taught me. Bikers, lawyers, miners, low-lifes - variously drunk, nasty, heart-ugly, or silly; wanting to fight, harass, compete, trouble up my shift. But and if i got my nuances and tones just right - and i did artfully and selfishly learn to get it all right - then all night i'd get them tipping me, be-friending me, protecting me (from each other & from themselves) bizarrely.

It's surely one of the mysteries of this universe that men like that are the grungy unsuspecting bankers who financed my doctorate in Feminist Studies. Now how funny is that!




Coffee - My Oldest Living Addiction
My savior, million times over, and hero doctor.
Gorgeous reviver of my own artistic concocting

And isn't it a sin when those hucksters or machines sell something like coffee - but it's old, cheap, punishing? A waitress once told me that the customers she dislikes are the ones she serves decaf to but doesn't tell them she's done that.

Lets them believe their injecting the real stuff.



** Making Silly **
lighten the daily lingering.
green strawberries handle enormous hope.
scoot your inner belled cat; get her skilled at scratching, poisoning, standing up to
those stealing dogs.
teach her it isn't silly to hope.
hidden give-aways are waiting to be
with your silky-sleepiness.
& when you must rise up,
snap car doors tight & just drive on ? leave
lemon rinds shredded at their door ?
then your sneaky fear loosens
so let it go, let it go anyway while you
leave mustard yellow stains behind
as you streak forward.



** Contests **
there are gift horses always kicking me in the teeth
the braces don't work
the mouth shields don't work ?
i'm always keeping repair teams busy & rich.

caring for creatures, forests of concern, rendering the dishes, serving the goods, washing the dishes, wondering what to do with the scraps, making compost heaps all round my perimeter gets me no promotions.
cold, cautious, conditioned to be mostly polite.
the market doesn't sell all the tools we need
& religion doesn't sell all the fools we need
so fumbling, we pretend there's a defined project.
any winter won't listen to your complaints
manmade & most natural forces are like that ?
non-discriminating
& mean to all equally.
most of the bus drivers, angels, salesclerks, technicians
have got commissions & tips they're chasing;
they've got union pay, pensions,
get-out-of-jail chips they're harvesting.
like those thousands of sixteen-years-old flipping
600 burgers a day over & over & onto another another bun do they care where, which, how
the cows died?



** Duo Zones Of Stickness & Flight **
teaching adds heroics to giver, taker & all in-between

oh no it's complicated dreaming makes strange the patterns & possibilities

oh shit I was almost caught! reading figures stuff out, figures stuff in, restuffs the emptiness

i'm lonely in all these constructions resisting's uneasy but subverting & sabotaging can be fun!

& Wednesdays meetings go on & on & on educating changes the bones, upgrades the marrow

belligerently they refuse abundance standing in line goes on for too long for us small people

i try to not be annoyed but i deserve reprieve risk-taking changes everyone whether it hurts or not

& everyone picks my bones for their protein pondering tires me out, high-talls me up

buses coming & going with ugly doors learning aint cheap like it used to be; lining squares up & knocking them down costs lots

the windows are designed to never open ? no fresh air gets in sleeping escapes and/or re-Wows the flesh & blood.

those garbage bags aren't big enough & there aren't enough of them!



** Any Day Valentines For The Self ** bake heartfood & gobble.
snip off your harnesses
exchange their buckles for soft stretchy spaces
insist that tomorrow
they will fit differently, more loosely.
tell all haunters to fuck off permanently.
scatter crumbs on the floor
& feel their butteriness between your naked toes.
let the cats play on the kitchen table
in the perfect sun beam.
make a poster in the shape of yourself that says:
i am a Canadian Tire store
with every tool sparkled, glittered, well-oiled
effective, precisely fitted & suited for my ferocious & tender grip.



** Purple **
for Dahne Harding & Jung
What happens when blue & red get mashed.
a color un-associated with any holiday.
a lovely old-fashioned lamp mysteriously placed in the modern restaurant i'm writing this in.
the odd color of some people's gums,
grape Koolaid, popsicles, gumballs,
exquisite plumage on exotic birds or
as in bruises, welts, wounds.
the color of penises in rape & oral assault
stories told to me or written by victims.
are there hundred dollar bills this color?
thousand dollar bills this color?
velvety petunias in my gram's garden in the years before she became too ill to care strongly.
deep purple rock music, deep purple feeling when stoned, deep purple as a fantasy place i never found.
excessive, extravagant hue that belonged to Kings & religious leaders which has been stolen by us.
meat slabs, veined with white & red, on an old freezer thawing in the second restaurant job i quit.
only ever had one outfit this color: a Danskin disco waitress outfit i wore &
sweated in when i was a 110 pound 18 year old:
it made the tips of my tits stand up & it made me tips.
a word i thought i had no thoughts about
but, as so often happens to humans, i was wrong.

For more on Si Transken go to:
http://row.unbc.ca/people/si_transken.html
YOU MAY HAVE TO COPY AND PASTE LINK TO GET TO THE URL.