Poems - JP Melville

Alberta Hull Ottawa 1994 - 2019 jp melville Hull, across the river from Ottawa, between the Alexandria bridge and the Champlain bridge, sitting by the river, on a rock, on the river bank. An old man walks past me, his eyes searching the sand and gravel and then looking off to the distance downstream, he kicks a can and ambles on. My entire time here has been spent leaving; I will miss nothing. In fact, since I left Thailand, Benin, Kosovo… so many places, that's been years and years an eternity it seems, much of everything has been, or has felt, a distance removed. I watch the busses and cars roll along over the bridges and on the road on the far bank and I see toys filled with animated manikins. I see the tall apartment buildings and I know that inside them people laugh and weep and worry and watch television and apply cosmetics. I am unmoved. A seagull takes off from the wharf and f...

My People 1993   jp So, I had gone to school and Melanie hooked up with Derek and Andrew went to Namibia and Paul got a school scholarship and Caroline returned from Honduras and Lance put a roof on his car wash and Andy cracked another gutter joke and Ruth worried about community farming and Linda zapped and zipped and zollered organizing a b c AND d and Tony flew and made babies and Farokh believed in development and Sally bussled and busied getting messages to everyone and soccer would soon kick off and some went gone to Malawi and India and Indonesia and Columbia and The Gambia and jp cancelled everything to stay home and not try to save or plan the world. Of course, as a modern day missionary of the rational mind jp (that's me) would have to go through the motions of believing the mania of school, washing cars, soccer, and flying off to other countries.   He would have to do a thesis.   He had decided on strategic economic comm...