Sunday, December 31, 2006

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

[more]



Sunday, December 17, 2006

chapbook (another)

published in Ottawa Arts Review, Volume 1, Issue 1
http://heat.artsuottawa.ca/main.html

Friday, December 15, 2006

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Friday, December 01, 2006

twenty nine and thirty

rain drudge sickness drudge
tv white noise nothing but
you forget how to dream
how to make plans
how to move
forward
fever and liquids
everything flushes out
leaves nothing behind
worry a dull refrain
and wire hum
background constant helpless
flutter you can do
dishes you can do
no cure no space for silence
every instant filled
water down windows vertical
prison bars
body you could be
are likely
next

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

twenty eighth

cold bus ride up somerset to bank
toques woollen mitts
the seniors have taken over
the grocery store
this is not the day to rush
seven varieties of apples
but no russets
more than enough chocolate
take a deep breath, close eyes
roll cart on
winter’s urge for beef
steaks burgers meatpies roasts
around childhood dining table
youve forgotten the recipe
for yorkshire handed down handed down
nanan’s treacle pudding and bakewell
tart the season custard and spirits
not liquid kind

pics to go with twenty four to twenty seven



twenty four to twenty seven

eastward sleeps an hours sunlight
the last time your feet won’t be sore
in three days
coasting in to central station
bland where train riders
arrive
in montreal
you wish for something
grand like arrival
plush red carpeted sound
like the champagne you keep cold
in an ice bag in your suitcase
with the broken wheel and the zines
a change of clothes
that afternoons wander thru the parc
la fontaine and on saints laurent
and dominique
portuguese chicken
the highway a lumberyard complete with totem pole
this is how you arrive
in outrement straight into the sun
a mirror against the wall
every angle refracts an ache
for something

you are distant here from you
and others thats a given
yield to traffic and jaywalk with the rest
rachel bakery and velorestaurant
coffee supposedly stronger than
this
an old couple having breakfast
he brings a large mug to the table
eggs benedict a days breakfast

the church basement
dogs running around
hip sayings on pins and slogans
you gawked at more than thirty
years ago
maybe you time traveled on the train
someone slips pyschodelia in your water
because this is a throwback
to something you never were part of
and all this time you thought
you were moving forward

old montreal champ de mars
stained glass rainbow sixties
a guy sings at the harp sign
off key
homeless in the tunnel covered
in white threadbare blankets and
garbage bags
down the street from chateau ramzay
where the history is preserved better

boutique hotels where old banks used
to be film crews where boutique
hotels used to be
theyre tearing down this old city
theres a good view of the port
with no ships waiting to dock

venetian slats slip light over you
sleep early sound of sitcoms blues
effective tonic more than gin
there are no cats on this street
just dogs and old men who hear
voices on mont-royal and shoe stores
and accents like bedding not language
you accessorize

twenty three

vacant unremembered
many things could have
happened
you woke up at some point
oh yes, there was laundry
and staying home
weatherered nothing
sometimes you want it simple
as washing, drying
the spin cycle
no leaks, no hanging
clothes outside for that fresh air
smell
just loonies and quarters
slipped in slots
a button pushed
the timer, a buzz
and folding

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

pictures that go with twenty two


twenty two

centennial public recess bell
first frost in snapshot sky
last winters fall thin sheet of snow on ice
on gloucester
laurier cardboard nest for the homeless
once you saw yourself there
severity of escape the last

fibreoptic for holes
to drop into
to float through connect
streets papered with reuters ho hum
christmas wreaths wrap wellington
how many shopping daze before
how many winds and snow storms before
this year ends on a sunday
eleventh hour is now
is to lie at the bottom of the deep end
will you ever dive again

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

twenty one

topiary christmas crescents
bus rides in slovakian, asian and italian
the number 3 is late again
you warn her
all the crumpled bungalos
and townhomes jigsawed together
a family a missing piece
turn a corner for the duplex and sprawling detached
the two car garage and landscape art
then again on merrivale
the big box stores
st. ritas students
raol wallenberg in the middle of this unremarkable
affects you most

twenty

a dark café and jazz in the late afternoon
rush hour traffic still an hour away
the whispered conversation of two
who are not lovers
his latest chapter and her
gossip
a winnipeg cowboys contribution
and too many oatmeal cookies

nineteenth

a tavern concrete down
crowds to listen
opera and a well celebrated
man sways his words
around the room
you must
at the end
absolutely stand
and applaud
this rapscallion out
shakespeares shakespeare

eighteenth

santa parade every year down bank
closes laurier elgin
last hard ground
and the cold and the tarmac already white
suburban folk unused
to walking block Lord Elgin
taxi stands
pretty soon snow will fly
wish i had a river
i could skate away
on

seventeenth

oratio sun scarcely a cloud hallelujah
restaurant unbelievably closed at lunch
this is what
happens in movies
dundonald park a spy’s hideaway
you bench it blue
leather jacket yellow beret
your soon to be lover across the street
is good with his hands
an afternoon of listening to the high winds
what matters most is those fingers
and their ability to curl slowly
inside

Friday, November 17, 2006

sixteenth

stoned on sinus pain two
cups irish breakfast
for indoors
and banished pigeons shelter
beneath balcony table disturb
a cold draft
writing to be done
stories just below
ground
apartment chant of
water drip and fridge
the flush above
high heels high heels high heels
possibilities of soup
blankets
crumbs in sheets
still more rain against bedroom window
to sleep

Thursday, November 16, 2006

pics to go with fifteenth


fourteenth and fifteenth

escalator relief canes and motorized
scooters wide familiar
where are the 1800s
two languages instead of twenty
sandy hill quaker state garage
deli stores
moss coats trees
at cathcart and cathcart
dalhousie so many hands
out for money
last warm days occasional
golden
patio ceremonies plastic leaves
strung
perfume of woodsmoke
on clothes
turn corner on cumberland
so many art galleries hair studios
a woman is painting her nails
in the window
your friends
masochism tattooed on her belly
sideline acquaintance
doesnt meet
your eye
fallen petals dead maples
neon words
sussex lunch crowd bypass
your destination
the angel

ninth to thirteenth

ottawa to toronto
behind
quad seats where bureaucrat gamblers bicker
morning beer increases machismo
and toilet stink
speed of
aluminium siding
no longer field no longer fallow
napanee
bellville brockville kingston cobourg
in every small city a kfc
glints of water scarborough bluffs
nuclear green water
union barrel vault windows
and tennessee marble
distorted arrival
red arrow to city
1927 prince of wales alberta ticket
$71.20
katherine goviers fables
sooner or later every one lives
on brunswick avenue
future bakery cabbage rolls
what is it with this city
and cabbage
corner of jarvis and church
one spark of waiting
streetcar touch of wire
flame
ten pm pours concrete
distillery lager under lamplight
we dont have at home
rum raisin
polite commuters
the underground
film crews and furniture stores
on king

a fog to leave behind
and lake ontario chill
leaf then no leaf is like moving
backwards through time
eyes closed
a civilised railway vodka and orange
rocked to sleep red
barn interruption
wave goodbye to 401 traffic

home is an empty station
where no one waits
a small bus on the queensway
in the dark
warm rain on bronson with your suitcase
of books
negotiate election signs puddles
sense of while you were gone
something happened

unmade and rotten fruit welcome
home

Thursday, November 09, 2006

eighth

view down queen
streetcars used to travel
constructions new tall buildings
shoot up mushroom like
block julianna sight lines
his apartment
sandalwood smoke an ovation guitar
ponytail and three ex wives
small bottles of glenfiditch on window sills
fog thick with ghosts of former lovers
the number sixteen a pothole distraction
and theyre gone

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

walkabout photos - for yesterday


seventh

past mary
down metal steps
st vincents orderlies and nurses start their shift
bottom of preston
back room arabic, english, french, spanish
espresso borgia with orange peel
complications of coffee in little italy
so near the hospital
surgery conversations and cancer
second day in a row you hear
the word to walk
out sadness

geese honk sole dows lake sound
motion november most shades of brown
bundles of leaves nested breath for later
in the pub men talk of war
your shelter is the table, this beer you drink
the small silences your body contains

Monday, November 06, 2006

sixth

james st. leaves in bags
sun blinds at somerset and bank
long shadows
james correa heaven has a bright blue sky
applies today
your body warm
how to get winter out of bones, joints
humour, one of the four-water in lungs
sylph invisible element in air
always red couches large garbage day
this is the day for joining pieces
a poet you never heard died friday
love against best evidence he said
sunsets pink tonight
for once you leave the light
off

fifth

warehoused toxic
snow settles over weeds
st. laurent wind tunnel
sludge
plexiglas
idling fumes
tin can buses saved for eastern
bingo hall evangelical
trucks end to end
outbound to 417 to montreal, to vermont
diners, donut shops
gas stations both sides at hudson
day rates and mattress for an hour

Saturday, November 04, 2006

fourth

at seven am a woman rakes leaves
on somerset they’re cleaning brick
by the ruined duke and inevitable pigeons
funeral day at st patricks cathedral
celtic cross, a ditch below door
and tarnished copper steeple
a saturday morning ramble
splurge of magazines you carry home
with the tea and throat lozenges
an almanac remedy for november

third

morning birds flicker walls
truck brakes squeal at bottom of ashburnham hill
this is how you wake
smell of cold slow morning to move
must be a thousand coffee shops
the one you save for late afternoon
number three bus winds through new edinburgh
stucco pink fortress beside yellow brick
river every blue
stanley park ottawa style
a man with a chainsaw clears away old logs
once a city built on bytown lumber
one hundred metres from rideau hall
the sign says
canada and the world
rockliffe and a bad sewage system
parliamentary puppet strings gone wireless

Friday, November 03, 2006

second

all souls day blue and storm pending
window display a fashionable fall on ice
this is the hour for staying in place
pinot noir and soup the cello whispered
conversations clatter beneath
restaurant of white linen napkins
a cherry wood armoire is open
wine shines like stained glass
the cathedral of trench coats
clash with butternut squash
former record store
an ancient limestone building
the place for hitching horses
walls a haunted travelogue
itinerant canal workers bought whisky, their veg
from market stalls
ogilves department store when you arrived
women on buses wore fur and hudsons bay coats
modern voyageurs or coureurs de bois

today on the ninety five
boy with studded lip
seniors cheeks pink from a sparks street wind

struggle to listen
this walking spell an alchemy of wine
burgundy dragon
the snow falls finally

Thursday, November 02, 2006

beginnings of november long poem

first

all saints day from ground up
contemplate mothers poisoned bone
pass a makeshift tombstone
plaid handymen prepare storm doors
trample last marigolds
a glebe walk away

old ottawa south ladies discuss october wind
turkey necks clenched
proper way to steep tea (is to brood)

paintings of fields easy curves imprisoned by lines and their brief
flowers cornered
you wonder about restless
men capture
your eyes
know well enough to look
away

ungathered in light are the ghosts
glass shattered stories twenty five down
glisten moments like these

her indian silk gifted by sister
matches café
music bells for no reason
blue haired kindred draws words over paper
what is it to yearn

here are too
many women urge to walk

chrysanthemum yellow at fairbourne and belmont
halloween webbing on riverdale hedges
every house a veranda
each veranda with wind chimes
stones smooth over terrace
exclusive hills

between echo drive
and canals other side
you are concrete
balcony spiderweb dream

Thursday, October 26, 2006

more journey poems

(2) journey / along

shoulders soul contact between
estrange. commute their
distance. transform surface
of daily body
language into deep
structure. decipher intent of
bones.
read external. passengers
refuse. push thru anabolic outbound
crowd.

defy dimension after
fifth treated. silence a frost
mark on patio. black
maple leaves fate. to
shadows. self forms
unwrinkled sheets.
how a body moves
without.

(3) journey / down, through

as if thru water a body soundtracks
frequency. deflects artefact
of undersea words. propagate
wave if
tumbled thru the heart.

travel light. and water
better. than move.
thru shallow. molecules
measure nothing. echo
return

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

twenty four sensuous phrases for every day

skein of wool
the theory of plate tectonics
the refrigerator is humming
tea service
mastedon sweet mastedon
brought to you by the letter el
affricates and fricatives
the schwa knows better
blue roses
green glass goblins
do you have this in china silk
stone the ruddy prose
someone is heating icicles on the stove
smooth brown rabbit
beware the dust addict
spaghetti owes
the bullet is on time
clouds make the man
the adam’s apple of his eye
yellow serenade
lobster fruit or vegetable
small dogs wearing rain
the sound of ocean on cobblestones
day’s edge serrated

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Friday, September 29, 2006

dream

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

collation daze

matryoshka

or those russian nesting dolls

fingers flying faster than brain
after sleep
of swimming
who remembers

one writer dreaming of another who dreams of another
re cur sive

mine features Stephen Brockwell
who doesn’t want gin

and then an airport
as so often happens
the blur into
out of

enter revolving door
forklift sound
turns on side

and you wonder
how will you
leave

the weatherman
says cold and rain
all day

Thursday, September 07, 2006

the secret is timing

321

from here to tavernity

Sunday, August 27, 2006

two from rasputins

andrea banjoes heartbreak, sings a montreal cold storm
masters capo mathematics

some of this applicable
only in winter

like you she is
comfortable riding
the bus

a pair of sneakers
strung above
street lights show
walking down bronson
or is it up?

this is august
you continue
snowflakes of her voice
melting you down
to midnight

&&&

wind blown over bottle
anticipates an arrival

rozalind presses a pedal
to loop memory
fluted

an island where unwashed people
take her in

not toronto, not family

a microphone
guitar and small room
far from grey hound bus pass
small suitcase of lyric travels
for sale, a string of breaking
hearts

yes she calls ottawa

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Friday, August 04, 2006

notes towards

[wish i could put right spaces in for all my poems, but dunno how]

(1)

before knowledge
cry * storm * song

memrie’s drench

who is there to tell

who is there to listen

to wait out lightning

snatch back child’s hand
from wrong iron gate

fallen tiger
lily

(2)

rise over kitchen linoleum

stretch your hand out and

fly thru untouchable sky

thisiswhatyouwant

nothing solid beneath

(3)

never rub brass lamp

you know the genie

keep him bottle blue

ether on the skin

with one touch

evaporate

Friday, July 28, 2006

the sand elegies

published in ottawater.com 3.0

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

waiting rain

willow blooms
brush curb
sing lightning, sing whisky
swig august indigo
dawn fog burns curryhot
shrubs turn black
bugs fly sluggish across parch
mud is a story for fools
spinach unfurls in sand
corn spills into cracks
slam dough on board
too hot for wood burning
rots in sun
nobody’s hungry
dusty mouths fill pails
a scratch of moonlight through clouds
finally moist drops
in air
brooks overflow
moon drips luminous

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

marauder of the fold

to be published by my self-publishing imprint Angel House Press and to be launched at the ottawa small press fair along with two other chapbooks on june 16, 2007

Saturday, July 08, 2006

Hallelujah

published in Last Tracks, In/Words, 2006

www.capitalysyn.com

Monday, July 03, 2006

Minutes Fo(u)r Last

“It’s a hymn to being alive. It’s a hymn to love lost. To love. Even the pain of existence, which ties you to being human, should receive an amen, or a hallelujah.”
--Jeff Buckley, 1994

choose a river single malt
minor lift ~ major fall
sink
three-octave-smooth-fire sub
merge
Rickenbaker 360/ 12 string
plug it
wolfe river boots on love is
not a victory march
swim a broken cold
hallelujah

holy dove
your draw is

every breath

Plundering Elizabeth Smart

Apparently when Smart's book By Grand Central Station, I Sat Down And Wept came out, her mother went to every bookstore in Ottawa and bought out all the copies. I fell in love with this book. Here are my plundered parts:

Pt. 1

Monterey waiting moment
desire madonna eyes
postpone miracle fire hung with vines

faith across leering world
pacific in blue spasms red
avalanche double-size flowers
legends of bloodfeuds
suicide the very silence

he only a word
hermaphrodite love
thru appletree golden indeterminate
metaphor unhappy moon
under thumb
thrust insinuation thousands
dead grown to fruit

shadow
is written escape
hawk far out of world

jungled angelic unhealable velvet wing seeds
damp dark sorrow
tenacious goddess of all empty
grieving

gravity connected ripe
no beauty in denying centre
huge and simple
smoke to hold on

Pt. 2

come dying body future ghost
drips remembrance
waters another pearl
beguiled to lie down
bones old trees decipher
parchment anagrams
torture windiest symbol
egg gabriel michael
truth brushes trembling night

Pt. 3

floods everything over
liquid gratitude
inside ticking remorse
fiery spill behind gauze
crushed bamboo birth
disrupt envy
noise of inside subtle
fluttered circle
no room urging song

shabby tables mojave
silver poise
take
everything

Pt. 4

border turn lilies guard
bracelet scrawled white
liberty clefts heart carbon
sought thirty million
lineaments of gratified
desire milk none happened
swear

Pt. 5

returning thru
gullies willow whips
moulded flag wav-
ing allude history
intoxication

Pt. 6

swivel symbolic medieval
pin placards frozen chaudiere
eleven thousand faces
illegal kiss ottawa new year’s
bruised goodbye
jazz of warzones ship
down
twelve more useless hours
power to endure temptation
sidles up devil justice yearn ease
salvaged from blood

Pt 7

letter folded steam on coils
artist orchard blood on clothes
stalled passion burnished scene
but no no

Pt. 8

antagonists swept up blizzard
bleeding minute near dawn
exact lightning glaze spat
liberated cunt
mad face in half lit
room foolproof games
clay archetypes return nameless
crucified over five hundred
squeeze grief killed daily
murder has ceased
to beat
foreboding jangle burrowing
whirlpool like armies
generations of heather comfort
old
no consquence

Pt 9

drug to ease
blank days caught
eclipse unremembering
joined mouths
volcano imagination pressing
sedative monotony saints pedantic
blur message elaborate so cold
lace sexy kindled lavish spring
squander relentless
retrace tigress ultimatum
Pt. 10

By Grand Central Station
I sat down
and wept
fallacy signals iron-muscled
fated island craves violence
all-night cafes third avenue
failure
eye full of dust
longitude of inevitable great globe
separated cells falling stars
corolla
O hurricane
as air
rivers beckon dragonfly lined
sterile battles lost

do you hear?

Thursday, June 29, 2006

moonpieces. fragments out of ordinary

full moon

open mouth
admit a truth
too late
the man’s face
ripples a silver smirk on black water
and whisky
to the devil angel flies
play your blood electric guitar
pluck out fire
of name
your lips mouth
o moon
guppy out of water
choke on reality
oxygen’s a cold comfort now
isn’t it?


trap-ease

just a fingernail’s worth of booze
and she’s seeing the moon as if a glass half full
ever talk to her
she walks where you would never
circus animal girl on stilts
truth swallower
give her a look
she’ll set you
on fire

whereabouts at night

there she goes again
smelling the moon
haven’t you told her
a thousand times
you’ve seen her fly
pluck it like a daisy
she’s gone
there’s a hole
in the sky
where you look

this harvest

dreams of soft butter moon
lemon cake rise
big enough to taste
what’s come over you
what you crave
isnt sugar

soon, gothic

after the sun bloodset horizon abandon
geese flown vee getaway
alone no moon all this walk
dark corners sidewalk crevice night blooms
crow call black water
who’s afraid of empty sky

The Molecular Structure of Marriage

A marriage carries no electrical charge.

is made up of two or more partners,
of same or different sexes,
joined by one or more covalent
chemical bonds.

is in constant motion.

its state (solid, liquid, or gaseous)
depends on speed
on separation.

its compound is represented
by a marital formula.

A more complex structure
shows
the arrangement.

In a chemical reaction between spouses,
is often broken apart
into radicals that recombine to form
other. Two or more
will form a single larger,
or a large will be broken up
into several smaller.


of women, H2,
each consists
of two atoms of hydrogen.

of men, H2O,
contain an atom of oxygen
as well as two of hydrogen.

A heterosexual bond, CO2,
is linear.

Common law , C6H6,
carbon atoms form a ring
hydrogen atom
joins carbon atom.

More complex form
rings, chains, helices.

Polyamorous
resemble giant helices.
small
join to form a single large
polymer.

Love was interchangeable until the early
nineteenth
century.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ More from Encyclopedia

Friday, June 23, 2006

Conjugal Verbs





Saturday, June 10, 2006

Plunderotica

through dark streets model
took off
kimono one hand
on parasol

go on

aching still trembling glitter of world
mummy swatched ghost
of Baudelaire
wind dying now
last of violence

do you want it, do you want it
dying eye fragment
spacious dreams of stone
toppling sluggish edifices studded
with gems coagulated with human
sperm

dipped finger in whiskey touched nipples
tips hard and red
settled regions wild
called to rise

murky light
fumbling fingers
scum on tongue
drop in eye
drink in pottle
itch in palm
gush of fundament fire
in gorge tickle
of tail

hullabaloo

pieced together by Amanda Earl.
My text comes from three sources: Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, Anais Nin's Little Birds and Emily Dickinson's Selected Poems.

The Who-Dunnit Collage

pieced together by Amanda Earlw/c = 389 wordsThe consequences of two men wrestling (1): the infinite erotic civilization we created is declining now (2). What manner of sinners do you have in Rome? They must be grand ones. I have seen much wickedness and cannot be deceived (3). All these people! Intermingled and jabbering and as much confusion among them, to me, as there is in my own mind. The sources reveal a people endowed with valuable qualities, hemmed in by stormy seas along a narrow strip of coastline, dense forests and steep mountain ranges behind them (now filled with flunkies, whistle-punks, chokermen, cat-skinners, the fiery mountainsides and stands of trees disappearing. (4)

To think the connection between my introspective black companion and those outcrop rocks taking the brunt of the ocean-this requires a stretch of the imagination. (5)

Her eyes were set so deeply the colour was hidden from a distance and he was surprised now by the emerald shade of them. Green as sea glass. (6) If you have ever seen the green in water that is forever flowing out to mystery and adventure then you know something of the colour of her eyes. (7) Along the river, trees are stranded bare as witches and dark as the woman who never learned to love one man. (8) She could never have imagined that a woman would lie beneath a man who grins like an ape fully clothed in a tattered tunic, ten feet from a body freshly abandoned by the spirit in its blood. (9) He lies there in a wilderness of sheets and his body inhabits strange spaces, oblique dimensions; like the keen emptiness of a child's eye, it offers me no entry and no alibi. (10)

Warned her to keep indoors with politic goodwill, not haste into a landscape of stark wind-harrowed hills and weltering mist; but from the house she stalked intractable as a driven ghost. (11)

I knew that it would happen like this. I hear the clouds of kestrels circling. The leaving. The solitude. (12) Finally the shape of the dream appears. Her arms in the cold air, holding the cutting tools. Space like glass. (13)

I see her head bowed in thinking of me, by the river, her beautiful eyes searching inside for the proper famous thought of me she loved. Ah my angel-my new angel, black, follows me now-I exchanged the angel of life for the other. (14)

(1) "certain works of carl stewart, artist" rob mclennan, name, an errant p. 44
(2) "The Erotic Civilization" A.F. Moritz, Night Street Repairs, p. 33
(3) "7. To The Church at Rome" K.I. Press, Spine, p. 56
(4) "Resources, Certain Earths, John Newlove, Moving In Alone, p. 72
(5) "1. Otherwise than place" Don McKay, p. 16
(6) Michael Crummey, The Wreckage, p. 13
(7) "Poem For A Tall Woman" Robert Priest, Scream Blue Meaning, p. 118
(8) "At Nootka Sound" Susan Musgrave, What The Small Day Cannot Hold, p. 6
(9) "Adrienne, Stephen Brockwell, Fruitfly Geographic, p. 47
10) "Hypnos" Gwendolyn MacEwen, Volume One, The Early Years, p.163
(11) "The Snowman On The Moor" Sylvia Plath, Collected Poems, p. 58
(12) A Basket of Distress" T. Anders Carson, Folding The Crane, p. 49
(13) "Hope Stories: I Signal Fire" Erin Moure, Sheepish Beauty Civilian Love
(14) "The Legend of Duloz," from Maggie Cassidy, Jack Kerouac, The Portable Jack Kerouac, p. 70

For an explanation and call for submissions for Plunderverse
When did you first know you were happy?
not till now, really, on this bench, in the sun

Why now?
i can let air touch

Do you still dream of flying?
i’ve already flown

Where is home?
you know
& if you could sing, the song/is all that would go/ anywhere
Barry McKinnon, Bushed, The Centre

with this beat
you can lose yourself
annihilate perpetual rhythm
electro-guitar shock therapy
drum a saffron thread thru veins
only then you unclench
find the shade
move further and further
away
soon the light needle silvers nanosecond

sells you by the jug, the hour
wind fills empty
echoes
hollow
echo

out of body

When did you first learn to levitate?
there are times i can’t touch down

Is it like swimming? Can you do the elementary backstroke?
i stay on my back, almost never look down

Are stars hot or cold?
they taste good with a little salt

Are you always alone?
no, i am not the only child to float

these are the fringes

of everything
the leaves, the vines,
the twisted
boughs

don’t you know
roots are contagious
spreading under ground
tangled planted
mud rotten and gnarled

when you walk
don’t let your feet

touch

tornadoed

is your suitcase packed
what will happen when you discover
there are places like home?

you carry it on your back
pack animal
whirlwind
don’t touch
(d)
o
w
n

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

beets

edible hallelujahs
juice of taboos her fingers sucked clean
your hunger
stained lips

it starts like this

in a kitchen cooking beets
let ‘em cool/slip off skins/slice ‘em
scent of
pickled ginger
apple cider vinegar
sesame seeds toasted

wooden spoon
her hands stirring
as you watch

alchemy

remember your on his
and how he
recoiled

lips trap air into yes gilded
words
melted down

his hands / your shoulders
flex of gold in his eyes

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

i was thinking you look like
russell crowe
and can i take you home

i was thinking i’m afraid
of glass
my shattering

i was thinking i
have beautiful legs

your hair is much too short
for my fingers to grab on to

i was thinking i’ll have to
moan when you enter me
sometimes i forget the script
and might yell out
my you have delicious tomatoes

i was thinking
i should learn to count
meditation is the act of breathing
out, out

i was thinking
there’s a holiday inn
nearby

after Bachinsky’s Spy Cam: The Surveillance Series, in Curio: Grotesques and Satires from the Electronic Age

At river’s edge. Water-touched. Skirt-burnished dandelion. Moccasins damp. A lover. Mist over rapids. Crows always up early. He hears her. Red silk for heat. June berry rolled between fingertips. A painting. Straw hat and sleeveless. Riverbank remembers.

Riverbank remembers. Straw hat and sleeveless, a painting. June berry rolled between fingertips. Red silk for heat. He hears her. Crows always up early. Mist over rapids. A lover. Moccasins damp. Skirt-burnished dandelion. Water-touched. At river’s edge.

Monday, March 27, 2006

Lobster

some of this is true
you chose the biggest male
fat claws pummeling the air
conversation picked clean
pale silence and sucking sounds
butter on your chin
shells cracked empty
relegated to the garbage heap

shucking – an aphrodisiac

special knife to split shells
thumb inside
parts, then holds open
slice the muscle
serve on half shell
lemon juice, Tabasco
the act of swallowing
whole

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

wanted

defiers of gravity
anti-clockwise glorifiers
palindrome fetishists
digital deity worshippers
moist skin enthusiasts
celebrants of the closed window

a line vibrates
between us
feel its pull

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

The Butterfly Collector

these are things I’m not allowed to say
like when I first saw you
I wanted you
and if I had the strength
I would have taken you
pushed you up against the wall
and pinned you
like a young butterfly
not to keep you under glass
but to let you colour the air
above my bed
just one flutter of your black lashes
against my skin
and I will let you
go