Poems
Published
Poems that have appeared in print, each one listed with the publication it appeared in.
42 poems
0110 LagniappesEngine(idling
#1She was a curious person who eventually disappeared.There was no justice in the world, at least none for her.#2She keeps forgetting exactly what she’s forgetting,and now she’s forgotten everything she’s ever forgotten.#3Too many acquisitions, most with no meaning, so that when her credit expired, so did she. That there can be so much stuff of no value is a mystery. #4She dressed herself well; only she knew how well she dressed,but it did the trick. She found herself always sartorially de rigeur.#5If I were as lazy as I know I am, I wouldn’t be writing these lagniappes,Demonstrating, once and for all, that I am only as lazy as I think I am.#6I sit in the sun and watch as the sun dapples mysun-dappled, sun-screened screen, completely unaware of its own presence.#7Anytime is the right time, if there is such a thingas anytime or the right time or no time at all.#8Picking up the pieces warrants that there is a whole,but what if, just, what if there is, as here, a hole in the whole?#9How to shepherd a pie, like the shepherds did?Though not the pies, they were immutable.#10I lied, yes, I lied.There are not 10 lagniappes,only 9 of them. This one is a fake.
02A New Recounting of Old WaysBristol Noir
I await the challenge. (Not really.) Aging isn’t for the faint of heart, more like ice cream turned crystalline from not finding the freezer fast enough, leaving strawberry shards instead of silk. Spiritual ennui, aesthetic overload gives way to slow reaction times, resulting in too muchpsychic pinball, flipper fatigue, and other imagined maladies.Inexplicable in any language, no bonus game(s) on the horizon, thoughthe beeps and pings still blare and screech across a menagerie of sounds,a sad reminder of the folly and fun of youth, absent any chance of getting laid. It’s the unravelling of Brighton rock, peeling off the sticky sweetness, colour by rainbow colour, a mosaic of shattered love tiles. The haphazard is hazardous enough, while the chaos of light mocks ourconceit that god is on our side. She isn’t and never was. It’s a myth.There is always more to do than time to do it, a nuclear stockpile of deeds awaiting annihilation, but really of no moment. Love is in the doing, wrapped in a feeling, usually found in the nether, never, neverlandof forgotten dreams and diminished expectations, transgressive. Or it would be if it held any traction beyond our fragmentary existence, thepale blue dot on a boundless timeline. No philosophical enquiry is warranted,except that my empowerment of these words is a treacherous ploy, fraudulent in scope, more the hedgehog than the fox, whatever the outcome. There’s no future in growing old.
03Afternoon IdyllThe Seraphic Review (Issue 2); republished in Red Door (Vol. 35)
I have nothing to change my perspective, mere skeins of words. Only chance anddaring remain while the talk of our livesfades into black velvet. It is fixed on theend of a pier, dangling a verbal toe intowater of imperceptible coherence, haltingthe shrill and the fury. The sea laps onto theshore, a carousel of laughter, a playgroundof mirth. Crossing the truss bridge at 5 a.m.for the last time, my future found due northand never reverted to the way it once was.Even now, all that is left is a rainbow-oilslick on a sluggish creek, light hues of indigo and green pastel muddling togetherand finding each other, touching like a zephyron a rosy cheek. We take sonority for granted.Dazzled, sun-proofed souls evaporate like mist,quenching the unquenchable, taking calm fromhere, comfort from there. We hit our stridethrough elegant legato, bassoons lowing inthe distance, leaving nothing abounding butclarity of vision. Rationality offers itself at too great a cost, too steep a price.
04All in the GestureThe Bridge (Vol. 21, bridgebsu.com)
Even amid the chaos, it’s all in the gesture. Fractured souls break like lines in solemn verseor leaves torn along their spines. Their finelydrawn shadows tell of a nymph’s narrowescape from her Greco-Roman urn, unleashingher hovering spirit over the threat of a deep fire,the way mothers love their babies with abandon—jostling, cooing, calming terrors as if drunkon breast milk. The swaying captivates, whilethe undulations catch us in the dusk of ourlives, daring us to cherish, embrace, and holdback nothing, lest we plunge like Icarus intothe void. Life only flows one way, as formdissolves into light, and love is worth whatever the cost.
05At the Elm Street DinerIn Parentheses
No nightmare here. Old-fashioned aluminum, tubular-shaped, like a railway car, encasing rickety wooden booths and a Formica countertop in front of spinning stools. Open morning until late in the afternoon, offering the usual coffee, eggs, toast, hash browns, griddle burgers, clubs, beans and other classic diner foodfor the regulars coming at their regular timesat their regular tables, notably one with his blue collarand regular five or six sneezes at theappointed hour, 1 p.m. This was after I headed overto snag just one thing that was often gone when I got there--the cherry pie,the lard-based, flaky crusted cherry pie,with the pale, sour cherry filling, and almostno cornstarch, not gooey, just pure,succulent, tangy flavour, worth whatever I could afford to pay. Even afterpleading to save me a slice, it usually didn’thappen, while I remember the taste andtexture these too-many years later, trying to recapture it ever since, hence these questions: Where is the Elm Street Diner cherry pie of yesteryear? And where has the Elm Street Diner gone? Likely the way of all things good and real,smashed like the burgers into the now-wistful past.
06Beyond the HazeBook of Matches Literary
Look! A film of floating paisley, skimmeringdown the glass wall like wine legs, viscous, more menacing than cataracts, showcasingthe colour of celestial space, a riot of fracturedvoid, a lava lamp suffused with neon oozers, flitting against a magic beam, full of inverted sunlight breaking through the clouds to findthose who pray. I watch the random dust motes prance around the crystal air, crowdingour time, and meshing with the tobacco smokecircling and swirling overhead. The tensionsoftens as you cross the threshold and fall into waiting arms. We roll along, train wheelson a steel track, hearing the occasional squeal, loud enough to make us cover our ears. Passingchestnut and larch groves, branches and trunksswaying in the wind, I hear God calling but can’t make out her words. An imprecation maybe but for no apparent reason. Judgment rendered without argument, as happened at Belshazzar’s feast, the words as unintelligibleto him as to me but surely calling us to heed her message: once dead, forever dead. Still, my plaint goes unheard, serving me rightfor conceit, for vanity. Just then, I hearharps twinned, ringing melodic and wantingto know the source of yesterday’s chords, the ones that might have saved us. Short notesat best, while ocular bubbles waft before me,this time bursting with sweet tears, full ofimportant nothings and improbable failings, left to reverb in a bleak canyon or in the angular crevice of a split log, a serrated chasm with no limit. As you hold the only truth, only you alone know. But when I awaken, I share the sidewalk on whichI’ve slept, with a beady-eyed pigeon, strangelynamed Nestor, head bobbing madly and cooingaway to his own melancholy, asking where is François Villon, that poetic thief, when we need him most. Stuck, I suspect, in his own yesteryear, but certainly beyond redemption,and well beyond this torpid haze we call life.
07BirdfallThe Green Silk Journal
A bird hit my window. Hard. Not my fault, or god’s either, —she doesn’t exist but couldn’tcare less, one way or the other—echoing the deceptive translucenceof twilight after you had vanished into the purple haze and left only vaporous trails and an elliptically vague air pocket.I live in life’s penumbra, that moody abyss between the maybe and the real, catching only tail winds, crossing fiercely turbulentjet streams to know your wise and capacious heart, measuring our lives, etched without pause, in sand grains through an hour-glass, roughly the shelf-life of a Hostess Twinkie, maybe 93 years (although not likely that few) but good enough for that bird who, after the shock of her ordeal and embarrassment of her misadventure, smoothed her ruffled feathers and, without a word of goodbye, flew away. And me.
08By Persons KnownThe Bridge (Vol 21, bridgebsu.com)
I wheel unmoored through the raggled sky,caught in a pocketful of time, this fool’s errand,lost in cross-currents of vanished longing. The arbitrary is always fatal, the deliberate even worse. There are no second chances, only melancholic lines melting into neon-bright sorbets, sheltering the sun from its usual commitments. Random words come stacked like wood in a pile, $200/cord,cut to measure and guaranteed to last a lifetime (if never lit).Hollow hearts dance in the wind, just as the trees jostle each other for your sacred air, your spiritual beneficence. There is no transparency, only resignation, an off-track train carrying goods of no value, possessions that lack meaning, as snowy clouds clash white on wispy white, undershot by grey.Facing a challenge with ‘no deposit, no return’, I let my heart default,tracing the rivulets of watercolor that cascade down the crinkly vellum,ever fearful to reframe the post—the one asking, “Does loss ever end?”Prurient waves slouch across the shoreline, leaving vaporous trails of mordant longing.as I feel the urge to conjure Attar,yearning to offload the unreal, rid the debris, and shoot the hostage.Truth be told, I need your patience while I down two fingers of Talisker and learn how to paint without a brush.
09Caution Site, Entrance AheadCape Magazine (Issue 5)
Seen outside Belfast, somewhere on a narrow N road, this portentous sign. Admonition or friendly warning, it’s hard to tell. Closing in on the entrance, popping pills andvitamin D to stave off the inevitable, begs the question—to what end? Wanting to slough off the pretext—indeed, self-delusion—of immortality, we onlyimagine there is free will. As the inimitable Borges offered, “We accept reality easily perhaps because we intuit that nothing is real.,” a devilishly clever thought that often confoundsme like lichen on a tree, with as much purchase or as little heft, depending on my mood. Warbling hands beat a steady cadence—de-dar-dum, de-dar-dum , de-dar-dum—on the table, quellingthe yips as they echo off the walls and hang for a second in the air. But it’s clear that where you place the comma informs meaning,a steadfast grace, informs meaning. Life relies on its properplacement, perhaps transposing it one word earlier. The cautionon the sign now makes sense, and I needn’t worry about entryinto a roiling void. A tangled cord is there for the trip. But forone night only, not seven in a row. It’s the minor joys that offerkaleidoscopic symmetry—spangled flourishes—not the major windfalls or rainbowed arcs, however bright. Perfection isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
10Chronic ConditionsMidsummer Dream House (Issue #4)
Overflowing waste, signs of indolence and spiritual torpor. As the curtain descends, the wall shadows turn opalescent. They darken into a void, a cool chiaroscuro, a crescent cream moon in a coral blue sky, never to be seen again. Atmospheric particulate crowds my space. I’ve lost my way. Nine floors up,a screen door screeches into urban floss. Canyon streets, linedwith colored flags, hail the unknown, the emptiness. Neural pathways abound, running amok, limning my litmus test of feeling. Dripping acid into a velvet base, there’s no time for second-guessing. Echoes from water droplets make me fiercely indignant at the disruption to my melancholy. The fear of death perturbs me, one liturgy observes. Not for the first time, I hear the Sirens beckoning me. But it’s only a drill, a test, hardly worth the heed, at least for now. (Maybe later.) Meanwhile, invisible molecules coalesce, cresting in time, causing chaotic reflection. I fill mesh bags with useless contemplation, trying to suss out the meaning of this pumpkin sitting on my table in a still-life pose, reflecting a Dutch master’s hollowed skull perched next to an ancient globe. Chaos beckons, with its saturnine air. Lend me a thought, I plead but put some oomphinto it. Abstraction reveals itself at great cost, but like a book on a shelf, time always lands right side up. Memento mori.
11Close the Door SoftlyDiscretionary Love (also in Litbop as No Other Exit, Vol. One, #3, December 14, 2023)
trimming curves from corners,straightening the plane, you gothrough that door to find yourself on the foreign side. it’s not you but it may be youor a better version of you, onewith less fear and more verve, now possessing an emboldenedsense of your white-hot spirit, much like a barn owl on the prowl for garden toads or wildfire. you just needed a push throughthe cursed door, your doubtswrestled to ground and vanquished, your anxieties quelled, to turn youinto the you—all complete,finding grace along your way,grateful for the love, past the [rear-view mirror], skippingthe soul-search, resting, butfilled to the gills with sangfroid.just be sure to close the doorsoftly on your way out, asI’ll still be sleeping and there’s no other exit.
12Colors of the SkyLiterary Yard
Let’s look at the sky, its corners and depth, upside down and sideways. Then let’s describe its color. Cerulean seems too obvious and doesn’t tell us much, a tautologyif ever were. Red adds nothing, however hued, evenin the morning when sailors take warning—it’s blue and grey that matter. Robin’s egg blue seems too definiteand comes from a slightly darker palette. The task ispleasantly aggravating, almost Sisyphean in its compulsion,as if trying to catch mist in a bottle or dew in a jar.Or asking fireflies to hold their light, especially in June.Cyan might be closer except it has shades of green,while I’m seeing more of a grey, not a gunmetal grey,not a petulant grey, but a soft grey, maybe a dove grey.It falls, perhaps, somewhere between a Klein blue and a Johns grey, between a cool blue and slate grey, all the while a confounding, dazzling, joyous, knowing, maddening, watchful cornflower blue-grey. Does that cut it?A better descriptor may be found on the prismatic spectrum,entre azure et argent, depending on mood, possibly affected (or even created) by atmospheric pressure, like the airiness of a Rothko mauve, one shimmering block atop another. Still,it’s altogether hopeless, try, as I might, to capture in evanescentlanguage, the ever-changing, sun-drenched hue of your radiant eyes. No doubt failing, but at least failing lovingly— a life’s quest.
13Contours of My HeartLowlife Literary
They must come from somewhere, these words. How do they emerge from the reticule in which they’ve been hiding with reckless abandon, awaiting their turn in the spotlight. Pinch them out, as with wire cutter prongs? Pull mightily, as with dental forceps on a recalcitrant tooth? Cough them up, as in a shakedown by marauders? All unbidden, they show up imperfectly ready for me to mold them into something tangible, comprehensible, for your amusement or edification. Your education I leave to the institutes of higher (and lower) learning. Cropping up most often is not rage or remorse or regret but sheer, rank, searing jealousy, incessant and irradicable, stemming from loss, my loss of you. And I’m lost trying to vocalize it. “Ineffable” comes to mind and I don’t even understand that word. I might as well be describing veins on a leaf or the hoot of a barn owl to come close. Try to depict the musical F# verbally and you’ll see what I mean. Ineffable is at least a placeholder of recognizable coinage, a proxy with purchase. Still, it’s no use, as the demon shivs its ugliness into my psyche at the most inopportune moments, namely, every possible chance it finds to cause mischief like my hooligan of a cat. Jealousy trolls around my tongue like dry saliva, its acerbity shredding my heart with dagger-like precision. Unlike “guilt,” which has no useful purpose, virtually or otherwise, jealousy punches well above its weight in derangement and staying power. It’s irrational, like certain numerical calculations or combinations, but it never fails to do the trick, complete decimation of my articulable senses, the ones once knowing beauty and joy, but no longer. Oh, just fuck off. Jealousy, I mean. Guilt, too.
14DorodangoPersephone Literary (Vol. 2, Issue 2, April 1, 2025)
The difference between dirt and soil is life. So, find a nightjar with orange eyes. Then notice the incongruity of the large man with his small dog, walking with the same gait. Cherish the woman swirling her wine glass to the left, not the right, at least in the northern hemisphere. Embrace the Nigerian bride living with her soon-to-be in-laws the week before her wedding. Peaceable moments. Soothing, like dorodango. To the ideal tactility and tensile strength, mud is mixed, shaped and reshaped, smoothed into a ball, a perfectly imperfect orb in its roundness yet featuring small divots and fissures. Much like incongruity, much like this poem, with its metaphysical aspirations and post-modern sensibilities. With one eye unseeing from retinal fracturing or ironic detachment, we can ignore the spherical imperfections, overlook the stylish faults. And just as there’s no point seeking perfection in a spiritual vacuum, a spatial void, the imperfections are the point, although finely tuned, finely dimpled like pips on a die. Or a Berber rug with its built-in flaws. Or wabi-sabi, finding beauty in impermanence, in suffering, in emptiness. Much like this poem. Much like life.
15Drop Me a LineThe Periwinkle Pelican (Issue 2)
When was the last time you heard from god? Any god? Is she even transmitting? Or receiving? She wasn’t doing either, last time I checked. But drop me a line if it’s all the same to you. Or if you’re at loose ends, merely seekingsalvation or respite. Or just connection. Or drop me a line if god, any god, speaks to you in tongues, in signs or symbols, or hieroglyphs, or any way at all. I want to hear from you before I wake. Or die. Before it’s too late anyway, as I’d ratherbe counted in than out. Or just drop me a line about anything at all. It’s been so long since I heard from god, any god, but maybe you have. More likely, though, it’s a slice of your fiery imagination. Your escape from freedom, from responsibility.But drop me a line if magic is in your sightline. Or has takenyou by surprise. It may be all we have left, especially now that god has left for good, leaving her rent unpaid, a full mailbox, and no forwarding address.
16ExterioritiesActa Victoriana (Vol. 148:2)
The trees are talking to each other, humming,and wooing, clustering straight and tall,craving breeze and recognition. The sun fractures its way through the foliage, slipping into the interstices, between thefree cracks, more than seems possible.Showcasing the drizzly yellow through thestalwart arbor, the leafy soldiers light ontheir feet, in orderly procession,shimmering like the tremolo on a guitar,strumming the high notes fast as doneon a mandolin or bouzouki. Warmthpervades as if the forest were alive with nervosité. The greens—Kelly, lime, sage, emerald, shamrock, especially moss,and the rest—jostle for position, spines bending, forsaking disquietudeand beseeching the blue from the sky. …You don’t see the birds, but they must bethere. Chickadees and cardinals lose them-selves and us in the fluttering leaves, nestlingtheir young in the heft of the branches, featsof engineering derring-do. Just as with us,melancholy comes with the territory.Filaments of life silently weave their waydown, past the lichen on the bark, its ownodd shade of green as the woodpeckerhammers for grubs. Green, though is the mostunreal, the most difficult colour to paint, so nuanced, yet having such tensile strength, perfect for verdant reflection and repose. Theair is so still it makes you cry, the calm it offers, a spiritual awakening if ever there were a god.
17GrampsIn Parentheses
Of the old school, Gramps carefully cleaned his double-edged razor blades after shaving. They were Gillette maybe, or Wilkinson Sword blades, whatever was most affordable. I never knew what good the cleaning did. He used a shaving brush in the old-fashioned way as I do now when I’m not paying cheek-service to the scruffy look of today’s hipsterdom. In fact, Gramps still had nicks and scrapes and left-over patches of greyish-white beard after shaving, but it suited his conciliation with life. It made me sad then and sadder now. It wasn’t that Gramps could hone these blades like a straight razor, unfolded and ready to slit the throat of the innocent, Sweeney Todd-like, on a strop to make them sharper, to make them last longer. Instead, it seemed to me an effort without appreciable effect. Cleaning the razor Itself I could understand but as I see it now, I must have missed the point. The point was chance, the chance, that somehow it would make a difference. (For the next shave, perhaps?) But it was the meticulous taking of that chance that is surely the meaning, the takeaway in today’s parlance. Naturally, economy, and reluctant disposal played their part, unlike these last, all-too-many years of our collective discarding of everything once the new, improved thing comes along. Having worked as a tailor all his life, he chucked only that which was truly at its end and ultimately, irrevocably disposable. It made me, shall I say, respectfully sad? As we lived with him for a time, I knew him best of all the grandchildren. He was gruff in a charming way, not without repetition or temper. He walked across Kew Gardens every week or so to retrieve a new library book, not that I saw him read much, but he wasn’t a character, just a man from somewhere in some old country who made Canada his home (as I was then doing) and at peace with his place in the firmament, surviving the Great Depression and raising two children, my stepfather being one of them. Why didn’t I learn more or remember more? Still, day after day, I can’t stop thinking of his cleaning those blades; indeed, day after day. And whether he knew it or not, I missed his funeral for some lame reason. I regret it now, fifty plus years later. Maybe he’s forgiven me (which he ought not to do) but maybe not. Who is to say? Who is to know?He wasn’t really my grandfather, but it didn’t matter.
18I Died on the DockQuibble.Lit (Issue 12, "Outlook. Lookout")
on a clear, languid afternoon.I had already seen a loon, a sneaky water snake, and a large grey heron, all seeking nourishment,but not from me. They knew I had none to give. The river otter wasn’t lurking for a change; anda scary dock spider skittered nearby. They gave brief incidence to my vanquished heart while thesun scalded my eyes crimson, like the loon’s. Having lost you in the ambient light, I had onlya blank canvas on which to dribble my newlythinned paint and varnish it into gloss, neverto see it regain depth or purchase. I died thatafternoon on the dock of the bay, as the waterarched and mirrored the cerulean sky, as a billion diamond glints speckled like love possessed, whennothing ever went awry and all roads led to you.
19I'd Feel the SameIn Parentheses (Issue 4, vol. 7)
if I could vouch for my idiothetic cues, thoserandom adornments of harmless wonder, I would allow my feelings to cast a broad, crepuscular glow, aglimpse into the void. Hot winds blow cold, cherishing the kestrels who ride the edge of the thermal winds,sourcing their next dinner, a communion to which I can relate in the sanctuary of my private fantasies. It’s a shock to the system, a dashed fable without a moral, that my loss isn’t universal, that others haven’tshared. I am a shipwreck waiting to happen, but I wouldn’t. trade this life for any unforeseen danger, even ifbenign. Instead, my plea should be read as a paean to our endless ardor, our magnetic insistence, the longishform of a journey we’ll surely take to an acquiescent pink moon, overseen by a licentious ghost whom I conjured only late last night.
20If Only I Knew ThenCurio Cabinet (Issue III, "Paradise"
…what I know now, I’d know that the past is unreal and doesn’t exist, and never did. It vanishes beforeour eyes like vapor in a rain shower. It doesn’t look like it looks or feel like it feels, more a mere shadow than a phosphorescent ghost, a white-hot phantom of stolen time. If the past weren’t the past, you and I wouldn’t need memory. Still, I know you and I try to hold to the constant, the lodestar, the Polaris—not of the celestial night but of the heart. It’s the ineluctable, the inflexible, the fixed, always sharing the pulsating space between us, that irresistible pull, iron filings to a magnet. Time isn’t replaceable, only consumable.So, let the music echo across our unfathomable distance, sounding precious grace notes in the air for a nanosecond, only to evaporate on contact. Forever. They may be all that remain of our once-sizzling feelings, or maybe it’s just my imagination playing tricks on me. Again.
21In Kensington MarketDiscretionary Love
In Kensington market, full of small purveyorsof meats and vegetables, of soaps and leathers,and roti shops, and pho restos, and bubble tea spots,I looked for you.I searched mindfully, and desperately,and keenly, waiting for the perfect glimpseof the perfect being that is you. But I came up empty.I tried the health food stores, thinking holistically,but no luck, except for the ginger pillsto quell my melancholyand our distance.I tried Blackbird Bakery thinkingthat the kouign amann, even just the aroma, mighthave drawn you in, but,again, to no avail.It must be the sunsets that took you away,leaving me empty of heart, caught on the reedof a song, a bittersweet tune,without an end.Still, I couldn’t find you,because you weren’t there.No, you were already nestledin the chambers of my heart.
22In Media ResLiterary Yard
We live in the middle of things, in media res if Latin were still lingua franca. But it isn’t, and we are meant to persevere. The past has not yet turned blue, and the future shines opaque. Turn the corner and swerve from left to right. Or vice versa. We will end in the same place in the same way, without being arbitrary or morbid about it, just capricious. The random is all we have reason to know, like the Creation of Adam from any vantage point. On leaving the Sistine Chapel empty-minded, empty-hearted, the aesthetic lost in the fetid space, so many eyes troubling the shimmering air, the internal turbulence ensnared in a skein of dolor and pain. Yet, life’s beacon offers hope and resolution. The trick is accepting the succor when it’s offered, drink it in as a lamb the ewe’s milk. Let the evangelists have their way. We’re still here amid a colorful human aviary, ensconced in a tropical rainforest. It offers no escape but to atone for things of no consequence we failed to do or things of no meaning we dreamt of doing instead. It is a surefire recipe for redemption, if that matters, given the invidious choices at large in the gloaming. A mug’s game is still a game. It only has meaning when it means something, while I am paralyzed with nervosité, fraught with fright, but the sun will ever rise again.
23In No TimeUnleash Lit
We plane the corners from the clouds,replete with imagination. Freed from the wooden trestles and the falsehopes, we trudge along, laughably for naught. No talismanic icons, no rabbits’ feet on cheap chains, no Tarot card images, only flashesof chance that make no difference, like Schrödinger’s cat, alive and dead.(Poor thing!) We’ll all share that ultimateindignity, trapped by a deepfake into oblivion, the final coda. Surely, it’stime to recast our narrative as, it turnsout, we can’t escape the inescapable. We’re snookered and always have been. Even when held to the light, our love is abstract, a shimmering frisson, shorn of colour and contour. So, if you want to revelin the way you’ve cheated us, know thatwe’ll forever be a kink in your shadow, leaving nothing to design, everything to random tumbling, forging illuminationas best we can, but living in illusionsin a barren universe of fools.
24InterioritiesActa Victoriana (Vol. 148:2)
The trees are talking to each other, humming,and wooing, clustering so straight and tallcraving the breeze and recognition. The sun fractures its way through the foliage, slipping into the interstices, between thefree cracks, more than seems possible. Showcasing the drizzly yellow through thestalwart arbor, the leafy soldiers light ontheir feet, in orderly procession, in lockstepshimmering like the tremolo on a guitar,strumming the high notes fast as oftendone on a mandolin or bouzouki. Warmthpervades as if the forest is alive with frisson or nervosité, the greens—Kelly, lime, sage,emerald, shamrock, especially moss andthe rest--jostle for position, spines bending,forsaking disquietude and beseechingthe blue from the sky.You don’t see the birds, but they must bethere. Chickadees and redbirds lose them-selves and us in the fluttering leaves, nestingtheir young in the heft of the branches, featsof engineering and derring-do. Just as withus, melancholy comes with the territory.Filaments of life silently weave their waydown, passing the lichen on the bark, itsown, odd shade of green as the woodpeckerbores for grubs. Green, though is the mostunreal, the most difficult colour to paint, so nuanced, yet having such tensile strength, perfect for verdant reflection and repose. The air is so still it makes you cry, the calm it offers, a spiritual awakening if ever there were a god.
25IntersticesWillawaw Journal
Filtered through intervening time,fleeting seconds march to B minorcadence, written on the sky, ephemeraland vaporous. Overmatched by a fabulistgod, she of gilded wing, lapping purpose,we have no recourse but to surrender.Shades of ancient greens and ancestralyellows glow from sizzling logs, keepingus as warm as bears in a cave. Paintbrushesat the ready, the artist dapples in penumbralshadows, the steady hand betrays no doubt.Time has stopped having meaning. Dinnerand coffee can wait while the paint is smoothedout of the tube and onto the canvas, just in time for one last stroke.
26Into the AbyssBristol Noir
Soft mist, cheeky interior, smoothly tufted caresses trace neural paths of pleasure-pain in the cavernous abyss. Dynamite awaits. There is telltale power in the vertical crevice where the pink-red livesamid the antimonies and vascular ripples, applying the balm and thefuror, the sacred passage where nothing forlorn happens, only lupine stares, ecstasy, and wildcat yelps. Fervid moments abound, urgent, with no timeto spare in a collapsing world, a sensurround, where drowsing is a naked leapof joyous fulfillment, more than a spectator sport, as unmasked filaments, and tendrils sparkling with heightened anticipation, tingling with nervosité,jangling with zest, and ravenous appetite. Sometimes the clock is silent,and the world stops on its axially, alluring convexity, irresistibly inviting and succulent, soothing like aloe vera, requiring no thought, only ardor.The abyss is infinite, more than a lifetime of possibility, an unchecked cadence,iris-petalled touch, cerebral ganglia afire. The silent trobairitz sings of love and loss. Profane regrets disappear like rainwater on a pond, an admixtureof untethered lust and rainbowed mist of violet dew, lemon icing, dappled and lingering in the ether like a Sunny Girl peony, blooming with howling desire and raging incandescence, a hefty counterpoint to the unfurling ambrosiain scope and scent, nothing less than quivering molecules swaying to the music of time, the Circadian rhythms of love. No echo sounds in the abyss, no deflecting shadows, no false patina of doubt or transience, nothing but sweet repose,leaving only the transcendent absence of absence, starving no longer.
27It's Over to You NowThe Paradox Literary Magazine (Vol. 4)
Heralding the peels of a split banana or a crane as an omen, reverse origami, we take our solitary walk to the lake together, all of a day. Sunfish near us pike for invisible (at least to us) insects, plashing back with Olympic-style flops and flourishes, catch or not.No hidden nooks here, only pools of frozen fire, clouds of dry rain plunging skyward, the trees haunting the shoreline in their stately silence. Fraught with no purpose, the moonlight beams pensiveover brackish green water, rivulets of overflow, the ripples turninginward just as my soul abandons me in 3/4 waltz time. Thereis no chance for prayer as the warbling loon and her tiny progenyinterrupt their swimming lesson and dive for cover, fearfulof the boat roars nearby, or maybe the creaking poplar treeabout to topple from root rot. At last, a falling tree that clearlymakes a sound, this time on a meadow not in a forest. We are hereto hear it, so no mystery to solve. To preserve the primordialpeace and tranquil vista, white sails billow on a lake in the distance,a Raoul Dufy montage begging for our attention but gettinginstead our saturnine longing. It is your face I see in my dreams, steady and sparkling, like diamond peaks on water shardsor the lovely necklace you sometimes wear, but reluctantly. You are where you are and what you seem. As dusk falls, the loonswail louder, close to the dock, whether from love or warningit’s hard to tell, followed by a silence so sharp it pierces our eardrums. But tomorrow comes with a vengeance, borne aloft on the rising thermals. Hands unhanded, we will keep each other safe tonight.
28Knights-ErrantIn Parentheses
Early snows halted nothing, no eternal quest for the holy arpeggios, jousting and seesawing with the violins, dashed off mindlessly, to take us to spiritual liberation, marathon sessions with trips to Formentera, that smugglers’ haven taking up the slack. The knights--brothers of the cloth—obsessed with atonal chords and dissonant runs, dissolved into random meanders, scamperingwhims of mournful vein. As they listened, shadowy cadences unfolded like dewy rose petals, surging up starkly in exposed wind-notes, filigreed vines climbing ever upward like beanstalks, ballgowns shimmering in the distance, abounding even as they careened and cascaded towards the inevitable end,all on one page as if there were no snowy space to breathe. The revelation now comes unbidden, past the fog, interrupted by siren calls, unfiltered andbothersome, needing to be discarded, leaving conventionality in its rear-view mirror, painted silver-chrome. It had all the trappings of a sonatina or madrigal dedicated to lost love, ours perhaps, but could never to recover its wintry patina for the knights-errant or anyone else for that matter.
29Love Song #4La Rotonde Review
Feathery ripples in the air, jet streams of chance,broken only by stable perseverance. The thread isgone, tamed by a deceptive murmur. While savoring the dazzling particulate, I watched as clouds crashed to the ground. I revelled in the sadness, the sorrow,ultimately subdued by inner depths of reserve, the grandeur unrecoverable, fraught, and crackled by a tolling death knell. Chanting the liturgy made no difference. I took a sidelong glance as art morphed into love and became eternal. Ignoring the guardrail in front of the precipice, trying to avoid turbulence and all its havoc, I saw the shading vectors and intractabletears. I chased the shimmering aurorae and the celestial green lights but to no avail, leaving me with love’s detritus, the grey ash of yesteryear, a litmus strip of ardor and strain, a blues song sensibility in a rocker world. Snagged from a spell of the Magus, I rush to rearrange my vocabulary to conform to the canons of all lost love, now to be rendered in the third person, as I try, absent faith, to unshackle myself from constraints, to free myself from twisted tethers and never look back.
30Missed OppotunityUnleash Lit
Seen through foggy lenses, we can stillfeel the moment when we knew it was there: for the wanting, the asking, even the taking. Maybe pheromones, maybe cosmic connections, but doubtless, random notes at play. Or justanother afternoon in the funhouse, a carouselof riotous chance and missed opportunity, handsfiercely grabbing at the elusive brass ring, riveted by the spin of the roulette wheel—always bet on red—of space and languid air, shorn of electrons. Still, I’m not sure whatto make of it all, the dashing and derring-do, like a deranged Zorro, absent his sword. No slashed Zs here. In the end, though, curledtoes are all that matter, even more than themurmur of “I love you” in a lover’s ear. It’s at least a glimpse of a heaven we’ll never otherwise see, let alone keep, not in this life anyway.
31Moebius StripBlank Spaces
Asleep on a park bench surrounded by the unruly hordes, I sense theblossoms dropping onto my chest and shoulders and dream of green tea leavesand purple açai berries, while an errant troubairitz strums Joni Mitchell tunes.When I wake to find you beside me, I leave chance unattended just as the almanacpredicted. My dreams were acorns gathered by puckish squirrels and buried for thewinter in the hollow across the stream. I hear a plaintive wail, so soft it’s almostnoiseless, like ants crawling up a blade of grass, susurrus in a modest register. There’sno arguing with the rhubarb and no direction home in the face of life’s passing lanes, all without a word of a warning, a word of a lie. Exile comes afoot after I’ve been caught by the night watchman. He’s heard the cadence marching with you. I search in vain for secret meaning, trying on each syllable for size, but bringing me no closerto the universal truth. Elegies are made for this. Still, there is no harm in asking. Or taking. Suitcases full of jargon, the space is replete with a list of unfettered possibilities, broad in scope, narrow in execution. Night falls to the ground like a curtain of black demise. It bodes no whisper, only the rustle of foreign skirts, shameless in their skank. Rhythmic words dapple the fields, daring us to be more solid, more alive. Cherry lips blow smoke rings to nowhere and dancers litter the floor, seen only by the splendid Siberian cat waiting impatiently for her dinner by the swinging kitchen door. Airy thoughts crample my hope of redemption, sussing out the bon mot, the one to lift the spirit skyward and let Orion take his best shot. There’s no truck for the faint of heart, this mug has lost his game. It’s all too easy to replace an umlaut.
32Mystical RiversDiscretionary Love
You were in my heart before I knew you were there, before I recognized you, a seedlingnestled in the forest floor, ready to flourishwith savage abandon, as I watched the dawnbreak before mercy. You are my shelter, covering me in the magicof your light, bathing me in phosphorescence, in moonglow, while beckoning the rolling tides, as they cascade and roar rhythmically over rippled sand.I want the untamed beauty of a love full of ardor, nourishing each other, as we’ve always known,as was always meant to be, as love surely provides,while strewn flowers are gathered by random hands,unseen strangers.The dream isn’t rent by the torrential rains, causing dams to burst, levees to flood, mystical rivers emerging from the overflow. Needing you, as I do, gives me purpose, the rest tended by those left behind.
33Nothing DoingMocking/Heart Review
Oh, sure, you could worry about the impending end of the world. No one would blame you. Or you could do nothing at all. All it takes is practice. Or you could lie on your couch, close your eyes, and dream in a colorful void, ever-chasing the psychedelic paisleys at the back of your eyelids. Or you could do nothing at all. It’s that easy. All it takes is practice. You could take a nap with your cat lying beside you and catch him dreaming fitfully or, more likely,at peace with his exalted station in life. Or you could do nothing at all, especially if you don’t have a cat. Or you could weave a cat’s cradle with a knotted pieceof string and pretend you have a cat. All it takes is practice. And string. Or you could pour salt in your wounds and call it absolution. Or mortification. Or you could do nothing at all, it’s that easy, and you have no wounds, anyway, let alone any requiring absolution or mortification. Or you could watch me blowcigar smoke rings into the ether, then catch them as they waft into mist and linger in an aromatic haze. Still, the law has banned smoking indoors. (Shame!) In that case, you could do nothing at all. All it takes is practice. Or you couldcheck your phone for emails or text messages, although you receive few, if any, these days and don’t read or answer them if you do. Better still, you could do nothing at all. All it takes is practice. It’s well worth the time and effort. Doing nothing is that easy, Brother. Give it a whirl. Or, on second thought, don’t bother. There’s nothing doing here anyway.
34Oh, Canada! A Musical Case HistorySyncopation Lit (Canadian Poets on Music)
Where to begin? How far back?Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians? Canadian Sunset, written by Americans?Hank Snow? Nah. We can do better.Let’s start with the Diamonds. Little Darlin’. The Stroll. Bobby Curtola (Who? Fortune Teller,that’s who. Not to be confused with the laterGuess Who.). Put Your Head on (Paul Anka’s)Shoulder. Where are they now? Lost in the recesses of time, forever oldies but (sometimes) goodies.Ian and Sylvia conjuring the Canadian Myth ofFour Strong Winds, the ones that blow lonely,the self-same identity. The prodigious Gordon Lightfoot, and the inimitable Joni Mitchell, later to be discovered anew by Zadie Smith in a brilliant exegesis. And for 40 years, we heard the indomitable Rush (Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and the late Neil Peart),all Closer to the Heart than we probably deserved. Of course, there is the late Leonard Cohen, whosecoruscating lyrics made everyone a better composer, still haunting college dorms by candlelight in straw Chianti baskets. So Long Marianne, indeed. Who,by Fire? Hallelujah. We can’t forget Neil Young’s and his enduring Heart of Gold and, later, Harvest Moon, following THE Band, those (mostly Canadian) redoubtable Dylan aiders and abettors, most eventually succumbing to onesling or arrow of outrageous fortune. Jann Arden saw us through the ‘90s (in)sensitively as did Alanis Morrisette with her Jagged Little Pills. And k d lang. Lost Together, we were, with Blue Rodeo, as with The Tragically Hip, whose legendary Gord Downie died tragically, ironicallyenough. I’d be glad to have a million dollars to hear the Barenaked Ladies again as I would numerous othersgroups like the Crash Test Dummies, remember them?And Drake, what about this living legend? Too cool for ordinary words, just Hotline Bling in the 6ix. I’m sure I’ve forgotten many like Murray McLaughlan coming home from the forest. Anne Murray’s Snowbirdflying off somewhere. Kathleen Edwards and the Rankin Family. And, of course, the classical Glenn Gould. But there must be a limit, and this is it. They all did usproud, even after some of them moved south. So, let’s enjoy this remarkably Canadian songfest dans notre pays (but without any tariff) in the Early Morning Rain.
35On SundaysPassword, the Journal of Very Short Poetry (Vol. 1.1), haiku
See elsewhere
36Small LifeBeach Chair Press
I lead a small life. Not any small life. Just mine. At least the one I imagine I lead. Where I play springs with my cat. And stream old episodes of Seinfeld and Judge Judy. And dream about you—twisting our bedcovers into a ball, clad in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. Or in nothing at all. And watch a wayward ant carry a breadcrumb or sesame seed—as I’m doing now, seeking le mot juste. Treading lightly, I leave little carbon in my wake but wonder what’s the point, apart from filling an existential void, a Sisyphean undertaking. Or keeping my phone charged so I can check for messages I don’t receive, let alone read or return. Or hearing from friends who want to intrude on my antisocial state of being. Or fussing over my chronic hangnail, the one I can’t seem to trim, too close to the cuticle. Or forgoing my one-time enthusiasms, ultimately succumbing to indifference or lethargy, pick your poison. First-person problems, I know. Ego problems, for sure. Still, it’s a life I can recount in verse or demonstrate by graphic jazz hands, although I’d rather trumpet these feelings, like cracking a tree branch, than yawn my way, fugue-like, through the ether. It’s a small life but, for better or worse, it’s mine.
37Splinters of the SunBristol Noir
Gliding on fumes, gnarled like twisted ivy scaling a wall or a carved blackthorn walking stick, and seeing blind, we are too late for salvation, only salvage. Dark valleysshare no secrets. They are only there for refuge, as the abuttingmountain face hides the truth, the striated rock holdingits own conclave, just as fire seeks oxygen for its survival. The blue and yellow and orange flames forge a pitchforkof white-hot ardor on a well-tempered anvil, a tango pulsatingin silent rhythms, never billowing sooty black smokeas if announcing a papal failure. The strains fade beside my fierceyearning for you, but it’s still safe to say that no poem, even a poem of depth and purchase (not unlike this one), should end with the word “eternity”. Or end at all.
38The Penny DroppedDiscretionary Love
on the second glance.No, not the first. That’s for fairy tales. Here, the electrons zapped from eye to eye—it couldn’t be mistaken—a frisson like no other.No thought required; no assembly needed, only the fully charged air between us. Across a desk in a random art gallery, the universe unfolded as it was meant to do, as it has done for millennia. Like our playful nightsin Bologna, where lived, Morandi, the master of shape and contour, he of the softly lit interiors, the absorbing hues melding effortlessly with each other, steadily flowing from muted grays to pale yellows, mauves, and even creamy beiges, the cool but quiet palette an antidoteto troubled times—gliding easily past treacherous shoals—the perspective alluring, gleaming, radiant, but already found in you. Even in a virtual world, the briefest glimpse transports me, luck-seduced, to a stateof rarest elation, as has always been true, from the first second of the second glance, after the magical penny dropped.
39The Rhyme and the ReasonFrost Meadow Review (Vol. 12)
Despite the times I’ve fallen like a buckshot- peppered albatross, I have no scars on me, at least no visible ones. Coming up on 9:52 this morning, I hack through life, full of misguided enthusiasm, replete with self-doubt at the inadequacy of my being. I channel pale iterations of rangy energy and unbidden ire through the veinsof the dispossessed. The trick isn’t in the recall but in the telling, despite dry mouth and tremulous hands that ‘mind over matter’doesn’t cure. The man in the bus shelter knows the one true answerto life’s fundamental riddle but he isn’t telling, at least telling me. In a clearing, I watch an arboreal creature twist into strange shapes And, having a penchant for spiritual musing, I sound a call to prayer like a muezzin. It feels hollow and doesn’t deepen my acuity. Farther in, the birds ignore their seed in the feeder, perhaps awaiting a different menu selection. They will be waiting a while as that sacred passage runs through your generous heart. I trust they’ll find it soon, that I might leave allegories and analogies on mute. Otherwise, you can blame me for being poetically lazy, cruising on empty.. Words of love must have some meaning.
40Thoughts of an Empty MindCape Magazine (Issue 5)
I could leave the page blank, reflective of my state of mindbut where’s the good in that? It’s a chilling bird that wantssuccor, sustenance, and soul, things I haven’t had in meto give for a while. The loss takes its toll and it’s hard to knowwhen the scar has healed. But I trudge along, drinking mindlessly, heedless of the consequences. My hearing only goes so far, caught in the vortices of a life still unlived to its fullest. The coffee is bitter but sustaining, the wine rapacious, trapped as it is in a spider’s web of words. But they’re my words, inadequate as they are. I’m feeling the dark breath of Satan behind me although I’m a believer in nothing but nothingness, a Sisyphean plaint of the irreligious adherents, anarchists, those with nothing left to prove. I could write a story from these bones but then anyonewho chances on it would have the spoilers revealed. And what’s the point of that? Camus would have a field daywith the meandering, the pointlessness, the anarchy of theserandom thoughts and musical phrases, but, sadly, I’m no Camus. Neruda either. I’m left dodging existential bullets, firing only blanks in return,no sound in a vacuum. It’s a hollow cri de coeur in a vapid worldbut right now, it’s all I’ve got, Lear in the storm, Job in the whirlwind, all crossroads, with no direction home, as Dylan rasped, A rolling stone, but always uphill. There’s no sustainability, only spiritual torpor,like an infinite plane, a Ferris wheel, a Moebius strip.And there’s no future in that.
41UnboundDiscretionary Love
Over 20 paces, I unpack the history,Force the meaningless to vanish, slagThe tailings onto an invisible pile.Like a pirate flag, a skull-and-crossbones Of black and yellow, time only flows One way, drowning the noises in its wake.Veins crisscross, weaving a spider’s Web of longing and ardor, spooning Sweets at one other without regret.Golden tendrils float and fall, likeThe moon past its quarter glow, likeThe soft down on your forearms. I catch you basking in the penumbral shade.Your eyes are truer than blue, moreA palimpsest than dusty slate, callingAnd cajoling the truth hidden within.Stay the course, you say with conviction, Resting on ancient artefacts and marblePillars, echoing the Greeks’ lament,The ineluctable fount, the sourceOf what we’ve become, misanthropicLovers in time, never sharing our fortune.Don’t touch the marble, the sign reads.But I touch it as if it were your cheek.I have no ability to resist. I find abandonIn your steadiness. It offers the redemption I crave, the invitation into your secrets, The ones you hold close, their unabiding Warmth and comfort. It’s this vision I grip like a green lollipop in a child’s fist,Or a waterlogged plank on a raft, adrift, As I can’t do otherwise, or look elsewhere, The burden too wrenching. But I know you Hold the code, the magical formula That will keep us safe from harm, From ravagement, allowing us to explore The bounty that, ever unresistant, is you.You own the knowledge of the owl, freeing Us to soar, unbound, untethered, on the puffsOf a shamelessly irreverent zephyr.In all, you shelter us in your fierce radiance,Your capacious heart, your you-ness, and there’s no time to lose.
42White NoiseBlood & Bourbon, X Issue
White is to protect the polar bears marooned on melting ice floes, heading inexorablyfor extinction. White is to cherish the sacredness of our spirit, its purity and power. White is to prism light into a rainbow, as on an oil slick. White is to shoulder our fate in its own way, jackhammering breath into our exposed ribs. White is as rare as a real white elephant (the mammal, not the cocktail). But the chime has rung on the hour, leaving the heart bereft and empty. It’s one of god’s eternal tricks, maybe her final sleight-of-hand. The absence of color, like death, fools no one. White is nothing but spliced turbulence, shredded particulate, disappointing like corn stalks hanging limp after the harvest. And surely, it’s too cheeky to say that no poem should ever end with the word “rainbow.”