I was reading a book on mindful compassion
but I fell asleep

I had good intentions
but something better came up

I went to Vipassana meditation
but a **** broke my focus

I went on a 5-2 fast
but I had to finish the plate

I made a New Years resolution
that fell into dissolution

I had a healthy constitution
till I found a lazy solution

Once I was undecided
but now I'm not so sure

I thought I had climbed every mountain
but have never climbed Mount Druitt

I thought I had all the answers
but never really knew it

I thought I was young and fit
till a girl offered me a seat

I thought I was in demand
but nobody rang

I sat in a "quiet" carriage
but announcements left silence in carnage

I'm not a racist
but ...

Just when you think
the road leads to nowhere
crops up the moss veiled house

its crumbling bricks make greyer
the sky with the hush of twilight
and you rue with melancholy
the night under its roof assigned for you

but the old man like a seasoned spider
lets you forget you're trapped for the night
to his web spun from timeworn earth
as you stare engrossed upon his face
outlined by glowworm sparks

he recounts it was all marshland
he grew into bowl of harvest
and how he was blessed with
the most beautiful woman on earth
then reaching the crescendo
his words thin into whispers
when he tells you his two poor eyes
were not enough to hold her beauty
so she putting a stone on her heart
spread wings on a night like this

the cornfield wilted
he wizened into an endless wait
with gracious death saving his bones
to lighten his heart to a stranger
who comes alone.

some claimed the paddies smelled like
fetid fishes, *****; some said like the dung of oxen, peasants
or other beasts who squatted there  

others whispered the fields reeked of death  
while I found no odor to be grander evidence
of life’s languorous longing for itself  

we marched those mired moors, as hunters
of invisible prey--ourselves too being stalked, or worse,
mocked by other hairless apes,  

who like we, sought light, but
could divine darkness far better, for we
knew little of night, its sacred riddles  

some said those places reeked  
of rotted flesh, the festering relics of our deeds
I inhaled deeply, slowly  

only rich, fecund stories
were revealed to me, ones I fear yet
this silent night

my hands protest today
so they become
don’t know how it started
they were filled with air without memory
nowhere to land, no stories attached
to the sleeves
this body is a history of fights,
wandering weeds,
of fists full of laughter

I was once an empty space with time borders
a true self or a void full of ambition
certain patterns disguised in black and white
milk tears


I met my shoulders today
I no longer hide my thoughts in open spaces
or defeather my dreams
my gestures turn into statues
to be seen from afar
I put my spin into the cup of morning
so I could tell today apart from tomorrow
in time’s bone marrow

Funny how Someone can
Asunder a heart of thine
And thou still dost adore them
With all thy riven smithereens

My love, please come to me,
In my life thou dost linger
A love from my sweet past
That beamed than many a star

My love, long have I endured
A heart sundered by love
Though wherever  I wander
Thy sweet love I still dost crave.

Oh my love, come back to me
So we may pick these riven pieces
That like sea waters scattered be
And I'll smoother thee with kisses

Together we'll never sunder
For my love will be thy love
Beaming so bright forevermore
As thy  love will be my love

Blissfully we'll dwell ever after
Like twinkling stars in galaxies
With our enchanted passion
Effulgently lingering in perpetuity.

A  poet was given
a life sentence today.

He'll be going the way
of Bob Marley and Frank Zappa.

I saw him perform
over the last few decades.
Hip he was and always will be.

In the ranks of Canadian poets,
his peers being  Gordon Lightfoot,
Leonard Cohen and Mister Neil Young.

He wrote about the Canadian Prairies,
about New Orleans sinking and nautical disasters.
All with soul and intellect.

A friend said,
"You didn't have to
Know know know him
to love love love him".
And that's true.

With a heavy heart I ponder the noon news.
I recall the day I heard of John Lennon's ******.

The only time I ever cried
over the death of a celebrity.

Thoughts and prayers out to you Gordie,
and your family and friends.

Ironically tragic for one so Tragically Hip.