No,
I refuse the blues. Excuse me,
for I fail to see as you empale
my ecstasy. Reflection, I will
not mend our relationship. I'm
not seeing you anymore.

Not all cages have barred windows,
some captors build walls
around
themselves.
The mirror holds me, keeps me
captive,
bleeds me, leads me
only to loneliness.
I sit with the door
locked
and the window
locked
and my life
locked down.
Comfort
holds the key,
and I'd be best to
break free from my confines.

There's magic in the moments we share.
Hands holding memories up with fingertips on each end like clouds in a drought. There they sit, unencumbered, until time necessitates rain.
Clouds can be made up of many things. That concert with two thousand people chanting the same words. The moment of knowing pause between sentences of a last conversation. What sometimes becomes remembered as THE last conversation. Brunch shared among friends. These are the things that matter. It's here that sparks are born. It's here that a dry mouth is drenched.

Mom,
We'd like to give you the world
since it's exactly what you gave to us.
Given our current financial limitations,
it isn't possible at the moment.
So how about a winter coat instead?

With leaders and life coaches
          mental doctors
they must have discovered the
                                                                                 Right
way to live.

With dreams broken down
crushed into a dust,
and structurally analyzed,
                                              they must know.
We exist from 9 to 5, monday to friday,
breathing in and out only for a

bi-weekly

paycheck.

Our lives revolve around
                                             one thing.
Religion has taken a backseat to this new obsession
that people fight and die for.
Now, we battle over
paper and metal,
pressed into coins, printed as bills.
Kind of makes you wonder
why you are
really

here.

A city incomplete. Orange vibrance directs every corner. Its
edges are rough, each turn of the
wheel testing my shocks
as asphalt ebbs and flows
beneath me. Each turn is chaos,
each location new and different. A city lost among itself. Still, each
turn brings with it cobblestone roads and ancient paintings, museums and tourists and beggers, some sitting under bridges, huddled around
a fire. I burn, too, teeth still chattering,
at home among the chaos. A city with plenty of past, looking forward. It
isn't hard to relate.

Thousands of pounds
of dark, shiny, heavy
metal light soars over the
moon-glittered mirror.
No shadows block
water from the sky.
I float, eyes looking
inward as I hope that
today will be forgettable.
For hours, I have no idea where
I've been or where I'm going,
hearing only engine and
praying its whirring doesn't slow.
I'm a chicken ****.
I keep trying to
fade away from my own
mind. Terrified.
Hell-bent on tomorrow,
I stumble off to sleep.

I start with a single idea,
smoldering sweetly like a single
piece of coal.
If I leave it unattended,
too much time and moisture will combine
to cool the sweet heat
of creation.
If I write before it's ready,
time again becomes a factor.
A hot coal needs time,
the unwise smother an otherwise fine fire
with sticks and leaves and logs.
Some are attracted to the
bright sheen of gasoline,
but all I see is a brilliant facade
that fades within seconds.
It burns too hot,
the heat isn't appreciated
and the living leave for darkness.
A good poem, like a good fire,
needs time and tact to survive.
It needs to be nurtured, worked
and tinkered with. A good poem
needs varying heats, complimentary conditions
to grow.
It needs time to breathe, room to
become a bonfire or a forest
fire. Either way,
I try to bring the bright heat
from the warm coal of creation.

Even the darkest night is followed by mo(u)rning

We climb mountains and buildings
and risk everything - well, some of us -
                                                                   for what?
For achievement? For a good story to impress girls?
For pride? Because no one else has?
No,

           it must be something more.
We climb into spaceships and airplanes and
elevators
          to be higher than anyone else,
      to see things that have never been seen,

                  and to be further than anything
                                  than anyone
before.

We climb to improve, to live, to love,
and because up is unlimited.

Sometimes you've got to stare at your feet.
Like when time stands still,
blood curdles with news
and shock takes over your
already white, emotionless face.
Like when you see past, present, and
maybe a lack of future,
all at once. Like when
you yearn for morning sun
because sleep eludes you.
Sometimes your feet aren't the
most interesting thing in the world,
but a bore might just delay or mend the cure.

all of these Important
people
walking to and from their Important
jobs,
talking on their Important
cellphones
about the upcoming Important
meeting...
   i
   n  
   t
People
   r
   t
   w
   i
   n
   e
   d

with their Important,
            complicated lives.

Their importance
           showing through their fancy attire, their better-than-you attitude.
   If they're all so IMPORTANT,
Why is it that I feel like I stand apart,

in my jeans and t-shirt?

A single piece of paper
Flutters in the wind, going
This way
And that
Without end.

Bound,
The leaves still are pushed
This way
And that,

But the weight holds them in place.

A home
Can keep pieces together.

An elderly woman signs forms
with a hand that is steadied with effort.

"It's terrible," she says,

pride turned to shame by time.

I wish I could steady
what shakes her, but
time claims all victims.
Strength today turns to,
like anything else, dust.

The dog has to ****.
The whole city sleeps.
The dog won't go more than five feet
from me.
I walk five feet from a bush, listening
as the buildings slowly inhale, pause,
and let out a restful breeze.
He sniffs the bush, apparently unaware
of the cold.
I look up, naked branches catching
my eyes and the breeze. They shiver
as white flakes of heavens tears
fall softly all around. The dog finishes
his business, then comes for some
attention. The city still sleeps,
time stands still, and we go back inside.

everything dies/ and some things are said/ to have lasted a century/ or more/ but how could that possibly be/ without variations/ changes in how things are done/or perceived/ how could a nation/ that once saw slavery/ as the norm/ elect a black president/ how could/ a nation that saw/ two centuries of change/ call themselves by the same name

everything dies/ and the world keeps/ crawling forward but we still insist/ that time does/ not evolve/or devolve/ what once was into something/else

It rests indignantly behind eyes,
and in the creases that hold them in place.
It's a permanent gaze,
a glazing of hope and health and most of all,
it's a loss.

Embedded in failed careers and lost dreams is this
listlessness, this blisslessness that some
try so desperately to hide.
I know some don't try to mask their masks
and I'm sure that most don't know
the parasite from their own
black sparkling souls.
The diamonds in their eyes have lost their purpose,
and pupils cannot regain their lustre
easily.
It takes divine intervention or more,
whatever that means,
to shine on darkness.

And sometimes no amount of sunlight
lets broken souls glisten; for that
I have no answer.

We're surprised when our 93 year old grandparents die of old age.
And we don't seem to see failing fires
in our relationships until
the Passion for battle
is the only thing keeping the couple together.
I'm no exception; my dad died three years ago
and I still laugh at the joke he told 3 times,
5 years removed. I still hope to make fun of his beloved Maple Leafs.
But, I guess I'm saying that
some couples just need
to alleviate their molten skin
from the furies of battle.

I get lost in the content. My eyes ache at the pain that burns around the world. No visine will ease the heat. I scroll and see a shooting followed by a dash cam of an accident followed by a cute puppy followed by some family drama followed by a selfie followed by

it's unending, and there's nothing to be done, so I scroll and scroll and scroll, giving as much attention to the meaningless and the meaningful. It's all the same to me.

I could never really tell you,
because love in my house was shared using laughs and insults.
Just know
that when I say
"You make me want to *****,"
I don't really mean it.
And know
that just because I can never find the words,
it doesn't mean
I don't feel them.
I'll always regret
not being able to say what you mean to me,
but just remember
you smell truly awful.

I've spent hours, days
wrestling with grief. I've watched
as it gnawed at flesh, taking
pieces of all of us... as if we never needed to be whole. It
doesn't care what you've
been through, what you've done. If you
let it, grief will nibble every inch
until there's nothing left.

It creeps through everything I do
now, nibbling. I see it there,
taking from me
what I never knew I had. No,
mine is no different,
but I refuse. It will not
define me. Grief can feed
all it wants, but my
patience
makes it mute.

Sirens will sit, stand, sprint, and lay with you,
if you let them.
Sirens whisper of an incoming life
while sometimes, on the same night,
discussing one that is outgoing.
Sirens have told the people of Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and Dresden
that their air would be turned to ash,
sooner rather than later.
Sirens pull you to the side of the road
to tell you that you're going too fast,
so maybe slow down a little.

Now modern Sirens have taken the face of man,
the voice of man.
They whisper not to the sailors;
but to the people in their cars,
in their places of work
and in their homes.
(buy my product)
(become a member)
(Listen to Me.)
Maybe control is swaying
and man is being changed,
persuaded to
sit, stand, sprint and lay
with Sirens.

Bay Street Bus Terminal at 2:23 PM

A small bird travels between the feet, one joyful hop at a time. It's accustomed to the careless giants that move about,
and it knows nothing but doors and trick glass and steel and cement. I doubt
it's ever seen a natural, unabashed forest in its lifetime. Nor have I, but I belong to
the rapists of land, molesting everything natural that should ever cross our paths. I'm not an exception, I type poems
on my smartphone and wear nothing but name brands, I travel by burning oil and I consume everything from plastic cases and my protein comes from animals
that sit in cages, their feet crushing old food and new ****, but I don't like to think about it. So I won't,

and I'll keep on enjoying the company of a small bird that can't even conceptualize a forest.

Today is windy. The thawed, muddy earth is restless.
Spring is here, slowly creeping forward.

Today there is nothing to be done. It's a work-free Saturday in April. The cats laze in windows while I sit on the couch and she does a puzzle.

Today is not notable. None of the many life explosions that we will face, will we face today. They will come another time.

Today, I look over at her. Her concentration is unwavering, her gaze fixed on that missing piece that just can't seem to find a home.

Today, I can't look away. She is content, beautiful, strong, smart. All that, with ease, and she chose me.

She looks up. "What?" She smiles, knowing full well that I was staring.

"what?" I respond. She laughs, for the millionth time, and it makes me float, for the millionth time.

Today, I'm home.

Yesterday I wore boots and a winter coat.
Today, running shoes and a sweater, and
today I lost a friend that I met last fall.
It lingered on a branch long after
loneliness took hold. As cold and wind
tried to dim its golden glow, this friend
shook and slimmed but never did it go. It held on through fading warmth, fighting with every inch of its existence to see another day. Time passed.
Every blast of icy breeze cast doubt on
my last remaining leaf on the tree
just outside my house. Today,
I lost a friend that reminded me to hold
on.
Tomorrow, though, I know that in its place a green bulb of life will take shape.

The battle will not have been in vain,
because together we lasted
through the darkest shade of rain.

Until snow speckles the skies,
winter hides joy from colour-laden eyes.
There's no sparkle
from October to December,
as leaves lose their lustre,
as beaches become wastelands,
as sun-tanned skin fades to pale.

When stars finally fall to the earth as
flakes,
darkness is shaken away. Skin quivers
with the cold,
shivers growing more common and less discrete.
Little flecks of brilliance
reach down to the blinded,
returning vision to those
who hope only for a little bit of colour.
The first one to touch your nose,
having
come from the heavens,
describes more colourful times.

"Patience," it whispers.

Pizza boxes sit at curb sides every thursday.
Bottles and cans fill most weekends, some
week days because why not?
We celebrate in ***** rooms, letting liquids leave all sorts of stains.
Semesters pass and we pass (sometimes),
with nothing left in our pockets but long-term debt, friendly conversations lost in the haze of moderate alcoholism, and memories that we feel will last forever.
Youth is wasted on the young, they say,
but what better way to spend a Tuesday than day-drinking in eternal ecstasy?

I remember that night you met my dad.
     I'd packed it away,
                  like one of the boxes that mom put in the storage locker,
         only to one day bring it back
when I need it most.

I'm not sure I need it most now,
                                             but here it is.
I remember after dinner,
my dad talked to us for about an hour.
And I told him we were going for a walk,
because he was a little drunk,
       and he loved to tell his stories.
I remember standing at the lookout,
                             my arm around your waist;
I knew I loved you then,
     but I didn't say it.
That was a perfect moment,
                           forever in my memory

But if I had known it was the first and last time
you'd meet my dad,
I'd never have mentioned that walk.

For another average moment with both
                            you and my dad,

             I'd throw away that perfect walk,
that beautiful sunset.

Generations change.
People didn't trust the radio or newspapers or television or social media or or
Or
anything new, at first.
And some people don't see the comedy
in posting why the next generation is unsuccessful on social media,
but it's there just as
the next generation is, and as their trends will be.
Change is not scary, I'm
telling you that it's coming and
fear, in this case, is a waste of time.

It's a game you never really cared about.
Still, I spent every waking moment giving all I had to this game.
Still, you spent nearly as much time ribbing me about the soft sport that didn't matter til the last few seconds.
Tonight, my team won a championship against all odds.
Tonight, despite the distance between us, I think of you.

Old man, I want to thank you. Cause if you didn't show me hockey, or baseball, or lacrosse, or football, I would have never found my life. I owe that to you.

Mom, I want to thank you too. Cause if you never took me to every soccer practice, if you never listened to my persistent sports ramblings, if you hadn't taught me what it means to be a good teammate, I would never have found this life. I owe it all to you.

I'm at the edge.
behind, open
clear
free space, green in all directions. Blue skies
that I've met before, become acquainted with,
and have become my dearest friends. They
stand tall behind me, pushing forward,
encouraging
when fatigue becomes too much.
They are my sword, my shield.
in front, closed
full
just unknown. Trees piled high, no sky seen. No blue, still green looks down from above. This time,
though,
it's dark. It looks on, expectant.
Of what, I'm not exactly sure.
in front, there is thick brush
built of brambles, raspberry bushes, and dense, low
branches. They cut,
scrape skin and burrow deep for the
unexposed. They have no aim,
no end goal, but
they keep on growing, pushing up,
spreading, acre after acre,
demolishing what I aim
for myself to be. They swallow
me whole, or try, but . . .
Still, there is only one direction
I can go
from here.

I sit in a coffee shop
pump pump pump
goes my chest
pump pump pump
goes my diaphragm
pump pump pump
goes these hiccups
pump pump pump
it's rhythmic and
pump pump pump
obtrusive.
2. I lay in bed
pump pump pump
unconscious, unresponsive.
pump pump pump
A stranger presses two
pump pump pump
metal paddles to my chest.
pump pump pump
It's rhythmic and
pump pump pump
obtrusive and
pump pump pump
temporary.

I was buying a parking pass from a sketchy, one-room portable office because the people that designed and built my building forgot that people have cars and
I keep my phone on silent so I missed the first call and
I knew my Grandma was having surgery that morning to replace a valve in her heart and
I knew my Mom wouldn't call unless there was a reason so as I was walking back to the bus stop, I gave my mom a ring.

It was mid-September and
we cried together but apart and
I decided to walk the 5 km home 'cause I didn't want to break down on the bus and
it was a beautiful day and
I knew that people would stare.

Mom said there was a 4% chance it would go bad and
we knew the odds were ok but she was 92 years old and
she never really was one for odds, fighting and becoming one of 3 female doctors in her graduating class. Mom called her on her days off and
they always talked for a few hours and
I know that Grandma really valued that time.

On my walk in this unrelated town, nothing seemed out of place, but I wasn't really there at all. The beggers begged and
the students drank and
studied and
the thugs thugged and
the cyclists cycled past me as I put my headphones in and
tried to disappear after saying goodbye to Mom because she had other calls to make.

And
Kim texted me wondering why Mom wasn't picking up and
I told her that she would be calling shortly and
I put my phone away and
walked on with my head down.

*

That Christmas season, we had no real family get-together for the first time, but I went with Mom and
3/4 of her siblings and
various other family members to Grandma's favourite restaurant that we went to together a few times and
everyone seemed genuinely happy and comfortable. And
I know they all missed her, of course, and
she was a doctor and
my Grandpa a surgeon, so they had a bunch of money to hand down to their children and
Grandma's family was the most important thing to her, so I think she would be happy knowing that everyone she loved and
that cared for her was a little more comfortable, was able to pay some student loans or a mortgage or a trip (which, also, she spent most of her life doing).

And
it seemed strange to me that on the day she died, nothing really changed, but as time moved on, she has continued to make all of our lives a little easier, a little brighter, a little less gloomy in the months that followed. And
this isn't an "Ode to Money," but rather an "Ode to my Mom's best friend" because all she ever wanted came true, directly
thanks to her.

I've been climbing that hill for a long time
Every time I ascend on my way home,
     I see the red and blue lights that were
     strewn across my lawn
just the one night.
     And I still don't know what that means,
that I'm reliving the one moment
before my world came crashing down.
Maybe it's my mind trying to return to the uncertainty,
     sitting in that little blue car just seconds before
     catching a glimpse of paramedics trying to
breathe life into my dad's lungs.
              Maybe I'm trying to return to a full family
or maybe it's just a memory
              that won't go away

until I stop climbing that



hill.

in crowding. the air swells, too
big to fit the most developed lungs.
Isolation creeps between the living,
making any movement seem
well beyond possible. Here,
I, and likely you, feel both
alone and smothered, helpless and
aware
that sometimes no effort is too
great. Soon, but not too
soon, hopefully, we
will be enveloped.

Sleet seems to fall in sheets.
It covers all, sometimes even a blooming
rose on a cold Spring (or warm Winter) day.
New life, now passed but still preserved.
It seems to evade death,
only until the sun returns from
behind the clouds. The icy casket melts.
It leaves behind a wilted image of
circumstance.
Some flowers wilt too soon
only to be remembered as gemstones
that brought
colour
to a glazed wasteland.

A friendly smile makes
distance irrelevant. Home is
where your friends are, and time
will pass.

Light is a funny thing.
In abundance, it
blinds.
In lacking, it
blinds.
Sometimes the right light seems to fade,
evading those who need it most. Sometimes
just enough shows through an
overturned car,
reflecting off the shards of glass,
showing those with aching bodies
what they need to see.
Sometimes light
is wrong,  but
who's to
say?

A fourteen year old borrows five bottles of his dad's daily beers, puts them back with ache at a brisk pace, and spends the night growing acquainted with an unfamiliar porcelain throne.
He wakes up with the bathroom spinning, and laughs with friends of friends about all that stuff he pretends not to remember (because that's what alcohol does, he's told).
And he does it again, and again
and one time he ends up alone
on the ground on a brisk autumn morning,
and he's moist and chills define his spine.
He goes home and still alone,
he lays on a bed that his parents bought.
Hours later, he wakes up to a glass of water and an advil that appeared on his nightstand, as if delivered by an angel.

tonight we reminisced
about pets loved and lost and a few that we
found again. and though
decades
have gone by, and we have travelled roads
with different destinations, we're still brought
back by the fur babies that made our
home whole. our source the same,
we
will always be held together by at
least that much

I reach
for colourful images, while trying not
to sound pretentious. Often, I fail
but that's alright.
I hate that poetry
has to be searched for, and
is not understood by the masses. I want to write for people, and not just those who took a creative writing elective, or those
that went to high-profile schools. I want to write
so that people have something to read,
to inspire others to create. Art is only for those that can afford the time,
and it seems to me that
there's plenty
to go
Around.

He abandoned me when I needed Him most,
plucked my heart from my chest
and let me bleed out,
much like the rest of my family.

He was hidden in the bushes nearby,
as we all lay in a clearing,
quivering from everything but the cold.

He saw us staring into space,
seeing everything fall apart,
watching me slowly stand up.

He watched as I tried to lift my sisters,
mom,
as I still try to do so.
I don't know what gave me the strength,
what keeps us all moving forward,
but He wasn't there for us.

We were able to lift ourselves up
from the wreckage,
and keep moving forward.

Sometimes I still look back,
past the clearing to the bushes,
and I see nothing hiding,
                                 as nothing hid before.

My landlord is renovating the neighboring room.
I inhale, eyes closed, and I'm faced with God. Unable to speak, I listen as he tells me that life is worth living and that love is worth loving. He says that I'm doing pretty well despite the circumstances and that often an ounce of a smile is worth ten tonnes of agony.
I inhale, bleach and other cleaning solutions siphoning reality from my extremities, replacing it with a calming alternative.

Get up.
Put on clean pants, a clean shirt.
Brush your teeth, god ******, and floss em
too.
I know, today the demons are howling
poison in a ceaseless ringing in your skull; every appendage aching heartily with each movement. Keep moving. Don't be
consumed by it. Don't listen.
Drink your morning coffee, have
your morning ****. Wipe til the paper runs clean.
Get up - go outside.
Breathe deep; count to a thousand, listen to the wind in the leaves and the honking of busy people that can't wait. Listen to the soft coo of morning doves and listen to the ceaseless coarsing of blood as it runs in circles throughout your body.
Watch birds float, intertwined in a back-and-forth that may be familiar. Watch them
swoop this way and that, pecking and chirping.
Get up.
I'm pleading, begging
please get up.
If not right now, if not today,
when?