Cut the limbs
off a boundary

of trees,
and the police come running.

He was more supported--
there was evidence--

twisted branches
on the ground--

video of it
in action.

It took three days
to go from comfort

to sorrow--
she who freed me

also made me
a ghost.

My i
diminished--

blood on all
my four walls.

I'm still
the only one

who sees red.
His wife doesn't seem to care.

She can always deny
everything

and stick her head
in another book.

Before that August--

(strange month                                        echo)--

bloomed in the east
sunrise bomb                                           sunset dawn

you sometimes
                                                                   rose
(unbidden)

to the surface
of my mind.

These were some of my triggers:

Calgary                                                     (always Calgary)
me too
Christmastime.

And all the times                                     you attempted
to reach out to me

(sucker punch                                          sleep ****).

And then that August--

(good mornin'                                         bombshell)

the news--
for shame.

For I had fallen for the lie
(while you talked all the while
                                                                 in your human voice).

So you like 'em young.
So you like it rough.

August sun                                            beat me down.

It took this glaring
of a light

to show me
the darkest                                             of men's natures--

and that I knew them
intimately.

Feast or famine.
The dry summer or monsoon season.

It’s not as though he had
murdered me.

That would be easier to
prove. There would be

no hiding
the blood of it.

And how I did bleed—
years later,

red all over it.
Improper.

Fuel for the fire.
Combustible.

But nothing trembles
as I weigh the being

of my existence against
what stoppage.

Order or chaos.
Black or white.

What has been spoilt
rotten can never be

golden. These are
the questions I ask myself:

Am I loved? Do I
love? Can I love?

While there is the story
he tells himself, reassuringly:

It was just ***.
It was just ***.

I live with
holy sunshine—

but I wake to weep.
In the sun,

shadows stretch
long behind me,

where some things ought to
remain buried.

I did not go digging you up.
Bees do not normally

nest in skulls—
but I know

they hum in your head,
dripping honey of me.

Gentle wolf,
you came in the guise

of a friend.
They tell me that they would have

rescued me
as you made your advances—

except
they were never there,

in your lair.
And by that time

I had already
been eaten.

All that exists
between us now

is a history;
the guilt that still

weighs on you,
and poetry.

And if your guilt ever becomes
too much for you to bear,

and if you ever feel like
confessing,

my poems can be
your Hail Mary’s.

Tin man, on the eve of tin,
your apology rings hollow.

I think that you
were only trying to

crack a window,
find a space to crawl back in,

attempt to
erase me some more.

Meanwhile, the police
are off investigating

crimes that happen in
real time. They like

to catch their perps
red-handed. Even with you

cast in the limelight,
confirming that what you did

to me was real,
it was my own nightmare.

I know, we fall into
that grey area.

In a garden of blooms
you walk freely,

inhaling and dreaming
of touching

those yet untouched
pink and yellow buds.

birds of a feather
no one has put

two and two
together

daisies gone
Occam’s razor

and he
our common denominator

no monsters under his bed
but in it

scars ripped open
I thought had healed

hurt to heal
heal to hurt

words I had never spoken
out loud before

hot lava
righteous anger

memory loss &
found negatives

was that a kindness?
to ply me with alcohol so that I wouldn't remember?

two weeks
no sleep no eat

hurt to heal
heal to hurt

a new hurt
to contend with

suddenly ghosted
back in the dark

like all dark
eating away at light

till only the stars remain
maybe signalling

to one another
I see you, I see

you, I
see

It isn’t as if
I must put on
the Queen’s English
to be around you.

It isn’t as though
I should feel
the need to rebel, or
that my solitude

is a luxury
instead of a right.
Rather, these are
the whale-bone songs

of a well-worn battalion,
poised as I am
at every solstice,
footsore at the door.

This is simply
the ebb and flow
of ambrosia
that sets the pendulum

to swing
in different arcs
of fool’s gold,
the soft footings

at the edge of my radar.
This is the culture shock
of living dead girls
undergoing a seismic shift

in the round
mother-of-pearl
mountain ash,
insinuating

themselves
in a sea of voices,
while shadows cast
a romantic screen.

For every one that succeeds,
millions of others fail.
So tell me
how it should be,

that I could live
on my knees
and weep honey tears
as my dreams escape me.

Because this is
a death of sorts.
The phoenix rises,
only to burn again.

Poverty
is a personal Shanghai,
and just as vast.
I want to believe

that wealth can be
weathered beauty,
Elizabethan colouring,
and a pirate smile.

You get my most
gorgeous parts,
although
my flaws,

innumerable,
hidden
in blind spots,
hidden in ivory,

are discovered
again and again,
as I live between what was
and what will be.

I wear an old shade of red.
My belly is a wrinkled
skin of fruit.
I am no longer a ripe peach,
not even a blossom.
That my daughter is.

I am a rose

blown wide open

petals dripping, seeds dripping

in a garden

full of buds

just waiting to exhale their scent

This cycle

flowers go through

dying

for the next beauty

Poetry is heavy as lead
in my mouth.

Tree branches find more grace
in a wind that’s ragged.

The times have me gobsmacked,
petulant observer, no more endearing
than anonymous audience.

My own visions, shadows on cave
walls, storytelling secret
animal lanterns.

I hardly journey there anymore.

Those ruins are far and distant,
Far and distant, and black and grey.
Relics are moon rocks in the frozen landscape.

The grand façade of the pantheon has
Crumbled into sand. I could crush it all into
Dust beneath my heel.

The mind itself is an eye, a camera obscura,
Lit not by the moon—
That old pinged marble—

Over whose surface I skim in my tiny submarine.
The lunar scene fills my vision,
Film noir.

I spy the cold garden. In the heart of it
Gleams the litter of my chicken bones.
My cowardice the wicked reminder,

Consequence of the role I performed
For the impassive audience. I underwent
A sea change in the theatre of their minds.

On some other plane
Holy voyeurs peer through spyglass,
Seeking to undress the celestial paramour.

Such delicious vacancy—
**** statue in an arena of eyes,
Gristle picked clean by vultures.

The air is ****** dry. Cold stars
Abound in the black sky.
Smeared ink the lingering impression,

Smudged thumbprint.

Does memory deserve such a platter?
Cellophane instead of silver, but still
An impressive tower.

Such weight it bears—
Exhibit of blue curiosities
Resting on shoulders,

Original honeycombs.
The honeyeater feasts
On what has made a meal of me.

Grand rooms echo with silence.
Love turned to hate
So often without comment.

A history of broken hearts lies beneath
Street level. Away from sun’s glare
I buried them.

It is a tomb I walk in, tour guide
To myself. It is an ossuary hidden deep
Underground. It is the Catacombs of Paris.

Here moldering in the dark repose
A stack of secret skulls and bones—
Those gleeful arsonists.

In the end, even they succumbed
To the fires they set,
Burning down chapels without regret.

The city rumbles overhead, oblivious.
Everyone is absorbed with their own busyness.
No one pauses to wonder outside the still museum.

The cool façade belies the treasures hidden within.
They forget the history we share.
No visitor ascends the stair.

Inside, all is quiet.
The sole curator walks among the artifacts—
The rare objects, a Gordian knot,

The personas we once wore:
The naked emperor, the femme fatale,
The honeycunt.

Drowned world
in a miasma of plastic.
I turn to love
is not just a flash
in the pan. I am moody walls
and stone borders,
eyes on the horizon,
the quickening ****** sunset.
I try to believe in some heaven
that I am here.
I should pay more attention.
I should bloom like a flower
underneath your sun,
rewarding you
with an infinite unfurling of petals.
The night need not crush.
It may reveal its stars.
The child brides’ shrieks
do not always
denote pain.

Peel back the layers
of my rural purgatory.

Figure out
the critical junctures
of where I once stood,
with this one,
now on TV, and this one,
surfing in Hawaii.

I was a **** girl, spreading
my legs for sailors, and
getting crucified for it.

I am guilty
of still imagining
our beautiful possibilities.

Death may yet
claim him, and my ****
are still round
and firm.

There are worse places,
little girl. Worse hells.
This isn’t one of them.
There are depths you haven’t yet seen,
where the dive alone
would **** you.
The sea monster of my depths,
curled still, and waiting,
waiting for me.
I imagine his hand on my ***.
I imagine all the trespasses
I would never let happen
(never again).
There is the scene of the crime—
I’ll be there once again—
I’ll take a photograph of it
again—
where he knew,
despite the hand that he let caress
its way downward, despite
his fingers that fumbled
towards ecstasy,
he knew—
he knew
that he never should have touched me.

Break me into chasm
then let the love pour in—
flower into deep well—
stem the umbilicus
of what you could say
you knew of me—

the privilege of living
inside your own head—
and me,
something made of sand,
a wink—

something of one
of many lives ago,
though how well
you knew me—
as did he—
how well they saw me—
and maybe no one did.

We were lovers
in a past life.
And now
I am obscure as
lost Atlantis, origin
of the fairy tale—
fragile
as gossamer and
the Holy Grail.

Where does it hurt today?

My teeth/sinuses,
Sciatic nerve,
*****, perineum,
*******?

But not my heart
(no, no more my heart).

My pieces scattered,
no more sacred
than dust
on the wind.

Lately, the outside
world has felt
cold, foreign,
and alien.

(Especially anything
American.)

Of course, being in this
wave of blue,
I would be hacked
to death.

I feel innocent in my arrogance.
A drudge to the syrup tin,
cheap and sufficient—
the honey hoarded.

and between you and me is the world

and between you and me is a language

and between you and me is culture

and between you and me is a war

and between you and me is religion

and between you and me is a wall

and between you and me is perception

and between you and me is ourselves

her shadows
have more weight
than my ghost

in my hands
a basket
full of ripe
plums

they prefer
those bite-sized
cookies with the
******* fortunes

plain language
in which
nothing hums

Learn their language. You will
need the words
to sing
your own songs.

Let them name you:
shameful
crazy
nothing.

We forget that
***
is still
a weapon.

Laugh at their visions,
their one-faceted
solve all
solutions.

Remember that
every day
you rise anew
like the sun.

Once
in the old neighbourhood

I had never felt more beautiful
and unafraid.

But I am afraid now
as you stalk near.

My words are naked babies
and I must run.

Swifter beasts than me
have not survived

the chase
across the savannah.

You too struck
quick as lightning.

Do they willingly give up
their bodies and blood?

Are they all too happy
to submit to death?

But I,
I just wanted to get out alive.

I search for the true reflection.
Is it in the mirror or the camera?
Is it in a lover’s eyes or an enemy’s?

I don’t profess to stand on a pedestal,
but I stand on something,
and it seems it’s always something

that knocks me off.
And we may say, I know, I know,
for I have also been there.

I know who she is. I know, I know.
I know the problems she’s facing,
as if we are all wise men.

But it’s becoming clear
that you can only ever walk
in your own shoes.

what is sand
but the finest of glass?

and what are bones
but the finest of ash?

and you may try to crush
me down into the finest of elements,

reduce me to nothingness,
******* to the wind.

but I have a talent
for rising again,

oh yes.
you cannot keep me down for long.

the latitudes of freedom are not hard to measure --
though they can be difficult to achieve.
there are limited means, and a day --
dashed by uncooperative weather, the wind
outside raging like some mythical beast --
blowing the snow sideways, piling the drifts.
and so the day unfolds in the usual way,
and the night -- the foreseen sleep interrupted,
as it has been for years, and the road ahead --
while invisible still -- promises more of the same.

the edges are stained blue

and no matter
that spring is holding out its hand
in a promise,

spring becomes summer,
summer fall,
and winter again,

and the hours and the hours and the hours

and cities rise
and forests fall

once, gods
are now falling into disrepair,
temples on the verge
of imploding.

you love me -- though you don’t

know me fully --

just as you love

the stars at night --

the vastness

you can’t imagine --

lighting up

eternity.

dense as marble, your body
is something to hold onto

after years of chasing shadows,
thin reedy men whose leavetakings

were their legacies, fashioning
(maybe by accident) crude sharp tools

with which to stab my heart.
look at it today,

made thick by crisscrossing
scar tissue. have you ever seen

anything so beautiful
that was broken but

unbroken? here, feel
the heft of it in your palm.

Forests were torn down and
cities built because of surety.

How can your child's face
assure me of my future?

you are so enamoured
with the honey on her lips

you don’t realize that mine
taste just as sweet

It is her spirit
you fell in love with.

Be careful
not to crush it –
shards
beneath your heel –

shattered glass remains
shattered glass.

I held up the mirror
just to see
if you were as unrecognizable
as me.

and it isn’t so odd that
we become each other’s
caretakers, as like
children, we reach for love,
as if we’ve never endured
a long winter’s night alone,
hope the last matchstick
lit in our hand.

A sky, pale after sunset,
is darker than a blue one at midday.

It’s your light I love,
shining from your smile.

Innocence has such light.
I’ll face it head-on. Sweep away

the shadow of my years
with your golden laughter.

Stuffed on chicken wire,
no rooster in the yard.

I’m practicing magic
while the lawnmower rides.

Funny that,
said her valentine.

They hadn’t yet learned
there’s so much to know,

her body opening
like a rose.

who told you
you were not beautiful?

does that mean
not worthy of their time?

but anyway
they stated as such

if anything
their actions proved otherwise

but no matter
I’m trying not to mind

that I was never real
figment of imagination

whatever you cast me
I betrayed love

and cast heroes into new moons
beached jellyfish

I’m learning to gather bones
painting a canvas

instead of
reading newsprint

sculpture of messy clay
ultimate opus

good gold
honest trinket

bees’ honey
I recognize my self

ageless blue
flame

in all that is
ugly

small practice
sunburst navel design

Do you see what I see?
We have descended into the belly of the beast.

Houses crowd together, their dead eyes staring out.
They’ve sprung up overnight like

Ugly toadstools.
The machines on the hill are busy

Scraping away the old. By that I mean
What was there before,

A forest naturally,
And putting up these monstrosities instead.

It can’t be let well enough alone.
There are too many people and someone’s got to make a buck.

The world burns down to the filter.
We suffer the fevers of the dry needle people,

And are left with what has been
Torn out from under us.

Some privy chair propped us up with potions.
Dutiful pawns, riding the arcs they have fashioned,

They pay us a small ransom
To cull and sell their wares.

Simple sticks and carrots are not enough to wake us.
The damage thus wrought we pay no mind to –

Subdivisions, shopping malls, parking lots.
There are too many people and someone has to pay.

after the ***** red day
her dry tongue bruises
the evening
with burning blue songs

morning bleeds in
then blazes
the sky pierced open by one hot star
night melts away, slinky black cat

a thousand restless fingers
pluck along my nerves
and crawl swarming bees
over my flesh
******* dry honey
and I as a comb am empty
waiting on the waxing moon
to bring in the tide
exposed and littered
on the cracked seabed
lighting beeswax candles
impromptu runway lights
for those aeroplanes
who always fail to land
and wasted afternoons
fade into wasted nights
tossing to and fro
I sleep
under the cupboards instead

Her novelty has faded.
The stars hang back, distant ladies-in-waiting.
The night sky, their palace, is eclipsed by cities
Exploding with neon lights and grotesque trees.
She is too romantic.
Inch by inch, the black sheath is drawn back,
Revealing her smiling crescent.
She keeps a faithful orbit, and stirs
Blue oceans with long white fingers.

In her full sphere
She is a perfect spotlight,
Turning quiet snowy fields into
Illuminated empty stages.
She plays peek-a-boo, uncovering lovers
Gleaming whitely in the mouths
Of beds.
The beauty of entwined limbs
Exposed in her milky radiance.

She is the sun’s soft reflection.
He is never dim, and the black
Silk bag, a sort of corset,
Is ready to devour her again.
The wine is drained from the glass.
Her smile has become a slit.
The single pearl
Gulped,
Cloaked in shadow again.

You could never picture me in the pockets of my West Coast.
I flew out of your story and into another, and then
Even into another, always the phoenix.

No longer yours, but his.
No longer his, but mine.
Perhaps I suffered these little deaths to forge a heaven with him.

A king, he’d follow me to the ends of the earth, thrice over.
His queen I’m still too shy to let shine through,
A star stubbornly obscured by cloud.

Though before I complained of rain,
On the Island it never bothered me.
Even in the dead of winter it kept the grass emerald-green.

An emerald city:
Ivy shrouded trees; moss fluorescent.
Our castles were those green giants.

Siamese blue to denim blue.
Betwixt the Spit & Seabroom.
It was all I dreamed and ever wanted.

The only thing missing was the garden, the garden,
Sheltered by walls made of cob.
Or a whole house, the air inside delectable.

Tendril of dream,
Is a cinder girl deserving of bees,
Turning honey into mead, of wild things?

No. Exiled to a foreign land,
A barren land; the ghetto forest.
Those halcyon years now only a memory.

Ridiculous to expect the bald
Rocks to yield to a surfer’s paradise, of
Blue-green ocean. Long hairs cannot thrive under puritans’ eyes.

Green things tremble for sun.
For all the rain, I remember the sun,
Filtering down through the forest canopy,

Upheld by the cathedral’s true pillars
Rather than these thrifty spindles. In reverence of true
Beauty, all is quiet & hushed.

The birth of a princess may bring us back.
Pioneers, we’re still in search of our happy ending,
To live lush in nature’s majesty.

I know the Pacific is still out there
Roaring somewhere,
Crashing itself onto stony beaches.

Mists wreath those mountains.
The drums beat.
That muted boom, my thud of heart.

There is nothing to pinpoint of the strange beast.
Only images,

Blurred and refracted,
Fleeing down a hallway of mirrors.

O maestro of conditions,
It is you they are in love with,

A dark sun unaware of its own orbiting planets.
They are the cause of all of it.

Every comet, every lack
Leaves a trail etched across your sky.

And in their eight eyes
Something seemingly whole becomes distorted,

A piece cut out made separate from the rest.
From this gulf appears a war engine,

A bite of venom,
The desire to **** what they can’t.

Darling of judge and jury,
Blame absolves them of all responsibility.

You are the sole carrier of their weakness.
They fill your skin with their nightmares.

Flesh as fruit
Is strictly poisonous,

Bleaching the sheets of the saints.
Now no more –

Vanished,
Like what was found and then lost.

Like what was married and
Soon divorced.

Still, notoriety is a phantom
Floating in cages,

Star player at a masquerade,
Costumed with your own face.

comely, maybe
but not beautiful
my features are as round as vowels
and I carry the moon in my hips
I am an unpolished beauty
smooth pebbles resting at the bottom
of a cold clear stream
with an empty purse
imagination
my only currency

in this world
I am a shrinking violet
occasionally a rose
february-white
caught in your button-loop
long-stemmed red roses
stalk runways
hollywood bombshells
are bubbly as champagne
and full of flesh and light

but *** sans love
is still an empty bathtub
whatever happened to pin-up girls
long cigarette holders
and muted photographs?
I am distorted
in the fish-eye view
of the modern lens

in my fantasies
I am no longer sand and loam
I glow like a tall slim candle
though I am often numb and dumb
and my girls are as absent
as long lost unicorns
I am the bohemian princess

I travel through foreign lands
clothed in exotic costume
a jewelled headdress, and
indian pyjamas coloured sapphire,
turquoise and cayenne-red
my feet are near bare
and my hippie hair
is a mass of blonde curls

I take a sojourn in
southern california
warm desert air
soft against my skin
I surf in the salty sea
held buoyant by the waves
a sunset stains the sky tangerine
the palm trees
black against the orange light
click teasingly in the breeze

Could it have happened any differently?
Perhaps. But which fork in the road was it?
Where does the path start to unravel?
A change in the way things are
Would have changed everything else as well.

For all the mistakes bemoaned, lessons
Learned – unless vanity stands in the way –
Or the same error repeated
With different actors playing the same role –
Hero and villain alike.

And the split between people of insignificance and
The people that matter – faces splashed on
Tabloids and magazine covers –
The invisible reduced to mere shadows
Floating on the fringes of light.

Shadows have a way of defining the light.
People have a way of shaping our lives,
Setting in motion our trajectories,
The way banks and boulders guide water in a river –
The wind, a fallen tree.

No absence made a hole in the day of someone
Who was never there.
What’s out of our control – people,
Sequences of events. What’s inevitable –
How we choose to react.

Stars of tragedy.
Stories of their untimely demise
Told soberly in newsprint.

Stretching from Africa to Mexico,
Victims of natural disasters, crime,
And of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What was here is lost.
What was warm is forever gone.
These envelopes that remain can be stamped with anyone’s address.

In the end, it’s all the same
Dust
That settles in the melting ***:

Empty shells littering beaches,
Dried-out husks,
Vacant houses.

The clocks wind down,
and soon the Earth will spin
tightly again.

How many passes do we need
to take a conscious breath?
How many paths?

The curtain lowers
before the curtain rises again.
I find myself staring at the red velvet,

the in between.

They are the sky.
I am the earth.

They are taxi rides.
I am a river rushing.

They are eyes glued to a screen
when their companions long for real conversations.
I am the wind in silence.

They are ****-coloured beer.
I am black coffee and stout.

They are cell phone towers.
I am the stars.

They are poodles on leashes.
I am the lone wolf.

They are elevator rides.
I am off the beaten path.

They have forgotten their roots.
I am plugging in.