i am at a friends house when your favorite song starts to play. i forgot you two like the same bands. i dont ask her to skip it, instead let it play, as i recount the numerous times ive heard you sing it to me. i can see your smile in the speckled white paint of her kitchen, hear your voice in my ears anytime she says my name. i am wearing my favorite shirt, and it is only when i am halfway to her bathroom that i realize it is the shirt you bought me for christmas. i look at my feet as i sit back down to see the shoes you bought me for my birthday, i look around to find the bracelet that you made and sent to me adorning my wrist and i wonder when my life became so for you and i dont want to think about this but how can i write about the importance of factoring quadratics when the most important thing to me is you? i didnt want to write a poem this time but ive found myself doing just that with your name as the subject line and your heart as the foundation and i hope there is never another day when i write a sad story with your name for the main character but with a heart like this, whos to say what goes?

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.

Fog drips slowly over rose colored mountains
like sap from a tall heartwood tree
Lavender skies burst to flames of burnt orange
as the sun reaches the horizon
The moon in waning gibbous
displayed boastfully
Sage brush blowing gently
sprouted from red dust  
on an indelible high desert morning.

When I first saw her

She was standing over me, like a worn statue of Aphrodite. She radiated beauty and power and her skin glistened like a lake reflecting the fragile moonlight

When I first saw her, she was wearing an asking Alexandria t shirt, a beacon of individuality in a copy and paste status quo of basketball shorts and loaded guns aimed at the weak.

When I first saw her, I was laying on the ground looking up. I was halfway through the word help, she was halfway through the word stop.

I was 13. Kids a few years older and twice my size held me by my throat and I choked on the gasoline bile boiling up from my stomach.

After she broke a few knuckles, she dusted me off.

When I first saw her, she said, youre kind of a loser, but I like you.




When I last saw her, I bent over the casket to kiss her cheek. The bruises on her neck and cuts in her wrists still hid behind the make up and I wouldve have seen them regardless of the caskets opening. I had this childlike dream that a tear would seep through her chest and water her soul enough to regrow and shed once again beam that beautiful smile that cut through the fog of life. I stood over her like a mournful tower, codemned to not move from its place. "Youre kind of a loser, but I love you"

I awoke to a song
A melody foreign to the ears
Of a life surrounded by concrete
Walls that strangulate the creative nature
Against mother natures nurture

With every note, a new realization dawned
Like the sun rising above jutted cliffs
Each varying in magnitude
To the degree that even the birds
Didnt know their tune

When alas,
The chorus reached a mountain creshendo
Filling the forest with such harmony
That I knew with every single beat
These woods are a part of me

You came in like rain
that poured heavily,
washing away the dirt and remains
of the polluted world
but, some despised your presence
for they lacked warmth and security
you made them shiver,
you made them suffer,
when you believed that
you gave them joy
With your pure drops of water

- Kaya