Maybe it's two years feeling lonely,
or I'm juiced from drinking way too much coffee.
But, when the Springtime shows its Joker's face,
I'm less likely to sneer and turn away

                                                           ­               Than I was this time last year,
                                                           ­     when I had lost all ******* bearing,
                                                        ­            while I was swearing at the stars,
                                                          ­                    aping Oneida's* navigating.

And, now, I'm on the eastern side,
I'm walking slow, it's early morning.
I don't even want a brush,
          to paint a blackout on the sun.
Well, I've had a few false starts,
I've made an art of second guessing.
Finally don't need a crutch
          to clear the days of all their must.

'Cuz I think I'm aware, now...
          that the frost is gonna thaw real fast
          and trickle down
          into the topsoil 'neath my feet.

Well, maybe we should lay off the whiskey,
or maybe it's two years in this city.
But, when the Winter creeps down 'round our heads,
we should welcome her just like a sneering friend.

                                                        ­                      'Cuz the other shoe will fall
                                                          an­d we'll be walking halfway barefoot.
                                                       ­                  Frozen roads'll get gridlocked,
                                                 we'll ***** for months that we can't stand it.

For now, I'm drifting through downtown,
I'm striding fast, it's early evening.
Ask a stranger for the time
          and wonder what's been on your mind.
And I'm always running late
but make an art of playing catch-up.
I'll catch up with you next week,
          we'll kick the pattern off repeat.

'Cuz lately I've been thinking...
          that the frost is gonna thaw real fast
          and trickle down
          into the topsoil 'neath my feet
          and green things up!

From the top of the Terminal,
your size was splayed out,
a grey **** carpet for the Red River Valley.
And The Forks right beneath
                      our weary walkers' feet
was a thick drop setting up in the center
of your ash grey forehead.
Traced a thumb down Taché and St. Mary's
to the peak of your left cheek on Fermor.

Your traffic light glance blinked us
                    right to a stop
as blue bomb thoughts and temperatures dropped
at the base of our minds
and your wide, widow's peak sky
formed a cold iron bruise 40 minutes past 5.

I've held your muddy diamond eyes
in mine, how many times?
And you'd sigh, sometimes
         from your North End scar,
but the Assiniboine bends around Wellington Crescent,
a stifled, spiced laugh from the failed rebellion
of your Province's youth.
          And you know I'm no novice
to the uncouth barbs of the Winter,
'cuz you wrapped asphalt arms
                                       nice and tight
'round our shoulders.

Osborne & Morley for an A-frame embrace.
The face of a city, its wrinkles a sketch
of laugh line drives for donuts and coffee.
Crows' feet stretched through The Exchange.

We followed your grin
                from
corner to corner,
from Richardson Airport
to Transcona Yards; one earring a lifeline,
the other, steel bones.
From your St. Norbert chin,
to your twin St. Paul crown,
we would wander,
kiss your River East temple
                  then call it a night.

I have names for every smile you gave me:
Vi-Ann in the Village,
The Toad in the Hole,
St. Boniface Cathedral, that first time
in deep snow.
                 I want you to know,
               you frozen Great City,
your terrible beauty is written on me.

Each side-slanted grin I shared with your sidewalks
               encircles my history now,
                          even still.
Fill an eye with 5 years
                of joyous, drunk laughter
which seeds your purple sand sky with fog ghosts.

Still-frame your patchwork, frostbitten face--
the Perimeter Highway's a jaunt-angled toque;
                                           keeps you warm--
I still wear you
           when late Autumn light takes me back.

Checkered choices rise some nights,
play chess with all my frightful failings.
Queen's Pawn to Rook 5.
          Nail my footsteps
          to the concrete season.
          I'm losing pieces it seems.

I'm a sardonic grinner
     and under these eyebrows, it's nuclear winter.
Wending my way through the last
three years, I find no release valve.
The pressure will build and place
its long arm along my shoulder,
pull me far from my friends.
One.
                                         Two.
One.
                                         Two.
                   Step
                 by step
      by hammer blow step
a story is crafted, installed with a lock
          in a circular book.

Queen's Pawn to Ryman Street
                  1:45 a.m.
simmering skin over ice armored innards,
the freezing rain sends up my curses
                                               like steam
                                  clouding off of my shoulders
and into the skyline.

I've castled my way out of checkmate questions.
Not my move to make,
                     so I won't life a finger.
Queen's Pawn to front doorstep,
          then straight on to bed.

About a million prairie miles
roll out slow from sparkling eyes.
Each night, beneath a blanket
of melting white noise
that distance wraps around your
toes and takes its sweet time
          with every
          aching inch.

If I could sell you a story
from pursed lips a half-inch
beneath my reddened, runny nose
who knows if you'd believe it?
But I might get rich if you
were buying
          my slurring, supine words.

I could buy you.
               A new coat.
               With your coin.
And I'd borrow it for the winter.
'Cuz mine's all full of holes
that breathe too hard.
          Like me,
on my long walks home
through streetlights and snow.
          Like you,
in your bed tonight
carving words in your wall,
in the dark, with tongue tucked
tight behind your crooked,
perfect, lovely teeth.

A coat's no good in Summer
(save to improvise a pillow
when I sleep on friends' floors).
But you can sell me back my story,
                                   (half-cost, I'd hope...).
And--just maybe--I could swallow
your million prairie miles,
and stomach five more months
of Sundays...
               To read your wall.
                       Aloud.

City limit space expands,
it's threaded through with veins--
grey-black dendritic strands
                                     span
                        across this moldy brain
of a city.
Our rotting nights spray hits around
           the places players play.
The impulses will whitewash all complaints
'til the glaring day.

I wanna spit-shine every storm drain,
stain the cracked sidewalks in white,
take this town to Sunday morning Mass,
though she was born for Friday nights.

We're gonna trickle past addresses
                                                   now,
Electroshock through habit streets
these crosswalks sneer with snide expression.
Mildewed thoughts we'll hardly think.
A conversation you're repressing
I'm smoothing out my wrinkled brow
Another weekend's blurred out
blank confession
melts off the tips of tongues,
          I can taste it now.

Circulation space expands,
we're threaded through with veins--
this bio-asphalt plan
                           spans
              all through this molded frame
of a body.
But rotten thoughts, like ships aground,
                   teach sailors how to pray
when impulses have buried all complaints
'neath the foaming spray.

I wanna shade out every bruise now,
paint the dumpsters all in gold.
Missoula, listen: You're a lady.
I don't give a **** what you've been told.

A moldy brain dreams slattern makeup
for a prizefight town each night
so let's take up every artist's brush,
paint shadows on these barroom eyes.

We're gonna flow right through these boule-
                                                          ­          vards.
Electroshock through habit streets.
These dim lit yards and spoiled thoughts
are hyphens placed between each week.
A conversation you're repressing,
I'm smoothing out my wrinkled brow.
Our city's made-up face is running
off the tips of winter and I taste it now.

"I once thought I had mono for an entire year. It turned out I was just really bored."--Wayne Campbell, *Wayne's World

Pass this
        night un-
*******
                                            wingnuts­.
Opened
        casing
showing
                                 ­            my guts.

Fragmented seconds ticking, slipping
through the widening span
                                     of these small hands.
I've unlocked                         my innards
and the truth is out: it's mostly rusting gears.
I've wound down.                 I've ground up
days and weeks, upended months,
spilled crumbs
                         of my years
on pages, aging fast.
The faces show it's late,
                                        so late.

Time's up.
          Trickling
out of
                                        habits
Gutter
        ­   nights are
washing
                                         ashes
Into
                 Yawning
                                              Faces
fille­d up
                  with questions
                                              falling
f­rom the corners of
their weary, sunburnt eyes.

I'll tick off one more weekend, crossing
panels off a page.
                               Discard a month.
They've opened                    the archives
and the story's old, the golden paper cracks.
The faces,                               blank pages,
rifle past through volumes' deaf--
--'ning greys.
                        Intentions
forgotten, filtered through
the seasons' blurring hum.

                                              It's so late.

An animal shriek
in the snowiest silence
is swallowed by eyes deep and brown,
                        not like mine.
Which're shallow and icy and
                                clouded with Sundays
                                shrugged off of shoulders
from peak down to plain.

These mornings are silent,
constructed from cinder blocks;
skeletal, rusting--yet inwardly
                                     wailing.
Why in the world can't I set those shouts free
when the achiest Mondays release
all their caltrops
               and I stagger through work weeks
on sore, shredded feet?

It's because of the way
      that your shrieks echo off
      of my wrought iron eyelids
      when frost fills your veins.

It's because of the way
      that I melt every Thursday
      and wash down the side
      of the night in cold sheets.

I can't shout out loud
and I can't melt the quiet
that screams from the mountains
to snow on the prairie below.