We had wanted to leave our homes before six in the morning
but left late and lazy at ten or ten-thirty with hurried smirks
and heads turned to the road, West
driving out against the noonward horizon
and visions before us of the great up-and-over

and tired we were already of stiff-armed driving neurotics in Montreal
and monstrous foreheaded yellow bus drivers
ugly children with long middle fingers
and tired we were of breaking and being yelled at by beardless bums
but thought about the beards at home we loved
and gave a smile and a wave nonetheless

Who were sick and tired of driving by nine
but then had four more hours still
with half a tank
then a third of a tank
then a quarter of a tank
then no tank at all
except for the great artillery halt and discovery
of our tyre having only three quarters of its bolts

Saved by the local sobriety
and the mystic conscious kindness of the wise and the elderly
and the strangers: Autoshop Gale with her discount familiar kindness;
Hilda making ready supper and Ray like I’ve known you for years
that offered me tools whose functions I’ve never known
and a handshake goodbye

     and "yes we will say hello to your son in Alberta"
     and "yes we will continue safely"
     and "no you won’t see us in tomorrow’s paper"
     and tired I was of hearing about us in tomorrow’s paper

Who ended up on a road laughing deliverance
in Ralphton, a small town hunting lodge
full of flapjacks and a choir of chainsaws
with cheap tomato juice and eggs
but the four of us ended up paying for eight anyway

and these wooden alley cats were nothing but hounds
and the backwoods is where you’d find a cheap child's banjo
and cheap leather shoes and bear traps and rat traps
and the kinds of things you’d fall into face first

Who sauntered into a cafe in Massey
that just opened up two weeks previous
where the food was warm and made from home
and the owner who swore to high heaven
and piled her Sci-Fi collection to the ceiling
in forms of books and VHS

but Massey herself was drowned in a small town
where there was little history and heavy mist
and the museum was closed for renovations
and the stores were run by diplomats
or sleezebag no-cats
and there was one man who wouldn’t show us a room
because his baby sitter hadn’t come yet
but the babysitter showed up through the backdoor within seconds
though I hadn't seen another face

        and the room was a landfill
        and smelled of stale cat **** anyhow
        and the lobby stacked to the ceiling with empty beer box cans bottles
        and the taps ran cold yellow and hot black through spigots

but we would be staying down the street
at the inn of an East-Indian couple

who’s eyes were not dilated 
and the room smelled
lemon-scented

and kept on driving lovingly without a care in the world
but only one of us had his arms around a girl
and how lonely I felt driving with Jacob
in the fog of the Agawa pass;

following twin red eyes down a steep void mass
where the birch trees have no heads
and the marshes pool under the jagged foothills
that climb from the water above their necks

that form great behemoths
with great voices bellowing and faces chiselled hard looking down
and my own face turned upward toward the rain

Wheels turning on a black asphalt river running uphill around great Superior
that is the ocean that isn’t the ocean but is as big as the sea
and the cloud banks dig deep and terrible walls

and the sky ends five times before night truly falls
and the sun sets slower here than anywhere
but the sky was only two miles high and ten long anyway

The empty train tracks that seldom run
and some rails have been lifted out
with a handful of spikes that now lay dormant

and the hill sides start to resemble *******
or faces or the slow curving back of some great whale

-and those, who were finally stranded at four pumps
with none but the professional Jacob reading great biblical instructions at the nozzle
nowhere at midnight in a town surrounded

by moose roads
                             moose lanes
                                                     moose rivers
and everything mooses

ending up sleeping in the maw of a great white wolf inn
run by Julf or Wolf or John but was German nonetheless

and woke up with radios armed
and arms full
and coffee up to the teeth
with teeth chattering
and I swear to God I saw snowy peaks
but those came to me in waking dream:

"Mountains dressed in white canvas
gowns and me who placed
my hands upon their *******
that filled the sky"

Passing through a buffet of inns and motels
and spending our time unpacking and repacking
and talking about drinking and cheap sandwiches
but me not having a drink in eight days

and in one professional inn we received a professional scamming
and no we would not be staying here again
and what would a trip across the country be like
if there wasn’t one final royal scamming to be had

and dreams start to return to me from years of dreamless sleep:

and I dream of hers back home
and ribbons in a raven black lattice of hair
and Cassadaic exploits with soft but honest words

and being on time with the trains across the plains  
and the moon with a shower of prairie blonde
and one of my father with kind words
and my mother on a bicycle reassuring my every decision

Passing eventually through great plains of vast nothingness
but was disappointed in seeing that I could see
and that the rumours were false
and that nothingness really had a population
and that the great flat land has bumps and curves and etchings and textures too

beautiful bright golden yellow like sprawling fingers
white knuckled ablaze reaching up toward the sun
that in this world had only one sky that lasted a thousand years

and prairie driving lasts no more than a mountain peak
and points of ember that softly sigh with the one breath
of our cars windows that rushes by with gratitude for your smile

And who was caught up with the madness in the air
with big foaming cigarettes in mouths
who dragged and stuffed down those rolling fumes endlessly
while St. Jacob sang at the way stations and billboards and the radio
which was turned off

and me myself and I running our mouth like the coughing engine
chasing a highway babe known as the Lady Valkyrie out from Winnipeg
all the way to Saskatoon driving all day without ever slowing down
and eating up all our gas like pez and finally catching her;

      Valkyrie who taught me to drive fast
      and hovering 175 in slipstreams
      and flowing behind her like a great ghost Cassady ******* in dreamland Nebraska
      only 10 highway crossings counted from home.

Lady Valkyrie who took me West.
Lady Valkyrie who burst my wings into flame as I drew a close with the sun.
Lady Valkyrie who had me howl at slender moon;

     who formed as a snowflake
     in the light on the street
     and was gone by morning
     before I asked her name

and how are we?
and how many?

Even with old Tom devil singing stereo
and riding shotgun the entire trip from day one
singing about his pony, and his own personal flophouse circus,
and what was he building in there?

There is a fair amount of us here in these cars.
Finally at light’s end finding acquiescence in all things
and meeting with her eye one last time; flashed her a wink and there I was, gone.
Down the final highway crossing blowing wind and fancy and mouth puttering off
roaring laughter into the distance like some tremendous Phoenix.

Goodnight Lady Valkyrie.

The evening descends and turns into a sandwich hysteria
as we find ourselves riding between cities of transports
and that one mad man that passed us speeding crazy
and almost hit head-on with Him flowing East

and passed more and more until he was head of the line
but me driving mad lunacy followed his tail to the bumper
passing fifteen trucks total to find our other car
and felt the great turbine pull of acceleration that was not mine

mad-stacked behind two great beasts
and everyone thought us moon-crazy; Biblical Jake
and Mad Hair Me driving a thousand
eschewing great gusts of wind speed flying

Smashing into the great ephedrine sunset haze of Saskatoon
and hungry for food stuffed with the thoughts of bedsheets
off the highway immediately into the rotting liver of dark downtown
but was greeted by an open Hertz garage
with a five-piece fanfare brass barrage
William Tell and a Debussy Reverie
and found our way to bedsheets most comfortably

Driving out of Saskatoon feeling distance behind me.
Finding nothing but the dead and hollow corpses of roadside ventures;

more carcasses than cars
and one as big as a moose
and one as big as a bear
and no hairier

and driving out of sunshine plain reading comic book strip billboards
and trees start to build up momentum
and remembering our secret fungi in the glove compartment
that we drove three thousand kilometres without remembering

and we had a "Jesus Jacob, put it away brother"
and went screaming blinded by smoke and paranoia
and three swerves got us right
and we hugged the holy white line until twilight

And driving until the night again takes me foremast
and knows my secret fear in her *****
as the road turns into a lucid *** black and makes me dizzy
and every shadow is a moose and a wildcat and a billy goat
and some other car

and I find myself driving faster up this great slanderous waterfall until I meet eye
with another at a thousand feet horizontal

then two eyes

then a thousand wide-eyed peaks stretching faces upturned to the celestial black
with clouds laid flat as if some angel were sleeping ******* on a smokestack
and the mountains make themselves clear to me after waiting a lifetime for a glimpse
then they shy away behind some old lamppost and I don’t see them until tomorrow

and even tomorrow brings a greater distance with the sunlight dividing stone like 'The Ancient of Days'
and moving forward puts all into perspective

while false cabins give way
and the gas stations give way
and the last lamppost gives way
and its only distance now that will make you true
and make your peaks come alive

Like a bullrush, great grey slopes leap forth as if branded by fire
then the first peaks take me by surprise
and I’m told that these are nothing but children to their parents
and the roads curve into a gentle valley
and we’re in the feeding zone

behind the gates of some great geological zoo
watching these lumbering beasts
finishing up some great tribal *******
because tomorrow they will be shrunk
and tomorrow ever-after smaller

Nonetheless, breathless in turn I became
it began snowing and the pines took on a different shape
and the mountains became covered white
and great glaciers could be seen creeping
and tourists seen gawking at waterfalls and waterfowls
and fowl play between two stones a thousand miles high

climbing these Jasper slopes flying against wind and stone
and every creak lets out its gentle tone and soft moans
as these tyres rub flat against your back
your ancient skin your rock-hard bones

and this peak is that peak and it’s this one too
and that’s Temple, and that’s Whistler
and that’s Glasgow and that’s Whistler again
and those are the Three Sisters with ******* ablaze

and soft glowing haze your sun sets again among your peaks
and we wonder how all these caves formed
and marvelled at what the flood brought to your feet
as roads lay wasted by the roadside

in the epiphany of 3:00am realizing
that great Alta's straights and highway crossings
are formed in torturous mess from mines of 'Mt. Bleed'
and broken ribs and liver of crushed mountain passes
and the grey stones taxidermied and peeled off
and laid flat painted black and yellow;
the highways built from the insides
of the mountain shells

Who gave a “What now. New-Brunswick?”

and a “What now, Quebec, and Ontario, and Manitoba, and Saskatchewan";
**** fools clumsily dancing in the valleys; then the rolling hills; then the sea that was a lake
then the prairies and not yet the mountains;

running naked in formation with me at the lead
and running naked giving the finger to the moon
and the contrails, and every passing blur on the highway
dodging rocks, and sandbars
and the watchful eye of Mr. and Mrs. Law
and holes dug-up by prairie dogs
and watching with no music
as the family caravans drove on by

but drove off laughing every time until two got anxious for bed and slowed behind
while the rambling Jacob and I had to wait in the half-moon spectacle
of a black-tongue asphalt side-road hacking darts and watching for grizzlies
for the other two to finish up with their birthday *** exploits
though it was nobodies birthday

and then a timezone was between us
 and they were in the distant future
and nobodies birthday was in an hour from now

then everything was good
and everyone was satiated
then everything was a different time again
and I was running on no sleep or a lot of it
leaping backward in time every so often
like gaining a new day but losing space on the surface of your eye

but I stared up through curtains of starlight to mother moon
and wondered if you also stared
and was dumbfounded by the majesty of it all

and only one Caribou was seen the entire trip
and only one live animal, and some forsaken deer
and only a snake or a lonesome caterpillar could be seen crossing such highway straights
but the water more refreshing and brighter than steel
and glittered as if it were hiding some celestial gem
and great ravines and valleys flowed between everything
and I saw in my own eye prehistoric beasts roaming catastrophe upon these plains
but the peaks grew ever higher and I left the ground behind

I met Neal Cassady last night in a waking dream sitting across from me with his back turned to the noise; the bar was loud. He repeatedly leaned forward and asking if I wanted a smoke.
        He looked just like Neal, talked like him. I hated and admired him just like I would the real Neal Cassady. His mind was incredible; beyond the worries of mortality, no thoughts or pains of hubris. He had the candor that I lacked only because I hadn't the nerve to jump first. When I asked him if he truly was the great Cassady, he stared at me from across the table with a wry smile; patted his breast pocket down, leaned back and said as he turned with precision out of his chair,
        "Let's go for a smoke".
        Such practiced determination, he was already outside before I had put on my coat. Of course I had no cigarettes of my own, he had expected me to bring one for the both of us. But I for one expected him to procure an entire carton by the time I was outside; one bent cigarette from every Saintly being at the bar.
        And what a bar! Great young gone gals; dressed in short skirts and long autumn coats; wool scarves around their necks and under chins beneath cold steel eyes. Ahh, forever young the white dresses and mistresses of the college bar.
        By the time I had opened the door and exhaled my first breath of the crisp night air, Neal was playing the part of locomotive engine with a German couple who were smoking and pretending to be Parisian. The three of them were standing in formation of a triangle on the edge of a stone staircase with a railing leading down into a steep lawn with Neal’s back facing the moon. It was all arranged in a perfect geometric mandala of overlapping Platonic solids.
        As I approached the cloud, Neal was recounting the tale of a nurse he had lain in the backseat of her father's station wagon in Nebraska in the heat of the afternoon sun. The German man was stocky and ill-dressed for the weather. He told me later that his name was Heinrich, but I did not believe him even though I knew he had nothing to hide. The woman whom I believed to be only his girlfriend told me, with a thick German accent, that her name was Deline. I believed her. She was well-dressed for the weather and smoking heavily; style is everything.
        "They've graciously offered to roll us a dozen", Neal expelled between great gusts of smoke, a boyish grin smeared on his face by the thousand red lips and wet ***** of passed consequence. Even in the light of a single lamppost coming through the haze that billowed forth from the three talking chimneys, I could still see a sheen in Neal's eye. The sort of sheen that implied hooliganisms. The sort of sheen you see before a person flies off the handle. The exact sheen you see before you wake up tomorrow in the late light of the afternoon, wondering who the Hell took your hand last night and jumped into total darkness with you. That is, if there was somebody around to take your hand.
        I liked Neal.
                He had a style about him that reminded me of a dark velvet curtain. Once you had passed through that curtain in your business casual attire, you witnessed the burgundy coloured stain of truth. There was no backpedaling after that; your chains would knot up and you would fall off the ride if you tried.
        The German couple looked around at their surroundings and the both of us with a degree of boredom. I had seen them earlier in the bar, they looked bored then too. Neither had spoken to the other once and I was beginning to feel like we were exasperating them.
        “Who cares? They offered to roll us a dozen” I thought. What did it matter how Neal got them to do it, they've offered twelve cigarettes and now they belong to us.
        Deline handed Neal and I six cigarettes each; they were magnificently rolled.
        “Goodbye, then! Thank you for your business”, Neal said and slid down the railing to the lawn below, lighting his cigarette mid-slide. I had just lit mine and started after him down the staircase. I turned around and spoke clumsily with a cigarette bobbing at the corner of my mouth,                      
        “Yes… thanks”, and left without another word.

        Neal walked with sporadic intensity; arms often stabbing out into the blanket of night; legs that would walk straight and stiff but then bent and fast with sudden changes as if he was preparing to spring off into the evening of speckled lampposts and smoke. His head bobbed West to East, North to South, and all Axis’ between X, Y and Z. The more I stared at this character whom I called Neal the more I thought of him as an illusion of my own delusions. When I had finished that thought, Neal had spun around and laughed a good hearty and honest laugh; he seemed to have read my mind and proceeded to flick the space between by eyebrows with his thumb and *******. The pain was real enough. This Neal must be real, unless I had gone full mad with lunacy. We blasted off down the avenue which connected the college bar to the dormitories and the library after that.
        Beyond the avenue laid the cozy valley of goodnight downtown with all it’s lights of sodium pearls below and us upon the hill top looking down with eager intensity. Neal gave another rounded laugh and stared with mad eyes above my head and pointed straight up into the sky at Sirius.
        “Tonight, yes yes, we go out. Not just out, my dear friend, but up. Yes yes, to the great up-and-over. Beyond the next stop we absolutely must climb.”

         I don’t know what mad beast had possessed me that evening but I followed this ghost; this great memory of romantic America into the heart of the infinite night.
        “Good gal Deline”, said Neal

        “Who?” I replied
        “Nimble fingers, strong hands for the German working class” he said, “Great gone gal. Good gal. Fine gal by all standards of beauty and sleek german ingenuity”
        “Hmm”, I responded inhaling my cigarette deeply. The Germans were just fine at rolling, but the tobacco was all American. It was harder and harder for me to physically keep up with Neal. He kept speeding off sporadically twenty feet in front of me, sometimes stopping and spouting at young folks asking for cigarettes. 

        “But you’ve already got one” They would say

        “Yes yes, but it’s for when I’m not smoking one is why I want one”, Neal would answer as he trailed off further and further down the road. They thought he was mad, but they all smiled nonetheless.

        My curiosity was brimming. Who was this mad man? Who was this loon impersonator of the American night? I could not stand by my idle silence and unquestioning.
        “What’s the plan tonight?”, I asked

        “What plan? No good plan. Only great plan and great plain rising higher and higher and we will be up all night but on top of the world for we must climb up and up forever until we can climb no more, and then after we can climb no more then we must climb a little further for life itself is nothing more than an infinite climb ever higher and why not get there faster than all the rest?”

        I had stopped walking and Neal’s voice echoed and vibrated the walls of the stairs between the library and the meal hall. His voice was like that of mountain that had slid beneath the ground reborn into an endless peak above.
“Jailbird Cassidy. Great bellowing Cassidy all energy and no direction, but getting there in no time just the same Cassidy”, I thought to myself.
“I trust you Neal”, I had said out loud.
“Not yet! First great big night time breakfast for you and me, for one can not climb without a good energy and good rounded stomach digested of food and stories.”

I stared catatonic nonstop and could not pull my eyes away or scream
except for the great internal scream and I felt like death was upon me, or nearly so.
And my body asleep but my mind twisted and my eyes awake wide-open
and no dream this was but real things and then my thoughts put outward
and all these things terrible formed into death-shadows
and flowed down through the fabrics above my head. 



Flesh undulating in darkness that creeped
and I found ten seconds of courage to sit up and stare
at the wall as the rippling fabric became a thousand black snakes
crawling down from the ceiling and out from my dreamcatcher
that did nothing at all but release these terrors from the wall.

And I thought it was sordid wind that came in gusting through my window that made my sheets become like a mechanical sea
but it was not so, and these vile snakes poured out like *****
from some gaping maw above and went underneath my bed
and all through the floor to the four corners of my room
and then came together again above on the center of my ceiling
and murmured death-talk and horror-faces from the walls and ceiling

and even closing my eyes would bring nothing but flashes
of demonic children and things with no jaws or eyes
hollowed out and terrible ghosts I procured and almost choked out laughter because this was it and I've finally gone and gone mad



There was a man at my closed door wearing my jacket that hung on a hook
and his face was the face of a skull that hung above my door
and from the corner of my eye the man with the door on his back with the coat still attached walked with silent step toward my bed, and I turned to look at this figure
and instead of snapping back against the wall like all nightly visions should;
he stood there, and as I stared at him I saw slow moving black legs receding against the wall

but the horrors of his feet were ten thousand worm bodies and black leathery fingers of bats and crawling things
and my carpet floor was no longer static but a creeping madness,
and my body trembled as if it were being continuously dropped
from heights a hundred times over and great odious black
pillars and monoliths slid steadily up the corners of my room with arms
that then burst out to the middle into nothing but a smiling cheshire grin
and I could not move anymore and just stared until my mind went numb

and like the first sunlight upon the last fog before dawn, I awoke.

ride into the floorboards
on the backs of people
you once trusted

        even fooling for a second
        the cleverly disguised devout

        why cleverly hide yr God?

he hangs beneath me
from the cages of
shopping carts

        he who would give up his eyes
        until they turn to milky white
        crescent moons that leak thick

******* on anything
that ever disturbed
yr morning walk

        the devout,
        who would give up their eyes
        for a *******

Michael Sinclaire/Mary Fahey. March 2013.

Come ask me questions
of thoughts I’ve forgotten
and send me dreaming
to a distant road
where music is free
and tired feet
don’t stop dancing
when the tap is dry

Moon heron blue tide
Wandering naked lonely
Covered in feathers
faster bird flew

Where long haired brother
smoking soothing sadhu
can sit at leisure
or stand or lay
(or be lain!)

Lovers fall off the train
Drinking wines on Summer strut
Trough graveyards old tombstones
White women in dresses

With cotton torn old sole
rubbed closet rug
Shoe stains got gritty
in dusty old trunk

Her wig bleach bald
eyes lacking interest
Tired old neck feels
like a head on a stool

Thespian laughter
grouped in the attic
They animate slowly
in the shape of ‘you’

Ghosts get me closer
on hot summer drives
Up North to see dams
and **** forest rivers

In dark we then travel
with Kings of old tidings
and Queens who lay buried
the lamppost their bed

Laying so gently
the Bishop wife Medley
The grass that laid bare
of yesterday’s supper

The lamppost we take
a notion of tender
Still a safe haven
so deep in my heart

The sunset of splendour
the primary sunrise
they howl their jowls
Hysterical laughter

In the midst of everything
I linger and stare
at pallor stranger
passing by

and I gather thoughts
with eager ease;
hungry prey
with moistly lips

Awaiting on some lonely stroll
with woman-hood not far behind
and look upon her nightly walk
her path I follow with gazing stare

Better days, her beauty speaks;
returning from some horrid dream
of young fantasy at home she left
longing to be with shining gleam

in my stranger twinkling eye
Not knowing that our paths will cross
she does not weep for love that was
but dreams lightly of love anew

When I pass with tender step
from staring silent on my stoop
I hunger lust forevermore
and wildly I shall proceed

Succumb to me my little bird
like melody on palisade,
and sing me songs of kingly halls
that echo deep in eternal crag

In darkness feast I shall on her
in waking dream I shall become
until too late the deed is done
in nightmare lover's hands lay still

Oft these thoughts of wanton things
that tend to drive my waxing dreams
waning not this horrid inkling
monstrous thoughts with monstrous wings

Barking mad in empty head
this wretched thing it does not sleep
to leave me be I wish it now
and bother some more lurid soul

and cast down he from highest steed
from peak to deep by cavern cold
chasm wide like open arms
embracing the forgettable

the last of man will lay at rest
his voice will wring among the stars
his body lay beneath the ground
his mind that murmurs in the void

Mortality shall be driven aft
to deeply bowels of hubris Hell
where no man can utter cry
of wanton deed or lustful way

Where the tallest man
to walk the Earth
is the tallest man
to stand beneath it

All the while his heavenly thirst
is nothing short of bliss

I was the canvas, as were you
One canvas to each other
and on the wall
with knees underneath
indecent exposure
naked mind of mine

Flushed out edges of this unique bedspread
a shower curtain used as a tablecloth
used as an ashtray

This was her only wedding dress
Wedding dress two dollars and seventeen cents
value market discount white sale

Found in the back when
suddenly everything was zebra stripes
and she was already ten minutes late

But what is time to a pack of teeth?
A high-ceiling filled with nostrils and bat claws
smouldering tar-stained enamel
fits nicely on the frayed corners
of her tablecloth underwear
and brushed away the ashes
leaving half-finished highways
and dark-stained alleys
and brooding courtships

She missed her basement apartment
and the way no one took her seriously
and the Grand Finale!
and riding high
and the blue ribbons
that sometimes came with last place
and windows and pillows
darkened sleep patterns with silver eyes
half-moon Iris

She isn’t home anymore
She left for a smoke
and the sidewalk took her

Michael Sinclaire/Mary Fahey. March 2013.

Who stood with all her pretense
hanging gorgeous on the wall

A mask she wore of kindness
the hawk eye lay beneath

Wings that spread all over
slowly moving down the hall

Returned to me a feeling
One I barely can recall

Nothing but a memory
drifting slowly through the leaves

The smoke and burning embers
walking naked in the fall

Her smile brought unease
with her lies she stood so tall

With her eyes she used to flame
the heated fires like the tide

Now all that she remains
is hanging gorgeous on the wall

It's all about the moon
the moon knows everything
about you and I and them and that!
The moon saw the holocaust
saw Caesar get stabbed
saw a miracle grow in Mary's belly
was there on your first birthday
puts France and Zimbabwe
and Brandon, Manitoba to sleep
every night
and still has time to shine
with the sun some days

-Melissa Nadine Flowers

Sweaty tempered jawline
Eclipse evening ritual bounce
Rendez-Vous on motor freeway
daydreaming girls in dresses
and overdue bills

Cab calling silent house
with the taxi driver
old gut
father death
without word
takes me home

Remnants of chill breath
Skunk ganj dead animal
Sweet smelling sour
on highway crossing

Get me inside
Cab fare cost
Unfair coast

The teacher collapsed
into a tempest migraine
rubbing her temples
in a clockwise motion
behind her desk,

presumed *******
her thoughts or bleeding.
She imagined her definite
white existence in a plane
of iodine and tumbleweeds

The children heard the moans
groans and the creaks
grouped tones
like old floor boards
kept secret in the attic

Turbulent lessons
creeping slowly up
over your shoulder
and into your ear
and out the mouth
a siren explosion

Everybody claps out of synch
in the midnight elegance of “Wine Ohs”

but the bass player hums
at the twitch of the sunken keys
that man who leans back crying a New York cry
and sweet daddy saxophone wailing a New York wail

and they all pale and bow with respect
to the young drummer with bright eyes that nobody knows
and nobody knows where he came from or how old

Who’s soul I remember meeting from Easterly winds
only to find himself on stage with strangers
in a plane of rhythm and ruthless time
in a freedom jazz dance

She asked me to paint her
an angel before she died
But she died a week later

She was surprised in your liking
for Reggae and Garfunkel
and the tiniest sparrow
that had not a friend
in the world except
for the Earth
that birthed him.

Now we're addicts looking for the hook
Starring into the sun
To be sold to a higher calling

Its the cog that drives us, defines us, binds us
The rhythm that we carelessly slap with our toes
on paved sidewalk stereotyping others
with ineptitude for rhythm.

And fingers that we caress in passing
each lip fragment truth talking deliberate dunce
pretending to be further seeking the void
To be true of the void. Truth in the void

But in fact finds nothing more
than the torn, callused tips
Lost in a nightmare daydream
weak-spell walking.

Who find themselves winded in middle journey
across open ocean plane infinite starring.
Sublime line of silver. No haze thumbed-pressed
opaque steam cloud on the horizon.

ready to land in open stretch in forever
wild stillness cured of all mental illness

The water came up
with the wind
and pushed us back
among the small flat
stones upon the shore

The fastest tides
in the world
lead by dark red foam
and the scream
of the infinite divide

Cropped short skirt
Frenzy tango-coloured
Midnight wanderer
sat kissing her thumb
on overpass under hill

Run amok
holding hands
and dish rag feet
dirt stains and clumps
of dead grass under
yellow wandering
lamppost

delirious diamond woman
bare milk drunk smell
one thousand screams
above

enormous peach
              I recall a black dress
                            repulsive goddess
              shadowing those who moan
              their language

ugly blue sun
raw honey
tough tongue
              mother please

I ask her to elaborate

"symphony of feet
together with the beat

spray
drool
smear
               or whatever "

Throw away your brooms and your mops

and all the tops to your good old canned goodies

and in fact throw your little cans of goody foods

with soups and little fruities away down

your flight of stairs and flight of windows down

those shining new linoleum walls



no need to worry about garbage here in these streets

so clean so clean so mean, and lean

and here everyone cries their child cries

and their bottles whistle that empty milk whistle

red wine milk drink drunk drank drinker



old clean city blues I see your dirt musings

can’t hide from me this great dirt

more dirt here than dirt itself has to offer

all things candy coated sticky nightlife

sticky affluence all your feet

stick to the black tar candy sucker floor



and I see you’ve been rat-free for thirty years

no bugs no slugs no moss

only late night sad sauce

always empty and wanting more

no rats no cats no dogs here

only cowboy hats

and all those old boys move
on down South anyway

What an umbrageous day
Heavy downpour cleaning soul city streetlights
unburdened back beckoned bright eye and high
The cleansing of the spirit

New rain beginnings
relinquishing old dirt and washed
all resentment that peels away like rotten orange rinds
revealing the musty moth-eaten underside of the teenage psyche

It’s a beacon of light, a point in the celestial wake of night
The true-burning ember amidst the counterfeit
glows of the day to day drudgery of a mundane
Human existence

Who cower and hide from head to toe in plastic wrap
and duct their senses with sticky ignorance
Who wander and wonder upon the multifaceted
raindrop that caresses each fleshy pore with motherly love

Who drift effortlessly
up misty parking garages
up sweaty chimney stacks
down missing fire escapes

In the tundra of weary dreary winter bite
Cold suspects stand innocent on frozen street corner

What an umbrageous day. Overcast. Raining.
Like open wounds rinsed clean to be healed by
and forgotten in time

The fractals are hard to miss
even in the gathering puddles

[written about getting high. April 2010.]

Soft cotton white of torn flesh
Chilled vapour and greyish face
A body of water above my head

Low flying ephemeral vistas;
great islands of water within vast
seas of nothingness

The Gods of mediocrity
have a parking space
reserved for us

        The meter costs
        three coins but
        we’ve been shortchanged
        by the boatman

Early morning gravity
makes us fat
we haven’t changed
the strength to search
the fountains for pennies-

        -when Elysium has gotten pricey
        and the downhill
        walk is cheaper anyway

Your feet hurt well,
all our ******* feet hurt

so we lay in beds
in abandoned motels
and finger ourselves

where is the economical gain in that?

        THAT is a wasted effort
        a **** poor rain
        a trite consequence
        to an abysmal excuse

We have no choice
We must be born

Torn from the void
to endure the agony of body

Only to return
to the Great Stained Mattress
in the sky

        Only to give true definition
        to the term “squirt”

Michael Sinclaire/Mary Fahey. March 2013.

Three hoorahs
Fantastic performance
Hidden ******
Damage Report

Written voices spoke words
smoked tonight on the vista
of ethereal desert rose sinking
violet into setting reflection;
tonight's sun

But where does the moon
bring us with her waxing
star-lite gaze?

Who were perturbed by excellence
and ashamed of loving the song
and the easy exhale that came after
smoking

What games does the night behold
with the ground drinking a slow faucet leak
and the delicate cadence of heavy feet
that bounce accordingly to the beat?

The full moon that followed you home
crying petals of light on the shattered remains;
the rooftop of the last and lonely house
The shattered roof of heroes past
no longer holding the weight of the air

Atlas, alone on his mighty steed
sitting atop a fragrant world; The Earth
With hands so large to touch
the humble breast that fills the sky

And the great cloud whale
that devoured the moon that was its eyes
Cloudless night and unblinking Jupiter in Orion
that brought us North following
the great humpback hills of ice

Son of Raurus falling sound
King of water all around
That fills the sky with dew

The fractals of these waters high
Climbing down to meet the tide
Sweetly in November rain

Eroded tongues that stick on out
To catch the falling endless spout
Even in still of winter blend

These rocks that climb up rung by rung
Forever climbing to the sun
To greet the morning light

The endless water ever falls
Enormous water-winged wall
Wetting all that pass on by

We crawled into an ocean of grass and clover
Sank our ribs into lemonade wine
and devoured the smoke from the ground
She ran a cool bath of lavender upon the lawn
and brushed my hair with ***** fingernails

[I stayed up all night and watched the Leonids meteor shower]

We stayed up two nights
watched by Orion
winked at by
the glittering falling
tears of Leo

Trembling to the bone
but was not satisfied
with our soup of sky

Began home
with jazz on the radio
drifting in and out
the last morsel
of consciousness

Our vision hesitating
before jumping off
Everything scrambled eggs

Lost in dark
endless space
of mind
fell asleep
a thousand years

Hosing Cigarette butts
and brain matter off the asphalt
in the parking lot
                 from those who painted blindly
from their third story windowsills

You kids, who mourn
the loss of some delusion
of art in memory
                  of yourselves
now seek the redemption
of a summertime soliloquy  

Mary Fahey/Michael Sinclaire. March 2013.

At least they taught us language
riding on the bus
they taught us how to spell
and table manners
the written word

They teach you how to smile
and that there are things
which have no shape

and how to kiss with open eyes
like pressing your face
against a mirror

In the back they teach you how to dance
and how to sleep outside
and a handful of names
of some now lost constellations

In the front they teach you how to drive
and how to talk to Cassidy
what’s beyond the window
it’s mostly dust, I suppose

And we drove across the country
riding on the bus
speaking words of bird
and beast and beat alike

As I cross slender golden gate Québec sunset
I dream of the old Golden Gate; long lost psychopomp
drunk at typewriter in rheumy-eyed fog

and old Golden Lion, gay and howling in firelight New York
building fond memories of the old man back home
imparting wisdom in a cloud of mint smoke

Driving out past clear blue sky in early autumn heat
great iron bridges with drooping sleeping half-moon eyes;
their yawn the endless moving waters below

The stone children hiding underneath a quilt
of dirt brown and green and mycelium grove grey
who turn slowly as the ground turns as sleepless nights are had in the underground kingdom of a lost Eastern mountain range

The valleys are wide and I sometimes find myself looking straight down over a crest, into the edge of a picture memory of the Rockies back West

Broken harem thoughts of past consequence
Thought buried deep buried deeper for good
Trying to drown the remnant skeleton
in the closet of doom

Found love in middle journey
Saw her eyes smile honestly
Gave only what she knew
Saw me with false tired hubris

Beckoned by batting lash
Legs that reach the floor
Toes that clasp about my back

He arose in a dream to a door to nowhere
As the light grew and clawed down his face
tender refreshments

The sun became clear in his eye
Through the shades drawn tight
Lumbering across the green velvet carpet
to fetch the daily heroes that pile up
like bile under the moss
covered mailbox


He arose from a dream on a platter so starving
for the thought of hysterical madness

Virtuoso of the inundating lips
Fine lines carefully placed
flooding into the mind
of a staggering brew

Two windows dancing past my vision
into my right ear standing teetering
on the brink of my left
"Don’t teeter", you shouted!

More dancing circle white light
in beautiful eyes in midnight chilly still
Salty asphalt dust
Frozen in desert pass

I never want to let go
of the bold chilling cold
of the tingle on the door
of my spine

Not blind to the spinning breeze
Open-eyed to the splendour;
The vision before two windows.

You had grown old
and constricting
a wool sweater
faded, itchy

Blooming light in
younger sight
have seen your eyes
grow dim

Counting rays in
your once bright gaze
and falling asleep
on your hip

Your hands are full of water
slowly dripping on the lawn
hoping it will grow back
greener than before

But your hands
have always been dry
when the sky is unforgiving
and it never rains

Your words become
soggy; moist
one grain
too much salt

Leftovers
from yesterdays
breakfast

I awake from a dream:
***** heels; red eyes;
gaunt face; sentiments forgot

I turned in my sleep
and saw that you were pale
Dead rose petals surface
from beneath sour milk

The ceiling buckled
under some unknown weight
I carved the grout into smaller lines
that were then beckoned
by a pointing finger

One eye was closed
half a wink later
The blanket of fractals
came down like a machine
trembling and vibrating

The segments came
staggering with each falling level
the light grew opaque
as I pointed upward
and my finger smoked

By chance, I noticed
a painting of England
before the rise of industry
and then the sun rose
behind the clocks
on Big Ben

I drank her lips
a sea of dew fine
spread upon dry land
she was a Royal
I was but a *****
of tender wine

She never danced
or sang
or cared for me
and when she washed
her ribs down with me
I looked inside
and could not hide

Washed my face
to my legs and femur
broke down brittle
to the sands
we went under
and there we hid

-Michael Sinclaire/Michael Mohan

We will wring out the ****
from our towels by hand
and walk wandering naked
down George slapping each mailbox-

-with our hands and rhythm with our toes
We will eat dirt and climb bark in park
at night swell to the full moon’s rising
and hang in cocoons ‘till dawn.

We stayed up all night
smoking pie sticks
in evergreen fields
and up the tallest trees

The snow caught us by surprise
and we were forced to flee
into surreal falling darkness
where no man gets out alive

“What an ignorant thing to say”
         which I promptly wrote down last night
         but made sure I had forgotten it
         by the time I awoke

I'm tired from work
But I'm close to home
My parcels are heavy
As are my feet

I stop on the tallest hill
I light my last cigarette
And sit
And stare
Over half the city
For the first time

There's a girl in a bottom window
She wipes the oven clean
And prepares her meal
She has raven hair and wears plaid
I can't see her face

I finish my cigarette
And head downhill
Home

“I have wine for you. I’m left of the Pedway facing the river. Join me.”

I’ve got half a bottle left
It’s got your name on it
And three other names
and my name’s on it too

I’ve got a pair of shorts
It eats all my money
And every bit of change
that I put in it’s pockets.

Roads in the West;
dynamite is cheaper
than asphalt