Immigrants, especially those who don't return,
create idealistic homelands.
They imagine that all their
Woes, hurts and indignities
Would not exist
in their imagined homeland.

In their minds, homeland
is in stasis.
The life they left is lingering
waiting for them to return.

They cast winter upon the ponds of their
homelands
And live lives skating over the surface
Each time coming closer to
shattering the illusion
and gasping
in the icy
waters
of change.

The problem with being 18 is
simple.
The thing is we feel too much,
too deeply, too suddenly.

Our anger is an earth-splitting motion,
Sadness a thousand and one rain
clouds dragging down
And happiness is the flight of the
new born bird
Love is the wonder of finding
a buried Easter egg.

Each day, anger strikes, sadness
rains and, on good days,
love rebuilds.

We live on shorelines ravaged
Daily and salvage
fiercely.

We live in fear
Of handshakes, of smiles, of
any sort of legal situation.

To us, then, books like
Franzen's Corrections are
revelations.

They are portals into this other world,
Of our neighbours, of our bosses
and, of course,
of those ever-perplexing PTA members.

He did it out of a swamping sense
Of obligation

He did it because if no one else
Was going to do it.

He did it because he had been
Doing it.

Sometimes that was just
enough to keep
going.

Sometimes he wondered
If others thought why.

If they too got lost
looking for an answer that
Felt did not exist.

Truth?
He did it because
He was scared
to stop.

Taking two sloping steps at a time
I hurried toward the gray peak
As if propelled by some Pied Piper’s rhyme
Between the battering of the wave’s break
On the smooth gray stones
Laid out as some colossal creatures bones

Near the top there lay
An ancient castle of pride and age
Shining under a single sun’s ray
Copied out of a fairytale page
Around it, the grass waved
Like sports fans after some fantastic goal was saved.

Nestled against the castle’s topmost crook
A fiddler sat upright and played
His music notes traveled and shook
Through the crowded masquerade
Of tourist’s gasps, native rough accents
Dominating the soundsphere without any assistance

They waltzed around in the air
Only to be carried away by a vicious banshee wind
Leaving me momentarily bare
A noiseless kind of blind
As I stared out in the distance
Watching the cliff be beaten out of existence

You are the clapping monkey
You are the restless throb of dusty city streets
You are the children running around after the school bell
And the stubborn tree that has lived in the neighbourhood for fifty years

However, you are not clipped footsteps of harried workers
Or the diligent, clockwork-like ebb of traffic
And you are certainly not tranquil duck in the middle of the city park
There is just no way that you are the tranquil duck

It might interest you to know that
I am the neat, color-coded filing cabinet
I also happen to be worn-out recliner beckoning in the evening’s light
And the ever-winding, deserted country road

I also happen to be the free-floating paper bag
But don’t worry, you are still the clapping monkey
You will always be that clapping monkey
And I am the enchanted audience.

A child did walk along the lake
On the other side
A monster did slowly wake

With claws that could rake
Blood and a hairy hide
A child walked along the lake

With soft hands that bake
Sugar cookies and intent bona fide
A monster did slowly wake

Repulsive cries that snake
Into dreams nationwide
A child did walk along the lake

Remarkable songs that make
Magic become applied
A monster did slowly wake

Joining together at sanity’s sake
Switching at the continental divide
A child did walk along the lake
A monster did slowly wake