A few words before a nap
In the heat of the midsummer radiance
In the heavy air of a string of rainless days
When our lawn with its broad diversity of weeds
Sits green without our help

Before succumbing to the mid-afternoon weight
Of eyelids commanding me to put tools down
I will select from the firmament
A few choice combinations of letters
And their concomitant meanings

They will say 'I am alive'
In a landscape of life and death and struggle
I am an organism that works to move forward
Though some days I'll move less than others
And sometimes I will rest.

In a vacant and a pensive mood
Lonely and cloudlike in my wandering mind
No daffodils are to be seen,
Nor bays upon whose margins to tread.

Sitting in this café crude
Drinking beverages of the caffeinated kind
The world around feels mean
And the possibilities for the future dead

Projects call but beginnings elude
Progress is something I cannot find
The page before me sits there blank and clean
And only echoes ring inside my head.

Snarling words, biting and dark
Bark and leap at the gate
Demanding to be set free
In hoards and clouds like locusts.

First they are placated by gestures upon keys
Performed by compelled fingertips.
Pixel-by-pixel, the screen is slowly darkened
Black against glowing white
As more and more are released
And they squeeze in to all the spaces
Blackening all until the there is no more light.

Then to runes upon the pristine innocence of white crisp paper
Their only resistance, the tip of the dragging pen.
Still they come like insects,
Thick and tumbling over one another
To stain the pulpy fibres wet with thick, sticky liquid
Dispensed by the rolling steel ball
Until all is encrusted with the dried ink.

With all words unleashed
There is no end.
There was more
With fewer.

Come down from the mountains
In coarse weave and wool,
Come down at the break
Of the iced inky night.
Upon smoke-spouting horses
Come down to the river
And drink deeply of its cold and black.

It got here before you
Melting, tumbling, weaving between stones
Coursing and dropping without caution.
And while you lay languid
Upon meadow grasses
And the bay shuffles, hobbled,
And crops at the green,
It will pool deeply at the bend in the river
And be gone before you awake.

Darkness arrives
But I'm not finished with the sun.
Hey, I was using that!
Those gears turn
Without any input from me.

Like a conveyor belt
We're whisked away
To the shadow side
And dropped into the darkness.

Nobody here gets out of this day with sunshine.
Our freedom from darkness only, finally, comes
When we're well and truly sleeping
And wish it wouldn't come so soon.

The illusions we chase in our work-a-day world
Our actions paint allusions to the person we try to be.
We neglect the elusive goals we proclaimed in our youth
While they sink silently into alluvial beds of time.
Ultimately we wax effusive about how we flew so high
And evasively rationalize the 'here' to which we have drifted.
As if we, exclusively, had missed that bus.
We wear obvious scars of the abusive universe.

It freezes you in place,
A cold gust of wind from the North.
It locks you in your home
And has you hover at the window.

It freezes you in place,
A fear of where you are heading.
Your only measure of freedom
How far away, the walls.

It freezes you in place,
A mirror that holds that other you.
Those eyes are always looking back
When you chance to look at them.

It freezes you in place,
When you embrace the immobile.
Tiny tendrils of inaction
Sliding over icy skin.

It freezes you in place,
But a thaw melts the icy clutches.
A thought, an idea, a chance –
Anticipation is a burning fire within.

In preparation for an invasion
A military force makes sorties
To their opponent’s barriers
And prods to spark response

In the responses
Defensive elements are exposed
Defenders are never sure
What constitutes a ****
Or the tsunami of attack

When the big push comes
There are shocks and surprises
There is resolve and bravery
There is fear
There is capitulation
There is desolation and loss

These shadows play similarly for us
The world prods us into middle age
Leaves us unsure with each surprise
Is this one just a little challenge
Is this the thin edge of the wedge of catastrophe

We, our weaknesses exposed
We, our defences to redouble
We, oh joyous recipients of a moment’s respite
Can regroup and recite unto ourselves
Henry’s Saint Crispin’s day speech
Before another sun rises

Yes, others shall think themselves accursed
That they were not here in my shoes
To have overcome that hellish Tuesday traffic
To have resolved the late-night call from elderly parents
To have dried the hard-fought tears
Of a beleaguered friend
Who found their last
and final reserves
were too thin
too little
too depleted
to cope.

Hello poetry, where have you been?
When as a child in a row of pastel desks
With stubby pencils and long paper sheets
Where we learned the paste from the scissors
You were there.

Loosely gathered into a discovery corps
We turned pages in tiny-finger worn books
And alternated voicing two or three lines.
With us who hoped the teacher would allot just one more
You were there.

When we waded through chest-deep angst
To spend hours tracing sidelong glances
Or the smoke-trails of our tiny flaming arrows gone astray.
Across chasms of the first decade of life in double-digits
You were there.

As we interwove whispers and fingers
Biases, peeves and favoured paths.
When we constructed habits and routines
Built of the fibres and sinews of our hopes and needs
You were there.

Hello poetry.
Like a ticket carried inside a woolen mitten,
Or words coalescing during a savoured conversation –
Sun-warmed pebbles discovered along the beach.
In our ears,
Our thoughts,
Our songs.

Go toward the bright sun's glare upon the snow,
Test the crust underfoot and trek to the west.
There are no footprints here, we are like the air,
That rattles leaves and hammers the tundra flat.

Call to the ghosts of the now forgotten fall,
Sinter white coals in the furnace of winter
Gneiss, feldspar, mica and granite all of ice
Frost like barbed wire, icy borders to be crossed.

Wend through the trees, with the thawing wind I send,
Found now, the sun's heat arrives without a sound,
Among grassy fields laid bare, a song is sung.
Free of ice and wind, that brings you here to me.

the fiery ember-glow of the appointed hour
beckons the hour-hand closer

starchy, stiffened footsteps
of the structured ticktock routine
fracture first then crumble into powder
swept away by stampede winds

forget it then
the charred and brittle caress
of the silver-for-chains bargain

instead there will be
lemon and lilac-flower music
sand dune and landslide gestures
and heavy maple-syrup glances
deep into a crude-oil quicksand night.

Tell them it was him
Tell them it was all a mistake
Show them something from your purse
And say that he gave it to you

Describe her face and the touch of her hand
Sing about places you stood together
Where your footprints have never been
And how the memories still burn in your soul

Dance the long-lived grudge against them
For reasons no one can quite remember
Paint it all with red and black

Mount your words on pikes
And your voice from the wires
And leave behind a Daguerreotype
That hangs suspended in the air
When you're gone

Inky darkness fills the late afternoons
And doesn't retreat until well into the mornings
November rises, standing slowly taller
And carries arm-loads of damp, chill days
Into December’s crystalline, grasping reach.

Crack.
The past cleaves from the now.
Your surprises and concerns
Lay in the street,
Until dried and fragile
They take flight on the wind.

A hum,
The future like a freight train
Slow but massive,
Inertia like a mountain
Pushes you forward, aside
Or goes right over top.

The moment –
If you can grab it –
Is the now.
Find the handles and pull them close.
Silence and stillness from the gale.
It is a seat beside the heater
On a cold frozen night.

Catch the one you beckoned
To fall down to you
Out of the deep black sky.
It burns unless you play it
Quickly from hand to hand.
As beautiful and sparkling,
As glowing and exotic.
You cannot too soon
Find a ladder tall enough
To place the jewel back
From whence it came.

One, bee, drei, orange, Wednesday,
Counting in riddles;
A hug, a meal, a song, a breath,
Loving in rhymes;
School, work, isolation, frenzy,
Living in chaos;
A lyric, a whisper, a dance, an eyelash,
Waking in dreams.

A small job, replace a bit of wood
On the old worn deck hidden behind the old house.
Textured with cracks and wrinkles,
The old man of the backyard
Would look good with a new coat.

Pulled away the sinking boards
To find rot and bigger cracks below.
Structure takes a poke to reveal
Oatmeal-like softness.
Many pieces must come out.

The whole thing should be replaced,
But I seek instead to deal with failed parts only.
Others remain solid,
Can hold on for a few more years.

Deft surgery required here, and special tools.
Excise a piece here
Replace a metal fitting there.
Don't make the same mistakes the original builder did.
We can do better than that now.

At the end it will look much as before,
But the proof will be in the putting
Of feet to the boards and walking across
With out the creaks and groans.

Another year, maybe two
And we'll take the whole thing down.
And in its place will be something new
Built out of trees that at this minute
Sway gently in a northern breeze.

In a time I never knew
Thankfully, outside of my own lifetime,
Your stories did not exist.

With sentences carved simply and economically
You weave ideas that engage us wholly
And open to us, image-by-image,
Memories of experiences that we have never had.
Nostalgia for other lives.

Or if you turn in another direction
You bring close around us,
The walls
The darkness
The night.
Suddenly, and with the echo of distant guns.

In our own worlds, the colours are a little
Less fragile. The smells a little less familiar.
Our interactions, the lives that end or begin,
With our every breath, a little less considered.

I do not know how your words
Bring somehow more than this
Wordless life that surrounds us,
But something in those pages,
Brings voices brighter than the sun which also rises.
More thoughtful than an old man upon the sea.
Neither the rain, nor the wind
Whispers so clearly.

Roses are red
Red as the whistling howl of fiery winds
As we stumbled into a crowd
Of rusty desert sandstone boulders
Sitting parched and abraded by time.

We'd baked all day
Surviving bouts of blowing sand
And so we crouched as thermal refugees
In the scant shadow of the boulders
Hopeful for an extra hour of life
Before the wind and sand and heat
Would claim us to our last drop.

Red.
Our skin too was red
Burnt like paper set alight
That never really catches flame
But is consumed by a glowing linear ember
Under the relentless sun.

Somehow we remained there
Against hot red sandstone
Saying nary a word
Greedy for the moisture
That would escape on our breath
Moving only to track the patch of shadow
As it moved methodically around the boulders.

When finally the murderous sun
Gave up and slunk away
The sky turned deep red with twilight.
The only words anyone spoke
When someone said
"Roses are Red"
But nobody had a tendril of energy
Left to extend beyond pure survival
To do anything with it.

Sometimes,
A tiny sliver of time
Wedged in between
The end of a work day
And the lethargic march
Into the routine of the evening.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Continue.

We're all really just alone
When you come right down to it.
Setting aside the biology
And l'amourology
And all the pooling of resources
It's just all about this biped
Standing on a rocky orb
Asking it to gravitationally hold me
Just a little bit longer.

They reach for the bright ring
All attention on the extended finger tips
Is a sympathetic squirm in your chair  
Our contribution to the attempt?

Can we lift them to reach further?
Can we have the ring lowered?
Resized?
Delivered by courier?

Give them good shoes
And demonstrate stretching exercises.
And at the attempt, let it be of themselves.
Let them do it alone,
And ask how it went.
Lament the failures.
Blame nobody.
And encourage another try.

Steps taken together over scarred, torn soil
And songs sung quietly together,
In an explosion-punctured night
With mouths just a breath's distance apart.
Smokey winds drifted over the pockmarked land,
The glow would never really let the night settle in,
When the sun left again with the refugees.

And these threads we carried for decades
Until they were small traces in a modern blanket
Woven with absurd cords of boredom and apathy.
Yet we still feel the anticipation
When we hold the other's hand
Of the sudden, desperate clench
Of a too-close escape.

Reddened legs dangle over the edge of summer
feet kick in time with passing rail cars
the heat of the day soaks through your clothes
yet you shiver a little at the touch
of a cold steel tendril from a bunch of yesterdays
The daylight passes in big meaty chunks now
leaving wide charcoal grill marks
and there's a ****** spilled-syrup stickiness
that persists on a spot on your forearm
Late afternoon means a silica-sand grit
when you run your fingers through your hair
And still that heavy waterlogged boot
that you can't get a hand around
sits in the hollow of your stomach
Along the sidewalk ahead now
the trees callously toss their shadows
uselessly across weedy lawns
rather than provide an ounce of shade for your path
Oh you'll see the end of all this alright
You'll come out the other side of it all
feeling for the source of the draft
under the door
to your one room apartment
and smother it there
where it lies
with the same old tattered blanket
that you used
last year.

The answer to what it was
Was what is wasn't.

It's like this, the rain
In grey and cold November
We feel it inside

Our headlights out there
In this wet October night
Sink into the cold asphalt
Glowing lumps of coal
Lobbed into a black ocean.

What angst was there
Among those myriad words?
I didn't reach out to let them in.
One more among the ashes.

I, on the cold, clear days,
Found that the best hours arrive after dark,
And in the cool night
Even those that avoid people
Would find the cold makes them reach
Toward warming embraces offered humanely
Carefully, selflessly, typically
Without malice, scorn, tear nor sigh.

Yesterday died late last night in the darkness.
Today was born in the small hours.

It lay there quietly gurgling
Alone and vulnerable in the inkiness.

At the break of the sun
That stabbed then tore the horizon,
I knew it was mine.

Almost abstractly it begins
Offerings of aphorisms to quell the daily tide
Exploring all angles available and their attributes
Adjust then all aspects of our problems
And build towards an anticipated resolution
A path that addresses those actions
But abandons the essence
Trophies acquired arbitrarily
Diminishing the attribution of success
Assistance pursued to remedy adversity
Renders academic the activities
That were pursued originally
Until all is abstract, ambiguous, abstruse

As you sit down to eat
With vigour and zeal
Good friends at your table
Make the most of the meal.

As you raise a glass
Then toast as you dine
The long evening chatting
Makes the most of your wine.

As at last you head home
It was good friends, well met
If there were still conversations
To which you didn't get.

I have been writing many poems
For a long, long time, I say.
Volume - surely that is why
I've earned such rank today.

Don't bother reading what I write
Save yourself some time
You know it must be very good
'Cuz it's a poem of mine.

And I've written them since back in school
Oh, such words I've strung together.
Many times upon the page
I described all KINDS of weather.

On special days, I wrote such words
The likes of which are rare
Seeing them would steal your breath
And put a sparkle in the air.

The myriad poems I've crafted now
Oh a dozen or two or three
Surely there are few by now
Who have written more than me.

For I am very nearly twenty two,
And oh, the things I've learned
Like people change as seasons do
Such accolades I've earned.

Someday when I am old and grey
Maybe thirty-one or fourty-five
I'll look fondly back upon these years
Though barely still alive.

The wealth that poetry will have wrought
Will those golden years make sunny
For surely there are markets wide
Where poets can earn money.

It's National Poetry Month you say?
Well, "National" in that usual way.

Between the borders that mark that land
That badge is applied only there and
Just upon these calendar days
Upon the poem, they'll heap their praise.

And after the month is put to the sword  
The words and phrases will all be ignored
Never again will such work we discuss
Until they mark another month thus.

There is something
                    Electric
                  in the air

As a new,
     ...original
                ...idea
       is conceived
        in the belly
of the World.

We begin by considering which space needs this small parcel
This bundle of words wrapped in crude brown paper
And tied with a fibrous, rough twine.

Affairs of the heart?
A plea against the longing of separation?
No, there we'd need our parcel wrapped in fine gilt paper
And tied with ribbons and perfumed.

A lament on the decaying society?
Stripped of honesty and corrupted by graft?
No, there we'd need a box of galvanized steel
And wrapped in a rusting wire with blood-stained barbs.

An inspiration to lift the soul?
Wings to fuel the rising inner enthusiasm?
No, that would need a ripstop nylon pack
Fitted with straps and pockets for a journey over the horizon.

A comfort, a support, a reassurance?
For an ordinary Tuesday, with some lingering Monday weight?
Sure - let it serve us here.
Crude, but effective, it lets us in easily.
The paper and string set aside to serve us again
Folded and wound into the kitchen drawer.
The words inside say that we're not alone
That Wednesday will be along soon
And it will take us all as we are.

A dangling thread pulled
Will either cinch up into an awkward knot
Or pull everything apart.
Sometimes the best strategy
Is snipping it off,
And letting it float away
On the wind.

Catch the one
You beckoned to fall
Down to you.
It came easily then
Out of the deep black sky.

Too hot, unless you played it
Quickly from hand-to-hand.
Too bright
As it glowed and sparkled.
Too beautiful;
Blinding, rare and exotic.

Quickly, you find,
You cannot find a ladder soon enough
Nor tall enough
To replace the jewel
Back from whence it came.

It was better there
If only you had known.

Just a thing put together on a blank screen
With pointless words that accomplish no goal
No sentiments here that the world has not seen
Nothing to tug at the depths of your soul.

A handful of truth and answers
Sprinkled over the upward-turned faces
Eyes closed, mouths agape
Desperate for puzzle pieces
So long assured of what they would look like
They bounced off foreheads
And shoulders
And fell down around their feet
And were left trampled and unrecognized
Still blowing about in little skiffs
Around the edges of the field
After all had gone.

Come, walk with me.
Unknown to each other now
But destined to merge downstream.
Like the fresh and salty waters,
As a quick silent river  
Is enveloped in the arms
Of the roaring ocean tides.

Come, my arm awaits,
Crook'd by my side,
You to weave a hand
Gently thru' along forearm
Warmth for your cold fingers
My breath-filled cage
Presses softly against
The back of your hand.

What is it that you let
Seep into me with a touch,
That inflates me so much
And lightens then my gait?
You placed it there so gently
It expanded within me so curiously
But I dare not ask the how, or why
Nor look too closely
Upon its magic.

Come walk with me in silence,
As we together watch the moment
From strange to intimate pass.
This quiet connection
Together we feel our feet
Lift up and away
Like so many bubbles
Above the sand and pebbles
And away,
Out to sea.

Tell me all those things
You've told me before
I'll listen attentively
And raise eyebrows in anticipation
As you get to the crux of each tale.

Tell me again the stories
Of people met and re-met
Of chance surprises and things said
Of sights seen and paths discovered
Of how good home felt at the end of the trail.

Just to sit across from you
At a chrome-plated and Formica-surfaced table
With a kettle going
And no breaks for me to squeeze in a word.
But oh, to see you again.

I am much taller in person
Than I am on your screen.

They say that the camera puts on ten pounds
But the images in my memory weigh a tonne.

A picture of you paints a thousand words
In a language I struggle to understand.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder
Unless you've left your heart behind.

Slap slap slap
Bare feet upon the path of stones
Cool and smooth and grey
Ephemeral condensate footprints
Vanish within a heartbeat
Of each foot lifted

run your fingers through the weather
and walk with the wind pushing
in the small of your back
press your feet
upon the spine of the world

Stretch to reach the goals of the day
The bar seems raised so high overhead,
Is it my footing too soft underfoot?
Or am I slouching under the weight of it all?

go join the crowds in the street
push with the rhythm of their steps
help them make this heavy globe spin
stand later on the prow of the concrete median
and feel what you've done
it moves heavy steady and firm
under the spinning wheels
of the stationary cars

Flit away on the wind
Swirling like autumn leaves
Twisting on the sidewalk

Children or dogs run through
Chasing this leaf then that
Then another distracts and they're off

Raked into a pile on the lawn
A gust blows them all away again
Tumbling down the street

Colours turn into browns,
Crisp turns into soil, sustenance for trees
Their branches reaching skyward

Sometimes I'm like the trees
Sometimes I'm like the leaves
Sometimes leafing, sometimes leaving.

reach up high and grab a branch
pull with your arms
and scramble against the bark with your feet
let it cradle you in its embrace
and dream you've always lived there

smile with the approaching punchline
and laugh at the end
do that for him
he needs a lift today