Forlorn pleas, angst and aching laments,
Thick like a melange of surreptitiously smoked cigarettes,
And plastics that have melted and burned while too close to the heater.

The teen angst hangs in the depressions and around the corners of this place
Where it is damp and wet in the just-breaking morning.
Among the verdant green, earth-rupturing sprouts
There are flower buds that threaten to burst.

The spring landscape here reveals hewn timber,
And crafted structures
Yet also black loamy dirt
Dredged up from beneath the swollen green carpet
Of ferns and sod,
Marking the unmistakable path
Of an errant vehicle,
That skidded unexpectedly from the narrow road.

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.

They are each and all still there
The moments we have lived
Toss them bright up in the air.
Like diamonds out of soil sieved

All exist like coins we've scattered
Time's the path between them taken
We keep the ones that we think mattered.
Memory-sounds like spare-change shaken

Uncertainty too in our exact position
Life's velocity with no certainty known
Entanglement tells naught of the mission
And futures sprout like crystals grown

And thus we dig as life goes on
And smash small things to find their meaning
Until we find our Higgs Boson
The pieces fall and scatter screaming.

No voice could call
From my sandpaper throat.
The script written
In a watercolour ink,
Left the pages blank
After the rain.
Clutching a weathered branch
On an overhanging rocky ledge,
Legs dangled into the abyss.
Finally, a reaching arm
From the quicksilver mirror
Pulled me back
To the rabbit hole within.

Tomorrow I will need to go
To a place I'll never know
I'll go there again next week
And find some more of what I seek.

I look for silence, sharp and ringing
I look to leave the things I'm bringing
There among the nothingness
I'll stop, and drop, then quick egress

Tomorrow you will find me there
Within a space I know not where
You'll find me there again next week
In silence where we dare not speak

A window into the soul
Water rushing along a gutter
The awaking to raindrops
Hard upon ancient metal flashing.
Gurgles echo in the drainpipes
Droplets join with a chaotic torrent
That interweaves fingers
With the cobbles in the street.

A window into the soul?
But memories melt like softened snow
Down off a high fence of wrought iron
Caked with ice
Though the blacker the metal
The more warmed by the electric afternoon sun.
Crystals drip into syrupy tendrils
And dissolve the moments past.

A window into the soul
The melting left the cold cinders
Once hot and glowing
Now long extinguished.
Even the ash is long washed away.
They sit among stones,
Tendrils of weeds.
Can anyone identify and name them
Among the petrified earth?

A window into the soul
A drought across the landscape.
Whiffs and wisps of smoke on the wind
Crackling sounds of burning trees and grasses.
Waves of flame sweep over a landscape
And even forgotten charcoal
Glows red again.
Flames dance and animate
An inner fire, that only rested
But was never extinguished.

Tendrils white and yearning
Spawned from the base of the stem
Cut and immersed in water
They reach and absorb
Flooding their capillaries
A pipeline of moisture and mineral
To the chlorophyll factory upstairs.

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.

Choosing a series a words for a ditty,
Those we first pluck a few at a time.
For readers it will, at first, seem so pretty
When they detect that rhythm and rhyme.

But soon, I suggest, it becomes such a chore,
When words strung together do pose
An oft-trodden pattern or insipid score
That bounces and sings as it goes.

The message conveyed in this rigid frame,
Is lesser I fear than than when we escape
From words chosen for just ending the same
Or some fortuitous fit to that shape.

So I tend to lean towards using blank form,
For verses I build by the letter,
And chose the words that I feel will conform
To that which my heart says are better.

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.

Just seven minutes ago,
I was but a shell of myself.
I was unfulfilled
With only the promise of
What half-a-dozen minutes hence
Might bring.

Seven minutes ago,
Oh, seven minutes ago.
I knew nothing
Of the crazy, heady,
Seven-minutes-ahead future.

Seven minutes ago,
Oh, seven minutes ago.
Those were wild times,
With dreams,
And pie-in-the-sky aspirations.

We're all more mature
And pragmatic
In this seven-minutes-ahead future.
We work hard,
And wear a no-nonsense countenance.

But some minutes,
Very rarely,
We pause
(If only for a few seconds)
And think of what might have been,
If those seven-minute-ago future dreams had come true.

There is something
                    Electric
                  in the air

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

A little oasis occupied in a cafe
that approaches capacity.
Three opposite, two adjacent,
a couple at the windows to the right.
Six or seven more around the corner, out of view

Early twenties guy, has a slightly too-small zippered sweater,
with head down and a two-handed hold on his phone
the left relinquishes its grip for a minute to wipe across his face.

Late fifties man in a blue,zipped, baggy, sweat shirt
and early-nineties hair gone grey.
A phone too, but of a more palm-and-fingertip interaction
with pursed lips and an occasional surveying of the room.

A quiet girl at my right leaves and four chatty middle-aged yoga ladies
squeeze onto the table for two.
They obliterate my concentration
and I resort to a cocoon of headphone noise.
Their too-strong perfume forms a veritable blue cloud
and leaks into the taste of my tea.

On a frost-whitened afternoon
There are wet black lines through an urban park
Throngs of people pulse along paths.
As all manner of routes come alive
With tributaries of humanity.

On a warmer day some slow and linger
Pausing in the shady spots
Bodies pool there to escape the sun
And the city embodies the lethargy
Of its denizens.

Trains and cabs and buses
Corral and group clusters of humanity
Eject them out in a seething mass
Upon the sidewalks of the tallest buildings
Which vacuum them in through tiny orifices.

From the greenery filled parks
To the traffic-grazed sidewalks
From the tallest buildings
To the tallest trees
The motion of life permeates the geography.

Immersed in it, I feel my blood flowing
Without my intervention
And my lungs breathing
Without me ordering them so.
So too my heart warms
Whenever you are near.

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.

so too the shifting powdered sands
from pulverized mountain ranges
that sift with a
whisper
through my fingers

and the planet turning
grasses creeping in
then going away again
baked out by the aging
swelling sun

but the sands still drift in lazy dunes
grains freed from their hour-glass
still shifting under foot
and warm through my fingers

and sift with a tsk
and a breathy sizzle
and melt away afterwards

as the dry touch of your
lips upon mine
on a sun-baked afternoon.

Stone cold, the blackening sky, stole our fields of flowers
They came like a silent flood over our continents
To block our sun and steal our humanity.

The ships were silent, and filled the skies.
Then down their marching hoards descended
Overwhelmed our puny technology, rendering us as apes.

Under their shadows our world went neolithic
They rendered all that was electrical or light to junk
We were left as scurrying ***** things among the soil.

Vastly reduced, our very memories were threatened
Forgetting how once we ruled our own planet
They plucked up our people like we once picked flowers.

When they came for me I was a child
The elders still telling me of the times I never knew
I had to learn their ways as I learned our own.

One day all our careful plans came together
And I sat hidden deep within their ship,
The thing so long pursued was found

Within that place, their robot brain
Where I could redefine their enemy as themselves
Then quick to a transport and back to my people.

Shortly then with a single bullet
We sparked their hostility sensors
The dark metal clouds burst soon with sun-like flame

We will never know the all that they knew,
Though we pick still among the mechanized ruins
And try to discover "from where" and "why."

More powerful than all our smartest elders
Covering the world with their dark mechanized oppression
But brought to an end by hands of a boy.

Many years now, since we brought them down
The hulking hulls worked now into barns and homes.
And once again we learn to talk across the oceans.

It wasn't long after the flames had ended
When in the fields the sun again warmed the soil
And fields of flowers there began to bloom.

Anyone can laud a sunny day
And lavish it with praise.
It's such an easy proposition
Amid warmth and golden rays.

But it is, I'd say, a refinéd taste,
When a day dawns bleak and grey,
To find some joy in heavy clouds
That bubble-wrap your day.

And even given pouring rain
That many see as vile
The drum of raindrops on the roof
Can bring to some a smile.

A wailing wintry driving blizzard?
Seems to most so rotten.
Yet for me I get a thrill
From a landscape wrapped in cotton.

Now a slush-and-sleet-filled day in March
Is a horrible kind of weather
I fear it seems to void my thesis
And brings to no one pleasure.

It erodes the city's state-of-mind
Optimism is diminished
Everyone is in a huff
And wants it to be finished.

Oh, for a bright day in July
With no one feeling huffy,
The golden sun to rule the sky
and clouds so big and fluffy.

Everyone lauds the sunny day
They lavish them with praise.
It's such an easy proposition
In warmth and golden haze.

But it is, I'd say, a refinéd taste,
When the day dawns bleak and grey,
To find the joy of heavy clouds
That bubble-wrap your day.

And oh, the ones with pouring rain?
Many call them vile
The drum of raindrops on one's roof
Brings to me a smile.

A wailing wintry driving blizzard?
You declare it all so rotten.
Yet my heart gets a pleasant lift
From a landscape wrapped in cotton.

Now slush-and-sleet-filled days in March
Are a horrible kind of weather
I fear it seems to void my thesis
And bring to no one pleasure.

It erodes the denizens' state-of-mind
Optimism quite diminished
Everyone with tempers short
All wishing it were finished.

Oh, for a bright day in July
With no one getting huffy,
A golden sun that rules the sky
And clouds so big and fluffy.

He insisted we go down
To a place near the river
He was briefly obsessed with the boats
And explained he didn't have anywhere to stay that night.

All these constant changes of subject,
And weird self-obsessions,
Then he calls ME half crazy,
As if that would make his company pleasant.

Why does he keep checking the origin
Of my tea
And of my oranges.
He's a loveless, non-committal fool.
Just when you think
He understands what you're saying,
He says something stupid.
And I don't say anything,
Just let the river do the talking.
He's delusional about our relationship.

And he wants to come on vacation with me
And he doesn't seem to care to where,
And he thinks somehow I'd trust him,
And he makes lascivious comments about my body.  

Jesus, how did sailing come into this?
Is he some evangelical nut?
Oh man, he is going on about this.
Sailing, and garbage and flowers and seaweed.
He clearly cannot maintain a train of thought.

I look at my watch,
I take out my mirror,
I practice my 'yeah, sure, I'm interested face.'

And again he's off again about coming on my vacation,
And again he doesn't care where to,
And again he thinks himself trustworthy
And again, with the unwelcomed comments about my body.

We went to a play last week

Actors strutted around

Among a set of tall buildings

Made of actual stone of grey

And billowing smoke

And noises

And crowds.


Upon the great stage they talked

About their ancient ideas

Like wars

And politics

And freedom.

In one scene an actor yelled

and swung a mighty hand

and struck the other man!


And though we knew

It was really just acting

The idea that one

Could hit another

Shocked all of us in the audience
So powerfully

And a few people even left

The theatre

In tears.

But there were funny bits too

In the play that night.

A character said he had a car.

His Own. 
Personal. 
Car!

And together they were to drive

Both of them

Off to an aeroport.

Like with all the steering,

And foot pedals,

And everything.

And in a very sad part

Someone treated someone else badly

And called her names

Because of the colour

Of her skin

And because she had come

From somewhere else.

And all our eyes were wet for a while.

One man used a device

Which was an ancient komputer.

Two flat parts with a hinge

And it opened upon his lap

And one side glowed brightly

To illuminate his face

And he presses a bunch of button-keys

To spell words and things

Because that’s how they told the

Komputer

What to do.

And we all laughed.

when it was over a bunch of us asked the man that was hit if he was okay was he really okay it looked terrible and did they really have to do that awful thing in the play and was the other actor a bad man and he said no, it was alright and the other actor was a nice man and that it didn’t hurt at all and he said he was sorry that it scared us but it was the violence of the time and the people of that time and we said we kind of understood.

And we all felt better


But one lady

Still needed to hug him.

And his eyes

Were a little wet too.

Extend your hand, palm up
Silk - a long bolt of it,
unfurls across your palm
Cold on contact
And smooth
And smooth and smooth
Dragging a crisp wind behind it
As it falls away like a solid liquid

Extend your hand,
A gelatinous orb, almost sticky to the touch
But not quite.
Rubbery, resilient, responsive
Pulled under the weight of gravity
To bulge and droop over the edges of your hand
When you drop it, it hesitates as it lets go.

Extend your hand
Feel the weigh of a solid masonry cube
The greyest concrete
Each crenelation of its surface
Like a dry-skin pore
The corners and edges hold their shape sharply
Dragging fingers make a rasping sound
And a ceramic-like ring as it slips from your hand

Extend two hands together
Like to catch a stream of water
But instead you cradle
A tired and content weeks-old kitten
It adjusts its position, and curls up
Content with the warmth of your hands
You feel the soft, purring of velvet fur
It feels implicit trust, warmth and security
For its always-pending next nap.

Snow, once wind-packed and
Crackling with a layer of ice,
Turned soft and wet under foot,

Like a rigid, schedule-driven life
Softened by a glimpse of mortality.

Like a hard impersonal heart
Warmed by the touch of a hand.

Like a cacophony of public chatter
Melted by the sound of a friend's "Hello."

Fresh weather will bring new snow,
And plummeting temperatures freeze the landscape solid again,
But these other things leave a glow that continues
After the moment has passed.

An entire genre of poetry
Crafted from the pondering of the page blank.
I have a mild disappointment as they
Are submitted into the stream
Of word sculptures that cross my desk
Emerging from nothing
From the art of just getting started.
And even so, here I sit
Having just pulled together one myself.

From the valley that feeds the great river
Beyond the hundred-league Forest of Darkness
He came in the first year of his Roaming,
Seeing then, for the first time, the sprawling city on the coast.

In the shanty-town wedged between spoil-heap and highway
Among streets one could span with outstretched arms
She often did whilst walking alone
And singing quietly in the earliest light.

That they would meet was fore-told
Not in lore or in the words of the old ones,
But in their hearts from their first days
Which each remembered without a specific age.

They both felt the world was surely a place
Bigger than the corner that held each trapped
Collecting only whispers of somewhere, something more
Hoarding words that meant 'bright,' and 'plentiful' and 'freedom.'

His clan's traditions are stronger than the bindings
That held him in his familial servitude.
The mandatory age of Roaming was upon him
And cast out, he at once felt a call across the continent.

But a release for her, from the poverty and isolation,
From the shacks, and filth and futility
Seemed yet as impossible and cruel and forbidden
As it ever had, over all her years before.

Something happened then, on that last day of the rainy season.
With the city still yet across the expanse of a black river
He saw the sun break through a dark-veined sky
As the ferryman took his father's amulet as payment.

The guards of the gate pushed back the planked doors
And he entered through the wet, rough stone walls
Among a dripping hoard of plains-peasants, and traders,
As a distant siren call caught her beneath that broken afternoon sky.

To the central market they both found their way.
She on hard, bare soles slipping on the long soaked cobbles
He on worn and wet elk-hide moccasins
The throngs of the city descending to find daily fare.

Aimless wandering guided them each across the Great Square,
She, tired, finding a mostly-good apple fallen aside the stands
He, exhausted, buying bread with one of his few remaining coins.
Each sat close, yet still unaware, unseen to the other.

Unknown in the city, it was a meadowlark that brought them together.
Alighting upon a thorny shrub near them both
They turned when they, at the same time, threw a crumb.
Eyes like wells, in they both fell, cobbles steaming under a new sun.

A meadowlark brings to each now a gasp of surprise
Alighting upon the window sill.
Five decades gone in a moment,
The memory fresh again as a just-fallen rain.

Here, there are slices of deep-red apples
And rolls of sweet golden bread, and cheese, and wine
That sit on the table between them,
And a fire slowly ebbs in their hearth.

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.

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.

I haven't written a poem on that website yet today
No words have come along for me to digitally say.
If I can't find a phrase or two for all those folks to see
This sunny day will turn to night with nothing new from me.

Surely I can find some words to mark this day that's ending
Even if not notable and unlikely to start trending
There's nothing here that with your beer you'll raise up in a toast
But if I'm not mistaken now, I've something I can post.

Like a back-lot set between movies
Or a radio-active Soviet village, abandoned and vacant
The cold January sun illuminates
A first-day-of-the-year neighbourhood
Unmarked by human presence.

Snow skiffs are the only activity
And frosted, black-green lawns
Retaining their last tending in an icy stasis
Everything remains empty and frozen
As the clock ticks relentlessly
Into another year.

Five forlorn fugitives stood tall
Five warnings to all who approach
Heavy bows move with foreboding in the wind
Chained to the wall of the ever-dark wood.

Needles brush needles,
Their tips like razor claws
Needles against bark,
Coarse and the colour of old blood.

They gaze across a soft blonde prairie
And the elders tell the tale.
"Avert your eyes, do not look upon the fugitives."
"Past those five, none return."
"Better to stay on the plains and live."

Five tired, twisted sentinels mark the boundary
A dark forest wraps around the low black mountain.
In our fathers' fathers' days, they say,
Pursued by horsemen they made it to the forest-edge
Five murderers, fugitives from the people.
Five went in, and none came out.

Their backs were seen immersing into a green wall
Their tracks ended at thick beds of needles
The horses would go no further.
The screams and howls were heard through the night.

Five fugitives went into the forest.
The next day, five tall, ageless trees
That were not there before.
They stand, and watch, and remind the people
You can run,
You can hide in the grasses.
But the forest wields a dark justice.

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.

There's a groove in the floor
I slip into it each morning
I slide on cold steel casters
Driven by a low-rumbling steam
Pushed through my routines.

It goes down the stairs
And into the shower
And loops around to the mailbox
And past the fridge.

Sometimes there are a few splinters
Sometimes it's polished smooth
And it feels effortless to move along

I dream that the groove will lead out
Into the deep green forest
And crest upon a granite cliff
Where the vista over patchwork fields
And under rain-laden clouds piled high
Is opened up before me.

But it passes the table
And the TV
And the couch.

Next time it brings me to the mailbox
I'm going to make my big break.

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.

Waist deep.
The thick black syrup meets skin
A sharp black/white line
Across the pores
Like a moving limb of day/night
Across the distant craters of the moon.
To tread deeper and pulls the surface down
The mirror-black surface bending, pulling.
A meniscus
A relativistic bending
Of space and time around a star.

Deep below the surface
Wiggling toes are sluggish
Movement of legs are impeded
A tug at each hair on legs and toes.
And the hydraulic squirt of the liquid
Below the soles as your weight shifts.

Ah, but sometimes shallower now,
Withdrawing belly skin pulls with it
The deep brown-black rubbery surface
That will not be left behind.
It will not relinquish this new intimacy.

What horror comes with the rising depths?
Liquid darkness comes over shoulders, chin and cheeks.
A sweet salty taste now upon the lower lip.
A tug, a pull at the chin with every breath
Every attempt to lift it above the surface.

Fear. Darkness. Unknown.

Over mouth and nose.
Sticking to eyelids.
Thick and warm into ears.
A bubble of air tries to escape from under your chin
And tickles as it pulls up on the hairs it passes.

The cool open air irises-off above your head
Only a momentary depression in the top surface.
Until there is no record, of your having passed here.

Silence.

A sweet and sticky seal, impermeable between this world and the void.

Silence.

Push up now with strength in frightened legs.
The suction is immense, the pull strong.
It does not wish to let you withdraw.
But you push and breaking the tension of the surface
You emerge.

Great thick layers of darkness remain.
Hands claw great gobs of blackness from nose and mouth.
A gasping, stuttered pull brings icy, bitter air.
Standing now, a black shadow-ghost emerging from tarry blackness.

Velvety and warm was the invitation,
Soothing and intimate was the gentle touch,
Silent and heavy was embrace,
A smothering, airless dark at the end
And silence.

But sweet, oh how sweet and warm.

A fragile vessel
Created of breath
Was floated upon the wind
To sing of lives and losses.

It envelops my face
And spills into my ears
As heavy summer rains
Drain into a cracked and parched landscape.

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.

It is in that wooden place
Among the too-close trees
Under a canopy of woven reasons
That block the lancing stars

Balanced on the edge of possible and improbable
We choose from a bouquet of what-if tales
Paths to tread carefree
Always avoiding the cold shining steel
That patrols around the edges
And reflects images of reality
In a clarity
Nobody wants to see

Time passing -
Is not the tick, tick, tick, of the movies.
It is a barely audible, high-pitched ringing in your ears.
It is the low thrum of a distant compressor somewhere.
It is the sound of the long shadows brushing against the wall.

Time passing -
It is the fabric rustle of changing your position in a chair.
A cat padding along the oak floorboards of the hallway.
An electric cube powering a computer.
The sizzle of speakers turned on with nothing playing.

Time passing -
I hear it from a silent telephone,
From the idle doorknob and hinges.
From wooden steps leading to my front door.

Time passing -
It is all of this,
And nothing.
So much nothing.

All of it a tapestry
Much expected is still unwoven
And lies in coils at our feet
Parts of it have come undone
Some of the colours and shapes are mixed up
But it hangs on the wall
And we keep on collectively weaving in spite of it all

In fading denial, I faced the leaves
And scattered hoses
And the pots still distributed about the yard
Where seeds had once ****** stalks and leaves,
And colours had burst, among the greenery.

In the chill wind, I removed them
The ice-encrusted aquatic plants
And exposed black cold water below.
Sunk a bubbler into the pond's depths
And caught glimpses of the orange inhabitants.

To the warmth, I retreated
As the sun turned up the shadows
And the creeping, early approach of night
Intruded upon the late afternoon,
And the winter, upon the fall.

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.

Rumours like echoes
That reverberate off ice
Memories sometimes just don't feel like playing nice

They are the textures
Of the fabric that I wear
The holes, a coldness  
Through the stitches you made there.

Still the darkening of the day
Leaves long shadows
That persist in the strangest ways
And a chilling wind blows
Until the night swallows up
All the light

I send out words for the living
Thin but bright as if of chrome
Returning echoes are the ones that make it home.

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.

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.

A throwaway.
Not for posterity.
Not for unborn archaeologists
To extract caked with mud.
Not to be hidden from the sun
Under a millennia of detritus.

Just for now.
Just for this bit of time
When nobody needs you immediately,
And nobody expects you to deliver,
And nobody is depending on you.

Just for these moments.
Just to share a bit of your space-time
While the sun finds a gap in the branches
And drives the chill from the room.
While the office has emptied for lunch
And a breath can be taken in peace.
While the hum of the bus/train/plane
Has lulled your fellow travellers to sleep.

Just to see some words gathered
Purely for their affinity to one another.
Just for the love of pictures
Painted in your head alone.
For when just one more read through
Is purely for the pleasure
Of sitting awash in an idea.

Throwaway.
A handful of words.
Just for you.

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

We have obscured points-of-view
From where we cling so earnest,
To this one rock among the few
That orbits ‘round that furnace.

But when we’re on the other side
Of our boulder, deep in night,
The stars blaze in the sky so wide
Such a majestic, unreal sight.

Lay down sometime, upon the snow,
In a treeless, open place.
As the spinning Earth below
Tries to throw you into space.

Do it now, you’re in your prime.
Take up your position!
If you let go at the perfect time
You’ll fly out on your mission.

Choose a spot that’s cold and clear
Where just last night it snowed.
Then punch out through the stratosphere
And let your head explode.

Out of the door, and a right turn
I take the asphalt intersection at the diagonal,
As nobody is driving past just now.
The path is muddy where the sidewalk plow
Was misaligned all winter.
The paved bit remains hidden under
A shoulder-high mountain of icy snow.
Mostly clear footing the rest of the way,
The warmer spring days have melted so much.

Next past the elderly lady's place
Haven't seen her little dog in a while.
I suspect he has met his end, as he was on a bit too.
Not long until we'll have forgotten that he ever was.
He seemed to bring some comfort to her
As he shuffled along the perimeter of her yard.
She'd sit on the porch, and smile if you said hello.
Him off his leash, but disinterested in most things
Beyond the boundary of his shrinking universe.

Past a church and its adjacent oft-rented hall.
Here all manner of gatherings during the week,
Bring people by foot, bike and parking-space filler.
I've only been in there for occasional elections,
When cardboard boxes emblazoned
With yellow check-mark logos
Collect a sample of hopes and worries
From those of us living nearby.

Across to the next block after the spot
Where the writhing roots like slow-motion anacondas
Had once lifted the sidewalk
And grabbed at your toes as you'd pass.
It was finally re-paved the year before last.
Or was it the year before that?

On the next block, past the house
Of a recently-retired couple
Recently clerks in a government office
Where at once disinterested and annoyed
They'd awaited a smoke break, and a pension.
On the nice days now they sit smoking
And often offer a smile
While they drink glasses of red wine
On a raised front step that reaches
To the edge of the sidewalk,
As if the pub patio at the next street
Was now close enough to save them the walk.

Finally is a new complex of four units,
Before we reach the busy street.
This one was built just recently
And employed an innovative new scheme.
All concrete and sheet-steel forms,
It came together slowly
As builders seemed unsure how the system
Was supposed to work.

The units are all occupied now, top and bottom.
The below-grade residents, haven't deployed
Their freshly installed blinds since arriving.
Denizens of the sidewalk pass the large window
Where all their worldly possessions are displayed.
They seem to lounge in the adjoining room, mostly
Hypnotized by the large panel on the wall.

Their driveway crosses the sidewalk here.
And it was dry and clear all winter.
I saw the builders installing the snake-like tubes
Of a snow-melting driveway heater.
All winter it liberated the residents from the chore
Of being outside, away from their TV.
And from piling themselves a mound of icy snow
And from later watching it slowly seep away
As the warmth of spring seeps into the sidewalk.

Call me when you have gasped your throat to splintered wood
Reach for me when your fingers have calloused to fractured stone
From the depths of the stoney pit of echoing isolation
When your legs hold you weary as rusted tin-soldiers

If your heart is hardening like lava reaching the ocean
If your song is submerged in a rain-on-tin-roof din
If your hugging arms are pulled asunder by monsoon landslides
If your eyes have filled with the angry spray of November hurricanes

Remember a warm hand against cold skin
Remember closeness like a heavy felted great-coat
Remember a low voice breathing fireplace hot upon your neck

Remember two hearts
Just two rib-thicknesses apart;
Two taught drums,
Beating in time
Together
In song.

People more creatively put words together
When they face some restrictified rules
Like not making up unemogryfied words
That they haven't been taught in their schools.