I woke up *****
And went to the shop,
I got corn, peas, chopped gherkins,
All canned,
I raided the reduced section like mad,
Got some cheese
And some ham
That I won't allow to go bad,
cause I'll make a ton of salad
Out of this myriad,
For breakfast, munch and evening feast,
It'll last a fortnight at the very least,
I can top it up with this
Foul smelling liquor I brought from the east,
Among the other mementos in my cellarette,
I could have a party in my ******
In my kitchenette,
My flat is so hot I could sign post it
'sauna to let',
But the swingers here don't speak a word of
English,
One time they took their ya-yas out
And called ME a delinquent,
As if I've got a funny kind of pigment
They can't live with,
I've tried to put my finger on it
But I don't want it to get stinky,
I think they simply haven't got an inkling
As to what and why they're thinking,
But never mind those pinkies,
Let us go back to my shopping
Just as it was getting *****:
Before my skimpy trolley glided to the checkout,
I got a ticket for my pfand,
Which measured fairly to my pleasure
Of having my alcoholism,
Which is confess is merely leisured,
Redeemed into a form of solid ******* treasure.
Throughout the years my drinking
Let me celebrate the fear
Of lack of meaning,
It made friends out of strangers,
Lovers out of friends,
Ex lovers out of lovers,
Clowns out of boring people,
It made a clown out of me too,
My drinking took my money
And gave me a suspicious act
To cling to,
It made me a legless athlete
In a race against the future,
It excited me with waterfalls of chaos
Bursting through cracked normality,
It pretended to bring Arcadia
Into the ruling technology,
It invaded Scandinavia  
With lawless Somalia,
It put peaks and crannies
Into the dull landscape of
Nord Rhein Westphalia,
I have a whole worthless encyclopaedia
Of what my drinking did to me,
Page after page of random numbers
Makes for a baffling read,
I don't know if I should frame it,
Burn it,
Or get some ****,
My drinking always gave me an excuse to smoke,
I puffed my hours into nothingness,
Laughter & loneliness,
A condition of no ambition
Made life itself seem like a superstition,
But I don't want the repetition anymore,
Boredom is but a bed sheet of a sore old *****,
A stifling breath of a handicapped mind;
But
Being now so temporarily poor
I find it easy to smile
As the cashier counts my pennies
Making the citizens in line
In their Jack Wolfskins and denims
Very uneasy,
Men & women of the Rhein get seriously queasy
When they see a foreigner like me
Simply taking it easy,
You know I had to break my piggybank just to get here,
I crossed a red light when it was all clear,
I have no bike lights - I just disappear,
Who knows what is it that I do inside the night?..
Could be something good,
Might be something bright..
Anyway,
I got my receipt,
Said my 'schön Tag' alright,
I should have said 'schön Abend'
But I guess I'm not polite,
Then I rode in the street,
My bags dangling left & right,
Balancing my act
Under the waning Eurodollar moon,
Some react badly
when they're given **** to spoon,
But my lack of money
In fact makes me feel immune
To superficial cravings like
iPhones, clothes, perfume,
shavings, shoes, tattoos;
I'd rather spend a fortnight
In the arms of David Hume,
Than stopping by at Rügen
On my way to Cameroon,
On a beastly ocean liner,
With pommes and Pauliner
Supplied ad infinitum!
I don't know my own mind,
I's time to take a trip down the ol' cerebrum,
While tickets are at a minimum
And the season is at a premium,
I'll tame my tantrums without ******,
I'll let my maelstroms guide me to a podium
Of perfect equilibrium,
I'll get a glimpse of wisdom
By watching my own delirium,
I'm serious about this.
I don't reminisce about the years
I dismissed by watching television series,
Dumbing down with the Big Bang Theory.
I feel so blessed to be weary
And out of breath
From the long hand of entertainment
That wants to tickle everyone to death,
It's an epidemic worse than crystal ****,
But it's not hard to shake the fever.
Only a ****** was born to be a ******,
Man was cursed to be a dubious believer.
So kiss my feet
Or chop me with a cleaver,
Nothing will stop me from becoming an achiever,
Nothing but the habit pattern of my own demeanour.

Before spring, near Grimsby, ditches run clean like trout streams,
Our vines are gray. They will be pink next, like flushed, excited skin.  
In March there is the flatness that is a big part of trouble.
Anthony's sisters are helping him scrub his apartment.

He was sick all winter. They raise his laughter like neighbours raise a burned out barn.
He had made a good start. The therapy.
He says now, "I wasn't so much sick as sad all the time."
The pills ended the depression. You can wish that life was never mechanical.

Smell of hot vinegar in the coffee-maker, smells of pine oil and beer.
Brock University jackets, damp curly hair, his sisters
Wiping their hands on sweatshirts, the open window,
His bedroom. Anthony clears books from the sills and cleans and shines the windows.
There are wicker baskets for their picnic and for his laundry.

I always wanted to know, what is consecration?
(Here is a scrap of his poetry:
"... ******* the colour of a driftwood campfire.")
His sisters laugh to think of a girl in the apartment.
The ***** clothes are gone. He's got clean denims and hiking boots.

Laughter, beer and young music,
Bread and stew and pickles and heavy  brown two liter bottles of beer
On the white wooden kitchen table where he hopes to write.
His father's pickup truck is in the yard, its bed full of garbage.

With cleaning any good thing can happen. The sisters feel it too.
I didn't know what consecration meant. They joked
That he could have a girl up there when they were done.

    
                                  Paul  Anthony Hutchinson

Through the nature that i've travelled
There's so much to unravel
And the sea's that i've swum
Whether fishes are dumb
And the skies that are blue
Do they wear lace shoes?
Those dinosaurs which were ugly
Did they shave their legs regularly?
Do flying fishes even fly
Or its just a rumor spread by cats
So that it can eat every time a human has its catch
Did apes develop into humans
Or totally vice-versa
Before we know it we'll go extinct
And apes on trees will have sips of *****
Do kangaroos have pockets from birth
Or did they buy from Denims
Before i know it dogs will purr
And rocks will have feelings
Do owls sleep or act their way through the day
It will not be Meryl Streep but them, catching the oscar and walking away!
Do snakes hiss by nature or just be angry due to their body folds
Before i know it others will wear Jimmychoo's and all they'll do is catch a cold!
DO lions have smelling ability or they just put a tracking device
Playing billiards in 'Catsino' and using cell phones made of mice?!
Do eagles, the pilots of the sky have pretty air hostesses attend to
Or locate and make a buffet out of the, that's exactly what i'm referring to!
Its this jungle or paradise, or what a new age city?
Casino's of lions, oscars for owls, that's my LIFE'S EXPECTANCY !

Behind a speakeasy
in a ***** moonlit alley
silhouettes climb up a tired
and worn out stairway
vacancy signboard beneath
an incandescent light bulb
marks the nondescript entrance
for the nights commerce

Outside the window ledge
a billboard hums an electric tune
between the blinds neon light
sneaks into the room
casting shadows on a naked
landscape across the mattress
spread totally disinterested
pockmark flesh limply waiting

Clumsy hands fumble
to unzip stained denims
hobbling with unsteady steps
to the edge of the bed
a drunk smelling of cheap whiskey
and ***** smiles at me with
two rows of rotted stumps
my first customer of the night

A chair in the corner sits huddled with the shadows,
while a second chair lowers itself by the door.
A window between the chairs hangs silently on wall,
as the curtains whisper with the wind outside.

Towards the left of the window is a shrunken bed,
with bedposts like redwoods and the body of a willow.
On the bed is a bundle of fabrics and tweed,
twisting and spinning amongst eachother.

Joining the first chair is a spindly wooden table,
with wobbly fingers and with only three legs.
The top of the table is clustered with trinkets,
pinecones from Alaska and feathers from Pompeii.

Littering the floor are denims and glass,
clothing and pieces of vases strewn under the door.
Thrown under the second chair is a pair of old shoes,
weathered and worn and left to die.

On the walls with the window is doodles and sheets,
drawings of childhood tapped in the space.
Paintings on the plaster are dusted with flakes,
burdens of memories of past and future.

In the center of the room stands a coat stand of mahogany,
standing tall and strong in the ruins of its lost kingdom.
Unaware of what goes on outside of his window,
all he knows is the dust and objects trapped with him in the room.

Oh Dipali, Oh Dipali
So pretty, so lovely.
Short hair, the smiley face
So pleasant, your grace.

But why do I wonder,
It's not real?
The masks you wear,
Covering up your anguish and fear.

Look at you, all changed .
Feet to forehead, everything arranged.
Just as an experiment, take my advice,
Need not be beautiful, need not be nice.
Be the one you really are- Just For Today!

Thick glass-frames, oh poor eyesight ?
Or maybe the darkness of  the lonely nights
without the two twinkling stars,
Your eyes reflect the deep scars.
Remove your glasses
Be the one you really are- Just For Today!

Take out your golden wrist watch,
Take out your blue and white friendship bands.
Free up your wrists, Free up your hands.
Burdens of emotions and time,
The marks will show up as their remains.
But Be the one you really are- Just For Today!

Heavily packed your wardrobe, so colourful.
Tops and denims and matching shoes, so cheerful.
Fingers will run through them, but give them a holiday.
How about just a plain salwaar-kameez for today?

Search for your simplest sandals, no high heels.
Be simple,
Today no visual appeals.
No make-up, no fancy handbags.
Be the one you really are- Just For Today!

A beauty rising out of clouds,
For today will just dissolve into the crowds.
Soon you'll realize its value,
An existence so natural, so true.
But for today, just be the one you really are.
And you'll still stand out in millions, my dear,
With your pretty face, and the short hair.

there are only 5 seats and on each end
are metal chapels. time slows down like a slug
climbing a vertical wall, or say, a drunken man
  making his way towards the oblique recess.

the ignominy of an exhausted carburetor
is the orchestra for the night.
lots of women go in and out, out and in,
  whichever is first, but the last is always
just as bland as any other truth:

we go, each foot splayed to cover measure,
  and in the flash of a scene, gone.

I watch their skirts make gossamer tune,
like some flotsam or a poised note being led
  straight to a trajectory disappearance:

the idea of the image is to glide
over them, over flesh,
over this fetal smoke that I will soon toss
  right into the womb of nothing

and fall flat as a key from a tone-deaf cathode,
a spanked melodrama of television with dull cursive,

        or as lithe as justly, the right camber of blues
             ripping straight through my day-old denims,

peering through the tease of a thigh’s penumbral shadow,
the sound of the world being dragged into double-doors

       echoing a metonymy: *silence the interlocutor, her mouth
                          full of birds. Dark birds.

The air, superheated, cocoons us
and we drive,
northwards into the heartland
of the desert.

You, black shirted,
your smooth denims
an intrinsic part
of the landscape.
You were born into dust.

I, crisp and white,
a polarised pair
of mirrors for my eyes.

Your hands on the wheel
guide us into the belly of time.
Intent upon a road with no end.

Sunlight hits chrome,
bleeding flashes of forever
into the gaze of any who glance upon us.

The roof pulled down,
my hat is given up
to a vortex of spinning air,
whipping tiny tornadoes
of grit and long-dead weeds
into a dancing frenzy of celebration.

We have no gold on our fingers.
Our teeth shall not itch
with the sugar of a wedding cake.
And we’ll never look back.

She's got that peasant stink stuck to her
radiating failed dreams and passed-over advice
speaking to the untold quantities
of filthy, illegitimate children
birthed through pale and quivering thighs.

Tattered, low denims
faded, high-cut blouse
full head of ratty, unclean hair
propped up in a high-rise hair-spray style
that hasn't been popular in the trailer parks
for more than a decade.

She always worked real hard
yet always put failing-foot forward
and though I asked,
she could never tell me why -
she never, I think, knew herself.

It doesn't matter though
she'll just fall again
fall to her knees before another he again
fall into the welfare lines due to another newborn again
fall back down into what she knows again.

She saves her non-handout-cash
for the spending on endless streams of hash,
bottles of paint for nail and eye-lash
-because she believes, as she's told,
that she's worth it -
even though it's real clear that she's not
and that
it's real clear that she's one for looking-on
and never acting upon and yet,
I cannot help myself
anymore than she can -

I have fallen
completely and pointlessly
in love with her.

I ran into you again in the old café.
You know the one, with its yellow and blue vintage mugs,
The one with the mismatched chairs and Old Persian rugs.
With the red espresso machine and the barista who knows us both by name.

When I say I ran into you, I don’t really mean we made small talk,
Or even acknowledged one another with a head tilt or nod.
It was more so I saw you from across the shop, and you saw through me.

I watched you order your coffee as I mimicked the bartender’s “Markus”.
I put my head in my book, the one about god-knows-who doing god-knows-what.
You took your usual seat, the one a table down from mine,
The one beside the window that looks down the main strip.

You drink your coffee with cold milk and sugar, with a slow rush and concentration.
I wonder where you go to each afternoon, who you meet with
And if she knows you bite your nails.

As you drink and think, you scrawl.
I follow your hand motions in-between a word or two on the page in-front of me.
Each time I try and imagine what it says, but each time you finish your cup you crumple the page and stuff it in your denims.
I wonder who washes your pants, who find those words,
Who treasures them the way I would.
I wonder if she knows you mess with the front of your hair when your hands don’t know what to do.

You pick up your empty cup, place it on the counter, you open the door and nod to the barista.
She nods and tells you to “not be a stranger”.
I look to where you sat, and feel lonely without your scribbling.
But where you sit is not empty, with a sugar *** and stir sticks.
Your words you left, for her not to find and for me to steal.

I walk to the table and turn over your page. It writes,
“A letter to the girl I see in our café, the one that knows us both by name.
I see you but you see right through me.
I wonder who you are looking for out on the street, I wonder if you are waiting for someone to walk by,
And if he knows you touch your hair when you’re nervous and drink vanilla lattes with one sugar.
I wonder if he is in your books you read about only-you-know-who and only-you-know-what.
I sit in the window where you look, waiting for you to see me,
I write and write to tell you something or anything,
But I know he is out there somewhere and not here in.
I scribble something down in hopes I can somehow get you to notice me,
But all I can write about is how beautiful you look in our quiet, old café, drinking the froth from a blue mug.”

Amelia
with the
tender
Tom Hardy lips
picks
at things.

Scabs.

The peeling leather
on her
steering wheel.

The frayed edges of the hole in her denims
that's as gaping
as a zipper mouth,
and looks
just
as
vicious.

Boys she likes
and likes
not at all.
(Men that call her "sweetie.")

Amelia's delicate fingers
and the ballet of her fingernails
warp bruises
into rose vaginas.

And make hurt
smell
good,
and decay
taste like
the wet of your first girlfriend
and the sweet odor of fear
she let off
when your tongue searched
and she lay there--
legs cocked on your shoulders--
quiet,
never sighing.

Amelia hasn't found anything
that scares her good and healthy yet.

When she does
she'll know love,
and I'll stop thinking about her.

Before the decade spat us out,
on our bicycles we had options,
the electric blaze truly sped by
with the years
and Dad's knew their sons interests
lay in Rock, where musicians in de rigueur denims
sign posted the alpha roost
and we all had dreams of blondes,
their beacons crafting
secrets and desires about growing up.
This was the surest way
to catch an education for life

goaded by a stereophonic monotone:
a flumine voice waxes with lovelorn dregs.

i heard the plump word of rescue
dangle from the heady decibel of song,
winterward, blue-veined and stillicide.

no more, shall the wind traverse the impasse of the verdigris. the incertitude
of beginnings sigh ultimately.

o people, your darling children soldered
to your denims. o rosefrail and sightless
bannerets — we mourn such coming.
it sleuths with a tangle of fingers
underneath fringes of flesh-warmed
draperies with a different temperament
as moderate as climates in squandered tropics, flows with a truth wishing it
more of the untruth:

never shall return, in faraway lands,
never shall look back and lay in prairies
attenuated, continue to sing oblivion.

there is principle, there is mad luck on the streets
 but then again, i have neither one.
i assume the idleness of poles underneath the roof of a cafe in Poblacion
   and wonder where all my poems go,
 the value they impose -- only there's implosion   and not   so much sense
    so i go out to seek tenderly in the night,
 a cheap moon trapped underneath the bottle   of a pilsner
   as i hear one  of   the patrons call out
  my solitude like a ******* on all fours;

one afternoon pursues a following.
  i have wasted my time writing and stopping
 to   watch   stray hounds   pant   and
     ****    on the hot asphalt of Plaridel.
the   papers   retch  at tyrannies.
    hands   for  mechanisms  configured to
  a heady bias of  probabilities.
 the   house   next  to me is  being
     overhauled   and i  imagine  the incredulity
of   things  not their own  meanings.

  a pair of old Chuck Taylors on the bedspread,  a decrepit  bed for making love
    or passing time or  wasting the night away.
somewhere, someone  is  reading my  poems  and  weeping at the  cadence.
   most do not notice -- it was the caprice of things   not mine to  commandeer.
   the sound  of  stone masons hammering
boulders double the  melancholia.
   the deliberate sieving of  sand and  stone
      felt like   sandpaper air.
 the matutinal  sky split into dire condition
    much like  mine: becoming   and unbecoming.

all the   ******* are out in the streets
with ladies wuthering in high strides.
all the priests are in their rendezvous,
killing buddha heads.
the police have silenced the sirens
and behind pairs of old navy blue slacks
   and mobiles covered with dust,
the  captives scream mercy.
all the ATMs drone the pither of metal mouths.
a widow in Bocaue holding a picture
  of the departed.

i look up and see my face in the sky:
  if only i could **** the man and be the man,
fill his shoes with flesh, his movements my emulation, his enigmas my clarity, his day old denims my best dress.


more than beer and cigarettes have done me in and more to myself much no less
   than a cat hit by a speeding bicycle
  somewhere in Padre Faura.

madness hurries like a lover and hands me
   a picture of the moon.

i've got something and that's good enough
  as the police leave the grime of times
   and evict drunks off the streets of Malolos,
  as the priests step into the showers, naked
  and bloodied just like the ordinary man,
  as the cat that was hit
      by   a bicycle
   goes   back   to   the dark
  licking   the   salt  off the wound,
    bone fractured,    still alive on the  hot roof.

Oslo that summer
having left the base camp
and the tent
with the Australian guy

(he was with the Yank girl)
you walked about
looking at the sights
Moira beside you

in her denims
and white tee shirt
and her hair frizzed
after a shower

(which she had taken alone
worse luck)
and she was talking
about the Yank girl

with whom she shared
her tent
O the perfume she wears
I’d rather sleep

in a tent
with a camel
than with her
and her voice

***** my head
and do you know
I've heard about
her love life

from the very beginning
I’d rather spend the night
listening to a duck quack
you nodded

and listened
taking in her fire talk
her four letters words
filling the air

floating there
like black
angry birds
you can share with me

any time
well you could
if I didn't have
the Australian guy there

smelling of beer
and talking about Sheilas
and how he did this
and that

you said
no
Moira said
and have them

talk about me too
no I’m not that
kind of girl
besides

how would we work it
to allow that to be?  
don't get so angry
about things

why do you Scots
get so moody?
it's not just us
she said

it's the ******* world's
view of us
as wee tight *******
when we're not

anyway
she went on
giving you the stare
what do you

know of Scots?
lived in Edinburgh
for a while
you said

nice place
so much history
well there you go
she said

anyway what’s that
got to do
with the Yank *****
and her perfume

and the love life
of a ******* rabbit
nothing I guess
you said

I think she's over here
studying art
O then
that explains it

the way she has
the I-couldn’t-go-a-day
-without- a man's- ****
-in-me

kind of talk
and philosophy
Moira said
spitting out words

like broken teeth
what about a beer?
you said
chill out

and take in a view
and have a smoke
and I can tell you
of my love life?

the beer's a good idea
but I’m not so keen
on the tales
of your **** life

she said
so you found a bar
off a street
and sat outside

with two beers
and a couple of smokes
and you wondering
how she bedded

and how indeed
to get her into your tent
and what to do
with the Australian guy

and the Yank dame
and off she went again
moaning about
the Southend

teacher guy
did you see him
at the from
of the mini bus

giving it all
that talk of history
and that Lancaster *****
all ears and ******* teeth ?

you sat and smiled
listening to her
talking of herself
and the world's grief.

yep, and the Welsh and the Chinese were intuitively drawing dragons before dinosaur bones were dug up.

i'm poor, in tatters, worn-out rags,
i slashed my cowboy denims
to show a plagiarism of the gaping holes
in my encoding -
listen... the Chinese were working
on the serpent long before you came along,
it's can be more abstract as that,
cold gaze venomous rattler, or sidewinder,
a spine of what was once a tyrannosaurus rex,
fair enough, arms too short to make a bed
but you wonder where the Koranic
reference about Iblis and pride came from,
if not that, meaning the prior to
mammal was somehow superior,
the lizard coliseum - looks like i'm
the Gremlin that drank all the brain juice
and became a talk-show host for the night -
and become famous for simply interviews interviews,
interviews? crackpot nostalgia,
bull ******* nostalgia swinging my way?
oh, i think i hear the church bells ding-****
the uvula of the anthem: mm mm Albert Hall,
hmm hmm, one ball... Colonel Bogey
boogied in the Elizabethan **** with a
Kit Kat... maybe two chunkies, depends on
the lung capacity of thrills too ooze up
that soaked sponge... granny gotta take,
she's up to her pleas for a deathbed seance;
was it me or was grass' *the tin drum a bit ****?
i mean, i loved the Bolshevik granny stuffing
potatoes into her skirt at the beginning,
but then the scenery changed into undecipherable,
images coming thick and fast like a tube
journey from Liverpool St. to Bank - the roller coaster
part of the Central line, ride it someday,
then you'll know what i'm dabbling about -
a real Karma Sutra geometric twist and turn
etching out what pop lit. would testify as a real
page turner, a thriller, a Tom Clancy -
here me with the Parisian boys, upturned nose
and a stiff-upper lip;
but like i said, i'm poor, look at my phonetic encoding,
**** just pours right through me,
thanks to the added space i get Voltaire Newton
Mary Sinclair... it just rapes the **** out of me,
if i were Chinese i'd be taking fancy to the words:
**** building a wall to keep the Mongol out,
let's just write ~ (tai) ~ (ji - chee, chi or źee),
that'll keep the ******* out.
i mean, look at it, it's so ******* complex compared
to the arrogant simplicity of the Latin text that
it's no wonder the Chinese were well grounded people,
necessarily staying gravity prone in one region
and no other, lucky them... i've got a lot of backpackers
to mind, ants in their pants crew, brothel safe-haven
in Spain or Corfu for the summer, and then
top-hat christian goody-two-shoes back home.

It blows, and suddenly the pavements are filled
With men and women going everywhere,
But none are going anywhere.

Women in pretty dresses are not going to dances.
Yesterday was long ago,
When tomorrow set shimmery curls in their hair
And summer slipped a diamond on their fingers.

Men in soiled denims are not going on safaris.
Yesterday was long ago,
When adventure held the scent of salt-air
And their names were on the roll-call of ambition.

The whistle is a smokescreen,
And somewhere, on the other side,
Lies the "Open Sesame" of youth.

the car outside. you in your plain clothes;
I solemnize over this slow hill of flesh
when you lay down after the dredge.

it was your old automobile. somewhere in the
console, piping in the shell of night, your once
swift-footed self.

it was for Mico, you said.

this thing of time that was once early.
you in your white shirt with blotches of
yellow, like some aureole-bitten lip of bougainvillea.

some cold smitten flitter peering out
of the window of your gray head, your sage,
prattling about its conscious footing, this automobile.

are we but disputes and all that sense,
eluding us? somewhere in Malolos, the fatigued
machinery with its lilting rotor

modulates a once wild memory:
you, still in your white shirt. two bodies
drained of inertia – otherwise occupying song and silence,

our volition nothing but jarring (unmindful of its scathing dialect),
our terms to ourselves fabulated, the savannah drunk
in dappled light that evening – in front of the hospital,
mum as a nurse.

you pass on the keys to him,
learning new language. by the thousand strophes
of this lurching sea with its plodding delay,

your once bright bone, quickening in slow delight
now, as his face obscures yours with wonderment,
this evening – both of you in your denims,
   all three of us in a huddle stamped
  with heavy understanding.

It's dust, mostly
the kind that burrows
deep into the creases
of his forehead
and hides inside
the crinkles
around his eyes

It's forever stuck
to the soles of his boots
and never rinses out
of his denims
in the river,
not entirely

And it finds a way
to roll with beads
of sweat in dripping
lines exposing
parchment skin

but somehow never
penetrates the ring
around his head,
preserved forever
by his stetson's brim

And it's also ashes
from chaparral
and tumbleweeds,
lit up in circles
where he camped

leaving a trail
of where he's been,
like breadcrumbs
swept away in a
restless breeze

It's the creaking sound
of leather in his saddle
and the rhythmic
thud of horseshoes
pounding sunbaked ground

It's the wind in his face
that grits his teeth
and squints his
glassy eyes

It's standing in the stirrups
to fly above the racing plain,
keeping balance
with the whipping mane

It's the endless sky,
and the horizon
that never fades

But mostly,
it's the dust
that he holds
in upraised palms

slipping through
his fingers, disappearing
from his touch

in the wild and still
untamed range

Dancing at night in dark blue denims.
You left the taste of lemon
in my mouth when you asked me to drink it.
I smiled out loud when I heard of your visions.

Dancing in the diner parking lot.
The cheap speaker you brought
is still playing our music.
I yelled that we were infinite just like you taught.

Dancing at the railway station by rail cars.
Looking at the stars,
thinking about the ones to which we belong.
I point to a pretty pair and you smiled at the dark.

Ad astra

1
From the city I know you were from,
building up the perimeter in summer – it was plenty searing.
Must when I found the town already, triggered and almost accomplished,
searchable signs for searching parties involved like grass on the lawn,
scraps on an empty lot – when in summer it got very hot
and your salt smelt of the sea crushed in between my territories, start the word.
Flesh deems it so in frame, walking with us this very evening crafted
   by a waking remoteness.

2
When it rains, build this city from here on – relieve it of its terrors.
The memory of an old cathedral being burned down to the last cross,
the volume of prayer genuflected within pews, or anything that was hieratic. Rain in the
afternoon was what your entire ocean meant to me, crossing its span of promise,
   sure of its weather. Rasp the skin tight like gears fine-tuned. Borrow its heat when
   it drizzles. Do you remember my face when you pass by familiar pavements, stalls,
   hospitals drenched in prognosis? The even flutter of a bird? What does this question seek
     but your truth – like an elastic map stretched to infinite directions.

3
Here is where you were named darling. Taut your name had it belonged to someone else.
Sharp were your features. Your definitions smooth. Your textures visible with difficulty.
                       When you wore denims rising from the cuff of your knees you showed
  me a blotch and other fraternizations. Moles as variables. Your body as graph. My senselessness,
     somewhat a trying delineation. Thousand fingers mesh altogether to formulate rescue,
   mind a garden of salvage enough for two. Or underneath the sphere of a body,
         neither rain nor sun could stop to flourish me completely. Yourself full of
  symmetries – the universe cut inside and out, trimmed to lasting – ubiquity, inhabiting the temporary.
         I transact with this darkness yourself containing light, like a window to your home
when you’ve moved on to a different continent, I myself staring right into as if the whole space,
    in search for a singular glint I could make up for a cluster
                            to make an elusive thing such as you walk backwards, from the entry, just before the guardhouse, to meet me.

This old and twisted thing,
arranged in awry futility
like most lives circumspectly:
 a pair of denims
washed in the Sun,
 a slow laburnum glowering.

face-ovals perfumed with
  the camphor of such departure.
 the hand waving the weight
  of the night's obsidian
    is the love i take in - dull or sharp -
  as it arrives, tired as a crankshaft
      or a waned piston

 this junked engine, wheeled off,
  looming a light-clenched house
 with its exhaust of excess. declension.
   rife as a numeral being. repetitive like the drivel of radio talk.  heavy like the sudden drop
     of Sunday on the plod of chapels,

  once more into this.

I remember the taste of her lips
As my arms went around her waist
Never letting her go from my grips
As my eyes met her eyes with haste.

I remember the world vanished
Trees disappeared, nothing but a taste
Time stood still, all thoughts banished
engulfed in a salivated paste.

To the world, we were shattered pieces
Like new denims completely spoiled
By permanently indented creases
As gene traits and double helix coiled.

To the world, we were broken
But to us we created a beautiful scene
Stories continued but unspoken
Of being and remaining forever sixteen.

Young Music
Before spring, near Grimsby, ditches run clean like trout streams,
Our vines are gray. They will be pink next, like flushed, excited skin.  
In March there is the flatness that is a big part of trouble.
Anthony's sisters are helping him scrub his apartment.

He was sick all winter. They raise his laughter like neighbours raise a burned out barn.
He had made a good start. The therapy.
He says now, "I wasn't so much sick as sad all the time."
The pills ended the depression. You can wish that life was never mechanical.

Smell of hot vinegar in the coffee-maker, smells of pine oil and beer.
Brock University jackets, damp curly hair, his sisters
Wiping their hands on sweatshirts, the open window,
His bedroom. Anthony clears books from the sills and cleans and shines the windows.
There are wicker baskets for their picnic and for his laundry.

I always wanted to know, what is consecration?
(Here is a scrap of his poetry:
"... ******* the colour of a driftwood campfire.")
His sisters laugh to think of a girl in the apartment.
The ***** clothes are gone. He's got clean denims and hiking boots.

Laughter, beer and young music,
Bread and stew and pickles and heavy  brown two liter bottles of beer
On the white wooden kitchen table where he hopes to write.
His father's pickup truck is in the yard, its bed full of garbage.

With cleaning any good thing can happen. The sisters feel it too.
I didn't know what consecration meant. They joked
That he could have a girl up there when they were done.

    
                                  Paul  Anthony Hutchinson
Brook Trout Press
Grimsby and Toronto, Ontario,  Canada

Because time was so heavy
her fragile lace was crushed.
Because the world held still too long
each moment twisted like a corkscrew,
bored into her heartword like worms.
It just made more sense to dress in heavy denims
and leather.
Smoke or warm wine could grease the seconds
make them slip over each other
in a fervent tumble--wine too bitter
smoke too easy.
Nonetheless, without them minutes lingered
like bad company, crowded the hours and days
with shrill laughter.
Only small deaths could evict them.
Hers or theirs--no choice was easy.
Because now was forever
her days melted into small puddles,
soaked into the earth and she clothed herself
in the granite of young mountains.
Diamonds grew in her ears,
bats nested in the crook of her arms, had babies
and the dark flocks shaded her eyes from the moon.
Now when she sleeps, she dreams, and she dreams
the dreams are real.
The dreams are hard as the rocks
and her lace is the dust of her dreams.

No time for crying
I am dusty as a clock
I keep looking ahead
To playing our broken records

The rains come in buckets
She rests her head on my denims
On an empty street as open as the ocean
The sunset keeps chasing us

But what tomorrow brings
That the autumn leaf turns
And winter's worry plagues me
If summer is dead, what is change, life, love

it begins as a series of unfounded berations on everything; which in itself is a statement against nothing.

what really was needed was a place to begin.

there will be the ones who are forever lost in the maze of one's drunkenness.

in a way she feels like a drunken thought. spurted out without thought and then carried over to sobriety.

together with the ***** stained denims and the borrowed t-shirts (were they borrowed alright)

she can't be churned into the washer like the rest

she's out there burying herself in deep resentment

because she can not forgive me

she gave herself that disease when she refused to grant forgiveness for sins committed in anger

since when, though, has the truth ever been an offense?

cuts deep

deeper that the most merciful lies one can serenade her with

we can not have anything if we refuse to confront what is real

but ke?

what's done is done.

these berations on nothing itself

are all that is left

most of these things remain unexplained

the story in itself is synthesizing, everyday, unwittingly. unauthoured, playing itself out like water lazily floating down a river

towards a fantastic waterfall

or right into the mouth of a gaping, yearning sinkhole - where it will not die, but steadily keep propagating itself beneath all observance and veneration

and perhaps sip out from a well-meaning spring somewhere deep in the uncharted lands

it's like that. it should be like that. just as all else is what it is.