"huron" poems
the earth is curved - sure y’all knew that.
but to get to the Northwest,
Interstate 84
ain’t le route plus directe
nope curve north to Ontario,
wave to Bex as I cross over
London and Toronto, also can’t recall
which poet from Rochester hails,
or did they shuffle off to Buffalo?
Crossing Erie, Huron, and Michigan Great Lakes all,
brings to mind
my mother’s birthplace,
Last of the Mohicans,
and the three years I did in the Cleveland Penitentiary,
where sun was illegal and baseball was a pretend play
of cowboys and Indians
but by god, it made me
the penitent fella I am today
Look skyward to Montreal,
yes, there he is, the Leo Priest,
the baffled king,
blessing this poetic meet ‘n greet trip
with a smiling unsurprising
hallelujah
Apparently some US citizens still can traverse O Canada,
even if one forgot their passports,
and are not PNG’s (Persons Not so GREAT)
over Minneapolis shed a tear for Diane,
a poet- gone-missing, and wonder if you reader come from
St. Cloud, Fargo or Duluth, Bismarck or Aberdeen,
surely they still speak poetic English there
in a twangy metering methodology - well, message me asap
wow there really is a Saskatoon!
the pilot asks us to lean left in our seats
to help turn the plane
so we go to Portland and not to Vancouver...
me thinks he might be a touch Rockie Mountain High,
considering we are at 30 thousand something Imperial,
as he walks the main cabin with an oxygen mask and a
huuuuuge grin
see the distant Cascades
through a crack in the shuttered windows,
must be close to “the coast”
(as if, harrumph, there were but one)
ah, words in the clouds, ripe for the plucking
must be getting close to Oregon,
where poets grow on trees, woody words like ****
and log-float poems down the Columbia to the sea
gonna drink me some poets
under the table cause this
trip I ain’t no driving and I am already
“flying” ‘n scribing and arriving
on a high tide and a good wind
Jun 7, 2018
Jun 7, 2018 at 5:47 AM UTC
We're mostly gregarious and polite,
Like most of you.
We too have our diplomatic trips 'n bumps;
We never cozied to Dicky;
But welcomed ex-pat refugees
For safe and sound reasons.
After the jimmy-rigging, how many re-pated?
And we gagged on the impeachables, all fuzzy and bitter.
He called the father *that ******* in Ottawa;*
And Pierre wore that moniker like The Order of Canada.
When you're not liked by one, you're a dove.
You should visit CANDU.wow
It has it all.
How is Supreme Leader managing?
Are his...
Are my people... sitting at attention.
We could real news a bomb a la Kim Jong,
Or flip a stone down at Port Huron.
We won't.
But we could if we weren't
The Great White North, so accommodating, so polite,
So Coo loo coo coo coo coo coo cooo! nice...
(for now)
Jun 18, 2018
Jun 18, 2018 at 11:27 AM UTC
The wind chimes are melting,
The ponds are sweltering,
The roads run like black tea;
The flags aren't waving,
Sheets aren't sailing,
The grass looks like gold wheat.
The beaches have more bodies
Than Juno did in June;
The dogs aren't barking,
But the kids are laughing,
Their joy's not lost on me.
I should go to the banks
Of the St. Clair River,
Where the current cools
Beneath the bridges;
Read the names on the Huron freighters
Carrying coal and oil;
Eat tasty dogs and greasy fries,
The northern breeze there never dies.
I should hover like a dragonfly,
Applaud the divers hot ******* chances,
In the dog days of their youth.
Aug 3, 2019
Aug 3, 2019 at 9:42 AM UTC
Some nights I forget to sleep. Keeping secrets in my teeth.
I'm neck deep in thoughts of you.
Drowning in words.
Great Lake blues.
You can't dig up whats dead.
So from Huron out I'll bury you in my head.
Kept secrets in sheets of my bed.
Moved out to where roses are red.
Midwest
Northwest.
My compass is ever changing.
Im unsure I will ever settle.
The girl that always keeps you waiting.
Jun 9, 2015
Jun 9, 2015 at 3:20 AM UTC
It was so hot yesterday
My armhair sweat,
My eyes were looking
Through a plastic bag,
My teeth were saturated.
I found the wind
Beneath the Bluewater Bridges
At the headwaters of the St. Clair.
Here I can relax my skin,
Watch the gulls maneuver,
Like your kite, Aine,
Against and with the blusters,
Gaining dive speed to vault the trestles.
The sun is burning my bones,
My blood rushes at four knots
With Huron's mouth.
I straddle the Shadow
To follow the birds,
Thinking of winter
I release a high-pitched laughing scream
That's carried back to the bridges
With my flapping shirt tails
Providing drag.
Jul 20, 2015
Jul 20, 2015 at 7:56 AM UTC
You could change the world.
You should.
Repeat this inauspicious comment to someone;
Age isn't part of the equation.
Even the youth may listen, may remember,
I should change the world.
You did. Some place, at a time unknown.
It's not so obvious as the Butterfly Effect;
Appearing subtly, less noticeable than
Pedaling into a velvet N-E Huron breeze
A walker feels on her wet lips
During a burnt Autumn stroll.
I changed,
And rocked the world
Of my loved ones.
Oct 5, 2021
Oct 5, 2021 at 9:00 AM UTC
You left me capsized on the Caspian
The bold-wind black-oil Caspian
Suicide-tower fire-altar Caspian
Cigar-smoke car-exhaust Caspian
Oh Caspian, My Caspian
How could you just let me drown?
Pacific and Atlantic and Mediterranean
Rhein and Seine and Thames
Huron and Kagawong and Lawrence
I see you quarrel
Over who is greater
Richer older
Better bolder
Who runs cleaner fresher sweeter
Who flows stronger faster deeper
Who gave more of themself to me
Who took more of me for themself
Who has more heart
Who stole my heart
And who will possess it in the end
I don’t know
But capsized in the Caspian
Is how I learned to swim
And to stomach salt water
And to weather storms
To enjoy the taste of raw fish
Calamari caviar crab
And to both love and hate
The forceful winds
That blow me to and fro
While capsized on the Caspian
I found my home
To be not stable, not stagnant
But undertow
An invisible current clenching pulling holding gripping
Dragging tearing teaching ripping
Delivering me to what is next
Oh plastic-bag jelly-fish Caspian
Petroleum-sand mud-volcano Caspian
Sun-blazed low-land Caspian
Capsized, yes
But also baptized
I drowned in the tangles of your dark torrents
And was born again in the summer moon-tide
Aug 22, 2015
Aug 22, 2015 at 3:15 PM UTC
Canoeing
written March 7th, 2021
I have spent the last few days
canoeing the Mackenzie River
making the journey in a book
with maps and words.
As I read it takes me back
to canoeing in my youth
the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness
along the northern border of Minnesota.
I can feel the paddle
pulling through the water
and hear the loons
crying at night.
The land around me
almost untouched since
Huron, Chippewa, Cree
Dakota and Ojibwa eyes
were the only ones
that had ever seen it.
Now I travel in thought and memory
the clear cold waters of the lakes
the portages through forested hills
taking me from one gem
of a lake and a memory
to the next.
Mar 7, 2021
Mar 7, 2021 at 7:38 PM UTC
There's a Route 22 near you.
A licorice asphalt road,
Twisting as opposing currents of time,
With anticipation and apprehension,
From home, to unknowns,
From comfort to expectations.
A rural ribbon of signage,
And milestones.
I traveled mine yesterday,
In an overdue Spring,
From Melrose to Bright's Grove.
I writhe and bend with its winding,
Former times arise like heat waves;
Mirage puddles flood my head,
Always just out of reach.
I recalled hitchhiking through Warwick,
As I backtrack,
And almost stop
For one today on the curve
Where they sell the garden gnomes.
I once looked wryly at them
When waiting across the road.
Sprawling upright over the northern landscape,
Towards the Co-ops of Arkona,
And the beer store in Thedford,
Wind farms thrive like techno giants,
In a mutant Utopian world.
****** Mary's red sign no longer hangs
Outside the white house in Lobo,
Where she could bring you in touch
With your dead.
Poplar Hill's trees no longer snow in the summer,
The water wheels are seized, barns are exposed.
The lofts collapsed.
I had to stop near a culvert, to listen to the sound of run-off,
The melt reflecting the transition under the sun,
Converging at Black Creek, Pulse Creek, or Cow Creek,
Carrying forward to the St. Clair River and Lake Huron,
Then onward and back.
Weathered iron fences enclose pioneer graves;
Settlers who cleared the dense Lambton forests,
And made the first ruts along my way,
With wagonfuls of backache.
I know well how you fared on our Route.
Mar 24, 2018
Mar 24, 2018 at 9:48 AM UTC
I live in Chemical Valley.
It sounds horrible:
Better you than me.
Perhaps.
I grew up here,
Where the southern sky burns
Bloodstone red,
Mixing colours with the evening suns.
The St. Clair carries Huron's ghostly horns
Past the flaring refineries,
To Detroit's waters.
We have stop signs
And other amenities
Small cities are proud to maintain.
I heard the housing market
Is sustained on the divorce rate,
And not the petro-chemical industry;
We're closing another high school next year;
And there was a gruesome woodlot-rape/murder
Last week on the Reserve.
Maniacs living out some sick web-site.
But the soccer pitches are full,
And our Mayor is the longest serving one in Canada.
Just around the corner
(everything is just around the corner),
Our flag flies over the bones of our second Prime Minister,
(he's from Edinburgh, Scotland);
I've walked a good stretch of the fifty miles
Of beach we have running north,
Past cottages, parks, camps, etc.
We've way too many pot-holes;
And for many years,
We were featured on the ten dollar bill.
But the new houses!
Who is buying them as we move eastward,
Away from the lake and river?
Newly minted single moms;
Rejected men.
We lived in one house,
Once,
One house.
We now occupy five.
Two of which
Are too far away
From Chemical Valley.
Apr 26, 2016
Apr 26, 2016 at 10:22 PM UTC
"Happy Face Variety Store"
Has new owners,
From Punjab.
They are way friendly.
I was renting the movie
Far From the Madding Crowd.
Ben, the owner's son, said:
Many people are renting movies tonight!
Yeah, the dog day's of summer.
Explanations and examples ensued.
The change in season.
Replace old anxieties with new.
The surety of autumn expectations.
The heat swirling in the ceiling fans.
The setting sun on Lake Huron.
All the dog days.
And then Ashna said:
Like the dog curling up to sleep.
They are way welcome.
Aug 28, 2015
Aug 28, 2015 at 8:54 PM UTC
The wind howls ******
Off the lake,
Yellow eyes centred
On its face,
Salivating white-capped waves.
Back arched rubbing
A cloudless night,
It claws the land,
Paws at my house,
Playing cat and mouse,
Scratching at my window.
Then crouching silent
It slowly moves,
Then springs, extended
In full flight,
Changing landscape
With one swipe.
Then like one
In the night,
It lies flat
Across my lawn,
Licking
With a milk-dish yawn,
Then prowls away.
Dec 10, 2014
Dec 10, 2014 at 11:18 AM UTC
I scanned the old man
Through my translucent curtain.
He stood before my door, hand raised,
Seeming ready to knock.
Wires ran into his large ears;
His waddle swayed over his crew neck,
Beneath a brown corduroy jacket.
Liver spots crowned his wispy head,
And the back of his hand.
He listed and bobbed
Like a Huron laker waiting to unload.
He had a distinct and not unfamiliar look;
A man with full faculties.
I opened the door to him,
But he said, "It's not time."
"Time?" I asked.
"To let me in."
Mar 11, 2022
Mar 11, 2022 at 9:57 AM UTC
I kissed you, once. Twice. Three or four or five
Ecstatic times, or maybe more. I kissed
You once when I shouldn't have, many more
When I should have. In a park and with Red
October on the tee-vee and Sean Connery
Somehow pretending to be Russian.
I kissed you under the fireworks
On the Fourth, and in a caboose
At your family reunion. Remember
How we'd walk around at high school
Football games, back when anything
Was possible, and AIM was popular?
Over six times: there were marshmallows,
And the old, broken, Charlotte High School gym.
When I asked you out, I'd been dared.
The first time I kissed you, I was dared. That kiss,
Cliche and on the bleachers, brought
Butterflies that I only just fought off.
You, Ashleigh, were my first love, not named
"Wrestling"-- but I went to you-ess-enn-ay
And you went to em-ess-you. You moved
To greater Lansing from Port Huron
Just as I packed up my stuff to crisscross
My way over four years to San Diego.
I kissed you, once-- or was it more?
Apr 22, 2014
Apr 22, 2014 at 2:48 PM UTC
It's cold, **** cold,
I blame the north wind.
It pushes the ice on Huron
Against the shore
Making great dunes of frozen water,
Cooling the wind passing over.
It penetrates my outer layer,
Warming itself between inner clothes.
Dampening my cheek;
Cold whispers in my ears;
A cruel embrace,
Girdling me,
Seductive as the dead.
It wraps my house
Like it knows my address;
An unannounced visitor,
Reluctant to leave.
It's mid-January;
Glad the sun's casting
Longer shadows,
Before the wind retires.
Jan 18, 2016
Jan 18, 2016 at 2:26 PM UTC
Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior.
You have always loved me.
Dec 9, 2011
Dec 9, 2011 at 12:12 PM UTC
S I D E A
"already mine" : us the duo
"us" : james bay
"broken things" : clairity
"the night we met" : lord huron
"delicate" : taylor swift
"life me up" : mree
S I D E B
"august" : flipturn
"stupid" : lizzy mcalpine
"i love you" : billie eilish
"mirrorball" : taylor swift
"through the dark" : alexi murdoch
"if you ever want to be in love" : james bay
Sep 10, 2023
Sep 10, 2023 at 12:03 AM UTC
I took a walk near the lake today
and the sun shined on my face
and the waves sparkled like teal glitter
and I could hear the seagulls laughing
and I smiled because it was the first time
in a long time that I had felt pure, relaxed joy
and it wasn't because of you.
May 21, 2014
May 21, 2014 at 2:24 PM UTC
On the waters edge of old Huron,
lays islands in the mist,
the horizon composed of opaque grey...
Tarnished oaks of spring
offer their ****** buds to rays of sunlight,
to unfurl life,
to sacrifice a selfless offering,
to blossom beauty,
metamorph into shade...
To wilt and wallow with the winds of autumn.
To solemnly parish with flakes of snow.
From birth to death may you serve a purpose...
grow with beauty,
and die with grace.
Be thankful for the day before us,
and the day we envietably fade...
Mar 11, 2014
Mar 11, 2014 at 1:06 PM UTC
The Huron waters
Don't breach their shores,
The heavenly bodies
Don't leave their spheres;
Fireworks don't
Fill my eyes;
My love is not ethereal
Not everlasting
Or transcendental.
My love is comely.
Factual not fictional.
Less passion with caution.
I love you when
I bring your morning coffee
As your day opens.
I love you when
I bring a snack
And say, Corpus Mea,
And fall forever.
Hold my hand.
I love you in comely ways.
Jan 6, 2015
Jan 6, 2015 at 2:57 PM UTC
One year, two, three
All of it blurs together.
My whole childhood,
gone in the blink of an eye.
Washed away with the waves of Huron.
In this moment,
the last of an era,
I want to stay.
I want to gather it,
pieces and fragments of seventeen years,
Into a blanket, surrounding me.
Close to me, within reach,
So it can't escape me.
Like if I wade in this deep blue,
Further and further,
I won't grow up.
Sep 3, 2012
Sep 3, 2012 at 7:05 PM UTC
The St. Clair flowed
Towards Erie,
As we walked to
The headwaters,
Where Huron emptied
So seemingly endless.
On Sunday drives
I never noticed signposts
Flying by.
On the court, Love,
I crouched, amazed,
At your service game,
Never ready for
The backhand.
Idle times lead
The girls to womanhood.
I'm left with celebrations
On celluloid,
And digital grasps
And loosening fingers.
Feb 15, 2015
Feb 15, 2015 at 11:58 AM UTC
For decades now
We have serenely, blandly,
Had the Huron horizons
To the North.
All colours of clouds,
Bringing shade or rain,
Snow and flora;
And all the shapes of Noah's zoo,
Morph approaching our soft shores
Of sandcastles and tender fires,
Those milestone from our youth.
Our fresh waters have given much,
And taken more with wailing
For the never returners.
For mothers with terror splashing
Over faces and maligned hearts and spirits.
The alone times of punishing memories.
Jul 31, 2023
Jul 31, 2023 at 7:05 PM UTC
Sipping on that juice
You are tripping
Screaming and laughing all at once
I'm flying getting my game on
Mystifying you be wearing your *** kicking boots
Smoking one, putting that roach in a jar
Popping vicodin just to stay alive
Not even sure if I exist
Selling Adderall's so the ******* can stay skinny
Sweet little boy shot down on his big wheel bike
All I can do is grab the mic and send the message on
People on the street begging for money for addictions
******* **** just to get high
What if that was your daughter?
Hoping the soup kitchen is open
Do they have a empty bed for me to sleep tonight
Dressing in color
It's a true story this town is in demise
The water is not even safe to drink
Lake Huron to the Flint river
The town showing no love
Then Rick Snyder declares a state of emergency
The first person to come forward Sasha Bell
Was found murdered in her home as her small one year old son was left to roam
She had a law suit against the Flint water crisis
She is now silenced a baby without a mother
Nobody is winning here
90 people were sickened from exposer 12 died
Delivering bottle water to Veteran's, as they are losing there homes
People who have worked there whole lives
People just trying to survive
Oct 3, 2020
Oct 3, 2020 at 1:28 AM UTC