i'm not moralising, i see the toilet as the throne for the trinity of my excavations, like a coal-miner, i have my **** (the helmet and light bulb), i have my urinary duct (my chisel)... and i have my testicular duct (my shovel)... well... can't miss out on all the fun you peeps are having and not join in.

verboclasm is real,
in england it's basically
f@!& etc., and in america
it's ****** (n@!i'm not moralising, i see the toilet as the throne for the trinity of my excavations, like a coal-miner, i have my **** (the helmet and light bulb), i have my urinary duct (my chisel)... and i have my testicular duct (my shovel)... well... can't miss out on all the fun you peeps are having and not join in.

verboclasm is real,
in england it's basically
f@!& etc., and in america
it's ****** (n@!'m not moralising, i see the toilet as the throne for the trinity of my excavations, like a coal-miner, i have my **** (the helmet and light bulb), i have my urinary duct (my chisel)... and i have my testicular duct (my shovel)... well... can't miss out on all the fun you peeps are having and not join in.

verboclasm is real,
in england it's basically
f@!& etc., and in america
it's ****** (n@!i'm not moralising, i see the toilet as the throne for the trinity of my excavations, like a coal-miner, i have my **** (the helmet and light bulb), i have my urinary duct (my chisel)... and i have my testicular duct (my shovel)... well... can't miss out on all the fun you peeps are having and not join in.

verboclasm is real,
in england it's basically
f@!& etc., and in america
it's ****** (n@!i'm not moralising, i see the toilet as the throne for the trinity of my excavations, like a coal-miner, i have my **** (the helmet and light bulb), i have my urinary duct (my chisel)... and i have my testicular duct (my shovel)... well... can't miss out on all the fun you peeps are having and not join in.

verboclasm is real,
in england it's basically
f@!& etc., and in america
it's ****** (n@!'m not moralising, i see the toilet as the throne for the trinity of my excavations, like a coal-miner, i have my **** (the helmet and light bulb), i have my urinary duct (my chisel)... and i have my testicular duct (my shovel)... well... can't miss out on all the fun you peeps are having and not join in.

verboclasm is real,
in england it's basically
f@!& etc., and in america
it's ****** (n@!'m not moralising, i see the toilet as the throne for the trinity of my excavations, like a coal-miner, i have my **** (the helmet and light bulb), i have my urinary duct (my chisel)... and i have my testicular duct (my shovel)... well... can't miss out on all the fun you peeps are having and not join in.

verboclasm is real,
in england it's basically
f@!& etc., and in america
it's ****** (n@!i'm not moralising, i see the toilet as the throne for the trinity of my excavations, like a coal-miner, i have my **** (the helmet and light bulb), i have my urinary duct (my chisel)... and i have my testicular duct (my shovel)... well... can't miss out on all the fun you peeps are having and not join in.

verboclasm is real,
in england it's basically
f@!& etc., and in america
it's ****** (n@!'m not moralising, i see the toilet as the throne for the trinity of my excavations, like a coal-miner, i have my **** (the helmet and light bulb), i have my urinary duct (my chisel)... and i have my testicular duct (my shovel)... well... can't miss out on all the fun you peeps are having and not join in.*

verboclasm is real,
in england it's basically
f@!& etc., and in america
it's ****** (n@!&#£
if you prefer political
sensitivity and a blanket
and a ***** and a nanny);
unlike germ- -any (+)-
where they love to **** on each
other in the shadow
of the crucifix procreating for films,
while in england they're
into children;
owning a use of a word,
venerating its usage:
where's the Schengen vocabulary?
i want to be there -
free flow of words like spotting
a kestrel in my garden one time,
while the traffic shovels hours
into comparison with sea waves
and a traffic-jam becomes a static tsunami
for the eyes.

Science can't save you, neither can religion,
at least Popper and Niebuhr, philosophers and poets,
are entertainers, which is why actors and athletes
are paid so much. Thanks for the summaries.
I was teaching Shakespeare's 92nd ridiculous sonnet
to my student who lays blacktop in the off season
Shakespeare bellyaching about dying without her love
a feeling foreign to a modern adolescent sensibility
although many teens are pretty far gone searching
for their mothers or fathers in their dazed lovers' eyes.
Which is why we call it "the wound that never heals."
Or the lesion that's always lengthening. And bleeding.

Muslim fundamentalists and their Christian counterparts
are a mystery to me. Pews and prayer rugs, the airless
indoor environment of religious worship, reading
scriptures, hypnotized by hymns and fainting from staring
at candles through stained glass windows, almost certain
the preacher is faking his certainty about the afterlife.
It's not my problem. A more immediate concern:
receding gums and tooth extractions, swollen joints,
poor lubrication and circulation, wave after wave
of viral infection, the occasional antibiotic-resistant
bacterial attack, usually urinary, and who knows
what internal organs are dividing and conquering
without mercy or cease, i.e. the wound that never heals.

It is wise not to overvalue your continued existence,
good not to be innumerate, unable to compare
a mere 80 years with say 6.0 x 109 or all of time
(to date) times the multiverse. Conversely,
it is interesting all of space and most of history is contained
in your mind (realizing of course it's just a map
of the cosmos not the cosmos itself, or is it?). I'm
unable to wrestle free, tongue in that cavity
and locked in my memories, so separate and disparate
from the biomass in the crosswalks, even my spouse.
Alone, so alone, even your doctor can only devote
limited thought to your situational mortality through
the redress of poetry - also a wound that never heals.

Snow for eternity, that's what this February's been.
All to the good, for someone it's the final February
so enjoy it to the extent you can. By that I mean joy.
Joy at birth. Joy at death. All joy. All times. Anyway,
that was Shakespeare's message: even tragedies are comedies.
May, a Buddhist, chants each morning.
Her husband, Marc, who's Jewish, plays league tennis.
Their son, Aaron, will soon make Eagle scout.
How does that relate to your wound that never heals?
Luck runs out. For D.H. Lawrence in New Mexico
or Ulysses S. Grant in Ohio or Yasujiro Ozu in
Tokyo or Satyajit Ray in Bombay or Rabindranath
Tagore in Bangalore or at the Battle of the Atlantic in the Azores.

The night is a poultice, winter or summer solstice.
My anonymity will not affect the anomie ghettoside
seeing for myself how season by season
vacations and accomplishments accumulate, late in life
and early on, sunrise over mountains or moonrise over Bronx.
Masturbator, prisoner of war. Hospice of the Holy Roman Empire.
Numerous blue notes: the 3 flat, 7 flat, 5 flat,
the 6 flat and the 2 flat too. I don't get
what Wallace Stevens means by imagination.
When groundhog shows up as a totem, there is opportunity
to explore the mystery of death without dying.
This then is the purpose of purposelessness (and of eating less)!
Now what about that wound that never heals.

The Skeptical Observer column in Scientific American
was somewhat alarming when he accepted a paranormal
explanation for how his wife's grandfather's inoperable
transistor radio played music from its hiding spot
in his sock drawer on, and only on, their wedding day.
Now I'll have to believe my father (or mother!) is watching me
perform private ****** acts with (or without) partners
or that they could even know my thoughts. Or aliens
are attending our committee meetings and making
perfectly reasonable decisions given the available information
and the world is rotating just fine without humans.
These possibilities - angels, ghosts, aliens - are better
than holocaust and genocide. In this way,
and only in this way, does doom become endurable.
The wound that never heals in the end is all you'll feel.

The patient has had no nausea,
vomiting or back pain. No chills,
fatigue, fever, decreased vision
or double vision. No ear drainage
or hearing loss, epistaxis or
runny nose. No sore throat, calf
pain, chest pain, cough or difficulty
breathing. No pedal edema,
palpitations, black stools, ******
stools or constipation. No diarrhea,
urinary frequency, laceration, skin
rash or depression. No dizziness,
headache, head injury, weakness
or enlarged lymph nodes. All
systems negative        

and yet

Love is beautiful
Patience and kind
Movie star kisses
Making passionate love
Paints a pretty picture
But lets get down to the nitty gritty
*** is ******* good
Rough and passionate
But the next day can be filled with regret
The next ******* day is plan b
And why don't people *** after *** on the television?
Thats a urinary tract infection waiting to happen
Or yeast infection
What the  televison doesn't t tell you
you can get hpv with a ****** on
Hpv leads to cancer
(but not all strands- you still got hope)
maybe a chance you already have hpv
Because almost every sexually active person will have it at one point in their life
What the television doesnt tell you
after **** some girls will have to take a huge ****
And most girls don't like ****
It hurts every ******* time
What the television doesn't tell you
how to use proper protection
That you can be rubbed raw
Get a hernia during ***
Sometimes its pretty ******* bad ***
Its not pretty
It can be awkward
It can be silly
and you do not need to act ****
What the telly doesn't tell you
Is how it doesn't matter about the age you loose it but when you have the emotional intelligence to go through with it
Even then you do not know that you have opened Pandora's box
You do not know what you think you know
The specialist are still figuring out ****** hygiene
So the next time you watch the television and you see the **** stars or teen lovers
It is not so easy
*** is complicated
But can be good and worth it with the right person
No matter what age or relation

Eventually all water drains to the sea,
and so to the body's waters drain to its urinary bladder.
But the bladder,
unlike the sea,
must be drained every few hours,
call it a normative ****** rhythm,
taken for granted, as it should be, by the functionally normal,
but the spine paralyzed
must be catherized
four, five six times a day.
**** breaks through an inserted tube,
to which I can personally report,
the ***** prefers piercing
then being pierced.

Another enchanting "Barry Hodges Memory" poem for you all!

O glorious Art Deco edifice, tucked away behind the 'Dilly!
In your near century of hospitality, how many millions of visitors
Must have thronged your rooms, meeting, greeting, eating, sleeping
And (need I specify the obvious?) ******* away the fleeting hours?
How sad it is to think that the dear Regent Palace has fallen victim
To the money-grabbing developers' philistine wrecking *****.

Rumour came to me in the Seventies that the ground floor cocktail bar
Had gained a somewhat , shall we say, *louche reputation,
Being frequented by ladies of the night and part-time gigolos;
And that the hustle and bustle of the reception area meant that
Staff would hardly notice if guests invited a newly made friend upstairs
For some horizontal entertainment, be it on a cash or ex gratia basis.

Several evenings, perhaps after a night at the theatre, I paid a brief visit
To the dimly lit bar, with its sophisticated black pianist tinkling out a tune
In the very best Casablanca tradition, perhaps even crooning a little ditty.
One summer night I recall I dropped in, probably post-prandially
More in hope than serious expectation, ordered an over-priced G&T;
And settled down to assess the odds on some casual leg-over action.

Much to my surprise I was soon joined by a large middle-aged blonde
(to a naive young chappie, any woman over 35 is no spring chicken);
She was Icelandic and big with it in the mammary department,
But not fat I hasten to add, just sturdy, like a splendid Wagnerian Valkyrie;
Yea, I knew she was gagging for it when she confided that, only last week,
She had shared l'amour with a young stranger in the Wienerwald al fresco.

I cannot recall much of our no doubt fascinating intellectual conversation
And I certainly can't remember her name, but I do know I readily acquiesced
To her generous invitation to participate in a glug of her duty free allowance
Within the intimate privacy of her spartan little bedroom on the seventh floor.
Delightfully, to my mild pleasure, our upwards journey in the crowded lift
Enticed her to caress my eager testicles in a heart-warmingly experienced way.

Over a malt whisky and, following an extended exchange of warm saliva,
We ended up stark ******* naked in the rather narrow single bed;
Sadly, my recollections of our coupling have gone the way of all flesh
(but my well-preserved diary for that year notes I gave her the works thrice)
And I do vividly remember wondering what time the Underground started
on Sunday mornings as I was no longer enamoured of her tobacco breath.

Now, dear reader, we come to the ****** of my night of Nordic nookie:
Just as the dawn's early light was filtering through the ill-fitting curtains,
My partner in lust informed me that she desperately needed a squirt
(I fear I omitted to mention that the RPH didn't run to en suite facilities)
And that, rather than struggle down the corridor to the communal bogs,
She intended to void her bloated bladder in the waiting washbasin.

She enjoined me to be a gentleman and to refrain from watching her
As she performed her toilette and I assured her, with a covert smile,
That I would not breach her urinary modesty. Thus I slyly observed her
Waltz over to the window and, with the assistance of a handy little chair,
Hoist her ample buttocks up on the basin and let fly her steaming ****;
O, what a romantic sound it made as it splashed onto the porcelain!

As I lay there, entranced by the sight of my piddling blonde Brünnhilde,
An unexpected sound intruded over the splatter of her seething waters:
O Jesu! Suddenly, in the veritable twinkling of an eye, the basin's supports,
Unequal to the unscheduled weight of the female Goliath squatting thereon,
Gave way and what's-her-name fell to the economically carpeted floor,
Screaming in fear, spread-eagled in ****-drenched shattered chinaware.

To say I was beside myself with mirth would be an understatement but,
Gentlemanly as always, I managed to pass off my gargled giggles
As evidence of gallant concern. As soon as common decency permitted,
I made my excuses and left the disconcerted dear to tidy up a bit.
But I will confess to emitting a huge howl of uncontrolled laughter
As I raced off to the nearest toilet (I too was bursting for a huge slash).

♀↵ϖ†∅↨⊕☺☼↑↓

Apples will be cantaloupes
depending on their nurture;
and so I cherish rainbow hopes
for our collective future.

Oranges elect their hue
improving Nature’s seal,
while pronouns stifle what is true
suppressing the appeal.

Fruits may choose to change to nuts
and fowls select their plumage.
Why settle in Tradition’s ruts?
Such rigid roles do damage.

Nuts in turn, may feel like flowers,
picking how and when to bloom.
So ambisexual thought empowers
androgynes to court their doom.

A leopard, too, may change his spots
(or turn into a vegan bunny)
No law’s tittles, neither jots
make Speciesism funny.

If you decide to see it so
the sky above is yellow.
Perceive as pink the grass beneath
and better times must follow.

Gender? Merely social constructs –
preach it to the masses
until tradition self-destructs
and *** takes off her glasses.

Babies need no Dad (nor Mother):
sexist labels, obsolete.
Love is blind. There is no other.
Bats must bark and chickens bleat.

Integrated water closets
show how far we have evolved:
urinary bank deposits
(with no member account involved).

Foolish thinking from the past
(like water being wet, and such)
calls for re-education, fast.
The State will lend its human touch

compelling all to sing the hymn
with genderfluid motions…
so birds can preen their scales and swim
in dry and waveless oceans.

(Yet “hymn” sounds sexist said out loud –
we ought to sing a “her” instead…
no – make that “us”,  since we are proud,
lest misconceptions be misread.)

Shake a healthy dose of salt
upon this strange post-modern food.
May God re-set us to default
with human common sense renewed.

So many lies from her to me
please don't tell him I'm pregnant
I was ***** she told the clinic
and me
the baby seems big for three months.....
but clinics get money for this
and charities give grants
they don't ask too many questions
6 hrs crying and screaming
till they chopped it up and ****** it through
a young doctor panicking
haven't destroyed one this big before have you you ****
took a long hooked thing to really mess the wee thing up
I saw it's dead eyes in the pan
her dead eyes
half-open and in a silent scream
where is the ******* dad? The nurse whispered..
somewhere ******, I said, I'm just her pal.
Dad didn't want a small thing in his life
my hands bled from her nails
and this felt right
my heart bled despair for her and the mess in the pan
took her home in a taxi suspicious eyes on us, huddled smelling of sweat and blood, no clean-up
she wanted to stay as soiled as she felt

Year later in another room
couldn't *** she wouldn't let me leave her
got a urinary infection holding on
longer this time
thirteen hours of pain and fright
no-one seemed to care again
on a trolly in the cold where is the magic
where is the ******* dad? A nurse whispered..
somewhere ******, I am just her pal.
twisting my hands
she bit my face wanting a kiss as she pushed so hard
the midwife dropped him halfway up her belly
I dragged him to her face
let go the doctor shouted
told him to shut up or *******
got yellow baby **** and blood in my mouth
wanted doctor blood too
tasted sweet somehow tasted of alive
took 83 sedatives that night  her sister found me in ICU
hard to die swap me for the wee dead one
I'm ****** she would have been special saw her face

She would have been 14 yrs old today

There is no fantastical world in which civility between us can exist. Civility, of course, being perceived in the sense that we can coexist pleasantly, without a romance topped with jaded raspberries and peppermint liqueur.
After a generous amount of sneezing and crawling and crying in the moonlight with half embered cigarettes hanging from our dripping mouths, I saw this. A grievous vision of Hank Stamper clawing at my back end, a still-life embedded someplace dark and dank, a cradle so forgotten and filthy that only a mother woven from dirt-covered cloth could love it. We built some ridiculous, disgusting house and made love in it. Day in, day out.
In the end our urinary tract infections infected our kidneys and became fatal when paired with the dysentery. I will always remember your name paired with dysentery, my love.
I promised myself endlessly that I was laying in such a softer settlement without you. Your reckless lifestyle was grimier than mine and our paths collided and collapsed with validity, I was sure of that. I am sure of that. However, it seems my insistence that I recover from you, brings with it some kind of ****** up honor to be dealt your way. Should I write a song about you? No, I'd soon hear it in your trapeze act. Should I make a film about you? No, the lead would be sinfully attractive and further engorge your rather large head. Should I write a book about you? Should I? Have I? Can I? I doubt you would see the honor here. In fact, if you were to look for anything other than consistent misuses of punctuation in my writing, I feel sure you would find solace and comfort and silence would soon follow.

Blow a dart through the eye of a needle
In a beetle's bull's eye's eye of the fetal
Position used to permission the perspiration of children
Flowing from the cycle wheels on their next revision-
Intermission-
The cat walks in the bathroom with the lights off,
Cat's cough, drops his neck soft loft, STOP
His paws from picking it and licking it off the top
Shelf of the urinary depository shelter shop-
Cat's pleasure walk-
The beetle's wife still cries to the beat
Beating butterfly kisses on the front left cheek
Tongue out, pierced through nose ring bling
Shine bright like the glossy wet stain, sting-
Half a toe dream-
"We call this recession", session dismissed for obsession
With questions about lessons learned by sections
In the left hand direction weeping willow pull our pension
From the pockets until the rocket red will start suspension!
Skin peeling regression!
Drizzle dribbling brizzles of bad mouth grizzle
Fat down throat smoke sizzle with frizzy hair frizzle!
Blood suckdown proud pretzel frazzle
Flowing mud slug suction cup dry slump saddle!
Have you watched your mind battle
The thoughts of many cattle
Pronged along like kids caught by tattle
Tale stories of dead bodies and hastles!
Watch them rattle-
Shattered glass got caught in the brains back
Spinal chord twisted in two ways tied around a racetrack
Task force grants permission for the Hazmat
Gas mask, tear burning sensation, blood, sweat and gun caps-
Gunshot whiplash-
Pulling out the hairy back hand wrist rip
Falling out grey death, black heart, sunk ship
Flipped over the backside walls to pavement
Too hard to bouncy ball back up to save it-
What a world we created-
Cracked skull thought shots, drink down the toxic
Hot spit, words flowing through split tongue box fit,
Cracked teeth lost kids, babies ******* down bottles lost in
Jungle jam, juicing through the ice box foxes sneak  in closets!
The world's spinning so fast, there's no way to stop it-
It's surprising how we don't see that we're all lost yet!

I’ve written enough small poetry
to start a nuclear war.
Do you want to die in traffic
behind the wheel of your car? Or in yr rodeer camp next fall.

Control eludes us. The hero
loses urinary control, the unified nation
loses missile control, lost my timepiece, lost my metronome,
now my music is ethereal as an archangel’s.

No owl hoots or duck quacks
or squirrels *******
or spiders spanning rampikes.
The floccinaucinihilipilification of nature.

No greater tragedy than a tipping
point that tests the hero’s gullibility, complicity,
self-control, comity, sense of humor
which is the only remedy not to hate those in authority.

Them guys with guns at the Michigan state house,
fat bearded tattooed ******* white bros.
Norsemen, Crusaders, Vikings, Britons.
For despair there is no forgiveness. Peace out.

Humor is the only remedy, or is ardor the best way forward.
We’ll see how things work out in the next generation.
The same diverse, spoiled, unpatriotic revolutionaries as at the nation’s
      beginning
trying to reverse the future, making phone calls to get out the vote in
      Georgia, hating the desert for having no water.

Nuclear mischief, mad Man’s most incandescent bloom
and the devil who exists to carry the load
when we misbehave and fight among ourselves.
I wake up to my skin boiling off my bones.

Events keep piling up,
the future depends on ourselves.
Conflict is inevitable and in this conflict power must be challenged by
      power
so err on the side of patience, perseverance and impermanence.

Working over Birk’s Works and other tunes my saxophonist admires—
Cheesecake, Blackbird—for the theoretical, applied mathematics
inside an abstract, audial harmonization of the Big Bang and The Fall.

The derivative reveals the ***** of the tangent along the curve of
       spacetime.
Follow that rope back and forth from the known to the unknown, your
      mountain to their shore,
an umbilical cord between cities and stories, history and hope, divinity
       and mortality

                        *                        *    ­                    *

I never had anything wise or gentle to say to my parents.
About bladder function. They got the same treatment as every other
       soldier.
Which systems shut down first and how. The mail keeps coming even
      after you’ve stopped barking.

And what is man made of? Man. Tough it out, laugh about it. Take it out
on your spouse and sons. Democracy corrects itself
through constant criticism, neurotic carping, daily life as low intensity
      warfare. That’s how we show we care.

                        *                        *        ­                *

Will my letter to the editor be in the funny pages?
Will I even be able to read it?
Did I send it to the wrong address? I’ve seen my death face and it’s not
      pretty.

Maybe I can watch your varsity games from a viewfinder in the afterlife.
If I don’t finish The Iliad, maybe there’s a library there.
Maybe. Maybe is a long, long time.

                        *                        *        ­                *

Homer tries several ways to explain the slaughter:
by describing how a spear pierces a warrior’s jawbone or armor,
how Achilles’ and Agamemnon’s hissy fits contribute to the pain of being
      a soldier

and how the gods, esp. Zeus, are passionate, confused, obtuse.
A callow youth even as a man. He was afraid and therefore could not
      comfort or help.
Perhaps he has a question he’d like to ask but isn’t sure what it is or how
      to ask it.

                        *                        *          ­              *

The hero loses urinary control.
The virtuoso loses interest in her bow.
The expert neglects to do the research.

How do cancer cells and bacteria cooperate to ****
the host (you)? The way yr mum & pop
******* up. It’s unavoidable and it’s not your fault.

I

Flowers already,
sputtering bicycles and the mad drums of foreshadowed
Springtime,
Massage therapist of the universe!
The extracted final note in a bird's outcry and my ears are full of sound
and sleep.
A cities undeterred heartbeat welcomes me to the continuous span of events only separated by the lambent verve,
windowless eyes watching each other
a signal-light blue ocean winding around a wicked mattress
seductively spinning a cowl into the night for her lover
(who's thoughts have been paused!  he's 100% clocked in and spun out, a hanging aluminum)
DAZZLING!
toothpaste spit outside into January's soft grass from a second story dorm room that's curtains reminds me of The Glenshiel..
(or maybe I'm suddenly feeling sublime death slowly knotting itself into my lungs, always been there but kinda like noticing your nose resting on your face for the first time)
On the bus home I thought of new years eve, 2015.
After the countdown, emerged from the underground
James Joyce pool hall,
rushing out to the streets
an asphalt madhouse
lunacy, absolute, and stabbings nearby tortured parkades.
Here's the new year made real,
a tangible calendar
an authoritative sentiment
while I listened to Donovan's "To Sing for You"
My new friends laughed, arms together,
I felt like I was standing on the edge of an undiscovered sun,
replaced by Vietnamese clouds
(Which I'll sail by come September)

II**

A crow waits on a balcony, wet and lonely from the rain.
Radios buzzing an electric tuba.
Smoke is the father and
dew is the mother
I am the son cold and clothed, while others soak beneath
canopies, cement gaps, they pray, I pray for them although I
wouldn't consider myself religious,
"Agnostic spiritualism"
yeah, the has a nice flow to it
but that's just my opinion..
Waking up before the sun has breathed
the first western factory.
Yellow hats
****** fists
a faint star is singing
I'm listening
ears are ringing
a static drone collapses
consciousness reaches a peak before subsiding to sunlight
(sequel to the last day, prequel to the days to come)
I'll fall in love again, I know it
I have it marked on my calendar you'll see!
Water a few hours still/room temperature/is shaking because my foot
beats against the carpet/
this music isn't exactly conventional or pure as the morning
more a glass shatter
or a psychotic scream in distant queer Victoria nightclubs.
Passing Christmas,
Oak Bay,
Spanish holiday (potentially)
and ** Chi Minh City market walks
(future events ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A university lecture from Vandana Shiva,
watching my dad's cat for four months
(Where my room was destroyed in a forty-five minute
terrified chase thru the house to lock him in a carrier for an urgent vet appointment due to kidney stones, or what we thought was urinary crystals at the time. He howled the entire car ride there)
I think back to childhood, 1996 Apartment light and the December blizzard which buried parking lots, blocked entrances/exits n forced people to be patient for once, sit and talk, make love without setting an alarm for the morning after
(before I was even 5, or 10, long before I wrote poems, and lost those I would come to care about..)
Hopefully all those elementary school friends turned out okay.
Since moving, I've frequently passed great corner store curtains,
green and grey dusty
by the rusting tills
an empty town
where the soccer fields became overgrown and ice cubes melt slow on
people's fingers (As they wait for time to roll by like it always has)
a forgivable loss of community.
Even so, there's that consistent disappointment in lost years,
a waiting room, and I'm choking on oriental carpet threads lodged one by one into my throat and here I thought I'd eventually taste the Chinese
but it appears that they have instead swallowed me, downed me with tequila (label torn from passing months and birthdays not celebrated)
The holy temperate wind expands down and through bare branches,
argumentative hours
desperate hands
a loudspeaker CALLING!
and the WILD MACHINE cuckoo cuckoo past the insulation.
Silvery sweet, undreamed kisses, misunderstandings,
the cool reflection of a kettle while two wait for midnight and for the butterfly to creep up on their shoulders.
(cradled by cosmic lobotomy, hours where not one person can sleep,
and Sadhus give spiritual advice for those that need it, India, while I need their voices here on Vancouver Island, far from the Ghats)
When can I go for that intercontinental voyage??
to escape the warehouse cathedrals,
capital Christs,
nettled lipstick,
weariness in the age of wireless consciousness
and a spectrum of commonplace goddesses who wake with no lucidity.
My breathing getting heavier every day, with the weight of wanderlust,
an asthma designed for those who's material position is dictated by a secluded room
(slowly catching fire)
I'm only months away from the prophesied airplane..
all been leading to this
here, now
soon.

The only known alleviation
on this unrest for experience
resides in poetry.