after the ***** red day
her dry tongue bruises
the evening
with burning blue songs

A lot of people think
it's shining armour that keeps them strong.

For me, it’s what’s underneath,
the bones of the matter
beneath the skin kite.

Let the wind take me and
watch how high I can fly.

My pieces scattered,
no more sacred
than dust
on the wind.

Lately, the outside
world has felt
cold, foreign,
and alien.

(Especially anything
American.)

Of course, being in this
wave of blue,
I would be hacked
to death.

I feel innocent in my arrogance.
A drudge to the syrup tin,
cheap and sufficient—
the honey hoarded.

A sky, pale after sunset,
is darker than a blue one at midday.

It’s your light I love,
shining from your smile.

Innocence has such light.
I’ll face it head-on. Sweep away

the shadow of my years
with your golden laughter.

Break me into chasm
then let the love pour in—
flower into deep well—
stem the umbilicus
of what you could say
you knew of me—

the privilege of living
inside your own head—
and me,
something made of sand,
a wink—

something of one
of many lives ago,
though how well
you knew me—
as did he—
how well they saw me—
and maybe no one did.

We were lovers
in a past life.
And now
I am obscure as
lost Atlantis, origin
of the fairy tale—
fragile
as gossamer and
the Holy Grail.

Before that August--

(strange month                                        echo)--

bloomed in the east
sunrise bomb                                           sunset dawn

you sometimes
                                                                   rose
(unbidden)

to the surface
of my mind.

These were some of my triggers:

Calgary                                                     (always Calgary)
me too
Christmastime.

And all the times                                     you attempted
to reach out to me

(sucker punch                                          sleep ****).

And then that August--

(good mornin'                                         bombshell)

the news--
for shame.

For I had fallen for the lie
(while you talked all the while
                                                                 in your human voice).

So you like 'em young.
So you like it rough.

August sun                                            beat me down.

It took this glaring
of a light

to show me
the darkest                                             of men's natures--

and that I knew them
intimately.

Be a voice; not an echo*

somebody had written on the wall.

People are in love with echoes,

reverberating off walls of canyons,

in love with the sound

sounding off.

Nothing for me, they decide.

Nothing for the girl, lifting her hand

to caress the branches of trees

hanging overhead.

They want the familiar sounds

of girls

sounding off.

I search for the true reflection.
Is it in the mirror or the camera?
Is it in a lover’s eyes or an enemy’s?

I don’t profess to stand on a pedestal,
but I stand on something,
and it seems it’s always something

that knocks me off.
And we may say, I know, I know,
for I have also been there.

I know who she is. I know, I know.
I know the problems she’s facing,
as if we are all wise men.

But it’s becoming clear
that you can only ever walk
in your own shoes.

How my disappointments frighten you,
the scalding of hot tea that should be comforting.
Chocolate mint, I’ll tell you this: these are
the virgins I have sacrificed, only to give birth
to two. These are the dreams I have traded
for cold realities. The rain is no longer green
and peaceable. The ocean is a perfect stranger.
Sleep evades me; the pillow is no loving cradle.
I am serenaded nightly by the baby’s wail.
Frozen solid in winter’s cocoon, I long to unfold
my wings. And no matter where I come to stand,
violence permeates every space. There is no escaping
it. It is in the square. It is in the mean people, hard
as glass that does not break, unlike hearts that do.

Stars of tragedy.
Stories of their untimely demise
Told soberly in newsprint.

Stretching from Africa to Mexico,
Victims of natural disasters, crime,
And of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What was here is lost.
What was warm is forever gone.
These envelopes that remain can be stamped with anyone’s address.

In the end, it’s all the same
Dust
That settles in the melting ***:

Empty shells littering beaches,
Dried-out husks,
Vacant houses.

1

Another space arrives. The newborn cries.
And the destiny determined:
Oven or matchstick.

Descendant of both; inheritor of another:
A machine that dreams itself into being,
Dragging its sleeping subjects after it.

Sustenance of nightmares, the food of what
God is, blood the earth pumps forth.
The plastic legacy is siphoned off,

Its artifacts cheap jewellery:
Enamel glinting white and turquoise.
Flimsy chains that never last,

And yet last forever, the paint flaking off.
So too does the rust on this delicate orchid.
It is an oracle of poisons.


2

The city burns in its incandescence.
The indelible halo
Of a lime-green candelabra

Makes light of midnight. Our slumber is
Punctured by gunshots and the drone of the
Ambulance.

Not a foot but a juggernaut,
Pandora’s box,
Sowing the seeds of your distress.

Fallout marks the potent epoch.
The neon octopus spews it back,
Invisible print on the murderous air.

Where water drinks
No diving bell can bear
The pressure of such fuchsia.

I am a rose

blown wide open

petals dripping, seeds dripping

in a garden

full of buds

just waiting to exhale their scent

This cycle

flowers go through

dying

for the next beauty

Cut the limbs
off a boundary

of trees,
and the police come running.

He was more supported--
there was evidence--

twisted branches
on the ground--

video of it
in action.

It took three days
to go from comfort

to sorrow--
she who freed me

also made me
a ghost.

My i
diminished--

blood on all
my four walls.

I'm still
the only one

who sees red.
His wife doesn't seem to care.

She can always deny
everything

and stick her head
in another book.

War paint I always found unnecessary:
Gloss for manicured lipstick commercial princesses
Not of my kind.

And though I walk with shield, I am without armour:
Ramparts mere cheekbones,
Bare skin impressionable as snow.

Boot-print,
The mark I hated. My characters:
Frail tree rings, exposed to the chill night air.

Gold inlay frozen solid.
The fairly bound dream factory
Lies purple with melancholy.



It’s the world’s bruise. It colours sudden,
Shadowing the other side of the room
Where it paused, rare moth

Lighted upon my dark reflection,
A Mona Lisa dressed in black
And reminiscent of bobby sox.

Beauty without fanfare.
Stuff of woods: we do not glitter.
We don’t call out.

Our tongues are both dumbstruck bells.
Shy rabbits, we fold within ourselves
And sequester our secret pulp.

you love me -- though you don’t

know me fully --

just as you love

the stars at night --

the vastness

you can’t imagine --

lighting up

eternity.

Even the stars are doing yoga.
Nothing has always done it,
bending into space.
This evening found me stoking
the fire,
warming by breath alone.
People are such cold little stoves.

Above the sound,
**** and give of ocean,
I heard Ariel sing.

You could never picture me in the pockets of my West Coast.
I flew out of your story and into another, and then
Even into another, always the phoenix.

No longer yours, but his.
No longer his, but mine.
Perhaps I suffered these little deaths to forge a heaven with him.

A king, he’d follow me to the ends of the earth, thrice over.
His queen I’m still too shy to let shine through,
A star stubbornly obscured by cloud.

Though before I complained of rain,
On the Island it never bothered me.
Even in the dead of winter it kept the grass emerald-green.

An emerald city:
Ivy shrouded trees; moss fluorescent.
Our castles were those green giants.

Siamese blue to denim blue.
Betwixt the Spit & Seabroom.
It was all I dreamed and ever wanted.

The only thing missing was the garden, the garden,
Sheltered by walls made of cob.
Or a whole house, the air inside delectable.

Tendril of dream,
Is a cinder girl deserving of bees,
Turning honey into mead, of wild things?

No. Exiled to a foreign land,
A barren land; the ghetto forest.
Those halcyon years now only a memory.

Ridiculous to expect the bald
Rocks to yield to a surfer’s paradise, of
Blue-green ocean. Long hairs cannot thrive under puritans’ eyes.

Green things tremble for sun.
For all the rain, I remember the sun,
Filtering down through the forest canopy,

Upheld by the cathedral’s true pillars
Rather than these thrifty spindles. In reverence of true
Beauty, all is quiet & hushed.

The birth of a princess may bring us back.
Pioneers, we’re still in search of our happy ending,
To live lush in nature’s majesty.

I know the Pacific is still out there
Roaring somewhere,
Crashing itself onto stony beaches.

Mists wreath those mountains.
The drums beat.
That muted boom, my thud of heart.

You are beautiful and I am not.
We are the habits of our forefathers.

We can choose to forget them, let them
Drain away like sand through glass,

Distant dust of history. As much as we try
To remember, desire is stronger than memory.

Sometimes I turn to sculpt soft clay,
Loose and stark in my hands.

And then I abandon the mess. I should keep
My fingertips stained red for effort.

I remember dreaming a vision:
Heroine of my own story,

Walking the grey beach in winter,
Projected far into the future when I might realize it.

Clay does not sculpt itself.
Prayers go unanswered. Here

I dwell in my own lit house,
Multiple yellow lights

Floating in the dark, mirror for
The starry night that I might see.  

We’re the only species with
Wings on our feet. We’ve molded

Paper into something precious.
Currency of kings. Gold origami.

Honeyed words remain my nectar.
Rome is a daylong process that is for ever.

To shape is a practice
Known by time and being,

That I may become a living embodiment.
That I might find grace in a raised arm, a bent leg.

That I might see myself through a filter of love.
That I might remember there are no

Comparisons.
That we are beautiful for our very selves.

what is sand
but the finest of glass?

and what are bones
but the finest of ash?

and you may try to crush
me down into the finest of elements,

reduce me to nothingness,
******* to the wind.

but I have a talent
for rising again,

oh yes.
you cannot keep me down for long.

The times have me gobsmacked,
petulant observer, no more endearing
than anonymous audience.

My own visions, shadows on cave
walls, storytelling secret
animal lanterns.

It isn’t as if
I must put on
the Queen’s English
to be around you.

It isn’t as though
I should feel
the need to rebel, or
that my solitude

is a luxury
instead of a right.
Rather, these are
the whale-bone songs

of a well-worn battalion,
poised as I am
at every solstice,
footsore at the door.

This is simply
the ebb and flow
of ambrosia
that sets the pendulum

to swing
in different arcs
of fool’s gold,
the soft footings

at the edge of my radar.
This is the culture shock
of living dead girls
undergoing a seismic shift

in the round
mother-of-pearl
mountain ash,
insinuating

themselves
in a sea of voices,
while shadows cast
a romantic screen.

For every one that succeeds,
millions of others fail.
So tell me
how it should be,

that I could live
on my knees
and weep honey tears
as my dreams escape me.

Because this is
a death of sorts.
The phoenix rises,
only to burn again.

Poverty
is a personal Shanghai,
and just as vast.
I want to believe

that wealth can be
weathered beauty,
Elizabethan colouring,
and a pirate smile.

You get my most
gorgeous parts,
although
my flaws,

innumerable,
hidden
in blind spots,
hidden in ivory,

are discovered
again and again,
as I live between what was
and what will be.

History forgets violence, cold-
blooded, the extinguishment,
and if not, the raw,
steadied torture.

This tenderness
rose from a river of blood.
Flowers in the garden,
wafting for no particular reason,
except a calling for bees.

Beauty I pick up on,
beauty like a sunset in the field,
blooming poppies,
just another revolution,
a day on Earth.

you are so enamoured
with the honey on her lips

you don’t realize that mine
taste just as sweet

and it isn’t so odd that
we become each other’s
caretakers, as like
children, we reach for love,
as if we’ve never endured
a long winter’s night alone,
hope the last matchstick
lit in our hand.

Forests were torn down and
cities built because of surety.

How can your child's face
assure me of my future?

Where does it hurt today?

My teeth/sinuses,
Sciatic nerve,
*****, perineum,
*******?

But not my heart
(no, no more my heart).

I become gluttonous
on solitude,

the way a person luxuriates
in furs and silk,

Italian leather,
diamond rings.

The finer things.

What can possibly be finer
than silence?

I created the tools.

I carved the stone and strung the bow.

I tracked the animal’s prints

across fresh snow.

I took careful aim,

steady, steady,

and then let go.

I brought you meat,

the liver & the heart,

and yet you

feast on

crumbs.

comely, maybe
but not beautiful
my features are as round as vowels
and I carry the moon in my hips
I am an unpolished beauty
smooth pebbles resting at the bottom
of a cold clear stream
with an empty purse
imagination
my only currency

in this world
I am a shrinking violet
occasionally a rose
february-white
caught in your button-loop
long-stemmed red roses
stalk runways
hollywood bombshells
are bubbly as champagne
and full of flesh and light

but *** sans love
is still an empty bathtub
whatever happened to pin-up girls
long cigarette holders
and muted photographs?
I am distorted
in the fish-eye view
of the modern lens

in my fantasies
I am no longer sand and loam
I glow like a tall slim candle
though I am often numb and dumb
and my girls are as absent
as long lost unicorns
I am the bohemian princess

I travel through foreign lands
clothed in exotic costume
a jewelled headdress, and
indian pyjamas coloured sapphire,
turquoise and cayenne-red
my feet are near bare
and my hippie hair
is a mass of blonde curls

I take a sojourn in
southern california
warm desert air
soft against my skin
I surf in the salty sea
held buoyant by the waves
a sunset stains the sky tangerine
the palm trees
black against the orange light
click teasingly in the breeze

I wear an old shade of red.
My belly is a wrinkled
skin of fruit.
I am no longer a ripe peach,
not even a blossom.
That my daughter is.

i.

Pink doesn’t play into it, that delicate
petal of perfume & flower stuff.
She abhors it.

Red suits her better.
Red for Fridays & red for Aries.
Red for the blood her dagger could draw.

Her seal of wax is no
rosebud adhered to
fine paper.

Warrior, she escaped its letter.
With Roman candles & Roman sandals,
sword, wand & chariot,

defender of her Eden.
Seashells are her votive gifts, the
stars of her Atlantic.

It is within her reign of Camelot.
At the edge of the Earth,
her kingdom dreams.




ii.

Blue maid
a curious ***** in her armour.
But she wouldn’t flinch

if an army of soldiers came crashing in.
They are hunting the witch.
A woman can never have such power.

It is reserved for the patriarchy
to wield at will.
Up it goes.

They can ***** steeples with it.
They are stoking the fires & sharpening
the axe with it.

But threats of torture
don’t make her beg, plead or recant.
She is guilty of nothing.

Even broken on the Catherine Wheel,
Athena still keeps her
bow & quiver intact.

There are worse places,
little girl. Worse hells.
This isn’t one of them.
There are depths you haven’t yet seen,
where the dive alone
would **** you.
The sea monster of my depths,
curled still, and waiting,
waiting for me.
I imagine his hand on my ***.
I imagine all the trespasses
I would never let happen
(never again).
There is the scene of the crime—
I’ll be there once again—
I’ll take a photograph of it
again—
where he knew,
despite the hand that he let caress
its way downward, despite
his fingers that fumbled
towards ecstasy,
he knew—
he knew
that he never should have touched me.

the latitudes of freedom are not hard to measure --
though they can be difficult to achieve.
there are limited means, and a day --
dashed by uncooperative weather, the wind
outside raging like some mythical beast --
blowing the snow sideways, piling the drifts.
and so the day unfolds in the usual way,
and the night -- the foreseen sleep interrupted,
as it has been for years, and the road ahead --
while invisible still -- promises more of the same.

Feast or famine.
The dry summer or monsoon season.

It’s not as though he had
murdered me.

That would be easier to
prove. There would be

no hiding
the blood of it.

And how I did bleed—
years later,

red all over it.
Improper.

Fuel for the fire.
Combustible.

But nothing trembles
as I weigh the being

of my existence against
what stoppage.

Order or chaos.
Black or white.

What has been spoilt
rotten can never be

golden. These are
the questions I ask myself:

Am I loved? Do I
love? Can I love?

While there is the story
he tells himself, reassuringly:

It was just ***.
It was just ***.

Learn their language. You will
need the words
to sing
your own songs.

Let them name you:
shameful
crazy
nothing.

We forget that
***
is still
a weapon.

Laugh at their visions,
their one-faceted
solve all
solutions.

Remember that
every day
you rise anew
like the sun.

I live with
holy sunshine—

but I wake to weep.
In the sun,

shadows stretch
long behind me,

where some things ought to
remain buried.

I did not go digging you up.
Bees do not normally

nest in skulls—
but I know

they hum in your head,
dripping honey of me.

Gentle wolf,
you came in the guise

of a friend.
They tell me that they would have

rescued me
as you made your advances—

except
they were never there,

in your lair.
And by that time

I had already
been eaten.

All that exists
between us now

is a history;
the guilt that still

weighs on you,
and poetry.

And if your guilt ever becomes
too much for you to bear,

and if you ever feel like
confessing,

my poems can be
your Hail Mary’s.

Would you leave me lost?
I could use the stars as guides,
and yet I could find
my way
so much better
by the light of the moon.

Would you leave me breadcrumbs?
I hope the birds
would not have picked them clean.
There might be branches broken
through a rough pathway of trees
that I could follow
in hopes of tracking you.

O, but darling,
the darkness is absolute.

It is her spirit
you fell in love with.

Be careful
not to crush it –
shards
beneath your heel –

shattered glass remains
shattered glass.

I held up the mirror
just to see
if you were as unrecognizable
as me.

There is nothing to pinpoint of the strange beast.
Only images,

Blurred and refracted,
Fleeing down a hallway of mirrors.

O maestro of conditions,
It is you they are in love with,

A dark sun unaware of its own orbiting planets.
They are the cause of all of it.

Every comet, every lack
Leaves a trail etched across your sky.

And in their eight eyes
Something seemingly whole becomes distorted,

A piece cut out made separate from the rest.
From this gulf appears a war engine,

A bite of venom,
The desire to **** what they can’t.

Darling of judge and jury,
Blame absolves them of all responsibility.

You are the sole carrier of their weakness.
They fill your skin with their nightmares.

Flesh as fruit
Is strictly poisonous,

Bleaching the sheets of the saints.
Now no more –

Vanished,
Like what was found and then lost.

Like what was married and
Soon divorced.

Still, notoriety is a phantom
Floating in cages,

Star player at a masquerade,
Costumed with your own face.

morning bleeds in
then blazes
the sky pierced open by one hot star
night melts away, slinky black cat

Does memory deserve such a platter?
Cellophane instead of silver, but still
An impressive tower.

Such weight it bears—
Exhibit of blue curiosities
Resting on shoulders,

Original honeycombs.
The honeyeater feasts
On what has made a meal of me.

Grand rooms echo with silence.
Love turned to hate
So often without comment.

A history of broken hearts lies beneath
Street level. Away from sun’s glare
I buried them.

It is a tomb I walk in, tour guide
To myself. It is an ossuary hidden deep
Underground. It is the Catacombs of Paris.

Here moldering in the dark repose
A stack of secret skulls and bones—
Those gleeful arsonists.

In the end, even they succumbed
To the fires they set,
Burning down chapels without regret.

The city rumbles overhead, oblivious.
Everyone is absorbed with their own busyness.
No one pauses to wonder outside the still museum.

The cool façade belies the treasures hidden within.
They forget the history we share.
No visitor ascends the stair.

Inside, all is quiet.
The sole curator walks among the artifacts—
The rare objects, a Gordian knot,

The personas we once wore:
The naked emperor, the femme fatale,
The honeycunt.

Tin man, on the eve of tin,
your apology rings hollow.

I think that you
were only trying to

crack a window,
find a space to crawl back in,

attempt to
erase me some more.

Meanwhile, the police
are off investigating

crimes that happen in
real time. They like

to catch their perps
red-handed. Even with you

cast in the limelight,
confirming that what you did

to me was real,
it was my own nightmare.

I know, we fall into
that grey area.

In a garden of blooms
you walk freely,

inhaling and dreaming
of touching

those yet untouched
pink and yellow buds.

Night lowers its curtain of silence,
my only time to steal away, and
**** the flavour out of every
lovely rind.

It is its lime
bitterness,
mine to enjoy.
If only I could taste it.

No suits are filed
because the lines were blurred.
**** isn’t ****
when there isn’t a clear no.
**** isn’t ****
when you just lie there
and take it.

Not quite a hurricane
but a wind that still blows,
holding love aloft.
I prefer to be behind the scenes
like god,
observing the audience
through a ***** in the curtain.

I am prophecy self-fulfilled,
but I’ve been before mistaken.

Surprised to learn
that they embrace what they ****.

Poetry is heavy as lead
in my mouth.

Tree branches find more grace
in a wind that’s ragged.

her shadows
have more weight
than my ghost

in my hands
a basket
full of ripe
plums

they prefer
those bite-sized
cookies with the
******* fortunes

plain language
in which
nothing hums

Go to sleep, my love.
This ambulance is not for us.

Although, I suppose it could be,
following dark impulses.

Its sirens screaming of hell,
tearing pell-mell in a night

not tinged by blood –
no crime committed for want or violence,

only help arrived too late
to save us. It would go silent then,

as we have been silenced,
locked in a terrible tableau.

You, still, curled around my heart,
me having found for us oblivion.