The Light in Grey

Beneath concrete skies,
wary eyes wantingly pass over
decaying facades of huddled homes
once lively with boundless dreams,
where leaves dropped one Autumn,
never to re-bud
like a heart shrivelled by betrayal's
corrosive, bitter exhalation,
feelings forsaken forever,
rheumatic cracks in asphalt
swallow tawny stalks of drying weeds
brittle, like a serpent swallowing something
twice its size.
This is where childhood began all things,
hope constructed, renovated then
abandoned when realising that
this is not the rabbit-eared reality television
proposed verbosely through metallic rods
and grey-white snow
the American dream;
barbed memories of
the true past re-visit,
blinding from future that never came.
Alone, beneath concrete skies,
weary eyes wait, smelling smoky
hints that a
last candle may continue to share
its light if it could only be seen.

Edmonton, AB, Canada

Waiting in a crowded Conference Room for Dr. Neufeld to Speak

Various voices, volume fluctuating, fluttering as a sparrow cloud, one,
sound sounding simulated, unnatural and natural,
as the bubble and pounding
of a small waterfall plunging, tarried,
tumbling as meteors over smoothed stones to waiting waters below
surface breaking, bass and crackling, the dischorded cacophony
of small applauding palms
uncertain as a new spectator at a symphony or opera
into a pool never placid, predominated by water sparks, bubble, clear and foam
with hurried anxiety
forgoing serenity
mixing, but each drop alone, anonymously
staining the stones a darkened shade with their moistness
labouring with lilting silty sediment's carnage;
some evaporating, angelic, to the heavens,
returning,
weeping from darkened swirling mists above
some settle, some fork into tributaries, to tears,
some to make for the ambiguous sea
each drop alone in it's self
in its part of the greater alienated whole;
whole in their solitude only –
content, searching, sad, asleep – pensive on the journey
fate unknowing, rolling uncontrollably in their roundness,
concordant with weathering rocks that
reveal themselves grain by grain;
self-destructing, nothingness,
decomposed - awaiting the speaker
to make his entrance on stage
continuing the beginning encapsulated
in the moment's now, oblivious to
the vague spectrum of all-consuming time.

Edmonton, AB, Canada






Words

the root of a word
has no relevance,
but, rather, it is how we understand it to be.
our perception, subjective,
can never hope to realise objectivity
any more than we can understand our selves.
we are discontented with
simply being and find suffering in
trying to see what we are not,
be what we are not;
there is no meaning in meaning,
all that is, simply is as it is.
definitions define little of
our essence – the simplicity
feeling is all we know of knowing
and all we can ever know.

Edmonton, AB., Canada

Charlatan's March

Posthumous shadows of
mystics and sages
seeping, leaking blackness
impostors block incinerating sun
with their inflammable pages,
sheltering in voided darkness
leading toward the abyss,
disconnected dust swirls
under each sole,
light and weighted, whirling,
dizzy, disoriented, falling, enlightened but unobserved;
forgotten – lost
seen only by great apes gazing through treetops
on high, waiting to return to the tegument below
to begin anew.

Edmonton, AB, Canada