Vote

Go to the polls

I nearly froze

I held my nose as I marked my X

Another vote cast

Not my first, not my last

All that I ask is for something positive

Is this the best my country can do?

Seems they’re all in it for them

So what’s left for you?

I am one in 37 million….

Is this the cream of the crop?

The microphone drop

The skeletons populate the House

Proportionally not

It’s first past the post

I’m tired of ghosts

I want solutions based approach

The planet is dying

Refugees crying

Racism and intolerance gaining speed

The invisible hand

Strength to the Man

Capitalize upon our greed

We are the cure,

We are the cause

We created Santa Claus

Politically correct

The noose round our neck

Strangles propaganda into our brain

To critically think

Black, brown and pink

Irrelevant, divisive, distinct

We should be all one

Not under the gun

Or tyranny of wealth and poverty

I am one in 7.7 billion….

Borders and pens

Angry white men

Everybody is pissed off these days

They victimize you,

But you do it too

Oblivious or apathy?

Did you go and mark your X today?

Did you stand up and use your right

To have your say?

War tears our earth, here we have rights at birth

The same so many others are fighting for

Taken for granted

The seeds that were planted

Choking under pesticide mist

The weed misunderstood

Don’t see it’s good

hemp, or dandelion

we all want that perfect lawn

but the picket fence is gone

replaced by solid, stolid walls

Go to the polls

I nearly froze

I held my nose as I marked my X

Another vote cast

Not my first, not my last

All that I ask is for something positive

Is this the best my country can do?

Seems they’re all in it for them

So what’s left for you?

I am one in 37 million….

Edmonton, AB, Canada

The Ride

Mind burns

Like legs hammering

Up an infinite gradient

On a velocipede

Spinning, the crank of the chain, axle, rim

The rubber hits the road

Every day I ride this route

Like Sisyphus, minus the ease of decent

Everything slows

Focus on each stroke

Eyes eat the inches of anticipation

I take flight,

Lumbering over the surface

But it’s in the depths you feel the ache;

The fire scorching lactic acid of self-destruction

Muscle and memory breakdown

The chain drives and accelerates me

As opposed to tethering

This time behind bars

Offers a sense of freedom

If only a mirage

Like the rising crest

I can feel my being in every cell enclosed within my being,

Being a distraction from incapacitating thoughts

And fear of fastness:

Stillness and speed

Always moving against the wind

Wheels and crank spin

Like mechanisms

In conflagrant cognition

The words of decampment

No matter motion, you never move in the now

That just happens on the sides of each moment

This is the basis of our propulsion

The bicycle, my boulder

But, unlike Sisyphus

The burning contains

A spark; synaptic; of hope

Enjoying the effortlessness

Of the descent

Presenting the freedom that is rebellion

Against all that which we have waged.

Summer

The summer never came this year

This summer I faced my greatest fear

Autumn is now in the air

It arrived too soon

I’ve seen enough

Death and decay

I need to see another way

Obscured joy through endless negativity

Me, you, simple solution

Seems harder fought

Than a revolution

Fighting against the tides

Of an angry sea

Take a breath, the salt air

The humidity

In your hair

Hearts face an eternal scare

That won’t subsist

Time has been our recorder

The ups and downs, tumult, disorder

The struggles we have had to face

Had nothing with us to do

Please just take my hand

Walk with me

along the strand

Beat back the waves,

feet sink in syrupy sand

We wobble, twist, but won’t fall down

I know how dark and cold the days are seeming

I know, in our hearts

That you and I are still dreaming and then

The sun will rise and perhaps

We’ll be blinded by the snow-

lose our way

But we both know the weather’s always changing

One thing leads to another

You’re a lover, you’re a mother

Expectations, so many things can overwhelm

Me too, I get the sensation

My narrative a retaliation of every time I try to turn things

Around and make them right

Leaves have yellowed, crisp and fallen

Laughter so often confused with bawling

Loneliness as we leave the tree

Fall upon the ground

The wind can sweep us both away

Spiral dance and joyful fray

Just have to be where we are today

Pray the rest will come

I know how cold and dark the days are seeming

I know, in our minds

That you and I are still dreaming and then

The sun will rise, perhaps

We’ll be blinded by the beauty

If only we can see through the pain

But we both know the weather’s always changing

The summer never came this year

This summer I faced my greatest fear

Autumn’s brief in this part of the world

It’s arrived too soon

I’ve seen enough

Death and decay

I need to see another way

Long for the bough, the branch, the birds

Come fly away with me

We can be free, eternity

Untethered by the complications

That seem to surround

Believe in me, I’ll believe in you

And hopefully the belief with soak right through

To touch our hearts, silence self-doubt

Then summer may begin

Elevated

phosphorescent flock

Flies afore the backdrop of the Big Dipper

The moon smiles its autumn face and the air is redolent with

The crispness to come

We sit there , exhaling into the night;

Our eyes fixed on the 

V 

Imagining what it must be to fly;

To be illuminated thus

Through the purest

White of lunar rays

This is where we find our peace;

Energy mating in cosmic

Dance

A speck amongst this

Speck we call home

Enveloped in infinity

The river

That our lives flow 

Words

Words are weightless when

Devoid of substance

Yet can crush

With entomological denotation

Conflicting with connotation

Empty without act

The actor’s script

Mundane; a work of fiction

Creates the narrative by which we live and perish

Out of sync with our mortal carriage

The body; a separation of church, spirit and state

Decapitated thoughts that plunder hope while aspiring

To American Dreams

The thought, the spirit and corporeal form

A sinewy mix of chemicals and flesh

Heavy with fluid

Unlike the weightless words;

Weighed down ; chained by inertia, apathy and gravitational forces-

Self-talk platitudes and

Make merry memes and technicolor pills

Knee-scraped off the wagon and scrambling

Back on, ragged, raw, real… if anything can actually be

All is manifest

Not taking the time to deal with the deluge of dust

Made muddy when our sacks release

Etching rivulets down dirt streaked cheeks; that emotional river, salient, sting

Wipe away, wipe away; smearing their channels in hopes of not repeating

But is it the mask I remove; exposed the callow of character; an naked actor,

Is there such a thing as self and an actual I?

Or is it self-immolation and erasing of memory?

Not that we ever really knew to know

These things, highs, lows, ebb and flow

Crushed by weightless words as they wind a noose

Choking the lines, blood flow stops

Brain fades brown

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down

Panic Attack

That feral feeling

Bones brutally brought through flesh by mind

The buzz and shudder of anxiety

All-consuming,

Invisible to those in proximity

Self-sabotage;

The beast is the burden

Talons sting offer no deflection

The thoughts still there; imploding/exploding

As yin and yang

Minus the balance

Containment and blunting

Not enough to stop

The sear of dread

My head takes over

As if possessed…

Why does trauma persist

Long after the danger is past?

Betrayed by body, the myth that we are programmed

To survive

Fear that the hand reaching out pushes away instead

The cure and causes intertwine

And dance like two venomous

Serpents fucking

Fangs slash, the poison floods my vision

And the constricting coils offer an irony of relief

While suffocating;

The degrees of pressure between strangulation and a hug

So minimal

And feeling like nothing but feeling so vehemently

Another of the bodies contradictions.

Breathe. Breath shallow,

Belly balloons but amygdala resists

The feelings persists

The feelings persists

And I must resist

The feelings that persist.

The Ride

These hardened streets, gashed with serrated pot holes

Asperous asphalt

Soon to be softened and slippery

From fresh winter snows

I streak a sliver through the city’s congealed veins

Heart attack, clot, but numb to my own pain

Wash it white, tint-rose so colourful but still

I’m traveling here alone*

Unwanted passenger bleeds my brain

Driving me insane; a taxi I never called

ṻber ṻber alles; bike lane, pushed aside

pedal on, pedal on;

We’ve lost community to a phone

Reaching out, reaching into that empty space, that void in me

The invisible wall maps my ride and counts my steps

Drugged and dragged along by platitudes

But they make no bloody difference

No hope exuded in hollow eyed words,

Eye contact, topped with tar…black pupil-retinal mud makes the darkness blindingly bright

I need to travel off the common path

And not be led where these roads go

The grids with untimely ends and capricious curves…

The need of a flock to follow unneeded, and takes us

To the same places over and over again

What’s the point of life when

You feel dead?

“We find ourselves in the same old mess,

Singing drunken lullabies”

Simply stated, no simple solve

What’s prescribed seems to sicken me more than heal

Nothing is genuine; it’s no

Wonder we are lost to how we feel

I feel weak, I feel small and powerless

Set my compass, but stuck on the determined road

Salt stings the cuts and cracks and road rash

Black tar and asphalt stain my lungs and the acidic rain eats at my soul

The salt water streaming from my eyes;

An ocean, an eternity, but not rain

Briny bites the cuts and cracks and road rash- I do my own stunts

I want to ride my bike with you

Off the main drag, the beaten path that’s beat me down

Or a canoe:

To be flowing through the river’s blood

As it feeds the earth with natural wonder

Feeds my soul, makes me whole

Lessens the impact of my mental load

Erode my jagged edges and smooth me out

Skipping upon the waves like a water walker

Even though I know

The river’s flow will never cease

A tegument of ice may distort our passage-

To inhale your warm breath; exhale and dissipate like smoke into the ether

Of the endless dimensions of universe and soul;

See it blend and absorb into the greater whole

A contradiction to these pending winter winds

Winter is always warmer in a photograph or film

This film that coats my eyes and emotions

I want to spin this into a positive

Propel by my chain, not tethered

Away, the big yellow taxi,

I need you to ride with me.