"A Lament for Education and Academic Freedom"
I was the mainstream -
a rich running river of life
once flowing forcibly, natural
determined, etching malleable landscapes,
now drowned in dust.
Animals grazed harmoniously and prospered over my lush leaning banks,
I sparkled pure, crystal, white,
while others flourished beneath my mirrored still
and ferocious foam
I fed streams, tiniest tributaries, bogs
teeming with living, amidst teasing twists, cryptic mists and fogs
what was given was as well too me given back
forging canyons from fragments and finger-like cracks
my silt settled, evolved into stone,
my purpose was my purpose, with all and nothing to be known
I once built wonders that made wonder grow
my currents, respected, their tempo and flow
but the respect now evaporates
in billows of dust,
leaving me dry upon a tegument sedimentary saline crust
for I was the mainstream,
but now am no more
a forgotten scar upon the planet's floor.
Edmonton, AB., Canada
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Friday, November 28, 2008
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
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
Monday, November 24, 2008
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
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
Sunday, November 23, 2008
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.
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
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Who Put Them in Charge?
fuckheads have taken over
selling sacred
selling right
selling rights
society clears its collective throat
phlegm flashes
stifling scream, hack-hack-hacking up lung
stifling scream
life choked out, brains lack oxygen
disillusion never makes the ballots “X’
losing conciseness
conscience lost
no one was a Nazi
no one voted Bush
no one stopped to ask “why”
we all wake up and proclaim
how we’ve no clue as to how things became this way
- one day it was just there! – just following orders jeffe!
legacy prevents total awakening
grammar eclipses content,
make it popular, extracting incisors
mass market meanings so
they can be worn, oblivious
to their tags: MADE IN INDONESIA
concealed beneath cotton collars
against extended necks
global peace transubstantiates like a Catholics cracker
into global piece
leaving the moral majority with their faith;
uncomfortable enough to believe in their enemies,
but not so much to get off their couches
“let them fear so long as they obey” is the mantra
of Pax Americana
McDonald’s, the only menu worldwide –
order from the new order
send in the clowns
send in the fucking clowns
send in the murderous, dominating fucking clowns!
because everything now is a bad joke – cliché, I know –
but this now my language is –
for the fuckheads have taken over
and we are all bowed, labelled and non-juxtaposed – prone,
naked in the new emperor’s old clothes,
subservient, safely behind
our circus ring’s walls.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Life of a Spark
hands reaching beyond grasp of flesh choked bones desperate, stretching, rubber dimension elongating diaphanous, retracting –snapping feeling, a flash… then still stings freshly crisp electricity mating in limited life span brief sparks flare, longing to unite into permanent flame but what stability, what continuous being is shaped through evolution? jigsaw thoughts scattering into one ironic battle engaged between heart and mind blind to time, deserting in bands of mixing light rationalising an irrational creature leads only to misunderstanding in a world where truth is a failing hypothesis to justify our selves, rather than to simply be.
Edmonton, AB., Canada
haiku #1
spawning salmon shakes
icy Autumn river flows
end and renewal
Seward, Alaska, USA
haiku # 2
gold dog’s fur dances
blossom breeze of summer eve
run with dangling tongue
Edmonton, AB., Canada
haiku # 3
fat orange fish darts
amidst broad summer lilies
canopy from sun
Edmonton, AB., Canada
haiku # 4
mosquitoes needles
summer blood supped up quickly
hand clasps flesh red sting
Edmonton, AB., Canada
haiku # 5
white goat’s bell jingles
through the cherry blossom breeze
in stony meadow
Edmonton, AB., Canada
Untitled
Mine is the world
where buzzing neon signs
impersonate moon, making due
cold weight of night contrasts
tributaries of grey breath etching blackness
retching soul away
leaving uniform casings
void of igniting spark
stumbling as children might
but with none of their hope
so sick of being mislead by mirrors
their mocking clarity transformed
I despise their interpretations
their icy, glass laughing
a mockery of all that really is
through its hypothetical was…
there is ignorance enveloping
any tentative freshness,
constricting as a beguiling Biblical serpent
replenish the earth, and subdue it
but our empire of self is fallen, disguised naked, as we subdue our selves in wheels of social machinery dependent on other’s spinning and, when replenishment is attempted we simply end up drunk.
Edmonton, AB., Canada
Unmarked Journey
Seems no matter how long you incubate your dreams
they still come out half-baked ideas
told and trained, that which is to be wanted:
wife, white picket fence, your career
but questions, chaos, acne, hair
emerged in those adolescent years
manifest themselves in the frame of a man
but underneath remains a boy and his fears
funny, eh , when you think
about the script we attempt to follow?
is it any wonder, that, when we wonder,
we feel not fulfilled, but scared and hollow?
Reflecting on this life’s journey
where the signposts send you the wrong way
where we’re so damned concerned about surviving tomorrow
we forget what we’re about here today
The sun and moon spotlights us upon a path
but we drive our eyes into the dark
or reminisce on a distant star
that died a million years after it made its spark
no wonder we’re empty, looking to space
for the questions that leave us lost
constantly troubled by the prices we pay
on a life’s value that can’t be counted by cost
I wish I could turn to the TV
to somehow escape from my mind
but I know that my wishes can’t come from in there
a falling star of another kind
I know I’m eighty percent water
and don’t know how to swim
looking out through my eyes,
hanging for life on their rims
but warm tears are coming
like a mothering tide
and my grip feels it’s slipping
washing me over the side
and I’m drowning….
Seems no matter how long you incubate your dreams
they still come out half-baked ideas
told and trained, that which is to be wanted:
wife, white picket fence, your career
where is that boy now?
did they send him to his room?
is he sun
or the man in the moon?
seems sad when you think
about the script which we follow?
is it any wonder when we wonder,
by our dreams we are swallowed?
Edmonton, AB, Canada
WTC: 11/09/01
Took out the two legs of a giant
in the land of liberty
the morning rush hour broken
in central N.Y.C.
The people look to reason
trying to understand it in some way
wondering if we’ve lost forever
the “ordinary day”
now the people are lighting candles,
embracing in the dark
while amidst the mangled rubble
rescuers pursue hope’s fading spark
and in backrooms are our leaders
with vengeance on their minds
contemplating how to counter,
to return the deaths in kind
and I sit here in my basement
out of tune from my guitar’s six strings
and with them my dischorded thoughts
wonder what the future brings
I’m wishing that the answer
was to “turn the other cheek”
but so unreal is that white dove
with the olive branch in its beak
So where can this leave us?
tell me what does it all mean?
Is this the 21st Century,
carnage, terror and screams?
Are we digging the foxholes
that are soon to be our graves?
following the cries for vengeance
lead by the war mongering knaves
David slew Goliath,
the beanstalk’s giant felled by Jack
but this time it was history’s hero
hit hard in the N.Y.C. attack
Over 6000 perished
that needed not die that day
the innocent, the common ones
trapped in ideologies way
What can fill one so full of hatred
that it becomes their life in full?
what golden fleece blocks the light of reason
blinding once open eyes with its wool?
and tell me what religion
calls justice, these means to an end?
what happened to “love thy enemy”
treat him as if he were a friend?
Took out the two legs of a giant
in the land of liberty
the morning rush hour broken
in central N.Y.C.
The people pray to reason
wishing hope from this decay
in a world that’s lost forever
the “ordinary day”
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Insomnia
Sleeplessness, ever ending
a coffee stain spreading
permeating fibrous cloth cover, saturate,
halting at edge; 90° of
dropping to nothingness
porcelain chip, pure white, porous,
clay grains clinging
observes horizontal body from brief expanse
neither half empty nor half full, eternal, existential –
silty
refusing stubbornly to synapse, cognate, disband
clusters of thought
possessing nightmares, distorting senses,
manufacturing fear, restless, discontented
bored
product of thought become disenchantment,
mass produced in kilns of
passion and hatred,
liquid
then solid
tepid, cool-
soluble beyond hopeful recognition
introduced to self in shrapnel
shards of polished silver slivers
viewed behind weary lens
- a fish –
· snapping perceptions into fairytales happily ever after and end.
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Yellowhead through Saskatchewan
Clouds billow as shoaling silver herring
sky,
azure over tiger skin prairie
tripod towers arc along
arrow straight road
amidst discarded flint heads
etched by rough ancient hands
and bison ghosts;
lines hum silent, internal, electric
their iron, cold cast legs
marking time, marking the way
engine hums off key
past retreating further behind
narrowing into tunnel’s darkness.
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
To Tie the Knot or Not, She Asked
How many more pagan tears
will sacrifice themselves upon teguments
of slate-grey slabs, unyielding stone,
to ornery gods of happiness, love?
Rocky fists, rough, as they fall upon
worry furrowed faces
as wasteland winds raping prairie
of fertile earthen grains,
excuses,
nature’s secret dark shadow,
burrowing,
buried
until Autumn’s brittle tawny straws shudder-
a matron who’s shawl is no longer new,
memories of warmth-
snapping, silent, feathery fall
swept, bound into bruised golden balls
by bailer’s turbine blades, choking twine, braided;
stored for feed, made to manure
continuing cycles of seasons and
sacrificial sheep.
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Away
White Vs part worn wooden bow
As gulls, they haunt the waves
the concrete skies and misty eyes
parting further from the quay
Guided by fortune’s pilot
As the skipper hums a jig
creaks and salt-rushing landslides
brushing o’er the blocks and rigs
How well I do remember
that grim damp Autumn morn
felt the morning shiver
before the day’s sunlight was born
heart filled with dark foreboding
my belly fastly felt the swells
tepid tear upon my eyelid
paused awhile before it fell
My thoughts began their roving of my love left on the shore The face that was my lighthouse pleading “go to sea no more” though cried did she I put to sea for on this schooner I’m a sailor but amidst my dreams and seagull screams I’m in her arms again.
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Room 220
Tonight the city is
one person
engulfed by desolate prairie
suffocated by space
I, alone in a downtown
hotel full of people
distant,
individual –
a packaged unit
wanting to be open,
released and
strangely free
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Morale
I question change’s constancy
when every new day here seems stagnatingly same;
small people, small games
pettiness of pitiful power struggles
ranking, rated, reeking realities
made meanings-
size-
no self defence can thwart the
parade of backstabbing – penetrating
forked blades-
us and them with friends close and enemies, closer
cliché!
brotherly embrace and undifferentiated from malign chokehold
no need for air
stale gas fuels rumour
knocking wind from every sail
full stop into this hateful timelessness.
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Head
What am I doing here?
Casing around thoughts seem similar, same-
crew cut hair, clean shaven, dress pants, ironed shirt
but fitted feeling, not right
squirming – crushed beneath stagnant, petty atmosphere,
envy riddled environment
little people pushing pathetic shards of power…
What am I doing here? Don’t belong.
I don’t want to belong; desires;
wantings aren’t at all same
don’t want to play their game
Ideas in pincer formation
attack! ambition’s battlefield
fold the flag, cover the eyes,
wait it out, wait it out,
waiting… weeks of waiting
tired, sleepless, unknown-
war never makes sense
searching for inner peace
trying hard not to commit.
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Rebelling Taoist
Rivers of life shape one’s mind
etching their rigid gullies, patterns, canyons
gaps
like hot water poured over malleable Jell-O mound
…Lao Tse wrote never struggle against a current
river’s might will forever prevail
outlasting, never tiring
I, the spiritual nihilist,
salmon swims upstream, giving birth to more of its kind
dies – cycles back into
Sisyphus’ rolling pebbles – repeating –
remnants of giants…
I dream of a cognitive floodplain
that would come,
washing all of this away.
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Amnesia
Can you remember the days that we talked about
those moments we would never forget?
Simple dreams, now dated,
passé, complicated
turned sour with dispassion, regret;
youth’s wasted on the young they say
eternal rest, that rainy day
like buying last year’s fashions on sale
try not to be bought
until tiger’s tail’s caught
and if time, then why not try “save the whale”?
Can you remember pleasure before it was measured?
Can you remember that special place in the sun
when you dreamed of tomorrow,
unaware that time’s borrowed,
before we knew that we were under the gun?
Life now seems so senseless with its barriers and fences
and neighbours who just can’t get along
Wish I could remember the days we remembered
before all our minds were gone.
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Identity
Feel so insecure about my present personality
Freud throws my thoughts during wardrobe selection
The meds the doctor’s been prescribing my mind lately
Puts me in such self absorbed disarray
Can’t get it up, my fantasies in the shower
Voice doesn’t carry the way I had hoped
Terrified by the coming of tomorrow
don’t understand a damned thing about now
Metacognition stalling all my ambition – diversion
Jung’s symbols interpreted so many ways
I guess for me normal’s a little bit crazy
I wouldn’t know though because it’s all I know.
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Meandering Thoughts
Thought I’d use all this time
in prison to write – never imagined
I’d be the keeper of the keys – the Boss,
screw, pig;
…Maximum Security:
this small world with razor wire and monitored chain-link equator,
grey and red cinder block and brick walls, lead gravity,
changing how I see people and, somehow,
pushed the words away from my pen’s tip.
Mixed feelings of pity, indifference, hate –
a mission I believed in now wanes to the
level of its employment within these confined ranges
I try to look beyond the facades, flesh stained with
angry tattoo ink, worm-like scars,
to see what began as is presently beginning
in my wife’s own womb
but, the harder I look, the less I believe in innocence
we may all be lost;
Yet the contrasting environment maintains
some sort of balance: the fence and brick
offset by surrounding marshland inhabitants: horned owl, coyotes,
hawks, gophers, red-tipped blackbirds…
all imprisoned though possibly free.
Edmonton AB, Canada
Untitled
Do not want my thoughts engulfed
in the pool of ebony which
controls this black and white world.
Razor wire encompasses each day
I cross its border at each shift’s end
But, as with most 21st Century careers
a bit of flesh gets torn, left behind
my compassion channels through chinks of
chain link, cold and weathered grey
re-shaping to penetrate each diamond shaped mould.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Youth
Vivid memory invigorating mind
the type of memory you can feel and smell
dream re-occurring
Slovakian train station waiting room of my youth
crisp Autumn air full of Carpathian vigour and Eastern European odours
peaty smoke, wet and wilted yellow leaves
worn wooden slats on rigid bench, posters and schedules cluttered
with words which once made sense, now, muddle of
harsh consonants, Slavic vowels and rigid accents
arranged aesthetically in an appealing bouquet
My bohemian youth of ratty rucksacks and red wine
experiencing the wonderful buffet of life
now moving to its next course and, with
all new beginnings, sorrow for the other ending.
I want to be entombed within this memories moment,
the joy of its being, circulated in the haiku, simplicity
undragged by Time’s hurried pincers
disallowing us from retracing the footsteps of our journey;
youth.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
First Child[
Her womb is rounding, its gentle, pale moon curve
a sacred mountain, anticipating immortality of union
spawned from primitive pagan practices, still instinctual
light azure veins nourishing network of knitted streams, swelling ground waters;
protruding nib of navel, subtle reminders of conception’s
beauty, wonder surpasses limiting languages descriptive dexterity-
something neither noun nor verb,
a conjunction of metaphorical sorts
first step, undetermined journey,
road conditions unknown nor notion of duration, difficulty, ease
purity shaping with unknown – shape etched,
details evolving from beginning fleshy mound to spiritual masterpiece;
I observe breath enter and exit in rhythmic cycles
and wait with Nature, a piece of the parts,
greater whole
Year of the Horse, its chariot containing Fortune’s princess or prince,
dominion over our hearts.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Lessons
Youth consumed by lessons life may teach
Interludes by a god unseen, but bow to its presence in everything
Adult life we practice and preach
Interpretations of what was taught, preparations for eternal rot
Nostalgia and ideals crowd the way
Making most the moments missed, lamenting latent lost states of bliss.
Edmonton, AB., Canada
Book
Life, story detached-
bound-
bound to read the same from
cover to cover, open, close, open;
never new commencement of opening lines…
no character chooses to be cast
in particular volume of genealogy-
yet pages, bound, fate, bound
bound to be recycled, regurgitated, re-read
Are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern really dead?
Change cover art, edition, text type
paper’s pulp proportions
“all that remains the same is change”?
Change; its own tale told over and over
but fresh in each premiere
-myths of revision/proofreading;
I will die. I am dead. I am born again.
Memories live on like Jesus, past volumes, testaments;
still, may we skip from 18 to 4 to 39?
Stop. Re-visit time?
Present is not a bookmark,
a corner page folded
bookmark is not god, though seeming so-
I shave my head and watch hair grow
I pour my coffee, it grows cold
I see green puncture receding snow
I bake bread which in time grows mould
No matter emotions, the love, the hate, the laughter, the sadness, the bland and innate
it is all written, on a page
absorbed, scripted
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Fare
Taxi meter
LED numbers turn the page
always at a decimal point as if to suggest –
presence printed prior to press
pressing forward
frequenting present, mind wanders
jumps ahead wondering how
many pages remain
flick backward, no passage re-reading
same second sequence – still
too old for re-living childhood;
always too something
diverted, distracted
splinters of past refract from
realizing light opened by
courses cut
more wary of waves at gunwales level
than course tacking
wondering if the fare is affordable.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
CPR
Sitting here
congealing amidst the posers
slot self by trying not to fit in
seems that we’re all doing the same things,
trying to be different
thinking of limitless combinations that
appear to be no more than the same shapes re-arranged
endless shades of grey all resemble a source
being colourblind is not an excuse for not seeing
freeze frame the heartbeat in a moment
-no pulse-
that’s the flat line death which traps me in the now
the cessation of blood flow
the decay suspended
the whatever.
Edmonton, AB. Canada
Shits and Giggles
Over in the corner
lies a screaming kid
forgotten reminder
of some guy she did
draining another bottle
glazed, glassy eyes
this shit’ll have to do
‘til she can score and get high
chorus
Shits and giggles
what a fuckin’ mess
shits and giggles
sweet distress
shits and giggles
The writing’s clear
on all of their faces
no bloody hope
in these worn out places
handouts come, tokens
from the middle class
needle exchange centers
couple of coins when they pass
chorus
Parliament’s puppets
International CEOs
No idea
of where the ragged people go
forever pursuing
their prime obsession
of selling souls
and of their repression
chorus
Million dollar men
in Armani suits
hide deep dark secrets
in their motor’s boot
keys to the city
keeping some doors locked
hand in one pocket
with pistol cocked
chorus
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Paxil & the Brave New World
Put me on Paxil;
chemical conditioned, brave new psychosomatic world
no smile, no frown
no up, no down
brain saturated – soma coma –
serotonin increase/rebate
but I can’t get it up anymore
for making love, to masturbate without Viagra
treat a bad day or a few
with an addict solution from pharmaceutical slew
anxiety, depression – seeking absolution
sick now of this prescribed emancipation
graduate down in 5 mg denominations
now my mind has moments of rage in exchange
and thoughts of liberation with monoxide gas or gun,
my brain from skull-cage
[we’re sorry, we hate to interrupt, but it’s against the law to jump off this bridge – you’ll just have to kill yourself somewhere else, a tourist might see you and we wouldn’t want that! I’m just doing my job you know, so say “uncle” and we’ll take you to the mental health zoo – force feed you mind melting chemicals, ‘til even the outside world looks good!]Ó
bones bounce beneath my flesh
flesh flies as sails in ferocious gale
far more torn up than before this particular journey
began – shredded, frayed – weaken strands unravel, snapping synaptic, alone –
bones scarred - windlass whipping, lash notched mast-
Those ashore, abroad, from their fortified lighthouses – dim and fog engulfed-
encourage to wait out the storm
seeing not burning
red skies that torture from dusk to morn
feel not the frigid mid day sun cast in concrete skies
and sensation of self feeling as two-
forced to separate apart;
not a smoker but now want to start
isolated fox hole in no-man’s land,
no support can help, simply the self;
to deal with it: conscious thought is aware of
temporary time – the perspective – the only resistance
tortured by whims
social stigma and sense
of suckerhood; Shut Up! Be Happy!
my atheist soul is a tornado of all this that is unreal – powerful
yet destructive – bound to burn itself into a breeze and dissipate
I wait…and wait…and wait
I try to create, to sedate –
to fight off that which aggravates
and urges to self mutilate – smooth out like
televisions hypnotic convex Technicolor windshield-
I try to think but think that thinking’s lead to this sense of sinking,
isolation, to this prescribed emancipation
21st Century Frankenstein with my
man made brain, my man made
thoughts, my man made
mortgage mentality and expectations –
no great man, just a freak
doesn’t matter if anyone listens when
I speak; it really doesn’t.
remember the bliss of being driven crazy,
so different wringing this psychotic cocktail from my mind:
A, B, C, vitamin DÓ
not seeking escape or fair fight,
no tunnel with beacon of pure white light
just want to exist a constant inside of my skin
rather than this state of flux: outside and in
rid myself of this gateway
to Huxley’s Brave New World
return me to the savage and
rawness I was
prior to Paxil, prior to hell and
prescribed equilibrium’s potent withdrawal.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
A Sign
Sign said: “Peace through Yoga
summer special now
one month of unlimited classes
$70.00 – WOW”
Price on peace – inner, act, outer, release
single’s souls married to this estranged world
breathing in, blowing out
breathless…
that that is is that that is not
I can be just what I am by being
what I’m not
simply simplify…
married man redundant in single’s world
dangerous notions of happiness
not relevant to myself, so I
must make sense to everyone else
psychiatrist summer special – WOW!
Price on peace – interac, odour, re-lease
motionless movement on a mound
breathe in water, blow out bubbles
drown…
Edmonton, AB., Canada
Solidarity
Awareness – struggle against selfishness
part of a world –
water: 70% inside shared by
wave, water lily, cloud, carp
minerals nourish snow capped mountains, me
self-lessness is not conformity
neither live nor dead,
future, past
part of the present – knowing no
first nor last
part of, but never apart
manifest in moment
never elsewhere
desire of ideals
manifests despair – all that can be now is –
the trees are my lungs,
lentils my hair
and I am you, you are me
both are one and we
Edmonton, AB., Canada
Thinking a Thought
subconscious excavates your
fossilised words
embedded in the bedrock of my brain
of how you could never be
called crazy in a world so insane
things I never dreamed of
form future fixations
breath, another release valve
of pent-up frustration
sour winds mix with beauty
vertical cracks mock horizontal fragilities
see it all along the vortex
revealing your fossilised words
senseless scents subjugate senses
isotopes and smell
shouting them outward
to sour winds mixed with beauty,
memories, my brain.
Edmonton, AB., Canada
Fall
Flocks of Geese fly
underneath November’s muddy sky
like a thousand popped umbrellas
but there’s no escape
for you and me
discontented wintry
land that lost its wonder
long ago
ice and snow
inevitably, succession to
summer celebrations
two more alone in
this thirty million plus nation
afraid of those things that
we might not do.
Edmonton, AB. Canada
"Killers"
Ever notice how people don't really Look all that different after having Killed somebody? Or is it that everyone looks Like a killer? Some folks will say stuff about "soulless eyes" but I can't see it; We're so used to screaming That it has become a common form Of communication, not that anyone really is communicating these days - just a lot of talk Perhaps we're de-sensitised, like from listening to too much Wendy O. Williams and the Plasmatics (or was that just me?) in their youth - Where are they now anyway, the Plasmatics, or were they just a bizarre dream? Think I saw some of their stuff in HMV... Or, maybe, it's the only way, at times, to relate… imagine that; Breasts - Wendy O. always bore her breasts - Was that duct tape on her nipples, or the censor's ink? - So long ago that it was on vinyl...
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Ballad of a Dysfunctional Truck Battery, Jan. 1st, 2005
New Years Day Winter's days, dark heart Thirty below Can't get my truck to start - so much snow Sealing the earth but no sign of seals- Spark dead from leaving a light on... No resolutions Just wait, see and try Hold on to something; turn over, turn over! Grasping, GI Joe Kung Fu grip, watching time fly Days have been draining me Killing me, like Cold on my battery's cells; turn over, turn over! Seeking out the spark - searching for the light- That makes this suicide Life make sense - But it's bullshit like abstract art: Think you get it then You don't Senseless piece of crap Or profound sensual ness Self-designated nihilist Self-indulgent fool Unfeeling masochist Numb - leaf, rancid brown, left over from Autumn's rancorous conclusion Grey river is frozen, Lao Tzu now a study in cryogenics, Slum with the mulch near the bottom The current - turn over, turn over! - Passes by The world outside... everything Lies outside- everything lies - Lying with the mulch, cream Skimmed from the petina top Persistent in pasteurization of passion, moist and steaming, Creamed by the speed, sucked in, down, Splattered like a bug on someone else's Windscreen - because Today it's winter, thirty below, All is some state of water, me, And my truck won't start turn over, turn over!
Edmonton, AB., Canada"Rodent (media, we get what we deserve)"
I've seen a rat's eyes Bleach out from the Negative of day And the positive exposure of night Luminescence bleeding from black Brazen, not limited to corners anymore; Smiling newspaper photo, political, Staining unsuspecting fingers with print- Carbon, like all that we are after Being burned beyond resemblance, after The water disperses as steam- dissipating White- Move toward the light motherfucker, Move toward the light! This is what you wanted, In what you believed On what you bet your life Throat scratched from gnawing on lead pipes and cinder blocks, Screeching radio static, from the Neck, never the gut Awaiting the irony of a poison never Feasted upon - left in the corners with the traps On trays, out of the way Never frequent there, in the ghetto, anymore, Out in the open, Common and domesticated No one even notices your tail anymore, It flicks and snaps Like a whip, a trap Like a camera shutter In the negative of day Or positive exposure of night; Call you rodent now, not Rat, remembering our manners.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
"Peek-a-boo With the Moon"
No one likes to see your dark Side - that's why man's not been To the moon since 1969 Too much yang and not enough yin In the world today No balance Leaves us all dizzy to the Point that we're silly Afraid of all the wrong things And too stupid to see the Things staring us in the face Or we do see it then turn Away - if I can't see you Then you can't see me Peek-a-boo with our Conscience to suit The moment Then beat Ourselves up for letting Ourselves down, screaming "who the fuck am I?" And asking "why?" Until we're hoarse Or drink ourselves to death, Click on the candy box And watch reality TV. Simply because that all seems Truer to the script than The stage from which we're hanging: I will not think bad thoughts I will not think bad thoughts I will not think I will not.
Edmonton, AB., Canada
“
“Winter of Discontent”
Canadian version of
the American dream;
Idealism turns to disillusionment,
then goes mainstream
too much coffee consumed
from Starbuck’s and Tim’s
Snow angels in January
when winter’s wearing you thin
This cabin fever
is getting to me
like a 50’s bomb shelter
waiting out World War Three
cheeks are red, mind is dead
finding it hard just to get out of bed
Edmonton, AB, Canada
“Some Kind of Addiction”
Went down Whyte Avenue the other day
the swan song slush of winter
don’t know what was nagging at me,
aggravating like a splinter
sometimes I get stuck inside myself
silly cerebral contemplations
was this the “what” I wanted to be
or the fuel of my frustration?
- kerosene conscience….
burning like a Buddhist monk
in petrol protestations
but only half-hearted in my beliefs
half-speed motivations, anyhow-
Stacey was a friend of mine,
devouted to the Mormon religion
I couldn’t believe in any of that stuff
anymore than I could believe in television
I wish I had a shred of her faith
make reason from this masochisim
fuck, I’d settle for having hope
in any sort of ‘ism
- couldn’t contemplate life coffee free…
paradise promising evangelists
movie stars and top 10 lists
Dr. Phil, Atkins, Martha Stewart, Donald Trump and the sacred cow-
Out of touch and beside myself
and all the books that I’ve been reading
the goals I’ve set, chance and regret
and expectations exceeding
all amount to nothing more
than a poor sense of direction
and the sinking feeling when you realize
that it’s the wrong stuff you’ve been protecting
- Lao Tzu, the unspecific travel guide…
Karl Jung and his beef with Freud
Chicken Soup for the Soul of the Unemployed
Johnny hating Joey;
“We’re a Happy Family”, “Hey, We’re the Ramones”…
Down on Whyte the other day
Coffee shop conversations
everyone eyeing everyone else
searching for the next sensation
Spring will come and another round
of magazines and sorted fictions
and I’ll keep coming here
like some kind of addiction, but alone…
Edmonton AB., Canada
“Drive on”
crumpled newspaper
twitching black and white dusty
like a creature in between
life and road kill – rat, raccoon –
salt and sand grit and grey
black asphalt makes winter
a memory waiting washing
warm rains of spring
return of summer’s ebony black
and fresh tar, rubber and radiant
drive on through
drive on by
drive on.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Day
Ever have one of those days when no matter what the time it always feels like late afternoon? When late afternoon finally comes around, you think “finally” so you go to chow down on a po’boy with sweet potato fries and a bottle of Stella on the side, eyes looking at the waitress young enough to be your student and you want to give some kind of fucked up carnal lesson, cause, hell, she’s at least twenty four or twenty five. So you sit there, sip the beer, fingers get sticky from the sauce slipping off the bun and greasy from the sweet potato fries that you know will be seeping out your pores until morning when you wake up with that phlegm-feeling you get after tuckin’ into a deep fried meal, and glass of beer ebbs a satirical coolness and teases with its texture of round, perfect glass. Waitress brings over the cheque and your fortune cookie for desert, cause you’re stuffed- even if you could afford something after all that. The cookie snaps and crumbles into two sections and several insignificant crumbs. Pull out the piece of white paper that has printed: “someone you know is waiting for your praise”. My first thought goes to God, but figure it can’t be him or her ‘cause I don’t believe in that kind of stuff, so I reckon it’s got to be someone else. I get home, the dogs great me at the door with their sloppy tongues and shake’n’shrapnel fur and I get it. So, I fill their bowls, give them a tussle on the head, they seem happy and eat while I need to take a shit, amazed at the speed of the grease lightening those fries must be because I already went once today in the morning, and here we go again. So I sit and read the paper about the shit and chaos that Hurricane Katrina is causing in Louisiana and how George Bush doesn’t give a fuck about the poor folk washed away ‘cos they’re black and I figure he must have enough cannon fodder in Iraq already and figure he must not be planning another invasion, therefore is leaving them to their anarchy. That’s it, I shit and do all the post shit stuff and thank the god in whom I don’t believe that it’s finally six o’clock because that’s what time it’s felt like all day.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Big Time Seller
Words & Music by Ed Meers
Strum pattern: \ \ \ V \ \ \ V (tempo approx. 96 bpm)
INTRO: G Em C D G Em C Am
Devil’s in the house of the rising sun
My friend went crazy then he bought a gun
now he counts to his final day
when he’ll blow his ex and kid away
it’s the craziest shit I’ve ever heard
she messed him bad, left him disturbed
after it happens he’ll make the news
then along comes another to fill his shoes
CHORUS:
Tragedy is a big time seller
sold by those that are just too yeller
to show anyone there’s beauty in this world
empires built on pain and sufferin’
but it’s all take, they ain’t given nothin’
Blind you from the beauty in this world
In the middle of genocide and useless slaughter
My wife bore me a beautiful daughter
didn’t know where Rwanda was
she sits and giggles just because
life to her is what she sees
almost feel bad that she’ll learn to read
I cherish her innocence every day
feel sad she won’t always think this way
Tragedy is a big time seller
sold by those that are just too yeller
to show anyone there’s beauty in this world
empires built on pain and sufferin’
but it’s all take, they ain’t given nothin’
Blind you from the beauty in this world
I like Seamus Heaney, my wife’s passion for flowers
that patch of green by the office towers
people who are in a festive mood
walkin’ round my house in the nude
life is full of little pleasures
no need to search for buried treasure
security’s holdin’ my daughter’s hand
and walkin’ past the new-seller’s stand
Tragedy is a big time seller
sold by those that are just too yeller
to show anyone there’s beauty in this world
empires built on pain and sufferin’
but it’s all take, they ain’t given nothin’
Blind you from the beauty in this world
If all you read is the Star or Sun
Then I understand why you’d buy a gun
with all those crazies in this world
it’s enough to make your toenails curl
somethin’ other can be had
in contrast to this world gone mad
smell a flower or make a date
or if it’s cold old winter then masturbate
Sex and skin is a big time seller
sold by those that are just too yeller
to show anyone there’s beauty in this world
empires built on exploitation
and measuremental exaggeration
Blind you from the beauty in this world
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Thought’s Preservation
Sick of myself
shards of the mosaic that
make up my mind slice
through thoughts – want to shatter
this shit in my cerebellum with a 9mm parabellum
hang them from the end of a rope
watch them swing like one-winged gnats
but to shoot the shit will send splinters flying selfishly
I want to kill the cancer, not the host
I’ve not endured this far, crafted this piece with
its poisoned parts, to let it win
under my skin,
the easy way out – the simple solution – the concrete
conclusion is at hand all of the time
but life will end one day, so I’m making may stand – twisting life’s balls in my hand
and when it gets sick of me it can finish me off
but until that time, I’ve got time by the throat
and will keep squeezing in all that I can.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
"Clay" Everyone here seems so calmwhile I feel like screamingnightmares and terror cramp my mindwhile everyone else seems tobe happily dreamingyou can’t dress up your mental state
in convenient cloaks of fashionno release, no releaseno inner peace for my passionsthe books that I’ve read, volume uponthe nextall make sense but I can’t sense itat all – the exhausted head thatwakesto full alert when put to bedand drags like time coated in sandpaperpulled over coarse pinesanding the finish on a lidthat one day will bid a final good-nightsleepy dust meshing with our ownimmersed in clay – the sameover-fired motherfucker that feels like cracking now.
Edmonton, AB. Canada
Wetland Hunter
lick your lips
moist, muddy
tongue like a towel
O la flam rouge
O Cameroon
O Khmer Rouge
O bloody
eyes opened wide
swallowing whole
the mottled colours
molten and smiling
O brother
O bother
O Mother
O Father
Lick, lick, lick
life on the tundra
tick, tick , tick, click
safety snap off
O Sadness
O Saddam
O Sodom,
Gomorrah
sting from the tears
the singing mocked laughter
lick, lick, tick
Lick, lick , lick, click
one more in the chamber
l’hiver
sans blanche,
Jamias, peut jamais
Nager! Nager!
visage sur la lac
beach salt sand
grit and cramp
O water
O winter
O splinter
O hinterland
ducks in a row
webbed foot flopping
down dropping
shotgun echo
dead.
Vignette of a Youth Yesterday
Patchouli scented, cigarettes,
A Marxist manifesto
Surplus shirts and red beret
Taking on the world
Idealist iconoclasts
with the best of intentions
petitioning the peasantry
challenging convention
Tolstoy over cheap chardonnay
nighttime never ending
minimum wage and mortgage free
this is how we were…
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Life Obsession
Lester laid himself to rest
with a shotgun whose shell he ate
a man married for fifty plus years
dead at 88
no one knows what was at play
what wisdom made his mind
knowing not selfishness or pain
of the widow he left- what was hers to find
Everyone I know now, vibrant and young
want to live forever
Hunter S. Thompson and Ulysses
lost legacies and lessons
Kurt Cobain
pills for depression
life obsession.
Edmonton, AB. Canada
Ó From “Soup is Good Food” by the Dead Kennedys off of the Frankenchrist LP
Ó From Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
fuckheads have taken over
selling sacred
selling right
selling rights
society clears its collective throat
phlegm flashes
stifling scream, hack-hack-hacking up lung
stifling scream
life choked out, brains lack oxygen
disillusion never makes the ballots “X’
losing conciseness
conscience lost
no one was a Nazi
no one voted Bush
no one stopped to ask “why”
we all wake up and proclaim
how we’ve no clue as to how things became this way
- one day it was just there! – just following orders jeffe!
legacy prevents total awakening
grammar eclipses content,
make it popular, extracting incisors
mass market meanings so
they can be worn, oblivious
to their tags: MADE IN INDONESIA
concealed beneath cotton collars
against extended necks
global peace transubstantiates like a Catholics cracker
into global piece
leaving the moral majority with their faith;
uncomfortable enough to believe in their enemies,
but not so much to get off their couches
“let them fear so long as they obey” is the mantra
of Pax Americana
McDonald’s, the only menu worldwide –
order from the new order
send in the clowns
send in the fucking clowns
send in the murderous, dominating fucking clowns!
because everything now is a bad joke – cliché, I know –
but this now my language is –
for the fuckheads have taken over
and we are all bowed, labelled and non-juxtaposed – prone,
naked in the new emperor’s old clothes,
subservient, safely behind
our circus ring’s walls.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Life of a Spark
hands reaching beyond grasp of flesh choked bones desperate, stretching, rubber dimension elongating diaphanous, retracting –snapping feeling, a flash… then still stings freshly crisp electricity mating in limited life span brief sparks flare, longing to unite into permanent flame but what stability, what continuous being is shaped through evolution? jigsaw thoughts scattering into one ironic battle engaged between heart and mind blind to time, deserting in bands of mixing light rationalising an irrational creature leads only to misunderstanding in a world where truth is a failing hypothesis to justify our selves, rather than to simply be.
Edmonton, AB., Canada
haiku #1
spawning salmon shakes
icy Autumn river flows
end and renewal
Seward, Alaska, USA
haiku # 2
gold dog’s fur dances
blossom breeze of summer eve
run with dangling tongue
Edmonton, AB., Canada
haiku # 3
fat orange fish darts
amidst broad summer lilies
canopy from sun
Edmonton, AB., Canada
haiku # 4
mosquitoes needles
summer blood supped up quickly
hand clasps flesh red sting
Edmonton, AB., Canada
haiku # 5
white goat’s bell jingles
through the cherry blossom breeze
in stony meadow
Edmonton, AB., Canada
Untitled
Mine is the world
where buzzing neon signs
impersonate moon, making due
cold weight of night contrasts
tributaries of grey breath etching blackness
retching soul away
leaving uniform casings
void of igniting spark
stumbling as children might
but with none of their hope
so sick of being mislead by mirrors
their mocking clarity transformed
I despise their interpretations
their icy, glass laughing
a mockery of all that really is
through its hypothetical was…
there is ignorance enveloping
any tentative freshness,
constricting as a beguiling Biblical serpent
replenish the earth, and subdue it
but our empire of self is fallen, disguised naked, as we subdue our selves in wheels of social machinery dependent on other’s spinning and, when replenishment is attempted we simply end up drunk.
Edmonton, AB., Canada
Unmarked Journey
Seems no matter how long you incubate your dreams
they still come out half-baked ideas
told and trained, that which is to be wanted:
wife, white picket fence, your career
but questions, chaos, acne, hair
emerged in those adolescent years
manifest themselves in the frame of a man
but underneath remains a boy and his fears
funny, eh , when you think
about the script we attempt to follow?
is it any wonder, that, when we wonder,
we feel not fulfilled, but scared and hollow?
Reflecting on this life’s journey
where the signposts send you the wrong way
where we’re so damned concerned about surviving tomorrow
we forget what we’re about here today
The sun and moon spotlights us upon a path
but we drive our eyes into the dark
or reminisce on a distant star
that died a million years after it made its spark
no wonder we’re empty, looking to space
for the questions that leave us lost
constantly troubled by the prices we pay
on a life’s value that can’t be counted by cost
I wish I could turn to the TV
to somehow escape from my mind
but I know that my wishes can’t come from in there
a falling star of another kind
I know I’m eighty percent water
and don’t know how to swim
looking out through my eyes,
hanging for life on their rims
but warm tears are coming
like a mothering tide
and my grip feels it’s slipping
washing me over the side
and I’m drowning….
Seems no matter how long you incubate your dreams
they still come out half-baked ideas
told and trained, that which is to be wanted:
wife, white picket fence, your career
where is that boy now?
did they send him to his room?
is he sun
or the man in the moon?
seems sad when you think
about the script which we follow?
is it any wonder when we wonder,
by our dreams we are swallowed?
Edmonton, AB, Canada
WTC: 11/09/01
Took out the two legs of a giant
in the land of liberty
the morning rush hour broken
in central N.Y.C.
The people look to reason
trying to understand it in some way
wondering if we’ve lost forever
the “ordinary day”
now the people are lighting candles,
embracing in the dark
while amidst the mangled rubble
rescuers pursue hope’s fading spark
and in backrooms are our leaders
with vengeance on their minds
contemplating how to counter,
to return the deaths in kind
and I sit here in my basement
out of tune from my guitar’s six strings
and with them my dischorded thoughts
wonder what the future brings
I’m wishing that the answer
was to “turn the other cheek”
but so unreal is that white dove
with the olive branch in its beak
So where can this leave us?
tell me what does it all mean?
Is this the 21st Century,
carnage, terror and screams?
Are we digging the foxholes
that are soon to be our graves?
following the cries for vengeance
lead by the war mongering knaves
David slew Goliath,
the beanstalk’s giant felled by Jack
but this time it was history’s hero
hit hard in the N.Y.C. attack
Over 6000 perished
that needed not die that day
the innocent, the common ones
trapped in ideologies way
What can fill one so full of hatred
that it becomes their life in full?
what golden fleece blocks the light of reason
blinding once open eyes with its wool?
and tell me what religion
calls justice, these means to an end?
what happened to “love thy enemy”
treat him as if he were a friend?
Took out the two legs of a giant
in the land of liberty
the morning rush hour broken
in central N.Y.C.
The people pray to reason
wishing hope from this decay
in a world that’s lost forever
the “ordinary day”
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Insomnia
Sleeplessness, ever ending
a coffee stain spreading
permeating fibrous cloth cover, saturate,
halting at edge; 90° of
dropping to nothingness
porcelain chip, pure white, porous,
clay grains clinging
observes horizontal body from brief expanse
neither half empty nor half full, eternal, existential –
silty
refusing stubbornly to synapse, cognate, disband
clusters of thought
possessing nightmares, distorting senses,
manufacturing fear, restless, discontented
bored
product of thought become disenchantment,
mass produced in kilns of
passion and hatred,
liquid
then solid
tepid, cool-
soluble beyond hopeful recognition
introduced to self in shrapnel
shards of polished silver slivers
viewed behind weary lens
- a fish –
· snapping perceptions into fairytales happily ever after and end.
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Yellowhead through Saskatchewan
Clouds billow as shoaling silver herring
sky,
azure over tiger skin prairie
tripod towers arc along
arrow straight road
amidst discarded flint heads
etched by rough ancient hands
and bison ghosts;
lines hum silent, internal, electric
their iron, cold cast legs
marking time, marking the way
engine hums off key
past retreating further behind
narrowing into tunnel’s darkness.
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
To Tie the Knot or Not, She Asked
How many more pagan tears
will sacrifice themselves upon teguments
of slate-grey slabs, unyielding stone,
to ornery gods of happiness, love?
Rocky fists, rough, as they fall upon
worry furrowed faces
as wasteland winds raping prairie
of fertile earthen grains,
excuses,
nature’s secret dark shadow,
burrowing,
buried
until Autumn’s brittle tawny straws shudder-
a matron who’s shawl is no longer new,
memories of warmth-
snapping, silent, feathery fall
swept, bound into bruised golden balls
by bailer’s turbine blades, choking twine, braided;
stored for feed, made to manure
continuing cycles of seasons and
sacrificial sheep.
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Away
White Vs part worn wooden bow
As gulls, they haunt the waves
the concrete skies and misty eyes
parting further from the quay
Guided by fortune’s pilot
As the skipper hums a jig
creaks and salt-rushing landslides
brushing o’er the blocks and rigs
How well I do remember
that grim damp Autumn morn
felt the morning shiver
before the day’s sunlight was born
heart filled with dark foreboding
my belly fastly felt the swells
tepid tear upon my eyelid
paused awhile before it fell
My thoughts began their roving of my love left on the shore The face that was my lighthouse pleading “go to sea no more” though cried did she I put to sea for on this schooner I’m a sailor but amidst my dreams and seagull screams I’m in her arms again.
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Room 220
Tonight the city is
one person
engulfed by desolate prairie
suffocated by space
I, alone in a downtown
hotel full of people
distant,
individual –
a packaged unit
wanting to be open,
released and
strangely free
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Morale
I question change’s constancy
when every new day here seems stagnatingly same;
small people, small games
pettiness of pitiful power struggles
ranking, rated, reeking realities
made meanings-
size-
no self defence can thwart the
parade of backstabbing – penetrating
forked blades-
us and them with friends close and enemies, closer
cliché!
brotherly embrace and undifferentiated from malign chokehold
no need for air
stale gas fuels rumour
knocking wind from every sail
full stop into this hateful timelessness.
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Head
What am I doing here?
Casing around thoughts seem similar, same-
crew cut hair, clean shaven, dress pants, ironed shirt
but fitted feeling, not right
squirming – crushed beneath stagnant, petty atmosphere,
envy riddled environment
little people pushing pathetic shards of power…
What am I doing here? Don’t belong.
I don’t want to belong; desires;
wantings aren’t at all same
don’t want to play their game
Ideas in pincer formation
attack! ambition’s battlefield
fold the flag, cover the eyes,
wait it out, wait it out,
waiting… weeks of waiting
tired, sleepless, unknown-
war never makes sense
searching for inner peace
trying hard not to commit.
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Rebelling Taoist
Rivers of life shape one’s mind
etching their rigid gullies, patterns, canyons
gaps
like hot water poured over malleable Jell-O mound
…Lao Tse wrote never struggle against a current
river’s might will forever prevail
outlasting, never tiring
I, the spiritual nihilist,
salmon swims upstream, giving birth to more of its kind
dies – cycles back into
Sisyphus’ rolling pebbles – repeating –
remnants of giants…
I dream of a cognitive floodplain
that would come,
washing all of this away.
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Amnesia
Can you remember the days that we talked about
those moments we would never forget?
Simple dreams, now dated,
passé, complicated
turned sour with dispassion, regret;
youth’s wasted on the young they say
eternal rest, that rainy day
like buying last year’s fashions on sale
try not to be bought
until tiger’s tail’s caught
and if time, then why not try “save the whale”?
Can you remember pleasure before it was measured?
Can you remember that special place in the sun
when you dreamed of tomorrow,
unaware that time’s borrowed,
before we knew that we were under the gun?
Life now seems so senseless with its barriers and fences
and neighbours who just can’t get along
Wish I could remember the days we remembered
before all our minds were gone.
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Identity
Feel so insecure about my present personality
Freud throws my thoughts during wardrobe selection
The meds the doctor’s been prescribing my mind lately
Puts me in such self absorbed disarray
Can’t get it up, my fantasies in the shower
Voice doesn’t carry the way I had hoped
Terrified by the coming of tomorrow
don’t understand a damned thing about now
Metacognition stalling all my ambition – diversion
Jung’s symbols interpreted so many ways
I guess for me normal’s a little bit crazy
I wouldn’t know though because it’s all I know.
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Meandering Thoughts
Thought I’d use all this time
in prison to write – never imagined
I’d be the keeper of the keys – the Boss,
screw, pig;
…Maximum Security:
this small world with razor wire and monitored chain-link equator,
grey and red cinder block and brick walls, lead gravity,
changing how I see people and, somehow,
pushed the words away from my pen’s tip.
Mixed feelings of pity, indifference, hate –
a mission I believed in now wanes to the
level of its employment within these confined ranges
I try to look beyond the facades, flesh stained with
angry tattoo ink, worm-like scars,
to see what began as is presently beginning
in my wife’s own womb
but, the harder I look, the less I believe in innocence
we may all be lost;
Yet the contrasting environment maintains
some sort of balance: the fence and brick
offset by surrounding marshland inhabitants: horned owl, coyotes,
hawks, gophers, red-tipped blackbirds…
all imprisoned though possibly free.
Edmonton AB, Canada
Untitled
Do not want my thoughts engulfed
in the pool of ebony which
controls this black and white world.
Razor wire encompasses each day
I cross its border at each shift’s end
But, as with most 21st Century careers
a bit of flesh gets torn, left behind
my compassion channels through chinks of
chain link, cold and weathered grey
re-shaping to penetrate each diamond shaped mould.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Youth
Vivid memory invigorating mind
the type of memory you can feel and smell
dream re-occurring
Slovakian train station waiting room of my youth
crisp Autumn air full of Carpathian vigour and Eastern European odours
peaty smoke, wet and wilted yellow leaves
worn wooden slats on rigid bench, posters and schedules cluttered
with words which once made sense, now, muddle of
harsh consonants, Slavic vowels and rigid accents
arranged aesthetically in an appealing bouquet
My bohemian youth of ratty rucksacks and red wine
experiencing the wonderful buffet of life
now moving to its next course and, with
all new beginnings, sorrow for the other ending.
I want to be entombed within this memories moment,
the joy of its being, circulated in the haiku, simplicity
undragged by Time’s hurried pincers
disallowing us from retracing the footsteps of our journey;
youth.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
First Child[
Her womb is rounding, its gentle, pale moon curve
a sacred mountain, anticipating immortality of union
spawned from primitive pagan practices, still instinctual
light azure veins nourishing network of knitted streams, swelling ground waters;
protruding nib of navel, subtle reminders of conception’s
beauty, wonder surpasses limiting languages descriptive dexterity-
something neither noun nor verb,
a conjunction of metaphorical sorts
first step, undetermined journey,
road conditions unknown nor notion of duration, difficulty, ease
purity shaping with unknown – shape etched,
details evolving from beginning fleshy mound to spiritual masterpiece;
I observe breath enter and exit in rhythmic cycles
and wait with Nature, a piece of the parts,
greater whole
Year of the Horse, its chariot containing Fortune’s princess or prince,
dominion over our hearts.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Lessons
Youth consumed by lessons life may teach
Interludes by a god unseen, but bow to its presence in everything
Adult life we practice and preach
Interpretations of what was taught, preparations for eternal rot
Nostalgia and ideals crowd the way
Making most the moments missed, lamenting latent lost states of bliss.
Edmonton, AB., Canada
Book
Life, story detached-
bound-
bound to read the same from
cover to cover, open, close, open;
never new commencement of opening lines…
no character chooses to be cast
in particular volume of genealogy-
yet pages, bound, fate, bound
bound to be recycled, regurgitated, re-read
Are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern really dead?
Change cover art, edition, text type
paper’s pulp proportions
“all that remains the same is change”?
Change; its own tale told over and over
but fresh in each premiere
-myths of revision/proofreading;
I will die. I am dead. I am born again.
Memories live on like Jesus, past volumes, testaments;
still, may we skip from 18 to 4 to 39?
Stop. Re-visit time?
Present is not a bookmark,
a corner page folded
bookmark is not god, though seeming so-
I shave my head and watch hair grow
I pour my coffee, it grows cold
I see green puncture receding snow
I bake bread which in time grows mould
No matter emotions, the love, the hate, the laughter, the sadness, the bland and innate
it is all written, on a page
absorbed, scripted
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Fare
Taxi meter
LED numbers turn the page
always at a decimal point as if to suggest –
presence printed prior to press
pressing forward
frequenting present, mind wanders
jumps ahead wondering how
many pages remain
flick backward, no passage re-reading
same second sequence – still
too old for re-living childhood;
always too something
diverted, distracted
splinters of past refract from
realizing light opened by
courses cut
more wary of waves at gunwales level
than course tacking
wondering if the fare is affordable.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
CPR
Sitting here
congealing amidst the posers
slot self by trying not to fit in
seems that we’re all doing the same things,
trying to be different
thinking of limitless combinations that
appear to be no more than the same shapes re-arranged
endless shades of grey all resemble a source
being colourblind is not an excuse for not seeing
freeze frame the heartbeat in a moment
-no pulse-
that’s the flat line death which traps me in the now
the cessation of blood flow
the decay suspended
the whatever.
Edmonton, AB. Canada
Shits and Giggles
Over in the corner
lies a screaming kid
forgotten reminder
of some guy she did
draining another bottle
glazed, glassy eyes
this shit’ll have to do
‘til she can score and get high
chorus
Shits and giggles
what a fuckin’ mess
shits and giggles
sweet distress
shits and giggles
The writing’s clear
on all of their faces
no bloody hope
in these worn out places
handouts come, tokens
from the middle class
needle exchange centers
couple of coins when they pass
chorus
Parliament’s puppets
International CEOs
No idea
of where the ragged people go
forever pursuing
their prime obsession
of selling souls
and of their repression
chorus
Million dollar men
in Armani suits
hide deep dark secrets
in their motor’s boot
keys to the city
keeping some doors locked
hand in one pocket
with pistol cocked
chorus
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Paxil & the Brave New World
Put me on Paxil;
chemical conditioned, brave new psychosomatic world
no smile, no frown
no up, no down
brain saturated – soma coma –
serotonin increase/rebate
but I can’t get it up anymore
for making love, to masturbate without Viagra
treat a bad day or a few
with an addict solution from pharmaceutical slew
anxiety, depression – seeking absolution
sick now of this prescribed emancipation
graduate down in 5 mg denominations
now my mind has moments of rage in exchange
and thoughts of liberation with monoxide gas or gun,
my brain from skull-cage
[we’re sorry, we hate to interrupt, but it’s against the law to jump off this bridge – you’ll just have to kill yourself somewhere else, a tourist might see you and we wouldn’t want that! I’m just doing my job you know, so say “uncle” and we’ll take you to the mental health zoo – force feed you mind melting chemicals, ‘til even the outside world looks good!]Ó
bones bounce beneath my flesh
flesh flies as sails in ferocious gale
far more torn up than before this particular journey
began – shredded, frayed – weaken strands unravel, snapping synaptic, alone –
bones scarred - windlass whipping, lash notched mast-
Those ashore, abroad, from their fortified lighthouses – dim and fog engulfed-
encourage to wait out the storm
seeing not burning
red skies that torture from dusk to morn
feel not the frigid mid day sun cast in concrete skies
and sensation of self feeling as two-
forced to separate apart;
not a smoker but now want to start
isolated fox hole in no-man’s land,
no support can help, simply the self;
to deal with it: conscious thought is aware of
temporary time – the perspective – the only resistance
tortured by whims
social stigma and sense
of suckerhood; Shut Up! Be Happy!
my atheist soul is a tornado of all this that is unreal – powerful
yet destructive – bound to burn itself into a breeze and dissipate
I wait…and wait…and wait
I try to create, to sedate –
to fight off that which aggravates
and urges to self mutilate – smooth out like
televisions hypnotic convex Technicolor windshield-
I try to think but think that thinking’s lead to this sense of sinking,
isolation, to this prescribed emancipation
21st Century Frankenstein with my
man made brain, my man made
thoughts, my man made
mortgage mentality and expectations –
no great man, just a freak
doesn’t matter if anyone listens when
I speak; it really doesn’t.
remember the bliss of being driven crazy,
so different wringing this psychotic cocktail from my mind:
A, B, C, vitamin DÓ
not seeking escape or fair fight,
no tunnel with beacon of pure white light
just want to exist a constant inside of my skin
rather than this state of flux: outside and in
rid myself of this gateway
to Huxley’s Brave New World
return me to the savage and
rawness I was
prior to Paxil, prior to hell and
prescribed equilibrium’s potent withdrawal.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
A Sign
Sign said: “Peace through Yoga
summer special now
one month of unlimited classes
$70.00 – WOW”
Price on peace – inner, act, outer, release
single’s souls married to this estranged world
breathing in, blowing out
breathless…
that that is is that that is not
I can be just what I am by being
what I’m not
simply simplify…
married man redundant in single’s world
dangerous notions of happiness
not relevant to myself, so I
must make sense to everyone else
psychiatrist summer special – WOW!
Price on peace – interac, odour, re-lease
motionless movement on a mound
breathe in water, blow out bubbles
drown…
Edmonton, AB., Canada
Solidarity
Awareness – struggle against selfishness
part of a world –
water: 70% inside shared by
wave, water lily, cloud, carp
minerals nourish snow capped mountains, me
self-lessness is not conformity
neither live nor dead,
future, past
part of the present – knowing no
first nor last
part of, but never apart
manifest in moment
never elsewhere
desire of ideals
manifests despair – all that can be now is –
the trees are my lungs,
lentils my hair
and I am you, you are me
both are one and we
Edmonton, AB., Canada
Thinking a Thought
subconscious excavates your
fossilised words
embedded in the bedrock of my brain
of how you could never be
called crazy in a world so insane
things I never dreamed of
form future fixations
breath, another release valve
of pent-up frustration
sour winds mix with beauty
vertical cracks mock horizontal fragilities
see it all along the vortex
revealing your fossilised words
senseless scents subjugate senses
isotopes and smell
shouting them outward
to sour winds mixed with beauty,
memories, my brain.
Edmonton, AB., Canada
Fall
Flocks of Geese fly
underneath November’s muddy sky
like a thousand popped umbrellas
but there’s no escape
for you and me
discontented wintry
land that lost its wonder
long ago
ice and snow
inevitably, succession to
summer celebrations
two more alone in
this thirty million plus nation
afraid of those things that
we might not do.
Edmonton, AB. Canada
"Killers"
Ever notice how people don't really Look all that different after having Killed somebody? Or is it that everyone looks Like a killer? Some folks will say stuff about "soulless eyes" but I can't see it; We're so used to screaming That it has become a common form Of communication, not that anyone really is communicating these days - just a lot of talk Perhaps we're de-sensitised, like from listening to too much Wendy O. Williams and the Plasmatics (or was that just me?) in their youth - Where are they now anyway, the Plasmatics, or were they just a bizarre dream? Think I saw some of their stuff in HMV... Or, maybe, it's the only way, at times, to relate… imagine that; Breasts - Wendy O. always bore her breasts - Was that duct tape on her nipples, or the censor's ink? - So long ago that it was on vinyl...
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Ballad of a Dysfunctional Truck Battery, Jan. 1st, 2005
New Years Day Winter's days, dark heart Thirty below Can't get my truck to start - so much snow Sealing the earth but no sign of seals- Spark dead from leaving a light on... No resolutions Just wait, see and try Hold on to something; turn over, turn over! Grasping, GI Joe Kung Fu grip, watching time fly Days have been draining me Killing me, like Cold on my battery's cells; turn over, turn over! Seeking out the spark - searching for the light- That makes this suicide Life make sense - But it's bullshit like abstract art: Think you get it then You don't Senseless piece of crap Or profound sensual ness Self-designated nihilist Self-indulgent fool Unfeeling masochist Numb - leaf, rancid brown, left over from Autumn's rancorous conclusion Grey river is frozen, Lao Tzu now a study in cryogenics, Slum with the mulch near the bottom The current - turn over, turn over! - Passes by The world outside... everything Lies outside- everything lies - Lying with the mulch, cream Skimmed from the petina top Persistent in pasteurization of passion, moist and steaming, Creamed by the speed, sucked in, down, Splattered like a bug on someone else's Windscreen - because Today it's winter, thirty below, All is some state of water, me, And my truck won't start turn over, turn over!
Edmonton, AB., Canada"Rodent (media, we get what we deserve)"
I've seen a rat's eyes Bleach out from the Negative of day And the positive exposure of night Luminescence bleeding from black Brazen, not limited to corners anymore; Smiling newspaper photo, political, Staining unsuspecting fingers with print- Carbon, like all that we are after Being burned beyond resemblance, after The water disperses as steam- dissipating White- Move toward the light motherfucker, Move toward the light! This is what you wanted, In what you believed On what you bet your life Throat scratched from gnawing on lead pipes and cinder blocks, Screeching radio static, from the Neck, never the gut Awaiting the irony of a poison never Feasted upon - left in the corners with the traps On trays, out of the way Never frequent there, in the ghetto, anymore, Out in the open, Common and domesticated No one even notices your tail anymore, It flicks and snaps Like a whip, a trap Like a camera shutter In the negative of day Or positive exposure of night; Call you rodent now, not Rat, remembering our manners.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
"Peek-a-boo With the Moon"
No one likes to see your dark Side - that's why man's not been To the moon since 1969 Too much yang and not enough yin In the world today No balance Leaves us all dizzy to the Point that we're silly Afraid of all the wrong things And too stupid to see the Things staring us in the face Or we do see it then turn Away - if I can't see you Then you can't see me Peek-a-boo with our Conscience to suit The moment Then beat Ourselves up for letting Ourselves down, screaming "who the fuck am I?" And asking "why?" Until we're hoarse Or drink ourselves to death, Click on the candy box And watch reality TV. Simply because that all seems Truer to the script than The stage from which we're hanging: I will not think bad thoughts I will not think bad thoughts I will not think I will not.
Edmonton, AB., Canada
“
“Winter of Discontent”
Canadian version of
the American dream;
Idealism turns to disillusionment,
then goes mainstream
too much coffee consumed
from Starbuck’s and Tim’s
Snow angels in January
when winter’s wearing you thin
This cabin fever
is getting to me
like a 50’s bomb shelter
waiting out World War Three
cheeks are red, mind is dead
finding it hard just to get out of bed
Edmonton, AB, Canada
“Some Kind of Addiction”
Went down Whyte Avenue the other day
the swan song slush of winter
don’t know what was nagging at me,
aggravating like a splinter
sometimes I get stuck inside myself
silly cerebral contemplations
was this the “what” I wanted to be
or the fuel of my frustration?
- kerosene conscience….
burning like a Buddhist monk
in petrol protestations
but only half-hearted in my beliefs
half-speed motivations, anyhow-
Stacey was a friend of mine,
devouted to the Mormon religion
I couldn’t believe in any of that stuff
anymore than I could believe in television
I wish I had a shred of her faith
make reason from this masochisim
fuck, I’d settle for having hope
in any sort of ‘ism
- couldn’t contemplate life coffee free…
paradise promising evangelists
movie stars and top 10 lists
Dr. Phil, Atkins, Martha Stewart, Donald Trump and the sacred cow-
Out of touch and beside myself
and all the books that I’ve been reading
the goals I’ve set, chance and regret
and expectations exceeding
all amount to nothing more
than a poor sense of direction
and the sinking feeling when you realize
that it’s the wrong stuff you’ve been protecting
- Lao Tzu, the unspecific travel guide…
Karl Jung and his beef with Freud
Chicken Soup for the Soul of the Unemployed
Johnny hating Joey;
“We’re a Happy Family”, “Hey, We’re the Ramones”…
Down on Whyte the other day
Coffee shop conversations
everyone eyeing everyone else
searching for the next sensation
Spring will come and another round
of magazines and sorted fictions
and I’ll keep coming here
like some kind of addiction, but alone…
Edmonton AB., Canada
“Drive on”
crumpled newspaper
twitching black and white dusty
like a creature in between
life and road kill – rat, raccoon –
salt and sand grit and grey
black asphalt makes winter
a memory waiting washing
warm rains of spring
return of summer’s ebony black
and fresh tar, rubber and radiant
drive on through
drive on by
drive on.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Day
Ever have one of those days when no matter what the time it always feels like late afternoon? When late afternoon finally comes around, you think “finally” so you go to chow down on a po’boy with sweet potato fries and a bottle of Stella on the side, eyes looking at the waitress young enough to be your student and you want to give some kind of fucked up carnal lesson, cause, hell, she’s at least twenty four or twenty five. So you sit there, sip the beer, fingers get sticky from the sauce slipping off the bun and greasy from the sweet potato fries that you know will be seeping out your pores until morning when you wake up with that phlegm-feeling you get after tuckin’ into a deep fried meal, and glass of beer ebbs a satirical coolness and teases with its texture of round, perfect glass. Waitress brings over the cheque and your fortune cookie for desert, cause you’re stuffed- even if you could afford something after all that. The cookie snaps and crumbles into two sections and several insignificant crumbs. Pull out the piece of white paper that has printed: “someone you know is waiting for your praise”. My first thought goes to God, but figure it can’t be him or her ‘cause I don’t believe in that kind of stuff, so I reckon it’s got to be someone else. I get home, the dogs great me at the door with their sloppy tongues and shake’n’shrapnel fur and I get it. So, I fill their bowls, give them a tussle on the head, they seem happy and eat while I need to take a shit, amazed at the speed of the grease lightening those fries must be because I already went once today in the morning, and here we go again. So I sit and read the paper about the shit and chaos that Hurricane Katrina is causing in Louisiana and how George Bush doesn’t give a fuck about the poor folk washed away ‘cos they’re black and I figure he must have enough cannon fodder in Iraq already and figure he must not be planning another invasion, therefore is leaving them to their anarchy. That’s it, I shit and do all the post shit stuff and thank the god in whom I don’t believe that it’s finally six o’clock because that’s what time it’s felt like all day.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Big Time Seller
Words & Music by Ed Meers
Strum pattern: \ \ \ V \ \ \ V (tempo approx. 96 bpm)
INTRO: G Em C D G Em C Am
Devil’s in the house of the rising sun
My friend went crazy then he bought a gun
now he counts to his final day
when he’ll blow his ex and kid away
it’s the craziest shit I’ve ever heard
she messed him bad, left him disturbed
after it happens he’ll make the news
then along comes another to fill his shoes
CHORUS:
Tragedy is a big time seller
sold by those that are just too yeller
to show anyone there’s beauty in this world
empires built on pain and sufferin’
but it’s all take, they ain’t given nothin’
Blind you from the beauty in this world
In the middle of genocide and useless slaughter
My wife bore me a beautiful daughter
didn’t know where Rwanda was
she sits and giggles just because
life to her is what she sees
almost feel bad that she’ll learn to read
I cherish her innocence every day
feel sad she won’t always think this way
Tragedy is a big time seller
sold by those that are just too yeller
to show anyone there’s beauty in this world
empires built on pain and sufferin’
but it’s all take, they ain’t given nothin’
Blind you from the beauty in this world
I like Seamus Heaney, my wife’s passion for flowers
that patch of green by the office towers
people who are in a festive mood
walkin’ round my house in the nude
life is full of little pleasures
no need to search for buried treasure
security’s holdin’ my daughter’s hand
and walkin’ past the new-seller’s stand
Tragedy is a big time seller
sold by those that are just too yeller
to show anyone there’s beauty in this world
empires built on pain and sufferin’
but it’s all take, they ain’t given nothin’
Blind you from the beauty in this world
If all you read is the Star or Sun
Then I understand why you’d buy a gun
with all those crazies in this world
it’s enough to make your toenails curl
somethin’ other can be had
in contrast to this world gone mad
smell a flower or make a date
or if it’s cold old winter then masturbate
Sex and skin is a big time seller
sold by those that are just too yeller
to show anyone there’s beauty in this world
empires built on exploitation
and measuremental exaggeration
Blind you from the beauty in this world
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Thought’s Preservation
Sick of myself
shards of the mosaic that
make up my mind slice
through thoughts – want to shatter
this shit in my cerebellum with a 9mm parabellum
hang them from the end of a rope
watch them swing like one-winged gnats
but to shoot the shit will send splinters flying selfishly
I want to kill the cancer, not the host
I’ve not endured this far, crafted this piece with
its poisoned parts, to let it win
under my skin,
the easy way out – the simple solution – the concrete
conclusion is at hand all of the time
but life will end one day, so I’m making may stand – twisting life’s balls in my hand
and when it gets sick of me it can finish me off
but until that time, I’ve got time by the throat
and will keep squeezing in all that I can.
Edmonton, AB, Canada
"Clay" Everyone here seems so calmwhile I feel like screamingnightmares and terror cramp my mindwhile everyone else seems tobe happily dreamingyou can’t dress up your mental state
in convenient cloaks of fashionno release, no releaseno inner peace for my passionsthe books that I’ve read, volume uponthe nextall make sense but I can’t sense itat all – the exhausted head thatwakesto full alert when put to bedand drags like time coated in sandpaperpulled over coarse pinesanding the finish on a lidthat one day will bid a final good-nightsleepy dust meshing with our ownimmersed in clay – the sameover-fired motherfucker that feels like cracking now.
Edmonton, AB. Canada
Wetland Hunter
lick your lips
moist, muddy
tongue like a towel
O la flam rouge
O Cameroon
O Khmer Rouge
O bloody
eyes opened wide
swallowing whole
the mottled colours
molten and smiling
O brother
O bother
O Mother
O Father
Lick, lick, lick
life on the tundra
tick, tick , tick, click
safety snap off
O Sadness
O Saddam
O Sodom,
Gomorrah
sting from the tears
the singing mocked laughter
lick, lick, tick
Lick, lick , lick, click
one more in the chamber
l’hiver
sans blanche,
Jamias, peut jamais
Nager! Nager!
visage sur la lac
beach salt sand
grit and cramp
O water
O winter
O splinter
O hinterland
ducks in a row
webbed foot flopping
down dropping
shotgun echo
dead.
Vignette of a Youth Yesterday
Patchouli scented, cigarettes,
A Marxist manifesto
Surplus shirts and red beret
Taking on the world
Idealist iconoclasts
with the best of intentions
petitioning the peasantry
challenging convention
Tolstoy over cheap chardonnay
nighttime never ending
minimum wage and mortgage free
this is how we were…
Edmonton, AB, Canada
Life Obsession
Lester laid himself to rest
with a shotgun whose shell he ate
a man married for fifty plus years
dead at 88
no one knows what was at play
what wisdom made his mind
knowing not selfishness or pain
of the widow he left- what was hers to find
Everyone I know now, vibrant and young
want to live forever
Hunter S. Thompson and Ulysses
lost legacies and lessons
Kurt Cobain
pills for depression
life obsession.
Edmonton, AB. Canada
Ó From “Soup is Good Food” by the Dead Kennedys off of the Frankenchrist LP
Ó From Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
1987 - 1997
Tourist
Tall and fair, blue-eyed German man
munching no-name ginger snaps
in the Calgary Youth Hostel
ranting on about how Americans
are destroying the world
in his uber alles brogue,
obviously slightly mad- deluded- obsessed
and right.
I remember Berlin- the sign at Check Point Charlie:
YOU ARE NOW LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR
but the truth is that you never can leave,
like No.6 on "The Prisoner"
- a vindicated insanity...
Calgary, AB., Canada
WOG
I've known you pretty near all my life-
when we were children I bullied you because
you were the only one the others disliked
more than me, despite my affections...
You never conformed, still wearing your corduroy pants
and Ernie & Bert stripped shirts;
you still look at the stars only now
you know their names...
children are cruel, adults,
killers and clowns;
but you are not like them,
you are genuine- you know who you are,
geek is their label.
They mean nothing, they are lost in their
cancerous unity, the cool,
you are my oldest friend and one of
the few I'll trust...
don't ever let them change you.
Calgary, AB., Canada
Spell
Our first kiss was magic
now I'm trapped in your spell
you're tattooed on my mind
I'm dying
of ink poisoning
Calgary, AB., Canada
War Zone
When I was four
my mother said she was going to kill herself,
was "going to jump off the bridge"
and that it was all my fault I was driving her to it
and if I "cried at her funeral"
she "would come back and haunt" me;
she was pretty fucked up, still is;
My father fucked her up- beat her, beat me
she was strong enough to leave
but is like one of those Vietnam vets:
out of the war but still lost in the jungle.
The war continued with backhands and wooden spoons;
I was the new enemy in a purposeless,
never-ending war... Now I've left "home",
been gone for some years, but the war wages still heavily in my head.
Now I'm the veteran,
napalm memories, stick to my mind,
I feel the hot lead pierce, shredding me apart,
the gas choking me-
some nights I sit alone in my room
and simply try to cope, sit hating myself
for being who I am
resenting Christmas and happy people...
Every mother's day I still sign a cease-fire,
"The Treaty of Hallmark"-
but their are too many mines buried within the
battlefield of my mind- sooner or later
my thoughts trod over one,
I implode and am back to battle.
Calgary, AB., Canada
Talk
Everyone
Here seems to talk
To me
About everyone else
All assuming I'm on their side
I tell them I don't want to hear
That crap behind
The backs of others
No one seems to understand
Friendship-
So free with their trust
I
Realise you
Can never tell
Who your friends
Are.
Pudsey, W.Yorks., England
Dream No.1
I'm in my Mother's home town of Liverpool, Nova Scotia-
I go into a gym, sparsely populated
with old oxidized weights,
divided into three rooms...
I'm speaking to some lady in lycra and can't stand up;
the manager arrives, I start
giving my relatives names, he nods and oh's
in recognition
Then a man approaches with a lanky
gray cat and throws it into a lake,
he then walks into the reflective clear water
and they both swim away.
Calgary, AB., Canada
Dream No.2
I'm in this classroom, high school
before an exam
I've got my pants down and
am sitting on a rust stained toilet
behind my friend Kevin Ryan,
trying to take a shit without being noticed
I wipe my arse with a
white towel,
trying still to be unnoticed,
I'm a mess, anxiety welling up
as I wish it was over...
things get worse as my skid marked
boxers dip into the bowl-
I pull them up, dirty, cold & wet
while the teacher continues
her lecture
and I sit listening.
Calgary, AB., Canada
Dream No.3
I go up to a car
parked in front of my mother's
house on Faulkner Street;
inside is my friend Bronwyn's father
with a group of girls from the
Anglican Sunday School.
I sit in the front seat
with Bronwyn's dad
and talk about rugby league
(he's originally from Manchester)
while the girls sing.
Halifax, W.Yorks., England
Short
The haze in
my head
from five cities
in six days,
a world pouring past
makes the sandy
glaze gritting in my eyes
see similarities
and common place in these exotic
rarities;
I realise that life
is too damn short.
Holymoorside, Derbys., England
For Nova Scotia
I look at this province that
Buchanan bought and sold
I listen to the stories that
have made their tellers old
I see a place once prosperous
now slipped into decay
In this tiny corner of Canada
that's been cast away
I remember the harbour crafts
coming in with their hauls
But now they're few and pass us by
En route to Montreal
The towns, they gray and fade away
in deaths so sad and slow
While the young depart now every day
for the West and Ontario
The young depart each and every day
for the Alberta and Ontario
What we need's a leader
one committed proud and true
who speaks like Joseph Howe
with the courage of Brian Borru
To be again a prosperous place
buzzing with the affray
In this tiny corner of Canada
that's been cast away
on this Eastern coast of Canada
draped in sweet Atlantic spray
The time will come in Canada
a new judgement day
arranged to the chords G, D, C & E
Calgary, AB., Canada
Cornered
I was walking in broad daylight to the
Drug store, southeast side of the city,
Crossing the street - shining like a
Silver blade in the sun-
Headache cutting deep through my skull:
Early 40's prostitute, black, ragged
From pills, pimps and paydays
Says "hey baby, how bout a really
Nice blow job in the park"
She forces me to play an idiot with
A stupid smirk on my face,
As I awkwardly reply "no thanks"…
That night on the same corner
A guy dialed 911 from the pay phone box
But someone capped him
Before help arrived.
Calgary, AB., Canada
Twine
The stars shone bright
through passing cloud
the tender moon's gentle glow,
the ground shone blue in
the heaven's soft hue
reflecting in freshly fallen snow
the night air cold, crisp and dry
the skeletons of trees
I made my way along the icy path,
heavy heart and mind where thought did seize
all my hopes and all I'd wished
here in this desert of snow
misfortune seems to follow me
wherever it is I go
There was a day not so far away
my head was high with hopes
but sometimes the line that can pull you up
can be your hangman's rope
I danced their tunes, I wore their mark,
Sang that which they wanted me to sing,
and ended up no further ahead,
still a puppet on a string
walking lone on this silent night
next to the frozen rivers edge
I think of how it's never the same
the rope and the ledge.
Calgary, AB., Canada
Outside
A waterfall of snow from a magpies tail,
icicles formed on the balcony rail,
people skirt along the roadsides hem
the same faces pass again and again
Calgary, AB., Canada
A Few Miles by Bicycle
Cycled today from Selby to York
Stopped to smell the roses, rode
At a relaxed pace
Normally I would want to conquer
The trail - make the small
Pebbles swirl in the dust
-get from A to B as fast as possible
all scenery seen in a blur
…today I slowed down, stopped to breathe,
trying to take in simple pleasures
thinking again in every hour
of the 24 found in the day of Jenny
wishing she was riding by my side
and hoping time passes as slowly
when we are together as it does
when we are apart.
Pudsey, W.Yorks., England
Bails in the Sunset
The buttery- salt flavour
of lower lip fills my mouth,
sighing in dusty fragrance,
crunching along the earth's
golden stubble freshly cropped
Adjacent field lies west
the seeds sail as sparks
before the thresher under
setting sun, cannon-like
wheat field workers wander,
weary haunches with
shoulders as sails stretched taught,
heads lowered as in
lament for the fallen, friend and foe
What stood tall at dawn
submits itself in browning bails,
massive wheels of fibre now
unyielding to the briskly blowing breeze
The scythes silent,
pitchforks abandoned in the turf
wavering as swords upon vanquished plain
and lofty lark, looping and whooping
on the whirling wind which breathes
across my salty brow,
on to home.
Calgary, AB., Canada
For Jenny
The day you said “I love you”
in your funny kind of way
I felt a weight lift within me
sunlight breaking through the gray
now we weather it together
and we share this common space
we’re building our home, wherever we roam
be it here or any place
Never in all my travels
on either side of the sea
could I have met with anyone
more perfect for me
and when homesickness beckons,
thoughts of home roam my mind through
sentimentally I’ll push pass them
and my arms will reach for you
When the evening settles,
sparkling candles and starlight
and you are in my arms again
and we’re holding each other tight
we’ll reminisce on the universe
or how small this world can be
and amidst these terms of vastness
we will build an eternity
Arranged to chords G,D & C
Calgary, AB., Canada
Princess Diana
Television screen brings the world
like shepherd into my life, fibre optic glow,
August night in Paris, the death of
a Princess I knew of but never knew;
tears well like the volcano in Monserate
which dominated the news in the days before,
made aware of emotions I never knew I held,
fighting back the pressure of liquid emotion
and I wonder if there are any who are to survive
as the epitaph 1961-97 embeds itself with assertive finality
crumbling earth slithers over the edges into a mass grave,
meshed within the Mercedes mangled metal,
lying at rest in questionable peace.
Edmonton, AB., Canada
River
The water splits
as a fighters forehead;
parting and tearing- gouge,
the scalpel like hull
the bone saw engine
the silence broken along
the green towel shoreline
absorbed in silver blades of sun
shining in pools along the shore.
Edmonton, AB. Canada
Peace
Sunset sinks as a capsizing vessel
Where prairie and sky form
A point of 45 degrees to infinity,
The black of night ebbs in like the
Tide of Death's darkness
Over drowning mariner's eyes;
I feel the peace of a drowning man's
Last moment
When the struggle is past,
A meteoric moment of recognizing spirit
Oblivious to the myths of a mortal soul,
Becoming one of the part,
In extinction of the days light
Rises the birth of the moon,
Its brightness develops as a seed,
Germinating with the stars;
Birth of night winters for the sunlight's spring
And shadows animated gardening
Amidst the animation of which we
Find our place.
Edmonton, AB., Canada
On Christmas Night 1997
I contemplate birth,
How first vision swept
The external atmosphere of the womb, through the new world,
As a candle's glow softens through its
Penetration of the abounding darkness
Or vibration carries its way melodically
Through the complex orchestration of silence;
The wonder of purity and blessed naivete
Which our development experiences to extinction
I wish my memory of that time
Was accessible to the moment
And in its faith recognize
The fortune of perfection which, with
Less wizened eyes, delicato,
Diminuendo - grazioso,
Is to be found.
Edmonton, AB., Canada
Ending Words
Some days I feel damned to
Represent my thoughts as a radio
Drama without sound, without image.
The snow falls outside my apartment window;
I sit within my unit at a loss for words to
Describe how it has fallen, how it is falling;
Wanting to paint, yet hands
Are the mirror of ambidextrous -
Equally talentless, incapable of describing
Through sound, to paint feeling as a magpie in it's
Vulgarity or an uilleann piper with sweetness, Melancholic or merry.
My words….
Words easily implemented with ambiguous affect, ineffective
In the age of illiteracy nearing the millenium's close.
Selfish wanting, to play for myself,
To paint for myself through a medium that
Gathers less dust, despite it's liberation
From protective covers
I think of the god which has encircled my life, I feel as weeping does,
To be an accepted part, yet unable to contribute to it's beauty.
I often despise the privacy of words,
To be exposed only when found and investigated,
Limited by language and mother tongue, by literacy,
And by want of reading;
So unlike image and song which makes itself aware
And likewise others - a trapper of sorts,
Inflicting itself and enriching it's captive.
I long for an imperialist medium.
Edmonton, AB., Canada
Tall and fair, blue-eyed German man
munching no-name ginger snaps
in the Calgary Youth Hostel
ranting on about how Americans
are destroying the world
in his uber alles brogue,
obviously slightly mad- deluded- obsessed
and right.
I remember Berlin- the sign at Check Point Charlie:
YOU ARE NOW LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR
but the truth is that you never can leave,
like No.6 on "The Prisoner"
- a vindicated insanity...
Calgary, AB., Canada
WOG
I've known you pretty near all my life-
when we were children I bullied you because
you were the only one the others disliked
more than me, despite my affections...
You never conformed, still wearing your corduroy pants
and Ernie & Bert stripped shirts;
you still look at the stars only now
you know their names...
children are cruel, adults,
killers and clowns;
but you are not like them,
you are genuine- you know who you are,
geek is their label.
They mean nothing, they are lost in their
cancerous unity, the cool,
you are my oldest friend and one of
the few I'll trust...
don't ever let them change you.
Calgary, AB., Canada
Spell
Our first kiss was magic
now I'm trapped in your spell
you're tattooed on my mind
I'm dying
of ink poisoning
Calgary, AB., Canada
War Zone
When I was four
my mother said she was going to kill herself,
was "going to jump off the bridge"
and that it was all my fault I was driving her to it
and if I "cried at her funeral"
she "would come back and haunt" me;
she was pretty fucked up, still is;
My father fucked her up- beat her, beat me
she was strong enough to leave
but is like one of those Vietnam vets:
out of the war but still lost in the jungle.
The war continued with backhands and wooden spoons;
I was the new enemy in a purposeless,
never-ending war... Now I've left "home",
been gone for some years, but the war wages still heavily in my head.
Now I'm the veteran,
napalm memories, stick to my mind,
I feel the hot lead pierce, shredding me apart,
the gas choking me-
some nights I sit alone in my room
and simply try to cope, sit hating myself
for being who I am
resenting Christmas and happy people...
Every mother's day I still sign a cease-fire,
"The Treaty of Hallmark"-
but their are too many mines buried within the
battlefield of my mind- sooner or later
my thoughts trod over one,
I implode and am back to battle.
Calgary, AB., Canada
Talk
Everyone
Here seems to talk
To me
About everyone else
All assuming I'm on their side
I tell them I don't want to hear
That crap behind
The backs of others
No one seems to understand
Friendship-
So free with their trust
I
Realise you
Can never tell
Who your friends
Are.
Pudsey, W.Yorks., England
Dream No.1
I'm in my Mother's home town of Liverpool, Nova Scotia-
I go into a gym, sparsely populated
with old oxidized weights,
divided into three rooms...
I'm speaking to some lady in lycra and can't stand up;
the manager arrives, I start
giving my relatives names, he nods and oh's
in recognition
Then a man approaches with a lanky
gray cat and throws it into a lake,
he then walks into the reflective clear water
and they both swim away.
Calgary, AB., Canada
Dream No.2
I'm in this classroom, high school
before an exam
I've got my pants down and
am sitting on a rust stained toilet
behind my friend Kevin Ryan,
trying to take a shit without being noticed
I wipe my arse with a
white towel,
trying still to be unnoticed,
I'm a mess, anxiety welling up
as I wish it was over...
things get worse as my skid marked
boxers dip into the bowl-
I pull them up, dirty, cold & wet
while the teacher continues
her lecture
and I sit listening.
Calgary, AB., Canada
Dream No.3
I go up to a car
parked in front of my mother's
house on Faulkner Street;
inside is my friend Bronwyn's father
with a group of girls from the
Anglican Sunday School.
I sit in the front seat
with Bronwyn's dad
and talk about rugby league
(he's originally from Manchester)
while the girls sing.
Halifax, W.Yorks., England
Short
The haze in
my head
from five cities
in six days,
a world pouring past
makes the sandy
glaze gritting in my eyes
see similarities
and common place in these exotic
rarities;
I realise that life
is too damn short.
Holymoorside, Derbys., England
For Nova Scotia
I look at this province that
Buchanan bought and sold
I listen to the stories that
have made their tellers old
I see a place once prosperous
now slipped into decay
In this tiny corner of Canada
that's been cast away
I remember the harbour crafts
coming in with their hauls
But now they're few and pass us by
En route to Montreal
The towns, they gray and fade away
in deaths so sad and slow
While the young depart now every day
for the West and Ontario
The young depart each and every day
for the Alberta and Ontario
What we need's a leader
one committed proud and true
who speaks like Joseph Howe
with the courage of Brian Borru
To be again a prosperous place
buzzing with the affray
In this tiny corner of Canada
that's been cast away
on this Eastern coast of Canada
draped in sweet Atlantic spray
The time will come in Canada
a new judgement day
arranged to the chords G, D, C & E
Calgary, AB., Canada
Cornered
I was walking in broad daylight to the
Drug store, southeast side of the city,
Crossing the street - shining like a
Silver blade in the sun-
Headache cutting deep through my skull:
Early 40's prostitute, black, ragged
From pills, pimps and paydays
Says "hey baby, how bout a really
Nice blow job in the park"
She forces me to play an idiot with
A stupid smirk on my face,
As I awkwardly reply "no thanks"…
That night on the same corner
A guy dialed 911 from the pay phone box
But someone capped him
Before help arrived.
Calgary, AB., Canada
Twine
The stars shone bright
through passing cloud
the tender moon's gentle glow,
the ground shone blue in
the heaven's soft hue
reflecting in freshly fallen snow
the night air cold, crisp and dry
the skeletons of trees
I made my way along the icy path,
heavy heart and mind where thought did seize
all my hopes and all I'd wished
here in this desert of snow
misfortune seems to follow me
wherever it is I go
There was a day not so far away
my head was high with hopes
but sometimes the line that can pull you up
can be your hangman's rope
I danced their tunes, I wore their mark,
Sang that which they wanted me to sing,
and ended up no further ahead,
still a puppet on a string
walking lone on this silent night
next to the frozen rivers edge
I think of how it's never the same
the rope and the ledge.
Calgary, AB., Canada
Outside
A waterfall of snow from a magpies tail,
icicles formed on the balcony rail,
people skirt along the roadsides hem
the same faces pass again and again
Calgary, AB., Canada
A Few Miles by Bicycle
Cycled today from Selby to York
Stopped to smell the roses, rode
At a relaxed pace
Normally I would want to conquer
The trail - make the small
Pebbles swirl in the dust
-get from A to B as fast as possible
all scenery seen in a blur
…today I slowed down, stopped to breathe,
trying to take in simple pleasures
thinking again in every hour
of the 24 found in the day of Jenny
wishing she was riding by my side
and hoping time passes as slowly
when we are together as it does
when we are apart.
Pudsey, W.Yorks., England
Bails in the Sunset
The buttery- salt flavour
of lower lip fills my mouth,
sighing in dusty fragrance,
crunching along the earth's
golden stubble freshly cropped
Adjacent field lies west
the seeds sail as sparks
before the thresher under
setting sun, cannon-like
wheat field workers wander,
weary haunches with
shoulders as sails stretched taught,
heads lowered as in
lament for the fallen, friend and foe
What stood tall at dawn
submits itself in browning bails,
massive wheels of fibre now
unyielding to the briskly blowing breeze
The scythes silent,
pitchforks abandoned in the turf
wavering as swords upon vanquished plain
and lofty lark, looping and whooping
on the whirling wind which breathes
across my salty brow,
on to home.
Calgary, AB., Canada
For Jenny
The day you said “I love you”
in your funny kind of way
I felt a weight lift within me
sunlight breaking through the gray
now we weather it together
and we share this common space
we’re building our home, wherever we roam
be it here or any place
Never in all my travels
on either side of the sea
could I have met with anyone
more perfect for me
and when homesickness beckons,
thoughts of home roam my mind through
sentimentally I’ll push pass them
and my arms will reach for you
When the evening settles,
sparkling candles and starlight
and you are in my arms again
and we’re holding each other tight
we’ll reminisce on the universe
or how small this world can be
and amidst these terms of vastness
we will build an eternity
Arranged to chords G,D & C
Calgary, AB., Canada
Princess Diana
Television screen brings the world
like shepherd into my life, fibre optic glow,
August night in Paris, the death of
a Princess I knew of but never knew;
tears well like the volcano in Monserate
which dominated the news in the days before,
made aware of emotions I never knew I held,
fighting back the pressure of liquid emotion
and I wonder if there are any who are to survive
as the epitaph 1961-97 embeds itself with assertive finality
crumbling earth slithers over the edges into a mass grave,
meshed within the Mercedes mangled metal,
lying at rest in questionable peace.
Edmonton, AB., Canada
River
The water splits
as a fighters forehead;
parting and tearing- gouge,
the scalpel like hull
the bone saw engine
the silence broken along
the green towel shoreline
absorbed in silver blades of sun
shining in pools along the shore.
Edmonton, AB. Canada
Peace
Sunset sinks as a capsizing vessel
Where prairie and sky form
A point of 45 degrees to infinity,
The black of night ebbs in like the
Tide of Death's darkness
Over drowning mariner's eyes;
I feel the peace of a drowning man's
Last moment
When the struggle is past,
A meteoric moment of recognizing spirit
Oblivious to the myths of a mortal soul,
Becoming one of the part,
In extinction of the days light
Rises the birth of the moon,
Its brightness develops as a seed,
Germinating with the stars;
Birth of night winters for the sunlight's spring
And shadows animated gardening
Amidst the animation of which we
Find our place.
Edmonton, AB., Canada
On Christmas Night 1997
I contemplate birth,
How first vision swept
The external atmosphere of the womb, through the new world,
As a candle's glow softens through its
Penetration of the abounding darkness
Or vibration carries its way melodically
Through the complex orchestration of silence;
The wonder of purity and blessed naivete
Which our development experiences to extinction
I wish my memory of that time
Was accessible to the moment
And in its faith recognize
The fortune of perfection which, with
Less wizened eyes, delicato,
Diminuendo - grazioso,
Is to be found.
Edmonton, AB., Canada
Ending Words
Some days I feel damned to
Represent my thoughts as a radio
Drama without sound, without image.
The snow falls outside my apartment window;
I sit within my unit at a loss for words to
Describe how it has fallen, how it is falling;
Wanting to paint, yet hands
Are the mirror of ambidextrous -
Equally talentless, incapable of describing
Through sound, to paint feeling as a magpie in it's
Vulgarity or an uilleann piper with sweetness, Melancholic or merry.
My words….
Words easily implemented with ambiguous affect, ineffective
In the age of illiteracy nearing the millenium's close.
Selfish wanting, to play for myself,
To paint for myself through a medium that
Gathers less dust, despite it's liberation
From protective covers
I think of the god which has encircled my life, I feel as weeping does,
To be an accepted part, yet unable to contribute to it's beauty.
I often despise the privacy of words,
To be exposed only when found and investigated,
Limited by language and mother tongue, by literacy,
And by want of reading;
So unlike image and song which makes itself aware
And likewise others - a trapper of sorts,
Inflicting itself and enriching it's captive.
I long for an imperialist medium.
Edmonton, AB., Canada
1984 - 94
For Nova Scotia
I look at this province that
Buchanan bought and sold
I listen to the stories that
have made their tellers old
I see a place once prosperous
now slipped into decay
In this tiny corner of Canada
that's been cast away
I remember the harbour crafts
coming in with their hauls
But now they're few and pass us by
En route to Montreal
The towns, they gray and fade away
in deaths so sad and slow
While the young depart now every day
for the West and Ontario
The young depart each and every day
for the Alberta and Ontario
What we need's a leader
one committed proud and true
who speaks like Joseph Howe
with the courage of Brian Borru
To be again a prosperous place
buzzing with the affray
In this tiny corner of Canada
that's been cast away
on this Eastern coast of Canada
draped in sweet Atlantic spray
The time will come in Canada
a new judgement day
Calgary, AB., Canada
Summer Seems So Far
The teeth of the stream
shining gray, vines of black,
chew in to the river,
white foaming hushing plumbing
echoing sounds of solitary
plopping drops-
hushing greenery, specked with brown
mirror on the camouflaging
calm, where
lines guess and dream of flittering
fins and turning tails
within the containment
of this ever changing place...
I think upon this place within
the cold grip of winter
when the weather, -30,
has me under house arrest;
the clicking of my fly rod's reel,
dreams percolating in my mind
with the pleasant round curve
cupped in my palm-
photos of Kananaskis in summer,
the mountains and Jenny,
trudging over rooted new trails.
Calgary, AB., Canada
Quebec, Je me souviens
Nostalgia can often
refocus one's perception of earlier experiences,
a contrast like the view you saw, the
photo you took
and the now developed photograph.
My winter in Quebec City
was the coldest I had ever experienced- a shit load of snow too!
I went there to study French,
but quit mid-way through my second semester.
There is little for an Anglo in a city where all the
bi-laws and attitudes are anti- English.
I got a job doing carpentry,
an Irish pub- Le D'Orsay- and spent the rest of my
free time training for rugby.
I worked with this guy really named John...
He was a draft-dodger from the States-
been in Quebec since the 70's, an artist-
he was bi-sexual and liked to tell me about it.
He painted beautiful landscapes.
Around the same time
a good friend, a guy from New Jersey,
mentioned his own bi-sexual-now-celibate
story in a by-the-way manner, but I suspected as much and didn't
really care; I continue to sip my Guinness and chat.
Most of my friends in Quebec were women.
Despite the distractions, they made great
weight training partners. Everyone smoked in Quebec,
I found it disgusting. I miss Quebec though,
mais je ne sais pas porquoi.
Dartmouth, N.S., Canada
Full of Shit
I had been writing for eleven years because I
thought I had something to say,
now I know I just wanted people to think I did...
I shake my head now as I muse over past prose;
the "ye's" and "thee"'s,
the adolescent Morriseyian angst,
especially the love lyrics ebbing with their ideals
"ah for my love, I shall expire without
thy sweet embrace..."
WHAT CRAP!!
The English society crowd at the university
said they loved my stuff;
my readings always seemed to be a hit,
no accomplishment really
if Madonna can sell Billions!
I became a liar in this quest for truth,
what was supposed to mirror the sincerity of my inner feelings,
opposite reflection, the filling of a mold to impress the others-
especially the girls.
How angelic of a portrait I painted, the little
boy that pulled the legs off grasshoppers, leaving them embraced in spiders web,
how righteous I tried to appear-
a lamb in the lair of wolves-
condemning judgements and facilitating falseness'
like those coffee shop artsies I despise,
despite dating a few.
The Lowest of the Low sum it up:
"I'm so full of shit it makes me drool".
Coombs, B.C., Canada
In a St.Mary's Street Hotel
Wet and dreary Cardiff night,
Watching some soap in Welsh on TV; guts
Feel greasy from the fried squid,
Earlier eaten in an alleyway Chinese café
Outside the window, it's wooden frame and foggy pane,
Whirling wheels; short fused drivers
Shuffle by;
Pondering away the time to later
Leave for the Odeon - pass again
The wall flower drunks propped upon
The storefront facades, in alleyways,
Grumbling in their packs with malted breath-
After a pause in some pub
For a pint of Brains,
Slipping brown and smooth over my palette,
Considering joining their purgatory,
Before returning to the Hotel, sleeping
Amidst the nightclub's chorus
Belching below.
Cardiff, Wales
29.09.95: San Francisco Airport
I've not been here yet an hour
And have already had enough of the USA
My flight is delayed 45 minutes and I've
Been ripped off twice - once by the teller's
Exchange rate and commission and
The other by a stamp vending machine;
Saw a T-shirt in a shop: "Americans do it better"
…fucking arrogant assholes;
I hope this place implodes with its self-absorption,
The earth itself here, trembling angry, tries
To swallow the city and shake free of the fleas
-a city surrounded by burial mounds of barren
brown dirt - mounded mountains, a curtained
cadaver of civilization,
made lifeless and toxic with the imperialist venom,
conquesting poison of predators
"America, love it or leave it"
San Francisco, CA, USA
Memories
Sitting on my balcony reading some Rollins:
"Today I went through all kinds of domestic bullshit
Tiny rules for tiny lives
Tonight I'm living all their little hells"
an AGT truck vibrates its
low diesel rattle- constant rhythm idling
men mending cables so I can reach out & touch someone...
Mother was here, ten days, my guest;
no matter which way you read it, mom is spelled the same-
past to present- pain
re-sealing the scars
suffering outlasting pain, or is it
the other way around? Still mom.
Evolving new tortures, ever present,
ever lasting:
"Memories stick like napalm and keep burning
Years later I still burn"
This pen is my sword,
re-claiming my flat, re-claiming my self, got the stub
hope the tag's not on my toe-
burning passions
charring flesh- my own-
petroleum tears ignite
E X P L O D E !
unaware if the beast lies within or without,
slaying myself, powerlines hum
as the truck pulls away.
Calgary, AB., Canada
A Chosen Few
Cardboard faces, GQ cut-outs; business men
their money- pulp pressed, printed, paper;
too busy to acknowledge the pan handlers
selling Spare Change
these brave monitory warriors
too consumed in cowardice & cellular conversations to look the wary beggar in the eye
-simple salutations
"Spare a dollar sir?"
look away in fear- whiplash- perhaps
pressing a cold coin to the putrid paw,
eyes evasive
and hasty brush by...
...conquested animal kingdom
conquest now the concrete city
avoiding their own to create another
pagan monuments unto themselves-
glass temple, sacrificing steel slicing sky, bleeding:
the priest's starched collar, pure virginity-
the cigar smoke
exhaled rings,
harsh crackling chuckle over
spotted silk ties, splashed technocolored,
mocking the self-proclaimed noose
with masochistic satire
-bondage-
sunglasses regardless of cloud-
in spite of them-
concealing the cast away eyes
products sold, skyscrapers alienating sunlight
spores spawn mould in the alleyways,
moist with the urine of dogs and men,
added growth to the economy
that blossoms for a chosen few
while a parasite on the remaining many
rummaging through skips
recycling waste, serving needs.
Calgary, AB., Canada
I look at this province that
Buchanan bought and sold
I listen to the stories that
have made their tellers old
I see a place once prosperous
now slipped into decay
In this tiny corner of Canada
that's been cast away
I remember the harbour crafts
coming in with their hauls
But now they're few and pass us by
En route to Montreal
The towns, they gray and fade away
in deaths so sad and slow
While the young depart now every day
for the West and Ontario
The young depart each and every day
for the Alberta and Ontario
What we need's a leader
one committed proud and true
who speaks like Joseph Howe
with the courage of Brian Borru
To be again a prosperous place
buzzing with the affray
In this tiny corner of Canada
that's been cast away
on this Eastern coast of Canada
draped in sweet Atlantic spray
The time will come in Canada
a new judgement day
Calgary, AB., Canada
Summer Seems So Far
The teeth of the stream
shining gray, vines of black,
chew in to the river,
white foaming hushing plumbing
echoing sounds of solitary
plopping drops-
hushing greenery, specked with brown
mirror on the camouflaging
calm, where
lines guess and dream of flittering
fins and turning tails
within the containment
of this ever changing place...
I think upon this place within
the cold grip of winter
when the weather, -30,
has me under house arrest;
the clicking of my fly rod's reel,
dreams percolating in my mind
with the pleasant round curve
cupped in my palm-
photos of Kananaskis in summer,
the mountains and Jenny,
trudging over rooted new trails.
Calgary, AB., Canada
Quebec, Je me souviens
Nostalgia can often
refocus one's perception of earlier experiences,
a contrast like the view you saw, the
photo you took
and the now developed photograph.
My winter in Quebec City
was the coldest I had ever experienced- a shit load of snow too!
I went there to study French,
but quit mid-way through my second semester.
There is little for an Anglo in a city where all the
bi-laws and attitudes are anti- English.
I got a job doing carpentry,
an Irish pub- Le D'Orsay- and spent the rest of my
free time training for rugby.
I worked with this guy really named John...
He was a draft-dodger from the States-
been in Quebec since the 70's, an artist-
he was bi-sexual and liked to tell me about it.
He painted beautiful landscapes.
Around the same time
a good friend, a guy from New Jersey,
mentioned his own bi-sexual-now-celibate
story in a by-the-way manner, but I suspected as much and didn't
really care; I continue to sip my Guinness and chat.
Most of my friends in Quebec were women.
Despite the distractions, they made great
weight training partners. Everyone smoked in Quebec,
I found it disgusting. I miss Quebec though,
mais je ne sais pas porquoi.
Dartmouth, N.S., Canada
Full of Shit
I had been writing for eleven years because I
thought I had something to say,
now I know I just wanted people to think I did...
I shake my head now as I muse over past prose;
the "ye's" and "thee"'s,
the adolescent Morriseyian angst,
especially the love lyrics ebbing with their ideals
"ah for my love, I shall expire without
thy sweet embrace..."
WHAT CRAP!!
The English society crowd at the university
said they loved my stuff;
my readings always seemed to be a hit,
no accomplishment really
if Madonna can sell Billions!
I became a liar in this quest for truth,
what was supposed to mirror the sincerity of my inner feelings,
opposite reflection, the filling of a mold to impress the others-
especially the girls.
How angelic of a portrait I painted, the little
boy that pulled the legs off grasshoppers, leaving them embraced in spiders web,
how righteous I tried to appear-
a lamb in the lair of wolves-
condemning judgements and facilitating falseness'
like those coffee shop artsies I despise,
despite dating a few.
The Lowest of the Low sum it up:
"I'm so full of shit it makes me drool".
Coombs, B.C., Canada
In a St.Mary's Street Hotel
Wet and dreary Cardiff night,
Watching some soap in Welsh on TV; guts
Feel greasy from the fried squid,
Earlier eaten in an alleyway Chinese café
Outside the window, it's wooden frame and foggy pane,
Whirling wheels; short fused drivers
Shuffle by;
Pondering away the time to later
Leave for the Odeon - pass again
The wall flower drunks propped upon
The storefront facades, in alleyways,
Grumbling in their packs with malted breath-
After a pause in some pub
For a pint of Brains,
Slipping brown and smooth over my palette,
Considering joining their purgatory,
Before returning to the Hotel, sleeping
Amidst the nightclub's chorus
Belching below.
Cardiff, Wales
29.09.95: San Francisco Airport
I've not been here yet an hour
And have already had enough of the USA
My flight is delayed 45 minutes and I've
Been ripped off twice - once by the teller's
Exchange rate and commission and
The other by a stamp vending machine;
Saw a T-shirt in a shop: "Americans do it better"
…fucking arrogant assholes;
I hope this place implodes with its self-absorption,
The earth itself here, trembling angry, tries
To swallow the city and shake free of the fleas
-a city surrounded by burial mounds of barren
brown dirt - mounded mountains, a curtained
cadaver of civilization,
made lifeless and toxic with the imperialist venom,
conquesting poison of predators
"America, love it or leave it"
San Francisco, CA, USA
Memories
Sitting on my balcony reading some Rollins:
"Today I went through all kinds of domestic bullshit
Tiny rules for tiny lives
Tonight I'm living all their little hells"
an AGT truck vibrates its
low diesel rattle- constant rhythm idling
men mending cables so I can reach out & touch someone...
Mother was here, ten days, my guest;
no matter which way you read it, mom is spelled the same-
past to present- pain
re-sealing the scars
suffering outlasting pain, or is it
the other way around? Still mom.
Evolving new tortures, ever present,
ever lasting:
"Memories stick like napalm and keep burning
Years later I still burn"
This pen is my sword,
re-claiming my flat, re-claiming my self, got the stub
hope the tag's not on my toe-
burning passions
charring flesh- my own-
petroleum tears ignite
E X P L O D E !
unaware if the beast lies within or without,
slaying myself, powerlines hum
as the truck pulls away.
Calgary, AB., Canada
A Chosen Few
Cardboard faces, GQ cut-outs; business men
their money- pulp pressed, printed, paper;
too busy to acknowledge the pan handlers
selling Spare Change
these brave monitory warriors
too consumed in cowardice & cellular conversations to look the wary beggar in the eye
-simple salutations
"Spare a dollar sir?"
look away in fear- whiplash- perhaps
pressing a cold coin to the putrid paw,
eyes evasive
and hasty brush by...
...conquested animal kingdom
conquest now the concrete city
avoiding their own to create another
pagan monuments unto themselves-
glass temple, sacrificing steel slicing sky, bleeding:
the priest's starched collar, pure virginity-
the cigar smoke
exhaled rings,
harsh crackling chuckle over
spotted silk ties, splashed technocolored,
mocking the self-proclaimed noose
with masochistic satire
-bondage-
sunglasses regardless of cloud-
in spite of them-
concealing the cast away eyes
products sold, skyscrapers alienating sunlight
spores spawn mould in the alleyways,
moist with the urine of dogs and men,
added growth to the economy
that blossoms for a chosen few
while a parasite on the remaining many
rummaging through skips
recycling waste, serving needs.
Calgary, AB., Canada
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