Remember how to sing.
If not, to hum,
or whistle a waltz.
Understand the beast,
and restrain it
with a stumbling spot dance.
Think of your goodness,
and not of your sin.
Of the young,
for they are short of life.
Of your faith, or your doubt,
and the quality of prayer.
Monthly Archives: March 2020
And darkness was upon the face of the deep
Lit the lights
in the empty black.
Spun off gaseous globes,
quick travelers caught in the slow sway
of their mothers.
Some boil down
with seeded airs.
A witching’s then afoot.
Hards and softs and liquids.
Bright lodes to find and mine.
And mind, next door-
Venus is venous.
A pause for thought
The slant of the sun.
The moss-green mechanic
with his fat cigar,
chuffing like a chimney.
The little kid threesome
on the gravel shoulder,
fist-pumping the diesel driver.
and the undetected grasshopper
atop my dusty boot.
How slowly I move.
I’ve never been here,
but I know it.
A killing
What’s lent
is a conjured greenfield.
A tree spreads,
knows the horizon.
I will feed
on atmosphere aquamarine
and minty clouds.
Give a cry at tempting scenes
of primal histories,
and wonder at our peoplings.
What words?
What doings?
With ages I am filled.
With cages, I am killed.
Fugue
I remember an obsession.
I built it myself
from wishes to horses.
Conceived in a hug and a blush,
quickened by preening pirouettes,
it seeded the fugue of my madness
and crashed in ignoble blackness.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(We still talk)
YYZ
Hey..
What’s in that bag you drag?
I have a box of my own.
It’s well known to me.
So, what do you think is fair?
Rock, paper, scissors,
the loser opens first?
I don’t mind.
I’m tired of its weight,
and long to let the moths loose.
Or, you know,
we could just practice being born.
I done something
It doesn’t look much like you see in the movies. Well, depending on how long you leave it sit, it changes colour and gets a little syrupy. Marge put in for two weeks’ vacation, so no one has thought to call here yet. Once I had cleaned up a bit, I took a few days off too. Just camping, bumming around, sipping Johnnie Walker. Not much fun, though, when you’ve got something in the back of your mind. So I slacked off on the drink last night and decided to drive home today. Jesus, it smells. So many flies. Shouldn’t have left her on the counter.
Shell game
The savor of a morning’s dream,
exhaled in a muscled yawn.
And the thing resurfaces,
still unresolved.
And I am back to juggling, left-handed,
with only one guess
at a shell game’s prize.
“Can’t sleep now!”, the Chairman says.
“Find this rock tonight. We’ll decide
who stays”.
The way we are
If I tried to dream you
out of whole cloth,
what a disservice it would be.
We speak in print,
with proper letters and cadence.
There’s ample time
to consider a question or a statement,
or to bid a gentle goodnight.
I apply and project my idea of you,
as a sculptor might,
from raw clay and memory.
You have never posed, I think,
and you are real and proud.
Noble qualities you exhibit,
and because I am not noble,
I rationalize and dismiss.
And, unworthy, I mash the clay,
and start again.
Smug as a bug
They haven’t turned up the heat yet,
or held my feet to the fire.
So, still I stay smugly detached
from nervous bristlings meant to alarm.
And time I have to consider the Shaman
who walks,
enraptured with faith,
on beds of glowing coals.
Aremyfeetofftheground 