Sunday 15 September 2013

2 New Poems

Thought About

I spent all my summers drinking from paper bags,
and regretting every unmade decision,
bar room lighting dredging daylight warning,
reflections caught in the glass above the faded
Soviet propaganda poster, were our testaments
crowned in suspicious plumage.

When I'd think of calling, I'd say sweet things
like, “mere minutes with you would be of gold weight”
in my head, but they say “you only get out what
you put in”, and the phones don't ring,
I'd put in nothing, except red-face confessions
wrote out over telegraph wires.

I spent all my winters, warming hands by the
broomstick fire, and looking out on the Ottawa
River, frozen in lovesick spire,
classroom clamour pounding rigid signatures,
sipping whiskey and rum and Coca-Cola and gin,
all mixed up in plastic glasses.

When I'd think of writing, I'd talk in romantic echoes
like, “all the time I was burning up for you”
in my head, but they say “you don't know what
love is”, and my hands were shaking; I know
the bitter-brill taste of springtime,
waking up same as last year.


Blues About Water

There was a street busker banging out Smiths chords,
at some place between the Spanish Arch and Shop Street;
I stopped for a moment, shine-grease forehead,
tourist bag in hand with sunlight splattering breezy
rainclouds through the lens-frames kept close,
looked out as far as I could see to say
and thought of you walking between the
Metro Centre and the CN Tower:

There was some man shuffling a propaganda paper
in front of you in Kensington Market, could have
been myself without illusions, you took one out
of courtesy and half-companionship, knitted cap
compulsion; still further between the Triad funding
and the Germanic cheese shop, you'd a place and
you'd look out over the docking waters, but
all that could be seen was Rochester's skyline,

and Buffalo, a bit.

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