Tuesday 25 February 2014

1 New Poem

The Silver Age

When one day you look upon all creation's glories
in glass encasement and dusted museum planks,
spare me a thought in nickel-pence reflection,
like Clyde dockmen's caps to the Sea of Japan.

When it was in the frigid farmhouse air,
the brindle bindings from ticking bluebirds,
I'll remind of thrushing greenery, the rolling
hills where once the causeway giants roamed.

Where crossroads clash in diamond angles,
the sparkle of last America's roadhouses,
you'll find the features of some charming gentleman
in soapy wash and beer glass tithes.

Where train tracks collude in appointed grace's
ground, staking my name in drawing quarters,
we'll draw figures upon the clear blue of Arctic skies,
but, remember, remember, of names and silver tongues.

Sunday 9 February 2014

1 New Poem

Something Close To It

In the hum of checker-shirt patterns
we'd drown up the dawn after six grams
and scissor rust brown; after a shatter
of tinder glass in wine bottle fumes,
you'd look to the disdains of oceans and teacup
patterns.

Or were they tempest light's licking flicker
upon the softened petal pieces you kept
as colours upon your cheek, as
hung halos in visions, in beatification,
and communion craft thin as paper
minds?

No, they were the casting of die and
chamber words in echoes of dead letters
and leather of shoe soles in the hallway
when you didn't come with and I couldn't
say.

But, in the ice-water reflections of
Prague hotel mirrors after cracking them
alone, in the hazy trust of afternoon flights,
I was just thinking about falling in love with
you.

Monday 3 February 2014

1 New Poem

Something About Living

I remember mother in a shuffle-huff of
Trillium cards and Ontario Works cheques
beneath the keyed maple we kept in the backyard
when I'd clip around it and the fenceposts with
hedgerow tools and she'd keep lined paper
books open until sun-up, give me spare change before school.

I remember father pushing my back to walls
and swish of teary eyes he denied to me
when I looked solemn at a McChicken wrapper
and the tubes jutting from five places at least
to keep his breath intact the last time
before the call with all the talking around.

I remember grandfather with his guitar case and
his father's poetry books, kept locked
off in the furnished basement's half-light embrace
and the look on his face when he passed
it off as state secrets with mustache
bristles and Arizona postcards.

I remember grandmother when her veins
change to eldest oak form and the Anne Murray
Chistmas CDs in the cabinet she kept finely
dusted in the room she had as her own
in daughter's house; she hated the road view
in the last year or two.

1 New Poem

A Bit Off

You said you'd wear pins on your jacket lapel
of whatever you thought would make a difference
in the shade-blue of a thoughtful think piece
read between the lines of a free Quebecor paper,
and the Globe and Mail subscription list of takers
and makers, and it took 'til twenty-two coming to
grips with it all.

But that's just fine because of the election buttons
and fair weather friends' jackets in cold.

It's just a giant comedy with the upwardly mobile
civil service and the bass guitar tabs, where I
order a Subway sandwich between classes and
hop the Via cars on weekends.

It's just a giant tragedy with the young millionaires'
club, where I can't come into champagne flutes
so I pump my feeble fists to DMX chants and stick
an LCBO bag under my arm and resist the
urge to crack open the Czechvar bottles with
the opener I got from Heineken promoter at
the last honest day of work I had, right in
front of OC Transpo ticket takers, and the people who'd
say

“You are something, by being nothing, aren't you?”

It's just giant romance between an old
heart and barely-heated bus shelter.