1 New Poem

Briefest Moments

Blazes of autumnal sunshine bright in

the early-walked heel-shoe mornings

fall through treetops, leaf-fire shades,

rum-stained spillings on sidewalk,

reflected tumbled waterfalls rapping

at the foot of triangular street signs boldly rusting.

You were subtle in dress-drawn hangings,

painting alleyway walls in dripping shadow watercolour,

burning fire flash-flick, cosmetic mirror

and pocket square aligned in fragile spectrum;

there was a word waiting, waiting, waiting

there for you to seize upon.

1 New Poem

Calling Car Services

The idle splish-splosh of orange-green

cabbie paint shades cuts a night's reflective

bloom in airs of protest signs,

a hail of marching feet, vague memories

of lights uncovered, flickering in

polish-finish of your eyeglass frames.

The times on the waiting porches for them

after five hastily swallowed mixed drinks

when I'd think of holding you between

sky-pine snowfall and errant

atmosphere of electric wire body heat;

the notions pile,

twist as Gaelic flags in winter wind

but they pass as the taxi rain,

as whiskey ice.

2 New Poems

Sketches

Your visage watercolours float

to a cinder-bright surface, speckled

trout-like by temperamental rain,

ringed in hallowed marquee of jazz spirit

dancers, the bright caress of shoe taps on

scuffed linoleum.

Renaissance oils streak down coloured

canvas maps, cave wall in simplicity;

the best I can manage on such short

notice, the brief wonders I can hope

of capturing as pointing patterns, as

cutting clicks.

The Whole Thing

Passing out pieces, broken chocolate and
polluted paintchips; it was something for
winter’s half-cloaked mirage of solitude,
something to sustain a broken lip fixture
when the water couldn’t lift to drink,
when the wine was rotten, sickly-sweet.

You gave, gambler’s hands and shaking card
decks one by one turned about to face
florescent skylight, all gold passed from
hand to filled tooth,

and I was clumsy by turns, too much bet
on merely the parts you deigned to show.

1 New Poem

Nightly Moves

The early-oncoming chill of unseasonable

September slithers around broken

church tenement's cracked oak windowframe,

wraps about my shoulders as patch-patterned

quilting, each square a figment-face lost

in wiry AT&T-Rogers state code

speaking,

A stench of stoked coal burns through

sinus, infected with a slimmer shape's

possible promise, the hammered smokestack

clang of smelting steel fell silent,

bright as the motel vacancy sign once

could have been before a manger neglected

maintenance.

We fill time as teacup jades,

blackened patterns crawling through the

winded cupboard clatters, of cement

and plaster still finding its settle in

the bony fragment sand.

1 New Poem

Recklessly

I am unlike these shrubbery leaves,

I did not bend to every fleeting nature's

folly, tap shoe performance in drunken footstep,

but, still, still I am unconquered, split

between this city where the shine from

boardwalk railings wore clean through

long ago, and girders from abandoned waterfront

development are piled in convex, called art

and the wide-collar boulevards where postcard

scenes frame the walls and turncoats spin

to a hat-drop of Monday's news bulletin,

but, too, where you flaxen-affix the

black cat follies of costume painter logic

and I hold aloft these pence rags of feeling:

your gaze sympathetic, but not the same.

1 New Poem

Something Grey

The hinter-scrape of laundromat quarters,

chipping brick paint on draw curtain

windows smeared of blue sky memoir,

notions remaining from faded haunt

as I pen-fritter in tumults endless,

reflection shattered on rain-slick graffiti.

When I draw string-pointed circles

on cheapened matte substance, they

form in blackened felt scratches,

unintended as they are to make the

same struggled overheat of mind,

to make the pointilist facade

of skies robbed of afternoons' light

you brought.

1 New Poem

With Your Thoughts

Picnic tables on boardwalk planks

balanced dripped in dewy rapids' crystal,

reminisce in muffled tones, knee

pressed close to forehead; I am alone.

The light of paper-stamp lampshade

barely-dimmed envelopes corner-to-corner

the rambling globetrot shoes' sole, the poise

of pictured urbane with you brought; I am surrounded.

1 New Poem

Mealtimes

The sidewalk shadow bends, decades-old

in iron-wrought, Hammersmith mill

fell long silent of bleating breath,

long running rumour of skeletal

frame emerging supper plate

rubble, never clearly enough

until in the storefront window

as a newborn bird, flying

through placement pane, unrecognized.

1 New Poem

Bounding Signals

The radio tower's rustwater shimmer,

salty spraying kiss-written shades

upon pale evening air,

gives the off-colour comment of

middle age's sagging bones, the sense

that everything that will happen

has. I turn about, cocooned in half-fine

slumbers, misplacing the wakeful howls

of blackened asphalt rubber somewhere

in a snow-locked fantasy.

1 New Poem

Names I Remember
The track-marked rhythm of motorbike engines,

every wheeling reel suffused in classic rock

twang, each hesitant quiver at midnight's door

in turnkey slash of tremor haunts.

They push against more wicked in ways,

replacing this all with brick cast and concrete;

yet

I still believe in haphazard promise of

green thrushlings at dawn, the

running waters rush of daybreak,

the thought of sweet scent carried

on winding pine thistles in caligraphic

winds, shaping Superior currents into old

faces.

2 New Poems

Different Kinds of Red

The sultry sweat of half-ripe Hamburg

chalk dust sketches sickly sweet

in weeknight half-power caution blinkers

through smeared lipstick windowpane pallor:

the shade some purse-pin upon you.

The moonshone crest of last emperor's lanterns,

pointed pen shapes of capsized myth

cling in tight constriction as

Snow White song in dead-end pale cheek:

the splotched paints picked out in hasty youth.

The flickering lighthouse guidance to

weary whiskey-hollowed traveler’s eye,

tempting warmths of discounted plane tickets

and kosher wine-stained confession:
the sort of gel light I held you in.

Lake Breeze

The constellation clouds in off-pink

shade of deep new day's warming

pitch the half-hung crescent moon's smile

to hesitant accord with solemn-sat driftwood,

with light-catching marble stone of private property signs.

The endless provincial crashing of waves in

sandbar echo a thousand currents past, as always

they have in steely haze of warn blue plank's

painted notion fences, in reflected temperance

to a paving brick beautification initiative.

The controlled salt-stammer, flattened grey

rook rock in same pale fashion as

late summer's swallowing sky, the impassioned

longings lick up as stray bonfire sparks,

stick as unhelpful as stray sole sand grain.