Tuesday 30 September 2014

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.

Sunday 21 September 2014

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.

Thursday 18 September 2014

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.

Saturday 13 September 2014

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.

Thursday 11 September 2014

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.

Sunday 7 September 2014

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.

Saturday 6 September 2014

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.

Wednesday 3 September 2014

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.