1 New Poem

The Dying Fantasy

The pyre ash of dreams glows

most brilliant shades of righteous red

in midnights of broken glass symphony,

in sweeping up still crystal mornings;

they cough, wheeze, spit up lung

sulfer sacrements, some kind of

greatness.

The songbook hymnals hewn of stardust,

secular rhymes of just dying, of lands

just beyond hilltop horizons, of worker's

paradise and history's end

that never arrive but with asterisks,

but with hardened faces, rivers mixed

with blood and life road's ice.

1 New Poem

Reprise in Blue

The victims of history speak not

to their plight, they speak not

through arrows and gunshots,

through shirt factory fires,

through schoolhouse stands and

rural church steeple bombings.

They do not speak, for they are

gone: no labour law reform, no signed bill

of housing redress, no so-called progress

shall make them whole.

No signal can cut through the

white noise cloth down draping

post-to-post in passage rites,

warnings unheeded by the number-crunching clan,

except in their moments of unearned regret.

Except in their mirrored lenses making

new liberal order of darker voids,

starring deep not long into the cold maw

depths of the thing, but to some

construction of tabulated script, some

monument made in ignorance of due

cost on plains of gold where greater

men than they shall ever hope to be

starved for lack of compass to guide

to berry bush and water spring.

They stare not into grim meaning of

coin collections, nor into spindled red

lines on FHA maps, nor into the

thin ice-water stew they ladle-heap

upon the cups and plates of sickly figures.

They stare not; they cannot face the victims,

the bombings, the fires, the bullets, the arrows,

they cannot face the calm wake of them

all the more.

They cannot stare too deep to history's gaze,

it is too disorderly.

Still, voices emerge from riot smoke,

casting arms and rising as a last

held note of Coltrane, of Shorter, held

in blue midnight shade of strung

Christmas tinsel.

They go unheeded as ever, but

cease not.

It makes nothing the better,

but has some conscience

at least.

1 New Poem

A Grey Area

You wish, picture upon 19^th century

cloud atlas, the cross stations of

pure down drawing on December's

facade; unbreaking, still, blinding

ivory.

Yet I am memory, impured as

mud-slush strewn with bottle glass,

cigarette ashes, tire squeals,

lead paint shimmer-blankets harrowing

pitch.

2 New Poems

Windows Open

If I opened this window, this batter-worn

weather wood in spool iron-twine framing,

the fogged November air of last semester's

oceans would rush to fill space, rush

to cling as dress shirt linens in

cramped, hallowed spaces, folded, creased

with gunpowder starch.

If I opened through this post-adolescent haze,

reaching brassy bouquets of all love and wordly

things' gold embossment, raised print of

names, helvetica signatures writ on water's

ever-shifting slate, there would be no reason

for longing's tender spiral to draw on.

If I opened eyes to the wishing white

blind, to settle upon dying, ruby red

back lights in Station Mall parking

lot snow squalls, the sketched lines

would wave of mercurial separation

stirring below-zero echo of Calvary stain.

Crackling

There is a charging flame, submerged in fractal

formed winter's skating rink ice, rippling through

the colder air, a kind that stains lung in

tarpit bitter snap, a kind that calls for

summer's breath, the light of Maidan chants,

or some centre square of Budapest.

Alas, alas, these dead-end cheers are no such

thing; the hoary slogan goes, “next time shall be

better, I shall be more noble of strength to

stand, not this rattling colt of shaking leg”,

and one can always speak its half-heard form.

The thrashing-thrown crunch of dead leaf last

call, flaring shout in boot sole time

beneath waves of crystal pattern turning

about, lone flag flapping as

fastened cheesecloth, as imitation

striped stars, sounds out but spirits of '45,

of '68, of '89, in reading of wrenched

machinery gears dripped in bounded blood

unspilled, for the cowardice of my

heart and time.

1 New Poem

Something Left Wanting

Stirring echoes raw their penmanship

in torrid currents of snowstorm

floral print against dashing backlight

of flickering cola sign, neon green

1970's embellishment.

Stucco ceilings, peeling painted walls press

against my temples in echoed percussion,

tapping like dentist drills of dripping

faucet senses in the bracketed echo of

tempest space.

A headlight procession drags on in

endless ennui, the bored-driven

gasoline streak putting in smoker's cough

torrent; I hear it ring out in open

window pane.

Unobserved, the disconnected carbon monoxide

detector wires laugh out a braying torment,

they threaten a spark, but never do:

they are red as the '68 air, a grin-smile

absent feline.

I tap morse code forms of gospel

hymns on the particle board furniture,

waiting for some sign of Freedom

July, some dusty dress shoe promise

of futures

unwritten.

1 New Poem

In Blue Hawaii

The weeping strains of pedal steel,

echo blank beaches not in Pacific's

growing whirlpool tide, but in

placed of Superior skies,

pebbled sands.

Shades of Lou Reed New York in the deadened

half-reflection of sunglass steam as breathy

sketches on the shopfront windows, painted

in disheveled morning star parallels to traffic

clatter-clangs.

The breeze in these Northern nights run

chilling deep through maple, pine and cedar moss

shines deep as the reconstruction of Antebellum

fables, the tragic falsehood in wishing for

pasts unlived.

There is a supple tinge of rippled water,

then, to these catchings of wafted warmth

from wood-burning exhaust in a land of

darkness breaking just past noons strike: just

the thing

for a second to mistake cracking phone posts for palm.

2 New Poems

Hopefully

Open window in early winter,

letting cold seep in, swelling

out in blanket covers, quilting

four faulty corners, water-damaged

walls and, in leaky ceiling cynicism,

cross-legged in late morning's light

with nothing much to do but

sort through endless paper categories,

learn some newly thought theory impractical,

I wonder of all the fun you're

having.

I look back on history texts,

the rivers of martyred blood

eroding deserts sandy face

of eons eternal, but I twinge,

selfish still as spoiled royalty

with quaking passion of fearful touch,

the unreality of warping signal

waiting, waiting in deadened pulp

paper passion; but I suppose

we are all but stardust in the

end.

And Then Three Days Pass

A thousand shut doors ago,

when I was but a child in

the freezing of foggy gestures

I'd make to kitchen cupboards

television cabinets,

I was ever hesitant of crooked

hands, solemn looks of plenty

from mother, and the noises

drifting from father's upstairs

with the stained dog shag carpet.

A tempered lampshade purchase ago,

I thought I had found my myth's

becoming, hands to hold in shimmering

Isle light dawning, the carpentry

of fingers to build together some

house of worship.

A flick of the light switch ago,

I opened a thumbed-over volume of

60's confessional verse and stared

blank as the page; its word

holding no less an interest than past,

but in shade of flicking

computer tab screens of some

international relations professor's thoughts

on West Bank settlements I opened

to distract from message I sent in hoping

related reply.