Sunday 8 December 2019

1 New Poem


A Good Thing for Us

You could be as crystal,
shocking in light of
brilliance staring through
widget walls and blinking wires,
sees all good things beneath
chipping paint, gathered cloaks.

If veils were lifted from
living time, shivering form
revealed between our cloudy
exhaling that sticks to skin,
chalk dust in red, embarrassment
of riches to split apart.

Too deep it went for all at once,
needles sharp for cutting skin,
nearer to the rushing blood,
in wicked strange of forcing
time, that sallow pitch sinking

Below cast-iron light of
ghostly morning walk.

Sunday 20 October 2019

New Poetry Collection Available for Purchase


I am very excited to announce that my new collection of poems, entitled Places to Be, is now available for purchase!

Thanks to Moonstone Press for working with me to bring the project to life!

Check it out here

Sunday 22 September 2019

1 New Poem


A Dear Green

I scour the scrapyard,
hopeful to strike riches,
some spot of land:
shimmering acre to draw
around with fenceposts,
anchor wire and call alone.

I arrive in carriage time,
flouting rule and upriver dancing,
from scattershot ravine echoes
that trap ourselves in
fearful amber, in rancor
of things left apart.

I lose some pinwheel grace,
no longer broken glass of
bottle colour and heavy sole
upon soil in crashing through
night windows and to the
warm, embracing place all alight.

Tuesday 13 August 2019

1 New Poem

Blood Loss

I felt it flowing through windows,
between walls, in salt air and sea spring
whispers we could take to brick
with us when fading starts,
trips the box breaker.

It struck me still as the
silver cups, upturned and making
noise replied tenfold down
dreaming streets.

I was the kind to go weary
in heat, dizzy-blank from
fear of fortune,

But in this time I am not
so rushed, three-sails and
wounded, yet again.

Monday 1 July 2019

1 New Poem


Foot Shuffles

There goes again the scattered picture whims
to four corners and six seas,
a disappointed numbing when you lack
a still part of evening time to get lost
between and come undone from beer
bottle cap to the closing line.

I had a habit of not joining
thought the inconvenience too much and
too penetrating for all of that;

But you work on me like
anxiety pills, dissolved in water,
crisply drunk to drive out
concrete memories and be careful
of ringing bells across dust
and yard fronts,

Where we could have closed some
time ago, walking through port lines
touching in the impermanence, Singapore
transit, that our heat makes on screen.

Monday 17 June 2019

1 New Poem


Burned Up Bundle

It was spectacular, sleepwalk and briny,
when I came out to wire shores for
a light lick of morning’s air;
felt something grow across from
wavering smoke signs, pit fire
leavings that criss-cross skies
and leave a breathless swimming dark
beneath.

When I wane in grandeur,
placed in bow-breaking time from
our good days that left marks deep
in skin damage, then I became
more plastic, with rains drifting through.

If I made the effigy stake, was
well-thought and worthy, it wouldn’t
have been so close to lifetime’s
defeat; still, too cold for all
that we were, just signals passing on
scrap ice and plated mineral.

Sunday 9 June 2019

1 New Poem


Red Shift

The light strings spelt out Dutchman’s
fantasia, glowing to beckon with long-promised
touches of teak handicraft and finger-
stitched garments that float, sinking with
time beneath falling waters’ pressures,

that they were hung above in  bold colours,
draped out waiting for hearts broken from
sunshine headaches, bad moonshine memory,
was a reminder of cement floors
below, that pouring pace of things before

you came; what it took prepare
for the splinters and sweat streaks
that came out as centered demands,
laughing requests from the bottom of
somewhere deep in spirit that longed

for a night when things were so
broken even the front-facing air
had a quality of blood.

Monday 20 May 2019

1 New Poem

Away from It

I feel so separate now:
broken from the string slice
of digits, dashes, keystrokes
that paint patterns in looping
gas leak through cloud showers,
make hazes in the morning I
cover to keep safe from
coughing fits and pitching ash.

Once reflected, once across
in our wonderful shape:
I was wary, rolled up sleeves
and stain-flecked smile,
but deepened in heart the expected
feeling thought mutual of
possessive skin clinging to each other.

Still, and reckless, was the
wrecking night that purred up:
the moment when you fell
to earth like all firework sparks
must in time, having faded, been
trapped between concrete and
ether.

Sunday 5 May 2019

1 New Poem


Days of Brutalism

When lights come on,
jittering television snow in
BNI sign, it casts
through tree shadows
to the imposition of stone,
smooth-pouring concrete and
broken bone;

I listened to chanting
vibration of the city floors,
hand-scripts made blank
through passed sands
of age.

While line drying fell
through sun shade,
twisted in breeze,

There was a crackling
wish winter that made
me green again:

New against
plastic pitch of breathing

And matching wood plank stance.

Sunday 14 April 2019

1 New Poem


Light Spectrum

I was talking in mystic chord
memory, in chime and pulling through
the light of all things

Across, across the battered bookkeeping
dollar sense of where we left to
stream beyond, looking up to stark

Shimmering blackness, whole points
of galactic time swallowed in
blinking pace before us.

When you take the raw end of things,
clasping and human against the bloody
edge of time, it gleams weary

Of all worked through sentiments,
the reduction to a firm figure
that brokers no wonder, no fancy flight,

It’s not me you toss to wolves,
to sharpened teeth, matted fur;

Only the sense-memory
of being there before.

Tuesday 9 April 2019

1 New Poem


What You Keep

I rolled out the sigil for you:
not breaking against waves of
grain amber, swinging vines of
palm, standing in the middle of
seconds ticking, turning cold
from blank standing of lights
after dusk.

You swam to shore, dripping:
I had been breathing (heavy, deep,
swirling), gathering words for
matchsticks to keep warm against
the flashing white righteousness,
the ink jet print of runaway
typing.

The pulley systems, dumbwaiters that
take us across the life stage,
curtains closing behind with velvet
precision are not the things
for me;

I just kept them in reserve,
just in case of failure.

Saturday 23 March 2019

1 New Poem


Downtown Lullaby

When I’d hang with sputtering
car engine blocks and rusted paint
fumes, the comfort wasn’t from

A blank space between walls
and light boxes in plastic
frames that flashed bold language.

It wasn’t from tracking tires that
made mess of ice and brine
split shuttering to bring bells of

Unfogging spring to eye-cough
sense we took in trade as costs
of the hibernating season’s panic.

It wasn’t the passion crimes behind
windows, made out in breathy silhouette
to corner stores below;

Kind of sentiment to take the
broken rising feeling that was
numbed across from brass rubbing etch.

It was the pitter-patter of stiff
soles on hard ground, reminding I
wasn’t the only one out.

Monday 11 March 2019

1 New Poem


Party Blocs

We were there in the last shivers
of incandescence: chip-paint hallways
past pulses of tin can sound
rolling through brickwork backs,
out across a forbearing
season’s snow-slush concrete.

We were there when things went
split-separate, turned all around:
I didn’t talk of smoke signals
and floating sinktops in the
beer can wages we made from
punch-card precision and crackled
toffee wrapping blunted turf.

We were there at the heat-rushed
steps of the crowd: when air
replaced body flesh and pressed
red faces to glass around back
stairs and basements.

We were there, clocks striking
points of lime green glow: discomfort
found in a numb bathwater submergence
from places still and broken.

We were there in the swinging
up-down pieces of cloying car honk;
kinds of thing that tears in two.

We were there for it all,
with our brutalist smiles shining through.

Saturday 19 January 2019

2 New Poems

Soda Fountains

It springs back, Coca-Cola fizzy,
through moments I never
lived except as a split-screen
drive-in triple feature;

Sticky sweet the summer mist
of insert cut-clips scissor
snipping and hasty tape.

It’s not Victory Garden harsh:
bare root vegetation and
careful-measured state loaf
I took a strange fancy to
after years;

But something lively, pressed to
tongue and offered grand,
withdrawn too quick from base
and bucket.

It wasn’t wanting, the infinite
universe of pop-snapping sounds
that made up the glass work
spaces contained;

A red velvet shade that
takes over dreams, seeps
to the staining cracks
like billboard light

That still trails me on
street corners.



Montreal Rose

You make me think about
the steam bagel heat outside
of Saint Viateur on sidewalk slabs
before nights begin,

Being so unexpected, yet welcome,
yet wafting through a lazy
summer breeze with dodging
of bicycle spokes and
selling of cold drinks outside.

You come in like McGill
ivy, timeless in elegance,
traced too deep in impression
for an easy forgetting.

The way you harbour so much
of wounded worlds and
grew still, clanging against
city brick and northern waterfront
concrete.

You make me think of the
tussle motions that happen when
bars would close so late

and I’d switch Greyhound tickets
for early morning routes,
thinking something would stick
around against the wish-wash of rain;

You’re more like the flower garden
piece outside the modern art gallery,
though.

Most of all,

You make me wish I was
Leonard Cohen,

so I would have some worthier
words to send you.