1 New Poem

Sand Castles

When I was young I drew

sculptures on the beach,

holding tight against reckoning

waves,

In bold ignorance of all to come.

They stood, loom weaving a

hope some day they would

come true:

The fantastic scenes of monsters

slain under bed clothes before

frights could reach me

sleeping sound,

Of lovers conquering the grand

canyons that tore them asunder,

heedless the cost in gold,

in bloody bruise.

****

They wash away.

Like hearts, broken each

morning in screen glass.

They wash away.

Like loving words, silenced

by callous hallway echoes.

They wash away.

1 New Poem

 A Child’s Toys

First you gave me the
rocking horse to practice,

Then the compass to
find my way.

Two in such balance
I could barely sustain

Illusions of meaning
in façade,

Illusion of peace on
shipwrecked shore
in tent-filled underpass,

Illusions of the serene
when all things washed out

Faded paint in high sun.

1 New Poem

Wallpaper (Blue)

In Stockholm, ’67, I left
you on the train platform,
going East, falling away,
from lives we had known
bound us to windowpanes,
flower boxes on porch;

You knew of the daylight
nightmares, curious figments
that crossed my eyes:
the fire rains, blood stains,
aftershocks on hard concrete,
I never forgot despite curiosity

getting a better part
of the film reels in mind,
marked up on acid paper,
burning through dawn.

I was stuck, breathless
to the four poster points
in this room where days pass
silent, forlorn, ignorant of
all beyond:

the bombs, the Belsens,
tragic cells for what remained
of ourselves in honour, once
smoke had cleared from
building ash.

You had pinned me, plastered up
to dry and crack, curl at corners,
go jaundice in summer sun.

And there I was remaining,
until a first step forward,
a last gasp of city air.

Book Launch!

 

Very happy to announce that I will be officially having a book launch for my debut novel, Smaller Animals, in Ottawa at Octopus Books this November!

If you are in town, please consider stopping by for an evening of literary discussion and me (hopefully) not making a complete fool of myself. Copies will be available for purchase at the event but if you would like to pre-order, just provide the title and ISBN number from the publisher below to your preferred bookseller:

https://lnkd.in/e8_AZMw4

If you're interested in learning more, just shoot me a message! Hope to see you there!

1 New Poem

Strawberries

When I asked you, how to
say freedom in a Persian
dialect from Qom,
you laughed:

“You have to taste the word,
in chalk, blood, bite marks,
rubber, gas,

let it drip down, sweet fruit,
and find its place with you,

see how it feels in the back
of big yellow taxis,

in front of star patterns
in shattered glass.”

I took a rosebud from
the counter case, studied in light,

how feel to run out
with dynamite sticks and megaphones,

break car windows, slash tires,
pour sugar down drainpipes,

give gotten candy to onlooking children.

You said it was the same as
strawberries

Whether I liked them or not.

2 New Poems

 Cold Nights Past

When we stepped through the door,
discovered it swung only one way:

Into the raising trash heat on
Queen and Alexander, I thought

Of the printed menus under glass,
outside our hometown’s Swiss restaurant,

How I did transgress,
the surveillance of city fathers

To slip between cherry trees,
take that rickety uphill ride,
drop metres down no more
in disgrace of arms and

Wind up tangled with you
bedsheets and boredom, missing the
starry tableau of clear Dominican skies,

Missing the clear head I had before
all the world, in gold, intruded.

Thoughts On Screen

When eyes become heavy with dreams,
I feel blood in all stitches
surrounding, the work of unseen
hands, advanced magic machines,
gas pedals and ship turbines:

They speak of waters deep,
rumours and rages half-buried,
they rush and recede in three-quarter time.

Holding tight, child in darkness,
arms wrap, entangle, a wire-nest
for flightless birds to dwell;

Reassured, face daylight,
turning over another set of
clock movement, counting until
again the covers can be pulled,

And the world vanishes, tragedies
invisible until morning.

1 New Poem

After the Midnight Caper

When they told me,
“this was the dagger
as we pulled it out,
no more from the thrift
store bin or through handle
markings could it be yours”,

I paused, taking in marble
columns, stained doors
from rain and the tentacle
of tracing wind in overhead
wires. I struggled to

Recall what was your
face without the wear of years

Without the misery of the world
tucked between two panes of glass.

I could have said you were
like a Sichuan peasant planting
by lantern light in ’56,

An apparition haunting
Wall spaces in ’89:

Something that held principle,
had faded, was torn,
to be sold on dorm room

posters in fifty years’ time;

I just said I never
knew your heat, left it

there.

. . .

But I wondered (silent),
if you still lived Munich,
at the lab with your
beakers and buttons, pencils and pinpricks,

You’d gladly have burned down
to dance amongst ashes,
breathe in the still smoke,

if the wall markings made an effigy of

us.