2 New Poems

A Kiss Or Something

My American love, the stories we could

star in ice storm Boston harbour's blue,

in the pastiche patchwork of Sante Fe style

rooftop spectres and Highway 61 underpass sketches.

We could write tales in the rust red pine,

draw new shades on orange grove pyres,

in unison sing out rough folklore’s lyricbook,

pages scattered, torn in Nevada's wearing winter wind.

We could swim hymnal-spoke riverside,

length-stride of great men in footprints unfilled;

it would be the giving up, the molt of

rosary-tossed and spectacle-seeking rejections.

We could, we could, couldn't we?

After Hours

You find it in the whispers

of hushed-clatter Italian leather

in Tuesday torrents and half-shaven

Wednesday mirror morning, nothing

so fine as being close.

You find it in the vicious

deadened bus brake screen

cast of buzzing beer brand neon

in pockmarked late-early pizza

grease and plate paper stain windows.

I find it in the faint

scent of placard paint on

your lipstick traces, memoriam

of brick shavings and teargas

temperament you hold like a family broach-pin.

I find it in the cold

honeysuckle stick of November's

skipping rapids sunlight to the

Ikea shelving and anarchist cookbooks:

a sentiment we thought worth sharing.

2 New Poems

Colour Corrections 

The facade of remembrance,

a descent of wool-eyed shroud,

blocking out pieces, stations one

could say, to the current of

river stone smoothness, perfections

of straight razor and stained glass.

We are always red, flush with youthful

bloom, in hindsight haze, while in

the moment we wasted hourglass grain

as idle shore with pacing about,

with shoe tracks beating out

hesitant pitter-taps, most unlike

the wild symphonies we recall.

Waking Up Too Late

You pour something special,

concord-Kosher sickly sweet:
the softer kind of IV injection,

the easier thing than talking

stark under-dressed and over-worried.

You balance the task-tools as

spinning plate syndrome, watch

burning shadows on plaster walls

in their bleach-scrubbed indifference,

wondering about how lipstick stains might look.

You recover to the half-tick and

rustle of overtaxed wind-chimes, of

underused bedsheets, curtain

colliding with cast of pale light

crusted eyelash on quarter-past

Sunday noon.

1 New Poem

Brittle Bones

All those times in the tangle of taxi stand
flickers, the in-out of Manhattan and Uptown
imagination; just some sidecar street in
a town of half-suited data punch cards,
in truth, I held hands close, waiting
graceless.

Ruminations cooled in dinette set embrace,
each piece embittered and chipped to edge,
handled with utter care, but ever indifferent
in the place we sat as unconvinced
etchings of two people who spent the
night,

and tonight these airs alone may well
pierce skin.

1 New Poem

Lost Something

It was the cross of

Dundas barn dance, the

heavy-lead eyelash curls

and cleanly-pressed silver

buttons;

where it wasn't.

Waltzing in the neon haze,

trenchant poises cutting colours

of grease-walled balti houses,

it was easy to think of ourselves

highly,

as something tragic.

Movement of triggering slip,

crises stare you keep to yourself

the bound book of reasons for

the tempest of slack grey loafer

I

wore funeral ready.

1 New Poem

Pieces of Silence

Endured in the fading hubcap lights

of 2AM taxicabs,

skin sweat pushing in pulse time,

breath set to clock radio thump,

we shone, haze-halo and dead diamond

upon the windowpane's unyielding stare.

It was so simple before words came in,

before we told ourselves in truism:

to give off such light,

we must suffer a burning.

1 New Poem

Midsummer Fires

The sniff-sallow of turpentine on lipstick,

lightning burst of maple shade, supple

hang-wire in coffee shop chandeliers,

little notes on fortune cookie paper to spark.

A heave of gin in new straw's sunlight,

drifting breath-to-breath whispering pine,

a kind of courage eroded fast as lucid

waters turned on heat-hearth in midnight's pitch.

As we drift cool as dying embers, floating

heavy in possessed denial past the fragrant totems

we worship in our ragged times, before we

figured we'd grown hides too bound in place for that.

1 New Poem

Days of Being Wild

It was then you stretched your tempers thin as table glass,

softest sound destined as star-burning shatter,

in those nights at the turnstile point,

swinging leg dipped to humid water of subway

staircases: flapper starlet in frozen hourglass.

Crane, swan form in flutter, licking of

light wounds in the tepid grace of dollar store

cross stations, mechanical reprinting of inspired

words we'd paint on the halls in teenage anarchy.

Slip-drunk in the tangle of construction beams,

garbled phrases you regret in funereal call

of 35 years and an oncoming train tunnel,

we looked toothsome aside, caricatures on washed brick,

when you asked about the point of all heavy footsteps:

“you had your being wild, I had my parchment pens.”