1 New Poem

Going Somewhere More Quiet

Bar lights charged with magnetic heat,

the drifty wooze of sangria coasts

in southern Spain, backpackers' fall

leaf crunch in time beat skipping

to floor drum strike, sign of

crossing celestial seem stark threading

held up to supple sheen of midnight conversation.

Crackling burn of family furniture

for firewood, the crass sweat of

dancehall devilry, cherry Coke revelry

implied in jarring jet of curl shine, soaked

in absinthe bottle spills and sustained

by movements most mystic, invincible to

freezing distance's covering cloaks.

1 New Poem

Wild As The Night

Starlight catches in pincer pose,

unkempt: a radiant, brown-eyed laughter,

drawn in by the wine stain lipstick

and kept there crisp as dress shirt folds,

sewn linework in suit jacket tailors.

Let's cheer to rafter planks, fiery

filling basement rooms with turbine

tempest of being foolishly young,

arms wrapping in hurricane bleats,

trying out some signal smoke for flair.

Shine on, you, Chilean bike spokes,

glacier crest waves and all

free-dancing wishbones unbroken,

never be so bound up by wishes,

weighted by suit-coated men who could only

draw something wild as you were.

2 New Poems

Ever Clear

Light floods in the shallow brick square,

brigand tumults in lens flare opulence;

finer jewels, finer shades of longing,

could never be bought, at these

city bus benches and Sally Ann shopfronts.

Glasses chipper in window tinting,

striking but for your difference apparent;

you flutter, errant updraft catching feather,

I ponder, surveying shipknots' tempest.

With the softest chime you mentioned muddy waters but

they were clear as glacial springs to me.

Say Something

I say something scratched, panicked

headlight trauma the core of it;

tries to give warmth, wriggles

dying under lens watch, evaporates.

I say a clattering cliché truth,

winding pattern, wind-like totemic

to pretensions past, making sacred cross

of Popsicle glue, of corkboard pins.

I say to spit an edged shard,

rendered reflective past marches

with fire-print intensifies, petty cruelties

settled as prefab foundations, dug-in.

But unsaid is something in haze-mist,

of spun umbrella, in crackles of

windows open to late spring's dewy breeze

and you, the roses and sill lilies,

the somethings I beat in chest for.

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.

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.

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.

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.