5 New Poems

And Fate

The call of blessed emerald,

casting spell of salted sea,

first tipsy-drawn mood of the fishing boat

captain in rosewater supple,

shades of graceless gods, lore of

ticking clock face ever-believed for its

boldness, how you find your heart again

between the Thames banks, beneath

suit-cut clatter of City call-men and

silent disco goers subtle flicks of

wrist.

What some say to sagebrush sapling,

the just-bloomed bud of restless connection

greening this way, that, root-tapped,

is smothered in the coal fire of knowing

better than belief, better than constellation maps,

better an horoscopes and untamed incantations:

that theirs is no destiny,

only the bricks of Highgate.

One Week That Summer

I never knew I was a dancer

until Lebanese liqueur and loud places

between the canals showed me just how
time can spill, tendril in ink sky as

stamping shoes give way to nervous

sock feet in kitchen chairs.

Still, in the bleary whir of electric

musicians, ghosts casting presence,

hoping for sure-spoken magic,

something more secure than this

rippling of flesh in low-light.

It frees from duller hours,

from places of silence where

minds can run free as steppe,

chase own tails in lifelong spiral,

but throb dull as dishwater

brackish, course with headache

crimson, confuse with genuine

shoulders to deem worthy of

gilded lily cry, that I never

knew myself to be.

Someone's Conquest

I was never a challenge,

in slumping pound shop dress shirts,

not some untouched citadel slippery

with vine cover, shape of ancient deities

imposing.

Was that the problem: you longed for

climbing hooks, false footing, the traps

and pleasures of new world overcome?

When it was only the ever-smooth steel

motion of Rideau Chapters escalators

I had on offer?

No, no, too wallowed in the realm

of sections in bookstores we never

went: Harlequins and self-help?

But, then, what is Rosa Luxemburg

to Sunday morning's lovers?

Only a memory of things

left away.

Conversing With Shadows

On those days the sky was wine-dark,

oozing blackened blood in the flaying cut;

it preoccupied wire-crackle sparks

the notion of infinite harms,

milestones of sheet bedding taken with

tear-filled eyes, but at least taken.

Talk through tea time and 2AM,

of how broken heritage was to come

down to smashed compass pocket watches,

how none of everything makes you real

some cosmic sense of its everlong embrace:

untouched, unknown as first sunlight's touch.

But more how to immolate ever-pledged freedom,

the glories of oaken flame setting stage,

bringing a Northern snowfall's certainty,

making ourselves into shadowboxers, and

perfectly matched.

1 New Poem

Branches, Bitter

You sting still with oak switch

melody, a creaking, careening half-sorted

thing of pretense to push, pull-apart

like children's building block etched

spectrum, your lips still dying to draw

pale blue-eyed passions on ambassador

brick walls in the slightly shaped, inviting

curves of unplanned sprawl, dressing gown

hem line in how, at one time, just

a right angle of porch light can

seduce us all, just a first push to

illusion can be a start to grand falling,

but for the bramble bush of thorny

crime, but for the beloved turn of

eyelash curl to tabulation, calculation,

broken by formula this manner and that,

until its pieces shone bright,

mortuary bone and sticker tags

on sterile glass, but for the cuckoo

clock anatomy revealed of gears and

theatrical spark: so simple the tick

to youth's hands, comprehended,

yet a lifetime's trial in making.

1 New Poem

Easier

Some people find it easy,

walking on hay fever air and sun-shower

prismatics, spectrum reflection

in the summer youth of their

flight-pattern passions;

Oh, how kissed they must

have been to memory, or

in some supposition those

broken hours of waiting, waiting

in the light of half-cooling

computer towers, whirring away at

heavy-eyed hours, too much

content with silence sittings.

Couple quarters on a table-set

Ms. Pac-Man machine, rigged pinball

stapled camera lens to dock lighting

set-ups: how perfected, how false,

how hard it always could have been.

1 New Poem

To Read in Five Years' Time

You live on flashed lights,

distance speculation, temporary

markings in the tribal sets of

our age; kind of dapper swirl

that stuns in midnight hours at

twenty-five but sour-stales by

thirty with the same clammy-headed

pill bottle pound awake-arise rhythm

of slanted beam ceiling, cracked lead

paint and charming irregular door frames.

Those same still-planted detachments,

coldness as some straining affect,

calm passing in raging tumult you never

faced in head charge, sheltered by

sunglass ironies, imagined wit;

how grand to keep believing

some heart beat in same teenage

time, the questions posed by one-off

mid-90s alt-group, pitter-patter

of scraped guitar chords you

could have worn as a halo,

worn as a cloudy cloth,

trail, rag-and-bone parade,

since you cracked the first

meaning of words in chapbooks.

1 New Poem

No Place in Particular

It is me and the chime bass tic of

a moderately talented 12-bar blues band,

jack skiffle beat to match the

swish of quarter-water Czechvar tap;

some half-tolerable mediocrity,

more passion than inspiration,

more rushing flop-sweat than charm.

It is you and the land of orange-fronted

storage lockers, flat middle Canadian dialects,

an endless expanse of still lives, passive

flowing the muddy creek banks toes

dug between at uncle's fishing lodge,

in relief from summer's pavement pulse,

the same shaky condolence of, now, your hands.

1 New Poem

Return Trips

The bonfire flicker-crinkle of
gas station roadmap in wearing passenger

seat fabric, outdated both, from 1971
before four-lane extensions and the
naming of Nunavut, fiddled with two
stain patches of nicotine yellow,
symbolized with roiling of red ink,

the fold crease of wrong turn

frustrations.

Echoes of ancient shores, the first
of oaken oar to tredge, the
first settler's shoeprint, ring out
in the blue hues of bridge iron,
the browning oxygen of 20s Ford,
carving walls, mythological
mirroring right back to
the heart of it.

1 New Poem

As Ever

In those cascade washes, the coursing,

pulsing, alive with a thousand and two

of streamer-spark nights, our

country town sense of shameless

pride was given forever shape,

quite apart from our bookmark

scribbles, our half-ted knots of

teenage commitment flip-flapping

in the farmhouse breeze,

it was some grander thing,

carved of soapstone ambitions old,

left to dry bake in sterling silver

cast of engagement band expectations,

some guidepost gilding for the

open wounds of concrete, steel

we set up to stamp our names

in heaven-spent splendor over

the choral ring of ear in skipping

time, over the facade of wooden panel

faces to claim our in-born ambitions.