Category Archives: poems

I’ve been workin’ on the railroad…on a new poem…

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Roots. Here it be, the latest work-in-progress. The “I, engineer” here full of bravado. It’s not *me* that’s for certain. This redhead is acutely aware that she controls nothing. Do you think the switch in POV works?

Dawning Consciousness

She wakes grimly febrile,
desperately nostalgic
for dawdling in ditches
of tadpoles,
wagering glass
marbles in snow lanes,
sewing mini skirts
for her Barbie,
mashed potatoes,
fried baloney,
the gag reflex.

She shuts her eyes,
snubbing the town’s lens
zooming in on her culpability,
incensed at the sun’s insolence,
rising despite the collisions,
the most recent death toll.

She groans, engulfed in tokens
of admirers, embattled by, Continue reading →

Bushwhacked!

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Check it out! Here it be, our videopoem adaptation of Bushwhack, the book I’ve collaborated on with visual artist Tina Schliessler. Some images are colour, some are black and white. As I said, my old school punk rock cohort Chris Coon and I composed the music and he scored Bushwhack in the 11th hour. I don’t have it up here yet but you can watch it at YouTube in the meantime if you like, and I hope you do.

BUSHWHACK

Lofty
midrib splayed
dual cedar blades
soar.

Bare, pushing bare,
singing Be,
columns stand,
bear heat, stings, ruptures
to make sound,
bring form to mound
and limbs.

Lowering maven trembles.
Hourly swells
rustle spores,
life,
galloping life.

Heaven supporting pillar
in this below
regenerates,
unfurls
her hide.

Slattern in the grove
whisker in Eve,
flymphs and treasure within.

Twisted sideways for the sake of light
shedding, blushing lost in cinnamon.

Barmy birds eye pistachios,
fooled by flying V’s Icarus molting.

Sunlight mackled nub,
pert tummy truncated mute,
spread legs spring ovules.

Giraffe freckled legs,
whistling monkey mouth
sashay past vivisection.

Closely furrowed strut
hecklers scattered to the wind.
Power to divine.
Her brawn perpetual,
stance, a pledge.

Persisting many seasons
in lace bark
peepers penetrate,
ogle, wink.
Spy or witness?

Coarsely fissured bole
muscles in on a finite niche,
damp, narrow, coastal fog belt.
Hardy, assurgent,
frontal as weather
prehensile Pan grasps
blundering larvae.
Spared by the hand fallers
for his perceived charm,
multifarious bush ape
trounces rot.
Flourishes!

Unfallen, unadorned
unashamed hydra,
free of thorns, caprice.
Plenary femme sole
indulging in whorling,
forsaking heaven for nirvana.
Brandishing titties,
budding insurgent
claws Adamite armour,
grips the root,
embraces the earth.

“Roaming On” from THREE BLOCKS WEST OF WONDERLAND

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Remember when you had to turn “Roaming” on your cell phone when you left your natural environment, vicinity, country? They’re pretty intuitive, universal now, right? I imagined a young rock luminary ducking rehab by fleeing to an island.

Roaming On

Stolen holiday. Far from rain flowers, unemployment,
asbestos, new town Basildon. Rangy teen virtuoso
activates Roaming on his mobile phone, eager
for a slice of country living, to court ravenous farmers’
daughters on Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark
and wonders, why do their cattle roam the earth?
Alfresco lobster lunches, no word for stress they say.
A tax haven. He scorns the salver of mini booze,

Sky Store catalogue, not in the market for pricey
cheap perfume, Gucci sunglasses. Not feeling
festive toward packets of party mix, he surveys
the movie, startled to hear a saw in its musical score.
Next to him, the butane-soaked Stratocaster he loves
to hump onstage. Bloomin’ airline won’t permit
his Marshal stack in the cabin though
despite his showmanship, dexterity.
Gobbling Valium, nicked from Mum, he drops off
to dream of hurtling through blue flame, ala Buddy Holly.

He survives to spy a Continue reading →

“Paddling” from THREE BLOCKS WEST OF WONDERLAND

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Never panic. Post 9/11 angst and guilt here in the *safe* zone.

PADDLING

Clouds of tulle, hushed cavern
suite, desiccated starfish, muted
conch, hurricane lamp decor. Five hundred
thread count sheets lulled her,
triple-moisture night serum, pilewort slathered.
Twitchy sleep, the lie of white lace.
Central nervous system, slipper socks seek the floor,
grope for codeine, find scars, blue bruises,
source blacked out. Yesterday’s kayaking lesson?

Low PH, high FSH. Every bleary morning
tea, tottering on the balcony, a smidgen
of remaining suppleness to torment. How tempting Continue reading →

The Humble Muralist and the Reproachful Buddhist

poems,

This island girl’s latest work-in-progress. I am reminded of the Jung quote Dennis E. Bolen used in his book Kaspoit! “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” I’ve noticed a lot of islanders fleeing their shadows. There are no no shadows in Paradise, no darkness allowed and nothing bad ever happens even as the RCMP investigate the murder of a 17-year old girl. Hypocrites.

The Humble Muralist and the Reproachful Buddhist

Island roads are only as long as the island,
invariably leading to the vortex every island hosts,
the village or burg hugging the cove or bay,
the place where sweaty, unsighted, unrepentant
cocaine and alcohol abusers
gurgle down to, wind up in,
rubbing elbows with the vigorous
Tilley-hatted, swamping landowners
with their nasty habit stench.

Island roads snake lowly
through a bucolic landscape;
swaying grasses, expansive elms,
lambs, cows, horses, llamas.
Do not be lulled.
Anxiety stalks the Continue reading →

A Larcenous Groom’s Cooling Off Period-new poem

poems,

Or, a work-in-progress, more accurately.

A Larcenous Groom’s Cooling Off Period

He filches
tunes. Fuck copyright, its owners,
downloading steamy nude pics,
porno,
providing a market
not Paypal.
Fuck that shit.

He pilfers
pop for his hottie Charlotte,
slotted into the fridge door,
stacked in the pantry
enough Coke to fuel a militia.

He boosts
street signs. That’ll stop their godamn
touch-the-sky routine,
bestowing his buddy Guy
with a shiny, green Jackson Street,
a little glory for the double-wide.

He lifts
century-old chairs,
stuffed wildlife
from a leaning farmhouse,
fence thanking him for the laugh.
Now get the fuck outta here!

He pinches
his sister-in-law
in the pocketbook.
Emily, who mourned the loss
of her younger sibling
before being Hearsed away,
thank Christ.

He gives!
To the church
indirectly every time he mows
Our Lady of Sorrows’ lawn,
’cause they ain’t paying me enough
to do this shit
and it’s fucken hotter ‘n hell out here.

He ponders
his situation, odium state.
Heh heh.
How to beat the heat,
weather big bust backlash
all effen summer.

SKY BUSTING from “Three Blocks West of Wonderland”

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I’m working on a new one about Haida Gwaii while sucked into the Plath vortex again after finding a volume in a used book store. Not good. As moving as her work is, I wind up feeling weak, pathetic and unworthy. Still, I persist. Surely I must be mad as well.

SKY BUSTING

To the hillbilly born
a cursed monarch who swore
this pothunter could not be her blood
with his short gait, sight, temperament.
They must have abducted her
from a conclave of columned nobles,
the bastards, and this she declared
into her black lab’s ruff. Unless her peeps
traded her for gasoline in a time of war?
Splitting dog hairs, she knew this much;
she would never know.
She must adapt and learn. She scrubs
and sweeps though never convincingly,
swift clips to the noggin ever reminding her.

Neither was she popular with him in the marsh,
standing as he knelt next to her, shotgun
between them, instructing her how to squeeze Continue reading →

POVs, or Redheads Rule Romania, from “Three Blocks West of Wonderland”

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A long poem-for me-about my trip to Romania a few years back. Several Romanians have taken issue with it but I found their country fascinating. Every nation has it’s problems, challenges and usually, a turbulent history.

POVs

DAY 1

At Heathrow I am wan, so pooped my heart quits
palpitating. I stop scrutinizing threat level colour codes,
unattended backpacks, retreat to my insignificance,
listen as a wife recites The London Times,
as foreign to me as Rome’s Il Messaggero. Katrina who?
These are disturbing times, dear. Cartoonist hit lists.
Boils of slam. Novelist fatwas. Bird flu dread.
Spread by beak or spicy chicken wing?
Off to hotbed of Romania, host to more than one virus.
Online scamming. Corruption. HIV. European Union
bid in peril. Does the average Brit give a feck?
Do rhetorical questions require a question mark?

DAY 2

Bucharest terminal quiet but for the cabbies. I nearly miss
foundation staffer Caroline’s hand-inked sign.
She leads me to a young American with a Welsh name
and an English woman with a broken tooth. Wait here
while we search for the poet laureate of New Hampshire’s
luggage. Not another reality show, please. Pale silhouettes
amble past a riot of architecture, crepuscular on the banks
of the Dâmboviţa. Baroque. Modern. Renaissance. Gothic.
Squat, Soviet blocks abut opulent cathedrals.

DAY 3

Currency—lei—so overwhelms me with zeros I don’t buy
books or icons of Mary and the saints. Resistance heroes
in stone. An Arcul de Triumf and a monument
to the 89 coup d’état, Memorial of Rebirth, a tall, marble
pillar and orb locals scorn as the toothpick and the olive.
Redheads rule Romania now, mine violet in the gamut of tints,
ox blood to bozo carrot. I don’t blend in. Women in heavy kohl
stumble on cobblestones. Toward vogue. Glamazons vying
to be Continue reading →

ROUGH CUT-new poem

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Despite all the poems I’ve spawned, each time I sit down to write, I have absolutely no confidence that I can do it. The anxiety and trepidation nearly overwhelm me, but I persist, work through it I suppose, hence the writing process; my process anyway which feels like torture. I know I am not alone.

It took four years to assimilate a nightmarish episode to the point where I was able to depict it. Remember, poetic license; the she is not necessarily me, at least not in every line, stanza. Here it be, a rough draft.

ROUGH CUT

After a gestation period of eighteen months
and several bouts of incommunicado-ness
she dutifully reported to the pica-
eater’s rat’s nest to defend her lump of art
before he nibbled away all the footage.

She sang his praises
pretending the indiscriminate cravings
and grinding teeth didn’t exist,
didn’t wear her down.

Meth-heads don’t generate, they spin
scratched vinyl, shoot blankly,
regurgitate turbulence,
brew dandelion wine
because it’s as free
as the blackberries and psilocybin.

Pirate of his own ship-
bachelor pad bouncy house,
he slept in a pocket on the floor,
close to the cache
when he wasn’t busy
snipping,
sniping.

Under the red toque
a mind’s eye so muddied
it could see nothing
move.
Images, frames, shots
blurred unremittingly.
Recreate, rework, repeat.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.

With no redress,
no kind release,
she considered murder.

“Motoarson” or “Motoarsonist”?

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I’m not sure exactly where I’m at with this poem, what it needs, if it’s complete or not. Oh you know the process. I’m leaning toward “Motoarson” as the title but maybe “Motorarsonist” is better. What do you think? Let me know if you have any other suggestions, it’s a work-in-progress.

Motoarson

Distorted in stature
duke of a wilderness family
winced at the price of fuel,
the carcasses in his wake.
Malicious by accident
depending on which room
the grilling took place
by which cop,
the good or the bad.
Benevolently slamming
he braised ugly hams in the sun
daily ate a shit sandwich at the wheel
of the taxi he drove all over the city
and its sidewalks.
Nothing can stop a provocateur,
nothing can stop ignition,
the fires
set at night
to divert shame,
flee scandal.
Detonated plushly
the flames trebled, jumped rank
puddles, lakes, roads, cliffs,
roaring into the ocean
to singe mighty creatures,
giant squid and the blue whale.