DISTRACTIONS
Dance around my keyboard.
Drive to your cottage.
Rash on my pup’s belly.
Mud on your mattress.
Latest turgid update.
Condom count.
Assemble blow.
Save your ex-girlfriend.
An ultimatum or else.
Sore peepee.
Fake boobs.
Flaming turd, doorstep.
Your problems are still prettier.
MONSTER LOST
Godzilla years
Vagabond phase
Rampage days
Punch & Judy Show
Nights. Wild west
Pastiche. Bang
Locals. Streamline fate.
No coastline suits
No dwelling
Can contain him.
Latent crush
She did not choose.
He fell into her
Living room
Woozy from flight
Parsimonious talker
Familiar, fragile, giant
Pocked with luck.
Collisions. Pain.
She did choose to look.
To see. To harbour.
SEEKER
She found him
Verbose, wondered
Why he was gargling,
Carving salt with his uvula.
Too much tongue?
She was the type
To fondle q tips
Groom his climax.
Swish. Swallow. Marvel.
The questioning type
Blessed or cursed
With a savant prone womb.
She found slums
More frightening than marsh,
Collarless dogs
And red grapes
Dozing, frozen in the sun.
Then she found me
Long after she’d quit
Seeking answers. Clarity. Peace.
When I write and think I feel like EveryWo-Man, that I am nothing more than bits of all and other people talking to myself. Them. Us. And today please bear in mind that which we desire can kill us before we reach the oasis.
MIRAGE
Strive to wake slowly
To answers, to morning
When I hear best
When I am best heard.
So, what’s my weather?
Clammy Kurt Cobain,
Decapitation dreams
Verdant commotion
Microchip dread.
Don’t shy away she said
Pretend you can’t see
What you see.
Here comes your tall order
Last Coke in the desert,
What you thought out loud
Sacrifice bunted,
Bent light rays for,
Made manifest, integral
Part of the landscape.
In dubious collusion
With your dawdling beau
Inspirational quotes
Make you puke,
The unsaid, uneasy.
There is no rain.
No water.
No lake.
. . . even when you’re not looking; especially when you’re not looking.
SCIENCE OF LIFE
Take umbrage.
Sour all I have.
I used to allow it.
Did not rock kismet
Delight in peals of spring.
I mired. Flickered,
Got the dirt on
A waif, wily, perverting
High school rituals
Claw hammering rivals
Blind to the nests
Cocoons, hives, shells
Snoozing in biology class
Oblivious to living organisms
Living in, on, through us.
All escaped our attention.
Now I name stars
Species, ripen salmon
Salvage withered pines
Old friends, repair things
Beyond repair
Sail toward a ship.
Despite the fairy tale, and a good trick in a cyclone.
DOROTHY UNDRESSED
When I, as in a dream
Am not me
I am free.
A sudden jerk
May stoke the cold
Chimney but when I
As in a dream
Am not me
I am free to divest
Of gingham pinafores
Flying sock monkeys.
When you, always you
Find me at last
It might be too late.
Posture all you want
My rangy munchkin
It’s too late
To smooth cotton things out.
The house is abandoned
Hot iron inside, remember?
BOTCHED MISSION
Or, booty call gone bad.
It’s not funny. Nor murky.
Icy thorns of fury
Recede slower than scars.
The sustenance of pain wore off.
Frayed, aching, sopping
With venom, rage engorged,
Vein of mayhem opened.
Angel dust of adrenalin
Winging dainty arms,
Amplifying might. Charm
Offensive, to be admired only at night
Beloved as a mule,
His shame her cargo.
Serial monogamy, serial frustration.
No getting off this ride.
Flexing reserves of righteous
Muscle, she kicked ass and dragged.
Damn him, fuck spadework,
Shanghai the shower as tomb,
Victuals, body rotting,
Speculation rising
Till they found the red stench,
Cordial, self-winding businessman
In fetal position, lenses
In the washer, voyeuristic goo.
Water did not silence the apparatus
Nor launder its images
Truth as obscured
As that Judgement Day in June,
God in the guise of ex-girlfriend,
Jesus lost in five years of lynch mob.
Some Mondays are more brutal than others.
RUDE AWAKENING
Thunder protests
Dappled grey morning,
Skyline of baby teeth,
Gush of soldier ants.
Pesky dream flickers
Will not scat. They invade
Dismissive e-missives,
Monster blogs,
Yammering news;
Mothers Day shooting,
A spate of immolations,
The highwayman who surveilled
A close to the road family,
Playing, exposed, oblivious
To all the uses of duct tape
Though the kids knew
They were too puny to win,
That you can’t move a house
If it isn’t made of Lego.
EXTINCTION
Warning, first you lose
The teat, then Dad
May skedaddle, disappear
Like snot into a rag,
The delicate mastodon,
Or cash, not so petty
Once it’s gone. Gone,
What was once embodied;
Mensch. Rock. Guide. Kingpin.
He stands prostrate,
Christ-less, memory flogged;
The spit-built homes,
One failing each decade,
The friend in prison,
Five years for manslaughter
Of desire.
He who eschews matrimony,
The futile urge to procreate
Harbours a friend
That killed a dude
For fucking his wife.
BIRD WATCHERS
Binoculars resting on the sill
Blackly inveigle us to look.
The luxury of observation
Rackety silk.
Cotton sheets abuzz,
I sleep with a mad bomber
In a bed too narrow
To contain explosives,
Eroding acres encroaching
Shores of receding flesh.
Grip off, I watch
Elfin hummers amok,
Flap-happy Mallards
Swarm a blustery afternoon,
Recall bionic gunrunners, East Van,
First day back from gangster land.
Recoiling at the forecast I fled,
Cramped in a compact car
Child piloting the wife. Blindfolded
Against your scrutiny, foiling
Implicit shame, I skirted
Roadblocks, sculpting my spine
Straight, forcing it
To withstand gales. Tolls.
Lousy steward, I drop
The argillite raven,
Gleaming abalone eyes divided.
I slap my back with hot plasters
So it may bend when necessary.
Fit inside. Repair.
When will listening
Reveal the shape? Scope. When
Will seeing decode the trick?