August serenade under a summer sun

Standing before the chasm’s depth I’m undone

I spill into the darkness before me

Unseeing the light reaching from thee

The void unfulfilled and shapeless

Shudders through my soul hopeless

The depth of you swallows me whole

The very darkness envelopes me to both poles

On The Brink

When fear becomes the heart of being

The beat is uneven and thunderous

When anxiety fills a prayer with leaving

Goodbyes are false decisions ponderous

When errors fill the mind and soul from gleaming

The body trembles answers are silent questions dangerous

When quilt arrests the art of striving

Then dreams become quiet and death becomes tremendous.

When I wander

When I wander out of my pace

Fast to the stride of others

I falter and tremble in their wake

But if I ponder a pause

And keep the beast quiet and still

The ruminations become silent and I am content

Under the blue of big sky country

I miss the smell of water

In all that was about me

The foliage of green turning to autumn fire

The rock cuts on forest highways

The scent of evergreens and red earth in the eskers

Purity of land cleans the soul

Here under the sun we are pounded into the clay

Driven into the work day by the midnight sun

Big trucks big rigs faster everything

Building upon everything attached

To calices connected to grunts

Bourne on the shoulders of some poor fucker

Sinking in the clay and oil (take a stride)

I miss the breeze drifting off the long lakes

Carrying the voices of those who sang by the fire

The smoke that glides over the water

Like the morning mist comes showing us stars

And shadows of past tides against the shores of decades

In August look for the flicker of fire flies

And the darting splash of the blue heron

On the shores of Nippissing waters

Wooden steps thump their echo on the boardwalk

To the sandy shore as we stroll Sunday eve

Under the big sky the breeze dusty at times

Over endless fields and eternal horizons

Can bring you snow in late June

Or crash down upon you like God’s heel

But today just races waves of long grasses

Shoring up to dirt roads and highways

Running east from the foothills

Through sand dunes short forests and badlands

It reaches into the depth of my being

Sweeping me back onto the Canadian shield

By dark waters cliffs and forgotten inlets

Where life hides and dies on the earth soaked rocks

In the lush brush, coniferous and deciduous

Scents of all seasons crashing

Against an old mine’s head frame

Framed through burning eyes scorched by the sunset’s glow

Underlined with the murmur of the lake just below

“Home is the place your heart’s never left.”

Here the endless level plains affords us

A clear view of miles and decades ahead

Here when the sun sets

It takes the horizon with it

Deep into the dark cold bitter abyss

Winter levels against us till spring sets us free

That ice prick always has a hand in things

The rain will always fall from above

And the snow will flutter to the ground

The winds will always blow cold or warm

And the sun will always rise and set

As ordained by its place in the universe

The landscape gives it all pause and twists

Turns and spins it all into that which we are

And what I miss most is sitting next to you and Lill’

Listening to the waters lap up against

The rocks and dock of Nippissing shores

1.

When the candles flame

Flickers and sighs

Against the dark

Casting my shadow

Longer than a sentence of my life

Into brooding prose and verse

I have to smirch and chuckle to myself

And wonder what the hell am I thinking?

2.

Tailgate toolbox tool crib

Alberta mobility life on diesels

Always moving conversations on the fly

Dollar signs and for hire placards

Constantly rolling site to site

To bars and grills and pubs for grub

Always thinking always doing

Changing the landscape redirecting erosion

Keeping the flow constant

Keeping it all mobile

3.

Here in E-town the traffic roars

Of truck, rigs and vipers on summer’s eve’

The big and bigger roll with tailgate toolboxes

And the smell of black diesel curling skyward

The afternoon rush under threatening casts of clouds

Burrow into the grooved lanes of chrome to chrome traffic

Reflecting the hurt of a day’s pay in the exhaust

And the reckless joy of liquored slanderous slurs

Against the target of the week

Who takes his with a shot of gasoline

The red heads a fake her slinking demeanor

Wasted on interpretation and corrupted

From the one to many lines per shot

She addresses her court with empty bribes

As her look drains into desperation her stride

Takes her back into the traffic

Of her breaking real ‘stated living

Isn’t that Viper pressed against the back of that Ram

Again the world is small.

Pin Prick

He views the mirror to spy the cleavage

And the diesel roars and rumbles

The cash drawn and quarters don’t have much spillage

As Friday night is letting the die tumble

As traffic begin to crawl again

The Viper finds an opening and charges ahead

With the weight of steel on rubber wrenches a strain

Now with a wicked smile ‘n’ grill the Ram’s behind the red head

Squeezing her volatile velocity scathing scream

The diesel pushes black curls into the evening sun

Letting sign posts guard rails and placards bend into a stream

They hurl themselves onto the open highway

Like bullets from a gun

They look like falcons sailing into the blue.

Some disappear into the neon and street lamps of Whyte Ave

Stray bullets into the darkness of yours so true

Wakened standing in the night rain covering up like a poisoning salve

A requiem sung to those playing the unfinished halve

The She Within

I have wandered far from the familiar

Driven myself into darkness like decades earlier

Sleepless roving in shadow alleys of the corrupt

Somehow was home and the end of it abrupt

Steps echoed through wet avenues of the projects

Chronic incense fills the halls corridors and air exchange inlets

Three shadows stand under door way lamp

Smoking a haze corrupted with laughter in the damp

The night reflected against the wet pavement

Clashes with the starless soulless falling elements

A flash of lightning crash of thunder the lights flicker

Alarms sound, cats screech, dogs bark night becomes bitter

And the ages I have traversed returns to me

To a place that has never set me free

I am not bound by chains or promises

But an inner turmoil awakened now dare I falter.

4.

You are vanished from the substance

You are no longer a part of the decay

You who smiled stars into being

No longer small no longer heard

But for the breeze that brushes

My burning skin to alleviate the burden

I only remember the sad child.

5.

I remember concrete and plastic wheel

Strolling an ending summer

Whirls of early morning giggles

From behind oversized star sunglasses

Catching a warm breeze

In a stretched out body hug

Looked up at me from your sling seat on wheels

Big smile Sunday morning squawk of gulls

And another laugh

As we strolled on queen street

Without a word

That smile etched on my soul

That smile etched on my soul

The sun rises higher the heat radiates

From the clash of chrome, hoods and fenders

Midday swallows us both happy and content

Into a café’s cool forgiving atmosphere

Turning those eyes to wonder and envy

Greedy I want I want I want that pink one

With a pointy little finger on the glass

And that look of eternal gratitude

It too etched on my soul

It’s etched on my soul

Then there’s that time at Carlton Park

With the fountain’s watering clouds

Late afternoons in the shade

Crooked stroller sleep to the cool grass

On a blanket I dreamed your forever

Watched your dreams whisper out of your sleep

And brushed your hair from your brow

You are etched on my soul

Curled eternally in sleep you are etched on my soul.

6.

You were my little constellation

Of broken stars and torn up suns

Crayola stick people that smile like you

And a barbouille of celestial green and blue

This little universe got ripped and jilted

When the colors all fell from the page

I was drowning in this air

Above my head

As you left November earth

To teach heaven

Returned with angel’s

Feather no worse for wear

You were my little astronomical miracle

Of motion and wheeling derailed

Into a garden

Of grave colors tainted flowers

Blistering blossoms

As I looked into your eyes

And wet your parched lips

Welcomed you home again

I looked at your face

Deeper that the ocean

Can hide you

And kissed the stars on your cheeks

They turned inside out when you smiled

You were my super nova

Cascading light in all direction

Turning everything into a shudder

And in the stillness of the moment

I looked at you beam

Until there was nothing left

And woke wishing I was…..

You were my creation story

Untold into verse folded into form

A meter gloried

The sorrow that the tide rolled in

Is grey and sullied

To the blue place we use

To splash and play

Christ all I remember is you

Devastated in the fray of time

You are my constant memory

Of giggles and dancing

On the park lawn chasing sparrows

Tuggin’ at my pant leg

And with that adoring smiling look

You’re ready for sleep

In the cradle of my arms

My ghost never leaves

Just wait I’ll be coming soon

And we can play again.

7.

I hear the chorus from afar

Calling the rest home

And sending others on

The few of us pay no attention

We know better

We do not fit or set ourselves

In the groove they cut for us.

My Trans Internal Conflict

She’s a sandy beach blonde

Walking a long shore

Through the winds of time

Every step to this world her bond

Does not quake from what we tore

Though quiet in this storm we find

The dust stirred never settles

In it she absconds.

She strolls with the mist of the wake

That breeze brushing her hair

Nature at her command bleeds for her fair

As the sun crushes the horizon

And the heavens spill onto the landscape

She drinks the event willingly

Like a poison passion poured into her cup

Willingly she drinks what you poured.

She’s a sandy beach blonde

Walking a long, long shore

With a chained dirk around her neck

Her bare feet stride in the water

Frees her from the depths of the dark

Momentarily – Briefly – A passion’s second

And the darkness swallows her up again

Just like the damp starlit night

With only the voice of the waters

Surging through the rocks

Polished shells fragmented cutting her feet

The dust of the many that have come

Never settles

She absconds in it.

She’s a sandy beach blonde

Walking a long-long shore

And she remembers when she looked outward

Oh, how she enveloped his being

Gave herself to his fire

And lit herself like a wick in gasoline

Together the fire burnt like water

Fluid as thick melted sugar

And their souls cracked

And splintered like shattered mirrors

She stumbles from the room of fog

From the hot shower running

And glass on the floor

Bloodied foot prints on the tiles

The steam keeps rising

She absconds in it.

She’s a sandy beach blonde

Walking a long-long shore

She brushes the broken glass from her hands

Sitting on the cold tile floor wipes the shards

From the soles of her feet

Looking into the distance she is awed

There’s a dark thunderous storm coming

And from where she sits

Only the running shower can be heard

She peers into the dark quiet

Where thunder is mute and lightning bright

The rolling thunder heads

Black petals of flowers that will rise up

Mist and dust

For her to abscond in it

She is the angel of morning spreading her wings

And pours herself onto the world

She is the life that at high noon

Reaches down with all her prayers

To pull us from the abyss

She is the hope with which she flies over

Hidden by dark clouds

She’ll make it rain through the dry spell

And at the end of the day she is the one

That kneels and prays for a better day

Wrapping her wings safe around us

And as all the colors of you

Appears in the light

Everything is like gasoline on water

Setting the us all a fire

She’s a sandy beach blonde

Walking a long-long shore

As she pulls herself from the washroom wreckage

She sees him unconscious in the broken glass

Rolling him on his back pinching the shards

From his skin and hair

Reaches to turn off the running water

And as it stops

Thunder cracks through her

And he opens his eyes

Seeing what she’s become

That thread

That connects us to hope in heaven,

Snaps; all the angels and demons drop to their knees

The rain begins

Her tears well up to a rush of darkness

In this she absconds

She’s a sandy beach blonde

Walking a long-long shore

He’s gone to the ashes to the rain

To the mud that mires life.

8.

Sombre day, the shadows hide

No threatening clouds of rain

Just an over cast Sunday covering the blue

Just the grey of your eyes

Fallen from heaven covering for you

I saw you and you thought I missed you

In the crowd

I saw you with him

Assumed I believed it was someone else

I saw you in the rear view mirror

Laughing not haunting

Followed to close

Ducked under your hat

Sunk into your seat and passed me

I was never the only and I knew

You pushed the knife in so deep

Wait for it it’ll pour.

9.

I want to make it last

For it to continue long

But my time is short

I must act perhaps

The time will never be ripe

For when it is

It too is brief and eluding

It is not the best

But make due with what’s at hand

Then the pain and choking may begin.

10.

The avenues have brought me to a place

Far from what you call free

I’m a prisoner as much as the victim

Tied, bound and gagged begging for freedom

No one to release or unbound this nature

I am slither the underbelly of this creature

I spy to make my move to hover over your pain

I am in the pursuit of your demise without disdain

This comes as a gift from your own

I am unwrapped by their justified throne

I am given to you as their wrath

Thrust upon me poured upon you and I laugh

As I enjoy wrapping you in pain

Drink your muffled screams in the dark of rain.

11.

Twisted in quiet thunder

I ponder fate and shudder

The doors been close for so long

I don’t think it’ll slide off my tongue

It’ll writhe and squirm and tremble

To the gasping eternal buried in the brambles

I can see heaven in her eyes

And then it disappears in horrible cries

Then…….

In the twisted quiet thunder

I can see the dark of her eyes ponder

Just for a moment she turns out the light

In the envy of the storm

She feels cold wrapped in her arms imagine to be warm.

11.5

What do you ponder

Staring through sun glasses

Looking across the white river

Glared by the spring sun

Are your thoughts happy

In depth of what could have been

Distant lost in shadows of regret

Maybe you ponder just a moment ago

I’m the erosion decades of pondering

Sitting in the sun just a ways from you

Your solitude is crashed upon

By necessity and disturbances of the present

Soft cheek against the cold breeze

From the icy river flowing under white

Your thoughts hidden from me

Flow under back, stand and walk away.

What did you ponder?

Behind those shades of black

Looking into your tundra

Glared by the sun of your landscape

I was lost from my own fate

Just for a moment I was free in you.

Thea D.

You are close Thea D.

I can feel you I can taste you

The first drop of you on my tongue

Sends my flesh into tremors

You turn away with a smile

That wave retreats the hunger remains

I had to let you go the sun was here

All those shadows did not see you

Your essence just from your smile

Is as thick as chocolate

On a summer’s day

I’ve taken a deep breath

Still the hunger remain

It is to kiss the smothered scream

With my lips and swallow your fear

To take what trembles inside you

And press myself against its strength

As you watch his eyes dim

From the even flow pushed out

By the every beat of his heart

It’s as thick as chocolate

On a summers day

12.

Sirens echo through the city blocks

Bouncing off concrete and glass

Shatters the murmured traffic hum

Dividing the peace from the pieces

Fragmented serenity in their gutters

Crude clay and crack

Slurred and muttered

Flows thick as blood in these corridors

Cleanest filth you’ll ever sink into

It moves thick and black in your veins

Shifts what matters in your head

Just enough to make it go grey

And what matters just goes away

Until they find another to be victim

To their self -assurances victimizing another

Like vampires cyber feeding on defamation

Ghouls sitting next to their guillotine

13.

I am not that which I see in the mirror

That reflection lies

Nature has formed me

With the breast of a man

And best intention’s guise.

Turned what soft hand there was

To become the hard hammer

Of many lives

Under brooding and thunderous heaven

It tears the fabric of assumption

Sense denies

Winding moments into decades

Aspiration into regrets

A present that cries

And cries aloud for truth

To change the thing I am

As day shows no stars

Oceans share no secrets

I am as bright and as deep

I am not the shell assumed by the world

But the just gender that unfurls.

14.

I see glimpses of me

When gladiolus bloom

Perfumes the moment I pass

My breast swells when I see

A child distraught

In her discomfort of hunger

Or need of close caress

I am captivated when mother robin

Feeds her chicks

Quieting their cries

I am amused when the girls

Laugh with their freedom

Conquering the moment

With friendship and admiration

Of each other

I am amazed when these girls

Lack oppression and self-censorship

The last few decades have imposed on me.

I see glimpses of me

When rose blooms falter

Leaving petal strewn paths

Lush pink in morning sleep

My heart swells

When the oak and the elm dance

In the afternoon wind

Letting the chattering laughter

From Mercer’s tavern

Be carried off while I

Stroll a path in solitude

When I get home

Oppression and self-censorship

Has withered and wane

I look in the mirror

And all I see is a lonely old man.

15.

I am alone dark and empty

I have nothing left to give there nothing to take

My, my hunger grows caught in a whirl

Twisting me apart bringing me down

Turned, tossed in a wave by the great big sea

Twisted into knots shredded into the quiet lake

My, my head aches caught in the ravings you hurl

Against this wall the whole thing will never come down

Just to make matters worse I think of you

Nothing prays on my mind more

I remember summer fires and sunset hues

The smoke and you so far I couldn’t grow

I remember a long distance drive soared

Through the night just to look in your eyes

I fell from the blue.

16.

The end of April beneath grey skies

If I hit the ground before I see those eyes

Let me have stillness if but for a moment

Let her fall ever so gently into torment

Ignite the moment with us together

One being lighting the world in a fever

You have become the monster terror

Tearing the wings off angels in fervour

The end of April beneath grey skies

Hope she prays hard that she is not denied

As you dare to judge so righteously

You are more apt to bend, you own unruly

As not to rock the strong who condemn

You may be listed hung out to dry to make amends

For their errors faults and omissions

The end of April under grey skies

Are in attrition

For no wrong committed against the world

No wrong committed the punishment still unfurled

The end of April beneath these stars

Would rather be home than to alter her scars

The end of April under an empty moon

Cool blue twilight void of candle light specks

The charred remains of yesterday she sweeps the ashes

With the darkening flowing the brim she sweeps

And under the brambles hides her fears

Retains her composure and walk into the light

She never returns eternally lost

Swallowed by the fucking void

17.

The dark is a candle in the light

Throwing shadows against the silk of time

Like soot smeared against a baptism gown

Letting you know where it all began

The charred remains of all you touched

Conspire to end you, obligated

The company that chased you down

Was allowing you the path you ran

When you saw the finish line

It all came to make sense to you

You just wanted to drown yourself in the baptismal fount

Taking as many worms as you could

As you could stuff in your mouth

Cause heaven is a self-righteous fantasy

And hell well the world lit the fire on that one

And as there’s nothing else

Cheers pour more gasoline on the fire

I’m chilled.

18.

Charred remains left at my feet

The day took the breath of me

Turned up the furnace and the heat

The sun set up high after clouds

Chasing stars and moons left at her feet

It left me wandering the moors within

Cursing the damp the aches the wishful thinking

As I look down upon charred remains

Ask myself if the fisted madman

Would have been the cure for what ailed me

Or perhaps just walk into the storm

And take the lightning lottery

Hope to turn this constellation of crap

Into those charred remains that sink

Into the burning earth under smouldering ground

Ghost like steps remove us from here

And the sand under our feet becomes glass

The breath and vine creeps into your head

Rooting out what gives light and Angels’ flight

Impaling with a rush the beauty of this flaw

When I was little

In a dark room under cover warm

Thought a safe place be sworn my cover

In youthful dreams of lust and beauty

A destroyer came and toppled those pillars

Of a castle safety keeps in childhood stuff

A dream of summer sun warm and free

The beauty lays bathing under blue, blue skies

Woman friend quickly covers from my youthful eyes

And with a grin forgiven shoes me and I flee

This castle’s safety keeps in childhood stuff

The days aspires to peer through pine and holly

The bathing beauty soaking sun summer breeze

Then the queen of my castle safety keeps

In my childhood stuff come running home

Boy evolving a maturing thirst from childhood stuff

The eve of play under such a burning sun

Warms the eyes fevered cheeks I’m weary

The queen thus bathes her boy ready to dream

Under the castles safe cover of sleep

There in safety conjure dreams to keep

In dream she waits for me under sun and stars

Inviting first infantile love pure to bloom

The warmth of she, scent of her to kiss as a groom

Then the lightning flashed through the dark

I bit her finger she filled my mouth the destroyer came

I woke in horror my love was stained

Fears kept my eyes closed shut to strain

My mouth was full could not spit or swallow

I was still did not move as the pillars fell

The destroyer was here and left unseen

There’s no place for us in our ruins

I wander the castle grounds seeking who he might have been

In a castle’s safety kept forgetting this destroyer

Till I saw him again in another room

Tearing this castle’s pillars felling them like trees

So if you wonder what it is I have seen

It was my own reflection in full scream

And still fought the destroyer of dreams

The destroyer of youth the destroyer of me

For I still lay in the wreckage of those pillars

To see if the destroyer would now show his face

This boy in chains

This boy in chains

Trapped in a time and place

Far from here and now

Waits on his rescuer

When they found the larder empty

They filled it with stone and bones

Placed it on a raft to sail

To the middle of the lake so deep

They toppled the chest full of crone

In black waters to obscurity and quiet gale

So that time would never whisper what it keeps

This boy in chains

Stands still and quiet

In a storm decades in rage

Waiting on decay to raise the stench

When it reached the floor to lie on its back

A cloud rose and the disturbed sediment swirled

Into the sunlit blue her face to heaven peers

She looked upon them with sadness and dismay

As every out stretched curl of wave did lack

To reach the shore their wrong, their path unfurled

In the cold waters summer storms Sunday still and grey

This boy in chains

Whom his only friend disappeared

On a rainy night

Was left alone in the wilderness

The house was abandoned the door resounded hollow

The grounds were ruins of phantom laughter

The windows were empty without reflection

The only place of safe joy was now sorrow

A place where toys are now relics of yesterday’s marrow

We walked away kept looking at reminders

To remember she told me upon my assertion

That they had vanished, no they fled from hurt and sorrow

This boy in chains

Was caught in a sun filled

Dungeon pulling wings

Creatures that would take flight

The forest scent thick of pine and birch

Poplar and thicket with summer suns

Raising morning mist beating through the damp

The safest refuge on the highest perch

Trailed walks of solitude in open fields heated runs

In search of a phantom cemetery camp

Deep into the woods of a child’s

Imagined abandoned church

This boy in chains

Found a key to undo

The knotted twisted lock

In elixirs and incense of escape

Decades of turbulent storms from the wolf’s howl

Serenades cursed through the winds song

Tirades escaping the lips of this lover’s desperate sigh

Only wanting the freedom you took from a foul

Twisted dark from fate so strong

Faded forgotten into that breath that sigh

Folded neatly tucked into the dark

Scraping and cutting my bowel

This boy in chains

Folded and in pain

No one clued in

To this twisted lock

It is not a season

It is not a season

That brings this to me

Cold blistering to rise against

From a cutting shore years passed

The wounds overcome the senses

Bleeding into the ice of this

My present + in the moment + still +

Screaming from the shudder of dusk

It is not a season

That unfolds its wings

Like an intemperate angel

But a thunderous shadow casting a frost

…..It crystalizes on his three day shadow

Turning fluid asphyxiate blue

With memories raked against her flesh

Peeling what remains of him from her

It has never been a season

That tore a child to pieces

It was as if you, little by little,

Into what was left, you fed and preyed on her.

Upon this spirit and emetic reflex

Left me seconds to ‘scape your breath.

I saved her and the lowest

What a broken child tried to heal bits and pieces of this.

20:29

This is not a winter

Nor am I discontent

This is a cruel joke

By idiots told and harshly sent

I wait to see the down load end

As I sit pondering garbage bent.

November

When the body and the mind

Are separate and unkind

Argue the gender’s refrain

In the binary world of disdain

These dissociated moments of dark tribute

From this mismatched simulation I dispute

When the princess has been gored

By the white knights silver spun stork

I’ve been cast out of the realm,

Everyday.

ID

Do you know why you treat

Us like Amanda Todd?

Believing you are beyond error

Holier than thou

Raising your voice only to be little

Those you fear from love

Making us unworthy excrement

Rape the heart and soul

Beat us down like mongrels

Into the corners of life

Till you believe there’s nothing left of us

When the forgotten

When the forgotten

Unravel all the lies

There exudes from the explosion

Of truth and humility

A fire which burns

Untruth, all these lies to cinders

The ashes of youth rises

On the currents of cool breezes

Twirl into the evening quiet

While the rest of the world

Gnashes teeth and clenching

Guilt and accusations

Into the dark

Into the dark

Where no star blooms

Through the void

Where no breath draws

To see a light

When no eyes ope’

I am the crocus

This spring’s bloom

19.

Walking a long stretch of road

To see places long forgot.

20.

The flower has all but gone

No petals left hanging on

Except for the crystalline frost

Clinging to the stem

Like summer moss

Forming the morning bud

Has brushed against my hem

And follows every step I weave

From here to the eternal garden

Of forever rows

And ephemeral cleaves

From the pastoral message

Received by the bee and butterfly

21

What is left but dry soil dusted

To the eternal in search of life?

What is left but decay leaching?

Into the dry clay faces I see?

What is left when the dead man

Cannot hold his breath without

Vanishing into the breeze.

What is left when the cold

In the air has nothing to chill

For that life needs to be

So when I look to the tundra

Of your eyes that is what I see

22

I anger easily from imaginings

Pulpit’d by ravings

And then I twist in my own rage

I sadden terribly from internal guesses

At the foreboding

Dark happenings

That will tear out that one’s heart

I am warm terror bleeding from you

Exsanguinated lush velvet red

Dry sticky I fear petrified.

23

Fear paranoia the illusion

Of broken reality

Misfit

Tortured perceptions

See through my eyes

One moment

Trade me places

One second

Make the switch

In the present

I’ll never give it back

In order not to be that.

24

Predicated to the moment rhythmic beatnik beat

In the background voices

Hip hop standard

With pop era’s favourites

Grab a bag full of beats to throw

A handful of words into the air

And return ideas into

Fashionable sentences

I’ve returned again to where

Someone has left off

Where someone has left

The off switch on

Flicker for me.

25

There’s not much left when the soul is bared raw

To its innocence’s theft blasted into your very craw

The pit of insanity and the broken

Thinking ambiguity is the answer stolen

From the brink the fire

This time the phoenix stays down

26

November 25, 2012

When the moment arrives be present.

27

The bloodletting’s a good song

Eerie cartoon from the dark place

Serendipitous play

Exsanguinated comedy

Sitting in on the day to day

Just watching all go to hell in a hand basket

Second by second

Such is the moment that permeates

My inner turmoil.

Days turn against what I had in mind

And squander Waits’ nickel on the dime

For a quarter not worth the bill it’s printed on

Must be Canadian surpassing the American

Bring it down

Standard isn’t

Angry of heart as the Blonde

Says (Concrete that is)

Is a voice of my inner beast

Shall we say

Nothing smudges the paper like Dead Me’s

They crawl out of the blatant

And turn upon the page

As nuanced slipped pretty at times

Sometimes can feel very Jaundiced.

28

I came into this place

As I came to the door

I was twenty years past

Decades showered me

With feelings of time gone by

Fled with the wind never to return

29

Here it comes again

Flows like a river and falls

Tumbles with the rain-bowed

Drops fluid with the rain

And then slowly climbs back up

Just like the mist

That’s the feeling of the mist rising

Not the uplift from the breeze

But rising hovering on its own

In its own life

30

Not its stop – brevity – halts

Movement ceases

All the gears ceased

Derailed and change

Unchained

We begin a new

31

The grateful turn

They do not return

They appreciate

They don’t depreciate

Or devalue

They care and seed the same

They allow not the dark

But bring light to it

However little be it theirs

To part with

And depart not with

The passion that fires it

32

Did you see sorrow?

It walks among us

Smiles blackened grins

At you to frown your chin

Have you heard it grow?

It turned in a fuss

To hide its tears grimace

Just a wrinkled chin you face

Bang bang

Has the reality hit yet

Poor you walking with the nothings

One step above the voids

And a step below the zero’s

Come on

33

In the garden of the accosted

We bruise fruit ripe with insanity

Ready for the pickin’ and full

Of the maddening reality that it brings

Turn it down and you’ll miss out

On the knowledge that parts us

Turn it up and you’ll see things

That’ll burn your eyes to dust

Turn it over and let it slice you

Cutting deeper into the flesh of the unknown

Spin it round and round till we’re dizzy

And let yourself think this is good stuff

Even though it’s just one perspective

Of the ugly truth there is no nice one.

34

I am free so I believe

Trading places from the chains of self

I am free to a place

I am given a reprieve from this self

I am free from this stench

And given my own place into play

I am free slice in and out

From what I believe twisted like

I am free I am free

35

I remember you. Clearly can see you.

I can reach and touch you

But like the mist that lays the summer dew

You disappear from reach

I can only feel you on my skin

Turned dew moist kiss on me

Wishing you were on my lips

Departed now into the dark woods

We see you darling as revenant

Through the bramble layers and the rabbit trails

Running into the shadows as morn

Cuts into days

The warmth of it lays heavy upon us

The heat carves into the decays

Its scent blurs the lines

Between the beneath and the above

Some would call this love

Others would deem it the just

Others just what it is

The second course starts

Remember running

Through it all

Through all the summer vines

And the evergreen nettle

Dead brown starts a fire quick

And again the breeze runs

With our every breath

Can you feel it

It was a time when we

Thought we knew it all

Were above it all

It was a time when we all called it youth

And like everything else

It gets old pretty fucking quick

Damn they came like wolves

And left like their howl

Into a void I never

Want or need to return

I can see how in that distance

From whence time took it from us

Took it and ran like that Buck and his doe

With pride.

Well it stood there for many years in the woods all alone

One day I revisited and saw

The shape of things to be

I that its collapse would

Have to mine to heal and bring changes

End part one

Part Two

I don’t leave it up to you

I just don’t care

I don’t give it up for free

I just don’t care

I fray the hypodermic thread

And puncture my being

I just don’t care

When there seems nothing left

And I’m ready to die

I still don’t care

Cause whatever you believe

I’m still fucking alive.

To seed another row of animosity

Is to burn into the sullen

The truth behind all the lies

When participation is my own demise

Creating subconscious avenues

Opening doorways with nothing forth coming

36

This rose frozen November red

Crisp frost green leaf

Half torn from life

Half hung on death

Framed in the mouth of snow

37

They all slumber now

The ant scurries not

The bee busy no longer

Sleeps curled in thee

The spider froze in her web

Shuttered by the eastern breeze

Fluttering between the branches

The hive, great forest,

Is your heart in slumber?

With no hum to churn you sweet

Summer fruit and fall harvest

We to slumber giving pause for nought

Empty carcasses wandering

Grieving things never owned

You are sleeping death

38

When remains leave you only bones

Surely dust is next to follow

When breath puffs no warmth

Then surely the heart is no more

And we walk alone

We drag baggage, toys behind

Making ruckus clang disdain at the world.

An older version of the youth that use to smile;

But crime ‘gainst us has sworn us down.

Down that damned abyss

That the everyone avoids.

When we become silent

It is only your blindness and deafness

Which impales us quiet.

So…..

When you listen to that quiet summer breeze

Through the green leaf willow

And that rush upon

The sandy beach you soak up;

It is we screaming

In the yarn you trifle here.

39

I remember your tears

From the words that brought you sadness

I should have told you

My lines of disdain were real

Were biographical self-inflicted fears

I could not explain

The subliminal constellation you witnessed

Was incomplete, in construction before you

The pain you felt was my dread

My hidden secrets borne like a breaking migraine

I could not express this beauty

I had so long ago beaten against life

Against all things true, this, made me

The liar I am in tomb social gloom

By self-inflicted anger and social doom

Here I stand liar cheater and thief

Only trying to keep what is untouchable safe

Only walking, my mired anxisocial friends

Through somnolescent crowds

Keeping these secrets like a broken heart

40

When broken toys scattered

Here and there glass shattered

What do we hope to find

With Harry’s heart of glass in such a bind

Should be swept and forgotten

Pull a rug over all that’s broken

Hide the nuance dust collects

And see what the fuck you protect.

When the snow has fallen in inches crept

And the mud under is still fucking wet

Let’s slide down the way fly

Into the brush and tree risk it all to get high

Slump into the car 17 and full of shit

Drinkin’ and rollin’ without light this is it

Laughin’ and smokin’.

41 A Love Song C F7 A min G Dim

When I saw you walking

Down the street just talking

With your friend laughing

It was what I saw in your eyes

We did glance a moment just a moment

Forever must have been just a second

And the sun crashed through that horizon

To light up your smile against all of heaven

I watched you walk away through the clouds

Into twilight while summer dew was mist

All I wanted from you was the warmest kiss

And I wish and I prayed and you vanished in the haze

As I stood in the dark under the moon

Just a ray of sun would come through

And I tried to find you but it got dark again

And I stood there feeling so lost

I watched the sun rise ‘cause it’s morning

Thought a shadow of you was in the clearing

But it was a deer without meaning

And anyway I don’t believe in love

42

Disturbed under ice and concrete

I never knew how his smile was sleek

Hippie slick how I should have kicked

Bit’ scratched but frozen in his grip

The deception of my fear

Threw me out of myself

Into made up world of missing parts

Asking what is whole? Complete?

Replete with disdain

Here I am hanging on a thread of pain

Where the hell was the “everybody else”?

Where the hell was night when day was bent by hell?

It was a week of fire turning mind to grey ash

Where was baptismal water when the flame rose to singe my life.

43

Where from, do you look back?

See a soul upon the rack

Laced with bloody lashes split flesh

Has its’ judgement curled into the mesh

Something of it wasn’t clear no not so much

Do you see the devil yet, in his clutch?

Can you feel his talons squeezing

A painful wretch slowly erasing

A damned old fool remembering.

44.

You left me twisting in the wind

From the spring to this third winter

And I live well on the wings

Of friends flown by, day to day

45

The crystalline frosted rose blossoms

Under the auspices of wind-blown snow

Her pale pink blooms on the cheeks of others

Her stem, in line days under frozen open sky

Smiles a dawn orange across my face

Beneath the cover of morning clouds

Violet to mauve lifts of light penetrate

And tares into the days without me

I’m a sadness that clings to everything

And to stop to cease would be to miss the beauty

My frustration brings a spring rain to this

Now, from under the ice a snowy lid

Something pushing the cold aside, a crocus

A crocus tearing winter apart

An angel pummelling fist against flesh

And flesh against light and time

It’s always been this way

It’s always been locked in time

46 November 30, 2012

So you tend to move through time

You hear a sound from the radio

And your travels begin

Sliding in and out of memories

Attached to feelings and sense of glory

You’re amazed at the vacation

Places vacated, with fear are now transitory

Just like the one you’re leaving now.

Stay a moment longer

Feel its pain and distraction

Don’t run from it

But don’t embrace it either

It’s just a minute of your life

Waste one waste ‘em all, right

A face has appeared from the distance

Just a wicked smile glows

Hand rockin’ to the thump

In the back of my throat (thump)

To the powerlessness (thump)

To the pain forceful hand (thump)

To the inability to speak (THUMP)

The back of my ear crushed

A sentiment against the bone

A failing of my humanity

That ache, that forever reminder.

That’s never left, kept sullen

Battered into a small area of flesh

Smouldering pain over the mesmerized years.

It’s when the last sun has risen

To cast tall shadows

On the morning glory

Do we remember moments thought lost?

Open into gaping wounds

Seething of hate and anger

From

The other rooms abandoned

Some have broken toys scattered

On the floor and broken bulb shattered

The once polished stairs did glide

Now are filled with rot and termite

The siding dad and I put up

Is falling to the ground sagging

The ghost of me scrapes my ribs

Hollows me out to give you truth

There is nothing left to give

There is only the crime that became me.

II

You know when the sin warms you to the bone

And after it leaves you glowing smile on your face

The depth of the laughter

You once shared with friends

How it made your heart swell

I mean even the blood was so fucking thick happy

How deeply the scent of home reached inside you

The baking mom did and the smell

Of plywood and panelling dust in the house

The smell of clay and sediment dirt

From all the digging to get the sump pump in its place

How this permeated m being.

I worked hard, we all did

But

Now

Not much gets in but the fucking cold.

III

The cold like an ice cream head ache

Ice pick

I scream into my own bones

Froze with sterile ozone

This tundra has become my marrow

Strong brittle and sharp

There’s not a bloody place for you here

Not a hair’s room for you to squeeze a penny through

And don’t say you know me

I vanished years before we were in

The same fucking room

You thought I couldn’t run fast enough

I was running to the inside

Deep into the dark

Deeper into my own marrow

It took a while to come out…….

IV

Quietly revving’ purr ‘n’ waiting

To take a bite

Winter has always been kind

It hurts as deeply as I do

I could wander days dragging my feet

In sub-temperatures

V

The January freeze clings to the heart

Has nothing for us to tear apart

On the painted glass shares our art

Seeping blood and life from them who depart

And the list of things that have come undone

In the foyer of the rudest man’s tongue

Where do you think all this comes?

Certainly not from the heart but his cum

Forced on me in me my mouth rude

Corrected constraints I am subdued

By his grip upon me crude

In the moment he laughs is lewd