We've moved. Oops.

Yeah, so I've relocated my blog to another server where I can do things like make it interesting and all that.

And this is where you can find my new poems. And yes, I've updated the link; my new design had broken it, but all is well again.


Dan (Always getting somewhere.)

Taking

I feel like robbing
you of something that
you've forgotten to
appreciate
for far too long;
after all,
spit and polish don't
hum and spin like
rubber melting to pavement.

You'll notice that
edifice missing, I wager,
a few years from now.

But, of course, I've
actually got my hands
on the
steering wheel.

Rhapsody in Seven Colours

(Red)

I want
you to say my name
and roll it on your
tongue like
a foreign phrase
now that I've
changed it a little;
if only to
remind yourself
of that night when
everything was perfect,
you were perfect,
I was perfect.
Fashion it, if you will,
like a merry little
tune you're afraid
to sing:
you might be
too happy.

(Blue)

I want
you to write
me a poem like jazz
and whisper it
into my ear
when I'm too pedantic,
or afraid to tell
you things that
I should.
There are words we
aren't able to
ratiocinate
and analyze,
but they're the dye
of our mornings, and
the stained glass
of our
goodbye goodnight godspeed.
You should dip
quill and spread
ink.
You should
tell it like it
is.

(Yellow)

I want
you to just
go for it
dammit! (Forgive the
strong words at
the slightest provocation.)
To sprint like if
you push that extra
seven feet the colours
will split seamlike and
begin spilling into your heart:
but then the fearful
consequence of
such things
involves getting what
you want,
and we all know
your rationalize your
desires as
abhorant.
You find ways to
thwart them,
to cut down trees
and build a hermitage,
but your landscape
is all stumps and
sloughage.

(Green)

I want
you to cast your
boughs to heaven and
thank
God
for wrapping your
heart in chains and
tossing you into an
ocean,
because when he gave
you gills
he meant it.
But then, I'm mixing
the metaphors like a
strong drink:
your logic can weave
them as fibrous
living threads into
a bag to carry
regrets.
Lift your boughs to
heaven and thank
God for that, then:
you still have
something
to heave over your
shoulder and
get someplace.

(Cyan)

I want
you to forget
about how the miserly
souls animadvert
simply because they've
never reached out
and grabbed
something
to clutch to the chest
and breath life into:
the facts
still the facts,
lies, damned lies,
statistics,
balances,
weights,
none of which being
alive will ever
submit to.
The subjugation
of freedom beneath
a footstool
of ambient data
speaks
more to your
state of mind than
reality:
I beg of you,
just get what you
want
despite what you
know.

(Orange)

I want
you.
Truth be told,
I want to run a
finger down your back,
shiver,
spine,
glory,
something,
something,
anything!
There - it's all about
me about you
about being
approximately
in love
with a lovely
shape
that takes my
mind and shakes
it every so often:
I keep waiting
front-of-queue.

(Violet)

I want
you to remember
playing Titanic on
a concrete ship
piered for good
in pavement feet from
the waters edge:
is that what you're after?
Something about the way
God sent a
rhapsody
in seven colours
and we thought
"Maybe he's trying to
tell somebody something."
Maybe it's me:
maybe it's you:
maybe it's that no flood
will again overtake
the mountains.
Ironic then,
how your water
has engulfed
my world.

Somewhere Inbetween Here and There

If I remember correctly,
we've done this before
and suffered
through the same
silence,

only, this corpse
is speaking out of
turn:

heaven is where you
whisper in another's ear:

hell is when you
store the words
for a better
hour.

Fingerprint

There she is
almost
within reach;
if I were
to strech out
an arm
and a finger
I could
touch her.

But I don't -
I never
do -
the memories
of stretching
slowly and
enfolding
her
are strangely
warped with
time -
I forget her
fingerprint
and its
ridges and
valleys,
but not what
it was
to skip like a
silverfish
from
breaker to
breaker.

Even then I
never
knew what
to expect -
is that why
I loved her?
(Partly: it
might be.)

The puzzle.
But then, if I
would bridge
these few feet
and touch your
shoulder,
my fingerprint
would linger
there for
days.

That much I
know. See?
I've figured
out a
few things.

Opportune

If I wait
for the
opportune
moment,
what will
I find
lef over
for
me then?

If I wait,
will I
see that
timing is
only for the
damned?

Distance

What is it that
you want?
What's keeping
you from it?

No, not the thing
itself.
Not that.

Orbital

Tonight became a quick
tour of the moon's dark side:
the ink of which is
now illumination
upon return -
that this inconsistant
revolution is
all I can ever count on
with you -
that is to say,
I've missed how you
never make up
your mind:
light or dark?

Yet, you still orbit
the same planet
in the same circles -
you beautiful
orbital being.

How you still
sway my heart like
tides.

Ochre

I passed by
a hillside wrapped
in a gauze of ochre
blooms, a gash
not quite flame -

once, it seemed,
a brilliant soul
had been fastened to
the earth,
reaching upward
to stroke
seedlings to
strange colours.

I have never seen such
flowers, except
when I dream
of cold sleep,
and they are
mine.

Query

Let me ask you,
"when did your heart
grow blunted?"
(What will you say?)
You have
twisted
the knife thrice
and your hand
is yet on its
hilt -

would you, two
thousand years ago,
have also given
her to Moloch?

A Cold Dream of Death

I feel weak in some deep
place, now
that the harvester
no longer stills
his hand -

this evasion takes
its toll,
to the weakening
of joints,
of marrow -

when I sleep,
I deam a cold
dream of
death.

Anniversary

The world is a strange
place, good and evil
mixing like a recipe
made difficult to decipher.

It is true, then
that this half-baked
scheme broke an
egg or two,

and I've become
both devil and messiah
in the
aftermath.

Gravity

I didn't recover
flight after
my last
brilliant
attempt -

nor will I,
if that's
the meaning
of this
word,
"free".

There are things
meant to bind
ones feet
to the ground -

this cage is
so beautiful,
so full
of gravity.

Patriarch

You had woven a
strong cord
in the beginning
years,
in words and gestures
you can't name or
recall now,
curiously.

Such a small thing
to fray that
once-eternal braid -
have you noticed
that?

A dance. Not so much
a rope.
When did you
decide this bootfall
choreography?

Such a loud misstep
to ruin that
once-untarnished
score.

A play, perhaps?
You should have used
your arms.
Instead, you usurped
another's lines.

Ironic then, that to
crush my heel meant to
crush another's heart.

Maybe no one told you
about bricklaying
(it's much like braiding,
dancing, and acting).
Maybe no one
explained about
foundations.

Lovesong

Tonight, half-phrased
apologies bubble to
my lips like blood
from spent lungs -
I've dealt with the lost
limb, and compensated
where you grow gangrenous -
but I feel an itch
there, sometimes,
in that extremity I
no longer posess -
it aches like a stormfront
when passing familiarity
strikes -
ergo, my apology, my
agony, my tragedy,
my lost function -
if I act like a lover,
you must forgive me.

The muscles are still
trained
to hold you.

Expanse

This world is too grand
for me - too beautiful.
I am swallowed by its
hyperbole,
whole.

The words I capture it
with are frail
compared with
my own duotone patch
of sky
and earth underfoot.

You, for instance:
I'll be quiet
now.

The World is Not a Cold Dead Place

The world is the
small of your back,
the curve of your lips,
the dark monolith
of your eyes.

The world is
your breath against
my neck,
your fingers laced
in mine,
a wink.

The world is not
a cold dead place,
not anymore.

Wound

I will set the bones
against my palm,
hear the joints snap
back into place -
knit your skin to its
former glory,
let my fingers wield
the needle and thread
like a
fine instrument -

until you a whole,
and wholly mine.

Form

Somehow, the days are
becoming longer -
we are shadows cast farther
than ever,
building stretching
into dawn
from dusk -
we're insubstatial
that way.

But in yesterday's suns
we fell
at cross-points -
something substantial
taking form.

We don't walk
there anymore.

Ripples

With those morose waves
lapping at my feet,
I listened to a low
groaning stretched
over the water -

you entered me like
the great ships enter
the harbour,

majestically soot-covered,
limping as only a hull
can limp.

But you invaded like
a spy, also:
you know all my
channels;

you move silently
now,
quickly now,

diving past the bastard
skeletons of
loves past.

I feel the ripples
at my feet.

You are
nearby.

Litter

I recovered my balance this
evening, after so long
precariously
teetering
on the brink of
something -
and when you asked
me why the new tone
struck my voice,
I answered in various
littered phrases.
None of them valuable,
or quite true.

Spine

At eyeclose of daylight,
I escaped to an equatorial
twilight - my
perpetual balance.

You followed not so long
after,
with the
bacteria
ravaging your
spine.

Axis tilt.

Its earth grinding
legion freshly-minted
glaciers.

Rhetoric

Your new heresies
rot near the breastbone,

where it
all holds together.
A curse
underneath the skin,
settling -

you can go to hell,
all of you.

Homeland

Do you ever wonder
about the enclave
rent, all
torn assunder
in the final
minutes?

There exists a
mystery in it,
I think,
when we crawl
back into the
warm soil

and imagine
the its perdurable
security.

Enclave

Last night
she noticed the
veil cross over my
eyes,
eclipsed in
the first water
of my enchantment
with you -

she knew my
polestar, then,
and pointed me
to the sky.

Wolf

Sang, ringing, the passion
dripping red about my fingers,
I am a muzzle met
close to belly -
oh, you
thrash
in songs all screaming
affirmations,
tinctured web
between two twins -
they join combat,
the snap
of jaws like
thunder in your ear -
oh, you know
these frenzied wounds
will drain you
before morning -
you know
it streamed, sang,
bubbled at my lips -
the madness
met with madness,
tooth to bone.

Paralipsis

Not to mention your
paralipsis;
not to whisper your
name unaware;
not your vibrato
parkinson fingers;
not our tangled
digits;
not a line from
a lovesong written when
not a moment rang
bitter in its passing;

not a last convention
before lapsing eyelids;
not a kiss in the garden,
Judas.

Thirty-One

Scant forlorn morning, I
remember it forcefully,
desert dawning
on once oasis ozone;
a cynosure recollected
starfield lying unattended,
sphering at half-turns;
love, your bellwether
dunes all huddled at
the skyline;
wraith - I remember it
unawares,
a first blush of
rosepetals round your eyelids;
a cloistered word:
consumed, I christen you
Polaris.

Thirty

She smoulders, struck
in a lighning second -
sputtering sabbath candles
resurrected -

yesterhour's ice turns,
all aflame, crackling
from breast to horn,
silt to breakers -

and as she vainly
tears the coals out of
her mouth,

her water turns to
steam -
all the air's a mirro -
and love, it's
still alive.

Twenty-Nine

Put your hand on my side -
I didn't escape wounding
when I entered the tomb -
you know this
horribly,
how it wraps
around, how it fits
your sharp palm
so well,
you hand still
dripping with blood
and water.

Look into my eyes -
the last vision I knew
before expiration:
your murderous
intent -
do you remember when
you frowned and
gathered darkness
round your head?

Hold my hand,
my holy hand -
you know these marks
as aching muscle,
a hammer,
thirty silver witnesses -

you are fithy rich,
beyond your wildest
nightmares.

Twenty-Eight

Raise a glass, darling,
for an aniversary -
it seems like ten minutes
ago that my bones froze
together on a winter
laneway, and you filled
me to the brim with
sadness.

We were so splendid, so
beautiful - I say it wrapped
not in metaphor but in
the cloth of half-smiles
and "do you remember" -
the best of which are
not to be forgotten,
the worst of which are
still better than this
life without you.

We were short-lived,
and questions remain, like:
how can a few months bend
me backwards and change my
life's direction? Now,
I look for you in the faces
of strangers. Now,
I dream of a kiss, a familiar
never-tasted pleasure.

Now, I raise my glass
for the anniversary -
it seems like ten minutes
till reciprocation.

Twenty-Seven

Anna's ghost floats above the trees,
her notes all light and happy
to be free -
how she live a lead-boot life,
all flames and rending things in half,
but now
she is a brass reed and
silky clouds touching lips
and beaches like the tongue
of all things eternal,
whirling somewhere
in jazz moments,

Anna's ghost like a whirlwind
and a silent theme,
you.

Twenty-Six

In the silent
morning of a new
day, he
ripped your wires
from his head and
started downsteam,
south to a
place he
hadn't known
to hear of.

In the silent evening,
you went deaf
and couldn't tell,
rubbing an itch
somewhere
at your scalp.

Twenty-Five

Spring rolls past
a winter wall,
a cocktail party
in the closet
overflowing into
a backyard,

the wall fading
with each celsian
death knell
tolling,

singing about how
it's falling
like an autumn
deciduous,

all summer's preludes
in my
ears.

Twenty-Four

Today is yesterday
in starlight's vernacular,
but then
they have a billion
fingers.

They say
it won't be
long
before we
get there.

Twenty-Three

Taste the white hand,
their braided muscles,
the channels blue beneath.
Brine and bitterness.

The whiteness speaks of your breath
building cities
with the blue Earth
stored in your lungs,
an alphabet of brick and mortar.

Taste the white hands,
the musk, the madness,
where your horizon touches them
whiteness to whiteness,

to red murder. Bodies below
the walls.
Faces caked with
mortar. Concrete coffins.

There is still blood
between my fingers.

Ba'al

When Ba'al fell,
flacid arns in
pieces to one
side,

cameras caught
terror in the
eyes of gilded
worshippers -

his holy asbestos in
the lungs,
his fatted calf torn
quickly
from their throats -

but when they cough
blood and it
bubbles at the scalpel,
no Elijah mocks
the frosty
sacrifice.

No one scoffs while
they plant their money
trees in groves.

Twenty-Two

We are at this
corner -
backs to eachother
as if to say
something about
ignorance.

You remember bliss,
don't you?

Twenty-One

He still loves her
like a good scotch,
neat,
how she takes the
shape of chairs and
disappears from sight,
almost.

She still loves him
like a good headache,
temples
throbbing with some
memory or other of
how it feels to feel
alive.

They still love. Is
that so difficult to
see?
They still pick signals
from the air and read
them aloud. They still
cry.

Twenty

I picked pebbles
from the beach that
evening,

and I placed
them on my
tongue.

I am learning
to speak your
name

without
stumbling.

Nineteen

At twelve I
filtered back in,
the cold all settled
on my back.
A fire crackled
welcome.
I took off
a coat.

I sat for a while
and stared
into the flames.
They look a
bit like
February.

Eighteen

Darling,
my mind is filled
with ultaviolet
rainbows -

there is something
wrong with me.

I love the
muscles in your arms,

the way you
smell.

There are nights
I would
trade
everything

to push the
pieces back
into place.

Darling,
my mind is filled
with electrons:
impossible
to predict.

Love, there
is something wrong with me.

Rain

Spring is walking
a figure-eight
around last
season's corpse -

raindancing
to wash away
the trace -

soon,
a crocus.

Seventeen

Each spoke
tells
a different
story;

the
rattle and
hum
is a
song.

Potholes.
Speedbumps.

Sixteen

After champagne,
after eyes across the matress
she finished the
last line.

After the tension,
after brimming evening
spilled
and I wiped it
from her cheek,
she wrote the
last word.

After fondness,
after winter set in
and I ground
protesting snow
beneath my boot,
she read the last
sentence.

After me,
she closed
the cover.

Fifteen

I willed this land
Atlantis once,
island rising
above chaos,

but yesterday I
noticed a half-
footprint
on the beach,

and denied the thought -
not now, not
now!

But it occured
in a dream that
you were there -
saying
something

about being alone.

It was a good Friday.

Fortnight

Here, let me
light the candle.

Do you like the bread?
I've heard
from seven different
people that
the bread's amazing.

Try the Bordeaux.
I swear you'll like it.

I got you something.

Yeah, it's a
strange thing to
celebrate.

Thirteen

There was some
strange tension in
the air last evening,
when a bell sounded
and
I flatlined -

if intuition were
an animal,
I have caged
the little
sucker up
and thrown the
key down someone's
storm sewer -

I can't stand plumbing
divergent paths
and analyzing
data -

there's a plane leaving
for
British Columbia
in the morning -

I may just use
this damn slip
of paper.

Twelve

The chains are
still in my wrists
at awkward
angles -

I sometimes spend
oblique evenings,
keeping even
keel,
polishing
the ballast -

but last night
a ghost was born
to trawl the psalms -
I felt an anklet
slip.

Bordeaux

One august evening
we uncorked that
something
spoken sideways
always -

a lulled
collective conversation -
fallen fruit -

bitter at the
boot -

a vile Frenchman
wrinkled his nose
and
passed across
the street.

Eleven

Dear Lord, I've
buried the love of my
life
under pinecones
and dead grass.

We used to pick
pebbles from our
soles
there.

We climbed the
spreading maple
trees.

Dear Lord, I
buried her on
an august evening;
I buried her
beside her grandfather.

Ten

Some things I can't write -
sentences
I used too freely.

I'll grin, now, I think,
and tell you
about how a
good double scotch
covers their
multitude.

Surgeons

With apologies to the original author, and for some reason to Jimmy Eat World.

They've all turned in
their badges to
become surgeons,
self-taught doctors -

trembling fingers
straining at the corpse,
plotting diagnoses
between warm
flesh and
an almost-beating
heart.

The merciless probing.
The determined answers.
The why.

Bloody to the elbow -
butchers.

Rigor

A certain stiffness
to the muscle -
out of practice,

and stone sets
in where
plankton and
krill
moved to
flowing electrons -

a strain at plowing,
where a fossil
strikes the
blade.

Cusp

Clouds have clapped their
hands over the sun's
mouth,
but a south wind
labours at the plow -

it will till snow
under and
plant a seed
of spring -

it will deny
the months
ahead:

the cusp.

Nine

Over the Nile,
they carred a kingly
body to its grave,
wrapped in a
splendor
reserved for
immortality.

There was Annubis,
a promise in
his hand,
a milky ways
away
through bullrushes.

Ra came,
three stars on his
belt.

Above the
threesquare structure,
the brightest star
flickered
into view.

Eight

And for a brevity,
Babel was still
cool in the morning -

but the thought fell
like a tonne of cut stone -

I no longer understand
your language.

Seven

This is a solemn
aniversary:

the words are boiling
in my stomach;
they supernova,
strike paper,
form sentences:

it's been a week since
snow protested
our passage;
words boiled
in your head and
flared out into the
darkness,
forming a sentence;

I live with the
bars in that
window.

Six

Let me tell you
a story about when
I was ten years old -
when the happiest
times in my existance
were spent alone,
building something
or reading
something someone
else
had built.

I was ten, kicking
a pillow
around with my
feet,
reading Hardy Boys
and wondering
idly if maybe
this one would have a different
ending than the
last thirty.
Time passed as if
it wasn't, because my
conception of it hadn't
yet hardened
like stone in my
gut.

I was ten, damming
the stream behind
those subdivisions,
digging my
fingers into
the cold, pebbly
dirt;
piling handfull
on handfull in
rapid succession,
till the pressure
behind
it built to
the point
I needed a shovel.
But I never
brought
a shovel.

I was ten,
walking through
that old
farmhouse
like I had ghostly
friend.
Punching holes
in the slat-and-plaster
just to prove
the thing was dead.
I didn't have
any friends, then,
ghostly or not,
in old farmhouses
or the warm walls
sleeping
down the street.

I was ten, picking
wild peppermint
to make tea,
walking as
far as I dared
into the woods
before running back
to the
house for
a hot meal.
But I sat thinking
about the first
farmers to
till the
soil,
break it open
for shacks
and later
houses.

I am ten,
or I am twenty-three.
Still an optimist,
because some
movie told
me it always works out.
Still wondering if
someone's going
to write a Hardy Boy
book that ends with Frank
dying.
Still building dams
till a poem
bursts over.
Still looking in haunted
houses for a friend.

Five

There's a tree
centred on desert,
its branches naked in
the earth -

leaves in dirt,
springtime and pebbles -
small sharp things,
tender.

There's a deer
centred on a tree,
its atlers
caught in the roots
of a marvelous
idea -

roots buried in the
skyline
and in the stars
and skyline again.

Crisp

Words are dry things,
crisp,
leaves -
the curled edges
drip ashes -

the collected ashes.

I try to pick
letters out -
form sentences.

I see the ashes under
your eyes.

I forget how they
all fit together.

Four

Jostling elbow-ends -
there are so many people
crowding here - come to gaze,
gawk, ask the whys, the whens,
the wheres -
to touch the smooth
stone, her new-found skin.

The artist stands
by idly,
chisel in hand.

The art is in the answer,
and vice
versa:
her empty eyes.

Misplace

Last night, when
I woke up screaming
your name,

they asked me who
you were.

I told them
all I remembered.
I fished my wallet
from a pocket.
Oh yes, that's
who I am.

They know your story,
and the name
I lost.

Three

Life is a road, and the road more magician than physician. The destination seems within reach, doesn't it?

Light at tunnel's end,
great charlatan -
pulled like
a rabbit from the womb -
the soft enclosure -
the liquid -

out of body and
floating -
twice in a lifetime,
and your light
beckons

with a grey
finger.

Cobble

For each stone,
an empty socket somewhere;
a road turned
blind.

A wall built
in the sight of itself,
eyes turned inward -

Oh, Iris, how we
loved you,
stumbling suddenly
in a blank
space.

Two

When I think
of this trapped in amber,
you are against my fingertips
again,
the stone of your breath
whispering in the walls,
where the walls curve
in on themselves.

You were soft,
when I reaped salt
strewn in valleys.
When I traced tongue and
groove -
how it all fit together.

When I dig, now,
red twilight, yellow amber,
I remember how
you hardened
into stone.
I remember that
expression.

Retriever

That sarcastic grin,
worlds turning on an
axis;
you speak in continents
and oceans,
as if I were a
cartographer;
you speak in boomerangs
and well-trained dogs.

Whirlwind. Retriever.
It's all coming
back to me now.

Facedown

Last night I wracked
my body with the breath
of prayer -

are you lonely today?
I thought you might be,
and sent you strength.

This morning I woke
with your lips on mine,
till you slipped sideways
and disappeared.

Are you substantive today?
I hope you are -
here, have my body.

This afternoon, I will
eat oxygen's bread and
blow it to the sky.

I will fold my hands around
you name,
close my eyes
over your tears,
and walk that figure eight
the thousandth time.

Pebble

I inter these things
to a pocket:
pebbles.
A weight gladly carried
in uetero.

Smooth to the palm
like melting ice,
inert like electrons.

Maybe I will mortar
them together,
build a wall -
push prayers into
its fault lines.
Wail.

Maybe I will write
a song
to their singsong
motions.

Click.
Leaves - waterfront.
Clack.
Rainbow.
Click.
Eyes. Just eyes.
Click.
Subway stations.
Clack.

Maybe I will mortar
them together,
build a wall -
stand on it with you.
Talk about
traffic lights.

Existant

Things end - they do. And when it happens, I always wonder - is there a place the good things are kept? Are we there?

Somewhere, they keep
good things at their
breathtaking heights -
before gravity,
entropy.

Somewhere, there's an idea
big enough for this city -
to contain it,
to circle round its walls
and travel it's
boulevards.

Somewhere, I am meeting you
again,
and that glinting desire
is in your eyes:
a good idea -
a fair thought.

Somewhere, I circle
round its walls.

Somewhere, I hold
you tightly.

Caspian

Caspian, I love you.
Your warm waters.
Crests. Troughs.
I am in uetero, in you.

Caspian, receding.
Earth swallows whole,
reveals your secrets.

Caspian, disappearing.
I love you.
Your sand between
my fingers.

Caspian, damn you.
I love you.
Your bitter salt
in my lungs.
My sand between
my fingers.

Caspian, I love you.
Your sand between
my teeth.

Ascendant

When you were young
you were the queen
of wildflowers,
dew,
riverbeds -

against your sepulcher
pallor reigns,
iris noon closed
tightly,

a white-clenched fist
wet with honeysuckle.

Above, a battle,
a void,
a shiftless sky
of stone.

Tributary

I wouldn't be so bold as to tell you what you're reading, except that some sabbath candles are torn from the throat. But some reach down to the wax and extinguish before you notice.

A cloud's lips
brushed your cheek
as you slipped above
the mountains,
wound tightly in a
ball of earth,
your twilight.

Goodbye, small
thing I have not
forgotten,
into the wide unknow -
flow,
like a tributary.

Circular

I've always loved stars; watching them revolve against infernal darkness; they remind me of youth. And like youth against impending adult noonday, they never quite disappear. They're in the back of the earth's mind, waiting to be born again, perfect again.

Oh turrets of this eternal age,
your stones diamond-coated
and all glittering under the spotless morning -
the currency of light
is at our fingertips -
sparks dance like lightning
from ridge to trough
and back again -
children escape wild forest
in comet-trails
as wildly as the untended groves -
the world is a sandbox!
come revel in it!
and to the astronomer
training instruments skyward -
and to the carpenter,
hands like sandpaper -
and to the mother
free of thorn and pain at last:
we are full circle children -
we are the grain of the universe -
we are stars.

Monolith

These poems were written in a series of several hours; I've included them all under the same heading, as they all relate to eachother. Somehow.

1.

I have a road for you
built somehow into a blue curve,
into an axis and back;
a roughness underfoot
of cobbles
and a wall built northward;
you run fingers
over mortar,
the textured skyline,
and wonder at my
alphabet of stone.


2.

I sleep, bedclothes
over my head. Who knows
what lingers in the chimney?

It isn't me I see in
mirrors, not my reflection
at night.

The house creaks, sometimes.
Treefingers. Werewolves.

I am a bottled scream, sometimes.
Sometimes you hold me
and there are no shadows.


3.

Your breath paints whiteness
on the air's mirror,
air all marble in lungfulls;
you still live,
rope around your ankles,
kindling, fuel.

These matches,
these stones in my
pockets.


4.

You, gypsy.
This is your city,
my finest work.
Among the towers
aspiring to granduer.
Among my monuments
all smooth granite.
Among palaces.

You, gypsy.
This is a city planned
as God might.
Open fields. Wildflowers.
Aspens scraping the sky.


5.

The antenna directed skywards,
my heart, wireless;
my soul streaming. You
are mazed in stars -
seven million sabbath candles,
you exist
certainly:

choose a galaxy, root
in its bricks and
build your temple:
starlight or eruption,
wave after supernova,

till I too
receive a signal.
Till I rest, and all
is good.


6.

Pass through the black
door, past
star-studded curtains
beyond, veil-like;

great rings
about your neck,
glaciers flowing,
your monolith pupils
obsidian -

whose darkness?
Reflection?
The black door?
Space passing
through?


7.

On your ice fields,
sunlight burns beneath
my sacreligious leather,
my temporary impressions -

I am slowly going blind,
light pockets once
hunched
with stones -

cruel, cruel beautiful
light -
even if
snow-sparrows left
picking up the pebbles -

my fingers -
my eyes!

Coin

I spend these days breathing minutes,
inhaling, exhaling, until the sum
of all hours is completed,
buried in a sigh, interred;
there is too much oxygen in a day,
too many trees
to waste their atmosphere
merely existing -
but each minute marks also
a moneychanger's gold-flecked palms,
as the sum of these hours
becomes the coin of my days.

Another Day

This is the autistic
pattern that caught you
so young, so young.
How, how, how,
sickness,
disease,
habit,
these things.

Can you speak
underwater?
Can you breath
beneath breakers?
Is there foam
in your lungs?

This is the mute
sunshine feeling
much like darkness,
so cold, so cold.
A heartbeat is not alway
a heartbeat.
Sometimes,
at time bomb.

Can you run with
broken legs?
Can you grab a future with
cracked forearms?
Can you
trust?

This is the sand you
swallow.
This is the sand between
your teeth.
This is an unending
thirst:

I know. Your sand is
also in my throat.

Spoken

You're static,
cacophony,
difficult interpretations:
you're cracked,
backwards,
facts and fiction
and fairytales and
horror:
you're nightmares,
clinging worry,
screams,
and when I hold you
I become this thing:
all spine, all ribs,
all shades,
all reading
in the shadows
of the spoken.

Words

Oh my love, my words,
my pen, paper, pixels,
I own you
and you are mine:

I desire you, I create you,
I dissolve myself
in your rivers.

We are a solitary thing,
one and the same,
two and different,
always together,

I have written you
for comfort and for a lash
and for eternity:

God has lifted you from
my lips, and set you
in the heavens.

Four

This leaves me breathless
to carve ice and give it form,
and bless winter.

It left me breathless once
to see mountains pooled
in cloud and ice
that never melts.

A little cloud
escapes me now.
Beads of water
on your neck.

We are no mountain.

Poles

I am suspended
between poles
and doubting.
Excuse me.
Let me be a seer,
read the future,
change it,
let it go.
Let me be a bricklayer,
build the future,
set its cornerstones,
let it rise.
Let me be a magician,
make the future disappear,
make the moment scintillate,
let it glimmer.
Above all, let me be a poet,
let me choose words,
hard words for hard times,
soft words for yesterday,
make the future bend backwards
and in on itself in figure-eights,
make the moment stretch a lifetime
and string together words like chains,
build, see, hide, and write it all down
between the poles of
doubt, belief, and
these successive
years.

An Explaination.

Following this post are several others that need, I think, some small explaination. Not due to their content, really, but the form they've been written in.

I love the Japanese form of poetry known as Haiku: small, breathless poems expressed in lines of fixed syllables. While Western verse (at least until relatively recently) did something similar, Western verse forms have the added trope of rhythm and usually rhyme, something haiku doesn't really have the length to express. Any rhythm a haiku has is infused by the author alone, not that particular form of poetry.

Another interesting thing is that pure haiku tends to gravitate toward natural themes, whether by instinct, or by some mistaken Western "zen" ideal. A great deal of haiku uses nature as a symbol, or merely revels in nature as nature.

It ocurred to me (in a dream, as they would say in ancient times) that both syllable counts (5 and 7) were prime numbers. I really haven't a clue why this is, but it is. And since 3, 5, and 7 are practically the only pairing of three primes separated by only two whole numbers from eachother (3 + 2 = 5 + 2 = 7), why not invent a form similar to haiku, one that has five lines, one of 7, two of 5, and two of 7, totalling five lines (another prime)?

It also seemed right that this form be dedicated to technology, considering how important primes are to cryptography. What do I think of when I think of technology, information technology specifically? Wire. So I combined the words "wire" and "haiku" to create the moniker Waiku.

You may think it's a little hokey, or a perhaps all in very bad taste, but it's quite fun. For all we know, haiku itself began as an excersize to teach students of poetry to be concise. And maybe the first haiku was about the wheel, or forging and twisting katanas. Who knows.

Oh, and just because I made up the form doesn't mean I don't suck at it. I'm still a learner myself.

Waiku: I Am Large

I am large
beyond all wild thought.
I grow in milliseconds,
in megaleaps, beyond
libraries.

Waiku: A New Page

A new page;
a whiteness and glow;
a certain turn of language;
a deft stroke let fly
an arrow.

Waiku: We've Never

We've never
spoken so often,
not since we flickered, wavered,
and burst mightily
into flame.

Waiku: Yesterday

Yesterday
these halls went silent,
the endless hum, memory;
lit candles flicker
wearily.

Waiku: The First Wave

The first wave
hits in binary:
overwhelming sensation
striking Normandy:
tsunami.

Waiku: There Are Trees

There are trees
that stand naked, tall,
suggesting leaves once shaded
the birds that rest on
steel branches.

Backwards Music

If informed by dark music
we dance, dirge forgotten:
what strange little men
deft tips
on a reed-harp.
Not a grave to be tread on,
not in this solemn second:
who smiles to show sadness?
Who bows as an insult?

If informed by bright tones,
a furrow, a frown:
what backward rejoicing,
black veils,
heathen candles.
Not a upward turned corner,
not if mirth was like money:
who grimaces naturally,
now?

Forbidden Words

There are forbidden words
on my lips -
hanging like ripe pears,
like questions that are themselves asked -
a quirk, expression, delight
in absolution
at my lips -
I murmur them
between your shoulder blades;
they trail down
to moist soil -

forbidden words, and seeds,
and bark, and authored fruit.

Many and Few

I was born, heavily,
with your name
rolling off my tongue,
no easy syllable
and syllable;
I was born of an idea,
for an idea,
to an idea,
the first of many;
born in pain
to bear pain,
also of many,
your name a breath,
a gasp:
the first,
the last
of so few.

Hum

Snow explodes inside the hub,
to be packed again by passionate
forward motion: the bitter metal
against taste buds: the clamour and
rattle: the hum.
It is the cant of friction,
the hum.
It is solemn, protesting gravity.
The hum
of a good year and its winter.
The hum
and dance and
fingers on the wheel.

Boat

A boat:
the broken brute forces
of sea and sun
crowd in,
as if to dine,
as if to go to tea
with the soluble soil
of a vagrant brute:
tread of a boot;
there they gather

in the boat,
the broken boat:
breakers on the rocks.

Eagle

Ocular,
you rejoice in
a fleeting shadow
and feathers,
king of fowls -
alone,
crowned with field-mouse teeth,
drunk with blood -
aloft
on a willing updraft,
all wingspan and
sharp bits -
alive
with no memory
of the nest.

The Weight of a Billion Souls

The four of you are worth
your weight in diamonds,
though really, no
material
is the price
of one hair, on fingernail -

so tell me: is it
worth the weight of
forty-seven countries:
a billion souls?

Variations on a Theme

Clouds
without rain;
littered starlight,
footloose,
pooled in a gutter;
cement breath
around the ankles;
a sensation of drowning,
lungs afloat,
a minnow or adam's apple,
a night,
a coma,
a city.

Absence

I am in your absence
changed:
flicking like
a broken streetlight.
The stench of death is
rank in my nostrils,
the motion of perpendicular
bodies altered
suddenly:

when something happens,
everything changes;
when nothing happens,
still, everything changes:

and in your absence
I am a peculiar novel,
a sleepless one,
written backwards beneath
siezured streetlamps,

words not of words
but of movement,
words that are forgotten:
a scent
that remains.

Jacob

In the seven years preceeding,
the anticipation
was sparks between stones,
sparks extinguished
at the well,

but the first night,
you're invisible -

if you are there,
invisible.

2001.09.11

If it was conceit
to reach to heaven,
ears popping, ascending,
now we know it --
the emperor's gunmetal
and mirror clothing,
imagination's bare construct
in shock and awe --
Jericho, not so long ago,
was the same
poem:

if there is distaster
in the city, has not
the Lord done it?

Utopia Aflame

If this earth, born
in its gravitic chain-links,
labours tirelessly
at the traces,
who is man, damned man,
clapping burnished stones
together, to cast
its orbit like fishline?
The ember on your lips
soon bitter in the belly:
Utopia aflame.

Egg of the World

Despite your commodity
and capital,
you're the world's egg,
hen,
and know it --

slave of many masters.
Subconsciously,
you are your own schoolmaster:
scarcity breeds value,

not merely as
a maxim for stamp
collectors.

The Beginning of the End

A vacant sandbox
is an only reminder,
its vast cities a
civilization in granular
decay,

the foursquare pine
filled with leaves.

This is how flesh and bone
ground to a halt,
with eyes closed
yet opened wide,

with a blanket thrown
over skyscrapers.

The Year the Grass Grew Tall

I will not be buried
with the groundwater
of slow decay,
or see the polished
inside of a pine tree.

Let this body be a pire
someday,
let me join clouds
and ozone:

scatter my fingers around
the yard.

Let rain fall
mingled with me
to a thirsty planet.

Point out to children
how the grass
grew so well
that year.

Pyromaniacs

Slow-burning tomorrow
is only embers,
pine needles,
smoke -
we hold our breath,
we dare not
breathe -
that glow once
fed sets the house
ablaze.
We are unfurled
masts and
and calm water,
somewhere at
anchor,
waiting for a morning
with ash
in our mouths
as that room burns
down around us;
we wait with cinders
on our tongues
and bated
pyromania.

The Moon and Stars

In their long vigil,
the moon and stars have
passed overhead
enough times to know
your name,
to tell your story in
straight lines
and figure-eights,
to paint a night
with your face
and hold it steady.
And, in our staggered sentences
underneath,
we name them in turn,
writing their stories in Greek
and Latin,
in your peculiar tongue,
tales that tell of
how I pulled Orion
out of the sky and
wrapped it around
your finger;
a promise:
our future
the sky.

The Fabulous Muscles

The fabulous muscles
of yesteryear
ache, atrophied
in lue of long use.
They have forgotten
their function,
their form,
their glory,
the memory of which
lingers long after
scented coma.

Flex.
Build.
Sweat.

Remember future cords
as well as past:
the beautiful muscles
of yesterday
sing under stretched skin,
their notes,
their song,
their stories,
the memory of which
are sentences
you spoke to a
deep sleeper.

Once and Always

I will remember you fondly,
however frail this thing we
have may become,
however frail your fingers
are in the last days;
when I ask did you
forget,
there will be a smile around
your eyes,
as if to say
how could I?
We stretch out like
the lake, overlapping
waves and shoreline:
there is more beach
below the surface than
above.
It is that word I store
for better times
(you know, the one you hardly
dare to say),
that you wash onto
me,
and I flow back
to you.
There is no telling
where the water ends,
no telling where the
sand begins,
nothing but whitewashed
shells left behind
for your recollection,
and for a dark day,
when you are frail
and they slip
between your fingers.

Static

Disconnect - the cord
transmits static,
disarray,
absurd dancing figures,
musical wavefronts.

Disconnect - the cord
tapdances into
corners of the psyche
it isn't privilidged
to, a

disconnect spreading
like the flu in November.

Disconnect -
there are junkies
clawing at their eyes
on the streetcorners.

Alien Eyes

These eyes are shuttered fast,
boarded over with melencholy slats
and tenpenny nails,
sight difficult between
planks,
but so certain that there is sunlight.
Removal speaks volumes
in painful regress,
as if to say
those fabulous muscles
aren't accustomed to such places,
alien eyeslids,
not created to open
into infinity.

The Complete Sentence

Did God design our
lives like paving stones
and puzzle pieces?
I wonder at
the interlocking happenstance,
how you complete
my sentences,
and me.

In Pools of Cloud

There is a place
where mountains drown,
alone in their
opaque
pools of cloud,
and ancient streams
carve wrinkles
around their
eyes.

There is a man
in one such place,
smiling at
the company
he has invited
over for tea --
the breeze grins
back, as if to
speak in
creaks and
old boxprings.

There is a man,
blowing steam over
a chipped brim,
the warm breath
of which
sinks to valleys
and is lost
from view,
moist lungs the
father of a
carrot.

There is a man
who has not
known connectivity
or conversation,
whose stuttering
speeches teach
his mountains
to speak;
they speak,
speak word,
speak spring,
speak torrents,

speak pools of cloud
dense enough
to shut out
the stuff and clamour
of another type
of drowning,
the irony of
which
is lost
when fingers
touch earth
and
dig.

The Eyes of Creation Shut Fast

I wish sometimes that we
were both children, captive in
the liquid gaze of some
forest, some clearing,

instead of the our blank
concrete, instead
blurred half-rainbows
in a misty window,

that all the world
was staring languidly in
our direction, saying,
"What strange birds!

They have no wings!"
And suddenly, a rush of
wings against feathers --
oh little children,

your innocence and brevity
has flown back to its maker,
and the eyes of creation
are shut fast.

Dance Through the Sky

Are you afraid to dance?
Do not be - the steps
are laid out in every soul
since the beginning,

and you are not so
clumsy as you think.
Dance.

Are you afraid to fly?
Do not be fooled by
your lack of wings. Birds
are not the

only ones taken to air
and moist breath.
Fly.

Are you afraid to love?
Do not be - the steps,
the wings, those fabulous
muscles,

they echo in your mind,
they ripple on your shoulders,
and when you find firm fingertips,
dance through the
sky.

Tragedy

This Niagara is waiting
to be jumped,
all intentions bright
with starlight.

A skyline filled with
electric outlines,
an outlook,
a vantage.

I have taken these
things in my hand like
dice,
and rolled them
again and again,

till here in Niagara
I have reached
a constellation
of my liking.

I have arranged
the skyscrapers to
form your name.

I have breached
the water,
and been drawn under,
where citystars

are fish
to dead lungs.

Odd, How we Converge.

This is where roads
converge like streams.
Odd, isn't it,
how we run
parallel.
So tragic.
So beautiful.

Will They Laugh

If we tumble, mortar
over bricks
to the ocean floor,
they will know.
They will see.

Damn the eyes.
We should have the grace
to part in peace.

The Curves and Angles

When I draw,
it's either curves or angles,
angles or curves,
not both, but either.

I admire the way
angles dwell precisely
on the page, from point
to point to point.

Always obvious.

But curves bend backwards
and around themselves
like wind in a willow tree,
in ways I can't explain
to the angles.
They are angels, but
so difficult to draw.

I think sometimes
that your mind is like
your body,
that when God moulded
you he
forgot where he
put the protractor.

You are impossible to understand,
impossibly precious to the eye,
so subtle,

and I think to a future
where we might
meet at right angles.

I imagine you
a gypsy
when you are queen,
all castoffs and
happiness,

a caravan from place
to place,
your crooked grin
for a good
turn of phrase.

I imagine you
a dancer
when you stand still,
the world tangoing
to your footsteps,

and my thoughts
wrapped up in your
arms,
the dance
a familiar tongue.

I imagine you
mine
though you are not,
our fingers threaded
together,

that casual remark on
a Thursday evening:
your lips
a world to be
explored.

I imagine myself
Columbus.

Such Things as Fire

She is always asking
why I dislike candles,
and perhaps it's
because I remember being
burned
once, a few
pages ago;
what was once
blistered skin is
instinct, now.

She wonders why I
never look overhead,
and I never have the
heart to tell her
I remember wings,
flight,
tears at the corner
of my eyes;
cages don't agree
with fallen
angels.

She tells me about
how I cry when she's
only half looking,
but I feign ignorance.

It isn't so much a
story ending as it
being told again;
my old tropes deserve
their graves.

Let's not dig
them up and make
sentences.

Wheat Fields and Thunderstorms

These wheat fields are ripe now,
a harvest threatening
on the sidelines.

They pray for stormclouds
(as do I);
the rain saves them and
brings us together
under one umbrella.

Warm water falls at our
feet, trickles down a stalk,
and the earth exhales,
its breath all gardens,
earthworms,
dust.

You are flecked
with accidental raindrops,
where she blessed
your shoulders.

The wheat fields are golden, now,
a harvest threatening
from barns and silos.

I pray for thunderstorms.
They bring us together.

Anticipation.

It is time to
draw back in anticipation;
to gather earth in the
creases of the palm
and hold it there.

It is time to
prune desire like so many
young fruit trees;
a fresh cut yields to full
fruit,
a foreign thing to the eye,
but so familiar on
the lips and
tongue.

It is time to
ponder the inevitable;
what is will be,
like the cast-off cicada
shell promising
forest music,
and what was will
be once again:

it is time to
remember the streetlights,
the stars,
and the universe with its
arms around
your waist.

Anniversary of the Fading (Brighter Than the Sun)

Dedicated to an old friend. How's heaven?

You died like a lightbulb
going dark,
and your afterglow
has faded.

I am a filiment
still stretched between
poles,
measuring my
wattage in years
and seconds.

There you are
with the angels,
brighter than the sun,
the same smile that
always shone.

There you are
with the angels,
in a city with no sky,
the same energy that
always flowed.

If you were with me tonight
I would ask you to take
me there;
this feeble glow
isn't worth keeping.

If you were here with me,
I would ask you to
bring me home,
oh my darling,
bring me home
to a country I have
dreamed about but never
known,

where we can forget
our charred edges.

Cobblestones

My tourist days are almost done:
these streets are almost home.
I've mapped their cobbles one by one,
and worn them to the bone,

but every day I find a place
I don't think that I've seen;
a sight, an unfamilliar face,
a patch of brick, of green.

They tell me that's the way it feels,
with this ground underfoot.
You look around, and sight reveals
something you've overlooked.

And so, these days are almost done.
I'm settling here, I think.
I've mapped these cobbles one by one,
each coloured stone, each link.

My Walk // Your Dance

I walk the same pavement
today as yesterday,
wearing smooth the stones
beneath my heel and
tiptoe;
not that I tire
of these steps:
they are an old, familiar
dance,
each shuffle
filled with meaning.
You don't regret
the path taken,
do you?
I don't.
This is sweetness,
and tomorrow sweeter still,
when you walk
this smooth pavement
and I teach you
grooves and pebbles,
cracks,
sand.
Yes, I walk the
same pavement today
as yesterday,
but when you
are here, it is
somehow new,
my baby steps all
grand and
full of importance.
You hold my hand,
and the world
is dancing
with us.

Four Wall Memory

This room misses you
from its chance encounter
last year,
the four walls all
sighing at nightfall.

They whisper to me while
I am alive in other places,
of how perhaps they
deserve a framed
photo, or a note.

They creak your name
in soft timbre and tone:
"Where is she?"

I don't know.

She is wandering some
hallway, where another
four walls are writing slow
poetry.

They echo your name
when no one is listening,
some sylables to remember
before tomorrow.

But these walls miss you,
and accuse me, as if
"You're the one standing
around, aren't you?"

I don't know;
we miss you altogether,
here, alone.

These five walls remember
a chance encounter,
once,
a year ago.

When You Were All That Was

Yesterday there was a second
where time froze,
and you were all that was;
there was slight wind
that stopped suddenly,
no sound
from the trees.

I held my breath,
but I didn't need to breathe.

You looked my way and
smiled at the corners
of your mouth,
in the place where
all emotion
scatters like
accidental sunlight,

and you told me how
you wish you could freeze
this moment and
live in it forever.

I felt the earth
breathe against my face, then,
and sunlight kiss
my skin.

A cicada burst into song,
and my lungs
expanded like sails.

I have that image in
my pocket,
beautiful, solemn,
when you poured out confession
like water over the brim;
when you loved me and
I knew it;
when you were all that was.

I met you under
an old, well-spread oak,
somewhere close to
a cicadan opera,

where the sky was
like a wall,

where I remember the
browns as utterly brown
the whites as
white,

and you told me
that this is how life
is supposed to look.

Was there more
than your eyes?

I Am Obsessed With Memory

I am obsessed with thoughts of change,
and your flippancy of vision,
even when nothing's going wrong,
when my future's ringing perfect,
then I think

what if the wind is marked with fog,
with denial of perception?
What if I'm backwards after all,
and your trope is just ironic
sympathy?

I am obsessed, those days, to keep
all the memory in stasis,
as if the pressed and laundered cloth
will preserve our faded moments
in it's folds.

I am obsessed, these days, with you.
There, I said it. Are you happy?
I am afraid of loss, of change,
of uncontrolled tomorrow,
and today.

Aeroplane

I watched you wave from
a portal somewhere above me,
and you were gone.

I remember a final brush
of your hand along my arm,
and a half-happy smile.

We were both promising ourselves
and eachother that
wire would suffice.

I watched the vapour off
the wing condense into
yesterday's wind,

and you were gone,
slightly, more with every
second in the terminal.

I remember thinking about
dreams, and how once
I was yours.

Memories of Winter

Winter is a pressed memory
of white sheets
and cheap diamonds
now,

folded backwards
where the closet disappears
into darkness.

The memory
is breathless.

Icicles and eavestroughs
sparkling disaster,
kamikaze killers
collecting liquid like
alcoholics,
crazed with the inclination
to come loose;

snow-bathed meadows,
slowly rising and
falling,
drowsy, slumbering,
calling in evening tones
to draw eyelids
like veils,
hidden;

frozen fingertips.

But that was the once,
the winter.
It is forgotten.
Swear to it,

that there is no recollection
at your doorstep.
No drifts,
no piles.

To a Dream

I never sing only because I dream.
There are a thousand
other reasons, each as good
as the next.

Mostly, I sing because I am able,
and because I must.
My lips are like a violin;
they were meant for something
(that is, to make music).

Someday I will press
my mouth against the loam
of yours.

Someday I'll write verses
like seeds and speak them
into that soil,

and someday watch
a newborn sapling burst forth,
enamoured
of sunshine
and song.

Psalm 12

I sat silently and watched
a glass begin to ripple;
still in the complacency of morning
to see its waveform collapse.

A morning's mist leaves quickly
as a desert flowers;
like a Saharan icicle,
it bends inwards and falls.

Wind is antithesis,
like a spirit over the water;
a breeze is antipathy
to a calm night falling.

I sit silently and feel
my crystal being vibrate;
still in the wake of midnight
to see my determination collapse.

Last week's dew returns quickly
to its mothercloud;
yesterday's dampness is
today's evaporation.

Warfare is antithesis
to a peace I once gathered as manna;
battle is not becoming
to a harvester of words.

Yet I will not faint;
I will not stumble,

for the Lord has discovered me
amongst the weary.
His arms are rest for
my rippling soul.

He has calmed my waters
with a word and spirit;
he has descended like fog
on my night-starved surface.

I waver no longer.
I am still.
For a small moment I feel no battle.
I am still.
The Lord is here, small and silent.
I am still.
His majesty is the placid waters.
I am still.
He is here.
He is here.
I am still.

Psalm 11

The Lord reigns in glory,
in the heavens of heavens;
there are none
who escape his vision.
He is supreme in majesty,
above the brilliance of the Watchers;
He holds the universe
in his palm.

Who can express the extent
of his dominion,
or who can spin the tale
of his infinite works?
What words have been created
to capture his magnificence?
What colours laid to fabric
know all his hues?

Even the earth in all its spleandor
is a shadow, a faint image.
Mount Everest reaches past the sky,
and the Mariana Trench
to the bottom of the sea,
but Yahweh knows them both as
lines and ridges on his hand -
yes, the Lord has measured
them both in a heartbeat.

He who dwells in the Light of lights
beholds them all,
the Lord sees them from
his throne.

How then, have I not
escaped his gaze?
Why does the Creator
still measure the trenches
and mountains of my footsteps?
Who am I that he holds
me also in his palm?
Why are my neurons firing
at his command?

It is a conundrum I cannot
wrap my thoughts around,
and a mystery too deep
for me to plumb.

I am left with one thought
only,
and with one desire in
my heart,
that such a God
deserves my praise,
and his holy name commands
my worship.

Is it not right
to praise Yahweh?
And is his honor not
worth upholding?

This I say to all the earth,
and to all who live in it:
let the words of your life
show forth his glory,
and let the fabric of
your being display his colours,

for the Lord reigns in glory,
and judges mankind from
the seat of his power.
There is none who escape
his dominion -
the reach of is power
is everlasting.

To You

I am a frail being
of tectonics and earthquakes,
modeled in dust
and destined therefor to
return to it,
half-blind with the
force of inclination,
battered by
obscene gales.

Me and mind have not yet
explored the plumbing
of this universe,
how deep or how
far it goes, nor
shall we.

We are shallow
sandy things,
hollow,
destined in our
infancies
to wreak and to create,
to break down and to build.

How then to understand
one who fills the
whole of space,
yet flows also into
the ether and beyond?
It is above me
that permutated
quanta are at the wizard's
wandtip,

waiting to be torn
seam from seam.

And when that purple curtain
has been torn,
will you sit among
the holy ones and judge
each electron?

How then to serve,
when service is rendered in
every raindrop and solar flare?

How then to worship,
if each passing comet
is a comment
and a trail?

How then to comprehend
the beginning and the end
when such words
have no context?

How then to follow,
to give,
to surrender,
when my earth-worn
being is a fallen masterpiece?

I am merely human -
but you understand.
I am tectonics and earthquakes -
but you calm fault lines.
I am hollow -
but you have filled me
full of glory.

Leaving

The table scraps are
icey cold
against the roof of my mouth.

Words sprind to mind,
but they are
again trite.

I am in love with marble,
chisel,
and no retina.

This pride is no
dog to fed:
I live unleashed.

If my private language would
suffice to explain it,
I would invent it,

but my breath is no
spark, except
as condensation.

Let the language live
on your frigid skin -
I am leaving,

leaving,
to freeze
alone.

Half-Truths

I catch you running
and gather you in my arms
to ask,
"what's wrong,
darling?"

But you never tell me.

You are a customer
with coins
suspiciously untarnished -
I turn them
over in my hand
and I do not trust
them -

but I give you all I have
in hope you will
one day
run out of counterfeits
and just

tell me the damn truth!

I am not so
afraid of honesty that I
would desert you,

but your varnished half-truths
desert me
every day.

You Exist in Four Dimensions

When another permutation
surfaces,
I lose you as if
in a sea of faces,
only to with I could
create stasis
with outstretched arms
and a prophet's
mantle -

I wish everything were
always and forever.

But I am no prophet,
no son of a prophet:
I am wrong.
you exist in four
dimensions,
and that is that.

It is your magic and
your curse,

that you bend backwards
where I cannot look,
to rend reality
like tissue and tell
me,

"I have dreams within dreams
of a place without
permutations" -
and I see life folding
in on itself,
and that is
that.

It is your magic and
your curse,

my heartache and
my joy.

And the Wonder

I am alive for
a few moments every day
and I flip aside the veil
to revel in a newfound
somethingorother.

Try it - you
never know what
you never knew,
what may be fluttering
round n round
the room -

perhaps, even,
there is no room,

merely the
space of something
unseen,
the form and the
substance,

and the
wonder.

Inscrutibility

Who can predict complexity?
Some moments have
no rhyme -
no reason -

no symetry as a
guidepost -

nothing to suggest
that when the
filiments
are gathered

a rope will emerge.

But the
strongest threads form
knots -

random seconds form
tangled minutes -

hours, even,
and there is no respite -

complexity breeds
its own,
and even an
age-tried cable

is inscrutible.

A Step

When I stepped disastrously
from a precipice
(I named it The End of the World)
gravity relinquished
its downwardness -

but the physics of not
knowing down
from up
were beyond my grasp -

it was a heady
sinking or rising

I did not know which.

A sentence became
my lifeline
like a tenuous thread -

a small dark
thread -

and you saved me.

Tonight, I'll leave
off sleeping.

My heart has not
yet regained
the ground.

How to Light a Fire and Disappear Completely

I have forgotten how to light
a match,
how it was once
to strike against a shoe and
watch the ignition.
A brave gust of
flame
and newborn smoke
lifting hands high
to an acidic tingle
in the air.
Oh love, I
have
forgotten
how to strike a flint,
until this
morning,
when I spoke to a
dead sky
of how night should
be running along like
a wicked child,
only to notice the dawn
brimming with crimsons,
pinks, with bluegreyorange -
all colour.

Oh love, I have set the sky on fire,
like a match,
like a flint,
like Forest Meets Cigarette,
like a thousand litres of gasoline,
and till
you come
like night,
like a blessed child,
I will burn with it and not be touched,
like a dervish,
like an angel,
like a ghost -

Oh love, it merely morning
and I burn.
It is not past noon,
and I expire.
There are precious few hours
in a day to waste with
flesh aflame.

Oh love, I am coming down
the eastline dome,
to where you lie
blankly,
starlit,
and when I do,
let me
forget how to make
a fire,
and fall
into that
marvelous
black
you.

Amnesiac

Mankind has lost
so many things
in ruins and dunes shifting,
under the sea,
beneath lava,
in war.

But there is a greater
irony of the
connected,
the collective,
that in our petulant
childlike arrogance,
we have forgotten
the lessons
history seeks to teach.

How it bitter
to know,
how sandboxes are
the world's schoolmasters,
and garden hose
that inexorable movement,
that inevitable decay.

We have forsaken
this most of all:
we've forgotten how
to forget.

The Last Battle of an Aging Mind

If memory flickers down, dullish, and dies;
if all that's left is charcoal, dust, and ash
except that last but brightly glowing coal,
I'll place in on my tongue - savour the heat.
It scalds to understand the pungent loss
mixed in its grit with failure and decline.
An Icaritic history defies
my thought. Defies the knowledge of the crash,
or how it came to pass; but he who stole
the memory left a mantra to repeat:
for when this fades, I'll pass in flame and dross,
the pyre of a night when you were mine.
A supernova. One final reply,
to grass, to love, your kiss, your laquered sky.

California

They found the mire to
be most likeable, thank you.
Nice place you've got
here, next to the
mud flats.

Does it get dusty in the summer?

The say even the burgers
taste a bit of
dirt,
but that's alright,
knowing onion.

And no, it wasn't us
that cut down the trees.
They were gone before
we got here,
maybe even before
the war.

All's we remember
is what you can see
until the sun set somewhere
that way,

mud, mud, mud, mud, mud, mudmudmudmud
and that dirty strained
water Aunt Delores
sometime boils
for her tea.

Yeah, the mud flats run all the way
over toward the sea.
The it meets the beach
and it stops, sometimes.

And we love it, here in
California. Here
in the greatest
country
in the world.

Our Love Will End in Ice

Tell me how love grows cold.

Is it an inherent numbness, an
applied entropy?
Do the atrophitic limbs
fail always by
the day?

There have never been answers
for this question, just
similies:
love is like
good music: one only
know it when one sees it.

But deeper, love is a seed,
and its own fruit,
the irony being a
labouriously exquisite
beginning,
a nuturing and teasing upward,

to find that love begets
love begets love.

It is much like rainfall.

I will tell you how love
grows cold: rote and ritual,
forgotten moments and flippant meaning,
a paycheque and a perfomance,

an apathetic evening,
and eventual annonymity.

Firefly

I have captured
this morning's sadness
in a mason jar
and set in on the windowsill.

It is a firefly,
a wastrel,
flashing on and off
that something
is wrong,
is going wrong,
has gone horribly wrong,

but I have never been
a cryptographer.

It is a firefly,
the sadness,
it is a firefly
trapped, and

whispering a secret
that I must know!
but can't quite wrap
my arms around.

It is a firefly,
and I am its prisoner.

The Waking Life

I woke
from a dream of finding
to another day
and its puppets
and its strings,

eyes wide with
the realization
that

it is not
the fading memory
built of unconscious
conquest,

but recussitating
constantly
and chafing at
restraints

that
makes this waking life
a nightmare.

Trust

Some days
cobwebs clutter
my vision

like thread-spun
strands of
reasons
and observance.

I told you
never to doubt,
that there are
always blue skies
here.

But when that same
sky boils grey,
and the rainclouds
fill your eyes,
I find
myself the
doubter.

What if
you've changed
your mind?
Are the cobwebs
are here
to stay,

threaded around and over
the dream?
Hanging heavy
with the
rain of
yesterday?

A Certain Lack of Words

A Certain Lack of Words

When I encapsulate you
in sentence
and with syntax,

the method fails,
each time I try.

There are no similes
that do you justice,

for you were made
a little higher than the angels,

and crowned
with glory, to reign
over this heart,

in ways that transcends
language and
expression.

When I ensconse you in
understanding,

I am always half-
short,

but I know this:
when God had finished shaping
you

he broke
the mold.

Our Conversations

There is always a subtext
to our discourse,
always some gravel in the
shoe of the conversations,

and we understand
subtly that this will always
be so,

that jest is not so much jest
as truth turned
sideways and
spun into orbit.

I read your subtitles
as loudly as you show them,
and wonder to
myself

if you'll ever
just tell me what
you're thinking.

When She Settled on a Dream

She exists at the
centre of others' eyes
and in the corners of a
well-worn smile,

a marked territory of
things all half-forgotten
and places not
quite so.

She is a small dark thing,
always to the east
and west,
wrapped once in wood,
once in brass,
once in marble,

and again in a cloth
of intellect and examination.

She is quicksilver
and her forest path a cloudling,
but she exists
with the scent of hope
at neck and navel,

with braided gold
and tears around her wrist,
with distance in defeat
somewhere to the east or to
the west.

She exists, for one
dream ago she settled on
a pillowcase
and filled a sleeper's
eyes with
wings.

Where the World Ends

Where the world ends
there is a great dropoff
into infinity,
pleasant rainbows
and light mist
alluringly deceptive.

There are angels there, dark angels
to deceive the innocent
wayfarer;
they call them mermaid,
or demons of
another world.

But it is a place where you can
drink undiluted sunshine
from a small tin cup,
and
no longer notice
how small the ship,
or how creaking the deck,
or how
the kid won't be
quiet,

because in this place, at the very
edge
of the world,
we are all silent,
and all connected to eachother.

There, where the world drops off
into infinity,
is where we are going,
to gather in
one foldful of
lungrigging,
spread wide our arms,

and see what is waiting on the other
side.

The (Un)Requested Poem

I am writing this
poem as you requested -
oh, not so much
asked as silently demanded -
but you well
know one doesn't have to
ask, to ask.

I am writing this
letter wrapped in simple
prose and ineligant
language
just like you wanted
when your eyes
folded shut.

I am writing this
epistle in the hopes of
enlightenment: we are
back at the same
old doubtful crossroads,
and for that I
am sorry.

I am writing this
with my hands tied behind
my back.
You are not just
anyone, love,
and though it is
frightening to hear it said,

I am tying this
ship to a dock, to
a future set in
stone;
I am settling
on a good chance.
I am betting
on a decent
animal.

Knots

A knot formed where you spoke those words:
they were whispered at chest level
and exhaled,

and in that moments I became a curator -
a scholar - examining the artifact
from every angle.

I obsess over this small dark thing,
this jade Rosetta, now,
as if to plumb its

secrets would validate my struggle.
But, as all museum keepers know,
it is vanity.

Yet, this emerald-eyed demon has
focused my ambitions
and my orbit,

that you have not paid admission
to see a worthless ancient object,
but something living.

Thus, I have ironically buried that idol
beneath spring's freshly minted grass
and tamped the soil,

if only to say I have forgotten anything
except the brightness of your eyes
and smile.

The Morning of My Forgotten Loves

"The Morning of My Forgoten Loves"

This is the morning
of my forgotten loves,
blown like
bright soap bubbles
out, out and away
to pop
and dissipate.

They have left me
like rain from
a cloud,
scattered
in muddy puddles
and runoff.

This is the morning
of my old forgotten loves,
none quite half-beautiful
or fit to
wear the throne,
but all rainbow bubble,
hot breath and
dishsoap.

But you rest like
a brick in my pocket,
and I think,
better a brick than a
bubble.

You can't start
building a house with
soap suds.