Crazy like a fox : west

The snoring ripped the roof
right off the holograph;
Rain softened it's  profile,
prepared it for seeding
a real body.
First, it must be carved
in wood... haul the junkers
to the dump.
This is the dump, a
graveyard of iconic houses
and endless conversation
about money.
Listening for spirits and carving,
leaves but little time .

coyote

Coyote of boreal suburbia
eats any object made of
meat that moves and
rubber boots. Even the
crows have moved on;
gardens growing madly,
deer afraid to risk dear
life for easy succulents;
paths untrodden,
greening...

Hero Whine

Paste this into your
scrapbook of delusions:
all of nothing is no thing;
be an artist, Zappa some
thing out of it, then sell
it, Taurus. Labour before
capital: get the silicone
out before it hurts you.

Irish Linen

A shot across the loom ,
then up,   and 
walk with  me awhile
among the bursting buds
where crows vigil
their broods silently.
Soon their handsome young
will leave the roost
to cavil seagulls
over scraps. Remember
when they crossed
the ocean, built cathedrals,
ordered damask for their tables?

Hawthorne

Ruined but alive , wounded heart
encircled critically by rampant
wild blackberry canes, thorns
impaling nerve endings, pruning
with a vengeance what remained
of a defensive attitude; a life spent
propping up unworthy falderal,
yet energy sequesters for another
round of leaf and bloom and berry.

Daphne

In turning my attention to other things,
I found Daphne volunteering near the
compost, her existence justified by
fragrance and color indescribable; she
lives so quietly, transported from a
rooted shoot mere centimetres long,
Cape Breton born and bred, a beauty
never noticed till this afternoon when,
at news of sons and brothers lost, her
sister from another garden consoled
a mourner with her sweetness.

Eternity Crashes

Eternity crashes ,then dissolves
as if a wave en route from past
to future ,then recollects to crash
again ; it is this moment that drowns
and then dissolves, eternally seeking
the way back into rocks that birthed
the oceanic clamour . Mortality resides
in the eternities, vitality crashes
circumglobal barrens and headlands.

I Hear Rats

Something in us that does not love a rat;
they neither love nor hate us but our bread
is tempting left uncovered; thus, with dread
the rat is working to succeed and I to sign
the chill in our close association; to define
the origins of plague, I note a more than
passing reference to the millions damned
in charnel houses, laced with warfarin -
Bring out your dead, in juniper and gin.

Sorcery y2k10

Basic training in resistance to sorcery
is acknowledged necessary in our time:
the steps are few but once learned
will preserve power for the innocent
and pure of heart...
Never believe the sorcerer superior
nor agree to give your power
willingly, as that is the only way
it can be taken. The evil sorcerer
or sorceress is one who does not
love your best interests ; who has a
sense for recognizing fear and lack
of confidence-most do not
even know what they are: so learn to
recognize and neutralize them.

Plague and Pestilence

March the distance between
bad doctoring to bloody
pillowtop or fake your own
death; hang out underground,
great for the skin-unrequited
vanity floats away, lost...
like the wild life used to live
on flooded land...

the Earth

" It is the Earth, like a kind mother, receives us at our birth, and sustains us when born. It is this alone, of all the elements around us, that is never found an enemy to man. The body of waters deluge him with rains; oppress him with hail,and drown him with inundations; the air rushes in storms, prepares the tempest, or lights up the volcano; but the Earth, gentle and indulgent, ever subservient to the wants of man, spreads his walks with flowers and his table with plenty; returns with interest every good committed to her care; and though she produces the poison, she still supplies the antidote; though constantly teased the more to furnish the luxuries of man than his necessities, yet even to the last, she continues her kind indulgence, and when life is over, she piously hides his remains in her bosom" - Pliny, 23-79 A.D.

quoted

"missed the shuttle" oops- there's
another one leaving for the moon
someday- lets colour up that
scenario...red white and blue
is stunning though ragged 42
years on; bespeaks a gray scale
mirror touched indecently,
yet undiminished, unfailing
in excelsis dea.

Dime size blob

Mad women shave their heads,
penitent; and sick women ,
submitting to ferocious
cellular warfare; then scarves
and wigs are arranged...
in for a fight or a shaming;
the clippers and razors present
only in extremis: natural as sunrise
for the man , no questions
asked re: sanity or imminent
mortality...just a hair shirt,
flagellation with a knotted cord,
the hermit's cell exponential.

talk is silver

Banish metaphor in favour of costume,
roll up the heirlooms anaerobic.
Walk to the market and home again,
12 miles each way, dawn to dusk..
Spend the rent money on two
blue-faced whatchamacallits
made of straw; hung up facing
each other, they say nothing..
silence is gold..

shrove tuesday

At the haunted house of snow
bales bound with street grime,
bread bakes in an ice oven
for a supper of sadness.
After the festivities,
ashes are applied lest
futility be forgotten
in celebrating exorcism.
Across the way, candles
stop smoking and a
birthday song rises
up the chimney,
inviting the spirits
for dancing...

out comes the pin...

Sea level common sense
rooted in sewage silt
dredged for panamax vessels
of crud for a dollar and all you
can eat at the buffet of closed
circuit scrutiny: stalks chandlers
by day, by night leasing space
at an outpost inside the spherical
universe, longing to pierce
the diaphanous membrane that
shuts out eternity...

dig

nasdaq dollars, connected to bridge-funding
subsidies,off-set competitive earmarking,
branding and targeted spending on break-even
policy for long-term development of luxury
condos, appeal to investment-rich brokers in
appellate toryism, healing economy, one hole
in one ...

...away from the office

With scorn of debt quite worthy
of a 17ieme aristocrat's sundry
chattels and entitlements,
the indices inherent in monopoly,
belie the public purse
created at cash registers:
receive an all-inclusive
holiday to public school or
hospital : bleakened,
unenjoyable, un mal voyage
for money hungry rats in suits.

in the dark and desperate hour

Decide this is the end of the beginning:
rise from your bed and walk the walk:
beneath the ice of lily lake the lotus
shelters, fallow in cold muck, abiding
summons. Cracked half of planet,
fixed with bodies remanded to
the carbon root as energy for flower, seed,
machine: nothing wasted in a
mechanistic universe but soul arisen
to rejoin the human archetype.

most grievous fault

Thin hands around a cup of misapplied
expletives, frowning jags of critical
analysis: they hate you for it, know
this and be quiet thoughts ; make pretty
scenes and suffer not the lack of child
presence in a hail of dirty weather.
Tides of fortune turn to flood the
crumbled sea wall , so ungrateful...

The Judgement of Vision

The warrened den of foxes,
passage louvred with branches
sweetly interlaced,
admitting just the pointed faced..

Before the church a Christ of bronze,
extending palms with an ironic smile;
The congregation paid with alms
for pediment and full surround of tile.

Abandon hope ye squirrels and rats
who come too near the canine bower
at dusk; a warning to all feral cats
who prowl the phosphorescent flower

The die was cast in Italy that made him
and thousands more for foreign places.
Do not fault Christ for poses that are dim
or trace of bitterness upon his faces.

The works of workshops mass produced
inform a vision deeply jaded;
the artisans of fields and forest used
to feast after the light had faded.

girl from a book

triste or tryst,
either way
lose your
place unless
exile serves
cloudberries
on Signal Hill;
flirting with Bloom
a thankless chore;
pattern book details
lost on his like:
let us meet
in asterisk...

epicentre

panepicentraldemic
miserere
shantishantishanti
toussaintl'ouverture
tontonpetitmichel
perpetua

Subaqua

Long distance, particles
assassinate expensive
privacies, travelling
cadmium cables two
miles below sea-level,
post-scriptum,
just for fun.

red strings

the region where spirit
and consciousness mingle
twines helix -like
the space between
earthworms mating,
forgetting the eternal
worm pulled ravenously
from a sodden field;
these strings attract
ancestral messages,
something about
the axis and the tilt...

If You Do Not Play, You Will Not Win

Banks of snow, sacks of cash
ready for the reckoning-
salt the tiny twists away,
les tortillons.
Come June ,
all those coins
thrown to the drifts
will be waiting,
glittering and bronzey,
among the buttercups.