en plus de

early night, we set fire to the christmas tree and my hands are swollen. i can't remember what time it happened but lightfoot put me to sleep on the couch as the fire crackled on. i know when i woke up there was dough in the kitchen  and goulash in my mouth. as far as feeling goes i'm no where further now than i was last year at this time and still pondering if i could get my skull through the gyprock. all the heartache and headache aside, there are paintings on my floor from the 5 year hunger and i miss the ones whom i love, and myself. maybe the only true happiness will come from standing on the side of the road in ontario, or playing cribbage on a picnic table beside the great lakes. makes me want to eat rotten cabbage and let the dog lick my face. someone inside of me still lives in the eastern townships and is in love with the photographer, but for every reason at all i am laying awake at 5 am on the western tip of culture thinking about the women who have signed a lease in my brain and moved out before finding a sublet. nobody is happy and who is making love? i mean not just fucking..

i'm in love with you, you know it, i know it and the cat seems to not give a shit, but he rubs his back against my calves and i wonder why, maybe he to, sees an easy target. 

just wanted to add, kerouac may have had his day with handsomeness, and off beat "poetry" but he was a dick and died with a bottle in his hand, why? tell yourself why, you know, it's modern art. unhappiness, no, its not that, but the state of everything, i'm fine you know, everything is fine, think about yourself.

a poem for wednesday. god save us.

finger's

promises kept by politicians keep me regular. i lay awake in the midday sun and watch the blue in the sky until it becomes white and then hope for eyes as big as the moon to tell me they will reach into my mouth and remove all the bitter tastes from my tongue.

i'm just trying to fall in love and you make it so damned impossible.

i let your fingers run along my spine because in that moment i worry about nothing. all perfection comes when we stop speaking and each of us becomes as a mountain, the valleys thrive in our sweat.  

stopped in a fall, i stand in love and i can dream about your mouth again, all full of sweetness.

when we kissed and our tongues touched, its the most disgusting thing anyone can imagine.

in comes the moon.

rumbles the earth

loosens our grip and settle the walls.

as we await the wave that will clean us of this place

one can only feel foolish,

to put himself in a spot of such tremendous vulnerability

and for what? 

beauty.

draw parallels and you will know what it takes to fall in love.

oh ye who fear the praise of beauty.

what you fear, is YOUR perception. 

not mine. 

i know my love, if i know you.

so, to run to the hills? or to stand trembling with the ground, as in a dream?

there is a chance at freedom, i think. 

feathers may sprout from our shoulder blades,

but we are not meant for flight, in this life.

stems envy the flower.

kingfisher

when i write about the earth, 

i will write about you.

I've waited all day to write this down.

something

about romance and repair of the trust in the movement of the night.

more about the bed

the sheet is too big for the mattress

the blankets are warm

two pillows.

in ten minutes

i'm nowhere to be found.

the kite.

so what started off as an aimless journal, and turned eyes to the hope of spring, to high moving cloud, to the dip of paddles in a frigid lake. what turned to a cry for the abandoned landscape and the suffering race. what turned to the opening of the heart and the longing for some lost connection somewhere between the aim and the arrow. in appreciation for the creation and the ones who give us life. to the hurt of many who lose hope in the first hours of the day, the romance of fear and freedom in a time of non existence. what started out as a journal, to draw lines on the weather. what drew paths to the sea which was terrifyingly real. 

which grew calm

with the window closed.

to the colour of the soul, which was blue in the warmest of light. where thoughts with weapons drawn, shot holes in the walls of what we had known as love. which lead to flight of the mind so carefully veiled. now just a bulletin board for earthen poems. 

it gives me rest to know you where here.

polo.

art the infection

art the inheritance 

art the squandering of time

all to make enough money to shop at the Bay.

the potters.

for the man who wears his face

like a clay mask

and for the women 

who carve lines into it.

montreal. pt. 4

i'm stuck on berri

i'm stuck in montreal

i'm stuck in la fontaine

i'm stuck on a grocery getter

i'm stuck in the back alley where birds fly through the small diamonds of a lattice fence.

i'm stuck in the red oil that covers my fingers after breakfast

i'm stuck in montreal

i'm stuck in a thick soup at chez jose

i'm stuck in the sweat of old montreal, i mean barfly

i'm stuck in an apartment with pizza boxes and cigarettes, out the back window and across the roof, where i am stuck in a bottle of wine

i am stuck inside of this swollen idea of a past

i'm relaxing on the stairs and watching bumper cars

i'm stuck in dolors' kitchen with some espresso and a pair of cut off shorts

i'm stuck in the window with lotte and we're waiting for you to come home

i'm stuck in traffic on sherbrooke and i'm walking

i'm stuck in the greenhouse and i'm in love with the windows that show me your heart

i'm stuck in andrea's pancakes

sugar cookies

i'm stuck in an apricotine

i'm stuck in a green chair that anchored the moon and her creations

i'm staring at the wall and i'm sitting in the shower 

i'm stuck in a sinking bathroom which smelled of a century

i''m stuck with myself and he's stuck in montreal.

we can't hold on as tightly as was expected. for it isn't strength we display, only instinct.

though i recall the kiss

can i remember the lips?

with what we gave as love, we kept in security

and my hands are swollen from the sting of childhood

and i distance him from the left over thought, balancing on the quivering crutches of the future.

soil

which fills the grooves of your boots

of your fingerprints 

under your nails.

and i feel your hands wrap around me

and the heat of growth.

do you think of the night sky, so full of light?

when the tide gave us the moon.

a memory for all the things we didn't.

rocktober

bodies are filling small beds with heat and dew

someone sleeps alone

someone in their clothes.

someone loves the short poem.

decay

the most i can wish for, is the slowly ways of old age.

to move with the breeze, with sway, like an ancient tree.

to smile with lines that run on for years, showing each path of every tear, earned and then turned with the coming of winter.

the weary smile graying with folds of laughter.

clothes worn from bent limbs and harder days, now passed

how i wish to be old, and as grey as the sky.

eyes twinkle under a sagging brow, as the waning moon, in its wisdom,  reflects upon the sea.

to be compared to stone, that has been heated by the summers sun

to smell of time

what is left of hair, ragged as the wool wrapped over the leaning torso.

crooked fingers that hope to hold a brush and work a pen, 

old poems for old lovers, colours that shine brighter than the days of youth with its constant change, as the leaves of season.

30, why do i need this?

i'd give it all up for a winged flight, maybe less.

find me soon, the decade is swallowing me.

tuesday, autumn 2014

 painting, and exploring in other mediums, like canoes and solitude.

the perpetual gypsy, slips out of his clinging bracelets and spies from behind the eyes of harry houdini.

she asked me what i was running from. 

to, not from.

to myself, and i think i found him. briefly.

but here now, i find myself swimming against the tide and all the fear in the world is standing on the end on my frigid tale. 

i dove into the ocean and it was warm. i skated on the moving water under golden gate bridge

i saved a monkey which treated me with disdain. the walls shook with abuse and i used the boardwalk in the peach flood of the afternoon.

there is an aching train caught in my throat.

here is some language for the offense.

every night when i am settling into my pillow, i try to plan my dreams. every night my dreams are not what i had planned because the movement in my resting brain is far more abstract in plot than i could ever consciously map.

a small bird, the size of a two dollar coin falls into a smoldering patch of earth from a discarded cigarette, its wings are covered in soot and it cannot fly, i hold it in my hand and try to wipe it off but it dies. i can still feel the grief that filled the rest of the dream. i went on to receiving unexpected guests in a small car, who had driven from edmonton to see me, though we've only had a few brief encounters, then disassembling my skateboard and mounting the trucks and wheels onto a piece of floppy cardboard. i was upset about the stability of the contraption but was still able to get a backside disaster and sweeping tail block on the ramp that seemed to be in the field near the sylvan lake apostolic lutheran church.

with shoes.

the foot at the dog of the bed

the paper casket in which we bury dreams

the sitting bull, watching shuffle board

cold feet and the sound of the pipeline running through the backyard of a broken down school house where minds were warped and formed to hurt.

big ships out on the rolling swell, tin cans in a landfill.

now that the house is clean we can all relax and watch tv.

and in classical terms

the fiddler plays piano near a street sign, "permit parking only"

cats chase spiders over the blankets.

a street car named retire.

and i'm still eating corn meal.