1 New Poem

 Younger Shadows

You trace symbols of past wounds,
in dirt tracks at the protest camp,
miners and mavens ran in your
blood, not to get us sitting in
front of dress, answering to change
in screen glow.

You loved the silence after a
window shattered, the second of breath
after rags and tear gas,
the twitch of muscle hen taking
off on broken sneakers down alleyways,
the smile after clouds cleared on
demonstration day.

You told me, “even though this
place is alright for while we’re
young, I’m secretly planning to move
back to Montreal”, eyes echoed
past the bartender’s stubble, the
faux-neon Miller sign.

I wondered what would happen to
spray-paint sculptures, chalk slogans,
restless sparks, cuts locks, thrown-down
chains? You said
we’d see in time, can’t take anything
but memories with us
to the other side.

Of night? Of sleep? How long?
Answers were a white fence,
red brick window in age.

1 New Poem

Triptych Panels

I hear the echo,
Turn on the Bright Lights in background
cascade of warring engine rumble,

Comes around again in spaces
between sleeping, comes around
at half-past-one, comes

When I wonder on broken glass,
shattered concrete howling
names of bomb-blasts; should

Have protested, wound not have
made a sound, would not hold
a flicking light to burning

Scent of tire rubber. I watch it
pile on the contested roadway, fearful
faces made logic in time.

I make excuses for antics,
excuses of myself, place of pride
for charming rogues, resented and

Kept a fair-minded distance from
heart and hearth, the last of
figures in Rockefeller relief

Background: the mad thieves,
ideal painters carrying wild eyes,
ambition promoters, fools all.

I sip from the ten tarot cups
of simpler comforts (good shoes,
warm linen), dream of drying

Days when versions merge
and take across their leaden
faces against street sounds.

1 New Poem

Spatial Planes

I was part of the crowd,
watched bombs fall from
dream state shoreside,
said nothing,

Saw veins of concrete open,
spiling tar, oil fumes haze
like the anchorage of
ships capsized.

I lost heart and will,
for much more of the screaming,
much more than the ranconteur’s
words could extend.

Approach in the wedding dress aura,
beckon back to homefront comforts:
the forgetting of what happened walls
beyond.

Pausing, stand across and shape,
we whirled in the April skies,
setting off storms;

Your voice didn’t break the
cacophony, grim sights paces away;

It came like balms from
crosstown market, kept in
mason jars, pulled out

When keeping together got too
great for tender ears to
hear.

It forges a hardness,
a bloodless unwelcome
to these nights.

1 New Poem

Firework Scars

I stepped by the waterfall,
memories restless, awakened
from induced night slumber,
drugged with bottle contents
until the pain of tears vanished

Until the misery of wrought hands,
twisted iron becomes but another
breath catching exercise, a cleared
throat from pasts immemorial to

Walk beside in space and time
to final resting. A blackout
after wounded crackle of static
on the airwave, a signal taken
too little from words

We passed as codes in dark
corners, back and forth through
wire fence.

A look at the roadkill, the tar
paper pine, the burn rubber leavings
of last year’s party favour revolution

Tells of nothing, save regretted
rancor: the lonely scribe dying
with his head firmly perched

To righteous side he’d never take
in fear of too much certainty.

1 New Poem

On Lost Truth

Silt in memory, rubbish
pile to sift through,
weights heavy with worse desires,
same circle drawn in place;

No longer one, lost heart,
wasting water, air, time with
pre-drawn places, stopping

Distance. Wished for greater stature
life, found it wanting, found it
misplaced and bedridden with

Murky calling of mystic charlatans,
words I cannot recall from lacking
state. Feel no longer embers,

Only coal dust, sweeping wounds;
I am not afraid to vanish,
just to break the waves,

Like cries from an orchestra pit
(drip sweat down forehead, lip
wince), calls for warmth.

I am afraid of not enough,
in these bones to bury them
aloft, highly favoured in places
hallowed.

1 New Poem

 Fragile Places

A hidden stamp in mirror walls,
I walk afresh dawn up the
ground floor cavern, tucked-away
slots in Morningside Heights
chill.

Shuffle in smart-shoed attire,
cooking speckle-shined for this
crowded exchange, flipping off
a switch in time to save me.

From when that love of brickwork
and high places started to fade
into fantasies of pushing, jumping,
leaping, into the floating fire
escape.

I trap the madness in champagne
expression, glancing pleasantries
tracing the wax of shoelaces,
the falling of triple-redundant
words to marble floor.

A breath outside imagined, cigarettes
and motor oil combining in sweat
sense; makes the moving go by
quicker, picture-perfect marking
time.

1 New Poem

 A Look, Undone

A stare into gold gossamer pool,
liquid chasing down leaves left in
muddy wake.

A reach across pinched points of
stardust, temporal spaces shining in
hedonic glory.

A happiness extinguished, pen-scratched
out in regret for the excitement:
rainy, lost.

A missed thought for moonlit
Dominica’s shores, for hazy
Semarang noons.

A pulling thought that this is
all, rocking back and forth until
light snuffs.