oh, one day you will

a man of advancing years

Not a fear my dear sweet
mead mediary but an im-
mediate fact that if we’re im-
modest may one day detract
from the body elastic and
ability to be cramped in an
old soul mate‘s camper van
caravan of distant land
with that spice and more
enticing honey side of life
proud and poised a desert
in its entirety for me to
romp and level and sweat in
through one day you come
to a dancing reservoir you are
dido and a diamond band
but you can keep it all every
accessory you possess is
less than a single cell of
your skin, your slant, your salt

She laughed after hearing
all that and said, “you are
certainly a man of advances,
but your years are perennial,
both the tender blade and
top dressing for so many
more of rich and permanent
visitations on earth that were
I an olive tree alive since
Gethsemane I couldn’t be
a single ring more complete
or well weathered than you”

Carved in stone/Monumental

The rhetoric of contemp-
orary life is as old as stone,
dusty tablets and their chips
that must litter the floor
where it was fashioned, and
in the indented form, shoulders
long after robes are worn, are
loose or only wrapping bones

In those walls our own
mortality to be quarrying—
quarries we didn’t learn to
avoid the void in the side
of the country, the once roof
and arch and paving block
blocked behind dead fire

And though pulverized
immortal, exposed to shade
and sun, blue, lake, ice and
blazes it stays in its place—
limp testament to a precept
when perception’s glacially spread

In my family we have block
heads and brick houses, hearts
of stone and gravelly throated
old men ready to deliver their
own sermon on the mount—a
mighty granite platform at that—
from memory to branch lichen
or castabouts keep skipping
rock hard, gritty, or a fist
of sand lost like ancestors,
hours, following a rolling stone

memories

Mindful, remembering—
and with a word a museum
fortress and galleries, or
tower of tortures, whispers
with an abasement complete
to sewers and foul streams
shot through, to idly stew
or find fuel to ideally survive

Always the push to apply
architecture to the fat,
for that is what brains are,
hogging power, made into stations,
a library or cabinet, an office
block castle or jail cell, all
mortar ascribed to the engine
of the head, and only when
it’s empty are we bored

What worth is it, if the
mess of threads connections
and receptors, if dead ends,
if not skeletons of sailing
vessels, spires above huts –
a prow that juts instead of
sleeks, to seek the unseen
stream-lined hemispheres
leaving less embittered men
to pilot the bitter dredge

Have half-a mind with me
we each conceive our share
weight and forward portions
bethinking sculls and skies

Seventeen

Humanity you amaze (me)
a congregation of cells
met up in a body I love
with every thing and no-
thing written on its face –
to learn and improve by
doing but be subject to mixes
and snaps in chemicals and
balances how quietly the hinge
is right until the passage

It was all about standing
on your own, until innocence
and harmonies are a jagged
thumbnail tag to chew through
to leave no taste, indecision
is growing up to learn to have
an answer for any person
or event whether well considered
or simply suicide(al)

God gets out the human
bridle, and we pack animals
become draft animals and daft
in the annals of the driver
always writes its history
we buck but for a season
and breed as we are teamed

Some fold outside the pen
some stumble hurdling it
then gain a footing and ankle
sturdy to be upright and learn
to stand this time by no order

bees

My insides are a pit of bees
why would I eat but to
irritate a swathe of stings
but in the same minute I am
able to flip inside out and
see myself as a barrel with
everything or nothing but
honey inside and I (to) follow

Coat, you know it’s winter
you know your hives living in
completely frozen homes
and the restlessness slows
to a sleep it off eternity
the way it seems on the
worms eye side of the bird
or fuzzy bee side of a hex-
agon we’re gone from
living in to living on

And would I be the one
returning to the same nest
in the spring I would be

And I would be the one
returning to the same haunt
in the spring would I be

overcoming adolescence

A couple of days and it’s over
if only that were the contract
from fertilization to maturity
maybe a week, tops, it works
for other earthlings, why not,
to have adapted within that
span, to have collected wits
in a collective nexus, to have

More than halves of an i-
dentity, driven to be seen
and desirous of hide outs a
patchwork dial attached to each
burgeoning branch’s back some strat-
ospheric feedback to Hamlet’s
operator the strings are (not) but
(enough) to pull it off, to make
the metamorph appear any
less the pull of a puppeteer
(wizard, curtain encircled)

What of us in the middle
of that interluding switch
doesn’t feel the fiddle dee dee
opine for thee, dum or spruce
sprucing the ensemble‘s front piece,
as a man is made of string and
glue lives for the sounding or
bored for the operatic drag that
takes place of tuning in and turning
out another instrument to mince
or stand on ceremony for an
onset and overture to both be
showered in an outpacing per-
formance, to score a guarded regard

rome

What did we say about
in a day or in our day
there was a country bigger
than the land, theirs was a
calendar of both name and
measurement that endured
for a second life we might see
the final grouping was of more
than just immodest countries

We’ve gotta be about,
more than a reason for
breathing, but abroad, in and
out, unreadily accountable
when asked which way did
he go no one knows precisely
but to point, though impolite
this time it’s right to, to
note (your own) rise and fall

Feat, heaving tissue and
lung fixing every stitch to be
oxygen rich and ready for
war, as we weren’t the first
to make it, but we advanced
its stage beyond posturing and
exchanging blows, though we
were hearty exponents of it
a million miles ago and now

Fairytale

Write your name on a line
in a page and brave imagination’s
trials to find the lesser ones
the physical obstacles and
the unseen, the more re-
mote from the pen stroke

Of midnights, always
the time of supernatural
mannerism, gathering, craft
if I was still the same at
the change of days or the end
of the tale then I have failed
you in too many ways to let…
so let passions writ slip away

What they don’t say
in one of those stories
in one of those books could
fill a book, before each a
myriad of false starts, a
mirror we had looked long
in longingly to leave the
soft focus scene behind (me)

How will I know
when mine is written
in intractable tracks, to
stand on sentences and
see it to be, the last, and
not to say why did it end
this way?— why didn’t I
find out what followed—
why didn’t we both run-
on, but that’s not the end

Mary Magdalene

What a woman— there are
as many ways to end that
thought as there are of them,
is, does, endures, adjusts, (outlasts)
but she was the foil in what
others have written of her
to slur a seemly brain mate
of the great J, keen sighted
to see the feeling of today
replaces, outweighs what
heartless minders decry as
outside that narrow J/G way

It may be the fairy tale that
made me (want to) fall for
the fallen woman, Mary full
of disgrace I hail thee, not by
your deed but the pen of envy
making your first faith one
(of the) unworthy of the river
unready as a liver in sin,
so are we all and that’s
what the river was (all) about
to drown that portion of
self found right to wash white

The message bears out (which is love)
you are among the most
ready, and whatever was done
before this collaboration
is understandable, is just
backstory for the lucky who
follow to follow to read,
a fellow reed in the stream
to weave and float with me

Also

Ran, just as the likewise
man as if all life had a prize
even as the gate landed on
a head so as the axes, also (did)

Fall on me, in autumn we
are as the leaves fleeting
and red as second glances
have an impressionability
that is as likely to scatter
as the tree that initiates
the tumbling cascade

On me in three, two,… who
can complete this sequence
however elemental we are
composed of those fibrous
strands of matter and cell-
ulose a greener pasture in
the bower and innocence
of an equally new verdure

We are our roots but we
also move with a quicker
clip than centimetres per
season you’re sure to see
in one such coming all
horizons in between are
enveloped by our canopy
(also)

No Reserves

Their concern is too small
a stock during shortfalls while
our contemplation of the back
ups has nothing on quantifiable
with finger flicks on the sliders
scale but a case of identy mis-
takenly withheld for the prospect
of a life on the shelf (we felt)

Safe. Words. A counting
house a café of the quays
to your country are in me
not some magazine reached
for in times of poor acuity
(a)cumulatively suspicious breed
of revelers peopling each
establishment sipping chilled
wine or piss warm beer here
is the long standing leveler
fear and its ready adulteration
of purity otherwise deeply held

One more time out
for one more time out
and from our times out
we away evermore heavily
the strength of constancy
a treasury in friendly reach
and less than accessories we are
worn, constant, companion or more

They made up my wild heart

Constituents or constructionists,
the world was not new when you
came to the prairie terrained all
that made up my wild heart (beat)

Four fingers in your hand
and ventricles fill up a fist
not so obviously of a like
size however little it is
and still, how fast it fits

A thumping—
of merriment, of derision
which it is tricky to discern
when the outburst is heard
it might be the rousing
shouts of a room made ready
to lose the straight lace for
the hopeless lord poured in (every)
counter pounding all round s
or the forceful one sound
hard eyes and hammer,
slams harder than the surface it is—
a thumping

“the first time I…”

Heard “the first time” I cried—
neither joy nor sadness,
just realization, and life,
with no proof to suffice

I have that association
with dead fathers and symbolic
sons, other brotherly bonds,
with love as it comes from
the artesian deeps, releases
buries pieces in a willowy (reed)
hum of wine rims crystal completed
and carried away in sea hymns
and as openings in woodwinds
any one would have wished played

The first word came with
companions but I am always
cognizant of the one

“home is…”

The way we trail off
only after off the trail

It wasn’t abruptly
contemplative or done
taken from the ceiling
rounded out with helium
but it is good, and so it’s not
afraid to blow everything
at once or float away

Home was
an ornament of Saturn,
a distance comprised of
tiny games and numbing
satellites all for another
reason to stay, but it changed
too little compared to you

Home won’t
stop circling the living
punctuation of deep space
or deeper inspirations in
we ennui sedimentary
debris unwilling to keep
people concentrically

Home will be
nothing as finite as a line (the inside)
inspiring as a like mind and
ready to die
(yours)

moment (peace in our time)

Moment momentum
and a lull in an otherwise
crammed time enjambment
begins and ends in a sentence
when we decree and carry
to the next take and titch for-
warding everything but meaning
in our evenings address temp-
estuous mastery of the main
mere cobbled planks to take
the coming excess of waves
and apprehend the ocean as
each day has its diminish and
artifacts their untested captain

Moment momentous what
bond have we anticipated
between us the age and
posterity surmounts severity
for every waking inkling way
wasted enough to bay hunger
stalking the hollow years be-
yond thoughtless living and
calculated deaths little by
little is gained traversing the same
blasted terrain until in one
crater a trace of comfort or
light (makes) streaks to be glorified
for wide eyes always skyward

Sky-write my final word
on the turning of hands and
digits on the exacting faces
of the piece we make to tell (it)

And Blue

Passport, asset of
a luxury class having
chip in stead of stamps
that had been handed to
father the world you know
but key tones of the grand
~~~~
Passbook, padlock of
the uppity just so
we can keep the eye
upon but not open
as grubby hands hold up
a bantustan laid open
~~~~
Papers, rustled stuff
of eugenics cleansing
an unending clutter
and engines leading cars
as far as that gauge can
get carried away
~~~~
(Leave it at the)
Bleep. Like pigeon’s
incisions carrier rests
never when even undressed
toothless and creutzfeltded
still held his possessed
GPS confessed it

Chez Moi

Splinter as evidence,
the processed wood not
of craftsmen but factories
eager machine and easy
outpost for outlets of
our heart of darkness
barter deters no one nor
waits for the application
of habitual women and men
heaven sent but in a case
of that’s what she said he
said (of) in the beginning

Return to the trees or
grainy remainders of
at least familiarity had
rough with a once fellow
living specimen of the
forest coexists with hip
flask and wallet ask me
why we carry the entire
trunk in memory and
baggage we leave better
parts of a tree as dust
seen as a constant pile to
be swept away as super-
stitions may have it

Made, chaise in the lathe, a
lazy or learned as lord
of a tropical horde, (all)
the more industrious this
station of the first among
us, scarcity scarcely relieves
relives less than peacefully
the healing properties of
what profits a hedonist

Whim Immaculate

(We) begin consideration
and overnight this time
we coincide has neither
been appointed nor a-
voided foregone forgotten
how long we were lined up
conducting the obscene
siege of self on self
less help from fellow let
alone an enemy

Beyond the wall the sky-
line taunts of pastels pink
and rosy streaks in each
going down of the sun
and coming up
of confrontation
we made our station
immaculate so immediate
awaiting an outcome

And they tumble.
As they always will
and do. As was written
and read repetitive gen-
eration found mistaken for
faith in either (the) concrete
or brick, when in each is
straw one faultily built
upon but not to lose heart
contrariwise to start (it)

Cities were the new
hub and distribution
of human evolution
(but what of love?)
Cities are the old
and fearfully so
outdated as we
came to leave
(obdurate)

Dab Hand

Illustrate it, and clearly
I’m told a portraiture
they dearly wish to hear
unfold as holding paper
cranes and games we played
before we knew how to use
a body to commune-
icate for fortune does
not end by telling

A clean sheet
and eager fingers
congregate in creases
increasing in all pro-
bably getting wobbly
just to cradle in cupped
hands and have no template
to live up to or erase

How the time was slated
how fondness fluctuated
how one coming was belated
by the waiting and outrages
just made jest of later
by us, capable completely
as we become ducky
defect free or simply
able to see past it

Back to the pond we sat
at sit the tatters of tired
loaves scattered openly
and we smile at each
beak we can eat the same
exposition as we’d spread

A One

Plain she came as was her
plan glass face and thoughts of
no real bite, child size, or fun,
if one could chalk that to
his board, the speech was brief-
a quick hem as faint at
dull brains and turn the train
to seek a hem more brief

I chafed in ways strange
to the crux of a man who feels
not meek or low, mad or broke
those be damned but in this
chase strained, old, not of
worn hides or high tech tools
and games gone out of date,
stretched as men of a craft
are by tests that tax the
same skill that names their
trade, grim and at the same
time chuffed, a bout to see what
stuff his guts are lined with

It’s not pride, or need to be
right, but a love of both
a maze and fate, of how
you are not a clue or its fix
and days we pair to fill are
in our log of years too near
to count in full, and far too
far from two hearts aim to
dare to halt their out flow

“here come my night thoughts on crutches”

What you see is not as
crippling as what walks inside
how tiring an effort already
limp-yet when begun at once
slackening reiterate the lame
state of poorly behaving limb

Cease me evening hearing of
old centuries and fancy
meter were we to speak of
satellites and titans high
up upon tie up the fawn
and fantastical tongue for
a run on the odium po-
dium boy forked as ways
less taken by the play as
old warders say it (in safety)

Recite with the illustrious
minds of the age what you did
not write but wish emblazoned
to be as the sole memory of
necessities prayers down-played
for the nicety of the town
globe round and ill-founded
as whispers written there

I tried not to be frail—
I listened while images
of neighbors came out
to be saviors but ended
their debut run betrayers—
to hold myself up and
I will live with the frame

“I’d rather”

“I’d rather” was the rather
silly repetition in a song
I knew a long time ago
before I cared to be this
sincere if even just for
the time to tell it now

I’d rather make you laugh
than a sold out renowned and
crowded hall in a faraway city
we haven’t visited separately
yet we will and in those
storied streets keep voices
an electric cascade, buoyant

I’d rather take a bath—
in the absence of cash
meaning nothing to do with
cleanliness—giving cheap ease
away to chase the hare-
brained patterer captured
by a child-like magic
~~~(Hey Presto)
I’d rather win a life-
time subscription to the most
limited run edition I know
than all the mass market
attractions shiny ball dis-
tractions you absolutely
shame any old appendix A

Scabs

Warriors for ancestors
we had who were familiar
with wounds cleft and clay
more like a vessel but not
air tight might still make it
for shores weren’t the first
song of how fleshlings had
come, in sides of mountains

Origin. Made.
Not as paper weight or play-
thing, shapeless trays of
ash rudimentary class
objet d’— sages may
school your skull and create
by council a creature cognate
we can conjure by and akin
the nature of the maker.

Cuts-in-tuitiveness
and parries as a jape
they paired as shakers
of seasoning, specks of
brew clinking and cupped
ones voluptuous spice well-
enticed well beyond conjugal
adjustment or mal-, entrust
the fullness of a bud crush
to temperamental glazes

Strip and paint
performance or per-
force full-up alabaster
or sand blasted had her
hand in first furnaces
and a prime kiln ken

Loco Locution

It might be the borderland
where refugee and brigand
greet the easterly entrant
not sunnily but sneering
gibberish in hearing this
condition getting worse

Cartoony, cactus and desert
moony as still folk with
a liking for the shine all
the time of history is rest
between industrious and in-
nebriation more creationists
divested and westward ho—
sideways as the soldiers
rode for a bottle, battle and
red badges from hot fire
have found hot fire

Festoon two points
on a bare chest and messages<BR>
are less mixed—ribbons
and things that brighten eyes—
bring blood to smiles and
what contrivance of modesty
have—well they cannot
a primate need to talk is
made minimalist by animalistic
stones and sticks, sweeps and
switches bewitches beast
before an outspoken chorus
rose another indicator for encore
roar! and in it stored (hard)
programming (cored) to roust
towers themselves toward
any overlordship to borders

“every species has explorers”

There are explorers most
often known for finding
what was known but not by
their kind—like a tidewater
pilgrim or granite cast
trilobite we liquefy in-
side while flap empty husks
collapse by what crushes
unlike any other structure
love and what must be

Behind or beyond
my fantasy font
full up with foundlings
and falterings halt ‘er
rings of burnish bronzed
ponder upons lily put
the fronds at your feet
and absconds with softer
parts of palms, hearts, pads

Put it back—
that destination
as afterthought
is afterthought

The joy in a library

She told me of a time
I could do no other than to
nod fondly for all reason(s)
— the joy in a library
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Whispered in-jokes
are primary fare in
there between odds and
evens in rows and shelves
together held by stiffer
backs and wire knick-
knacks with skid resistant
undercoats for those
multi-spinal throes

Push, pressure and
hand sanitizer by touch
of screens for reading bar
codes in open palms dreary
weather balms all in here
for harlequin and horror,
goosebumps and fear

A pushup as bulletins
its to watch, not to listen
the elocutions given did
not diminish – what we wish
is purest make-believe
a reciprocal gift of
living in each other‘s
stories before we re-
treat beyond hearing

Beautiful Boy

Safe was not the word
for we terrors of and
less than subtle lovers
finding fun in under-
mining entire general-
izations, but what of it?

Life and a question, its
questions keep the lost elite
alike, fantail and shrike
fly regardless of height
and by identity denied a
loft among the high rise

Let us begin our migration
twinned with the uncanny
magnetism that makes these
impending ventures south so
fearless for the working out
of route pursuit and sail
prevailing whichever way
it blows windscreens below
will be thankful for transparency

It had to be me
stopgap of sky diplomacy
broken as your older orders
no longer would be stood
before—some imperious
eagle is still belittled by
vultures black out more sun-
light— or more stalwart
for a bird the birth of
a beauty, bigger than a
fantasy flight might have left

“he found the bandages inside the pen”

There was the pain, it was
inerasable as your cells
dividing little deaths in
stride while topping off
so many days of sadness
wrapped within one’s self

Wake up and they’re red
there on your softened skin
so adept at hiding the infra-
side of the spectrum and cut
more than nursery tenders
do under hot house roofs

Trip of the infantile mind
to bleed and dye the tie
that binds flowers and rags
diapers and bags of the body
sagging and replacing dead
layers till the next flank
of human syllable flay
is found clotted down

Strangeness and wishes
to be covered, wrapped
away nothing to say when
angers were landed and
a pummeling rain refused
to be exclaimed any more
than one downy feather pluck
up or one plucky feather down
this rounds on me, breathing
piston the deafening felt held

Fact Finding

Consider the fact finding
fiction abra cadabra and
conviction two ideas wide
minds tried to isolate
but in the least divided
we find it side by side

The idea is stilted from
the onset one undertaking
a study of the unknown too
often has hopes pinned to
a particular decision when
the discovery stage of
the body electric is done

Tireless the strident
identifiers by turnstile
provocateurs by proxy
when to-be-seen is not
an option able to be tabled
or raked out with the coals
those cold footed bozos

One more day the fact
remains printed plain on
paper prepared before the
day contains authoritative
explanations and florid
scribbles, names taking
perverse perversification
for prefect verification is
a stick swinging constabulary

imperfect perfection

I will not debate
the syncopation of an
organ and what makes it—
it must be so to the degree
that sadness can’t encumber
me so equally weakened
and strengthened when pre-
sented with you flaws

How much was whispered
about behind you when in-
dependent thought was new
as youth always insists it
be, and in the uniform
any non-uniform prolifer-
ation body and brain be held
(punishable by shunning)
interminable running-throughs
and bloody handed excise

Then, when the bleeding ended
a fellow, an observer not
solely of your own trial
but those of all witchery
gallows (and) treachery bellows
in primal howls for now—
the rising of suns by half-
light and in that semi-glow
cast a demi-entity for friend
companion and witness of
a brilliance more beautiful for
its blemishes make it whole

S2 Snow Angel

Did it not make the man
happy to stand the harsh
approach, all down to shirts
sleeves and overcoats, cold
noses and stored logs alight,
satisfy the flake and flight
or smoke out the scurry
living in clinging bark

Brought into the heat these
hedra- bead and drip coverlets
and coverletters haven’t said better
than a pool accumulated slowly
from after-effects the freeze

I am in the main artery
but blood is not for the white
insistence of the day’s blanket
sifting a Hiawatha wind
like trinkets of perennial
visitation tidy in the pass
or spattered in the blade

snow was general over all Ontario

It made the cold less so
and though I wasn’t in time
to crunch it with my own
boots I’m hopeful to before
another winter‘s through