postcard poem # 5

August 23, 2007 reading at Factory Reading Series

i will be reading with Marcus McCann and William Hawkins. we are all launching chapbooks published by the wonderful above/ground press.

Factory Reading Series
Ottawa Art Gallery
Arts Court
Thursday, August 23, 2007
7:30 pm

at some point, Marcus and I will be on Susan Johnston's Special Blend show on CKCU. i'll put up a notice.

postcard # 4

August Poetry Postcard Fest

i signed up for this neat thing, better explained here

here are my first three. all the postcards are works of art from canadian artists

three reverse poems

published on www.ditchpoetry.com

finale-a sonnet for the end of our world

tales from the end of our world

reynold throws stones at the floor-to-ceiling windows of his penthouse apartment. water sluices from a functional sculpture, tumbling over paddle wheels, splashing on black rocks painted with the words “joy,” “gratitude,” and “sky.” a stunted bonsai lies on its side in the corner beside a lacklustre rubber tree plant. sometimes reynold hits. glass shatters, disturbs the sound of water, the gentle background music, the still leaves of the dusty plants.

denise likes to eat french pastry from larks, the latest trend in high fashion eating. you fill you cheeks with soft yellow cream and chocolate profiteroles, pause and spit. the thin and stylishly dressed waiter to your right holds a bucket and wipes your mouth when you’re done. you feels as if you’ve indulged in gustatory excess, yet when you leave you are empty. strangely empty.

zoe rides a harley hog across california’s coastal highway number one and listens to the grateful dead. she wonders about her mother, ashes and bone finally cold in an urn on her mantle in the family home where zoe dreamed of escape. she’s given her mother everything she wanted: non stop big screen colour television and the security that nothing will ever change.

bridget’s eye is still bruised from the old lady’s fists. she wouldn’t have sex with him, the man her mother sold her to. she discovers a gray army blanket and an old box of crackers. for the first time in weeks, bridget sleeps. in the morning her body is so frozen with cold she can’t feel her toes, her fingers. there’s a hole in the roof of the shed where she’s run to. winter light melts the ice. she opens her mouth and gulps.

david composes text on a typewriter, blots empty spaces with gray smudges caused by eyes that refuse to remain dry. he takes a sip of his morning martini and watches the words blur out of sense. a long list slides slowly down the refrigerator door, its overwhelming and impossible to complete obligations too heavy to be held by magnetic force. david shoots out six typewriter keys and saves the last bullet. t h e e n d

cassiopea makes the best pizzas in the city. the teenage boy watches the curves of her body bounce as she twirls another circle of dough in the air and laughs like she means it. his mother kicks him under the table and tells him to chew his food and stop gaping. his father folds the pages of the business section until the creases are so sharp they cut. while his mother goes to the ladies room and his father pays the bill, he steps through the kitchen and out the back door, a still warm ball of dough cradled in the palm of his hand.

the end of our world-a poem cycle

big bang theory: countries broken
views of earth from space
as viewed from earth from space from earth
close up where planets splinter
genealogy over atom
stratified centre of quake
birth monsoons
tsunami




before burn
wax effigy packs for apocalypse
carries child raggedly unstitched
plays radio
severs surgeon hand
speeds train
throws bird over cliff
plummets diver
swallows an open mouth
begs an answer




saving the world
wanted—
fuel efficient
fish that flies
and leaves no ecological footprint
afterwards you can eat it
without ingesting mercury or depleting
scarce ocean resources
is powered by hot air
converts noxious bleats into energy
you if ever travelled by fish
know about economies of scale


turntables rewind empathetic breath
until tuesday the stars
rescind hills folded over egg
whites of rivers, eye lids
shutter before after
yolk rises in the east
sets elsewhere
eel or jelly crust unbaked
stuck to the bottom of
bellows suck and fan
the blastfire
finale


the prince counts hands in the valley
while his wife searches for shoulders
in the kitchen
and the butcher needs meat to chop
gristle for the chattering teeth
chew 32 times a feast of galaxy
burn wholes in celeste’s brand
new night table cloth
the dog ticks frenzies from his collar
hind leg thumps to the renaissance
beat of under
again a question breaks the window

rob's assignment on sound poetry

for this week's workshop class, rob asked us to go to the website PENNsound and listen to bpNichol and Steve McCaffery and write something in response. my response is below and the poem cycle i wrote is the entry after this one.

Sound Thoughts

Steve McCaffery - love his language, it goes all over the place. with his work i like to read and hear it. silly at times, such as “what as poetic”:
“the rain in spain falls mainly on mark twain” “an avant garde a kierkegaard”
just so full of rhythm and implausibility, fantastic. absurd “poetica, helvetica, ars poetica.” “when i grow up i want to be a version of a virgin of a brain surgeon” all kinds of unlike ideas put together. “a walnut covered walrus” what happens when you let your mind run free in association with sound? [on a side note, i enjoy also his idea of poetic research being different from other kinds of research in that it is a reaction or response or inspiration rather than necessarily a comment on it, pataphysics, beyond the metaphysical and a parody of science...all fun! love his seven pages missing volume one.]

in bpNichol’s sound poetry, single syllables are emphasized, his word associations are based on sound rather than concept, there’s often strong & sing song rhythms to his poems and he also plays with pitch. some of his poems are like tongue twisters.

also Bill Bissett’s Lullaby from Motherlove-love the language of an unknown or invented language; see how sounds alone can create an atmosphere; this is soft, repetitive like a lullaby.

the addition of sound effects is so much fun; shows you there really are no limits; folks like antonin artaud and william s. burroughs played with all of this years ago, yet it’s still treated as something new. they played with sounds alone, added effects, slowed down and lengthened discrete sounds, distorting them. to me it’s like going deep inside language to really consider it and analyse it in depth, slowing down each individual sound like an isolated moment. this to me is what poems are...the isolation of a unique moment and its articulation on paper or in the air. today folks like max middle and jw curry here in ottawa, a. rawlings in toronto and others all over the world are creating sound poetry. it’s as exciting to me as visual poetry and every other media being used.

i dig the idea of removing and or playing with expected patterns of meaning. seems to me that changing languages is one way of doing so. i fell in love with words for their sounds more than their meaning. i have always spoken my poems out loud and the poems of others. as a child i would repeat and still do, little phrases and words, such as “the theory of plate tectonics” my favourite phrase and “lugubrious.” I love what these sounds do to my tongue, how they fill my mouth, how they resonate in my brain: “the murmuring of innumerable bees”-Tennyson.

in one of the music classes i can still remember from grade school the teacher has us listen to peter and the wolf and tell her what we were hearing without knowing the story. i was fascinated by the way music and sound alone could convey mood and tone, could tell the story without words.

i have always played with language, inventing my own as a child. this exploration of sound has brought me back to that playfulness and the idea of invented languages.

in this poem cycle, “8 planets speaking in tongues,” i’ve chosen vocabulary from existing languages and also added my own invented words. i haven’t chosen the words for their meaning, but rather for their sound. the sounds are meant to have onomatopoeic associations with specific atmospheres...let me know if they do...

8 planets speaking in tongues

to be published by my self-publishing imprint Angel House Press and to be launched at the ottawa small press fair along with two other chapbooks on june 16, 2007

away by train

what if there’s nothing more beautiful
than this about to be

what if i can never look in your eyes without the dominos of all our histories
downing the centuries of every thing discovered not as important as this

you and i at castles moated between us no fire greater than the inner dragon wind
travels the taut wire sings our bones

walls of roman ruins and tarnished armour carved statues of ghosts and rusted red wine staining silver chalices i’m eager to touch the legend of you if that’s all i will ever

some have found prophesies written in the sacrificed petals of flowers torn apart
fingernail scars on the moon fanatic latched onto

in this life understand what’s meant and what’s not to be
you’ll allow spark to lightning but never to ground

your histories i dare not
fall into

fingers fumble through electric compositions and fret
board under your hands i’ve imagined how they’d find me
a pattern beneath all the eras
eros eros rose sees seas seize
scar of lightning written over bones
is all i need

it’s windy the clouds i can taste the coming storm

you the ocean nothing more
one glance reveals infinity

believe unbreakable

hand wedged between soap
bubbles and narrow water glass
body within a morning’s yellowgreen
the simple act of washing over re
washing daily in the early hours

constant hymn of swallows in prayer overhead
folds into routine unnoticed
always present
an act of forgiveness
your blood receives

before feet press down onto solid
the day begins with this

two untitled poems

(1) friday's poem

on these nights

better go hungry

know exactly what misses

you leave the water on the table in its empty glass

wait and listen sound of

you could talk the constant the surround the hum

wonder does anyone?

feel it there a pulse that drives

yesterday there was lightning thunder

response yes exactly

only the cold air can understand

only the spring green tree blur can understand

to clarify a hot air balloon made of tissue paper set on fire

there is no voice for this

tune guitar the in-between

the waves will tell

so the whisper it’s taken so long to find it the secret so this is

leave lose in paper shuffle yet in pulp scrape over you can still discern

the travel of what’s left unsaid

(2) monday's poem

snow thinks of you
sky merges land
the quiet ly
falling fall
day where nothing matters
but white
whets appetite for


the cold is
silence that never before existed
the morning an answer

secret

please distract me

its true your words go directly

and i shouldnt

but do

want

if this the only conduit

i accept

speak general

careful unspecific dont for granted take

vicarious thru your words not meant for me

not meant

i close and your eyes simultaneous

ly river ly stars ly flow from to inadvertant ly

touch your something language with my body

syllable i could devour each

will subsist on nothing but word scent

on wind

notes from my response to hannah weiner's poems

hannah weiner’s little books/indians came along when i’ve been feeling frozen by the cold beauty of the perfect. writing like hannah’s seems closer to the bone, more real to me than the writing of someone like don mckay lately. a good friend suggested it’s all about timing and what we need at a particular moment. at this moment i am not inspired by beauty but by messes, holes and ambiguities. i don’t want a writer to fill in all the blanks for me, i want her to leave the space open, so i can breathe.

hannah addresses herself directly, makes colossal typos and spelling errors, changes apostrophes to esses, fucks around with subject verb agreement and linearity. nothing is sacred. within all that is a painful honesty. she makes up words, she references other writers, like ron padgett. she sticks in clichés, she messes with the order of ideas, and even splits words apart.

she began writing poems in her mid 30s, no reason why she waited until then, just twenty years went by. she went to the new york school and was bored to tears by the poetry of writers like kenneth koch. her most well known book was the clairvoyant journal. she saw words on people, on things, giant 8 foot words. in an interview with charles bernstein for penn sound, she said:

capital words give instructions
italics make comments
ordinary type – me just trying to get thru the day

more stuff from the interview and other sources:
are you ever embarrassed about the triviality of thought – cb?
i don’t have time to be embarrassed

i bought a typewriter; i had 3 choices ordinary words, italics and capital letters, that settled it

how can you not be avant garde if you’re the only person in the world who sees words.

cb says that “One of Hannah’s most enduring achievements as a writer was her unflinching, indeed often hilarious, inclusion of what, from a literary point of view, is often denigrated as trivial, awkward, embarrassing, silly, and, indeed, too minutely personal, even for the advocates of the personal in writing.” jacket 12
http://jacketmagazine.com/12/wein-bern.html


it’s not easy to go thru her writing. at times she loses me with all the stretching and playing around but i don’t mind that. it’s good to be lost and i know i can go thru her stuff again and notice different bits.

at the same time i’ve been going thru steven ross smith’s book flutterlongue-the book of games. not only does he play around with sound, but he also messes with form and linearity. in some interview i listened to on line, steve mccaffery said that when you take away cues for literal meaning, it forces your reader to look for other patterns of meaning, such as sound. i’m excited about this idea. i think it also extends to form. when you take away linear patterns, how does that affect how readers read your poems? folks like weiner and ross smith are opening up poetry for me, making me want to throw some sand out of the sandbox too.

[click on pic to enlarge poem]

space junk circus act

he a high wire artist who loves
distance between trapeze
and audience
you someone who holds fistfuls
of air

he glides all business
like across enthusiasm you as
net

here is tennis between ceiling
and floor
your words ricochet relay
bounce off silence

vertical’s a virtuous border
with enough gap
to keep him safe
not from falling
but from falling in

thru
one way
telescope he is the man
in moon
where he escapes gravity
and the unavoidable drop

you remember a juggler
incapable of throwing fire
without burning

she sells fruit and memories

brown eyes gold flecked reflected
seed
devoured inflection
possibility of taste
hands tender lift apple from basket
the old man who no longer hungers
wants a bite
squeezes ripe in palm
sweet plum scent of longing
clings like remembrance

ode to late night conversations

winter has emptied the pub
a snowplow scrapes away what remains

another scheme creative dream unfolds
i think of a song in italian
che so bello da morire
you’re so beautiful i might die
between hands i hold the need
to touch his fingers

i take his words lovingly inside
plate scraping substitutes
for a full meal
when the meal is done

this morning i wake late
the sound of his voice in my dreams
i am so hungry

notes from juliana spahr's response and a poem

in our last workshop, rob mclennan had us go to http://www.ubu.com/ubu/ (a great site for post avant stuff) and choose a collection to read and respond to by means of a poem. i chose juliana spahr's response (i've read and felt affected by spahr's writing already):

in her poems, spahr describes a series of scenarios where someone's truth is questioned: the torture of military prisoners, the self stalking of a woman with disassociative personality disorder, the abduction of people by aliens.

in her introduction, she discusses the difficulties of representing what's real and what's not through patterns, through art, through history. my poem was triggered by her use of abstract language, her method of including everyone by not being specific in naming, her occasional use of very complicated sentence structure, her simple language and the following excerpts:

"some co-opt this language and paint a series of meticulous and beautifully colored (sic)
monumental images of people imprisoned alone and at the edge of a
tedious despair."

"some [refigure [refuse] respond] call out for an end "

"rewritten the goal of the artist is to present reality in a true and concrete manner"

"another [generic human figure] says passionately we express ourselves in a lan-
guage of regulations. Symbols and numbers best convey our ideas."

"a voice stutters in the background of our waking mind"

"in the narrative she finds herself floating up and out of the bed"

"i can't say this happened to me and expect to be treated in the same way again"

"you keep shaking the secrecy tree
hopefully something drops out"

"as we try to look with eyes better than what we've had before"

"when terrible things happen they must be witnessed"

"how much of self can be removed and the self remain?"

and all of this VIII from page 79

"an attempt to speak to the human moment will occur
in these moments someone touches someone
someone claims to love someone
someone moves closer to someone in prelude to a proposition
someone waits outside for someone to come by
someone becomes unable to live his/her life and succumbs

this is information that might be left out of witness
yet it has a bearing that is all the more strong
it speaks to the safety of immunity that does not exist
to the various kinds of immunity that do exist
such as an emotional immunity to the world
a quarantine of engagement
a feeling of safety

which do you believe?"

untitled poem by me (amanda)

these pages are intentionally left blank

any attempt to find meaning

here is fruitless

abstract does not equal concrete does not produce sound does

not translate

into utterances decoded by ear

there is no evidence to suggest that saying no does not eliminate occurrence

or re o cur rence

to engage in hypothetics is incorrect

muscle memory is a myth

to obey / respect conspires against

solve this problem

where x is father

and y is mother

and z is child

x + y = z

x + z =

there is no answer

solve for why

winter

angels

2007 is the year of living red

[still counting]

[more]

chapbook (another)

published in Ottawa Arts Review, Volume 1, Issue 1
http://heat.artsuottawa.ca/main.html

love poems - more

love poems - three

Red...Variations

http://www.unlikelystories.org/earl0107.shtml

twenty nine and thirty

rain drudge sickness drudge
tv white noise nothing but
you forget how to dream
how to make plans
how to move
forward
fever and liquids
everything flushes out
leaves nothing behind
worry a dull refrain
and wire hum
background constant helpless
flutter you can do
dishes you can do
no cure no space for silence
every instant filled
water down windows vertical
prison bars
body you could be
are likely
next

twenty eighth

cold bus ride up somerset to bank
toques woollen mitts
the seniors have taken over
the grocery store
this is not the day to rush
seven varieties of apples
but no russets
more than enough chocolate
take a deep breath, close eyes
roll cart on
winter’s urge for beef
steaks burgers meatpies roasts
around childhood dining table
youve forgotten the recipe
for yorkshire handed down handed down
nanan’s treacle pudding and bakewell
tart the season custard and spirits
not liquid kind

pics to go with twenty four to twenty seven

twenty four to twenty seven

eastward sleeps an hours sunlight
the last time your feet won’t be sore
in three days
coasting in to central station
bland where train riders
arrive
in montreal
you wish for something
grand like arrival
plush red carpeted sound
like the champagne you keep cold
in an ice bag in your suitcase
with the broken wheel and the zines
a change of clothes
that afternoons wander thru the parc
la fontaine and on saints laurent
and dominique
portuguese chicken
the highway a lumberyard complete with totem pole
this is how you arrive
in outrement straight into the sun
a mirror against the wall
every angle refracts an ache
for something

you are distant here from you
and others thats a given
yield to traffic and jaywalk with the rest
rachel bakery and velorestaurant
coffee supposedly stronger than
this
an old couple having breakfast
he brings a large mug to the table
eggs benedict a days breakfast

the church basement
dogs running around
hip sayings on pins and slogans
you gawked at more than thirty
years ago
maybe you time traveled on the train
someone slips pyschodelia in your water
because this is a throwback
to something you never were part of
and all this time you thought
you were moving forward

old montreal champ de mars
stained glass rainbow sixties
a guy sings at the harp sign
off key
homeless in the tunnel covered
in white threadbare blankets and
garbage bags
down the street from chateau ramzay
where the history is preserved better

boutique hotels where old banks used
to be film crews where boutique
hotels used to be
theyre tearing down this old city
theres a good view of the port
with no ships waiting to dock

venetian slats slip light over you
sleep early sound of sitcoms blues
effective tonic more than gin
there are no cats on this street
just dogs and old men who hear
voices on mont-royal and shoe stores
and accents like bedding not language
you accessorize

twenty three

vacant unremembered
many things could have
happened
you woke up at some point
oh yes, there was laundry
and staying home
weatherered nothing
sometimes you want it simple
as washing, drying
the spin cycle
no leaks, no hanging
clothes outside for that fresh air
smell
just loonies and quarters
slipped in slots
a button pushed
the timer, a buzz
and folding

pictures that go with twenty two

twenty two

centennial public recess bell
first frost in snapshot sky
last winters fall thin sheet of snow on ice
on gloucester
laurier cardboard nest for the homeless
once you saw yourself there
severity of escape the last

fibreoptic for holes
to drop into
to float through connect
streets papered with reuters ho hum
christmas wreaths wrap wellington
how many shopping daze before
how many winds and snow storms before
this year ends on a sunday
eleventh hour is now
is to lie at the bottom of the deep end
will you ever dive again

twenty one

topiary christmas crescents
bus rides in slovakian, asian and italian
the number 3 is late again
you warn her
all the crumpled bungalos
and townhomes jigsawed together
a family a missing piece
turn a corner for the duplex and sprawling detached
the two car garage and landscape art
then again on merrivale
the big box stores
st. ritas students
raol wallenberg in the middle of this unremarkable
affects you most

twenty

a dark café and jazz in the late afternoon
rush hour traffic still an hour away
the whispered conversation of two
who are not lovers
his latest chapter and her
gossip
a winnipeg cowboys contribution
and too many oatmeal cookies

nineteenth

a tavern concrete down
crowds to listen
opera and a well celebrated
man sways his words
around the room
you must
at the end
absolutely stand
and applaud
this rapscallion out
shakespeares shakespeare

eighteenth

santa parade every year down bank
closes laurier elgin
last hard ground
and the cold and the tarmac already white
suburban folk unused
to walking block Lord Elgin
taxi stands
pretty soon snow will fly
wish i had a river
i could skate away
on

seventeenth

oratio sun scarcely a cloud hallelujah
restaurant unbelievably closed at lunch
this is what
happens in movies
dundonald park a spy’s hideaway
you bench it blue
leather jacket yellow beret
your soon to be lover across the street
is good with his hands
an afternoon of listening to the high winds
what matters most is those fingers
and their ability to curl slowly
inside

sixteenth

stoned on sinus pain two
cups irish breakfast
for indoors
and banished pigeons shelter
beneath balcony table disturb
a cold draft
writing to be done
stories just below
ground
apartment chant of
water drip and fridge
the flush above
high heels high heels high heels
possibilities of soup
blankets
crumbs in sheets
still more rain against bedroom window
to sleep

pics to go with fifteenth

fourteenth and fifteenth

escalator relief canes and motorized
scooters wide familiar
where are the 1800s
two languages instead of twenty
sandy hill quaker state garage
deli stores
moss coats trees
at cathcart and cathcart
dalhousie so many hands
out for money
last warm days occasional
golden
patio ceremonies plastic leaves
strung
perfume of woodsmoke
on clothes
turn corner on cumberland
so many art galleries hair studios
a woman is painting her nails
in the window
your friends
masochism tattooed on her belly
sideline acquaintance
doesnt meet
your eye
fallen petals dead maples
neon words
sussex lunch crowd bypass
your destination
the angel

ninth to thirteenth

ottawa to toronto
behind
quad seats where bureaucrat gamblers bicker
morning beer increases machismo
and toilet stink
speed of
aluminium siding
no longer field no longer fallow
napanee
bellville brockville kingston cobourg
in every small city a kfc
glints of water scarborough bluffs
nuclear green water
union barrel vault windows
and tennessee marble
distorted arrival
red arrow to city
1927 prince of wales alberta ticket
$71.20
katherine goviers fables
sooner or later every one lives
on brunswick avenue
future bakery cabbage rolls
what is it with this city
and cabbage
corner of jarvis and church
one spark of waiting
streetcar touch of wire
flame
ten pm pours concrete
distillery lager under lamplight
we dont have at home
rum raisin
polite commuters
the underground
film crews and furniture stores
on king

a fog to leave behind
and lake ontario chill
leaf then no leaf is like moving
backwards through time
eyes closed
a civilised railway vodka and orange
rocked to sleep red
barn interruption
wave goodbye to 401 traffic

home is an empty station
where no one waits
a small bus on the queensway
in the dark
warm rain on bronson with your suitcase
of books
negotiate election signs puddles
sense of while you were gone
something happened

unmade and rotten fruit welcome
home

eighth

view down queen
streetcars used to travel
constructions new tall buildings
shoot up mushroom like
block julianna sight lines
his apartment
sandalwood smoke an ovation guitar
ponytail and three ex wives
small bottles of glenfiditch on window sills
fog thick with ghosts of former lovers
the number sixteen a pothole distraction
and theyre gone

walkabout photos - for yesterday

seventh

past mary
down metal steps
st vincents orderlies and nurses start their shift
bottom of preston
back room arabic, english, french, spanish
espresso borgia with orange peel
complications of coffee in little italy
so near the hospital
surgery conversations and cancer
second day in a row you hear
the word to walk
out sadness

geese honk sole dows lake sound
motion november most shades of brown
bundles of leaves nested breath for later
in the pub men talk of war
your shelter is the table, this beer you drink
the small silences your body contains

sixth

james st. leaves in bags
sun blinds at somerset and bank
long shadows
james correa heaven has a bright blue sky
applies today
your body warm
how to get winter out of bones, joints
humour, one of the four-water in lungs
sylph invisible element in air
always red couches large garbage day
this is the day for joining pieces
a poet you never heard died friday
love against best evidence he said
sunsets pink tonight
for once you leave the light
off

fifth

warehoused toxic
snow settles over weeds
st. laurent wind tunnel
sludge
plexiglas
idling fumes
tin can buses saved for eastern
bingo hall evangelical
trucks end to end
outbound to 417 to montreal, to vermont
diners, donut shops
gas stations both sides at hudson
day rates and mattress for an hour

fourth

at seven am a woman rakes leaves
on somerset they’re cleaning brick
by the ruined duke and inevitable pigeons
funeral day at st patricks cathedral
celtic cross, a ditch below door
and tarnished copper steeple
a saturday morning ramble
splurge of magazines you carry home
with the tea and throat lozenges
an almanac remedy for november

third

morning birds flicker walls
truck brakes squeal at bottom of ashburnham hill
this is how you wake
smell of cold slow morning to move
must be a thousand coffee shops
the one you save for late afternoon
number three bus winds through new edinburgh
stucco pink fortress beside yellow brick
river every blue
stanley park ottawa style
a man with a chainsaw clears away old logs
once a city built on bytown lumber
one hundred metres from rideau hall
the sign says
canada and the world
rockliffe and a bad sewage system
parliamentary puppet strings gone wireless

second

all souls day blue and storm pending
window display a fashionable fall on ice
this is the hour for staying in place
pinot noir and soup the cello whispered
conversations clatter beneath
restaurant of white linen napkins
a cherry wood armoire is open
wine shines like stained glass
the cathedral of trench coats
clash with butternut squash
former record store
an ancient limestone building
the place for hitching horses
walls a haunted travelogue
itinerant canal workers bought whisky, their veg
from market stalls
ogilves department store when you arrived
women on buses wore fur and hudsons bay coats
modern voyageurs or coureurs de bois

today on the ninety five
boy with studded lip
seniors cheeks pink from a sparks street wind

struggle to listen
this walking spell an alchemy of wine
burgundy dragon
the snow falls finally

beginnings of november long poem

first

all saints day from ground up
contemplate mothers poisoned bone
pass a makeshift tombstone
plaid handymen prepare storm doors
trample last marigolds
a glebe walk away

old ottawa south ladies discuss october wind
turkey necks clenched
proper way to steep tea (is to brood)

paintings of fields easy curves imprisoned by lines and their brief
flowers cornered
you wonder about restless
men capture
your eyes
know well enough to look
away

ungathered in light are the ghosts
glass shattered stories twenty five down
glisten moments like these

her indian silk gifted by sister
matches café
music bells for no reason
blue haired kindred draws words over paper
what is it to yearn

here are too
many women urge to walk

chrysanthemum yellow at fairbourne and belmont
halloween webbing on riverdale hedges
every house a veranda
each veranda with wind chimes
stones smooth over terrace
exclusive hills

between echo drive
and canals other side
you are concrete
balcony spiderweb dream

more journey poems

(2) journey / along

shoulders soul contact between
estrange. commute their
distance. transform surface
of daily body
language into deep
structure. decipher intent of
bones.
read external. passengers
refuse. push thru anabolic outbound
crowd.

defy dimension after
fifth treated. silence a frost
mark on patio. black
maple leaves fate. to
shadows. self forms
unwrinkled sheets.
how a body moves
without.

(3) journey / down, through

as if thru water a body soundtracks
frequency. deflects artefact
of undersea words. propagate
wave if
tumbled thru the heart.

travel light. and water
better. than move.
thru shallow. molecules
measure nothing. echo
return

twenty four sensuous phrases for every day

skein of wool
the theory of plate tectonics
the refrigerator is humming
tea service
mastedon sweet mastedon
brought to you by the letter el
affricates and fricatives
the schwa knows better
blue roses
green glass goblins
do you have this in china silk
stone the ruddy prose
someone is heating icicles on the stove
smooth brown rabbit
beware the dust addict
spaghetti owes
the bullet is on time
clouds make the man
the adam’s apple of his eye
yellow serenade
lobster fruit or vegetable
small dogs wearing rain
the sound of ocean on cobblestones
day’s edge serrated

re: philly talks 7- second

re: philly talk 7

dream

collation daze

matryoshka

or those russian nesting dolls

fingers flying faster than brain
after sleep
of swimming
who remembers

one writer dreaming of another who dreams of another
re cur sive

mine features Stephen Brockwell
who doesn’t want gin

and then an airport
as so often happens
the blur into
out of

enter revolving door
forklift sound
turns on side

and you wonder
how will you
leave

the weatherman
says cold and rain
all day

the secret is timing

321

from here to tavernity

two from rasputins

andrea banjoes heartbreak, sings a montreal cold storm
masters capo mathematics

some of this applicable
only in winter

like you she is
comfortable riding
the bus

a pair of sneakers
strung above
street lights show
walking down bronson
or is it up?

this is august
you continue
snowflakes of her voice
melting you down
to midnight

&&&

wind blown over bottle
anticipates an arrival

rozalind presses a pedal
to loop memory
fluted

an island where unwashed people
take her in

not toronto, not family

a microphone
guitar and small room
far from grey hound bus pass
small suitcase of lyric travels
for sale, a string of breaking
hearts

yes she calls ottawa

notes towards

[wish i could put right spaces in for all my poems, but dunno how]

(1)

before knowledge
cry * storm * song

memrie’s drench

who is there to tell

who is there to listen

to wait out lightning

snatch back child’s hand
from wrong iron gate

fallen tiger
lily

(2)

rise over kitchen linoleum

stretch your hand out and

fly thru untouchable sky

thisiswhatyouwant

nothing solid beneath

(3)

never rub brass lamp

you know the genie

keep him bottle blue

ether on the skin

with one touch

evaporate