untitled (June 3, 2008)

laying, face fragile,
in thought i am marginal to her story,
while everyting else pours into her, being

so, with grace
and upturned intentions, she is smiling
sideways, gravity marks time for us

as i, hold, still
and soft as death or a sidewalk
when life enters and exits without fanfare

until a warmth comes
closer. submersed and paralytic,
in vain do i sit beside her so

june 3, 2008

she writes in blank spaces

the walk was surreptitious and silent
and I remembered how it was made:
we had always swept past each other
going to work, or in play resting
intangible and ever volatile
we met looking sideways

once in walking we passed a year
our bigness dwarfed the whole street
i realized then that the way you move
gives title to moments of pleasure
i took your hand and pressed it to my days
marking the calendar on my wall in bald faces

on this Monday we were going to your place
it was a tea that had filled a week, promised
and poured with my cup handed
when i smiled you stopped, then
burning drops went over my hand caressing

i sentenced you to life for that transgression

Advent For Love

sitting sideways we
stare into each other
unblinking
like props looking
de la soul
and you preen my wrongdoing

yet i know this is a tarnished forever

imminent and glowing
how it should
be
with a respect
for the speech that lies
ever after

it's tough not to wonder at the size of it all

in like a beggar, out like a light

sighting and marking are both
passive joys and dedicated mysteries
for delighted reflection
locked inside to arrest
all inquiry and ability

it is a ghost for all seasons;
free these little remains
this sepulchral filter of words
for the next sorry person
to click and pass away

like i never even cared

So there is this thing that i like to call progress.

It sits and waits patiently while I encircle its reach,
fumbling lecherously in front and behind.
Unfurled and delectable she brings me to a fold and a eyelash:
I am made humble in this divine presence.
After every look is a bite, at the end of it all.

I look and cannot help myself.

Others see passage where I only see isolation and false depth,
probed to the extent of its necessity.
We put all our hopes and dreams into this preternatural evolutionary path,
wanting a future like the warm, friendly hug of a straightjacket.
We turn together and find pleasure in this, in it all and everything that it is not.
"Does the vulture believe in progress when it finds another carcass?"
-- once this had been asked, there was little comfort
with typical and daily tragedies.

Instead of revolution, I learned absolution to be necessary:
a way to forgive oneself for one's own transgressions,
rather than those of a vocal and sociable past.

We bring ourselves to the height of it all and lie fallow.

Spent, I waited for my income to rise again.
It became quite clear to me that dialog was impossible.
She never felt the same again.

A diner once taught me that after every individual, all of society is a mute point and simultaneously an in situ violation of the self. It took a positive regression for me to fully understand this.

frankenstein come into being thanks to a drunken party

i wanted to explain my position on politics to friends
they fought back

it's easy to get addicted to lifestyles
i wish my friends had never gotten so smart
because now they only wish to perform miracles

the night felt like fingers closing eyes by fingers
the uncontrolled fastness of it like a baby
you make it in them you can't stop seeing
them: i'm going into that one tonight, now that one.

this is society, this is fucking involvement.

subway bag

you came and
went
like the wind in
fall, who had?
lasting clear, yet always,
and your country will always be

a new David and Artaud
built
like bread and clothing
with mournings at
minimum wage remembered
like yesterday's kings

the bag™ is the most important thing

i don't think that

i don't think anything
i already know that i
don't trust, so there is no eye
that will always be a chore

all there is, is a lifting
simultaneous in rags do we drink it
removing from anything which is pure
and only itself joy
entombed in all that is seen
this tragedy, seemingly a betrayal
and a hope absurd, is all that is
and all that lifts itself into absolution

into ourselves we bring it
where all is memory
a ritual of prolonged extinction
where the only apostle is time
a wine which consumes,
intoxicates all senses

wasting trees

i sit and waste trees
because
even words can cut
and so i fall in as the not-me
so beautifully green
my speech fleeting as a guitar
sonorous cousin in sleep
passes like a discovery
making all glow in time
that leaning so, slow
asking like a waiting room
but like a good patient
it's all in my head
and so patiently, everything
wasted and reborn

Robin

last night i dreamt of my father:
his face so close it chimed like a bell

i wanted to reach out, but remembering the rules i looked
the other way, into the subtle folds of his sadness,
where grace held triumphantly its shameful cup
and the days were equally marked by too much work

through him i learned that time seeds like moonlight
casting shadow upon shadow-all, wrapped in one intensity
it is the glue of bandaids holding us together
and keeping us all locked tight

in my dream i saw a black cat try to cross a highway:
this was my father's childhood
a mouth entered and every second breathing
a language, caressed by the tongues of silence

my father's leg, paralysed by diabetes
that old stick-in-the-mud who said yes
too often like a baby, i wanted more "no"
he looks at me, passing my inheritance
while clutching it fiercely, like a beggar
i wanted so desperately for him to walk
so i could take him out into the park
and we could fly kites written

what poetry is this, where grammar is so inarticulate?

i woke up and circled my feet like wings beating.
the day was sunny,
so bright that twenty-six years open
in front of me like a moth

Feb 27 2004 - Dec 4 1977

the end of capitalism

in my shoe
is
a foot
moving
grasping
holes and tears
like any other foot

i see better shoes
mounting other people
and i know that
with kicking
it will all end in a riot

sixty days

sixty days
and sixty ways
resplendent
across from me it sits
artificial marking
a moment that should
it should be
a certain way with memories
of the way it used to
be so many times sixty
days try to catch themselves
without understanding:
the infinite joy of running

sitting with a subject

this most beautiful thing
see that it sits
and by an upturn,
or a down maybe
mostly a sideways
and a red with soft plastic
and how it is not there
except in a fold, a smell
or a contemplation, it
thinking of you making and unmaking,
which should really be everything
if you think about it

the same is,
and the only thing that changes
is the time that you take to look

yet another wasted day in dundas ontario

softly i see
the horizon
the way from here to there
it paints like a landscape
pushing me back (mom told me not to stare)
and takes a while to grab you,
but does not play in time
no different from the table i used to write
like graffiti, a cloud, or an orgasm
i want to die in public
words are a massacre, one substituted for another
while life sits softly and looks beyond itself

time

time sits like a peculiar thing
as though speaking was both
crime and victim
and silence its persuasion

only endings say nothing
while raising mountains and meaning everything
leaves falling sideways counted
makes the day, so beautiful here outside
if outside is more possible than standing
it calms like a fury
while supposing rain like drops of sunshine
ending on my thigh, like a morning

Dundas, with Sobe's Orange Carrot

try
not being there
it is silent
and like a sacred word
it is not
and cannot be

a place in the country

look at the way the sun grabs and holds a side
the building now made complete
with a bird in play, maybe
and its last time here for a while

trees hide the light and it's weird how they don't
speaking gradually "that everything already is"
and time for me/building/bird is a thing of intensities
and a watching that changes,
making poetry of all that is no more

this ghost that we haunt,
infesting every moment with time is
a scratching, like a pearl to an oyster
this is the defence which is beautiful and necessary

and so everyone jogs together past the building and the tree
forgetting the light as they forget themselves in perpetual song

Dundas

poems once purged the ghettos of old europe

The Bitch

this poem is not correct
no, wrong, right?
this poem will never speak sideways
which opens giving birth
this poem never fucks spits curses
it has never had a glass of water
this poem is not a way in
for outside is always sunny

we all learn best at play

this poem is not an architect
piled to the ceilings
this poem is not a banana
for it tastes bitter
this poem will not sit outside
waiting to play tag
this poem will not be quiet
loud soft sexy it stings

and breathes like i do

this poem is not my Self or Anyone
for words are not birthdays
this poem is not a way out
looking for meaning
this poem is not words or sex or violence
all i have is time to spare
this poem will never arrive
late early never always

it came before i did

untitled (...the clouds above me don't laugh)

...the clouds above me don't laugh
even though i tell them my truths
instead i am judged
simply by stopping to stare

the violence of pornography

last night onscreen
there was a girl
and only part of a man

she was gasping, grasping
looking for the air
which he took away for himself

she died seven times
while asking for no memory just video
he pulled back and sought her always

her eyes closed, ice like tears
slowly on her cheek suddenly
she couldn't see and never would again

i came in silence and reloaded