Aspect

in fields of tobacco
I would ride the machine and prime leaves
dreaming about our nights—together—

call it love—or phemones singing the future fantastic—
though anyone else—

would you call it magic—this inability to explain
what seems so simple for a moment

I never imagined you to be smoke and mirrors—
but rather a tenant in a shared building—

you facing east and I facing west as we view
the sun on a horizon forever defining the same land—
even if we can only hold a conversation in north and south

Billy Blood and the Hijackers of Time

At the campfire, he played guitar and sang
until the last beer was drowned.

Against night’s blinds, cigarettes were fireflies
dancing languid cymbal-brush waves.

Wind-scattered cormorants slept as far as Hope Bay;
an owl cut the Milky Way in half.

‘Once upon a time,’ he thought—‘once upon a time in the spider’s
web of politics and guns; high tide, rogue moon—

once upon a time on dusty streets, in raucous café’s
where 60’s hobos waited for the last milk wagon

out of time, searched for Eden in wood-lots,
spaceships and permafrost—once upon a time.’

He walked the path to his car, placed the guitar in the trunk
and wrapped himself in the night’s sentences.

Paragraphs pooled against parking-lot lights. ‘The world is
an airport, each plane departing events.

I need a chair on which to sit, a book to read,
but every book is copyrighted by me.

Planes leave erratically,
ignore every schedule.’

Cruise Night Downtown One 

Cruise Night Downtown Two 

Cruise Night Downtown 3 

Monday Morning, Early Meeting

Monday Morning, Early Meeting

I’ll create a religion this evening
that prays

to how I feel about sunrise

and sidewalks snaking like dead trees
through the horizon’s eaves.

I’ll baptize the events of making bread
evangelize a button and loose thread

fluttering—a tattered flag
in the hallways of a Sunday event.

I’ll move into the temple of my thoughts
into the music of my talk

as the subway car spins through
the apple’s core.

I’ll hear no sounds and see no bodies
only visualize the destination

of my prayers.

Work Poems

The Infrastructure of a Cog

Elemental is the distance between building
A & B this year. Information packets flow—
hard copy business realities.

This is maintained by ‘Timmy’s’ coffee—
suspenders and cigarettes—an atmosphere of 50’s diner.

We could call it resource conservation,
or recycling. That the environmental by-product
is downward mobility coming to rest
at the feet of poverty—that’s immaterial—
information packets flow.

That Small Book Store Beside the Fish Market

This blink—page there, page gone—
and ideas falling off the earth’s mind—
this newspeak of old events—
don’t tell me society doesn’t need
the ridiculous point of view—don’t
tell me there shouldn’t be countries that
fly under the flag of misinterpreting
the shapes in clouds. An unbalanced ship
has never been able to navigate
from New York to Oslo, yet we are asked
to accept one playing-card construction
of words as enough.

Just don’t throw contradicting ideas around.

Parked for Jazz at the Waterloo Uptown Jazz Festival. 

Sunset over barn, Mennonite country.