The Door Still Lets in Hallway

The last thing you did was slam the door so hard
it bounced back open
and I saw that splatter of blood
on the wall from the Friday murder—resembling
a Munch sky,
or the cod’s mouth as it lay in the bucket
gasping for ocean, unable to comprehend
the difference between one side of a split second and the other.

Early Morning Squardron 

Autumn morning mist on the Grand River 

Nixon

Nixon

What does it take to control
so many, a few, or one—
words tempered with dreams,
a plan, an idea, a side-road dalliance
in the daisies ideas are?

Perhaps a single word
at the right moment, as when
your dog is running for the street
and you yell, “Come!”,
knowing that it listening will avoid
fate for at least a minute

and no longer.

A Note Left Against Ibsen's Shoe

A Note Left Against Ibsen's Shoe

Ejlert, you're sooo late.
We sacrificed this scene without you
and have gone to the harbour.

The clouds are howling into the fiord—
the colour of dropping leaves—
don't kill yourself to meet us.

Remember the train ride
downhill through Aquavit increments
from Bergen to Oslo?

Ejlert, you're such a drunk
in a sober era—get high on words instead,
the way you did at University.

Don't meet us at love turned
to stone; we'll be inside
with the petrified man from Gomorrah.

— Hedda






The petrified man from Gomorrah

Shift Worker

I watch my father go. Later,
he returns

to leave again. Always at odd hours.
Perhaps between a bath and a story, or when morning clouds
settle three poles down the road (you know,

that land surrounding the castle and the dragon—that land
noone claims). I watch

my father in constant motion
between meals and the elsewhere which occurs
behind doors/downtown/across the street/at odd

angles to a drill press/tumbling through Sunday
in a shot glass/repairing the sofa/in the snow

of a Motorola black and white tv before
the test pattern mantra of tuned in.

I watch my father, but he never becomes.

Watching a Woman Read Poetry

You’re reading poetry. I can’t imagine you anywhere
but here. Sun sets and clutters the buildings with
music. Yes, colours are music and soft voices and emotions
flung across time’s tapestry like a comforter.
Cuddle up and digest the day turning into memory—
a midnight snack of arguing over cloud lions, peaches,
the direction between one point and the next—straight line,
although a lingering curve is sensuous. You’re reading
poetry. I can’t imagine anything beyond the sound of a drill,
the gasping compressor, how wood swells with changing
weather, dust distributed unevenly with each opening
of the loading dock doors. I know how grain inhales stain
as though it’s putting on a dress, a tux, a pair of socks.
You’re reading poetry in a voice I associate with nursery rooms,
library back corners, a tet-a-tet between two absolute
universes dancing at opposite ends of an opulent room—
a gentle pat on the back in the middle of a rush hour crowd
waiting for the subway—a smile from the woman standing
in the rain—the sound a memory makes when it returns. Forever.

War

the human spirit
lives, nomatter which fence side
it finds itself on

Making a Living out of Poetry

Haiku for the baptism,
sonnet for the wedding—drive-by shotgun words ringing (or)
tires on fresh asphalt delivering to a destination, for a price—
and passing countryside (a promise to revisit) sometime soon.

Bank account battles a rose. Clouds bend to pick up a penny.
Music’s supplied by accordions like reflections in windows
facing the news, guessing at words.

September and a Pen

Three glasses of wine into
the evening,
I tried to say everything in a bursting bubble
of words.

Of course, I was saying nothing, though
the reader thought it poetry.

Yes, there’s room there for interpretations;
that marmalade on toast in the mourning
for what we might have

Woman waiting after the rain, Oslo Harbour 

Oslo Subway arriving 

Neuswanstein in the alps 

Munich in the rain. 

Another One Bites the Rust

This distance between—and lawns, gardens, bungalows—
cars from the first bondo Studebaker to cruise control Corolla—mind tooled
to a metal press, pieces of iron forced into form—this product
of unfinished pieces, snippets of song and walks to corner stores,
down spur lines, this person of Saturday night hockey and haze—
this meat and potatoes political philosopher camping, at the cottage—
this worker, whose soul has been outsourced to Mexico and Taiwan—
it’s Thursday night at the mall and he finishes his Big Mac.

Rust spreads across his face, makes his joints grind as he walks
to the garbage bins with dinner’s waste, tosses them in and continues
down the mall’s south walk—past Sally’s, Tom The Tailor, Bethany’s,
Cinnamon Heaven—this figure fading into the undying twilight
that death by change emits long after the old world has been buried.