When Jazz Is

Just that and not a note more;  the way 
       river herds water but doesn’t

        speak for the child on its shore, the bowed fishing 


       line cast into a string of sevenths,the hook which sinks deep 


       into grace, piano burning voice, 
metamorphosis, the moment when 


all sky disintegrates and the saxophone is finally landed.

American Idol

 Not that you didn’t win, but rather
the performance when you were who you are
and had the courage to be just that.

Judgement is a terrible moment, a photo
of an open mouth, deer eyes looking askew at
that distant, unattainable star, the street

down which you vanished irradiated
with a billion opinions lacking resolution.

It’s not that you didn’t perform,

it’s that when the song ended and the lights
failed, I saw myself in the mirror of you
and I wasn’t changed.

Forgetfulness

What I wanted to say disappeared
shortly after the thought, like sun falling
onto railway tracks, the train still distant
schedule and speculation, the rails not yet
quivering the way they do just
before the warning gates descend and stop
all traffic for however long it takes
the lumbering train to pass and move
one mile closer to its destination.

But arrival is only one page in a book,
the journey everything.  Each stop is sunlight
falling on events, a smile, a look
at the schedule of upcoming events.

Security, The Trainee

After the disingenuous bantering and always
as the ebb and flow of proximity cards proceeds
unabated we determine that this work is not
rocket science as though only rocket science matters
and we’re all trying to escape to Andromeda.
Computer work will never escape the keyboard
and cameras will only record the history to which
they’re pointed. And repetition is human. 
Though to fill the empty places of new skin,
he mentions the first time he discovered a corpse,
the road accident, where he helped pull four victims
from a probable death, the way street people swear
when disturbed from their fitful sleep in
whatever corner feels womb-like and warm.
But we’re not in Toronto we’re in a backwater
a Go Train journey away from a relevance
his two-year old son may never understand.

Life In A Disarranged Home

Bury the day’s remains in the folds of Ella’s voice, Satch’s brash.
Arrange morning’s events in the drawer of alleys, ill-lit,
skittish memories, row on row.

The idol of Christ in black and white maid’s costume crouches
by the window, back turned to the iron water ribbon,
where frail crafts negotiate like money lenders.

This sunset, I am motorcycle navigating curves
on gravel road.  Barbed-wire fences are crown.

A street sign is named desire, another vinegar.

And the sun breaking free is a leaked drop of blood.

And music paints the atmosphere, a cover enclosing words,
a force rolling away a stone to reveal.

Sunday Wine

 Perhaps if this eternal rain would
end and the lawns, which squish, dry and April become
August in a cacophony of lawn-mower movements
front yard to back and those grapes, which prospered
in two thousand and nine, had been
a blue jay’s evening snack, instead of our argument,
then the china plate your grandmother presented
to you on our wedding day would still sit on its favoured
shelf, instead of in pieces in the garbage,
where so many other things have found their way.  

April is here, poetry month and I'm trying to remove to cobwebs from my writing.  Hopefully, by the end of this month, I'll be able to write something that approaches poetry...H.

With A Camera I Hope To Purchase

I focus on the buck (forest 
twilight) inclined to a meager stream

snap         capture the moment.

The patio door of the house 
I hope to purchase creaks and opens.  

The woman I hope to meet 
offers me coffee and pastry

brushes her hand across 
my shoulder and solicits dreams.

Spooked        the buck vanishes.

If I’ve imagined dawn Degas

(and oh, the camera will lie
along with me)
dancing to Blues-Ette

and our relationship a warren
in the folds of concrete
draining down from this flat

in trumpet rills that fragment
into voices and a river of words
which congeal in cafés

where we congregate
in a crowd of two
over a cup of coffee or wine

Then I’ve imagined the bond
between your hand motioning
at a passing limousine

and the  old woman who tacks
these tables relentlessly
using a tongue we try to ignore

The View

My chair is twenty slow paces
from the kitchen,
which still leaks
the odour of micro-waved supper.
The journey to the hallway
requires seven steps.
Another six brings me to
the washroom door.
It's been a week since
I last walked the distance
to the entrance.
On my right, the open window
gives me a view of the gardens,
beyond which the parking lot
is almost empty.
Muffled Ravel wafts through
the window screen,
and like black flies,
feasts on my ears.
The book I've read
and I'm reading is cracked open,
a crustacean's carapace.
The stars are snow,
the moon a drift
to the window sill,
the curtains a night
which waits to be drawn.

Yellowknife

Having gone to Yellowknife, though not
above the tree line and having walked
in Yellowknife on streets bisecting
the now and then and having seen
the scraping of the earth’s carapace
against a sky with clouds, water with
boats and planes two-legged at exactly
the demarcation point between
earth and air, I wonder how anything
can exist there that is not a playing card
flipped down on a table piled with chips,
an open bottle of vodka, a primed rifle,
the promise of an unborn child, chill
northern lights, a hand reaching for
a hand, the winter cold that cauterizes
pain, a desire extended beyond the snow,
into the warmth of a ferocious love.