The Way

of music.  I listened.

And footsteps found
themselves against the
edges of midnight and
the stardust of falling
snow.  Streetlight shredded
the sinews of vision.
The war disappeared,
the radio and TV spoke
from a memory.

And.  History is a coal
seam deep in the flesh
of the earth, the soul;
deep in the rain-speckled
sidewalk, the pattern.

There is no escape.
Fractals of violence become
the big picture, the
only answer, the only way
that the sun will set.

It was a Tobermory morning,
Little Tub walking and
the seagulls acrobatic above
the shackled boats,  people

searching for what they already
had.  I was jazz.  Everything
fell on the second moment.

And the second moment was
memory, chorus, a step back
to where I was before, to where
the sun rose out of the set,

reliving.  In music, time is
folded in upon itself, drums
and bass guitar and words
are history, the way I
remember the news —

stories from elsewhere until
you walk in those notes.

After Equinox

There are
those things which
will outlast me. 

It’s not a contest,
it’s just the way it is.

I’ll fail to remember
that future, though I’ll
fail to live it as well.

Old man, old paths,
evolving truths.

When the sun shines,
the illumination is
a shadow from
all my experiences.

When the sun sets,
the darkness is
stillness, quiet,

that point where
one loses all knowledge
of having left tracks.

Chance 1,000,000

This is a photo.  Remember
when and. The horizon.
Bent.  To accommodate
the sun.

Your words resonated
against.  The fabric of
chairs.  The perfume of
words.  Wafted.

I was a statue.  Erect.
hand drifting left.  Eyes
dragged right.  To
touch light.

And the traffic muttered.
Behind my back.
Again and.  Again night
wears a death mask.

Thus do we all keep each other company

With shared words which are
the lash marks of life.

Some flow under street
noise, errant and erratic,
Karst by their nature,
dissolving and devolving
whatever innocence might
yet cling to them. 

Some are snow in streetlight,
or slow tongue twisted
around an emotion, early
morning, when sleep is
an alternate universe into
which everything reappears.

Some are the first star and last,
before lightening and rain meld
into fears and doubt.

Some are almost completed
thoughts on a new
avenue of paper, or the
computer thoroughfare, as
though, as though they might
be shaped into and iterated.

These words appear:
sometimes out of mystery,
the way streams will from
the mouths of caves;
the way change will
suddenly stampede across
dry veldt; the way panic will
gurgle from the terrain
of our lives, consume
and sculpt us into strangers,
recognizable only when we
struggle to communicate.


(The title is a quote by Sharon Olds, commenting on her poem, "Suddenly", written about poet Ruth Stone.)

At The Corner

The tracks are cigarette wisps
in wind and trees are jumbled
leaves of a book left in rain. 
Smile. Coda. Smile and return
again to the sadness of
glistening streets reflecting
glissando and abrupt angels.
All memory and not new
terrain.  Smile again at
memory.  Note everything well.
There are no Operas when you
find your fingers dancing in
the wrong space and time.

There is only cacophony.

A Sliver

of cognisance between what
you know and what you have
seen.  Light particles
accelerating thorough the event.

And in the hallway, doors open
and close.  Lights flicker, then
vanish to appear again a drink
south, a conversation falling

from the table where events have
congealed.  This is a game of
pick-up-events, without disturbing,
without ruffling.  Without consequence.

In the aura of memory, equality
rules.  In the rule of today, events
are pollen in the wind, an irritant,
a photo of.  In the moment that

you spoke, the air cracked and
I will never know if everything
escaped or entered.  It’s just
that everything is different and

I am breathing a different air,
seeing a different light — the way
it clings to the sounds we make,
the way we try to communicate.