​Inappropriate laughter spills from my mouth
Making tabu topics taste sweet on my tongue.
Tears of mirth flood my eyes
Washing away the sting of sorrows.
 
Like giggling schoolgirls, we banter away our pain.
Stripping it of its power,
We lay waste to it,
Striking at it with absurd guffaws and irreverent merriment.
 
Ours is a cackling camaraderie that roars at the farce of life
And satiates my soul.
 
For Ev
Sunday, February 6, 2022

​Once a month ‘neath the milky moon, full
A creature is summoned to answer blood’s pull
 
Snarling snout, silhouette lupine
Rippling and liquid, inhuman design
 
Thick hairy hide in black-glistening night
Merging with shadows like lovers meld light
 
Clamorous hunger and hill-hewing claw
When moon glows in glory–beware, beware all!
 
Fangs murderously tipp’d behind drool-dripping lips
Dare not a cut, not even a nip
 
Night orb ignites the cursed call within
Air-cleaving howl signals hunt to begin
 
Werewolf pursues now in pulse-pounding haste
Flee its fell fate, or next you lead the chase!

​I cannot see you through another man’s eyes
The image of you that is flipped
On his retina is as
Unknown to me as sunset is to sunrise.
 
I cannot know what attracts other men's aim
Makes them appear
As frequently as vowels on a printed page
And want to know your name.
 
Does the image that is flipped on their retina
See that your upper lip is asymmetrical
Or that your toe is purple and swollen, making you limp
Right now, because in the middle of the night
You mashed it against the leg of our coffee table.
If only you had turned on a light.
 
I know that their image of you
Does not include the time you threw
A $200 cheque down the garbage chute along
With the rest of our kitchen waste
And that you stood next to the garbage bin in the basement,
Apologizing, complaining of the smell,
As I stood inside combing through refuse and
Dodging other tenants’ garbage as it fell
From the chute like enemy mortars.
 
They want to know your name
Like that's all they need
To make a claim.
Yet
We name rivers even though
The water always changes
And erodes the path it courses over
And,
Even though we don't notice,
Nothing about them from day to day
Is ever the same.
 

Tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow morning/
different than today?

Always wondered why transformations never happen at night.

Change!

An instant of reckoning/
built on future promises
that rest on quick sand.

Tomorrow morning
the dirt will be cleared.
Smooth sailing from here
or not -

Tomorrow - mourning
How quickly we forget
the pain
that made us/
beg
for penance
the night before?

In the whispers
hides the seductress
whose call/ a siren’s call
beckons to that place
that makes you pray
for tomorrow morning.

Basking in the safety
of vices - well worn companions
on the path to survival
to here
negotiating the end
in order to begin again ....

Tomorrow fucking morning.

​it holds you together / it blues with winter / flushes in love
you stretch it at the lobe / low aching pain a pleasure
it stretches elsewhere / lightning white
you write on it / forever black words
lines that morph as you / expand and contract
it the world / it is your coat of armour
and your warm embrace

Silence sinking into me – filling me
​
“May all my speaking and idle talk be mantra”
Live as if no one is watching
Speak as if it is worship
 
Four elk crossing the road this morning
A bear in the clearing
 
2 pm of my third day here alone and I discover I don’t like myself this much
Embrace that which makes us uncomfortable
 
A dream last night that feels like a gift from Tommy
Tommy died ten years ago.

​“Why don’t you visit me?
It’s been weeks since you last came.”
It had only been two days,
time warps for the dying.
 
“I saw Tony! He’s down the hall.”
Tony’s been dead fifteen years
but I don’t say that. 

In the end, memory becomes slippery, slimy,
impossible to hold.
Like water or fine white sand
cupped in both hands.

The water streams to the floor
in a gushing cascade.

Like the ones we used to
pull over to the side of the highway to drink from.
Glacier runoff, you’d say. Nothing fresher. 
And we’d climb back into the Lincoln,
damp from the mist and refreshed.

The sand tangles with the wind,
off on a grand adventure.

Like the time we visited the Mayan Ruins
though I didn’t make it far.
The heat, even under my sunhat
zapped my fair sensibilities
like a static-charged fingertip.

I wonder if the sand you lost,
that flew away with the wind,
ended up in a tourist’s shoe
in Mexico somewhere.

Or if the water you lost
gushed from the side of a mountain
to quench the thirst of
intrepid road trippers--
 
the ones we once were.
 

​She slumped down into the couch
A slight smile on her lips
Slipped her shoes off
Tucking tender feet beneath.
Her shoes, new and smart
Lay forsaken in front of us
Like dying butterflies on a path.
A few fleeting agonizing minutes
And she was gone, gone on
Long past me.
 
She was made of more
Tender non-attachment
Than I, this tough old bird.
She left no personal effects
All given away
Even before her last breath.
 
After long minutes of
Baptising, over and over,
Her softly cooling
Face and hands
With my generous tears
They arrive to take away
Her body.
 
I slip on those shoes
She now has no need for
And walk away
Destroyed, grief-stricken.
 
Ten weeks later
Wearing her shoes
I take her along with me
On our longed for walkabout.
I stride the broken
And cobbled streets of Guatemala,
Weeping without cease.
 
While her shoes
Meant for gentler urban paths
Swiftly lose their loveliness.
I try to be gentle, tender with them
They are precious to me.
Yet I walk through
This foreign landscape
With all its mystery,
And beauty and brokenness
Weeping for that which
I can not bear,
Her now disheveled shoes
And my shattered heart.
 
These charming, delicate shoes
Still carrying her essence
Not suitable for this life
But carrying me forward,
A trail of tears
In my wake.