Thursday, December 29, 2011

I watch my world through a glass.

words begin to tumble
slow as the snowflakes
that land on my nose
so that I can blame my red complexion
on the cold.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

The shallow drowned lose less than we.

I.
sometimes the flames tickle
the soles of my feet – the follicles in my skin jump
like fish out of water to find the sun
because the calm dark deep called home
is a prison where I lay on the stretching table.

II.
grade teacher said to always capitalize “I”
because I’m special and worthy of respect.
but the more my Inner-demons stretch my lImbs
the less InclIned…
i am to believe her.

III.
try to breathe on the city docks –
the waves carry the sounds of screams
from home to my emancipated ears.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

That ship left and I wasn't on her...

(all of this)
I've thought of her ever since
(tears in the rain)
because that's how the brain works
(all of this)
and she probably thinks of me
(a breath in the wind)
like a breakfast cereal
(all of this)
that she never had
(peace in the protest)
but heard good things about

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Ja, das ist mein teil...

displayed her breasts like hanging game
fresh from the woods, arrows extracted,
but nobody could disagree that they'd be delicious
over a roaring grill with the right sauce

I misted her with my eyes
and, glazed, [du riechst so gut];
she smelled like fields of honey bees.
I'd wear her pelt with drooling face –
rabid with imagination's force-fact-fiction

circle like a vulture above a lost desert-tourist

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Yes! I am a long way from home.

Just click on the image to view Graffiti Kolkata 19, featuring myself, Aleathia Drehmer and others.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Hopeless but I don't know it...

Rain on concrete steps
fades to grey like your hair in the sun

if not for the temporary stain
of damp love, I've never be clean

you throw me about like a sapling
in a tropical storm; winds like hands caress and slap

waves broke on my back all summer
in that green-blue lake of your ebbing tide

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

She leaves a trail of honey...

You, with your Jennifer Aniston hair,
walk like skimmed milk into my coffee.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

I just seem to feel better when they're out of view...

Another poem has departed from this blog, after a minor adjustment.
Why?
Well, it's being included in a broadside. In India.
Yes. India.

Not exactly certain of the title of this broadside. But it's being guest edited by the wonderful Aleathia Drehmer (also of Full of Crow).
But, at the risk of error, this broadside will be titled Graffiti Kolkata 19.
Further interest can be taken here: http://www.graffitikolkata.com/home.htm

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Oh.

The most important thing, he said,
was the screen on his only window.
Because it's one thing to be hot,
it's another to be hot and bothered.

Monday, August 1, 2011

T'ain't no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones...




Contrasting messages in images
fade into the walls where love
actually means nothing despite its focus.

Poison frogs poison boldface
poison mushrooms poison symbols
and a dark cloud looms

over the western front, less dominant
than your alluring flower that
invites my wandering eyes to bed

and holds me there with illegible
written word visible through panted
breath and excited glare.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

I'm a sack of broken eggs...




They say I have strange eyes
and strange sound
like a deaf-blind mute that still
still
still
still
still
still
still
still
gives his senses a tickle.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Curled up on the floor where I belong...

She searches for holes
in the sore floor beneath her;
stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Let them brush your rock and roll hair...




The strawberries are in season
and the trees along the road sway
sway to the beat in the car
of hungover hearts leaving a good time
in a city that already feels like mold.

Monday, June 6, 2011

You'll be calling out my name when you need someone to blame...

GOD!
I wanted to tell you
when you said "used book store"
all about the ones I visited.
I wanted to tell you about the gems --
all the ones I own --
and tell you how fortune finds me.

DAMNIT!
You told me about your practice;
this strange view of the world from mountainous plains.
I looked second-hand through your Viewmaster
to find the world colourful, naked, and needy.
You've given an identity the need for an identity
and tears ocean-wide scar(s) stretch/fall on my back.

CHRIST!
I've always been blasphemous, but said no wrong
and you listened, replied, tongue-lashing my frontal lobe.
These pictures of you display dichotomy I love:
The unremarkable you, a snap-shot of still potential
and the remarkable you, commanding my forced subtlety.
When I learned your last name, I just hoped you hated Frank.

FUCK!
When you left last night, I was drunk.
The alcohol -- pardon the cliche -- had nothing to do with it.
And I can't help but feel I've lied to you
about who and what I am -- like Goodman pretending to be Candy.
Forgive me, m'lady, but if I could only be a knight
rather than dress as one to fool you.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Tied down to my bed, feet cold and eyes red.

The empty wine bottle's contours
feel like the pit of my stomach
when I dream I'm falling
from Mount Olympus.

I'll be your Hephaestus, baby,
if you'll just be a dear
and break my legs.





(Side note: Seven lines, imperfectly divided, are just unlucky.)

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Until the feeling's gone and the act is done...

I now have a poem forthcoming in Full of Crow. It will be in the upcoming Fall issue.

It's titled "The dogs shit just as much." There was an unedited version up on this blog, but you'll find that it's disappeared. Mostly because it was shameful before editing. But also because they retain the right to post it exclusively for a month and I'll likely forget to remove it by the time the issue is released.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Heart beating like a riot riot.

These women of poetic habit
plan to kill me.
They each sit upon thrones
of their own magnificence
and look upon themselves as subjects.
They eat raw metaphor
and spew simile simile
forth from their gaping maws.
And I, childlike, watch in wonder.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Tired and sick, but I don't want to be alone

Mornings in the basement of winter
always bring the cold soul to the skin.
A coffee too far -- blankets too warm.
Outstretched feet beg for sensation
but I have none to spare.
The tissue of last night's clearing lies balled in a mess,
scattered by two successive coughs.
Remind myself that this is not death --
This is life. And it sucks.

Friday, May 20, 2011

To have ambition was my ambition...

I travelled to Burlington this evening to see the finals for the BSP. There, I supported my good friend, Dan Murray, in his quest to make the Burlington Slam Team for the Canadian Spoken Word Festival.

Dan read well, good poems. He made the team as an alternate and I really hope he decides to go to Toronto and hopefully gets a chance to compete.



Really digging these slams, but if it's one thing this style of poetry needs, it's a badass Bukowski figure speaking in plain language and unafraid to show you his balls resting upon his heart. Maybe that figure will emerge someday soon...

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Looking California, but feeling Minnesota.

Like sushi with flakes of frost.
Or maybe like the bee that settles
then
in a while
stings.
As if to say
that my begging --
my words --
are not good enough
to stay nature's hand.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

This is life. Pay the man.

In the shower, things wash away. The skin I shed yesterday that just wouldn’t fall off is washed off. It makes me wonder how some people can shower at night. To start a day, I believe this ritual of renewal must take place. When thought of this way, it becomes clear why homeless men can’t get their shit together, why long road trips with no stops seem to be one block of time without an intermission, or why we feel the need to say, “Tomorrow’s a new day,” or even come up with the word ‘tomorrow.’
In the shower, my thoughts always seem to be accelerated. In ten minutes, in my own head, I can cover thousands of topics. It could be my recurring fantasy one moment and then I’ll leap over to my job, women, drunken nights, guitars I’d like to buy, what I need to do today, how I might spend some of my money, where that scab came from. Eventually, I need to get out of the shower if only to escape my own mind.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Like Herod

Lightly glowing letters and numbers
dull your brilliance

sometimes things are inconveniently placed
like signs – or the plastic in
your hands.

Sometimes I wonder what the world was like
before cell phones
because maybe I wasn’t living then
or maybe that’s what I was really doing
and now I’m lost in ringing, dinging
and pleasant vibrations through pockets.

I choose to live like a monk
without principle
and I want to lose these materials with which
we build life
because there must be another way
and I need a way out

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Gimme back my alcohol!

I read last night at Fine Grind.
It was Jade Alyssa's book launch, "A Book for Judas."
It's a good book.
Buy it.
Published by Grey Borders.
Congratulations to Jade on a fine compilation of poetry.


By the way, I'm sort of picking up the pieces.
I lay them on my coffee table and put on my glasses.
And I slowly, and suredly, connect the ones that fit.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Laying in bed, between giggles,
she said to me, "I slept with you
because of a poem you wrote."

After I let the Bukowski
feeling fade into the sheets -
after I let her and her
one-night-crazy out the door -
The only thing I could do

was smile.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

There are thousands of him in this world.
Complaining clones --
unable to catch a break.
They all hate to work;
they all have sons;
they're all divorced.
Beer consumed by the gallon and
bellies bursting with liver failure.
Garbage day is a weekly crisis and
none of their wrecks are gone.
They tell me I'm failing.
I'll be one of them some day.

I drink my coffee with the sun sets and
eat my lamb.
I never could chew it fast enough.
When my plate is empty, I'll lay in bed
with caffeinated insomnia and
plan like NASA.

There are thousands of him in this world.
They all fuck two donkeys and
tell me to pick out mine.

At midnight the walls look different and
my stomach wails, newborn.
My skin shakes like snake’s rattle;
my lungs fill with the fresh scent of clean sheets and
the dust of the past week’s slow death.

Sunday is the start of a new week
when all my grey cells go green.

Every dawn begins
with eggs and
coffee.
Two spoonfuls of sugar, two of milk.
Cream is too heavy and
if I can’t jump,
I won’t stumble past noon’s speed bump.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

I've come to hate this digital bullshit.
This fucking shitty white screen of failed attempts to read my mind.
It's not intimidating, it's annoying.

That said, I've taken to writing everything on a real sheet of paper with a real pen because everything I think becomes so much more REAL.

I understand the writer that uses a typewriter, and I guess that'd be satisfying, too, if it wasn't so much work.
Pens are cheap.
Paper is a fair price.
Thoughts are free to become valuable.

And this digital fucker-clust is not how anything is meant to be
because, plainly, I can't feel it.


Anything you see on here was written on a page first.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

He told me how the world works.
There's a circular system.
Everything's been dumbed down for me -
I'm digitally dulled and he asked,
"You don't know the time?"
I did not.
I am not born of an analog world.
He told me the secrets
and I learned responsibility for the first time.
Ever since my feet have chased hands
and I've watched my world slowly spin quickly out of control.
Sitting in a chair, watching television,
a fire at his four o'clock,
he told me how he made time work for him in the past.
But you can't teach time control
in analog terms for a digital world.