June 27, 2012

on saying something vital


this tongue of mine's
twisted through autumns and springs, 
laboured long to wring
out these words now rattling

between my teeth; i stall with
'is THIS the time to speak?' and

store my heart inside my cheeks, 
like a twitchy squirrel, to keep. 

June 25, 2012

trajectory of a broken poet

I salted my wounds, took
mystery from the moon and
spread it like a scab over
the heart but,
so doing, i
lost my art. 

June 23, 2012

from where i love


I love you from where
poetry oozes like caramel -
the loonie-locket or paper-pocket
of sweetness that nurtures me more 
than spinach or sprouts - from a place where
i'm much more than living it out. 

June 17, 2012

on losing a poem

How quickly it escapes!

One minute, like
magic, a word
prickles skin,
frizzles neck
fuzz; a thought
charges the heart
to beat from its fleshy casket,
like love,
to startle the appled
throat. Yes,
in that minute,
i AM in love!

but then it fades into the day.
To speak becomes -- oh, i dunno.
Life is neutral

but for the poems
parted and particled
riding the wind like dust
waiting to tickle my nose.

June 8, 2012

To us!

where is our substance?

when we chant the cat is not
le chat n'est pas
el gato no es,
om for the religiously apathetic
cloistered in wide open-to-the-heavens skulls,

what matters lacks reference.

what matters, lacking reference?
all speech becomes
an emphatic stutter: N - N - N!!!

Does it come to this, friends,
this double-sided coin, our god, revolving
on a pedestal, winking
like a sleepy eye watching coals,

and us wrenching something to call poetry
from the nothing we call all,
from the - the - the -

June 6, 2012

some days

these days i want to curl up and die are no poetic matter,
although once the major theme,

ideas

age and the springsweet voice
begins to cackle-whine
fungal words so

everything sounds the same.

---

these arms
that groped, stretched liver-spotted
lose their grip on the
poetry so

the mind just curls up and dies, these days, and, just

everything sounds the same.