Poem: Creating Collage

 

we sleep together,

for sure,

but mostly we share together,

cutting out our memories

from the bark of life’s tree

 

— like pieces of collage

laid out on the floor

before an exhibition

celebrating our anniversaries –

 

unhurriedly pasting them together

 

— refocusing colors and shapes

and forms –

 

until it is late again

and again

for sure

we sleep together

 

 

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Poem: Complaints Desk

 

She fumed

and fumed loud.

 

And as she

disabused me

of my place

in the human

race — given

my lineage

must be replete

with morons and

monkeys —

her otherwise neat

and clipped

peroration

was interlarded

with sailors’ slang

and potty talk,

and ended with

a red-faced

squalk.

 

“Fair dinkum, gal,”

I replied,

smiling the smile

that’ll usually

sink ’em.

Stonefaced,

nothing.  I sighed

and completed

the refund

that would send

her away.

 

Thank God,

I’m stoned

all day.

 

Poem: Beach At The End Of The World

 

The bus ride finished a mile from the shore

leaving a trek through the muddy clay

of rain-spattered early spring,

the swarming midges of late July,

or the leafy carpet of middle fall,

to the beach at the end of the world.

 

Sitting on a sea-driven log,

a carcass of the far northern woods,

my lover and I cleared our throats with lemonade,

quietly removed the stings of another week,

and populated our thoughts with waves of dreams

far removed from the drab of every day.

 

Poem: Five Definitive Movements

 

Childhood is

a flat green blade growing from the stem of a plant,

the absorbing and digesting of

a body of myths

 

Adolescence is

the property of becoming self-luminous

in the recognition of

fire and hunger and strong desire

 

Adulthood is

the acceptance of the heat and light caused by burning;

a steady flow that rises

as the tide, and ebbs

 

Wisdom is

known only to those of special comprehension,

something very white,

a leaf blown across the firmament

 

Death is

the beginning of all things, the nape

that links the body of one life to

the head of the next

 

Poem: Moving Experience

 

Should we trash your aunt’s portrait with nary a glance?

Take this excuse to throw it away?

Can we use the old closet as a place to deposit

The trumpet that no one can play?

 

There are sofas and chairs and loafers in pairs

unmatched and still to be packed;

barbecue sets smashed by unhappy pets,

and nine bottles of wine still unracked.

 

Several old tables with mouldering labels

sit forgotten on the back stoop;

while dozens of books lie hidden in nooks

and unwatered plants sadly droop.

 

Beautiful oak chests that used to serve guests

for overnight stays in the spring,

now jammed with hi-fi and cups and bonsai,

untidily tied up with string.

 

Boxes of china and photos of minor

children are packed in the car;

old wooden crates filled with pillows and plates

lie piled like produce bizarre.

 

 

There still are the spades, the shades and brocades,

the stove to unplug and wrap;

the children’s old cots, tights tied up in knots,

and plenty of crap to just scrap.

 

But we’ve lazed away weeks and now conscience tweaks

to put us in such terrible state.

Now that the day’s here, there’s too much to do, dear,

I just hope that the van will be late.

 

 

Poem: Martyr

 

He had long ago accepted the loss as permanent,

but that acceptation was merely a gloss, as yet skin deep,

 

not yet having bled into the very marrow of his being,

nor led him to that place of serenity.

 

His bitterness lay as deep as the roots of cedar in shale,

following tracks as distant and serpentine as the staged attacks

 

of true hackers working their miraculous juju through the internet

ether, and forever ending in a sad soiled grace.

 

And, though he could choose to confuse his loneliness with tragedy –

as if he were the sainted prophet of his own persecuted

 

exarchate in exile — it was but loneliness nonetheless,

and it hurt as bad as the arrows of martyrdom.

 

Poetry: Having

 

I have seen the best minds of my generation squander their extraordinary talents on the marketing of consumer goods and the maintenance of shareholder value.

I have seen them abandon all pretence of worker’s rights at the behest of foreign and domestic bankers, Friedmanites from Chicago and MIT.

I have seen them relegate the environment to the dustbin, a victim in the race for quarterly profits and analysts expectations.

I have seen them treat safety issues as public relations issues, and seen them lobby to lessen their liability.

They have shamed seniors into wearing diapers, taught children how to smoke, and taunted teens into starving themselves to death.

They have sold goods that have killed millions, children, pregnant women, families, clans, tribes and nations, here and around the world.

They have spiked the waters of the masses with a poison called greed.

They have swallowed our ethics and morals and spat them back in our faces as branded goods for which it is right and necessary that we pay to display their logos.

You have contributed to their victory with every discretionary purchase, every dollar saved or spent.

You have accepted their world view with every envious glance, every lottery ticket purchase, every time you have watched a TV program starring “celebrities” or giving away a million dollars.

You have bowed to the inevitable with each ring of the alarm clock, each punch of the work clock, each end-of-week celebration.

You have become your parents, your older sister, your Uncle Frank with his shiny pants, your parents once again.

I have purchased things I could have made myself.

I have allowed my city to become plastered with advertising slogans, from store signs to billboards to the names of buildings and arenas.

I have dressed my children in designer labels, given then Elmo dolls and Flintstone vitamins, and let them choose CocoPops and TV cartoons over papaya and reading for breakfast.

I have enough of everything I need, and yet forever I need more; and

We have accepted all this bullshit, washed it down with the liquid lies of the liberal’s election hoax.

We have time and again made the wrong choice; time and again we have meekly accepted that the choices we are offered are the only choices possible.

We have been active participants in our own kidnapping, paying the ransom over and over again.

We have failed ourselves — and the bastards have won.  At least for now.