SMELL THAT SMELL
He was red from head to toe
Gnarly red Red stubble on face
The door behind which he crouched pulsed
You knew something someone
lay in wait
His grin lascivious yellow teeth
He reeked of hell & frankincense
In the battle that ensued he kept coming
at you Plates flew in every direction
You bashed a few over his red head
And later in a dress of blue on the elevator
at Loblaws you spoke in tongues
Your lipstick MAC Diablo
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Winter 2014
NIHILISM NIHILISM NIHILISM
Tennessee Williams said: The sound of
the clock ticking on the wall is loss loss loss
Andrew Oswald economist at Warwick U
has been studying human happiness for 20 yrs.
He has concluded that all primates have mid-life
crises & get happier in old age *(except for Ted Nugent)
Rust Cohle the psycho cop on True Detective
thinks that it is an act of incomparable hubris
to put a soul into a human body Into this shredder
he says of human life
So what does your ticking clock say?
Mine today: apologize apologize apologize (already)
ted nugent ted nugent ted nugent
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Winter 2014
LOVE IS BLUE
In my summer haunts an icy pall
as I pick my way down a hill It feels
like days ago under hazy sky I walked
with slow defiance
Now The Great Upheaval tempts us
indoors where the A.G.O. cleverly?
leads us toward: war-sounds
Then to gift shop crammed with Art Deco
In the centre of the show there is a
jagged affair A love that has turned blue
Breath held through embrace No escape
Flowers will bloom where seed spills Soon
winter will be jettisoned indefinitely
Art patrons dash for the exits & limp out
onto streets It is -17
Somewhere in the distance as melancholy melts
a woman with a polka dot dress & cubist face
raises her head and screams
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Winter 2014 *Embracing Figures Blue Patina Otto Gutfreund 1913
THE LAST INNOCENT
Ruby is from Africa Congo
Everyone needs one friend
to remind them of the child
they once were Unless
someone is her brother A boy soldier by 8
I encounter her at Planet Car Wash
Ruby blurts out her story in sub-zero
un-glory on a mouldering February
day Strangers always do that I must
have catharsis about my eyes
Yesterday I read in T.O. Life:
I feel for all new Torontonians 300,000
without power in the ice storm 200,000
in the July flood Better go buy a flashlight
Harsh coming from wine soaked editor:
I invited my neighbours over for wine in the
storm We were so bored
Ruby said on the day they took her brother
they also took her mother & made her a
mattress slave A little ice A little water
Sub-zero weather for her a second innocence
Ruby never gets bored in Canada
Ruby I will save you tomorrow
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Winter 2014
LET MY PEOPLE GO
We are a desert people Never knew
if we’d make it out 40 days + 40 nights
Felt like 1000 (go know there were locusts)
There is a twist of irony to all we say
You just never know if you will survive the day
Ma I’m going to San Francisco tomorrow!
Man makes plans God laughs
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Winter 2014
NAVY DRESS BLUES
My new Comrags dress
is navy blue A replica
of that dress from Florence
The cover of Italian Vogue (1984)
on Patti Hansen Richards
White for the wedding that
went missing
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Winter 2014
ALL THE LEAVES ARE BROWN
Digging in the dirt Today so much
mud and water Dirt floats & Noah
might even have trouble reclaiming
his projections Dealing with his shit
This day is not for hope-squelched
citydwellers You must have grit to
get through it Like the man on the
corner waiting for the bus
A Bukowski dead-ringer Face scarred
& misshapen eyes sunken ships Almost
feral He will likely either: murder the bus
driver or jump into my car & beat some
sense into me?
For not renting the apartment in San Francisco 20 yrs.ago
When I was plump with possibility & organic
granola California has a way of getting under
the skin & in my 57th year I can still smell the
fear lessness encountered there
Big Sur Henry Miller long dead & Liz Smart’s
ghost still weeping by Grand Central Station
My thoughts perpetually creeping to Divisadero St.
let me in
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Winter 2014
ARE MEN OBSOLETE ?
Resentment scented flowers bitterness weed
Do you really want to wake up in a country
without men ? Why bash them so heartily then?
Locate yourself in the thickness of things If you
smile at the ape-man up there on the roof he will
smile back All thoughts of jumping you will vanish
He is youngish not un-handsome must have sisters
a mother somewhere ? Try this every day for a month
You will have him eating out of your hand instead of
drooling on the shingles
Confront brutes with words that rhyme
You will be the pied piper lady poet of your block
The man with the shovel out back will lay his coat on the
melting snow and encourage you to join him at the altar
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Winter 2014
DON’T REMAINDER ME
Stanley Kunitz said: Poetry is mythology
telling stories of the soul It’s adventures
in time & in history
The soul dives into a body builds a house for
an Ego Jettisons said Ego Soul now a fugitive
Free of the squalid human Until the next dive
Nothing useful rhymes with motherlode Our
adjectives cloying Our clichés grating But
dare hire a poet if your soul needs saving
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Winter 2014
GOOD NIGHT MARY ELLEN
Ralph Waite Pa on the Waltons died
on Tuesday He was 85 My father Lee
died 23 yrs. ago He was 68 I thought
they would live forever
It is said that Ralph died at mid-day in
Palm Springs Allan Mills his manager
was taken aback Ralph had been in good
health
Both Ralph & Lee had Paul Newman eyes
Handsome not entirely gentle men Silent
types with rivers of regret around the edges
The actress who played Erin Walton said:
He was like a real father to me Goodnight
Daddy I love you
A gentle family drama set in the Blue Ridge
Mountains through the Depression & WW II
Inextricably entwined with mine
Bleak suburban playground nouveau riche
& holocaust survivors Life on a lush ravine
Ralph was our spiritual father back in the 70’s
He was an ordained minister with a slow smile
that belied his battle with the bottle
When he said Good night Mary Ellen you could
almost taste your perfect future apron sensible shoes
family of 5 Those were simpler times
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Winter 2014 Good night Pa Goodnight John-boy Good night Blackie
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