Poems

Pride

A half-hour.

Thirty minutes.

One thousand eight hundred seconds.

They sat.

Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris

When Daniel Harris stepped out of his car

the policeman was waiting. Gun raised.

I use the past tense though this is irrelevant

in Daniel's language, which is sign.

susiya

Fire Watch

Hello, listen, I’m on a field phone, do not speak until I say “over.”

Repeat, don’t talk until I say “over.” Over. Do you understand,

The Man He Killed

“Had he and I but met

By some old ancient inn,

We should have sat us down to wet

A Fixed Idea

What torture lurks within a single thought

When grown too constant, and however kind,

However welcome still, the weary mind

Solitude

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

Weep, and you weep alone;

For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

Underworld Lit

XIV

Please print clearly and remember your name.

1) The river of fire, in ancient Greek thanatopography, feeds into the river of _____________.

In Praise of a Shadow

Source of echo

madman of prophecies

buffering nonsense

in absence of anything 

solid as a cloud

flung

from the womb

pale pallid asteroid

belt of nanny goat

Five Postcards from Jericho

Dear Regret, my leaning this morning, my leather foot, want of

…

more treaty lines

1790 → treaty 2, district of Hesse (step into wolf)

province of quebec

“We do herby certify that the following goods were delivered to the

several Nations”

Not Waving But Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought 

Portrait of Alice with Elvis

Queen and King, they rule side by side

in golden thrones above the clouds.

Her giggle and wide eyes remind him

Marshlands

A thin wet sky, that yellows at the rim,

And meets with sun-lost lip the marsh’s brim.

The pools low lying, dank with moss and mould,

A Stone Diary

At the beginning I noticed

the huge stones on my path

I knew instinctively

Hail

Hello from inside

the albatross

with a windproof lighter

Family Tree

    My imaginary brother speaks of our migration and history,
how time pulses like the green water
in the South Saskatchewan that sputters by our home,
success measured in how still he’d lie after wandering

When I consider how my light is spent

When I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one Talent which is death to hide

Song: To Celia

Come, my Celia, let us prove,

While we can, the sports of love;

Time will not be ours forever;

From the Catalogue of Cruelty

Once, I slapped my sister with the back of my hand.

We were so small, but I wanted to know

how it felt: my hand raised high across

the opposite shoulder, slicing down like a trapeze.

Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Plenty

The sky, lit up like a question or

an applause meter, is beautiful

like everything else today: the leaves

If —

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, 

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, 

Current

The sludge-slow flow of the visible current

opens a path we can’t continue, tugs

at what no hand can pull along.

It’s how even water loses memory,

travels a direction it cannot find,

Lake Michigan, Scene 3

The bodies are on the beach

And the bodies keep breaking

And the fight is over

But the bodies aren't dead

And the mayor keeps saying      I will bring back the bodies

Tractatus

The sun gave our shoulder blades ulu-shaped burns, and the sun gives nothing to our sort

I sleep now, and furiously

Clouds excreted shadows on the shoreline, and there were no clouds

Declaration of Intent

let the colonial borders be seen for the pretensions that they are

i hereby honour what the flow of water teaches us

the beauty of enough, the path of peace to be savoured

Holy Ghost

We had no paper

then, or we had

no pen, or no words. How

to say it. We had

no voice. No listeners.

Just deaf night

Danse Russe

If I when my wife is sleeping

and the baby and Kathleen

are sleeping

At the Centre

Today doves flew from my head

and my hair grew

the longing is gone from my body

Homeworld

this is the growing of things birthing of skin

and bone stem     and leaf     this is planet

earth beneath snowlight and desert sand

Between Strangers

Stranger, who can measure the distance between us?

Distance is the rumor of a never-before-seen sea.

Distance the width of a layer of dust.

Maybe we need only strike a match

Thoughtless Cruelty

There, Robert, you have kill’d that fly — ,

And should you thousand ages try

The life you’ve taken to supply,

Wow! You’ve Changed

You’ve changed.

You used to be so

and now you’re all

like, you’ve transformed

I don’t know how to describe

it’s like

you don’t like canasta anymore

you text IN ALL CAPS

Saskatchewan Indians Were Dancing

60s pulled us from starvation into government jobs

antiquated Indians in Saskatchewan danced for rain

Manitoba Indian doings were hidden for a jealous

i am graffiti

i am writing to tell you

that yes, indeed,

we have noticed

Filament

Always that spectral fragment. Filament of line cast back there.

Where open-mouthed fish rise to gulp down shiny lures.

I sang once in an auditorium to almost empty rows.

The Dictator’s Message

The Dictator’s Message

O poets

return,

we have swept

your homeland clean

of thorns and splinters

O writers

return,

to make a record of your works

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today