Poems

England in 1819

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;

Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow

Through public scorn, — mud from a muddy spring;

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,

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

After Li Po

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead

I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.

Wrk

this job hates me

             this job wouldn’t make me feel so shitty if it didn’t

i’m nothing but nice to this job

but when this job is done with me it always sneaks out while

Trust Fund Witches

Moon-Gazer

On moonlight night

when moon is bright

Beware, Beware—

Moon-Gazer man

with his throw-back head

and his open legs

gazing, gazing

up at the moon

Moon-Gazer man

Black Sheroes

My Black heroes don’t drop names like Fendi Gucci Prada

My Black sheroes rock afros like Angela Davis and Assata

But my sheroes are more than a trend and they’re bigger than a hairstyle

RAINBOW ROCK-CLIMBING CLUB

I’m a gecko on a wall 

that simulates a cliff 

with rainbow grips 

I’ll touch any colour 

that’ll have me 

midway is high enough 

wary of emotional 

Catastrophe That Nearly Brought Down a Plane

After late-night Li Bo,

on a plane to Houston, out of sheer intumescence

I begin unravelling a sickness bag—

starting with the wired throat,

then the pleated sides, then bottom.

Full Moon

My bands of silk and miniver

Momently grew heavier;

The black gauze was beggarly thin;

mcPemmican ^TM1

first you get the grease from canola buffalo

then you find mystery meat

you must package this in

Image-Nation 21 (territory

wandering to the other, wandering

the spiritual realities, skilled in all

ways of contending, he did not search

Money

Coin Exhibit, British Museum.

Their misshapenness strikes the table in tiny splashes,

like still-cooling splatters of silver. Stater and shekel,

You charm’d me not with that fair face

You charm’d me not with that fair face

Though it was all divine:

To be another’s is the grace,

Modestine

We have each tried to read to him, with no success, except for James, 

who read him all of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the

Cévennes

Glass Hands: A Eulogy on the Anniversary of the Pandemic

Hands pressed to glass

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Channel Firing

That night your great guns, unawares,

Shook all our coffins as we lay,

And broke the chancel window-squares,

The House on the Hill

They are all gone away,

The House is shut and still,

There is nothing more to say.

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;

Those that I fight I do not hate,

March on Washington, 1993

What struck me first was the sheer numbers, queers everywhere.

Battalions of sailors and infantry, proud in their uniforms.

Eventually, I made uneasy peace with this equal right.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

The Maldive Shark

About the Shark, phlegmatical one,

Pale sot of the Maldive sea,

The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,

Great Intimacy

It is like an exquisite spider web, this world, but I

don't get trapped.

I have ceased to tie the strings of one shoe to

another in the morning,

One Perfect Rose

A single flow’r he sent me, since we met.

All tenderly his messenger he chose;

Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet—

Nocturne

It turns out there wasn't a door, so she stood looking at the wall, and then

at the ground, and then again at the wall, and then about the sky. The sky

was doorless, which was comforting, especially at night, when she could

Color Piece

Visual world not exactly shaped –

Sense of smell, anticipation, senses that

are not exactly shaped —

Dark shadows casted —

Rat colors with faint hairly smells and pale

Bliss Point or What Can Best Be Achieved by Cheese

A.k.a.

        the other gold.

                 Now that's the stuff,

Poem of Failed Amends (Amor fati)

I’ve put the oats in a jar,

with yogourt and seeds,

left it in the fridge

overnight. The fruit on top

will thaw, dripping

sweetness

into the rest.

I want to remember

I’ve done this

The First Day

When I was five I was put on a bus

and sent to Catholic school

not unlike my mother who was five

when she was put on a train

and sent to residential school,

both feeling that gut feeling

The Potato Harvest

A high bare field, brown from the plough, and borne

Aslant from sunset; amber wastes of sky

Washing the ridge; a clamour…

Grief

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;

That only men incredulous of despair,

Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air

From The Titanic: The Iceberg

Calved from a glacier near Godhaven coast,

It left the fiord for the sea — a host

Of white flotillas gathering in its wake,

howlin at the moon

take the moon

nd take a star

when you don’t

know who you are

paint the picture in your hand

nd roll on home

take my fear

nd take the hunger

take my body

To Helen

Helen, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicéan barks of yore,

That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,

Garbage Box with Black Loons

My father's speech was slurred most of my childhood — but it's a rite

of passage for many Maritime Canadians

'cause I heard from a friend of a friend that linguists say our accent

No Coward Soul Is Mine

No coward soul is mine

No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere

I see Heaven’s glories shine

Northern Light

Stepping off the plane in Whitehorse

the last thing I expect to feel

is home

not quite alone

but close enough

here in this great black north.

As we drive away from the airport

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art —

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

How Prayer Works

Tucked away in our tiny bedroom so near each other

the edge of my prayer rug covered the edge of his, my

brother and I prayed. We were 18 and 11 maybe, or 19

and 12. He was back from college where he built his own