Poems

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

On Monsieur’s Departure

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,

I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,

I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,

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

Introduction to the Songs of Innocence

Piping down the valleys wild,

Piping songs of pleasant glee,

On a cloud I saw a child,

Equinox Ritual with Ravens & Pines

— so we said to the somewhat: Be born —

     & the shadow kept arriving in segments, 

    cold currents pushed minerals

won’t you celebrate with me

won’t you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

Cocteau Twins

I’ve heard the phrase between you

and me too many times to believe

it to be true, but between me and you

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

Experience

The lords of life, the lords of life, —

I saw them pass,

In their own guise,

Wind, Water, Stone

for Roger Caillois

Water hollows stone,

wind scatters water,

stone stops the wind.

Water, wind, stone.

Wind carves stone,

In Favour of Being Alive

    Twenty-four years ago
I tried to kill myself
but with my usual incompetence
did not manage to.

you aren’t going to like what i have to say

before i start i want to say you shouldn’t blame yourself

there’s no point in beating around the bush

there’s something we need to talk about

this is the most difficult thing i’ve ever had to tell anyone

En Route

The train has stopped for no apparent reason

In the wilds;

A frozen lake is level and fretted over

From Correspondences

Sometimes we are led through the doorway

by a child, sometimes

by a stranger, always a matter of grace changing

absence. displacement.

absence. displacement.

waiting. then comes rejection.

anger follows. shame makes

the beds

the shadows jostle between

the walls of the scarcely visited cities.

Through Time and Bitter Distance

Unknown to you, I walk the cheerless shore.

The cutting blast, the hurl of biting brine

May freeze, and still, and bind the waves at war,

Ere you will ever know, O! Heart of mine,

The Fish

wade

through black jade.

   Of the crow-blue mussel shells, one keeps

Sorting through Documents at Dawn

three crosses appear

on the tv screen

following a

sweep of my hair

that felt like your hand

maybe i dreamt it

but i so badly

Rondeau

Jenny kissed me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in;

Time, you thief, who love to get

Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

The Chimney Sweeper: A little black thing among the snow

A little black thing among the snow,

Crying “weep! ‘weep!” in notes of woe!

“Where are thy father and mother? say?”

In Exile I Draw the Tower Card

           Spruce, inadequate, and alien

            I stood at the side of the road

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”

Laurentian Shield

Hidden in wonder and snow, or sudden with summer,

This land stares at the sun in a huge silence

Endlessly repeating something we cannot…

Nocturne for a Moving Train

The trees I’ve glimpsed from the window

of a night train were

the saddest trees.

They seemed about to speak,

then—

Salmon Courage

Here at Woodlands, Moriah, 

these thirty-five years later, 

still I could smell her fear. 

monday thaw

On TV it looked like a high-speed photo of a milk drop

the dying leader of the Pana Wave laboratory cult smack in the

centre.

Acres of white cloth streamered his followers, who

River of Milk

bear with me     it wasn’t long ago I was brainless

lazily pulling fireflies into my teeth      chewing them

into pure light     so much of me then was nothing

Weed Killer

Our mother gave us a sack of weed killer

the size of a toddler, and told us

to spread it on the front lawn.

My sister and I lugged it there.

A light cloud of white powder

All About My Grandmother

Wheat daughter, prisoner of sneaky pigweed, mother

to the five corners of the world and your three hectares,

beak-nosed carpenter’s wife and the potter’s lover,

Badlands

Your father worked Drumheller while you ate and slept at home. 

He travelled the badlands, squatted below rocks, read books 

The Windhover

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-

dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

Of the rolling…

Unspeakable Acts in Cars

It’s the first day of summer and we’re so happy

To see the sun and the satchel of colours it schleps

All those dark kilometres. The sky is so blue

And the sea is blue and the small islands in the sea

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

Hindsight

Hindsight- never existed until August

3, 2015.     Someone had painted

over hindsight. But if you paint over

A Fixed Idea

What torture lurks within a single thought

When grown too constant, and however kind,

However welcome still, the weary mind

big ghosts

big ghosts contra

band my diction war

korea's north sees red as

america flags china's chopped limb

british crowns hong kong

cut for duplicity more capitalist than capitalist

What Is Poetry

(a twelve-tone poem)

trite yap show

rosy twit heap

What horror to awake at night

What horror to awake at night

and in the dimness see the light.

            …

from Quit Dying to Die

   When the doctors burrowed into my body, they unearthed a slew of tumours. Growths speckled across lungs and kidneys.