two

there's reason my lover
why we're undercover
when they're misconceiving
the beauty of not

redeeming the ticket
of undeserved time (it's
a bit disappointing
how little we've got)

but Night has forgotten
the keys to the rotten
old door of the day on
her dresser back home

and while she's still mumbling
and searching and stumbling
we'll pull close the moment
until we're alone

Thanks

Spring we are grateful

for this
   the shattering of the cloud and
   the continued warmth of the sun
   who has found his incandescence
   in the winter's compact fluoresence
for this your
   first flowers and the first
   open hearts in joy
   and the beholding of brightness
   more red than red
   of the premature rose
for this the
   eyes of my countrymen
   and of my friends
   who see you and are so
   glad of sight that their
   throat cannot sing their joy

o thank you spring
a million years you've come but
thank you every time

Lessons

I heard my teachers say: "the worst will come to he
Who cannot tell the ancient forest for its trees."
But will the worst not rather come to pass
For those who cannot tell the tiger from the grass?

don't worry too much about the ufos

beauty's roommate-beside-manner
syncopates our evening stars
as we stand and revel darling
at the near and at the far

(though your song won't reach the heavens,
be comforted in this--
i'm easier to take in
and i'm easier to kiss)

edward i'm kicking you out of my house

i sing because i am alone. your voice
the interrupting rain upon the glass
has made me look into the out of noise
has made me stand. o let the morning pass
and let it get away i'd rather live
with clouds above our mouth and garish light
be helf accountable in older griefs
with stars as shining as the dark of night
please do not bring me water for my thoughts
and do not honeydew my lonely tongue
the moon is all my light within this cell
the heart is neer something that i sought
yourfaceyourknittedsweatersyour own wrongs
should always keep me up
                                           (and then he fell)

Hello, all! I feel I should probably say how much I still love HeartRape, and how much of a joy it is for me to have some regular poetry and fiction and half-naked word-covered ladies in my life. It's a reminder that the world is not set as we had once thought it, that we are the typesetters and the illuminators and the incunabulum all in one. I love you all.

Voyages en Europe

Keats was alone when he died
in a small room in Italy
in the small house where
we are staying.

Did he hear as I do the
forest of cobblestone and smoke
and live though the ink
froze in his pen?

If anything the window must have
broken from the canopy that spread
from the ceiling, pushing
the tiled flowers

out out out like
a slow tide or
a mountain or
breath

from one who knows it will come
so (like a bloom) it may as well come now

There Really Is No Other Theme

sit straight
uncross your arms
forget about your
penmanship
forget about your
broken heart

for this is
less serious
than you realize,
friend--

this is less of a
crucifixion more like the
scratching of
twig against leaf
in autumn

and the poem isn't
the blood on your hands
the poem is not the trace
the poem is holding the
leaf by its stem and
letting go

Winter comes around again

and I am left scribbling on the bus,
stuffing poems into cracks
between two walls
of academic sound.

What of the city keeps me pent
like water suspended before rain?
Is it the sky closed by the building-line,
the absence of marshwind through my heart--
the certitude of movement
that renders it boring and
unworthy of a thought?
But every snow piles upon me like
another failed downpour--
another reason to keep rewriting,
if only to warm up the clouds
for the flood.


It's been a rough time, lately. Too much to think about, future-wise, and too little time for scribblings. It'll get better, right? I hope, anyway.

Roughing It In The Bush

This is experimenting in voice. The Rumi and the Szymborska are spilling out, and I don't know how it works. Help!

This is the morning,

this is the hunter,

this is the forest snow.

Walking behind you, I wonder why

we are the only species

with the capacity to ignore.

Were we birds

on the wing of some migratory path,

there would at least be salutation.

But for now I breathe quietly

and try to match

the rhythm of your feet.

You are looking for something

beyond my understanding,

so I don't focus on 

following the path

so much as the bootprints.

I begin with myself

step before step

and only the crows note my passage.

If you look behind

and find me gone

when you arrive,

it is because I finished before you

and took to flight

for other hunts.

The Second Apple

So after First Adam left
and Eve went with him
they tried again

but this time they brought them
to the centre of the garden
and they showed them
the Tree of Knowledge
and said go for it
no seriously
we don't mind

and wouldn't you know it--
it worked
and no one left

So things are okay up there now
Second Eve does the garden and
Second Adam just walks everywhere
like he's forgotten to call some
long-forgotten relative
they're pretty happy
as far as these things go
though sometimes they dream about
the taste of apples or
the breath of another
on each other's cheek

but mostly it's sunsets in lawn chairs
by the garden on the hill
and the feeling of the company of a world
without neighbours    to yell at
or dogs   to let out
or dishes    to break

and it's pretty good
let me tell you so far
it's pretty good

I Know That You Are Home

I know that you are home
when I hear you from
beyond the staircase and
you break my concentration with
the open heart of song;

and I listen like a man
who has spoken all his life

but never heard before.

there is a girl

there is a girl and her dog
on the sidewalk

(there is always a girl
so the dog just seems
extraneous at this point
but we'll go with it for now)

she is the girl i thought of
when i lay half awake on Saturday morning
expecting her to walk through my door
not knowing she expected
the same of me

she is the girl of my day wasted
looking at dinosaur skeletons
in the Canadian Museum of Nature
hoping for a conversation
about early equines

the day that wasted but did not rot
did not bloat and bulge and burst
like what might be expected
of a dream, but
rather fell to the sidewalk

like the other thousand forgotten days
(that are sitting on piles
in impoverished countries
with small children climbing
looking over the mounds of wreckage looking in
the Hills and Mounds of Bad Days
for what they (as children
who cannot, or so we observe,
do Nothing) consider Days Well Passed)

but this one has returned
this one remains
and as she sits on the sidewalk
and i do not know if
she is there for me

but i can only assume
that the dog was there
to catch my attention

Cliff Jumps

Storm in tableau:
the waves a mountain falling
towad the face of the rocks,
lightning half off the ground--
the immobile sound of
one hand clapping.

wait and

one more step
to the edge of the cliff
with the spray half on your face--
the deafened air still ringing
from thunder's passing.

wait and

you are there with me here
at the edge between open and closed,
stricken and calm--
while below us erosion takes
the fastest ourse
and the sky above shows
no signs of ceasing and
no signs of going on.

it never fails

i am learning how to hunt tigers.

in good weather we venture out
into the jungle
and hang our bloodied shirts
from vines;

then we sit below them
in meditative states
and calmly call
for lions instead.

The Obvious

Oh, I have dreamed this streed a thousand ways--
yet some things must remain.
The inevitable sidewalks,
the constancy of that little cafe
by the hardware store,
the absence of any escaping cars
cement it in my mind
no matter the angle of its view,
the speed or meter of its recitation.

And then the obvious:
no matter the time or season
no matter the extrerior emotion
you are always there,
sitting cross-legged at the cafe table
with the disapproving look that tells me I am late
or else have not understood
the time of my coming.

ten years from now

I will have a vague recollection of
sitting on some rock
in the middle of the Rideau river
where my drunken kinsmen came at night
to disturb contingents of ducks
with cell phones and beer
(or so I was told by a French man
I kept meeting)

and I will remember
the tiny waterfall sloping the torrent
across the birds who waited
until they were fed

and then the ant that I saved from drowning
after brushing it from my leg

as I try to recall the year
whatever I was doing in Ottawa
and why i was trying to write poems
and I will sit up like Purdy on his dirty promontory
slouch back like crinkled paper and whisper
to hell with poetry then
to hell with poems

To Auden

I sit upon the doorstep
of this intermittent age:
an eye for every shimmering light,
a hand in every page;
and cannot help but notice
my own body wearing thin
with the entropy of ages
like a river on my skin.

I know I am eroding--
it's a fact that I can tell
like every kindergarten schoolchild
who has heard the churchs' knell:

it doesn't matter that there's heaven
or that Jesus never burned--
the death that he's been teaching
will undoubtably return.

We're chipping at a mountain
but we're been keeping all the stones
and putting them in pockets
so as to weigh down every bone:

if life is like an airwave
we cannot help but transmit,
then the body is its tower
and I cannot help but sit.

these lakes we come to

flow from earthly rivers
we cannot help but travel.
We sit by weekend fires
in our manufactured heart of hearts,
crowded by our drunken neighbours
finding their own peace.

Why ruin thse savage hearts
with intimation of a slower beat?
We are a warrior-people
who follow the erratic drum
of mathematical precision--
and so when Sunday passes
find ourselves driven to
the voluntary teeth
with shield abandoned
where we made our rest.

I Carry My Heart (with apologies to Edward)

i carry my heart
like a late-evening stroll
like residual flame
like a campfire torch

i carry my heart
like a trembling bird
like a sentence that came
when I'd run out of words

i carry my heart
far away from my head
unaware of the fact
that biology lays

i carry my heart
like it's waiting to fall
onto sidewalk or street
onto nothing at all

i carry my heart
to be shown to the eyes
that don't quite shy away
that don't quite say goodbye

(i carry my heart
in your heart)

The Halls Are Filled With The Sound Of Us

There are no speeches anymore:
there is no such thing
as a formal declaration of joy.

Here is the handshake broken
by laughter's hammer,
the procedure ripped--thrown
from the thunderous height
of the Speaker's chair
and the cheering of the public galleries
(they've never thrown roses before).

There is the Sargent-at-Arms, dismissed
to return with coffee
and a copy of the Republic
(for all the diry jokes).
There are the bells summoning
the assembling House
to speak of the beautiful children
of the Opposition;

and later,
when the lights are dimmed
and the movie put on,
the distribution of candy
among the multicolored sleeping bags.

Do comment! Also, people I have high-fived in Parliament so far:

• The hon. Peter Milliken, Speaker of the House of Commons
• Bill Young, Parliamentary librarian
• The hon. Michael Ignatieff
• The hon. Stéphane Dion
• The hon. Bob Rae
• The Right Honourable Jean Chrétien

Also--how is publication going? How does one get a copy? When and where are we officially doing this? Are we under Creative Commons? All questions to be answered.