You live underneath arguments
Between pages of old magazines in waiting rooms
The buzz of the lighting
Hospital halls that smell like coffee and hand sanitizer
IVs, tubes, sedatives, beeping
You are there the whole time
Beyond all the adjectives that describe love
I stand beneath your mother,
the SUN.
You
burn and boil
until I tan.
Why so much silent anger?
north and south
east and west
you release your particles.
Yet
I suffer, suffer, suffer
until I sprint away
from your poisonous effects.
You are a poem
The part I skip over in my novel
A mysterious blob of words
Why can’t you clearly state what you are trying to portray?
Instead you force me to guess your meaning
Yours is plight that unravels without shame
Or simple gobbled gook
What is your charm?
Where is your depth?
You make me feel vulnerable
How to respond without cliché?
You foster the capacious soul
and dismantle the world
It is much safer to hide behind my book and think inside my box
Sitting under a great elm
Looking out past the horizon
I watched,
Engrossed
As the sun slowly set behind the ocean.
The colours were brilliant;
A plethora of shades
Of red, and orange, and yellow.
As I sat, I began to think of you.
The way you laughed
The way you smiled
The way you held me when I was a small child.
I think about how you were present in every moment,
How you lived life to the fullest and taught me
To just be.
Then I start to think about how cruel the Fates were
When they stole you away.
Those cursed sisters.
If only they would allow me to see you
Even for a fleeting moment
Just to hear you laugh again
To see you smile again
To hold your hand in mine
One last time.
In my anger and pain, I called out to the sisters,
“Why?”
To which they replied
“Cruel fate.”
I left my love in your morning coffee
swirling between the undissolved grounds and cold milk.
There for the grace of God go I.
… But why?
You know me,
Because I love to talk,
And think,
And tell you about it,
And rethink,
And wonder,
And pause,
And continue,
Because there’s so much happening
All the time,
And there’s never enough time,
So why stop when I…
You have to stop.
A full stop.
Don’t go on.
Please.
That’s enough.
A breath isn’t enough.
But I give plenty,
So you’re never short of those
When you’re with me,
Because I believe in breathing,
So I never stop breathing,
Well never stop anything really
When there’s more to do
There’s more to say,
And that’s what I always say
When I’m saying things,
And I’m always doing that
You know…
I know.
I know it’s nice to stop.
You should try it.
Well, I don’t know about that
Because there’s a lot going on,
And I can’t miss it
When it’s all happening,
So maybe another time
When…
Just try it.
We can try together.
Well, ok.
L’appel du vide
And amour fou
and you.
Wolves waiting at the door
and coyote at the piano score
L’appel du vide
Amour fou
and you, too.
Too dark in the moonlight.
Two wrongs make a right.
I wake with arms draped across my chest
your heart tied tight around my neck,
But it’s your smile I remember best,
Frost’s woods were lovely, dark, and deep,
and I’ve got you between my sheets
L’appel du vide
L’appel du vide
Amour fou
with you.
Dark and Dusty
You cleaned up the mess
You tilled and toiled and planted the seeds
Creating new life where the old had abandoned
Established new hope in a space previously held by sadness and dispair
What was cracked and lifeless now does elate
You stepped back to enjoy your work
The shadow around you continued to envelope
With you gone should all this deflate?
Hey, do rats dream?
Whatever possessed him
To build his dream home under the hood
Of our 2012 Mustang?
Did he have dreams?
Of rising up
Out of his gutter life of
Rummaging, pillaging, scrounging
Vermin of 52 Avenue
What was he thinking when he heard
The click of the key,
The slam of the door
Sucking in his tiny breath
Ready to let his mottled fur fly
Living for the thrill
As he rode that 350 horse power
through the streets of Ladner
When he sat
Hunkered down under the hood
Adrenaline surging
In the Save-on-Foods parking lot
Did he know what he was in for again?
Addicted to the rush?
Is that what drew him back last night?
As his entrails exploded,
Dreaming in his Warfarin haze.
Steve McQueen of Ladner,
Writhing under the hood
A life misspent on cars
Ending in intravascular coagulation