One night in Calgary, against that great white darkI leaned against a pillar that creaked, warilyAnd stared down the corridor of this old Gothic houseFraming, perfectly, the blue, cold streetsCold with the kind of cold that pulls your face tautAnd feathers the light. Makes her eyes look bluffing.Old Prairie days. Home at last.But is HomeContinue reading “Squalor Victoria; or, An Elegy for the Shipyards”
Category Archives: Poetry
Singapore
I met a man atop the tallest peak of a tiny Pacific IslandI stared into his pitiless eyes, and he sneered, resentfulBehind lenses that immerse him in reality, artificialAnd labels that brand him with the names and the facesOf a country he’s never desiredAs I laid wailing and failing and crying and dyingHe pressed aContinue reading “Singapore”
Passenger Seat Satellite
If one night, whilst I lie in my bed, the Lord told meThat all I ever had and more would disappearI would never make another movie, never write another wordNever beat on against the currents like liberty told me I wouldNor spread my wings and dive into the valley, abseiling like a birdI would neverContinue reading “Passenger Seat Satellite”
the dollhouse
i carried the dollhouse, safe on my shouldersbowed but steady, beckoned with becomingbeneath shooting stars and satellites, she sat in my seatspeaking such small safeties and the softest subtletiesand as we descended the hill and passed beneath the freewaystars scattered across the river, nightlights in the baysoft sodium like glass across the banks of theContinue reading “the dollhouse”
Armistice
Armistice, armistice, peace at lastHave you learned to love those leaves of glass?Or do you long for softer things, like liberty in the harbourThat call to stretch your arms farther, fartherDo you even have what it takes? To leave those sheets of snow?Leave your boys on a mountain’s edge, say ‘last one, time to go’OrContinue reading “Armistice”
America
I have a dream todayOf vast, immortal marble rising over the state of MassachusettsUpon which is mounted the golden rotunda of the grand State houseAnd outside that spectacle, on the streets that surroundA rebellion mounts against the oppressors and the tyrantsAnd the masses rise with their guns and their spiritsAnd stand before a world thatContinue reading “America”
What life feels like when it’s falling apart
At a certain point in life, man’s spirit finds itself overcome by a drive for adventure. It beckons him to look outward. To escape his hometown, to embrace life beyond the known world. Perhaps travelling is a means of satisfying that drive. Europe. Asia. Australia. Faraway lands. No, he’s done that. To hell with thisContinue reading “What life feels like when it’s falling apart”
Three Days in Oregon
Three years from home, got two years to go, but you’ll never see it the same way againYour Rockies are empty; your streets are pretending; palimpsests make up a nooseThree years from home, still better than most, but your compass stopped pointing you eastVersions of memories imprinted in reverie cry, ‘Why did you ever haveContinue reading “Three Days in Oregon”
British Columbia Highway One
Sarcastic beams of light reflected in the rearviewImposing intermittent vignettes on sprawling golden fieldsAnd bumpy asphalt (with no hard shoulder)Languidly stretched across the heart of the continentAnd a dark red car with no front plateIts view ever fading beneath the eastern horizoncrying ‘wait for me, I fell behind’ And under condominium lightslay the world inContinue reading “British Columbia Highway One”
Transatlantic; or Seattle When the Sound Kicks Out
We were little paper aeroplanes off across the seaLike fireworks on rooftop ledges when you were here with meWe’re reactionary pyrotechnics, we flutter violently in the wind But at transatlantic distances, we’re practised, permanent, perfect. Love meant mighty airliners bound for far-off destinationsCarmine-kissed promises whispered through telephone receiversAnd thirteen-point Helvetica on instant messenger screensOr hurriedContinue reading “Transatlantic; or Seattle When the Sound Kicks Out”
line of best fit 