oh canada

I will never be warm

Block-hard feet in black boots

Mittened hands clutching my Otterbox as if

It could deliver me from this

Snow

As if I could tweet myself away. 

Creeping down, soft,

Innocuous, looking like Christmas,

Like childhood, like a white blanket.

Like a landslide that looks like clouds in the distance.

Smothering trees,

Lawns, roads, cars, 

Steps, hats, upward gazing churches.

Smothering hope of spring

Hope of light, gasps for help.

Smothering.

I close my eyes, imagine

A beach, the crystal blue Dominican sea,

The sharp explosion of a beach grape on my tongue,

Sand and sunburn and coconut.

Imagine Balinese breezes, 

Loose cotton pants, big hats, 

Grass thatch.

But my feet are clay, frozen to this place and 

I hate snow. 

Southern Cross

It's the imperfections that make it art.
That moment in Southern Cross where Stills' voice cracks
breaks my heart wide open to the salt sea
every time
every time

The messy people, the odd ones, the ones who don't fit
The stripper feminists, the androgynous ones pining for princess treatment
The ones who bluster and cuss and make uncomfortable spaces more
uncomfortable

80 feet of waterline.

read riot, blast on, trample your fucking etiquette
this is the stuff of life

nicely making way.

Punks and Stephen Stills
Feminists and arrogant men
Black hearts and bleeding hearts

I have been around the world

but I haven't, I haven't, I have been safe, here,
in the invisible buffers of everyday life, contained.

I may not get to the Marquesas but I can
be the mad one, love the differences, embrace the unusual
I can fall out of your polite society, push out, punch my way out,
I can rave with the ravers, rant with the newfoundlanders,

Spirits are using me
These things make life bearable.

Storm riders

"Out here we is stoned, immaculate."

Jim Morrison carves an altar out of a grey Sunday and I
am flooded
by colour making my fingers itch, words
piling into stalagmites
pushing for release

Lizard king, slither out now, I
can't focus in the deluge. My
eyes ache for wool's soft tug, I crave
Pattern and rhyme, need to hear
A mosaic of line and shade.

Spattered and bruised and ragged,
Not immaculate,
Not stoned. I need a funnel, a filter, a
Priority system.

When this gladiator war is complete, I will lapse into
re reading cookbooks and knitting books
Lamenting my spare time.

Monday haze

I know to escape the labyrinth I must turn always to the right, but
A bright flash of red turns me left,
The smell of coffee, the crunch of gravel, a tumbling shapeless mass of green fuzz,
Light jazz, loud punk, taste of sugar-caramel, taste of garlic, taste of bitter melon,
Soft shag carpet, sharp rocky path, cliff over a vast ocean...
Where
is my
right turn again?

Bus Time

Bus Time.
Thoughts tick,
  Pen clicks,
    Time sticks.
Bus Time.

Bus time:
Phone out.
  Cell-shouter,
    Smelly pouter.
Bus time.

Bus time.
Co-eds preening,
  Disturbed keening,
    Cars careening.
Bus time.

Bus Time -
bell rings,
child clings,
drops things.
Bus time.

(It's odd, I know
It should be so, but
Poems help the anger go.)

time

Most unappreciated gift, spend
pound-foolishly, profligate
on Not To Be Missed TV, witty
word-swords crossed with imagined opponents,
puttering, tidying, erranding for all we are worth,
making ready for when there's
more time.

perfect bus teeth

Cancer  ads with perfect smiles, banks
Luring with colourful infographics and charts,
Superb, sophisticated and simple typography
Elegantly leering over the frowsy
Grocery-carting lower classes.
The masses with earflap hats, strapped-on toddlers,
Earbuds and ball caps, stolid faces,
Bundled in brown and black and gray.
Stoic under the smug wordplay.