Spring

Even between the barren oaks you can smell it.
Even among the old oaks, the lifeless oaks covered in dust, in sawdust, exhaust –
even when you’re walking between barren oaks, you can smell it.

And on the busy streets –
the Monday morning streets, packed with cars all filled with drivers
clad in black and business cazh* –
filled with drivers driving Audis, or their Civics, or Ferraris,
city bitches, exhausting rich bitches dreading the week
and lacquered nails, listening to Damien Rice, TGIF is only 5 days away,
Bellinis with the colleagues after work, everyone sucks –
Even at the crowded streetlights packed with Civics filled with drivers
who don’t watch out for bikes –
you can smell it.

Even on the cobblestone streets –
the brick-laid streets that clatter your teeth and unhinge your feet
as your wheels rattle overtop –
On the cobblestone streets with the Subway on the side,
the Second Cup, the Starbucks and garbage cans –
the Subway Fresh Eats Foot Longs Five Dollaz
buy now buy buy BUY free gift with purchase
you can smell it.

And on the stairs up to your office –
the enormous flights, fluorescent lights, skin-tight jeans a poly-cotton blend,
the three enormous flights of stairs light-years removed from the elements,
the flights encased in minimum eight layers of cement
and stacks and shelves of books and Post-It notes and push pins and rubber cement,
entwined between all the Macbook Pros, the Macbook Airs, the iPads, wrapping around the Androids, the 32 GB Samsung Galaxies S7s (this poem will be irrelevant in 1 year), the self-serve book checkout stations in the library humming with neglect,
Even the stairwells are no relief from its intoxicating scent.
Even in the stairwells you can smell it.

*cazh – short for casual, as in business casual.

**photo from flickr.com thx to whoever took it ❤

November

On the first, she handed me her notebook
and laptop. I sat down in the living room
while the waves continued to break on the rocks
outside and the creek swelled a little higher,
wrapped myself in layer upon layer of blanket,
and began to edit. A comma here, a deleted word there,
these two fragments stitched together.
 
Her life opened before me, page upon page
upon page. She offered it to me, her life,
to read and to work with. At times, she sat
with me, and coloured, and answered my questions
and added more stories, more detail.
She gave me her days, her existence, and I met healing
through the breath upon breath of her story
weeping and whirling its way across the years.

dances

today i saw a river
it coursed around
caving-in cliffs
it moved
with a convicting power
and the movement
was beautiful

we are a river
i am a drop

today i saw a river
i gazed at its turning banks
was pulled in by the
sound of the gurgling water
and wished
for one moment
that it would all be still
that i could hold all the world
just as it was
for eternity

how unwise of me
to wish that i could stay still
when the beauty is in the movement

Upon finding that all of this is a big cosmic joke and the ending is just a John Cleese God walking across the stage rounding up applause

**I can’t claim full originality for this one — I think it’s inspired by the 1981 film Time Bandits

So this is the afterlife:
You see him enter and he doesn’t
Even notice you in the crowd
As he struts his stuff and grins
At the politicians and paparazzi
Shaking his hands and telling him,
“A fine job, good sir, mighty fine.
You really had them all worried for a while!”

Mechanical Edmonton

Here twilight blue skies ripple into
Chemical clouds a deep smoggy red
And underneath the pavement of the highways the
Spinning soils tumble into
The North Saskatchewan’s ice floes,
Chisel away its banks,
Inching it closer to all the fluorescent-lit
High-rises on the northern shore.

Mechanical motorized Edmonton rumbles
By, the No. 4 interior dimly lit
Against the falling of night that
Whines a B natural, one half step above
Nature’s normal hum of green and loam.
The lone passenger opens his vintage Fahrenheit 451
Book, the temperature burns
On the bus, he unzips himself against the
Heat, pulls the cord, then closes it, and puts it
Back into his satchel, his requested stop nearing.

He steps off, patent leather
Shoes crunch into the graying spring ice,
And feels the whirring electric wind of
Streetlights and sidewalks and speeding cars
Down roadways and rivers of melt that
Run down the ridges of time
And space, and the sky up above
A cacophony of peeking stars
And clouds and smog,

And hides, just a silhouette on his Android,
Clutching his satchel with his book all bundled up and
His parka zipped to his neck and his mittens on
Against the slow coming of spring
Inside the plexiglas bus stop with blue trim. Over
His head the twilight blue sky sits for a moment
And then slips away unnoticed into a deep
Deep black moonless night.

On the opposite horizon, moments before,
The sun sank down a delicate pink and orange,
Burning up the last pieces of daylight that smelled
Of motor exhaust and too many LED screens.
I stepped into a yellow streetlamp buzzing away
Patches of blue-gray night,
The first sweet whispers of spring rippled through my senses,
Replacing the throbbing in my head
With green and dampness, and my black boots
Splashed away brown and sooty snow

And beneath the bare and towering
Oak trees and an ever-darkening sky
I zipped down my jacket,
Removed my hood, let the
Resonance of the night breeze
Catch my crumpled hair.

Prophet

1.

Comfort my people,
Says the Lord.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.
Tell her that I have seen her tears,
And that I still know my plans for her.
Tell her that though she has been
Beaten down, that she has
Run away from me and
Cried my name in fear and longing,
That her dry bones shall yet be raised up.

2.

There is no comfort.
My feet wrap themselves fearfully,
Step by step, around the perimeter of possibility
And all the thousand blades of grass
That stand in between.
The evening sun beats down beyond my hiding places:
A forest of broken alders to protect me,
A grove of brambles to shield me.
For today, sweet blackberries and loneliness are enough
To keep my bones, my muscles moving.

3.

Comfort, comfort my people,
Says the Lord.
There is still healing for this broken
And worn-out body
While I yet remain in the land of the living.
There is still hope
While the possibility of love
Intermingles with the scent of fresh-cut hay
And the desperate sweetness of July corn.

4.

Comfort, comfort my people,
Says the Lord,
And do not let them be afraid.
See: this valley, too, is already being lifted
This rough place is being made into a plane.
It is being made plain,
And all your sorrows are scattering.
See, a new day is dawning,
And the hope of new life
Is raising its head again, is moving again
Over the tall, free-flowing grass.

First Fruits

Mid-July:
The first fruits of the sky
Drip down towards the earth,
A filmy gloss greening the surface
Of what we know.

All around,
The dust falls quiet.
Leaves curl together in prayer,
Waiting.
Above, the gray ceiling
Fills its lungs.

Mid-afternoon:
Between field and gravel path,
The soft mist of sky whispers
To the wilting and skeptical soil
Of resurrection.

Hope sneaks in like a fog
And new life,
A possibility the dogwood
Threw away months ago,
Moves, again,
Over the face of the land.

Gomorrah

In some nearby future, we turn into pillars of ash.
Behind us, slightly to the left of your vision, lies the salt.
Not a single gull is left to fly overhead while
The rising tides corrode us, sulfur eating our fingertips.
Are there any good ones left?
A good soul is hard to find.

Far away, next to the roar of the distant Pacific,
I have been speaking to the barren pines
About why they might save us.
I have been explaining mercy
To stars I can hardly see beneath the molten city.
I who can hardly forgive my innocent father.

The hope of forgiveness rises up,
A cross, a bronze snake among the ruins of desert:
Forgiveness that would cleanse every stain
Of our abusive ignorance.
Would it not?
I have pleaded for life, not even for myself,
But for the good ones.
Are there any good ones left?

What holy mystic spoke
About second chances bringing untold revelations:
Yeshua, how we trusted him.
And this is at least our seventh chance with
Still no salvation from the fumes we
Exhaled into the stumps of cedars.
Only salt.

Far away, in Lebanon
Where the trees used to grow,
Us few who have made it:
We can order champagne
And rest our feet in baths of purified water
In the middle of our own catastrophe.
Are there any good ones left?
The good ones are dying.

Gomorrah begins to weigh upon us,
Its putrid salt and sulfur stifle our vision.
So for today I’m drunk on Bud Light and fear.
Redemption: what an idea, a joke:
Our trust in its religion brought us down.
Are there any good ones left?
Our trust in its morality is eaten up
By vacant and nameless forests of ash.

The Stuff of Legends

This one goes out to all the single kids out there:
All the freshly single, always single
Single and looking, single and desperate,
Single and hotter than hell,
Single and not giving a flying fuck,
Single on Facebook, on Tinder, on Christian Mingle, single
At the bar, at the club, at all those weddings, still single
At every family reunion in Calgary with your aunts,
All the super single, single and rattled, single and shell-shocked
Heartbroken, war-torn, single and fucking depressed,
And all the single kids who aren’t sure if they’re actually still single,
Who like all the late-night texts but seem to still be single.
To the single and content, single and wondering why
People keep asking you if you’ve found someone yet
Because you know who you are, and you’re standing. right. here.
This one’s for you, you know, I been there too.
I been there, all of the above, and sometimes I thought,
Maybe I should change my situation, maybe I should
Act a little more flirty, bold, whatever, but other times I didn’t,
And those are the times I bother to celebrate.

This one’s for the girls who looked at boys, boys
Looked at boys, looked at girls,
Girls looked at girls, and everything in between,
And thought, well, maybe,
But thought, no fucking way, I can do
This
Way better on my own
And spent the next five years not settling
For any of the bullshit that paraded its way past their vision,
Or maybe it was five months, five days, hours,
Doesn’t matter, you did it,
You didn’t do it,
You kept yourself for yourself.
You defined yourself by yourself, not by some
Asshole with a ring and a mantra, or
Two tickets to the drive-in and seats that recline.
And that’s the stuff that we celebrate, that’s the stuff
Of legends.