Sunlight breaks in through the blinds

I write this because I woke up thinking of my Amber necklace. Shaped as a heart, I put it somewhere months ago and I can't find it now. I thought of it this morning when I was waking up.

Sunlight breaks in through the blinds

Sunlight breaks in through the blinds
to show you where the clutter is:
haste, indecision, complacence, fear
are clumped in piles before you.
What's under there?
Can you even remember?

I think you remember.
It is the thought that makes you wistful
and the hope that makes you wish
someone to find your heart under all of that mess.

Once upon a time you put your heart in a special place.
In the place that no one would steal it and break it.
It was the last place anyone would look.
Then you filled up the space
with books and clothes
and everything else,
so no one would even bother looking.

Until one day many days later
you notice the sunlight breaking through the blinds.
you find yourself
wondering if your truest heart
is still under the clutter.

All you need is the time to sort it out
to take the road to being ready,
blow the dust off what was once
the 'you' that you had time for;
the 'you' that you hid.
because you were afraid someone might find it
and throw it away.

Each item in the pile was something that you put there
and you can put it somewhere else.

Because sunlight breaks in through the blinds
and life is too short to hide your heart away
from the love you have to share.

Be.leave

Some birds have trust enough to pick food from an open hippo's mouth...
drones die mating the queen...
a chameleon's tongue is as long as its body and head...
an octopus has three hearts...
half of a gecko's body can fall off and wiggle and a new tail will grow...

and I, this strange animal can get this whole set and a bonus knives for three easy payments of $24.99...

A 'why' without a knot

This one is about breaking promises to yourself, to friends (big and little ones)

When days last too long, life flings by
with maggots and leeches
you aim for everything
but your slingshot has no sling
and they are coming to suck your blood.

A promise is a y-knot
made on a rope to a bowline
keeping a sail in place,
but broken,
a promise is a 'why' without a knot
and without a knot
the vessel loses its certainty
in choppy waters.

So no more promises.
I won't promise anything,
but I am going to try to
hold the leech steady
and with good intentions,
loosen the frayed rope
tack and jibe as best I can
crisscrossing the wind.

In Summertime

Here's a warm thought for a cold winter... inspired by my visit to an farm/apiary in Rosedale many summers ago with T&K.

He is like
like a hundred buzzing bees on her skin,
never to sting.
She loves that
such dangers lie just under the surface.
He builds her up row by row,
makes her know that
she is the queen of the hive.
Nectar gathers in the crevices.
in hot slow burn
like sun melting like honeycomb
in summertime.

Honey is sweet on the soul
the soul craves the gentle sweet anticipation,
the amber liquid
that pours out so excruciatingly slow, even
in summertime.

The body craves something savory.
toughness turns tender
always so tender
how they massage each other
with ice cool beer on humid days.
Savory like kobe beef, meaty and marbled
born to live a golden life
among wheat and alfalfa.

They consume each other in hot heat
the two of them like thick juicy steaks
sizzlin'
in summertime.

Bugging Me

I believe in suns and stars far away,
constellations and timing of birth
to give us meaning an purpose.

but what if we are
like moths confused by lightbulbs

and flies crawling up mesh screens
feeling the wind and dreaming of heaven?
flies too busy fighting to get out
than to drink the peach juice left on the cutting board

Humans like to think they are doing more than
buzzing around in an enclose space.
We have opposable thumbs.
We can build things
to keep ourselves warm
open doors into the world,
and yet we build box after box
cut down trees, level the mountains
to put up boxes to live and work in,
then create roads just to ride in boxes,
we stuff fluffiness into a box, sleep on it, call it a bed,
dream fanciful dreams of thinking outside of the box
feeling the wind and dreaming of heaven.

Maybe the world isn't round.
Maybe the world is a box
Maybe the moon is just a hole out of an outhouse
and we're meant to stay inside of this dark stinky place
until we've finished all of our business.

Maybe the gods are peering at us
and we are not looking at stars
and we are only smiling at poked breathing holes
like lightning bugs stuck in a jars
lighting up to try to find someone to else to see us
lighting our little lights
hoping for someone to love.

Not rumpelstilskin but...

My name is both the bursting sound of gasoline being burned
and the sound of brakes squealing
a vroom followed by glass breaking
bending steel
bending lives to burden
the last colour you see before the red.
Proceed with caution
and stop when flashing

My name is like
a dollop of honey on the end of spoon
yellow that has died
lager with hops
electricity conducted
Seeing through me
all you see is tiny bubbles of air suspended.
The tree sap dripped so quickly
that insects could not escape in time.

Suddenly
after many centuries
I am polished and perched
in a glass case
peering at you, fossilized.

Ring in the new year

S&P tied the knot on Christmas day! This is inspired by how I know they love each other.


I feel your arms around me in a snug circle -
even when I am not with you.
When I think of your smile, I smile,
When you cry, I want to hold you tighter
When you laugh, the world is beautiful.
Your warm hands
make me both strong and weak.

When I am with with you,
a white bright full moon in my chest
it widens and kalidescopes
into a large colourful world.

Hearts melt to create a red molten core
bodies are valleys, canyons, and mountains
isthmus meets estuary,
lush flora and fauna bloom both wild and tame.
Imperfection becomes imperfect perfection.
Oceans break around us
and through us at the same time.

Dawn

Here's one I wrote for a close friend of mine...

That fuckin' cancer
I wish I could've jumped into your body
to kill each cell myself,
untie every knot of pain
so you could run, and run.
I'd nurture every hair back
from the chemo that poisoned it away.

I would've taken a long shift
in your body if I could
so you could've had a few
days pain free,
so that you could ride your horse
and play with Meghan, laugh with full breath,
walk in the sunset with Dave...
so that he could hold you tight
all night long under the moon.

I don't remember a time I didn't know you
and today, after they told me you were gone
My thoughts look everywhere for you,
I have no where to reach you
to talk to you
except in the eyes of your daughter
or in the crisp early mornings
when everything is silent with beauty.

The sky is caught between yesterday and today
and those of us who know you by heart
will recognize you there.
The heart has a long memory.

paper chain people world

If we were all made of paper
we'd read each other like the morning news
dress ourselves by folding 2 small tabs around our shoulders.

Love would be easy,
Lovemaking would be called enveloping
Engagements would require only paperclips,
and marraige ceremonies would use staples

If the world was made up of paper chain people
I think people would arrange themselves into castes:
lined, unlined, crepe, construction...
more or less the way they do now.

Arty types would maché themselves into interpretive art,
bratty kids would spitball themselves at teacher.
fashion models would be less than paper thin.
shy kids would wallpaper into wallflowers.

In wartime, corrugated carboard men would fight battles,
standing on top of rocks.
paper soldiers
holding scissors.
Artillery men would be armed carefully with matches
and camoflauged in wax
Medics would mend soldiers with sticks of glue.
Any rain shower would be a natural disaster.

How about if you and I were made of paper then?
Just for a few days.
We could write messages to each other,
draw hearts on our sleeves,
mail ourselves to one another
by expresspost.

We could visit paper moons,
fold ourselves up like airplanes,
go wherever the wind would take us,
fly around like
crazy autumn leaves up high into the bright blue sky

We could race each other like sailboats on the water
or origamily glide along the wetlands
as two paper wishes out of a thousand paper cranes
...avoiding the rain

Oh no, fat kid

Oh no, fat kid,
you've eaten your burger
and found a stray french fry
at the bottom of the takeout bag
soggy and shrivelled.

One brief smile
before you swallow it
and it's done.
From happy to sad,
sad it's over
sad you did it again
sad you lost control.

Whatchu feeding in there fat kid?
some demon in you
dug a dry black hole in your belly
and is using grease and sugar like crack cocaine

Oh fat kid you've got so many tells...
...the orange fingertips from the cheezies
...the chocolate around on your oily mouth
...the rotten teeth
...the button that needs undoing after a meal
...the dented lines in your waist when you take off your pants
...the flabby overlaps growing everywhere
...the heavy breathing after a flight of stairs.

Oh fat kid, fat kid,
you say you don't care about it
you say you're happy who you are
but I know you care when you remember;

mostly before sleep, you dream of a different life
far away from the plastic booth and turning chairs
a life of summer after a long winter
when you take of your winter clothes
and underneath the layers,
under the folds and fleshy skin
is the best of you fat kid...
...is the best of you kid.

Bedbug in an Evian bottle

OK, I take it back. It won't alway be poetry. Here is a postcard story.

Bedbug in an Evian bottle


Travellers, walking around this world for all sorts of reasons. For looking for something, an experience. For love. For being able to say that they made the trip. For "anywhere but here". They fly around in jet sealed aircrafts, boats, bus, and train.

Working at the youth hostel, it seemed like the same people over and over again. The Japanese girl who barely knew English, the nice looking Germans who had body odor, the Aussie who was on his 5th year of travel, and the perpetually lost English girl that makes you wonder how she found her way to the hostel when she was so clueless. I gave lots of change for the pay phones, and sold laundry detergent in zip lock bags. I folded a lot of sheets, and gave alot of directions to cheezy Vancouver bars.

Most travelers carry their passports in a waist pouch under their pants. When you ask for ID and they hand it to you, it is curved in the shape of their abdomen and the pages are warm. For Commonwealth countries, the passport contains a message from Her Majesty the Queen. A request to allow the bearer of it passes freely without let or hindrance.

The hostel staff became my family. "You can make out with hostellers, all you want, but don’t let them touch your privates!" said Jenn wryly. A catholic-raised, twenty-something girl with a wit a sharp as a tack. She liked to smoke cigarettes behind the front desk after the boss went home. Guys from all over the world used to hang out at the front desk when she worked. She was right not to put out; aussies and Brits snogged and shagged each other on the beach nightly and Chlamydia was rampant.

One time this Dutch guy came to the front desk in his dirty white boxers scratching his arms and legs, saying there were bugs biting him in his bed for the last 2 nights.

Mosquitoes we said.

He returned around midnight with messy bed hair, and smushed up tissue in his hand. It had a spot of blood in it, as if he had used to pop a zit. Inside was a small reddish-brown bug squished. Hoffman went to check out his bed with a flashlight and found a bug under the mattress in a crevice. Trapping it in an empty Evian bottle, he put it on the desk by the ghetto blaster that was perpetually playing Yo La Tengo.

I suspect that the bedbugs came from those English backpackers I had checked in a couple of nights before the Dutch guy. They had pink prince Charles ears, burnt at the tips. I’ll bet they traveled from Southeast Asia on their gap year, having read The Beach. I'm sure they had pictures of themselves squinting in the sun, their pale bodies and soft feet looking so unnatural on the beach without clothes on. They had bites all over them. But maybe I’m wrong. I know two things about English guys. They're likely to be the first to get bitten by something, and they're always the ones who get their things stolen. They seemed most likely to be the source of the bugs. They had red marks all over their white legs.

If they were, the source then those bugs had traveled from what the Brits said was a "Brilliant Thai guesthouse" in Chiang Mai. These bugs came all the way across the ocean to Vancouver. Pretty big adventure for a blood sucking insect. I don't know if it was looking to travel, but it sure got an experience. One that ended in it's demise.

The next day we called the exterminators and shut down the 14-bed dorm for 3 days...

That bug stayed alive for a long time it walking around for a way out, looking for blood. One day it finally died and someone threw the bottle away.

Why poetry and not prose?

Daily Poem

Here's a poetry blog. I'm by no means a great poet, but there's something about writing a poem that I really love. Perhaps it is a bit like how I grew up playing the guitar but love the ukulele.

Why poetry and not prose?

Because writing poetry is like the ginsu knife
cutting the can open sideways
then effortlessly slicing through the tomato.
The tomato in a BLT.

Prose is more like a masher
mashing fatty spam and potatoes
you love it but you eat too much of it
and start feeling sick.

A poem is a snack pack...
a postcard to tell you that I thought of you
a tealight that turns pitch black into dim
a gold speckle in the pan
a ladybug among the potato bugs

Poetry, poetry, poetry
Some people call it navel gazing
They don't understand that
I want to make a sketch
of the of the weathered windblown tree
because it stood more still to me
than the setting sun behind it.