sometimes poetry
is the equivalent of
a Jack in the Box
you turn pages
and you turn pages
and it is delightful
there is nature
there is life
and there is the ponderance
upon all that is good
until

BANG!

one them jumps out
and smacks you in the head
and you love it
or you hate it
because of what it made you feel
how it made you want
how it made you want to
to kill the poet
and never read again

it’s these few moments
that validate the writer
and the writing
they stick with you
in ways the bland never will

You

You live in the back of my mind

Like a parasite

Gnawing away of what remains

Of who I was

And

Who i could’ve been

Once completely unknown

Now all consuming

Like am eclipse

That never ends

Switch has flipped

It does that by itself

Not sure why

Maybe

I know why

At a different level

But not at this one

I was six when it first went

Everything turned off

Lights out

Cold

How do you know you’re different
When you stand alone?
You don’t –
You exist in blissful ignorance
3, 4, 5 years old…
Until people come into your life
And they let you know
They stare, and they talk
And they chase you round the block
They grab you and they beat you
And you just don’t know why
But you know it’s something,
Something about you
It’s everything you forget
It’s too much you pouring into them
It’s never starting anything
It’s never finishing anything
Then doing everything it all at once
It’s staring out the window
At the boundless blue sky
Imagining that you can fly
While a teacher drones on and on
About what’s supposed to be important;

And they won’t dance with you
They leave you standing against the wall
Wondering at the point of it all

Until you realize with stunning clarity
The solution to this shit that is life –
Shed your skin, become the others
Talk like them and walk like them
Until you forget what it is to be you
And you wake up every day
With the burden to be new

A lways
D ifferent
H orribly
D ifferent

is it real?
the house?
the light that spills in
through the windows
that look out into the yard
we so deeply love?
are we real?
are you real?
how do i know anything?
(with respect to Descartes)
are those stars peering down on me
or is it me peering down upon myself?
i don’t know
i don’t know if i ever knew
and does it matter in the end
a wound watch will tick
tick, tick, tick, tick
until at last it winds down
it doesn’t wonder
why am i wound up?
and why do i tick so?
and why, oh why
am i?
it just ticks
and then it doesn’t.

for now
i am real
and
i am here
the scent of your hair
as i drift off to sleep
is the most real of real
these things,
they anchor me
in this harbour
until one day
i am set adrift
and am pulled out to sea
away and away and away
into the dark
and who knows what
but
for now
i am real

There is no such thing

As silence

Only

The calm before the storm;

And during

The maybe.

Might have been.

Could be.

Is.

conflagration

You will find

I told you so

While night holds no rest

As a time to prepare

While in the daylight hours

We climb to the tops

Of our hastily built

Lookout towers

To watch for the far off enemy

Who we do not know

Who we have not met

Who may be imagined

But may still attack yet

We must be ready

For all things real

For all things imagined…

We are enslaved to fear,

This is truth

Do not believe

Everything you see

Or everything you think

Do not believe

Everything you’re told

Or everything you know

Do not believe anything;

You know nothing

This is clear

It is what has been said to you

That you are blind

That you are insane

That the world

Is something other

Then what was presented

Just shut up

Keep your head down

And move forward…

Belief is over rated

My column in this week’s Winkler Morden Voice and Altona Rhineland Voice newspapers.

How does one fill

A bone dry well

Rain, my friend, rain

It will fill the reservoir

To overflowing

And you will have

Abundance

But

You will have to stand

The rain

You will have to survive

Dark skies and lightning

Wind and furious floods…

Perhaps and empty well

Is not so bad