Unstable Life

Life is unstable

Like some theoretical particle

Unobservable, changed if looked at

Constant in its inconstancy

Life is unstable

Like some war zone

Destroying in seconds what took years to build

Sending families fleeing into the night

Life is unstable

Like that first flicker of love

That explodes into red tinged nights

Or winks out some cold blue morning

Life is unstable

Like a city toppled by shaking earth

Washing homes and lives away in a cold flood

Reducing great halls to timbers

Life is unstable

Like life itself

Bubbling up from nothing

To take that first step from ocean to land

Christmas Day Cat

In frozen sunshine

I carried flowers to the lake

Where I met an orange feline

Who cried and mewed

And put his paw

On my scuffed leather shoe

I heard his pitiful need

Saw his scarred stray face

But had nothing to feed

I drove up the lake road

To a brimming store

Hurried back with a load

Between my shoes the cat ate ham

As I sat on a bench

And thought how lucky I am

That I have when he has not

And at Christmas time

I could share what I got

Christ Like

That white Toronto Christmas

I dined with my rich aunt

Who gave me fancy bourbon chocolates

To rich for me to eat

As I trudged to the subway after

I met a man sleeping in the street

Who begged me for a loon or a toon

I gave him some coins

Then turned again and said

You want these fancy bourbon chocolates?

I got them from my aunt

Top class fancy things

You can have them if you want

He took them and ate

I don’t feel close

To Christ as saviour

Or as son of god

But sometimes I feel

Close to that carpenter

Whose only wish was to heal

What was wrong with the world

Fictional Fathers

Son

I built this all for you

This star of death

This empire too

I’ve paid in blood

Lost half my hide

So we could rule side by side

Son

Father left me all this

Enemies and racist dwarves

Our land of darkness

And when I am gone

I pass on everything

Making you the hermit king

Winter's WIsh

I hope no one's burning in hell
I don't think it serves anybody right
Just wishing we could all get along well
And stop this useless fight

On Misogyny

Women rise up

When they splash acid in your face

Because you refused their advances

When they chop off your fingers

For going to school

When they beat you with sticks

For letting your hair down

When they whip you

For driving a car

When their laws don’t protect you

Against any of these

Rise up

Do not lay down

Do not let them lay you down

Men rise up

When your brother throws acid at women

Disown him

When your uncle takes away her writing

Turn him out

When your son beats her with a stick

Beat him with a stick

When your father uses a whip on her naked back

Snatch it from his hands and whip his face bloody

When your laws are broken and let her suffer

Mend them as you would a fence or the net you need to live

Men rise up

Women gave you birth

Do not let your brothers give her death

When The Shine Comes Off

Birthday cake waits in the fridge frosted

Downy flakes turn greasy where the wipers crossed

You go first, I bring the bags

Of useless things and colorless rags

Life started the week in this room

This is where life ends it

When the shine comes off it

You’ll never look at it the same again

Love deepens from a chain to a ring

When you give all that’s all you lose

Tired doctor from faraway lands

Fingerprints on eyebrows from his bloodied hands

I lead you away clutching your purse

Containing a jewel greater than this world’s worth

This movie started in color

Now the only one left is red

When the shine comes off it

You’ll never see it the same again

Love hardens from a pearl to a ruby

When you give all that’s all you lose

We roll out to the ocean

Where the grey waves crash and run

Leave mother’s car cradled into a snowdrift

You lead me to the end of the cliff

Don’t need hats or coats

When inside is colder than out

When the shine comes off it

You’ll never see it the same again

Love softens from colors to grey

When you give all that’s all you lose

24 hours later at my family’s place

No one knows sees anything behind the smile on your face

It’s none of their business anyways

This family of two is where it will stay

The greatest gift we have is each other

We’ll keep giving until the end

Haiku Haiku

Perfect poetry

When inspiration is low

Or there is no time

Veiled Haiku

Wrap your face in black
Windows of the soul enlarged
Humanity shrunk

Ode to Marshall MacLuhan

Literary agnost from the empty plains of Winnipeg

Charged by criticism at Cambridge

To take the husk of English departments

Give birth to the new Muses

Media Studies

Cultural studies

Communication studies

Global studies

Married to your mechanical bride

Shine a light bulb on hot and cold running media

The genius scouts shone their spotlight on you

Your exile was natural

For years you wandered

Reduced to a soundbite on medias and messages

Casual viewin' head buried in the sand

Martyr and messiah of this critical age

Now you come into my classroom

Of kids whose heads are filled

With kanjied propaganda and Hello Kitty brainwashing

Open their lids slowly to the signs around them

Seeing for the first time messages

In TV and radio

In chopsticks and forks

In skirts and pants

In the worlds and words that bind them

Thank you

Ode To Crowded Morning Trains

O morning people

Crammed in with me

That I grind into

While being ground into

Fathers who never kiss their wives

Mothers who never hug their kids

Children who never say ‘I love you’

Hold up strangers

While being held up

I tower above you

You huddle around me

Penguins around a seal

Ants around a mantis

Tree amid the bushes

Growing in the same earth

The ride would be longer

The ride would be lonelier

Without you

On Childlessness

With all the children

In the world

Being used or killed

Being used to kill

In the grand scheme

Us not having kids

Is no great tragedy

It is our little one

Economies of Thought

Europe swirls around the drain

As America cries out in pain

When their tickertapes come to rest

Will we see the fallen West?

The start of Asia’s hundred years

Realization of a hundred Chinese fears

Between Bear claws and Bull horns

A new world will be bloodily born

Before we rail at Oriental specters

We’d best our own vampires hector

Those who suck the people’s lifeblood

Dried up society’s investing flood

We ourselves asked for trouble

When we set our hopes on bubbles

If in Mammon we blindly trust

We chain ourselves to booms and busts

Perhaps the change from yin to yang

Is fitting for us the Damned

If the East is equally cursed

They could hardly fuck things up worse

Jetlag Hero

Here I am

Body still shaking from the plane

Soul still there

Walking the contrail my meatsack left

ETA before the weekend hopefully

Soulless I still go to work

Students hopefully will not know

That though my flesh stands before them

My sprit’s toes sift sand on Manly beach

And spirit eyes watch the sea and tanned youth

November's End

Christmas muzak

Wordless for the moment

Cold crisp air

Northern hemisphere

Snowless sidewalks

Booted girls in long coats

Scarf-wrapped boys go capless

Frogs slumber in cold mud

Spider eggs start ticking down to spring

Leaves stripped from branches

Cluttering the streets

Outside the newly wrapped windows

Where kerosene burns the first time

At dark suppertimes

Or reading a book in bed

Before cold mud slumber

Wakes to work in the chill morning

Downcast

Jogging home at night

Look for million dollar bills

No one ever drops

Jetlagged Soul

I am here

Body still shaking from the phantom plane

Soul still in transit

Walking the path my meatsack flew

ETA before the weekend hopefully

RAukland

The hippiest hip

On the global edge

The worst whites can do

To a bird of paradise

Tattooed, cow-pierced

Bare-footed skateboarder

Too good to work

Not too good to beg for smokes

Or camp protesting in a park

The Maori are still there

Driving buses

Delivering freight

Not really bothered

By the white waves that wash over them

Or the neon Chinese characters

They still see

Paradise there

Under asphalt and traffic lights

Asians and arabs

Arrived and living life

Working hard and smiling hard

Sending their kids to school

Speaking slacker English

Fighting tournaments in internet cafes

Speaking 8 languages to the clients

As they work in their father’s store

Or smoke and chat and run their own

Strange city

Palm trees and gigantic trees

Frozen still behind Victorian brownstones

And walking parks

Buses hurtling up and over

The hills to Queen street

Where she has never been

Where I another strange wanderer

Trudge past your chic shops and beer stores

Born in the North

My Californian friend
Sat in the sunlight and said
“Get one of those avocados”

I knew but I did not know
What he meant
And shamefully asked
What was an avocado
And how did you eat it

This is what it means
To be born in the North

My Indian friend
Cooking with me said
“Throw those brown leaves out”

I knew but refused to know
What he intended
I carefully hid the leaves
In the cooking pot
And we both ate them

This is what it means
To be born in the North

My Japanese wife
Took out her parasol and said
“You should get out of the sunlight”

She knew but did not know
What it meant
To innocently ask
A body starved for warmth
To deprive itself of sun

This is what it means
To be born in the North

Friday Night Sound

Rubbery screech and metal crump

Voices raise in ire

Banshee red siren

Subtle burble of smoking men

Click clack of heels

High pitched hyena laugh

Tinny rock muzak

Early carols

Cellophane snap and change jingle

Deflocked

People keep on being sheep

So long as they worship shepherds

They won’t even make a peep

As to the block they’re lured

Dirty looks from stone age books

Keep our bodies in chains

That we learn to hate ourselves

Is as inane as it is insane

Fear Big Daddy in the sky

More than Big Brother on earth

Both turn us into children

Both tell us what we’re worth

Given choice of hells they sell

In this life or after it

No matter how they sing and dance well

I politely refuse to buy any of it

Fall Rest

Go you to bed

Sweet mothering earth

We treat you much less

Than you are worth

We bully and torture

Take all your best

Now your seasons have turned

So off to your rest

Off now to slumber

Beneath sheets of white

We cannot stop you

You have the right

While with woodland folk

Your brown body lays dreaming

We will rest too

From out cutting and reaming

Give gifts from your bosom

Stamped with love brotherly

The one time of the year

We act with humanity

I will miss your beauty

But I am glad you will go

Would that I could sleep with you

Nestled beneath the snows

In Morning

Lonely mouse myself

Slides the shoji with no thump

Pulling clothes on pantomime

Takes me twice the time

To ready myself for work

And slip out the door

Terminal autumn sun caresses

Like an older parent

Asshole-in-face waiting

Then asshole-in-face riding

Bang my head

Searching for change

At the office

Second hand dead man’s shirt

And frayed clown shoes

No tie never nowadays

When I’m safely in the pen

Until slaughtering time