Youth Things

Hanging out all night
With kids you just met
Then sleeping together without sex

Jumping the walls
Into a construction zone
Just to take a pee

Driving into a city
You've never been
Without a map

Listening to a new song
Constantly for three days
Until it is a part of you

These are things
Only youth can do

Sad to Think

Sad to think
We'd have climate change licked
If killer drones gobbled CO2
As easily as they take lives

Sad to think
We'd have less racism
If we separated people into Vanilla, Chocolate, and Mixed
And put them in separate bubbles
Where they could hate people like themselves

Sad to think
We'd even out inequality
If we supported everyone
So they could grow healthy and strong
Fulfilled by contributing to a better society
Instead of crushed competing for a better economy

Sad to think

A GREAT Nation

Make America GREAT again

Gay-bashing
Racist
Extremist
Arrogant
Terrifying

Mission accomplished
But
As any minority will tell you
There was no need

America never stopped being GREAT

Black Bolt Beauty

Japanese high school girl
Ran through the morning commute
Leather gym bag clearing paths
Ponytail flashing a rebuke
Then was gone

When the Earth Shifts

When the earth Shifts
Under your Feet
It Means
It is Still There

When everything you Built
Falls to Pieces
It Means
Build Stronger

When the earth Shifts
Under your Feet
It Means
You find Yourself

Gold Day Night

The only work that gets done
On Friday night trains
Is watching neon stations
Drift in then out of view
Across your own face

A Peaceful Spot

There's a spot in space
Out by LaGrange 4 or 5
Balanced between moon and earth
Where it is impossible
To think of god or country
Where war and strife
Fall from you into the sun
Like an applecart rolling downhill
Where eye and heart are filled
By a blue silver colossus
Where others cease to exist
And only sisters and brothers remain

We need to find this spot
Pass each and every one through it
On our way to the stars
A cosmic baptism into
A true space race

My Ancient Stories

Have I spent too long
In this Country of Mice down the hole
Where my sandwich rolled long ago
Drinking sake and eating rice cakes
Made by mouse hands
The smaller treasure box my gift


Have I strayed too long
In this undersea kingdom
With my mermaid princess
Holding my youth in a box
No way home save a turtle's back
Too slow to see alive anyone I knew

Have I lounged too long
On this Demon's Isle
Arrogant in my belief
That no warrior will arise from a peach
Rouse the dogs, pheasants and monkeys
To drive my kind from this Land of Gods


I believe I have
But how would I know
When I am but a character in their story

Never Saw Gord Live

Never saw Gord live

First Hip gig
Too busy working
Convenience store twelve to eight
Getting robbed
Thereafter
Stuck in Newfoundland
Grad school, two jobs
Teaching in Asia
(No jobs in Canada)

My work at odds with music

The Hip was a Canadian luxury
You who saw many times
Are richer than you know
Us too poor to see
The saddest song
Gord never wrote

Silence Thirst

I am dying for a drop
Of silence

I need
To hear the thrum
Of my own engine
To put my finger
In the broken dam
Of media
To step back
From the deep chasm
Of other people
To be alone
Instead of just
Feeling alone
I long to hear
Clouds creeping and grass growing

O quiet land of birth
I am coming soon

American Question

The question for Americans is no longer
Are you willing to die for your country
And for freedoms you hold dearer than life
But rather are you willing to die in your country
For freedoms others hold dearer than life

Brock Turner

Little did you think
When you grunted
"I'm fucking this bitch UP"
You were talking more
About your own priveleged life
Than your momentary soiling
Of a much better human being

Trans Gender

Transgender
Is not being lost
Between two sexes
It is beyond the binding blinding
Binary of pink and blue

Dividing people up
Into male and female
Straight or gay
Is like drawing a rainbow
With a two colour pencil

If you force people to choose
Between blue ball over downward triangle
Or pink ball over upward triangle
Don't act surprised
Over where they s(h)it

Transition

In the morning train
Plain Jane sleepy Japan
Sat across from me
In her funeral suit
And painted herself
Into the office hotpot
By the time we reached Osaka
A complete erasal
Of all she was

The Unread

The Age of Uncertainty
and
Cours de linguistique générale
Sit heavily on my bookshelf
Mocking and taunting me
Calling me
Coward and cretin
For not reading them
In so long

春の川俳句 Spring River Haiku

春の川
亀らは浮かぶ
ゴミの上

In the spring river
Turtles floating lazily
Over the garbage

Habitus

Only one in a suit
First day teaching at a new uni
Only one not in a suit
PhD graduation ceremony

Pierre Bourdieu's habitus DOES exist
Encircling and excluding us all

How To Write Poetry

I know as much
About how to write poetry
As I understand why
So many never write a word

Outgrown

The hardest friends to lose
Are the ones that outgrow you

Why I love Trump

The Ump, Bump, Chump, Clump of Hair, Dump, Frump, Flumf, Gump, Hump, Jump, Krump, Lump, Pump, Plump, Rump, Sump, Stump, Thump, Wump

A perfect name

For any poetically inclined

To praise or raze

Or for the protagonist

Of a newly discovered

Dr Seuss book

Lonely, Horny

Why create life

Lonely, Horny

Why make acids & lipids

Lonely, Horny

Why brave hell

Lonely, Horny

Why make harpies cry

Lonely, Horny

Why leave Menelaus

Lonely, Horny

Why invade Troy

Lonely, Horny

Why give an ear to Roxanne

Lonely, Horny

Why get married

Lonely, Horny

Why cheat

Lonely, Horny

Why get divorced

Lonely, Horny

Why watch porn

Lonely, Horny

Why remarry

Lonely, Horny

Why create life

Lonely, Horny

Allah Ackbar

When a person

Yells Allah Ackbar

As the hospital

Where their child lays

Is bombed by fighters

This does not mean

They are a terrorist

It means

They are a terrorized

When a person

Yells Allah Ackbar

As the hospital

Where their child lays

Is bombed by fighters

This does not mean

They believe god alone is good

It means

They know man can be evil

Barbie Dolls

I used to think
Ken and Barbie
Cockless wonder
And
Sexless fairy
Their shiny dead eyes
Rictus scar smiles
Were so inaccurate
Till I realized
They are married

Nowhere Fast

Apparently
An unmuffled Porsche
Is just what you need
To get the fifty meters
Between stoplights
Here in Japan

Hand

Sometimes as night
Is turning to morning
I feel your tiny pink hand
Creep into my wrinkled old one
And I forget
That life is suffering