Will be away for a week

on vacation to Vancouver - returning July 7th - catch up with you then!

xodj

A la mode

A la mode

Colourful skirts
taken up by the armful
into Bay Day dressing rooms.

Summer sandal flats
pinching round the toes
at the end of bare summer legs.

The sizes vary
along with the hemlines,
the girls a parade of difference.

Cotton peasants,
rayon with slits,
upside-down, tulipy shapes.

Svelte picnic blonds
with freckled noses
emerge in soft leaf greens.

Brunettes & redheads,
peach, plum, mango,
in mirror-time randomly smile.

Heat Wave

Heat Wave

I make my way through to where you wait,
sleeping. The sky hauls
wispy clouds in, protectors
of blue monotony.

You are under a willow tree.
You've forgotten to bring a book so
you sleep, fitfully,
in the steep heat's
sticky envelope.

I have something to tell you,
but I'm leery of waking you.
I am sweaty in my sandals.
I've brought pita sandwiches
& bottled water for our lunch.

This section of the park is empty
& we like it that way.
I sense that if I wake you
you'll just be too hot –
if too hot, cranky maybe.

A jogger, porpoise-sleek, flashes
by. What I have to tell you
turns, humidly, into a headache.
On my shoulders, heat rash marks
where earlier there were
backpack straps.

I think of something else to tell you,
but it's only about this weather, nothing
you aren't feeling already.

I'm losing my appetite,
my desire to have you notice me,
my thoughts about my thoughts.

I decide – I think wisely –
to let you sleep.

Aftermath 

Rooms For Crooked Music

Rooms For Crooked Music

i

Predator spirit, colour of golden sums
numbering each & each in drawn out order.

Frederick Nietzsche with a prelude in rhymes
reading collusions as signs of recurrence.

Endless song in the middle distance
of the open, deafening ear.

Imperial, windy birds flapping. Ladybugs.
Fantastic origins that cope by going missing.

This moment I have no plan like a last plan –
just talking pictures behind the retina. Oh.

ii

The paperboy didn't come this morning
so I read yesterday over again.

Arson in Beaumont, A Streetcar Named Desire
to be staged in drag. Bay Day Sale tomorrow – that's today.

Under my tongue, game of gaps.
In the milestone closet, weight of sleeves.

Over the pitch of each & each a strumming
looseness of drained endings.

Or the dead letterbox where Heidegger snoozes
waiting on your call/fall.

iii

In the slant dream I stand straight.
Crooked trees, right & left of me, hold up the sky.

Overgrown dirt paths, clearings.
Branches clutching clouds using ruined hands.

I hear – but I don't hear – commanding voice.
There is god – or not – in not tuning in.

Maybe the dark is a wise holding pattern.
Maybe this is where I don't know how to land.

Numbering want, each & each.
Sleep stilled & still there's stir.




iv

For providing contrast, I like my walls white,
even when they're white walls stonewalling.

Outside of each & each, there's this & every other
not figured out – child molesters, languid priests

with pockets full of sucking stones – Angelfish
tattoos on burly shoulders. Mimicry, brassy chuckles.

I hang my pictures straight, & they hang crooked –
invite you for dinner, hoping you can't come.

Who am I to be asking why
so much of the world is like this?

Poem for Laurel

Away From The Weather

In panties & lavender tank
she stays inside away from the weather.

Bare essentials in the unflappable back room:
turned down bed, shuttered open window, speedy ceiling fan,

side table with lamp, book & brimming water glass. Under
the bed, flip-flops, dust & cat hair. She stays there

not moving, sweat pooling in the crevices behind her knees:
drip, drip – left hand, then, flat against protruding hipbone forming

right angle triangle, an odd lapse in a bad mood. She is not aware
her foot has gone to sleep. She is not thirsty enough to drink, bored enough to read.

When the phone down the hall begins to ring
she moves onto her side, swipes damp hair out of her eyes. Listens.

The phone stops soon enough. The fan whirs. Hot.
Flat on her back again, she thinks about being hot.

She pictures tubes of sunscreen, parasols. Ice cubes, swimming holes.
Mostly she thinks about weather.