Sunday 16 February 2020


Image result for painting dinosaurs in red sunset


      
                                               Suchomimus With Juveniles 
                              (credit: Wikimedia Commons)





                            Expectations

Within me soars an eagle, gazing down,
Upon a lake, dark-furrowed in the wind,
High in the snow-capped Rockies near my home.

From far away, it seems to be a bird.

But when, Imagination brings me near,
I journey back through time instead of space,
Into a harsh, primeval, ruthless world.

The sun and sky glow unrelenting red;
The eagle is a pteradactyl, cruel,
That shrieks and flaps its hard-edge leather wings,
Across a sweating, steaming jungle-scape,
Out over that same lake I saw before,
Which now, as shadows of the night encroach,
Looks only like a lake of blood and clots.

I weep and wish I might not know the truth,
Which now with full, grim certainty I know:
That this is where my deepest longings come,
When Sleep or Fantasy my will subdue,

To drink from this dark lake and watch as Death
Plays out on every side, so casually,

As pteradactyls crush the brains of sharks,
And suchomimi fuck with thundering hate,
Fierce, foot-long preying manti shred their mates,
And even flowers hide sharp, poison spines.

I do not weep that my heart holds such sights.
I don’t bemoan my thoughts that visit here.
I do not even grieve how I recall.

I weep that I that weep have weakened so
To be repulsed at only what must be.

I know, though dreading what will be endured,

I should return.

And then the journey back, descending in 
Along the valley's length at close of day. 
The lake looks ...

Wednesday 12 February 2020


   


   Image result for hospital entrance


                     (Mark Buckawicki, Wikimedia Commons)                     




                               Hearing The Cry For Help


Denise was in intensive care

Charts, tubes, pumped stomach stench.

The day could not assert itself.

Vague stratus cover thinned over cumulus clumps to almost-blue.

Street noises muted.

Sixteen kilometres away,
The scuffed tile in the classroom wore on,
Dully resenting shoes and teenage desks,
Perennial as their yak-hah noise.


While up in Mercy General
Across several strips of asphalt

Somewhere

She lay,

pushing off commitment, 
pushing off life and death at once,

with a line of light
Not quite flat.



   File:Classroom 3rd floor.JPG


                   (credit: Motown 31, Wikimedia Commons) 

Monday 10 February 2020



                           
       
                    (credit: Lewis Hine, Wikimedia Commons)



               
      (Photo via <a href="https://www.goodfreephotos.com/"> 
                                Good Free Photos</a>)




                     Frank



I saw my father, putting on his boots.

He worked a plastics factory.
Shift work, but still …an okay job. 

Until …

World competition toughened. Men were pushed.
And pushed. To sprinting on a steel grate floor.

At fifty-three, a man's foot bones, thus stressed
Form growths that surgeons actually call "spurs".

(Some cowboy song!)

I saw my father, unaware of me,
Just putting on his socks, bone weary, numb,
Now fingering his left heel, gingerly,
Eyes hooded with fatigue, big shoulders set,
Grim-brooding, fighting back despair,

And wondering … how long he could hold on.


   File:Calcaneal spur.jpg

           
                                     Calcaneal spur 
         (credit: Dr. R. S. Pradeep Raj, via Wikimedia Commons)

Thursday 6 February 2020



   Image result for teenage girl crying


        To Jim Holtz


   Marie had one crossed eye ..... and mousy hair,
   A bit thick-waisted, but a pleasant air ....
   Nice skin. Cast-off, forgotten mannequin                                 
   Held up by scars like wires, deep within.
   She knew how life’s inviting roads lead on
   Through hostile woods to hostile waiting towns.
   She did not flinch. 
   Small, rounded chin, set straight ahead, 
   An open-shy, tough-fragile, teenage girl.

   She ran her boyfriend, Jason, from
   the time they were fourteen,
   the gangly, gawky, sleepy Jason-type,
   by Nature, hand-designed and built           
   to be a life-long little boy.

   Most kids in old GESS      
   exiled them out to Loserville.                         

    One rainy Tuesday morning class,
    A project for their Drama 10:
    Old Holtzie helped them make a script,                
    that stumbled like a beaten dog,
    into a scene just credible;
    girl loses boy ... yes, trite ... but then,
    they did it for their yawning peers.
            
    And something in the eye-net ... caught
    and Feeling crept into the room ... 
    through some door someone left unlocked,
    and Jen and Liz and Ryan Sloan         
    began ... all unaware ... to watch.
            
    Then softly add the skids in class,
    then preps ... then everyone ... as one.
           
    ("What, Jason! Whoa! Marie!" he thought.
      "Where is this suffering coming from?!")

    Even the walls looked in ... and hushed;
    two minutes, maybe, at the end .... 
    the heartbreak happened, real as breath,
            
    and God Almighty, yes...
    in shining tears
    on stage
    alone
    she was ...

   beautiful ....

   That was poetry, Jim; that was your making.
   A waif hardly aware, a young heart waking,
   Saw, past the stage, a place where souls just are;
   She stepped across ... reached up ... and touched a star. 


           

Monday 3 February 2020


                       landscape nature grass mountain girl woman field farm meadow prairie countryside morning flower rural crop agriculture plain rapeseed outdoors grassland canola brassica rural area paddy field grass family mustard plant cropland 







                                    File:American Robin 2006.jpg

                                         North American robin 
                                 (credit: Wikimedia Commons)
                                           






To Be In Alberta

A robin in my new home isn't one;
In Kent this was a plain red-breasted thrush.
New land, new names, new hopes -- ah well, but hush!
His throat lilts one clear note, then six all run,
Then four picked of the six, and then ... the one.
Song after Winter! Such emotions rush!
Spring's even here, this other Edmonton.
And now he darts to perch my windowsill,
Head cocked, all saucy, pecks the cold, bare glass.
You're fighting your reflection! Silly ass!
Aren't you? Illusions thus exhaust the will.
My baby cries, the prairie sighs. I brush
A tear away, heartsick to hear that moan.
And then ... I'm strong. Get tough or die alone!




   File:A Winter Scene (15709194996).jpg

                                             (credit: Wikimedia Commons)




   File:Downtown-Skyline-Edmonton-Alberta-Canada-Stitch-01.jpg

                              Downtown core, Edmonton, Alberta, 2013 
                                  (credit: Wikimedia Commons)