Time Passes

Time passes

That’s what it does

Time passes like an impatient driver passing in the left lane.

Revs the engine, glares out the passenger side window

Time passes.

Precipitation falls.

That’s what it does

It falls, racing to the ground, to finally rest, to hit the pavement, settling, only to be summoned again, not ready to ascend but up it goes. Time waits for no droplet.

Future happens.

Future happens when you’re busy sitting on a chair, cushions surrounding, fingers flailing, clicking, clicking.

Future happens when, inspired, poems distract you from the task at hand.

The task at hand distracts you from the future, (the present) and so it goes.

Time passes.

Snowballs are formed, then they hit. On impact they come apart and the pieces, so small, melt quickly.

Revolution’s lead-up is prickly, its result disappointing. And its body, painful and illogical in every step.

I feel at home where there is struggle.

I feel at home amongst the rough and the poor.

More,

I feel at home where people are discontent, unquiet, where the trees are not groomed, where the concrete is cracked and where one of the doors is always locked.

I feel at home where struggle is real. Where the people I see, asking for money, aren’t pretending to be in need.

Not a false mandate, channeled hate, or one-sided debate.

And our bodies: a statement of resistance in every step.

But change can be written and change can be bitten, making rabid what was written calm.

And our words: a statement of compliance in every space on the page.

What if I had resisted with every inch of my body?

What if I had permitted his hands to slide under my arms, to grasp my hot anger and drag me into holding? Holding my resistance in his gloved hands; Quieting my unsymmetrical demands.

Would the weather have cooled, the air frozen?

And my questions: a remark on the unclarity of every step.

They have held up pillars, stayed after they have been knocked down.

Smoke and Words

They moved to the suburbs. Got pools

got fooled;

their own tricks used against them.

Peacock’s nothing more than an ornery hen.

“The neighbo[u]rhood of poetry and rhetoric.”

Party at my place tonight

Wander down the block to the house with the red door,

with the painting of the peacock

crawling up the edge on the east side. Its rising. Its raising.

They get together and play word games. Eat flambés, say beautiful

things for their own sake.

Quote Elliott and Joyce, flirt like little

girls and little boys, all curtsies and courtesies.

‘Wait til she sees my new publication: On the Word What.’

Just because.

The neighbourhood went up in smoke last week.

Rhetoric has to speak to the insurance company;

poetry never got insurance. Thought nothing bad could ever happen: 

the place was too beautiful to burn.

So all the fucking paper burned.

Smokey maché churned the words and up they flew, mingled with the smoke, forced up by some physics they didn’t understand: They’re rising, they’re raising.

Now the clouds are full of smoke and words. And all the clever

tricks that were written, that had to be read to be understood
are gone.

Free, honest again. In the clouds where they should be and

where they began.

And poetry and rhetoric are naked.

All their clothes burned.

And their neighbourhood is a pile of smouldering ashes.

Atop the pile sits a particularly elaborately-coloured peacock, all

proud and calling, his Tail spread wide and he’s tramping the dust with strong claws and toes and its rising its raising.

Our Only Hope for Peace

Our only hope for Peace lies on the gum-riddled, spat-on brick sidewalk.

Dirtied, stepped on, about to be blown away.

Our only hope for peace. Passively waiting to be acknowledged, revealed. It waits to be accepted, followed, believed.

Walk by. Rushing. We’re late for class. We need to buy a gym pass so we can go and work out our asses so we can look good and make passes on the best people in the bar.

We don’t have time for thin, wavering arguments, without enough weight to hold them down. Just trying to be heard downtown on a busy street corner.

Call the coroner. It’s turning blue.

Why should I believe you? I have a million things to do. Bet you didn’t even go to school.

Our only hope for peace is wrinkled, slight, not many people think it’s right. It stays there all night, if not brushed away somewhere else, close by, far away. It’s here today, don’t really know what is has to say. (Do they?)

It doesn’t have a good look about it, ragged at the edges, wedged between an apple core and Bank of Montreal door. Looks sore.

'Our only hope for Peace' is right there, written on pale blue recycled paper. Didn’t even stop to pick it up. Would you?

Hold.

Hold your truth.

Hold your head up high.

Hold your lover’s hand and let him hold you.

Rest.

Rest your head on his shoulder,

Like you will when you get older.

Nothing’s perfect, not even love.

Being a Bigot

Not being a bigot means never knowing where you stand.

Not towing the party line means missing out on the conga line. Not feeling the buzz from celebratory line of shots on the bar.

Avoiding the boulder of conviction rolling over you, pace increasing from the mountain of rectitude means getting the cold shoulder from the two-dimensional people. The people who got shmushed.

We may agree, but should not march ever forward in the brigade of progress, our dicks out our pride impenetrable our opponents very penetrable.

Arrogance is not something to brag about.

Listen

Open.

Open your ears; hear the

wind rustle through the trees

grasshoppers’ pinch cut through the dense breeze.

Guitar strings resist his tender squeeze.

Listen and you will hear

sipping of beer, melodiless chords,

calm, deep, melancholy.