dogs of portugal



the dogs of portugal are too aloof
to sniff, fetch, lick fingers

they refuse to be called buddy,
won’t make eye contact,
have no interest
in our pockets and crotches

untethered and independent
they trot busily across cobbles
like doctors on call

so mature and serious i’m surprised,
every time i step in shit,
they haven’t picked up after themselves

UNTITLED

UNTITLED


occasionally, without majestic

refinement
I feel good,

my metronome heals itself


internalize joy with glee

splashing fits of circulation


I try to adore less
imbibe less drive

less chemical

wheels

still, madness likes to

bring me flowers


I’ve always seen

a brightness in leftovers.

FAKE OCEAN POEM

When youre brought into this world
They say youre born in sin
Well at least they gave me something
I didnt have to steal or have to win
Well they tell me that I'm wanted
Yeah I'm a wanted man
I'm colt in your stable
I'm what cain was to abel
Mister catch me if you can


Everything so blurry
Everyone's so fake
Wind juicing thin through the thorn from fast forward,
And the woman calling. The audience leaving.

And everybody's empty
And everything is so messed up
Pre-occupied without you

So make up your own ending
And let me know just how you feel


Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves rewind around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.


I cannot live at all
My whole world surrounds you
I stumble and I crawl

You could be my someone
You could be my
Broken social scene
you Know that I'll protect you from all of the obscene

Im going down in a blaze of glory
Take me now but know the truth
Im going down in a blaze of glory
Lord I never drew first


But how can I protect you
I don't know your name

But I drew first blood
Im no ones son
Call me young gun
You ask about my consience
And I offer you my soul
You ask if Ill grow to be a wise man
Well I ask if Ill grow old
You ask me if I known love
And what its like to sing songs in the rain
Well,Ive seen love come
And Ive seen it shot down
Ive seen it die in vain
Shot down in a blaze of glory


Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?


Wonder what you're doing
Imagine where you are
Oceans in between

a recognized symbol of Excellence in

Can you take it all away
Can you it all away
When you shoved it in my face
This pain you gave to me
Can you take it all away
Can you take it all away
When you shoved it in my face

Everyone is changing
There's no one left that's real
'Cause I am lost without you
I cannot live at all
My whole world surrounds you
I stumble and I crawl

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as close to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.


Nobody told me what to find
Nobody told me what to say
No one showed you where to turn
Told you where to run away
Nobody told you where to hide
Nobody told you what to say
No one showed you where to turn
Showed you where to run away

Can you take it all away
Can you fake it Al
When you shoved it in my face
Explain again to me
Can you take it all away

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wrestlessness,
A mania, a madness

Frail and fall

Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.


Can you take it all away
When you shoved it in my face
this pain you gave to me
gave to me
this pain you gave to me

Take me now but know the truth

Im the devils son
Call me young gun
Each night I go to bed
I pray the lord my soul to keep
No I aint looking for forgiveness
But before Im six foot deep
Lord,i got to ask a favour

And the woman calling.

map of edmonton (belgravia)

for doug barbour

1.

where trestle
comes up against bone

an endless spark, a promise

don’t compete
for the same word

the ground relents
& the street goes

& the rock
& the stone

& the slapdash of houses
festooned

in postwar arc


2.

if you cut every sentence
like silk

or like leaves

in his basement office

in belgravia, nights
& the virginal self

would her hands

& the olive, the olive
festooned

in new home

your turn


you rummage through
scrabble scores,
half-inked nuthatches,
riffle your small, thumbed sketchbook
like a vegas dealer,
find, then read aloud,
your wedding vows

matériel

M.,

I still shake. this cold longing and fear a fog bank. and here on the coast it’s so hot today (30 C) and still I can’t clear. can’t feel heat.

days pass. then you write three words, take it easy.  nothing more. sign, M, no x’s.   

and W.O., love is a fucking desert (war) sometimes. and I have no matériel.

 

S

an opening of the plains

closes a door
& a door

how do you solve a problem
like medea

a mountain
what youve never seen

john goodman
in barton fink

the pixies
, saskatoon

that one time

you said it
you said it,

again

the air
is thick enough

w/ dust

to be afraid
of venus flytraps

Still a Banff poem

..only this really has nothing to do with naming things, but I had so much fun writing it I thought I should share.



A partial letter to Mimi in Paris, written at a jazz club during the last set

They say equations are everything. Sometimes we work them out. Mathematically speaking, the Eiffel tower owes its life to a woman. Sure, that tower is tall, but so is a mountain in Banff, an elevation of over 8,000 feet of rock that pushes up and out, getting in the way of even itself. There is the need to conquer these heights. We are much like men, I suppose. Yours included. He is watching me now you know, as I sit at this table pretending to write you a letter that you will never get, not knowing your address, or anything about you, only knowing how to address the issues I’m sure you wouldn’t want to know. They say your man is a player, but according to our mothers, we shouldn’t believe anything we hear. I prefer to think he was an instrument: a trombone I pumped, a bass where I pulled every string. If he were a drum, oh how I banged him. Even the air was filled with the half-spit tune of night, the melody of skin scraping skin, the fleshed out note held in a solo re-entering. The song was a place we climbed into, clinging to the cliffside, bass and treble meeting for the first time, plus and minus solving the problem of whose mouth goes where. And although the name he sang from the peak was yours, we straddled that summit together.

Quahog

To outlive Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth,
only to be cut in half, declared the oldest animal
that once lived. Like so many artists
gaining posthumous fame. Celebrity clam,
christened Ming—counting its rings, what clues
can scientists find to stop climate change,
or better yet, aging? The new Botox, four hundred years
of seafloor boredom injected into our foreheads.
The ancient Egyptians used Frankincense oil.
The Chinese, ginko. My friend blew $30 on eye cream,
says, we’ll see if it works in ten years. Just blink
and we’re halfway through the month, living
weekend to weekend. Deathbed haiku:
the quahog’s last words--water siphoned, spit out.
Translation: we’re all filter feeders.
Take what comes. What if
we enjoyed our bodies now
instead of mourning what no longer fits.
Jeanne Calment, who lived to be a record 122
said, “I have but one wrinkle, and I’m sitting on it.”


---
I could tinker with this indefinitely, but I'm curious to see what's working and what's not.
Also, I'm a bit behind on my comments. It's been a crazy week at work, but I hope to catch up soon.

belem


last afternoon,
guidebook zipped away

warm, luscious custard tarts

lips leave cinnamon
on the mouth of the wine bottle

(This feels really sparse, even for me, but anything more seems over-written. I'm not sure if I even want the first stanza...thoughts?)

MNVGs

o M.,

waiting. last night all night the radio, the t.v., my laptop, my mobile switched on. the silence of all that noise pecking my throat, that place.  where I hold you. when you’re gone.

“We own the night”, you said, then let me try on your MNVGs.   see the green glow of your underworld.  you, your men fearless with your invisibility cloak.

but I’m afraid of night M., nights like last.  when lilacs claw my windows’ glass.  no stealth in me. it’s your invisibility that terrifies.

4 a.m., J’s email. Subject: NOT HIM. I laughed so loud I scared the dog awake. switched on Radio Batanga danced tangos in my bare feet. poured a Talisker. settled down, read on.

patrol near dawn. mud maze village. ambush. your medic. young. bright saver.

my first thought, oh no, M. now you’ll stay on. revenge for a brother.

read, next line. 

wife, two year old daughter, baby coming on.

relief, warm whiskeyed, funnelled  first to cold guilt. 

then, to empty ice.

 

S

poem for max middle's birthday

if three weeks, out a vowel, make

with it, would you have concealed

if, tried to tell her of her of her beautiful
, model & make

a space of time in which to protect yourself

, permeates hands

you said you dressed in gutturals,
pre-lingual speech

a day in an instance

run-on meeting

.
bumped into him last week tuesday man he just reeked of memories tried to breathe through my mouth you know he moved on eventually but i couldn't get the smell out of my clothes i slept poorly that night
.

Bug

Picnicking, fat burnt-umber bugs manifest
on limbs like moles after a summer
in the sun. Bug, you insist
as the ladies tightrope walk my thigh
& upper arm. Bug, you insist, as your pincers
descend and they go
still.

(Bugs fall from your fingers like pennies
tarnished by intent just before they slip
under the surface
like raisins wet
from your open mouth.)

Head back, you discover canopy
& leave my lap to run hatless
flanked by wasps on their patrol
of the park’s brindled pelt
& sticky garbages. Your hair & skin
gleaming in the sun
a small sting.

rain day with the dead of mertola


1.
along the white-washed cemetery wall,
tombs stacked and orderly
as televisions in an electronics store

we windowshop through padlocked glass panels
for sallow plastic roses, photos,
lace-draped caskets


2.
the archeological museum squats
over layers of ancient graves –
moors rested east/west, christians criss-crossed

we translate roman numerals from tombstones,
shoes squeak the planks that edge the maze


3.
main road dug up, workers busy on their knees
under blue canopies, purpose obscured
every time we walk this slant of town

rain charges and we step into a doorway,
watch the scramble to keep tools, papers dry
and see a skeleton waking from the dirt

eleven lines of itchy sorrow

(after sharon thesen

could a lyric discontinue
after such abrasive terms

I hold you up

a moment after this
a moment after, thus

at the wrong end
of a minimum

one drink, & then
another

thousands of miles away
the fate of my right hand

All this and more

She's left again
and each time she goes
i know i'm supposed to say
a little part of me goes with her

but it doesn't
i'm all right here
one hundred per cent
me

i can't afford to give
pieces of myself
away to other
life travellers

and she is still she
wherever she goes

but if we happen
to be in the same place
we are so much more

poppy harvest

o M.,

maybe it’s the rain.  or the phone that’s gone dead.  or maybe it’s the email you didn’t send.  or maybe it’s this spring that’s so damned quiet.

J. txted  me.  said you’d taken your men out.  again. outside. the ring of razor wire. multi-nation flags. big guns.

to poppy fields. opium bellies. you once said they stink like fetid rhubarb.  you drive straight through them. mow them.  your leaguer a metal ring, knuckle duster, “we’re here you fuckers”.

and all night on hilltops, watchers watch watchers.  your cigarettes, lit laser. tag.

and today. no phone. no email. no nothing. electronic lock down. means only one thing.

who would call me if it’s you?  J?  she won't.

o M, maybe it’s the rain.  

or the phone that’s gone dead. or the poppies in my garden.  swelling to open. 

blood red.

 

 

S

 

lines from the mountains

Lawren Harris calls through spirit mountains

& here is the postcard

we might have fallen into the canyon

but we needed the perfect shot

sublime & beautiful

flatten to stage scenes

MARTIAL (MAUDLIN MIX)

by Nathaniel G. Moore

ornery boys
hacking mono
nucleosis

ornery boys
happy being nouns
happy being nouns
building shelves

ornery girls
magic marker clothes
clever being Chloe
forge youth was sewn different,
pinned-pants out on loan

avoiding any


lengthy leg-breath strolls
and with their eyes sewn
normal

so careful
so chortled
you stood odd, alone

ornery boys
happy being nouns
seeking mounds

demono dancers
geno cyanide
so lucking so locking
sod hopping