Bouquet Garni

Over-easy, hash browns crisp, coffee:
bitter black liquid in ceramic.
A tall glass of concentrated California,
one part bourbon, the other orangeade -
her fried eggs, my diluted drink,
a culinary serenade.

i love you and i use a mortar and pestle on
whole black peppercorns and rock sea salt.
My heart a tightly tied bouquet garni,
(parsley, thyme, oregano);
my skin as white as dinner plates
my blood a red Bordeaux.

Elephants

If a blue sky reflects Earth's abundance of ocean,
does a red one reflect the saccharine fires of hell?
A masked man's mustache bars his ability to tell.
Obelisks atop elephants with spindly arachnid legs,
are always spinning webs of lies to trap
small humans who rely on their maps.

..........

Maudlin mannequins in a shop window
stare out, faceless and waiting for
nothing. i watch them as often as i
memorize the backs of my hands
or twist my hair into knots.

A photograph of my heart
exposes the past consequences of
cruel misery and soaring failures.
At 02:00 i only seek to find
an outlet to hold a charge for my
rusty alarm clock.
At dawn, i will break your arms
and run. A warm place is nothing
to keep this stray dog domestic.

Without crutches, without stilts,
my steps may fall erratic on frozen pavement.
Singing and screaming are no different
under the black ink and blotchy white stars
of prairie midnight.

A whispered kiss goodnight between jealous faces and
one cold hand extended to another.
As the lightning and the wind intertwine
sensually in the sky,
you and i recite all the lines we have ever read;
i will never be the drunkard in your bed.

My Own Lazarus

Red hair, white skin -
a woman's malcontent
is a visible tattoo for
the surgeon to remove.
Sylvia is smiling;
are you terrified?

Life is a switch on the wall.
Nine tries to get it right,
nine people to find her
barely breathing and
covered in worms and leeches -
gripping Death's white knuckled hand.

.....

From the crumbling ceiling, a bare lightbulb
hangs with its chain-link partner, just within reach
so you can turn on the light and see yourself
in the harsh, low rent reality of
the incandescent light.

A dark night in July paints a portrait
of day number forty-seven of
the Hundred Day Cough; the
hundred generations of twisted fingers plucking
and snapping rusty guitar strings.

Though our lives of poverty and addictions
will likely result in the lukewarm infinity of existentialist hell,
no apologies will be made. The stumbling beat
of ten thousand broken hearts in fractured cages
will forever go unaccounted for; forever
unnoticed.

We are the walking wounded.
We starve. We wander listless
and floating in our fevers, in
a trance. Our lips push out sounds
that no human ear recognizes.
We dull our pain with treachery;
we hang at dawn for treason.

When the Brotherhood of sinners
finally fall silent in our graves,
the children will go hungry.

.....

The man upstairs is sleeping.
Saturday morning,
the sun is not up, but my keys
are opening the door.
Three machines begin a slow drip of coffee
and the smell rises upward,
along with the soft, sad music
of a hangover and the need to work.

Perhaps the man will take my misery
from me and turn it upon himself.
Absolve me, stranger,
i am ready to start anew.

....

The earth is off its axis
and slowly things begin to slip off
and fall into the ocean.
Gravity pulls, and even the tallest buildings
begin to lean like Pisa.

The time is out of joint
O cursed spite
that there was never one born
to set it right.

i want to reach below the surface.
A shovel and pick axe in my hands,
my arms aching and straining
as i begin to dig.

"Time waits for nomads," they say
and other witty little adages
to be repeated and passed down
until they mean nothing anymore.

i want to unravel my veins
and knit a sweater to keep you warm
throughout those cold Alberta winters.
They get worse every year.

Fly South.

........

flipping through old notebooks
to find the pieces of you
that have fallen out of my pockets
into the dirty streets of my home.
i try to tell a tale of space and time
but the words written on curling yellow pages
are hard to read underwater.

bold statements in black ink
follow the trajectory of my heart
and trace the lines of your skin.
there are millions of unspoken thoughts
and unfulfilled dreams waiting
to jump from the pages
into my mouth
into your ears.

i can't stay sitting still;
i was born with an old man's knees
that ache and shake and should be replaced.
admit that you're listening and
i will never stop talking.

Κέρκυρα

The birds are fat.
The beggars are drunk;
still their pockets rattle with coins dropped
from the fingers of generous hands.

The tourist family:
grandfather, mother and son
all have their noses pointed towards
their cellphones - the tiny electronic oracles
obviously have more to offer than
the rich history and the mountains of Corfu.

The melodious voices of the past remain there;
the dull monotone of modern speaking
is what continues to come from island throats
from now until the oceans rise and swallow
the rich rocks of Northern Greece.

Locals stay here for the entirety of their lives.
They are born here, they work here,
and ultimately they die here;
only the lucky ones escape.
Only the outcasts have a reason to leave.
The explorers were the lucky misfits to leave their homes.

Once they have been gone,
coming home will never be the same.
The feet that have walked on other dirt
have a hard time remembering the
paved streets of their native lands.

.....

The men stand outside the church,
or they walk down the uneven streets,
maybe sitting in coffee shops;
they count their prayer beads.
Click. Click. Click. Click...

For some it seems more like a nervous habit
than a practiced ritual.
The weight of their worlds,
their families,
the burden of knowledge:
the tracks of fifty years
of unshed tears
burning holes in their bellies.

The tough image of old men
carried forward by their sons
and taught to their grandsons:
it is not acceptable to cry.