breaths

A golden dusk;

The contrast between us and between our failures

Heartache takes place in the shallow bodies of water

strangling the softened eyes out of Zeballos 

(community of pop. 5000 and diminishing)

I can’t understand how you don’t see it

You established your worth then put it out 

in the weeds that grew up the side of my old townhouse

I watched the embers fall through the leaves

There wasn’t anything for you to realize

But I’m like this now and my sense of self

is all I have to give away

Beside the fig tree in that backyard 

I gathered the shards of a cheap hubcap 

into a pile and burned a small and slow 

transparent flame that filled the backyards

the open windows with plastic smell and smoke

You call it low grade anesthesia 

when I pull the white kitchen catchers over my head

I don’t know

I could already see your mother

through the kitchen window then

when it was dinner and dark set over the brutal oaks

Her fervent whispering of made up psalms

and ghost stories she’d learned from you

staring back at her window reflection

her hands white and bony around your neck

Each year when Christmas would come 

you were always ready to die

The hill up the road became spindled 

with stinging nettle and runaway dogs

I will never watch the city stir in its sleep 

from there with you again and for the better

Saturna just became an obsolete ideal

the way weed tea did, or Cipralex

This has never been easy for me to admit

but I don’t need you

You only want to spend my hard earned dollars

anyway ha ha ha

We’ve never actually watched a river run 

while standing together

and I can see now the cracks will form

in the wall whether I'm in the room or not. I lived 

for the smell of what we stole from department stores

That kind of thing's just too risky now

first poem about lightning

distances have been crocheted and dust

built up in the rope. between dark hills i watched 

while you felt sorry for yourself. there are patterns

in the forks of lightning that reflect the i ching 

and whether we’re what we call ourselves 

for you i’d never come up short

you’ve heard somewhere my destitution

is the pride of our nation’s capital region

but i may still be a toothache and i may 

cause you to dream of tall grass and knives

clairvoyance and purpose are simple stones

on window ledges. my fear of the immaculate 

is all i can talk intelligently about

but somehow women still think i have an answer

like somehow the water won’t stir up the sand

let’s watch the lunatics eat pot pies at a picnic table 

while the weather is nice. no one’s ever told me to 

give it a rest but then i’m just the lobby shoeshine

i saw you anchoring the news last night at ten

i couldn’t stop laughing at the clothes they'd put on you

fluorescent lights and smoke fill up four undecorated walls

i’m tearing entire pages off a rack of magazines

my cat died only once he’d seen me cry on the floor

i guess it was what he’d been looking for

one day my thoughts will look like prayers again

Steph Gets Her Master's At 22

I always thought I would treat time

that way: easy to hold as ash.

Now I sit by my window after dark

and wait for the doorknob to turn.

You’d think they’d have found

me by now. There are unsettling 

cracks in the store bought century.

1971: My dad is on a comedown 

kicking the dirt on the side of the freeway

with a plastic gun in his belt.

1991: He drives the white Toyota

towards Duncan. On the steel bridge

over Golden River a semi enters 

his lane too soon. He moves right 

sees sparks, his knuckles let go 

the barricade ends. 

Like painted birds or homespun sins 

I am better off abandoned. 

One morning you will wake to find

all the shit stains you’ve monopolized

look like they could be anyone’s.

I Gave All My Love

to a shoreline far up-island:

a black bear sleeps in the tall grass; 

a grey haired woman wears a leather coat

follows wolves into the trees. 

Lately I've seen the water rise 

and Pessoa standing in the ebb tide.

I want every name to be abandoned.

I want our ankles to crack under us.

I never saw the front of the shaman's

head who led us to the clearing:

Totem; pale body in the sunlight

paint once pollen all gone (thinned 

by rain in the April storms); A ghost 

is quietly at the end of the trail.

Weather, weather, all altruism aside

I grew older than you then died

and now I am here haunting you.

The front lawn was last cut 

by a neighbour, tired of looking at it.

The ceiling will cave in at the end

of the decade. By that time I will 

have forgotten how to settle dust 

by watching it fall. I will be shooting 

owls from the side of a logging road

lit up in high beams and moonlight.

foxfire testament

You were so lawless last I saw you

slow dancing lonesome Sarah Palmer 

in the basement. You spoke smokily

of prophets leaning on wooden rakes 

in the toothy sun over Paraguay. I never 

said my share of apologies. I wrote off 

the foxfire testament, buried the book 

like it was your body pale and receding. 

I ripped photos of you, rolled them into 

cigarette filters and fucked all your rivals 

in their peach coloured dorms. You took

to the omniscience of road maps. Left

shards of cd’s on your front lawn to melt

in the dry dirt. I’m still bleeding through

the same stitches. You can and should 

rub salt into the cracks. 

I saw truth and then the hair on your ass 

and then rent checks on your mother’s coffee table. 

You punched the vanity mirror and rubbed your fist 

into the broken glass. Other than that you measured 

the faith out into hand bound books and watched 

the Juan de Fuca grow darker from your balcony. 

Then anxiety bled out of hometown backyards 

and into your ernest blue lungs. I know you 

left for a righteous reason. My mother just

prayed me gone like shitty weather or calls

from Collections. I know it’s colder where you 

are now. There, sunlight dies behind a treed hill 

with an electric crucifix on top. I may never see 

the vapour leave your blistered lips. 

When I stare through my hands it’s like last light through bare branches.

You’ll never know how all this death got into my eyes and under my nails.

platonic teeth

dusk hangs off your shoulders

as you shine down the beach road

your weather and crow's feet to keep.

my loneliness and symptoms 

are classic. i worry no more about

you or the academy. celebration

approaches like a thirsty horse. i've said

i'll ruin you before you win.

i'll draw the curtain over your 

veridic skin and leave you waiting

in the setting sun, an honest 

horoscope from the suburb's paper.

your vitality calls for suffocation

hazard lights and shirttails. my stetson hat

is in the grass. little tunes i've suffered

on the harmonica you gave me

bleed down the hillside like wounds.

my hands touch red to my jaw.

i look for answers at the plantation's ruins.

i look for rewards in your polished veins.

a little sunshine can steal the breath

from all your prose. on the other hand

those nights took me in like a drunk 

mother in law. the trestle curves

as i half run on an empty stomach 

to get another enemy undressed.  

the smoke is thick in the pockets 

of my body. make best use of the god

who's at the window with you 

guiding red leaves to their gutters

dry-heaves at the strip mall

you preferred to live under stars that shook

with memory a swift hand folded punching 

your throat. in the library's basement

there are rows of tables on the basis 

that you'll be forgotten. stack the auto-

mechanic journals to the ceiling 

till they fall like dead grey seagulls. 

forget the world when you go camping

love your friends on the slow-pitch infield.

throw spitballs in the setting sun while

your husband drinks molsons on third 

losing hair into the ice box water

drive home loudly playing jack johnson

through your ipod nano. 

snail mail, stainless steel, keep your kitchen 

counter clean. you were baptized by your grandpa. 

you shed tears every winter at the civil war parade. 

diamond sphere privatized eternity spider's web

iron breath will give slack to a familiar collapse.

your husband spits his gum onto the sidewalk

half drunk. he anxiously awaits your lies.

untitled

Trying as I may to see the baseboards in your love

from the strangest catacombs of my solitude

I've learned the sun will neglect us each respectively

In response Lord let me renounce all these answers

turned soft like bus transfers in the pit of my pockets

You laugh like my grandmother hunched over 

the sink with her hair in the water. Don't worry 

I won't think that way forever. Fireflies fly off as we hack 

away at bike locks. Neighbors hold our baby photos 

to the muzzles of their dogs

Stay out of the city parks the magazine stores

Test the dusk light with the patience needed to touch any 

such unpredictable mammal. You've been warned I am 

trying to turn back into nothing. Nothing

And my sweet dream of a skyline burning

Scores of clean SUVs idle in the flames

I wish for you never to kneel under your porch table 

and give in to thinking fatefully. How maniacal 

all these monks on waterfronts

counting every breath that leaves their bodies

the furnace

Somehow i can see 

the flashes of moths 

inside your ribcage

I can see them from

three provinces gone

The women here all

hate me

To look in my eyes

they notice everyone
they let go quiet

they think of the cat
under their car tire

and all the fences 

they've leaned against

and hands they never

let have them and blood

they thought too personal

for plastic bags on hooks

Mystics stand on street corners

knowing the distance 

between you and i

knowing my hairline is not

the first crack at death

i have ever taken

knowing i dwell too long

on my own to take grace

from the books i stack 

in the furnace

Bitter art of altruism

a crack in a lung 

a cloud of dust 

You've never 

looked so empty

as when this summer

shone all the way through you

soft edges

I know I've lost my charm 

(at least while the spiders
are still in my sleeves)

You say it means nothing

Pages become the soft 

edges of space and I forget

the importance of suicide

How can you be so bitter

with a bedroom so large

How can you still ask what

really went down that summer

Here's the definite answer I know:

Fresh water rippled around thighs

the alders grew whiter and whiter

and the diaphanous hills
echoed no sound at all

Take the billboards down

along the freeway

You can't pray for cash

that has yet to be printed

As I try in desperation

to be more beautiful

as I send roses in the mail

I know my hometown won't hear

my smile. The con artists

at the front of the bus 

blow smoke into their scarves

A mass public unwinds all their tapes

And I am the devil in a long dress

saying only what I don't mean

black eyes

Here I am pushing down chords on my synth

secure inside a telephone booth

As hail rolls into the sewer's wet mouth

as I slide the glass door closed

you are alone on your kitchen tiles

and do not hear a single tone

Black eyes are among us

In ten years' time

we will be composing postcards 

by the soft light of a mircrowave

creation myth

Your blind mouthed brother the tailor 

was pushing clients off his storefront 

with a broom yesterday

Did you hear the sound of brown leaves burning

outside your apartment window?

How can you say the night wraps me like a bedsheet

if i hide from you in it with wet shoulders slung

Your brother is closing the cupboard door

behind himself - unrolled spools on the carpeted floor

Spiders building lives between downpours

Call off the party

It's not à bientôt

It is a prohibition 

It was voted in

hometown

blessed is our hindsight
glory is the methadone
your chronic self medicating
your spit on my sleeve begging
the youth to come sore eyed
from hiding like Plato from his
basement one bedroom

the sidewalks are lit up at night
they're freckled with enemies
Your mother is drying her hair
as the lawn grows over and the roses
mourn the season's end
A life small and intricate as a poet's
who could only give whispers
when standing in the rain

i close my eyes and see empty
cigarette cartons piling up
on the balcony
To get to this stage i've lost
a friend every year and a father eight times
now but i see a thin film
somewhere between my mind and eyes
the colour of daybreak at the end of moss ave.

you don't get to retreat into me
the west coast folds in like the edges of a wet leaf
this shoreline is a thread i've been
pulling at for too long
and now the afternoon is shirtless
and nauseous with thirst

message #2

live in the box i built for you 

be the song at the top of the stairs

never the dark horse tethered 

i will walk for you to the mecca

i will do all of your whispering

just cut the grass in the back yard

until the bodies can be seen

show your work each equation

the magazine the silent diamond

play cards right until the contract ends

this is shoreline this is fervor this

is revelation candy-mouthed skinheads

weighing each other in the sun

let's make pin cushions out of every soul-mate 

until the attic dust settles on ourselves

do so gratefully

the curtain is calling
for the actors to whelm
The show's whole run you've 

been pleased to be shadows 

in the rim of a spotlight

just let me spring like a child
from wet rock to wet rock
If i slip and knock my teeth
on the barnacles i swear this time
i will do so gratefully

man knows nothing 

about just keeping his shit 

together
The bricks go up while
the fence pickets burn till they're 

six inch holes in the lawn
What we were once
will be the panting dog on the end 

of its leash heels dragged 

pathetically

what am i to you what am i to you what am i to you what am i 

to you

your gaze a chasm
all the way across town
pulverizing from the window 

of your husband's home

water tower

fish bowl

do you still ask yourself
if it could be just some game
if we are wasting it waiting on
the wide angle take
my broken record syndrome
will never exclude you
I will pull at the corners
of a loud sky until
it starts to let you down
the mountains hold
us both in
waiting
patient as riot control

you kneel on some empty field
and can see the spirits
travel amidst those black hills

I was filled with hope today
I peeled my skin back
and saw pressure systems
forgiving themselves
rain and sun wind and heat
quelled and met with shorelines
my veins were pacified
battle cries quieted
metal slivers in the bloodstream
every morning they’re more dull

get off your knees
and walk with me
to where the dogs
will break their chains
the fences will lean
towards the east
close your eyes
and between the shadows
of the flowing freight cars
there in the yard
learn the causality
of sunlight in the cracks

lost in the thickets
the king keeps the crown on
who's left to idolize
the stars turn their chins
to miss the man
gone wrong

at the end of the dirt road

litter the golden age

with brass thumbtacks

all over the sidewalks

ignore the permanent tension

you got from the meds

smile at the strangers

swimming ravens in their hair

all along the assembly line

the crackers sip snake bites

pretending to have been born

all cute and shy and kind

in that clearing we came to

at the end of the dirt road

dolls were nailed to the alders

black eyed and ruined

you left something there

the way a sailor might leave

wedlock to burn in a port town

a secret unraveling in the fog

down eternal streets

that pray silently at dusk

I shower maybe three times each week

but my body only wants a wet gutter

it can give itself to

and these days hot water just makes
me regret you

                             

after the war

was i awake for any of it then
anymore than i am now
i see versions of me chestcrossing
compulsively in the corners
of an empty hall where
we hang paper lanterns up
melt the tealights at the bottoms
go out and lead the rosary
in gracious escape
to the funerals along the highway

what shingled figure did i see
steal out the front door to cry
i never followed and forgot
until now - it's too late anyway
to ask what was wrong