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