summer and snow

I set fire 
to a poem,
red sparks rise
and roll
into the sky,
cooling
the further they fly
from my hand.

Embers 
tumble awkwardly,
left then right,
no longer my proxy,
like 
passengers
on the night breeze.

Losing
their crispness,
the colour difference
between them
and the stars-
actual balls of fire-
confuses me.

Moments
from pages,
from life,
drift down
like summer snow
and 
I am compelled
to accept 
the ironic
and paradoxical.

I released them
before their 
flame could
consume me.

Yet,
I expect
to feel some 
of their warmth 
as they come
to ground.

And 
when one hand
can easily wipe 
the charcoal smears 
from the other-
all the permanence
that those words
once served,
once held,
is gone.

lifting words from paper

In high school
my teacher believed
that a life
was best understood
through poetry.
My teacher loved poetry.
I did not like poetry. 
I did not know 
how to love words
or otherwise.
And I could not
imagine words enough 
to make my world 
any better. 
But, I did like her. 
I compared her
to sunsets and music. 
Her favourite piece-
If by Rudyard Kipling
fed anger and angst
into starved souls
for many students,
mostly because
our particular cohort
was filled 
with scientists and carpenters,
mathematicians and athletes-
so English class as a rule
existed outside
their practical minds. 
If could not exist without then.
Poetry was an abstract maze.
Impenetrable. 
And inescapable.
Kipling and high school
expected us to delay 
our gratification,
to live up to expectations,
and 
to slow down enough to notice.
Rudyard wanted us 
to wait,
and to be lied to,
and not to look too good,
and be skeptics of truth
and our friends,
and not to cry
or hold friends close,
and to
start over,
again and
again and 
again 
and
never breathe a pained word of it. 
And then,
in the end,
accept that others 
will blame you
for their same
misfortune. 
English class
became too much
with all of the if this
and if that.
Even if 
I could break 
with habit,
I understood inference
quite well
and the message
was that
even if I suffered
nothing would be
learned from it.
And likely,
when I am
most broken
someone will likely say
if  you'd only done
things differently
then ...

storage solutions for emotional baggage part 2

When crisis arrives,
it's often in svelte boxes.

Generally it
needs loose parts
to become not-nonsense;

without invitation,
it reaches into the edges
of my brain,
shuffling and disturbing
odds and ends,

lifting and
divining meaning
in the miscellanea
only found
at the back
of that shelf.

Arriving unfastened,
mostly,
and held in place
by sheer tenacity,

words and
meanings of words
tumble from its grasp.

I hear my mom saying-
use your words honey.

If they could
be kept from falling
and rolling under
tables and chairs,
I would.

She also has told me to-
hold my tongue.

Confusing.

And funny that poetry
still came from
impossibly form fitting
tensions like these.

Memories never
fit
back into a box.

And sometimes
will not
fit into each other
either.

I have so many of
these moments
shelved with impunity-
an
as-is section

near the bathrooms
just around the corner
from the café

where you choose
between bitter truth
or mushy metaphor
for
your last loonie.

With little paste
to connect ideas,

every line
needs to have en
jambment
to make sense,

stressful that one thought,
potentially,
might never end...

The grammar of poetry
writing has always
been negotiable.

Entitling also.

It's purchase
often made
with words that
my ass is not really
prepared to pay for.

There are
just so many things
that do not fit
back into boxes.

Or on to shelves.

And when they come out,

like broken instructions
for living a
fixable life,

they avoid
specificity.

Storage solutions

instead of

problem solving.

Their intentions
masked and shadowlike
are troubling.

Poems,
forged figurative
and fearful,

not eager
to become prose.

the fact that someone notices

we are mostly memories
hoping to be recalled;

given purpose and consequence
in that instant instance
just before the page turns.

what was it we just talked about?
you know,
the gloom that brightens
and slumps at the same time.

the craving that our body of work,
our remains,
continues to vibrate and clang
in some useful measure-
still.

in retrospect,

piece after piece,
a life re-sembles
some of the art
that frames it.

but
these are not materials
of matter.

not mortar or 2by4.
no rebar, no shingle.

they will not ever
sit level or
settle into a
foundation.

memory is metaphor.
moments, echoes.

most is just
fleet foxes daring us
to follow around the tree,

tails flashing a beckoning
or a caution,
warning,
in the last minute,
that we have
left the path.

left our home.

we are chapters,
not categories or
title pages,

thumbed and dog eared
by another reader

and our story,
like the fox's print,

will disappear
under iridescent
snow before it
is ever
truly
found.

endless horizon of aspiration

I sit 
in my classroom,
lights off,
halo'd by a single lamp.

Class has just ended.

Laptop open
and some found text is
bouncing around
in my head.

A conversation between
Krista Tippett
and
Rebecca Solnit.

"what if everything
we’ve been told about
human nature is

wrong, ..."

Normally,
I would wait out
the day.

Save my words
for the drive home,
let them interrupt
my music,
distract my driving.

"and we’re actually very
generous, communitarian,
altruistic beings..."


Funny, how the quiet
classroom feels dangerous
somehow.

Like the moment
just before a moment;

Unsettled arrives
and gets settled
in.

Can I write like this?

In empty time?

Non committed.
Not wedged
between other
moments.
As a choice?

"... who are distorted
by the system we’re in
but not made happy by
it?"


A hopeful thought;
it could be
dedicated.
It could be
a new routine.

First I
would have
to admit
I am caught up,
completed,
box checked,
ready.

Eschew
the guilt
of not being
an impossibly
over cooked
swamped teacher
at the
moment.

Then accept the
pause after
prep's done;

waiting
in a notable
piece of space;

peace
before the
parking lot
empties.

No commutes
necessary,
yet.

But as I put on my
headphones,

that will block out
most noise,

I get this itch
of dread in
my head.

"What if we can actually
be better people in a
better world?"


What if
the phone
rings?

What if
an announcement
bellows?

What if
a student
catches sight
of my other
side?

What if
I want to shed
the adjective,
leave
the comparison,
drop
the metaphor;

exit the
comparison
between
where I am
and what I
should be?

"Excerpts" from On Being Podcast with Rebecca Solnit.

if truth mattered then poetry should not exist

the truth 
does not matter 

in poetry. 

like,

when 
you wander 
along a memory,

of 
let's say
a beach,

the water, the sky, 
the wind 
are conjured. 

sand is assumed,
stones also.

waves and
crashes soundtrack
in the
background.

then it gets muddy.

was there a gull
keening 
nearby?

sun?
no sun?

did I
go there to 
swim
or sit?

one day,
someday 
when I need 

to depend on
my pages

to assuage the 
forgetting

I am not sure 
my own words 
will be helpful.

likely

they will conspire 
to convince me,

to confuse me,

to tease me.

to remind me
that they are temporal,
secular,

and that 
they are only
in service to my
memories,

not me.