Next time is indeterminate.
Sometimes it never arrives.
This time is the right time.
I've offered buckets of promises,
Boxes of apologies,
Truck loads of regrets,
Warehouses of chances,
But there is no next time.
The crystal's broken,
The hands are frozen.

The taller you are,
The longer it takes to sink
In this quagmire.
Reach down,
Extend me your hand,
So I can throw you a rope
From solid ground.

I have always enjoyed the shows
Being in the second row.
Here, I avoid the spittle from the stages,
Felt safe behind third base,
When a line drive missed my face;
Playing sax behind clarinets in Band;
The first row gets chosen first;
I could rest my head on my desk,
Slouch behind raised hands.
An A-Team player always got hurt,
Or worse.
Behind me,
Are infinite rows and tiers,
And each gets a turn;
After second row.

You're like a bird
The way you unload
Before flying off.

I accept atheism, agnosticism,
Transmigration, reincarnation,
Obliteration and nothingness.
These beliefs include all religions,
Yes, Voodoo, Satanism, Witchcraft,
Judaism, Christianity, Muslim, Hindu,
Shintoism, and Buddhism
(even Scientology).
Some sects aren't polite.
I won't mention the one that rhymes with:
Vileness, truthless, bias, noxious, menace,
Hubris, vicious, ****, prejudice, malice,
Callous, darkness, heinous, carcass or badness.
I might lose my head, or something.
But all the others,
They're based on humanitarianism,
And isn't that what it's all about?
Us,
Not them.

Children aren't cruel
Because of their learning at school.
From earliest times,
They're fed on Nursury Rhymes
From Mother Goose,
Of children being fatted for the oven,
Jack breaking his crown,
Humpty got cracked,
The Duke got sacked,
And as fast as he could run,
The Gingerbread Boy
Never got home.

There are two voices
Behind my shoulders
Giving conflicting advice.
One says, Reach;
The other, Draw back.
It's a crisis of decision
For the left or right.
These voices meet
Between my ears,
For a synthesis.
So I listen to the third I hear,
One that avers,
*Live life right.

You know you shouldn't ask that question.
You know you force me into a lie;
And in the middle of my patent answer,
You cry.

You know I couldn't be mistaken.
You know I try to see your surprise;
But before I can finish my lie,
You cry.

There doesn't seem to be any escape.
We act together with little debate;
But the answer is always the same,
I lie.

Emotions are stripped
from lyrics. No angst
or panting over doves
dresses the lines of verse.
It's dissecting, inspecting,
and by all means one's thinking
on the condition,
for now,
we'll call love.

Malcontents are contrary.
Praiseworthy comments
Find antithetic lamments
Filled with spite and bile.
If somethings are good,
It's understood,
They're twisting all the while.
They argue black and white,
Or night and day;
Wear blinders to other ways.
They just don't see the rainbow.
Every query has three sides;
Their's is there to despise;
Contrary to pluses
Of the other three sides.

One's falliability
Is too often reconciled
In the eulogy;
When the offended
Nod,
In agreement;
Accept,
Yes,
Forgive.
Yet,
They too may wait;
Til they too
Are late.

They carried us
Through gestation,
Or adopted
Without hesitation.
Our coming
Was a celebration,
Mothers are our affirmation.
They deliver.

When we were quiet
From travails,
She made time
For school-yard tales.
The warmth of sunshine
Shyly pales
To her prevailing arms.

They nurtured us
Til eyes dried out;
Cried alone
When we left
The house;
Waiting by the door,
Like a living cure.

When Moms do well
All can tell
The Madonna-like connection:
No need to forgive them,
We'll always grieve them;
They've loved us
Since conception.

Bridget was born on a flax mill farm,
Near the Cavan border, in Monaghan,
At Lough Egish on the Carrick Road,
The last child of the Sheridans.
The sluice still runs near the water wheel,
With thistles thriving on rusted steel.

What's known of Nellie's early years?
Da died before her grieving tears,
But burn her eyes in later years.

She's eleven posing with her class,
This photo shows an Irish lass.
Her visage blurred,
Her eyes look distant,
Yet recognizable
In an instant.

She attended school for six short years,
The three R's, some Irish,
And a Doctorate in tears.

Her Mammy grew ill,
She lost a leg,
And bit by bit,
By age sixteen,
Nellie buried her first dead.
Too young to be alone,
Sisters and brother had left the home.
The cloistered convent took her in,
She taught urchins and orphans
About God, Grace and sin.
There were no vows for Nellie then.

At nineteen she met a Creamery man,
Jim Lynch of the Cavan clan;
He delivered dairy from his lorry,
Married Nellie
To relieve their worry.

War flared up, and men were few,
So the work in Coventry
Left Ireland's thistles to bloom.

Nellie soon was Michael's Mammy,
Then Maura, Sheila and Kevin were carried.
When war floundered to its end,
They shipped back to Monaghan,
To work the flax mill again.

The thistles and weeds
That surrounded the mill,
Were scythed and scattered
By Daddy's zeal.
He built himself a generator.
And powered the lights and the wheel.

Sean was born,
Gerald soon followed;
Then Michael died.
A nine year old,
His Father's angel.
(Is this what turns
A father strange?)

Francie arrived,
Then Eucheria,
But ten months later
Bold death took her.
Grief knows no family borders
For brothers and sisters, sons and daughters.

We left for Canada.

Mammy brought six kids along,
Leaving her dead behind,
Buried with Ireland in familiar songs.

Daddy was waiting for family,
Six months before Mammy got free
From death's inhumanity.
Her tears and griefs weren't yet over,
She birthed another son and daughter;
Jimmy and Marlene left us too,
Death is sure,
Death is cruel.

Grandchildren came, she was Granny,
Bridget, Nellie, but still our Mammy.
She lived this life eduring pain
That mothers bear,
Mothers sustain.
And yet, in times of personal strain,
I'll sometimes whisper her one name,
Mammy.

It's not natural.
If I can't smell it,
It ain't,
So don't tell me
It's as natural as birth.
You've seen the roadkill,
Deer missing the most natural of parts,
Lying in the strangest contortions;
Heard the bird
Breaking its neck on a window;
Then there's the gaping mouth,
Eyes staring most unnaturally.
To be burned and urned
And feel nothing.
Having a steak and beer
Is natural;
Sitting in sound at a McCartney concert
Is supernatural.
Expensive, but sensient.
But it,
It's most unnatural.

What crisis changes a life?
A birth.....................defected or not;
A death....................expected or not;
A break-up..............rejected or not;
A make-up..............accepted or not;
A ****-up................degenerative or not;
An accident.............not ever planned;
Or,
All of the above.
There are no boxes to tick;
No likes to click;
No swipes right or left;
No emoticons to stick.
Just choices and decisions
That are life changers.

I planted my garden
In straight spaced rows;
Under the scrutiny
Of  thieving grey squirrels,
But I fooled them, I think,
With my ribbons and bows:
Pink, red, green and yellow,
I hope no one tells 'em,
For I surely won't sell them,
These tatters, tomatos and carrots,
Beets, near lettuce and onions,
And kale, beans and turnip:
All because squirrels
Have been tricked,  
Yet they'll turn up.

It's not the losing hair
That's bothersome;
But the bone
With eyes and brows gone,
And an unattached jaw.

The cancer is told to no one.
We latently recognize noble reticence;
Are inspired by the selflessness:
He hid the pain and loss so well.
The addict,
The same lie,
And we say,
Loser!
One inspires;
The other,
Despised.
Two suffer too.

Suffering,
Like light rain,
Loud as thunder,
Alone like wind about the face.
I know it
As an empty bed,
Made, but not slept in;
An unplanted garden
Left empty on the plate.
Don't tell anyone
How you feel,
How we suffer
The agony alone.
There's an occasional text
To remind one of lonliness,
Especially around twelve o'clock.

Whether it's
A novel,
A fist,
A bottle,
Adultery:
It's all about
Lying,
Lying,
More lying,
And more.

Oafie lingers before his mirror
Pointing at the slinger Dillinger,
In his black suit,
******* his loot,
He won't go in there.

Then Oafie puts an old coat on,
Posing before his cheval,
Sharing jokes with Robert Duvall,
Who lights a smoke for Lauren Bacall,
Who say his coat fits well.

I know this seems humorous,
But Oafie isn't left too much;
His acuity is out of touch.
But he played guitar like a harp,
Which sadly isn't that far off.

For now the famous visit often.
He shuffled steps to classic Sinatra,
With Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
I'll visit Oafie one last time,
And slip a mirror in his coffin.

I've caught myself talking to my orchid.
Surprise myself when I call her, Baby,
As in: Baby, you could use some water.
She gets watered once a week, fifteen minute bath.
Been doing this for several years,
And she blooms for a few weeks.
I call her Molly.
Should I get help.
The dychotomy is,
She never utters a word,
But man,
Does she bloom with purity.

I measured the steps
From the back screen door,
Past the rock water well
And the garden plot,
Down the gravel drive.
The crush of stones beneath
Were the sounds of anticipation.
At the end,
The road stretched and ribboned,
Grey, beneath the harvest sun.
I numbered the fence posts
Up to the tree with embedded wire,
Demarcating the next acre.
The telephone poles like guards
With cats-of-nine tails,
Red-winged blackbirds and wrens
Hanging on trapezes, upsidedown,
With rigamortis clutches.
The few cattle stood cooling in the pond,
The chickens pecked the farmyard dung.
Each day my steps imperceptibly decreased,
Speeding up the monotony of my walk.

I missed the sheep shaped clouds,
But saw them move
Across verdant dales,
Following the stream,
Like lambs.

Today, I look out my kitchen window
To see where my son,
My disheartened, lonely boy,
Counts the steps to Brigden Sideroad,
Feeling the gravel
Hard beneath his feet.

My suede shoes are green.
Well, no, they're forest.
My, how the sky is blue.
More cloudy and teale.
The Church is corrupt.
Their message isn't.
The educated egot.
I've been called
Egit, stupid, idiot,
And codface
(try to find a definition for that).
Not proud of those nomenclatures,
But at times they fit me like cells.
But when I come across the Midvale gifted,
Who try to convince me that
East Indians are West Indians,
Well,
I remove my simpleton's conical cap.

Ha!
Just hitched my pants
Above the waistline;
Added a tight notch.
What's to become of me.
Should I consider
Knee-high socks,
With Bermuda shorts
To match
My peppered stubble.
Perhaps man-scaping
And Botox,
A ****** moustache
And comb-over,
Or live life
Like Benjamin Button.

Spring reminds me
Of being thirteen,
And sprouting.
The verdant tufts,
And budding girls.

You want
What I refuse
To relinquish.
Like my penchant
For raw onions
On my hotdog;
A pillow
Between my knees.
The choice is mine.
You can have
Everything else,
But that.

I live in Chemical Valley.
It sounds horrible:
Better you than me.
Perhaps.
I grew up here,
Where the southern sky burns
Bloodstone red,
Mixing colours with the evening suns.
The St. Clair carries Huron's ghostly horns
Past the flaring refineries,
To Detroit's waters.
We have stop signs
And other amenities
Small cities are proud to maintain.
I heard the housing market
Is sustained on the divorce rate,
And not the petro-chemical industry;
We're closing another high school next year;
And there was a gruesome woodlot-****/******
Last week on the Reserve.
Maniacs living out some sick web-site.
But the soccer pitches are full,
And our Mayor is the longest serving one in Canada.
Just around the corner
(everything is just around the corner),
Our flag flies over the bones of our second Prime Minister,
(he's from Edinburgh, Scotland);
I've walked a good stretch of the fifty miles
Of beach we have running north,
Past cottages, parks, camps, etc.
We've way too many ***-holes;
And for many years,
We were featured on the ten dollar bill.

But the new houses!
Who is buying them as we move eastward,
Away from the lake and river?
Newly minted single moms;
Rejected men.
We lived in one house,
Once,
One house.
We now occupy five.
Two of which
Are too far away
From Chemical Valley.

I've
Disassociated
Myself
With
Losers:
Now,
I'm
Beside
My -
Self.

They say the Bard's been dead four hundred years;
But each time I attend Stratford,
He struts upon the stage,
Fretting about our human condition,
Our foibles and grandness,
Like a parent,
In the wings.

Dead four hundred years?
Don't believe it for a second!

I had a boss
When I worked,
A black-hearted sycophant
We'll call Bert.
There was no escaping
From this ****,
Unless Daddy'd sheathed
Before his squirt.
He was the smiling villain,
With a glad-handshake,
And a slap on the back:
One never knew of his scurrilous attacks
On reputation,
On self-esteem,
This viper slithered
In my Garden of Eden.

Listen to the aye-sayers;
Pay heed to the nay-sayers
For point and counter-point;
As Lear did with his fool,
As we did once in school.
Hear the sycophants and flatterers,
The realists and truists;
But in the end what matters,
Is the voice between your ears,
The sooth-sayer of future years.

Getting older
Means
Hear today,
Deaf tomorrow.

I am love's *****,
An untouchable, and
Alone.
I once anticipated the moisture
From your lips,
To find compassion
Looking back.
I shared the food you brought,
At arm's length.
I am dis-eased,
Laden with our sins,
Chased away to wonder.
I've left my fallen fingerprints
Where you
Once let me touch.

The world is losing
Gravity,
But no one can escape,
We're hurtling on our petrie dish
In a gel that seals our fate;
Gravitating
Towards black holes;
They're closer than you think.

In China
There's a wall of dust,
Seen clear from outer space;
Our living waters die
In a legacy of disgrace.
We're citizens
Wearing masks;
We should hide our faces,
But we're running daily tasks.
We're fossils burning
Fossil fuels
Found in cremation gas.

The amphibians
Are on the fringe;
Whales can't sound,
They run aground.
It's an environmental slaughter.

Our world has lost
Some gravity.
We need to plant our feet,
But  charnel fires
And greenhouse gas
Have hastened our retreat.
Migrating birds lose sense of time,
Confused by the lights.
The mourning dove coos at night,
The nightingale at dawn;
We're like
New turtles muddling,
Under lost starlight.
We must grasp
The gravity
Of burning
Burning  light.

I quiver til I shake,
I tremble,
But won't break,
When approaching you.

My heart, I won't foresake,
You'll not know my mistake,
Although my ground will quake,
When I'm nearing you.

You see, I will retake
The joys, not my heartache,
The day I drive the stake
Deep inside of you;
And finish building the fence
To separate we two.

Time is running out on us,
The hands replace the feet;
Hasn't time run out on him?
What time can we meet?
His ebb's my flow,
His desert my beach,
His frozen bed my sundae,
Wrap him in white sheets.
His fall's my rise;
Will you close his eyes?
Has the shifting finished yet?
Count his hairs,
His last sun's set.

The factory gates are locked,
And there's no work today.
The line-up's getting longer,
And the soup kitchen's closed.
The cardboard box was recyclable
As a home above a vent;
My children have no clothes,
I hear my school's been closed.
Then I hear you call her ****
Because she won't sleep with you.
The lake's been closed, no swimming,
And the park soil is contaminated;
I think we're underestimated.
Clear the area
Before Gilligan removes the head,
Or Hawkeye looses his arms.
This is not a false alarm.

Don't greet me
When we meet.
Don't look into my eyes.
Don't say, Hi.
Don't tell me how you're doing.
I'll do my best
To do the same.
I'll just close my eyes
When I say your name.

I returned early,
You were still there.
You left a chair and table
For my meals.
My recliner and lamp were waiting,
Before the new flat screen.
You made-up my bed,
One pillow at the head.
Closet space had its place
With missing clothes and shoes.
Others fared less well
More were desolute;
But you walked out in style,
Took time for a Good-bye.
The house has less furnishings,
Plenty of meaningless stuff;
It's not the missing articles,
But your missing voice,
I guess.

I can't make love!
It's free-
To give and take.

Whatever hand swirled
In the cosmic bucket,
Continues to stir the stars.
Keep swirling them
Across my sky.
In daylight I know
There's work afoot
Maintaining the equilibrium
Of the gyroscope;
But remove it,
And we're feeding oats
To the horsemen's rides.
The stars will fall in upon themselves;
And me,
And you.
Digits of chance, luck, chaos and coincidence,
And the thumb of phenomena
Move through the infinite waters,
Clockwise,
One second at a time,
Swirling, swirling, swirling,
Like the snail on a rock.

We were misplaced and confused,
So, I bought a coffee, sat with a magazine,
But felt so antsy, I went to the Kiosk,
Inquiring about your flight,
Then went looking in the other places.
So many people started looking like you:
Their hair, shape and walk.
So many doppelgangers.
It was getting way too late, hours, in fact.
Now concern settles in,
But seconds make the difference,
Not some butterfly in China.
If I'd lingered, sipping,
I wouldn't have walked right into your tears
Around the corner.
I happened to have a tissue in my pocket
To dry your found eyes;
Now let's get the **** outa here!

I used to find a pop bottle
And cash it in for a two-cent grab-bag.
Three could get me a five-cent
Wine-dipped cigarillo
To smoke in the dug-out on a Sunday afternoon
With my best friend.
We went door-to-door
Collecting bottles, clothes-hangers and baskets,
Get fifteen cents and play a game in the pool hall;
We traded old Supermans for older Batmans.
Successive generations decrie
Their loss of innocence,
But this one tweets, twitters and instas;
I see ultra-sounds of small penises, and more.
There goes the last surprise.
I'd rather loose innocence than privacy,
For after that,
All you've left
Is the skin of your teeth.

Every night, my aged aunt,
Fervently prayed
For God to take her
During her sleep.

Then every morning,
She fervently prayed,
Thanking God
For another day.

I attended a house concert last night. I go to about three a year. The hardest working musicians in the business. The fella last night was from Newfoudland. Drove to Victoria, then to Sarnia, my hometown. Drove thirty-three hours from Regina... in one day. Old and new friends were present, all of us living the middle-class life.
He sang a song, Money Can't Make You Happy.
That's not a truism. It's an opinion. It sounds... eh...
Go for a walk, but you need to cover your feet.
Watch the tele, you need a room.
Have some We time; Your place or mine?
We relish our North American Middle-Class Life.
It's true... money can't make you happy,
But I'd be unhappy without it... some of it.
Later, as I was getting in my Kia,
The Newfoundlander was getting into his Volvo,
With happy tail-lights.

The news arrived
Of the new arrival.
We grant him
All the Rights,
Privileges,
And Responsibilities
Accorded to
A son, brother,
And grandson.
May his endowment
Of love and honour
Stand him in good stead.

Like a meteor at night,
The stages of life,
Come from darkness
No one could know.
There's the flash,
          (and a fire)
The Oohs and desires,
Then
Pooof,
There goes the show.

When I hover
Over your heavenly body,
I'm ******* the constellations
In braille.

I've scorned and derided,
Needled and spited,
Those, who are closest to me.

I've cheated and lied,
Vilified and decried,
Those, who are closest to me.

I've toasted many glasses
With strangers in places
Where I shouldn't have been.

I've smoked and laughed,
Admired strange ***
In lands where I cannot be seen.

But mention your name,
And all seems so vain,
Those promises I failed to keep;
The losses that haunt me in sleep.

Despite confessed sins,
My transgressional whims,
I know I've always been true;
And when I bow out,
My whisper will shout,
*Above all, I've always loved you.