Cold cement roads
And sidewalks
Hold the first, dry snow
Like grout
Between warm patches
Of lawn,
Speckled with Autumn's
Last offerings.
The neighbourhood
Reminds me to re-floor
My kitchen
In green-speckled tiles.

Einstein refined
Space and time.
Failed to define
Divine Design.
Almost divined
A superior outline:
But the subtleties
Were too sublime.

Must I,
Like some fitness freak,
Do 10 000 crunches
To see my feet?
Or,
Rely on
Water's erosive powers
To expose my toes
With 10 000 showers.

Expectations were soaring

The invitation addressed:

Me and a Guest.

Expectations were tense.

The last suitcase labelled.

I shaved in my mirror.

Gave the shoes a black shine.

(Pulled back the flap,
Laid a grip on a bottle,
Gave it full throttle)

Expectations were high.

I saw the mailman

Wasn't far from my drive;

Still facing the northwind

The mailman

Walked by.

Expectations can lie.

Hey, aren't you
That son-of-a *****
Whose mother jumped the wall.
Yea! You know who you are.
I spotted you hanging on the corner
Through the windshield of my car.
Were you talking conspiracy,
And planning your next job;
Dealing girls, drugs and guns,
Looking goth macabre.

You know who you are.
I saw you look right back at me
Through the side window of my car.
You were talking to your buddies,
I couldn't hear what you said,
I'm convinced it wasn't good,
By the tatoos on your head.

Yes, you know who you are.
You're still idley standing there,
In the rearview of my car.

Someone's mother died today,
So let's pretend her to be
A sacrifice to winter,
For birds are singing now,
The sun and sky
And all seem to conspire.
The chill has left the air.
The very ground has softened
To receive her.
We've removed an outer layer.
Namaste all the years.

She saw me again, looked my way,
But I wasn't in her eyes.
Yet, I see her everywhere,
Even when she's not there.
How would you handle this.
What does one call this.
If you were sitting as I,
Looking through the throng
Of family and others,
Sitting through the ceremony,
You too would feel the entropy
Of vines tightening on your tongue,
Like ice cream melting in your bowl.
She looked again, I see,
But didn't quite see me.
I will steal away. Steal away.

The Sphinx's riddle
Ended with a stick man holding a stick.
The cane.
Those Egyptians were on top of the chain.

What will Lady Liberty's Riddle be
For today's Empire.
After the machines, tubes and electronics
Have made us blade runners.

With a cane.

I should've written Thanks across a blue sky,
Where the winds would carry my message
Around the world.
But I didn't even try.

I should've banged my pots and pans,
Put a sign out on my lawn,
Or at least on a forward facing window.
But I didn't, and I'm wrong.

I could've, with minimal exertion,
Clicked Like or Love
On one of the millions of gratitude posts
Praising them... Them,
The essential and not so essential workers
On our northern, southern, eastern and western Fronts.
But I didn't, and it haunts.

So,
I will now say,
Thank You
To all those who expressed Thank You
To all those who have kept us healthy, safe and secure:

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

Some drive big cars,
Brag of deep scars
To prove they have big ******;
Some grow goatees,
Axe down huge trees,
Or chew on edible *******.
Real men, I've heard, eat Wheaties,
Enjoy lap dance stripteases,
Build towers with their empties,
The bravado is relentless.

Kim Jong Un,
Thinks his long
In his munchkin hands.
He does private battle
With his androgynous name;
While playing with lead soldiers;
Unsheathing a stainless sabre,
Lighting up his candles,
To show he's macho manly.

"Happy Face Variety Store"
Has new owners,
From Punjab.

They are way friendly.

I was renting the movie
Far From the Madding Crowd.
Ben, the owner's son, said:
Many people are renting movies tonight!

Yeah, the dog day's of summer.

Explanations and examples ensued.
The change in season.
Replace old anxieties with new.
The surety of autumn expectations.
The heat swirling in the ceiling fans.
The setting sun on Lake Huron.
All the dog days.

And then  Ashna said:
Like the dog curling up to sleep.

They are way welcome.

I had one last visit with
Daddy before he died.
Before leaving
I asked
If I could do anything for him.
I was shocked when I heard:
"Feed my sheep."
My friend was closer to him and heard:
"Clean my teeth."
Not quite the same as Camus'
Deathbed pronouncement.
His corpse had an existential smile.

'Tis true what they say,
May your glass be half-full,
I discovered the same
In a quaint Irish pub.

On leaving that evening
I pulled on my mac,
The wind was wet
And pushing my back.

Pushing's surely
An understatement,
It drove so hard
My face met the pavement.
And I could hear Molly singing:
And the road rose up to meet me.

There was no sun
To blame for my face,
The burn on my skin
Was a shameless disgrace.

The road home that night
Was all downhill,
But with hard rain that night
I was trudging uphill.

There's plenty
Of work
For this man's hands,
For the luck of the Irish
Is a tourism scam.

As for being in heaven
A half hour ahead
Of Ole Lucifer knowing
That I'm ten minutes dead;
I'm sure he'll be keening
At the foot of my bed.

Dad always said
Being Irish was grand,
If you're in North America
And not Ireland.

So many things happened
So many years ago.
You hitch-hiked to have tea with Mammy;
But not me.

You scaled the Mount to succeed;
Without me.

We slid the Fiat into a Rambler,
Before your big night.
The front got bent out of shape,
But we still went,
Drinking whiskey from the bottle.
Nothing stopped us. We couldn't bother.

We stayed at Sean's,
Or various friends,
At Inns, or canvas tents;
All were means to our ends.

It was fifty years ago...
Half a century of years;
Decades of joyous laughter,
With many unanswered tears.

George came by bus everyday
From Alvinston;
A No-Daddy community.
I've heard that town
Should be fenced
And re-named a Zoo.

During a power outage
George was suspected
Of being the dumper
In the middle of the gym floor,
During class. He was present.
The evidence was piled against George,
But inconclusive.

When George brought
A bag of **** to school
I called his mother,
A worn-out, retired pole-dancer.
When she arrived I showed her
The bag. She was pleased
I didn't turn George over to the cops,
But roundly upset with George
For swiping her good stuff,
And not the skunk ****.
Some kids' parents.

Hey, Xavy:
If we're still here
When you get older,
Check out the potholes on my street;
Are we still planting telephone poles,
Accusing animals for sky blue holes?
Are there tourists in S.E. Asia;
Did Manhattan disappear?

Are people dying with different bodies,
Still thinking with their transplanted heads?
Do we build schools, did the shootings stop?
Is work still measured by the clock?
Do well-heeled shepherds still manage flocks?
Have you seen our  fingers evolve,
Does anyone listen to voices at all?

When you get there, Xavy,
Take a look.
Did they heed the Richter scales,
The geo-thermal warnings,
The snow caps' warmings?
Does wildlife drink from Winter's brooks,
Is the soil capable of growth,
Does Spring herald re-birth?

Your spirit is indomitable.
No problem insurmountable.
Denial is unintelligible,
The sacrifice regrettable,
But no other choice acceptable.
And the legacy left remarkable.

Ah, Xavy, What I would give to be a small part of your unfolding world.
But I've got to go.
All the Best.
Granda

With Asia and Africa,
And all the A's between;
Try Ireland and Israel
And the centuries,
And the screams.
Why not America and the ancient Picts,
Or Adam standing naked,
(Now there's a neuron thought).
Let's share a neuron or two
Before the world is lost.

Your small town
Has four corners
Across the road
From your house.
When the time comes,
Choose a road,
North, South, East or West,
And follow it fervently
To the end.
If all goes well,
You find yourself
Back in your small town
Sometime down the road.

I hear too many sirens,
Their call has no desire;
And yet their plaintif wails
Makes one feel alive.

But there's a chance
A child's at risk,
In chaos children die;
Not all kids are underage,
Children are the majority,
Their older than you gauge;
It's like they live at home:
They did: They do: They don't.
And the sirens
Still mean the same.
Someone's child
Left parents grieving
This side of their grave.

The windfarmer was thirty
When Sputnik was launched.
He woke the kids who followed
His finger across the night sky
Of a nativity scene.

He returned to the tractor,
Ploughed years of soil,
Planted rows of questions,
Tilled crops and cared
For animals.

He's a windfarmer now.
Stands beneath the behemoth blades
Turning over the air we breathe,
Felling the clouds,
And harvesting the wind.
The mills are run by a distant orbiter.
His farm,
He calls it Spooknyk.

Hello Poetry is our bohemian site
For the new counterculture
Of the contemporary beat.
The works are here.
Ginsberg's long gone.
Kerouac took to the road
Not taken yet by us.
This is our Greenwich Village,
And I can stay at home.
Now, and some years ahead,
I'll say I met and read
The likes of you,
Here,
On Hello Greenwich.

Aine, Xav and Ga, their dog,
Were hiking through the Sifton Bog
On Sunday morning, sunny and warming,
Hunting for their Easter eggs;                                                    
When Ga sniffed, then barked in a hollow log. 
What is it, Ga? Aine asked in wonder
Is it a frog? Xav asked Pumper.

But Ga smiled and left to lift a leg.

So Aine peeked in one end,
Xav peered in the other.
It was hollow, that's for sure,
They waved to one another.

Oh!... But Oh!... something moved inside.
Brown and hairy, with flaming red eyes.
It moved at Xav, who stepped back, then cried:

Aine, come here! Come here NOW!

Quick as a flash she stood by his side.

(Together they would live or die.)

With twelve powerful legs and six beady eyes,
It leapt at them, then hopped outside.
There cuddling ‘n twitching at Xavi's feet,
Were three wee bunnies, cute as can be.                              

Ooooo, Ooooo, they both sighed.
Can we take them home to feed and keep,
And play bunny games till we fall  asleep!
Xavi asked. No. Xavi begged!

Hmmm, thought Aine, quite perplexed;
But then remembered what her parents said:

Be cautious with our furry friends;
The birds, fish and earthy crawlers;
When you find them,
Be careful-kind,
And they'll be with us always.

Still,  Xavi worried, so he asked his Sis,

Are they okay if left like this?

Hmmm, thought Aine (who's getting real good at this).
Let's call Granda.
Tell him what we've seen.
Mom says he knows everything.

(They Zoom Time on Mom & Dad’s phones)

Hello, Granda, this is Aine.
Xav and I have a question for ya.
We came across some wee bunnies
Huddled in their home.
Are they okay if left alone?

Granda heard their concern,
So he told them all he had learned.

All the bunnies I have known,
Have done real well when they have grown.
I knew Buggs as a wee bunny,
And he grew up to marry Honey.

Rabbit's a friend to Kanga and Roo,
And Mr. Rabbit got carrots tricking Cap’n Kangaroo.

Miffy was Kathleen’s first rabbit friend;
Mark loved Velveteen’s happy end?

And Roger starred in his own movie,
Like me, your Granda, he's so cool and groovy.

Thumper keeps thumping his left hind foot,
And Br'er Rabbit’s still naughty in all his books.

The White Rabbit leads Alice down a hole,
Where March Hare’s late... as usual.
                      
If you like heroes found in comics,
Read Captain Carrot, he’s supersonic.
I can't forget Crusader Rabbit,
He rides a horse and feeds it carrots.    

I’m sure you've heard of Beatrix Potter’s
Tales of Peter, and his sisters and brothers.

All these rabbits were once wild bunnies,
Now in movies, books and funnies.

Why, even magicians pull rabbits out of hats.

Your three wee kittens were left alone
While Mummy Bunny left on her own
To gather food bits to feed her wee kits
Waiting for her safe return.
                    
I surely hope I’ve allayed all your fears,
Don't worry, your bunnies are here for years.

But there's one more bunny I should address,
And I'll tell you who so you needn't guess
This bunny's the one we might like best:

It's the Easter Bunny, au chocolat!!

Xav and Aine were much relieved
To let their bunnies
Live wild and free.

Thank you, Granda.
Hope to see you soon.
Happy Easter, and too-da-loo.

And off they hopped for some Easter treats,                    

Pumper got his treat back home.
Leftover from dinner-
A tofu hambone.

We had *** yesterday.
Reminded me of the cover
Of a Harlequin Romance.
You, the school librarian in the foreground,
Hair up, glasses on a chain, reading.
Me, the Principal in the background,
Just entering your workroom door.
But, back to reality.
The breeze flipped the curtain corner
Along your bronzed leg, and you looked up and smiled.
Was it something you read, the thought in my head,
Or the breath of joy passing by?
Out through the screen, now open in Spring,
To bring the irises to move and radiate.
A breeze that ruffled and teased.
You directed your eyes, bent to your book,
Pleasured and pleased as me
The lace tail fell back to the sill.
Your leg never moved.

The wind howls ******
Off the lake,
Yellow eyes centred
On its face,
Salivating white-capped waves.
Back arched rubbing
A cloudless night,
It claws the land,
Paws at my house,
Playing cat and mouse,
Scratching at my window.
Then crouching silent
It slowly moves,
Then springs, extended
In full flight,
Changing landscape
With one swipe.
Then like one
In the night,
It lies flat
Across my lawn,
Licking
With a milk-dish yawn,
Then prowls away.

Clever is not poetry.
It's readable.
It's admirable.
Sometimes, memorable.
It's clever.
A word game.
Poetry is not a game.
No winners.
No losers.
Not even
A draw.

We've come together
To reach our Mecca
At 10 Mathew Rd.
Blessed by the Beat Les Musique,
Beneath this winding road.
(Son les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble).

Mersey Beat shook the world,
In the beginning,
In the end,
Then across the universe.

I get a feeling
Beneath this burning neon sign,
Proclaiming,
The Cavern.
I imagine
I hear:
I am he
And you are he...
I'm peaking here
Above holy ground.

Don't ask me why
We said the things
We said today.
We've carried that weight,
Said hello and goodbye,
Good morning, good morning,
Good night.
And when I'm down,
And I'm so tired,
And when you needed someone,
We could work it out.
Why worry over yesterday,
Let yesterday
Be.

Hold my hand
As we descend
Thirty-three steps,
And stand again
Like we're seventeen
Before the altar of song.
In this crypt
I'm a child
Buying tickets
For a ride.

Now hold me tight
As the two of us
Twist and twirl and shout.
I'm happy
Just to dance with you.

From this cellar,
Rose sons of man,
To sing and teach
Of love and peace,
And the brotherhood
Of man.

Let's ascend the stairs,
Oh darling,
It's getting better
All the time.
Here comes the sun,
I'll follow.

Small people aren't measured
By their height;
That's not right!
We dread
The small-minded;
The bigots,
The ones of two minds -
The one they share,
And one they hide behind.
One face we see,
The one to please.
One hand held out,
Unembossed,
The other unseen,
Fingers crossed.
They're high in stature,
But small,
In matters.

You'd play too
If life was
Like tennis:
99.9% out
Is 100% in.

The World's Times* chronicled
Crusades and Fatawas,
Jihads and Inquisitions,
Coups and Genocides.
     Such resourcefulness

The Construct.

Another Cathedral rises
In a destitute country.
     Do-able

We're told
From the leader's lips
     We'll always have the poor.

Uh huh! The poor!
That's what was said.
We can always put them to work,
And there won't always be work.
They'll need membership cards,
And birthings and burials,
Like always.

     See the pyramids along the Nile
     You get up every morning from your alarm clock's warning

Another temple
Will grow from
Rice paddies;
A synagogue,
A mosque will
Cinch tiles
On the backs of peasants.

I've had enough
Laundering by recluse
Single mothers,
By crooks posing as shepherds,
And Holy Wars
     so oxymoronic
     cleanses too

Any Divines
Benefitting from
Our labour and wages;
Our drachma, denarius and shegel,
Aren't worth the worship.
Yet the lenders are good
At getting their pound.

          *Don't drop a coin
          In a wishing well,
          Pay cash for a mass
          Where they'll ring your bell.
          Choose a charity,
          There's so many,
          That need a
          Pauper's Penny.

If we're together
When we're older,
If one's not left for another,
If one's not dead,
Or out of sorts
Or imprisoned on an institutional bed;
Let me tell what lies ahead.

We'll go to sleep wearing socks,
And rise by our internal clocks;
While on walks we'll hold hands,
And listen while the other talks.
We'll sit content by the St. Clair River
In Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.

We'll have our tea and buttered toast,
On weekends enjoy your Sunday Roast.
Around the table our children sit,
With grandkids we're blessed to be with.
Then, in the evening, when all are gone,
And we're in our home of homes,
I'll confess my love again;
You're all I've wanted all along.

You can surely decipher the scratches
On my interior wall, just inside the pile of bones.
There are hieroglyphic reliefs on my brow;
My simian eyes are the windows to my genealogy.
I am refurbished, re-modeled, re-drawn, re-worked;
I am not born again.
Along the hollow trunk, dragged to the bone pile,
Scratches and claw marks attest to the competitions.
On the flip side of the tablet, evidence the wax impressions
Of migrant refugees landing in Hibernia.
Nuclear scan my revealing contours
Of imperishable, ingrained, indelible markings
To unearth former loves,
Parsed and re-read in the morning light,
Not unlike outlines of Mesolithic settlements.
The male landscape is as seismic as the plates beneath the seas,
Where no winds sculpt, no suns scorch, no moons shade:
Only the timeless, steady, relentless currents.

The Chinook and Monsoons have no effect.
Bring rain or snow, sleet or hail.
The Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn
Can shift or stay.
The wadi and oasis can pool or dry.
Fogs can roll, jet streams can carry their worst;
Hurricanes and tornadoes can wreck havoc.
This is my Kouri, my Oued,  myTog.

All the animals are welcome to eat and drink.
There's plenty.
Migration is unnecessary.
The watering holes are wet or arid.
The desert can bloom or hide.
The skylights can shine or dim;
Moons can be full, new or in between.
This is my Nahal, and my Nala,
This is my Dry Season.

As expected,
Feast is followed by famine;
Plenty by scarcity.
Inhale, exhale.

I shoot a shot of Jamie,
Having watched it pour,
That dram of gold
Eclipsing all that shines.
That one diluvial ounce:

Then my cave calls.
This is my Akhet.
My Wet Season.
I enter sapien-like
And grow hair.
The animals scatter.
The cave fills with bones and bottles.
I eventually emerge
With the changing of the season,
With the return of reason,
And see;
Then hope
My dim familiar shadow
From the dry season
Will lengthen.
All I need is water.

A poet,
One of our best,
Got far
Inside himself.
He LOL a lot,
Used emoticons
And dots,
To share
Personal thoughts;
Then he forgot
His name.

A pseudonym's
A precarious thing;
Its acronym
Might fool you.
But a nom de plume
Becomes you,
Like Twain, Orwell
Or Seuss.
So, when your writing
Takes you far,
It's important
To remember
Who you are.

I hear,  "...blah... blah...blah..."
             "...yada... yada... yada..."
Tsk! Tsk!
So verbose,
And redundant too.
If you've nothing to say,
One blah will do.

Papa,
Had you held her,
She'd be the death
Of you.
We see it
In her lineage,
Which we
Ascribed to you.
Eons of Irish tribes
Coverge in her
Blood lines;
She is like
The ripening fruit
That cures and makes
Fine wine.

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've an itch to scratch
Inside my nose;
An itch that runs
Down to my toes.
I'll yoga pose
With those, my toes,
To wiggle-tiggle
That scratchy itch
Tickling my nose.

We're so sure
Concerning births,
With one hundred billion
Born on Earth
Since chaos turned to form;
There's fourteen times more people dead
To the eight billion this time round.
And yet,
I can't conceive
The finality of death.
The equation's misconstrued:
Of all the numbers
Come and gone,
I count mine,
Not yours.

Begin with my skin,
White, hairy and thin;
But for my brothers,
I'm much like all others.

Dig deeper to bone,
Europe's our home.
Trowel down to my marrow
You'll uncover our Congo.

We travailed
Down our paths,
We share the same cells,
Have the same origins,
Hear the same knells.
The one difference lies in
My white, hairy, thin skin.

Accidents happen in the Spring.
Babies are born from left-over
Autumn bonfires,
Never properly extinguished.
The sun should shine for an extra hour
So I can finish “The Burial of the Dead.”
Small dogs can escape out doors
Opened for a breath of fresh Spring air.
If there had been a screen on the door...
If it had been a cat...
If it had been raining...
If the sun had set sooner...
If the stranger had been kinder...
Would April accidents happen?
Instead, a sad woman cries,
Ah, nao. Agrander a Deus.
Nao por favor. Mitzi.

We can't plan for mistakes.
We call them accidents.

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.

I don't have a problem
Sharing with my kids
All the privileges
I strove to achieve,
As long as they don't
Feel entitled to them.

Mammy had a cauldron of stories,
And Mammy never lied;
Strange tales about the living,
Still touched by those who've died.

She spoke of a friend who read the leafs:
When babies died, she heard banshees;
She foresaw the cornice collapse,
Saved me when I was three.
She whispered these tales
Through pressed lips,
Would pause to sip her tea.

Seers told her of her one-legged mother
Standing guard at the foot of her bed,
Long after she was dead.

One prophet spoke of an open door,
A one-way trip to a foreign shore,
And agonies she'd bend to endure.

For me, these stories rang so true,
For mothers wouldn't lie to you;
Yet Father said she was a sinner,
Spinning yarns against God's will.
That's not the story in Bethany,
Or the fairy homes beneath the hills.

Are there ghosts under our beds,
In the closets in our heads;
Hovering over marked graveyards,
Abandoned houses and Tarot Cards?

When the unknown night tore at me,
I'd been told I could pray
To the Father, Son and Holy Ghost:
Now they're the ones I fear the most,
They're the stories she often chose.

Today is the first day
Of Spring in Ontario
After an arduous winter.
We have waited with
Northern patience.
I cruised my Shadow
Along Lakeshore Rd,
The sun strobing through
Leafless, budding limbs.
The smell of Spring clean-up,
The burning of leaves and wood;
An invisible, invading aroma.
That one assault held the force
Of all my Springs,
Before I worried over CO2's.

Trust a liar
To equivocate.

Trust a thief
Won't discriminate.

Trust your government
To disappoint.

Trust Justice
To miss the point.

Trust your parents
Til you find a voice.

Trust education,
If you want a choice.

Trust your friends
To have your back, front and sides.

Trust your children
With your life.

Trust your partner,
Like no other.

Trust one's self
More than anyone else.

The ****** queen
Ate seedless grapes,
Eyeless potatoes
And mandrake.
She washed it down
With honeyed wine,
Then went to bed
A ****** crying.

On this day
We share the notion
That a Child
Born long ago,
Called us home
To live as children;
We hear our name,
We're not alone.

          Gather round,
          Sit at our table;
          Stretch your arms
          Increase, expand.
          Bless our children,
          Bless our parents,
          Count our Blessings
          While we can.

For today
We share believing
That the Child
From long ago,
Called us home
We are the children,
We heard our names,
Never alone.

          Gather round,
          Sit at our table,
          Stretch your arms,
          Increase, expand;
          Bless your children,
          Bless your parents,
          Count your Blessings
          While you can.

Borne on the promise
Of a notion,
On the promise
Of a seat;
By our Love
And our Devotion
To the Living Son,
Our Living Feast.