ten year reunion

smash razzle-dazzle isms
of sunshine on storm-washed Penticton streets
and here where we wandered drunkenly
the night before
no imprint of the raucous voices or
coarse delights

all washed away and under over into
something brighter and new and
bafflingly similar to
sodden wanderings and musings of the years before

fresh

what we were returns when the grime is swished away

all of us gathering
and unravelling the mysteries of who
and how did we become what did we were did you
how was that and when did they
the murmurs of rebuilding/regressing

familiar smells of the Okanagan earth

and we might come away with more of what
we already were

cougar tracks

space


fills out, breathing
and surrounds us
so time doesn't exist but space does
nt exist either


connect to

my young new love
time does
nt bother me but why when i speak to him
why do i condense my life so that
growinguphighschoolcollegeuniversity was just
something complicated that happened a few months ago and he

expands

so that all of the everything that made him twenty years old
actually took an eon

leaving the desert

everywhere I go
I am missing
someplace I'm not

so I might as well go
I might as well go, I tell myself

I try to convince myself
it's time to go

but the weight in my pockets
of the possibilities here
the possibilities everywhere

are tearing-- I want to stay but they are tearing through

holes in my pockets
everything I'm picking up is falling right through

maybe I'm leaving a trail
maybe I'm leaving clues

and I don't know what I'm hoping to find
or what I am hoping
might find me but

at least there's
some sort of indication that I was here
briefly
and how long
before the vultures and gypsies
carry even
my small bleached bone trail
away

so find me
or let me find my way

soon

whale song

we might be whales
in the underworld

the rabbit's ghost
pressed flat
to the midnight earth
had a message
for you

where were you?

oh, maybe in the garden of eels
oh, maybe in the garden
where the blue light fell
like chain-link in the grass
made you trip
didn't it

we might be whales
in the next life

what you see isn't
what you see
isn't what
is

it's so hard to train for the olympics
when you don't know
if it's winter or summer

orca or beluga
humpback or sperm
minke
oh, don't be a minke
Japanese people eat the minke

the mystic dixie cup
missed you in the
misty witches crux

waiting in the underworld
think you'll be
a humpback

they sing the nicest songs

dance in the morning

just shake your head loose
of all the night inside
jiggle, make that pajama thing work
wake and break through

dance in the morning!
dance in the morning!

he moved to hiroshima

what a wicked wonderful way to start the day
keyboardplastic cigarette smoke wafting over
partitions here but I am thinking about
you

oh farwaynear friend, newfound lover

I am smashed to pieces at your very words
mismanaged twofingered language burrrrred out from a bar
called Memories in Hiroshima City

you found me I found you
and the squealing gears and workings of my interiorthink
on the brink of a shift and grind
mechanicimagination

we can find other people
maybe we will

but

you can say things about slaves building pyramids and fujigrand
and punchinggodintheface and vinegaroos,
coconut candy, giant purple squid
the wasteland of dreams and the nicknames bestowed in a frathouse

and I gather you

every other bursting fragment of your being comesglittering
sharp and precious and I
(like a crow)
without thinking
pick it up to keep

Cloudy Mirror

looking for mirrors
we fall in love with that which reflects us
back to ourselves most beautifully

enraptured with our uniqueness
we become entangled

Japan is like that

in the exoticism & sweetness
of loving a mystery
we play at magic
we see ourselves as honored outsiders in the floating world
glorious intruders, glimmering explorers

so of course it's a tedious thing
to remove the webbing, a filament at a time
place the shining fibres aside
look into the mirror

squint hard to see ourselves
from another angle
in another light