Divine 
Friday, December 8, 2017, 09:13 PM - Poetry and Writing
Dragon flies in drag
over river spits,
mustard grasses,
tissue wings
zim hummering.
Their needled bodies
threaded beads, azure
hyphened by ebony
to the period of their
tails. Tumid eyes to tips
to eyes, waging circles
where another begins,
where mist and sigh,
early sky shaking its wings,
water below splitting,
spreading hemispheres
a slow spinning blue
mouths
consuming
tails
consuming
mouths.

(earlier version published Antigonish Review 151, Autumn 2007)




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Rust 
Friday, February 24, 2017, 08:48 PM - Poetry and Writing
Thorax of tractor, trailer aground.
Letting the metal go.

The gathering is shrinking. Soon
we forget to ask.

Old men idle over tinto and war.
A dyke gives way nail by nail.

It doesn’t stop here, ever.
Through bulging sewers

and guttered debris,
the music snuck back,

slipped on a hot little dress.
What part of love is patience?

A blown-out, boarded-up
city stuffs its windows with toys.

The derelict car lot
polka-dotted.

Abandon as litter
or landscape?

Insides out
mustering red.



Published Halifax Poetry Series, Frog Hollow Press and FreeFall Magazine
2016

Qin 
Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 02:46 AM - Poetry and Writing
Was bloody, half the empire would fall
but battle only lays them for a time
they cut and burned the books to quell the living
Rites of Zhou replaced with rule of law

and rule of land and tombs that fit for kings
an infantry to make it great again,
chains of serfs and bandits moved as one
bound the little states that wrapped Beijing.

Two thousand years, about a million men,
a life for every foot of wall when done.
What is blocked and what is kept within?

Caged white roosters, mortar of human bone
like the scales of a sleeping dragon
and as visible, too, from the moon.


100,000 Poets for Change 
Saturday, December 3, 2016, 02:58 PM - Poetry and Writing
Proud to be part of this chorus of voices speaking out on the American election. Click on the link below to read the poems.
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The Demagogue 
Friday, December 2, 2016, 02:39 AM - Poetry and Writing
like those before him, less blood
or a different kind, different
ceremony but similar use of timing
and Other as when Europe swelled
from pogroms and picket lines.
I don’t mean to equate brutalities
but history is bound by desire
spit and gut.
You can slay an order
when we're grinding our teeth.
The right mix of wind and kindle
a clear enough path
to unleash the legs of flame.
They knew, they know
fear is bloody heady-
we don’t care for details.
We’re tired and
when you’re tired
the smell of body
on altar delivers.
Hot front, full speed
seemed to come from nowhere.



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