So you’ve got to highlight the most important
Parts for those who’d like to see
Somebody here has highlighted the horizon
Canola fields erasing all our trees
The trout
You went to emergency today with a pain in your heart. Tests found no cause so you drove to the stars. You photographed a Gould fish and sent it my way. A pile of silvery trout with yellow-tinged eyes. Like you, I too know a pain near my heart. Too tired of my skin and so shallow in breath. Mouth open in hope of developing new skills — perhaps just in time to remain in this life. Eyes wide and near dry with the shock of it. For us all there’s no knowing tomorrow. That pain that you suffer really is about your heart. Which I know that you know, as do I.
wardrobe
this too-honest light through such outdated curtains
guides nightmare-wide eyes to the half open robe.
much too much black and some anxious red floral
crowding and wrinkling and escaping from wire.
scrapping in uniform doing some stilted dance
can it be all these items are playing their roles
in some weird narrative inadvertently told?
perhaps cataloging some bizarre Freudian slip
of this self that has never been known.
morning
upon awakening often
instead of enlightenment
there appears a pit
of items lost in dream stories
(or were they really lost in waking,
like keys and glasses and names and love?)
and ineffable aches in phantom
limbs which were fine reclining
but now, open eyed, know nothing
of that sturdy, long-lost, mislaid youth.
shoulder
Strapped up like some athlete
who sadly never got a run
but even so misses the play
and especially, now it’s gone,
the promise of a left shoulder
that was never owned but which
feels like was once in possession.
Now’s the ache of the fading bruise
and the itchy weary eyes which
must watch others on familiar fields
play the very same tired old game
Velveteen
This morning’s light was velveteen
In spite of last night’s troubles
Every street light peered through blinds
To illuminate dream lovers
Spare her the rhetoric she’s
World weary now, she could
Do with some silence
Instead of that sound
Barking everyone knows
It’s this way not that
While all the truly curious are
Killed by the cat
Whose paws are
Velveteen
In spite of all his troubles
Every night he peers through blinds
To spy on lamp-lit lovers
Dream lover come rescue me
Take me up take me down take me home
I’m not afraid of silence
But I don’t wanna be alone
I wanna be
Velveteen
In spite of all our troubles
Velveteen
Like all those other lovers
taper
it’s wearing off as we wear out
I wonder when they’ll factor in
the times we thrashed and lurched about
as holier ascents begin
we never tapered off from where
the memory-bells of lovers pealed
ancient flames, devil-may-care
while we still long to be revealed
