April 18, 2016

#AllMen

the time it takes to
get ready the morning, the blank
stares and climb to the back
of the work camp
bus—what length beard and
the price of peaches

all men and diapers
all men and taxes
on the movie industry

on this day he lets his lover
sleep in and checks the charts
for any let up, any hint
as to where his grandfather went

all men disappear into html
and terms of reference replace
what his outline left

a bar stool and a quick look
to access the field—poetry
and the addressee of all men
hail all men hail

amen to the rink and pitch
filled with rules to keep the small packets
of history hitched to our belts

all men carry the load, the tablet
scored with commands, the backpack
to the outback to feed the burn; all men
play the trumpet to ward off her morning light

on the examining table, the patient does not
meet the doctor’s gaze—a hand placed there
and there and he mumbles something about his
bowel movements and the doctor leans over
to take some notes, her awareness of his
discomfort adding to the slant of her script

all men deserve better, all men deserve less
control, all men serve the other men and their
hate is spilled into the reservoir 
all men are a hypoxic feedback loop
with shells pock-marked by action
films and bleached by the internet

all men believe the anchormen on the news,
all men believe in all men

a certain efficacy that all men share
when ordering food at a restaurant

all men know how to limp their wrists

all men own the pronoun’s pronoun
all men reserve the right

tense moments over the wording of the affidavit—
this monument to the precedent, to the legal jurisprudence,
to the gavel’s symbolic weight, to all the men who line the walls

not all the time was spent in dispute—the rest was

taken to fortify and change the locks

all men spill open like a cracked egg



May 12, 2015

clickbait

sure, put it out there

the first line 

cleavage, or 

lumbersexual chic

every way you 

look, you

are caught 

by the scream

the gloss of this

trenchant bottom 

line, or

family drama

surrogate, you

sure wish all

this would make

a living, or

climax, or

transition to

origins

November 29, 2014


the myth of community

So I stepped off the stoop into
culture, expecting something
there to give and receive and
weave with the weft
and left to my own origins,
the crass concepts where I reside, 
the soil I inhaled, hush, but
such was not the case
and skin and gender and
class met me at the end of the street, 
threatened my life, sent
complaints to my third employer,
whispered in jubilant webby groups,
then erased the traces, and eased
to my side to console me.


*    *     *

November 28, 2014


swirling assessments

mobility, like a drum
beat or open sourced water
experience (stunned into being)
cyclical, transformative, interactive:
all difficult, but not

all outcomes, all relations
a reflexive gaze, bobbing
sunning in the eddies and heavy
oxygenated air (and desire
is extraneous) waves made
a bit like nudity

what is necessary? an igneous
and groundwater core
(ethics?) where you live
and its disconnect from consumption,
where you are, shuddering in syntax


*  *  *

February 12, 2013

January 8, 2013

Unidling

begin start the first
the music of care and four
women saying it again
to circle and stop

the prairie nations carrying generational
the way to the start and the eighth

to circle to stop to
turn off the tap
roots rooting further

the women don’t stop
the place and their will

the fraser, the skeena nations
will stand a circle against lines
stopped up with haste

the round the drum in
hands for a turn—
to circle a stop
and a recreation story

April 21, 2012


toponym 5

the North, a medium-tall scrub
at eye level, the other layers flowing
into and out of
the poem

but for now, the moment
is this line of willows, second-growth
awareness

burned-over areas,

Labrador tea against the thigh
and a rustle of being
scrub birch, black spruce,
listening for connection

the thin tree cover wetland
buzzes away the afternoon drowse

soaks though shoes,
holds you here

April 11, 2012


toponym 4

contingencies blend and/
or collide and the root structures
                             flex with input

the political economy
of the space is a             constant
negotiation of flow

the energy of a word’s
motion across paths
of light, water,
generosity

the name of the place is
consumed: chewed and changed,
shit on the road,
washed into a gully,
reorganized

in transition moments or/
and ecotone zones the shift is
a turn and sway and knows
nothing of revolution

the needs of this area
will be met

April 9, 2012

toponym 2

maps lose us
in their          accurate
lines, boundaries of own and
out and here
there and when it was

this separation--the gap
of space and standing
             (a glance around
              for others there too
(and love         love for
you placing yourself
all your relations
defining the next
step, the next
meal          time is land

the measures are story
the place neural
           inaccuracies scrounging for survival

April 1, 2012


Blockade 4


dawn, prescient, bulldozer      |       the flow of resources go also through our mind                                           |              cardboard boxes and broken crates on fire; three white-tails further down                                  the ditch            |               first, what family’s land               | the road, the pipe, the                             terminal, the tanker, the destined port, the profit—all going away and leaving       |                              resting crouched on the ground, feet planted, listening to the sounds of small creatures,                           the air, the rich smell of hoolhghulh powering the ravine, the trickle of water everywhere,                      the place is not numbers, the place is not yours           |         a tourniquet would seem so                      enticing too                  |               enbridging v.  :   to make a leap in logic that dismisses                            all other points of view           |        “nation-building” the minister’s claim staked          |                         what else is a 1991 Civic for              |                 named Tehwehron, named MacBlo                          Brutalist in 1993              |                  this passive act of war, this bodied word