Monetize

Now, I’d tell you the truth,

But the thing is, the Truth

Doesn’t pay much these days,

Really.

 

 

Now I like this whole scene

Where you’re Feeling and Bleeding,

But how do you sell it,

Really?

 

 

What’s the price on Sublime?

The markup on sunsets?

I mean, everyone Transcends,

Really.

 

 

‘Cause if you’re not speaking

Passion to Profit and

Profit to Power,

Then what are you saying

 

Really?

Ocean Haiku

Looking out to sea

Our dreams roam over the waves

Calling each to each

 

 

Lighthouse shines a path;

Dark and frigid dreams of brine

Swirl beneath our feet

 

 

All that lies beneath:

Ocean minds, sunken lives

Souls who’ve lost the sky

 

 

Ships which ruled the waves

Submerged, seek now lightless depths

Of fallen empires

At Winter’s End

Winter is gone and I am spent.

Winter is gone and has left me with nothing: no strategy, no artifice, no clever thoughts or words of fire.

Spring comes in its victory; Spring comes and it welcomes her heroes, laughing.

Children play and old men ponder; lovers stroll and passions bloom through things deep, ecstatic, and wondrous.

For this moment, I gave all.

I paid its price: , in darkness, in doubt,  in empty nights and bitter dawns, in frost, in fear, in frozen dreams and cold despair.

The arrival of Spring is paid for with hope; I gave it my light, now between us is nothing.

Retire The Side

When I raise my arm,

I wrench the moment away from you;

I see the need to strike

 

To split through time,

To dare the chance

That you will fly above the diamond’s shine

 

And I will throw down the judgement line,

Waiting for the call,

Waiting for the insurrection of the dust to rise

 

Waiting for this rundown, dugout rebellion,

A triple-strike shadow looming wide

Tight, tense, knowing

 

All words fail when I see the sign,

For this fate, this moment

Is when I retire the side

Arrival At The Finland Station

A snowflake begins

As a white-laced weave of dreams

 

And dies

On the cold stones of the station square

 

Steel tracks

Lay a path cold as fate

 

Into a country of memories,

Exile and bitter words

 

Love is precious; so precious, it must be rationed

And we must not allow it to be stolen

 

By these grey skies,

Their glacial breaths

 

Rise up, brothers,

Rise up from your Siberian silence

 

Lonely is the rifle

Sitting squarely in still hands

 

Lonely is the certainty

Which comes at dream’s end

 

With resolve,

Blood and the body politic

 

That cold, dreadful compromise

Which is the mind of a Bolshevik.

Aquinas

It is hard to refute the stars

Or summer

Or love.

 

It is hard to remain unmoved,

Even in the ecstasies of contemplation,

When we are dancing outside your door.

 

When we return

To love and lose upon sacred grounds

When you are sleeping.

 

For I am a pagan

And I seek the perfect moment

When you will be overcome.

 

Until then, I will dance this festival,

For when the night comes,

I will have no need of your irrefutable proofs.

My Hometown

I return to this place as to an unfinished conversation.

You know my heart; you know we left things unsaid.

We never settled on the meaning of all those skies…

And you still have to answer for all those nights, those passions, those unexplained and thrilling secrets…

And as your streets are all stories and my steps are the telling, we can walk back through our days together.

And you can tell me how we keep going over the same sunsets, the same glances, the same dreams…

But I feel I am owed your concrete narrations, your downtown confessions…

At Day’s End

At day’s end, come, fall here beside me.

For you come home from the world; your scent is of ozone, harsh wind, and smoke.

For the city rose up all around you, cold and hard rock garden.

And you wove joys and lives and fates within it.

And above you in the sky, a point upon which wheeled the cosmos; your moment, your brilliance, your star…

And through a day of burning, where you sang, confessed, gave all of yourself and fell into dark…

…you come home and sink into my love, this light which remains, a bright star of promise in the heart of night

Courage

“it couldn’t come at a worse time”–Gord Downey

For when the moment beckons.

For when you are faced with the page, or the word, or the song, or the silence and it demands the blood which is its due.

And before you is all or nothing, everything…and the hardest questions,the heaviest price, asking only all of what you have…

For when the moment needs an answer and either you burst forth with shining eyes and ragged breath, burning desperate blood and blazing, blazing…

Or fade away, as daylight fades faintly out into the pool of night, until all that remains is spent light and wasted breath.

For when you decide what it truly means to live

When The Storm Comes

It is when the storm comes that a moment is given, a moment for heart and breath to pause, a moment when shadows and souls become the city and its sunshine congress suspends.

A moment…consider it: a moment as it turns, a glance given to the storm, a heartbeat, calculation and haste; anticipate what this may mean.

I became myself in the storm and lived only for that; raindrops cool and desperate on my skin, racing through cold and thrill and daring it, all! My loves, my hopes, my dreaming, daring the storm to take it before shelter could be found.