There are days I confuse Parkinson’s with Alzheimer’s. Maybe I’ve been coming down with both. Tremulous à la San Andreas. Amnesic like a dissipated answer— the snuffing of its candle; wisps that up & frizzle to the ceiling, evanesce to merge with wafting clouds. There are days I mix up lupus with arthritis. Either way I cannot climb the steps. You spoke to me of wolves & full-moon fever. It’s lupine I recall— you giggled lunacy. I thought it just in jest. The days will com

The young tanned woman sporting Lululemon was checking me out from a distance. Sure. She was a football field away. Wore specs to align her sight. Worse than Mr. Magoo along the dock in London Fog. Where the fingers in your pocket aren’t yours. Your wallet going AWOL like a Lieutenant not coming back from evening Leave. When it came to hugs & kisses, many gave their stripes to sense the touch. You say tiger. I say cat-o’- nine-tails. Watch the tunic shroud the scars like a Ma

is useless. Spare me all the tales of your precision— either type of compass is in err. There’s always someone drafting swollen circles, someone there to offer wayward routes. Why are both poles swamped in ice? The extremes of north & south like Left & Right— either one is fascist when it's drastic. Lines that hug & kiss on the ellipse. Straight is no straighter than gay. Even in the rainbow it’s a beeline—every hive a spectrum taking flight. What we call red is green. Try it

The bards of yore lamented all the times they murmured love to demurring piths. Today they’d say it different—taking all the romance from their strophes— shredding every ticket while the numbered orbs will ping-pong at their twins, like the initial break of pool; bumper cars in neutrons of an atom—Chadwick ‘fore their time but not their sense. Horses that were flogged are now the drones in Beit Hanoun— the splatter of its rocks like slivered glass. How much smaller must they

Two wrongs can make a right and I can prove it: to tickle a burning itch is extremely soothing the fishstroke in a downpour keeps you dry interrupting Jonas Kaufmann with a yodel— a junco that emerges from the middle a sauna down in Yuma, Arizona? Will cancel each other out in terms of sweat. Like an igloo that keeps you snug in Nunavut. and stepping on your bunions— right after crucifixion? A thousand splints of Lego between yourself & the kitchen fridge, the jug of expire

It began when you were young. Told to wash your hands at dinner time— you dunked them in the mud outside the door, a wild-eyed John the Baptist, declared that they had never been as clean as they were now. Purity isn’t white— neither is it snow. The melt will take it down the grubby river—yes, even the grubs will splish & splash on a Saturday night. What else would they be up to? What we call filth is spotless. Immaculate. It’s why Mary never kept her hands in gloves. Benea

I’ve yet to see a poet on our currency. That’s not to say that Fox and Viola Desmond aren’t worthy—for they are. And a preference to the same old privileged faces on our cash. Purdy’s a pretty good choice to bump our monarch off the twenty— simply for his Service. It’s certainly the Smart thing to do. Or maybe stick his A-frame on the fifty buckaroo—inhabited by a solemn John McCrae—up to his chin in poppies—not for seeds but to remember. An Acorn under the tree with Brandi B

There’s a reason we like it dark while having sex. A lamp’s no friend of flaws. Fuck off with fluorescence. There’s a reason we call them blinds. Why you’ll don your Ray-Bans reading braille. A girl once felt your acne, you said it spoke of words. Appalachians in the snow awaiting melt. A trowel to a ‘60s popcorn ceiling. Touch comes up with ways to hear & see. Resourceful in the clutch. Our senses tell of need and never want. Water is innate but not desire. If you think th

Willard, there are rats in the basement —1971 Ben, most people would turn you away I don’t listen to a word they say They don’t know you as I do —Michael Jackson There is no fear in love —1 John 4:18 Mice are always cuter out-of-doors. The way they squeak & squirm has always given me the willies. Why I’m watching Willard I do not know. But Ben & friends have shown me that these rats would be much worse. They’ll chew you to the marrow— your wires in the wall as though it’s lic

The man who works for the city is clearly a poet. Watch him as he skirts the jagged potholes on the road. For him they are a mimicry of moon. Craters to fill with trope and not with tar. Eye him as his hose sucks all the chaff up from the sewer—an elephant at the edge of a watering hole—cognizant of predation yet awise it needs to drink. How can a behemoth be affrighted by a mouse? Look again—the Norway rat placed gently on the lawn. If it’s unworthy of love, then how can we

Please—no more poetry prompts. They’re living with the larks in la-la land. None which light a bulb for what’s been lost. Write about your very first camping trip. Sure, I’ll scrawl about the tents in فلسطين. Ones with scourge & rats. Cute as a whisker’s twitch. Torn just like a kite that’s clawed by osprey. Mine got stuck in oaks like Charlie Brown’s. Epitomize your childhood— a single, joyous image will suffice. What names do the animals call themselves? Do

You’re averse to eating tuna. Calling it “Frankenfish.” There’s a dozen different ones in your stinky tin. Fins inauspiciously flaked past recognition. My StarKist has been opened with the teeth of an electric jaw—efficient as a table saw, a lid that hangs by a strand; as a cuspid that is loose in second grade, your rocking it back & forth like grandma’s chair— the one in which she knit— until it drops in your anxious palm. Your father lost four fingers to a Rockwell—its whee

I’ve tired of saying it twice. It dilutes the gong of love. My uncle stuffed his ears with cotton balls. Not to quiet the Earth but to bear in mind the labour of those enchained. He deemed it reparation. Organized 3-on-3 at Jane & Finch. Your ex had mumbled stay & it blew the game. Like Dylan with bazookas in his mouth. The gum— not the gun. A superfluous dubble bubble. Pops as soon as you gesture for attention. Like the stone you’ve skipped along the stagnant pond. The rest

I no longer hold the door for someone else. The last time I did it made the front page. By all means, assume I’m simply tactless; void of bygone manners; absent of chivalry— when a woman’s right behind me in the torrent—my faking obliviance; dreading she’ll think it’s a ploy to get her number. The last time I was polite, I stood like an English footman, allowed 4 others to pass. Seconds can domino— throughout eternity. Faces have a quintillion combinations. As for that unfo

and flags and scraps of blue above him make regatta of the day —P.K. Page The Glass Air: Poems Selected and New I’ve read Canada will be sending POET to other worlds. Though it’d be better to launch a poet—to a planet miming ours; such as TOI- 6716 b, discovered in ’26, dubbing it Alicia instead— as a troubadour will often do, the one who took a gavel to your heart, leaving just the muse to birth the verse; its woe, its wonder, strophes of I would have adored you more if only

The Holy Land is nowhere near Jerusalem. Dear Abrahamic faiths—I am truly sorry. Your shrouds once white now claret have stamped you null & void. I get the jar of sand you’ve cached is thought to be a blessing. That you’ve waded in the Jordan, vowed to never wash again. Like the very first brush you felt from a beloved crush. The ground on which they tread— roped off in your mind with a silver plaque. No, make that gold. There are seldom second bananas that are entombed in sa

Iceland is no longer mosquito-free. When it comes to global problems, this is hardly breaking news. Maybe that’s why I found it while perusing phys.org— though how it pertains to physics I do not know. What I do know is no one loves mosquitos but the frogs. And spiders. And maybe the odd lizard here & there. I can’t imagine Iceland having frogs—their croaks from some volcano keeping me up at night. But of course, arachnids must be everywhere— like the rat & kitchen roach.

Well, maybe just one more. But only if the rocks were once a boulder and the boulder a bit of mountain. Not Everest or Olympus Mons, but the smallest one on Earth—mistaken as a hill by both the yodeller and the mole. The only thing worse than being found naked? Caught in lederhosen. I don’t mean dead —but very much alive and trudging down the slope so scarlet-faced—for which you’ll no doubt blame the sun and SPF-point-five. When does a stone become too large to be a stone?

There’s a certain way to voice it that removes all trace of doubt: I love you denotes that you’ve been chosen; out of everyone who's birthed; that I know of seasoned ardour & its heave; two clans who tug in kilts below the boughs, your name in orange plaid— the hue of a lifting sun. Your lambency aloft beyond the rain. I love you is stuck in self- importance. A smug, Earth-centric cosmos. How honoured you should be of my devotion—as though each rose a laurel —from the gar

You’re lamenting like a kvetching Jeremiah: I no longer write you love poems; say your lilt has put to shame the morning swifts; I haven’t compared your glory to a nestling’s— in that moment it takes to the sky for the very first time. Very first is quite misleading. Its wings may have burst through fissures while you slept. Then took a trial flight beneath the fleet of stars. My telescope transfixed upon the same old barren basins of the moon— until an egg which up & flut