By The Edges

my hand gripped loneliness and wandered through the orchard,

watching apples fall from trees...

the wind tasted like your lips

and it swept across my face and turned back the leaves

they made laughter on your tongue

and the music showered down on me in windfalls. 

a basket for the apples 

and I'm walking around under the guild 

of aimless thoughts of you

a gathering of moments that have fallen to memory.

bound by picture frames with silent smiles 

and now I have to hold you by the edges. 

Roll My Stone Away

ain’t no sunshine through the window

ain’t no grass beneath the trees

they got no leaves on their branches

sitting by the window taking chances.

my breath upon the glass

your image makes it past, by automobile

snow tires on for wheels.

no footprints through the winter

no hand knockin’ at my door

I’ve called your voicemail before,

wasted my time to hear your sound

scatters the silence

a tactical violence.

you always find the right place to hit me

and I always fall apart.

All the men and the horses

couldn’t gather your remorses,

I’m just a man in a cave

can’t roll my stone away

can’t roll my stone away

Love Song

Let us go then, you and I

before we stop and watch the sky,

like paranoid xenophobes who believe in Cable.

Let us go, through alarmist 20/20 stories

and try to reclaim certain past half-glories

of knock-off Hilton Hotels,

and Gulf-coast restaurants with oil shells.

Stories that forecast a terrible financial year

and holiday toys that generate fear...

to confront new parents with overwhelming questions,

“Is my child safe at all?”

Oh do not ask and ignore the war

just close your eyes and walk to the store.

The paranoia that haunts the people behind closed window panes,

The paranoia that yells at the television behind the closed window panes.

Licked its tongue into the ears of each new generation

lingered in the service help on airplanes and trains,

let sink into the offspring, the words that fall from the mouths of parents,

slipping past the public schools, shouted out loud multiple times,

and seeing it was a monday morning, ran from the back of the yard

to the bottom of the pool and fell asleep.

And there has been plenty of time

for the paranoia that pushes on the window panes

and creeps along the street.

there has been plenty of time to plot your bombs for the faces that you hate.

and time to murder and time to flee

plenty of time to take my life from me.

And time for all the hatred of the quiet hours

to rise and fall and break your plate,

time for felling trees and salting earth

and yet no time for peace or regret

but for another pause to place a bet

before the rapping of you and me.

From the rooms the call girls come and go,

collecting unemployment, though.

And there will be time to wonder about the answer for the cancer.

But no strength to turn back and ascend the stair,

with chemo thinning my head of hair.

They will say, “Oh my how he’s getting thin,” and

“Can’t believe he thinks he’s still gonna win.”

My morning jacket, straight, and locked, the IV

in my trigger hand cocked.

Do I dare

disturb the nurse?

            With each minute passing there is time

            to witness all my progress slowly reverse.

For I have known them all, already

all the scars and scrapes and burns.

I have measured out my life waiting for my turn.

I know the voices in the bathroom mirror

lying beneath the visions of a smile in a picture,

painted a while back, but becoming clearer.

And I have known the prizes already, known them all -

prizes on which we fix our narrow gaze,

and when I am blind and repeating all the words, them all.

When I am kneeling before the toilet in a bathroom stall,

then where should I begin,

to clean up the upchucked entrails of all my meals,

perhaps by chasing individual dreams on wheels.

And I have known the arms already, known them all -

arms nuclear, biological or concealed

(but in certain circles tight, as plain as light)

Is it briefing the press

that makes me so digress?

Arms that get marched along the street, in the cold war heat,

that bloom red and orange flashes on the screen.

            And then did you see it?

            And how long can it be?

Shall I say, that I have gone to war with love in my heart

and simply shined my shoes and played my part?

I should have left my gun beside my head

and shattered the silence of the neighbours’ bed.

And the afternoons, the evenings interrupted violently

smoothed over by politics

blanketed with stars and stripes

closed casket lays in state, in front of you and me.

Should I, after the generals, the press, the public and the flowers,

send lady Justice to feast on military powers?

From the rooms the call girls come and go,

collecting unemployment, though.

But though I have searched and asked and questioned and prayed,

and seen the lives of peasants falsely portrayed -

I am no hero - and there is no great platter.

I have seen the crystal ball of our future shatter,

and I have seen the committee act out charades

and in short, I was betrayed.

 And would it have been profitable at all,

after the wars, the famines, the killer bee.

Living underneath mosquito nets and pricing antidotes for you and me.

Would it have been worth it

to have scarred the face that wears a smile

to blow giant radioactive holes in the universe

and fill them with questions, removed, dismantled and buried.

To say: “I survived, but I feel as though I died. Come back to tell you the soothsayer lied.”

No note left behind to say,

“that is not what I meant at all, not at all.”

NO! I am not a savior, nor was meant to be.

I am a servant, one that was made to

disrupt the food supply, slow the progress of you.

Advise the Prime Minister, no doubt an ignorant fool.

Bound and gagged and forced into use,

segregated, exploited, no statue to get loose.

I grow old, I grow old,

I shall lose my CPP to corporate mould.

Shall I use the rest of my conscience to flee

I shall go AWOL and make my speeches free.

I shall show you where my brothers died upon the beach,

I still hear them screaming each to each.

They do not think I will scream for them.

I have seen them riding in planes as silent as the clouds

climbing through blue skies painted black.

When prevailing winds blow orange flames across my back.

We have lingered long in forgotten pages

of our diary, 

until human hands grab us and set us free.

Why I like typewriters

What can I say, I like typewriters. I like feeding it pages and hearing the clicks and creaks of its movement and the punch of its keys. I like seeing a stack of my first draft physically continue to rise because it's sitting next to the typewriter. It's not lost in the some electronic world of binary code, dependant on expensive equipment and a stable electrical supply to access.

Look no further, it's on the table right in front of you! Just be sure to keep the open flames away from it.

If I was cynical I could boil down my love of typewriters to some form of hipster bullshit. Like fedoras. People always ask my why I'd put myself through such a task of writing a novel on a typewriter, when I could just use a computer. I could tell them that every writer has a method for how they write. Hemingway wrote standing up on a typewriter, Capote wrote lying down on a sofa with a pen and yellow legal pads, and Annie Proulx begins long-hand before switching to a computer. Everybody has their method. (As for myself, I write all first drafts of any project - novel, short story, poem, whatever - on my typewriter, then transfer them to my computer for editing.)

My reasons are simple. First, I feel that writing on a computer directs my attention to how a story looks, rather than what it's made of. In other words, I spend more time on presentation than substance. Whether it's the constant back-spacing, or ignited rage at the red underline, I find computers to be distracting during the creative process of the first draft.

With a typewriter, I don't worry about mistakes or typos because there isn't an easy way to fix them, so I don't worry about them until editing time. I believe this allows my train of thought to flow more easily. And the longer I can maintain that flow, or "juiciness", the more productive I am. This also allows me to maintain focus on my story and its details, rather than the details of font size, save as, and et-cetera.

Typing on a typewriter is like playing a musical instrument along to a metronome. The sound the keys punching paper through the ribbon sounds like the tick-talk of keeping time. In a sense, the sounds the keys make sort of help keep the tempo of your thoughts as you get them out onto the page.

My second reason relates to editing and crafting a finished product. I'll admit, I'm a writer, not an editor. My strength is in the creative process, not in revision. But I want to improve. And typing on the typewriter helps with this. Because you can't fix mistakes with a typewriter, as I've already said, the first drafts are littered with typos. Due to this, after I've arrived at a first draft, I then retype, word-for-word, the entire story onto a computer, where editing is easier.

This forces me to concentrate on each and every character I've typed into the story. From there, I make a series of additions and subtractions in the formation of second or third drafts until I'm happy with the story.

Typewriters might be old school, but I've found writing a story in this way really helps smooth out the process of creating the story, and sharpens my editing skills. What the hell, I'll feed a little paper for that!

America (2011)

America I’ve given it my all and you left me with nothing.

America five-hundred dollars credit, September 30, 2011.

I can’t afford my own peace of mind.

America when will you let me take off my clothes?

When will you be empathetic?

Will you ever stop sending our best eggs to die in deserts

and middle eastern streets?

America what plans are you concocting while we sleep?

I won’t let my emotional life be run by your atomic bomb.

America I feel sentimental about the West Memphis Three.

I studied Castro in school and downloaded music and I’m not sorry.

You should have caught me abusing Napster.

America I’ve checked into Hotel California.

America live fast die fun.

Forever young.

America when will you stop funding the human wars?

America free Tookie Williams.

America save the Arab-Americans.

America Mumia Abu-Jamal must not die.

America WE ARE TROY DAVIS.

America why are all your hospitals so full of tears?

When will you be worthy of your millions uninsured?

Leave my Medicare alone.

Go fuck yourself with your HMOs.

I just bought myself a gun so I can feel safe in my bedroom.

America look who’s wearing the strap-on.

America this is freedom of expression.

My ambition is to write despite how hard you make it to keep a pen.

America this continues to be serious.

It’s serious on the news in the streets in the schools in the churches.

Everybody thinks this is serious except for YOU America!

They mean food when their stomachs growl.

They mean medicine when their coughs do the talking.

They’re trying to speak when they go quiet.

America are you paying attention?

America you’re becoming quite greedy.

ME wants Big Oil.

ME like skyscraper and concrete landscapes.

ME have foreign Tar-Sand dreams.

America China is still rising against us.

America you don’t know who to go to war with.

America it’s them bad Terrorists. Them Terrorists and them Freedom Fighters.

Them Terrorists wants to blow us up again. Them Terrorists fly our planes.

Them Terrorists is suicidal and crazy. He wants to blow us up with envelopes

out our own mail boxes.

America all that’s left in Oklahoma is the Tree.

America but it is you and I who are still perfect.

America I am Canadian and this is the view I get from the television set.

America that wasn’t icing sugar you used to sweeten the Winnipeg sky in 1953.

America when will you fuck off and let me be?

America when I was eighteen years old I was watching the news with my mother and it showed us images of kids running out of their school with their hands held to the back of their heads and they were following the police officers while guns were firing and the injured kid crawled across the library floor and dangled outside the window for all the cameras to see and still inside were two kids with guns and bombs and trench coats who walked around their school and killed all the jocks they could shoot and then they killed themselves.

Then there was Virginia Tech.

America then ten more innocent holes in the Beltway.

America you still don’t understand what happened to Ron Kovic when he came home.

The Old Man can’t fish in the Gulf of Mexico.

America my name is Forrest Forrest Gump and people call me Forrest Gump.

America shit happens.

America I’m imagining there’s no heaven and I like what I see.

I won’t find your Jesus until I’m ready.

I believe I’ll finally find Neverland.

America I’m a super freak I’m super freaky.

America I’m going to keep on rockin’ in the free world.

America how many times will you turn your head and pretend you just don’t see?

America the answer is blowing in the wind.

Easy Rider.

Freedom Writer.

America I found Forrester and he’s pissed

because nobody remembers his book

because you took all the books out all the libraries and you closed the libraries.

America for a fisher of men you’ve thrown many of us back.

America this is the view through Garry Gilmour’s eyes.

America is it becoming clear?

I didn’t say anything America.

...Nevermind.

One Morning in September

The first thing that people noticed was how low the plane was flying, and then how fast. Every news crew in the country had their cameras pointing at the already smoking North Tower. Sirens bounced off the exteriors of the buildings lining Wall Street, the sounds of people expressing their shock and awe became almost ambient noise as panic and uncertainly began to take hold of the fearful people scattering on the streets below. Many watched the destruction through the lenses of their video cameras, unsure of what they were seeing unfold, but certain they would want to remember.

The nation was watching and wondering why these two staples of the New York City skyline were being attacked. Thick black smoke continued to escape through the sides of the North Tower. Cameras rolling. People running away from the building but unable to take their eyes of off it. A city of Salems and Lots looking back and running scared. Then the cameras saw the plane and it hung low in the sky, too low in the sky, and was blasting through the air with speed. People would note the roar of the engine screaming mere meters above their heads. Police and fire crews responding. The authorities begin to climb the stairs.

Five hundred yards away from the North Tower, Ben is watching through his camera lens at the surprising and paralyzing moment thrust upon his morning view. Ben was thirty-five stories up and like many in high rises that morning, was wondering if his building was next. With a shaky hand, he panned his camera across the large smoking hole in the North Tower, followed the trails of smoke up toward where it collected and formed a giant blur at the roof. Smoke pouring out the windows, smoke pouring out over the Hudson River. The practicing New York Giants saw the smoke rising from lower Manhattan and with the same curiosity as Ben, some of them grabbed their cameras and began to tape whatever was happening. Every movie camera in the tri-state area was trying to get this on tape. Spectacle doesn’t quite say it. The second plane was flying low in the sky. Air traffic controllers watched helplessly as the plane abandoned its flight plan right before their eyes.

In the clarity of hindsight you would have thought more people in the towers would have brought parachutes with them to work especially those who worked on the upper floors. Instead of watching helplessly as people flung themselves to their deaths to escape the smoke and flames, Ben’s camera would have seen a rainbow of parachutes blossom through the smoky sky, navigating their wearer’s way to safety.

Instead there were arms waving white flags and people desperately gesticulating in a vain attempt to call the world’s attention to the people still trapped inside. There were arms flailing and legs kicking out for the support that wasn’t there. There were bodies that sounded like sacks of cement when they hit the earth.

The streets were frantic. Police, Fire, EMS workers scrambled to assist. Smoke pouring out over the Hudson, blurring the eyes of Lady Liberty. People screaming. People standing with their mouths agape hoping the right words to say would crawl voluntarily from their mouths so they wouldn’t have to think.

A blur of cellular phones pointed at the smoking North Tower.

The plane was closing in. Faster. Roaring. Thunder sweeps across the streets of lower Manhattan mixing with the whirlpool of sirens, horns, screams and camera flashes. Annie Leibowitz aims her camera through the windows of her twenty-third street loft. Pictures go in her book of significance.

A man on the one hundredth floor has stopped waving his flag. He looks through the smoke and sees his children and the life they would go on to have without him. Below the people look like ants scrambling away from an unwanted footstep, scrambling for safety, scrambling to heal. Scrambling. His shadow grew as he approached the sidewalk.

Planes in the sky check in with the towers. The men in charge of national air traffic scratch their heads when repeated communication with United 93 go unanswered. Clear skies all across the country today. Nothing to worry about. Boss Man’s famous last words as he left the control room for the coffee room. Coming back to a view to chaos. The world imploding. Plane flies low. Roars. Screams. Bulge of orange flames appears a second after. A firey hole punched in the steel and glass skyline. Clear blue skies. Nothing to worry about. Smoke columns visible from outer space. Masking liberty island.

Twin Towers are burning like candles on the birthday cake of a new world priority. Beware. My suitcase means something to you. You should find my stare menacing. Why are you ignoring me? You won’t be doing that for long.

The towers burn like candles.For an hour the Towers burn and Ben’s camera records the entire thing. The sirens, the screams, the running, the yelling, the heroes, the collapse.

A people’s redemption in the hands of the heroes who crawled through rubble and pulled out angels. The shadow of a solitary fireman quietly taking stock in silhouette becomes a symbol of recovery efforts to rise again. Falling Man frozen in the shutter of a stranger becomes the symbol of the thousands missing, and efforts to name those without names.

About Gravity

I built the city when I first laid eyes upon it.

I made this chair when I sat down on it.

I killed you when I saw you already lifeless in the grass

beneath the apple tree that taught me about gravity.

Paint a rainbow when you opened my eyes.

Walked through the rest of my life expecting a big surprise.

Fell through the traps I found in picture frames.

Became the catalyst to my own decay.

I saw hellos when I first heard your good-byes.

Felt the tears of my laughter and the joys of my sorrow.

Shut my mouth and watched my open palm shake while it did the talking.

I do my best running when I'm faced with walking.

Bum a cigarette from a stranger,tell a line to feed a friend.

I saw a tall tree, you saw the opportunity to fall.

You dressed for winter like you didn't notice the summer at all.

We built this island when we stopped to see the sea.

Right in front of us while we slept way up in the apple tree

that taught us about gravity.