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Alberta
Alberta
Oh, I love you Alberta
Big sky beautiful you, strong woman, ruff and soft soft-blue,
I’m sitting right in the middle of miles of you
High on my ponderosa pony
Saddle smooth and sexy beneath me,
I want to ride the range of your possibility
I’m Alberta bound baby; hear the silence of your immensity
I want to touch the horizon of your immeasurable light
Ride the westerly wind of your raven flight
Pow
Pow Wow
Let’s go
Golden trail. Light sinks, just west of highway 22
As me and mini gallop wild-west to the crest of you
Ah! Your light stops us in our horseshoe tracks in awe
Even your shadows fall gold – alchemist maw
In the background you’re a capella sky that impossible colour
It would seem, beyond,
Beneath me ponderosa pony ponders – amber dream
Find a feather
Find a feather
There’s something ancient about you,
buried deep in your badland bones
Hoodoo voodoo queen,
your heavenly body sings aurora high notes –
flood lights,
I ignite - this night - firefly rare
I am tongue tied, moonified,
I am sanctified, satisfied as a studified mare
By your light – Oh Alberta, your light turns me on –
Bar Bonbon
My big horse Mini, is of course,
all a’ whinny, all a shimmy beneath me, over you
Oh yeah,
I want to drink from your milky-way river
I want to bucking-bronc scream from your highest peak
Mount Columbia 13,000 feet
Hey lucky stars up there…thanks for birthing me here…
Certified Albertafied – Grade A Canadian girl
I fell for you as a kid
Stubbed my toes on your gopher holes
Shucked the pearl from your prairie oyster, witnessed first-time eyes of newborn foals, picked whole bouquets of full rushes for my mother, played hide-n-seek between jails and hails and bales of hay like none other, like every other, tumbling tumbleweed
Looked into the forbidden eyes of grizzly, bare
Alberta bound baby,
stars fall in the mischief of your eyes as we drop off
Like late season flies,
or crab-apples wind plucked from their branches
And when we rise, in the morning,
ad manum from more
You Chinook arch above the foothill floor,
merge and diverge, animal to the core
Through dawn’s early dew,
we roll against the earth moving earth
Like a couple of crazy coyotes,
howling with instinct
Half wrangling, half untangling –
sliding across the slippery Prairie grass
Cacophonous, as one,
in the path of your bright morn-light stream
Cream all buttermilk,
pussy willows and crocuses as we stream-steam
Black gold. Light crude.
You’ve got gas- it’s nasty
It’s natural.
It’s rude
It’s our earth
Our drinking water.
Saddle up ponderosa pony
Pow
Pow Wow
Let’s go
I turn –
And O no, I smell winter in the air
Let’s get home before she snaps her snare
Gotta put the plastic on the windows
Suddenly it’s freezing; my skin is peeling off my face
My only prayer is thermal underwear
Get me out of this hideous place
Alberta, you’re a brutal hard uncompromising crone
And I hate you and I want to leave you,
live somewhere else that’s warm, I moan
And just when I’m ready to throw in the bone,
I smell my first lilac of spring breath –
buzzing bees swarm bring honeycomb
And that’s when I know, these Buffalo plains,
they’re home
Big sky beautiful you
Strong woman in the ruff, oh yeah, of blue
Taken from the CD, Re:Cord.
Ma and Tight Corners
Ma and Tight Corners
It was a turquoise
1957 Chevy
with the truck engine.
And Ma would drive that old jalopy
around corners, hell bent
like a Formula One demon on speed,
and she’d yell, Hang on!
We’d be in the back seat
changing from our school clothes
into our brownie uniforms,
and she’d take the corner
with a fighting spirit, on two wheels,
and we’d hang onto the seats
for dear life, gripping with our fingertips
till our lips turned psych ward white,
and then both car doors on one side
would fly open,
no holy shit handles
we’d hang on to that front seat
with the fake fur seat-covers
so we didn’t go flying out…
…and then the corner would be over
and the heavy ’57 Chevy doors
would come flying shut.
Bang!
Bang!
And we’d go back to changing our clothes
and eating our Kentucky Fried Chicken
right out of the barrel, like pros,
finger lickin’ good; before seat belts,
and car seats and sun block and water wings.
Way back when they’d give us
matches to play with
and guns to shoot the bottles
lined up on the fence
for fun.
Back when you could ride without a helmet,
feel the wind in your hair.
Because of Ma
I’ve never been afraid
of the dark. She taught
me how to stay on my toes,
how to dance with danger.
And she’s funny. Damn,
she’s funny. Always
makes me laugh.
Sometimes
it scares me
when I think
I might be
exactly
like her.
Taken from the book, Autopsy of a Turvy World.
Bridge of your Ghost
Bridge of your Ghost
Today, I came to visit the bridge of your ghost
like a monument built over mortality
and the weeds and the flowers
grow below the solid line, like capsized dreams.
And I came to the water’s edge
where they left you face down
in the mud,
drowned and clubbed to death.
When I was down there
the groundskeeper came by,
to say a mother duck
laid her eggs just inches from where
they left your life behind
for less than a song.
Underneath the wooden bridge—
what the hell went wrong, all graffiti
skulls and half-sprayed words
under there, on the cement wall
pylon beside the place
where they kicked and you crawled—
I sing to you.
I sing to you
a lullaby—sense of senselessness
fills up in hollow blue hue questioning why,
why you?
Under a noisy wooden bridge
planks and beams shudder and quake,
above my head, rush-hour retreads, snakes
over.
I take digital vigil snaps
of your beautiful imaginary body,
invisible outline wraps
around the tide here still
like a flower, a water flower
where you laid to rest
your final breath, and I can hear you
here, beg for mercy
I can hear you here
clear as spiritual bells
ring in a bowl.
Past midnight, a meteorite,
you write prayers across the sky.
I want you to know, I sing to you
in praise, and I hope you might hear me
as the night heard you cry,
through the wooden bridge
above, like a racket, rattle dust overhead.
Was it heaven you thought you heard
above you, like a calling
overhead circling like vulture-angels’ tell-tale
tattle, and the herring in the water still
and the heron’s priested shore,
and the gates open above the bridge
to the other side
where you might live again?
Gates where you might live again
in your teenaged body like a long note
of stolen youth and eyes of naked wonder,
body unlocked to love
and all the births you might’ve had.
The streets grow quiet
and the ducks brood on their eggs
and all that remains of life
is death and memory and ghosts and my song
humming
still humming along—
Today, I came to visit the bridge of your ghost
where people cross everyday
on their way in and out of their lives
en route over bones, sticks and stones
cockle shells, easy ivy over.
The sacrifice of a flower
and a heron and a weed and a clam
and a blackberry bush, and a final hour.
Crow calls to me
and I try to understand
without meaning.
Reason is a name on a gravestone
I once saw. Light breaks
and when does hatred rest—
and the wash of excitement and the rush of relief
and the disbelief
that they actually killed you
with sticks and stones,
and they did break your teenaged bones
and their names will always hurt me.
Taken from the book, Autopsy of a Turvy World.
O Hail Thee Mighty Cabby
O Hail Thee Mighty Cabby
Hail cab O Holy light blinking
beacon on broken night CABBY
Hail to thee mine chariot
into the San Francisco night
O mighty one, blinking cab
holy night coming toward me on this broken night
unforgiving and destructive
hail to thee, blithe spirit
bird thou never wert
hail O thee for me
radiant illuminatrix in all being over there
circle whose circumference is nowhere
and whose centre is everywhere
pick me up and take me into the broken night
and fix it, and fix it
and fix it, and fix it
what is a broken night?
down the crazy inclines of the cities
spilling sight
twelve gold moons are glowing in the heat of holy love
chariot driving CABBY
take me
and pick me up
I said take me, I said pick me up
take me I’m yours
O mighty infinite CABBY
pick me up and take me where I’m going
I’m close enough to the tenderloin to get marinated
I said, I’m close enough to the tenderloin to get marinated
I said, I’m close enough to the tenderloin to get marinated
and on this crazy heat hold night you’re being serenaded
by me, holy night light CABBY
pull over to the curb of me sweet sideswiper of the supreme
and pick me up and meter me
and meter me
and meter me
O bliss CABBY
holy light blinking Signum dei
beacon on a broken night
pray I, to thee, mine creator chariot guide
mine blinking benevolent mighty righteous-one cosmic ride
hail O thee for me divine deity
and take me into the night my blinking baby
and drive me home
and drive me home
and drive me all the way home
through the broken night
O holy love beacon blinking one!
Taken from the CD, sweet taste of lightning.
Crow Fusion
Crow Fusion
Crow hanging upside-down
Noosed by her eerie feet
Wings coven wrong way ‘round
Rigor mortis
In a second degree, delete
Calling me
Through the mid-summer fusion-heat
From the crumbling shambles of a gang house porch
Through the silent shadows of the street lamp torch
The incorporeal corpse
Was calling me
Hanging upside-down
Calling me
To cut her down
To set her free
To give her death some dignity
So
I cast a spell on the gatekeeper key
Used trickster power of crow to aid me
To tame the frothing guard-dog fangs
Chained pit bull to the criminal gangs, haunt
And then
I crept black cat to the crow-cry-crypt
Up the creaking stairs I silent spirit-slipped
And there
I cut lynched crow-woman down
And I carried her home
To my lair with no sound
As a poem in my pocket, in my arms a ghostly child
Unjustly defiled, in a veil of
Black feathers hallowy-wet
Searching for light, that night
I met, a crow who called thru curse’d-blight
And who,
I given taxied Rhea-graven
En route to her funeral flight
I hung crow-woman aloft my altar
Ebony nib pointing down, and I prayed
And the crow started to grow inside my ever-wavering room
And the shadow flexed and the marring flayed
Crow-ghost spreading breath-black wing, death-black wing
And beginning to moan
Of the murder of crow
Murder of Crow
Tearing-wet bleak-blue feathers
Touched by the fingertip of Buddha, together
Our mourning moved down the broken body to the crown
Of the clown-cawing-cry
Down the silky body to the tip of the bleak dark eye
Where the sound screamed, and screamed, and screamed
And the, died
Down
Scraping
Tears fell drop by drop
Scorching-wet-sorrow
Memento mori ’morrow
Onto the altar’s cloudless ground
It rained
And it rained
And it –
At daybreak I took crow-woman
To the secret groves where I gave her back to the earth
Buried in crow graveyard closest to birth
And all the crows came dressed in black
Ghosts of crows and crows still living
And they flew around my head like a Hitchcock halo
Of screaming thorns
Clacking and crowing and
Screaming their thank-filled song
They carried me
They carried me
They carried me,
Along
On a beautiful kind of crow carrion blue
Indigo
Taken from the CD, sweet taste of lightning.