the ground floor archive

From 2004 and 2005...




Hog-wild-fire-cracker-jack-in-the-box-spring-fever-pitch-black-
dog closes in.
A mouth opens in the hedge
and swallows the cat whole.
The pup comes up short,
twists her head to an impossible degree, then
zig-zags after a blue butterfly.


JH








Blood is running its own race, a marathon
through veins and arteries pumped by heart and lungs
and chased by the beast in relentless pursuit.
Cresting the last hill, I curse my sorry state
and vow that if I survive I will change.
I collapse. I can hear the beast breathing next to me.


SG






Makuso

When I close my eyes I see
the blue scattered map of flax on the hillside.

The past behind you, put it aside,
think of the training you are about to do.
Think of the training you have done,
put it aside, return to the world.

Till I close my eyes and the blue, blue, trailing,
the wind trailing through the blue flowers,
the wind breathes through my eyes
the life you have done
the new world you will open to.


ME
(In Makuso, karate students close their eyes and breathe in silence for a time, before and after training.)





Blue Girl

That brief field of blue on the hillside. I love those flowers
that only last the morning until colour cowers.

For the weeks of young summer
the sky lives in these clouds of blue, bees must live there too, and
it all makes me face losing it all. By the time I pass
the hillside, my mind moves to green regret.

Now I remember a moment, I wasn’t even there, but you told me
about the morning Rachel climbed the field. She entered the blue
while you parked below and watched. Earthbound, I guess. I feel
heat ripples rise from the hood. The engine ticks as it cools, confused with cicada.
No radio, just wind in stiff grass.
She brought down a fistful of sky in her hand.
It’s a dewdrop world, but I think of Rachel in the flowers on the hillside
and I love the blue flowers even more.


WPO
July 2004







Ocean-eyed merchild,
I remember the queasy pleasure
of you
practicing tumble turns
inside me.


JH








clothing has bred
more clothing
books more books
the plastic armies of the damned
conquer the living room floor
drifts of dishes, papers,
lists, laundry, longing
a little fog of mind
creeps round the house
oh hurricane
come soon


ME







Shit-faced in Saskatchewan I sit
with my best friend in the whole world—me.
I am brutally honest with myself
so I hate me more than I love her.
I can live with that but not with her.
Think I’ll slither off to Alberta


SG







Fifty Andy Warhols
leaned out of some dreamish dyptich,
lips moving, no sound.
“Strange angels,” I said. “I can’t hear you.”
They smiled weirdly/wanly/thinly and asked
if I’d like some Campbell’s soup.


JH








After Marina's Bridge

The man falls from the bridge after all
the weight of his arms and legs pulling
the spirit down, downstream past the stages
of flotsam, jetsam, sticks, leaves, frogskin shed
fallen leaves of his age and youth.

But the stream slows into a broad pool, unexpected
where the current rises into shallows containing
all the debris of his past and everyone
where all the missed chances turn in simple currents.

All he has to do is reach out and grab them
and they haul back to the light.


WPO








A mile down the road
your familiar waited.
Feigning affection,
she wove an invisible cat’s cradle
around my ankles. Spell-bound,
I had no choice but to turn back.


JH







arching Arabian head of the hot tap
steams and prances
my father’s rack and drainer
surrey cart cantering through the dishes


ME








in a thunderous whisper
the muse declared
that a rhyme
is worth but a mere 10 cents.
Or is it more
like 30 pieces of silver?


SG









Sunday

In the streaming covenant of light
hawk waits, an open eye.
What do I know?
That something above the world
listens to our beseeching?
No.
That an ear inside the world can hear us?
Or—a stone in the shape of an ear
that we can speak to,
and the speaking shapes us.
Or only this:
light opens our eye.
Enough.


ME






"What you need," she said, "is a sign."
"A sign," I said, "Yeah, a sign would be good."
And just then (I swear to God) a keyhole appeared in the grey gauze of the evening
with the luminous eye of the spying sun pressed to it. Oh man, we laughed, and in that
moment I was so happy I believed in Heaven on Earth, at least.


JH








watch me now—this will be quick
here you are and now you are there.
It happens that fast.
now you can rewind and watch this again
but you can’t do it forever.


SG







At 35,000 feet you flirt
with a dark-eyed beauty
who offers you peanuts and completeness.

No surprise.
So why are you
an exclamation point in water vapor
on the flimsy airmail paper sky?


JH







You fell asleep so fast you must be dreaming of running.
Your legs jud-judder, interval training through the dark.
On your mind's porch in my pyjamas
I whisper, Peter! Come in! it’s past your bedtime!


ME








A sentry in full iridescent panoply,
armor of steel-gray and midnight black plumage,
sits on the weathered fence post
guarding the stock-waterer.
It barks a warning to the approaching quadruped.

Yielding to a higher authority
and to a natural order based not on mass,
the dappled gray retreats and returns
to its station grazing.


SG







Work makes a shell of dark air round my head
one white eye stares back at me all day

Night comes stalking in, tail twitching,
I am still here. Pounce. Turn out the light.


ME








LAND

In a peaceful field near Morley, Alberta, the Indian
paintbrushes attacked by the wind-a force
trying to break the treaty between plants and earth:
we must hold on to each other—it’s the only way to survive.
A noise, but there is nothing.
It is quiet here, has been for well over a 100 years,
silent but for the wind that blows
sometimes loud like the tireless call of a ghostly bugler,
sometimes soft like the haunting hymn of a cedar flute
sometimes ominous like the scratching of a feathered pen over parchment.
The wind has been blowing here for as long
as there have been people to tell its story. Maybe longer.
A Mohawk oil tanker charges up the dusty road and raises a dark cloud
that settles and blankets the field in its sooty history.


SG







Someone wanting somewhere now! goes
BLAM
and the black & yellow checkerboard,
dead end road sign,
upended game gone oh so wrong, reels
as each hit opens an astonished little mouth, steel lips pursed,
gasping in the dry wind.

Starlings rise fast and fan out like shot,
a spray of holes in a blue wall.


JH








In the lizard’s tank
the crickets sing
for they’re supper.

Will wants to sleep
with us tonight.


ME









JOURNEY OF FOUR

A simple thought rolled in
from somewhere out on the Pacific
where it had been turning on itself,
churning like a young hurricane, yearning to form.
It moved south, bypassing littoral cities, then bravely ventured east.
No highways, it said. No towns, no paths, no trails. And no signs.
Just ancient trees and wildness; rocks and rivers and streams;
maybe a mysterious meadow, wildflowers, a grizzly or a raven.
It puffed as it climbed each mountain range
but found new strength and verve upon descending their eastern slopes.
Arriving at the Bow River, it took the plunge
and boldly swam downstream alongside formidable swimmers,
undeterred by their elegance.
Exhausted, it took a rest in this last line.


SG






Lost glasses
world recedes into rumour
anybody home?


ME









Will I never learn?

I must stop drinking Molotov cocktails with you
no matter how lovely the paper umbrellas.


JH







This late day, this evening,
bitter boiled-bark blazing end of day
bonfire of the dead leaves the underfoot
untangling unclinging remnants
scissor-snipped paper hags
parchment-skinned, flayed,
leave them riding downwind into snow.


ME







I won’t be home this morning.
I’ll be at a spot just east of here
where a pretentious little creek spreads and divides itself,
then cascades down a rocky hillside,
creating tiny waterfalls with delusions of grandeur,
with the power to arrest the eye and release the soul.
If anyone calls, I’ve gone to church.


SG






Gloom, cold-pressed into a single sheet of paper.
A slight crease side to side. Sky over. Earth under.
A slapdash scrawl of willow across the bottom third.
Broken snow fence tallies each bleak day.


JH







Haiku Nov 21

Sunday coffee shop.
His girlfriend with the round face
reads the wallpaper.


WPO