Broken 

The Implicate Muse and the infinite boxes

Driving t   hr   ou gh  colou     r

This moving vehicle

sweeps me through time

so I am nothing

but a smear

on the texture of

creation

I yearn for rhythms

other than technological

What are they?

Variations of Light.

Green is the

colour of

MmMmMmMmMmMmMmMmMmMmemory

the tranzlucent

chlorophyll of

longing

blue curls under

every impulse as

oceans winkle salt

from

tears

clouds nudge

the face of

a

I

r

white whispers  on

elusive   tenderness

yellow shades the

night from

perpetual dreaming

~ a sunflower

in the throat

of deth

If I were

pink I’d

be a

Prostitute

Petunia

pimped

by bees

black ~ how

fortunate

your velvet

insights convert

pain to dust

purple is

love ~ the

voluptuous

communion of

red on

blue

red 

frayed agony

of bliss rendered

blood and rubies

orange

a robins pulse

in a

fragile chest of

sky

brown

grandmother of green

hope of grey

She told me poetry was more important than spelling, and in fact that spelling was a recent invention, like money. 

There was a warehouse on

Dundas West

Backing onto the tracks she was

So trains would woo her

Freight elevator – slatted – wooded – ironed

Bulk like a cube of elephants

Soon to be extinct

The sound – chains – wheels – gears

Everything transparent and muscled

A working place – A place of revelations

The windows – arms cranked to let in the

Glass air – no screens or glazing – just BIG

Against the brick

Unshuttered eyes

We moved in and made spaces with

Indian curtains and bamboo

The plants died from chemical smells wafting

From living factories

The dry cleaner gave us his hibiscus trees

We lived there in confusion

Wondering when life would

Begin

Or if it had

I walked the overpass

Looking for love or linkages

redundant spaces luring eyes to diamonds

Guitar a compass needle

And there was she

Palais Royal – a tattered elegant

crouching ‘neath expressway

sheltering from relentless gaps of GO

Her neon fused with candles

The caretaker still lived there

Like they did in days olden

As I climbed the stairs to his rooms

I mused on strangers and dangers

And pushed the curtain of fear aside

He showed me pictures

Albums of the past

Improvisational times

White horse plunging from a diving board into barrel

Roller coasters ricketting with innocence

Black bands jazzing white wonder

Gangsters sipping gin

A thousand golden, flavoured notes

All jangling against the

Cage of future

When I lived in the warehouse

I roamed about the city

Always close to the waterfront

Saw ‘Opening Night’

Three times at the

Rep cinema

It resonated

Not sure why – lost chord on lost chord?

But one night,

I walked on

And found

A back street

Cloaked in dusk

Its ancient whittled buildings

Soot smeared and

Filth festooned

Dickensian

Refreshing

In a soil-smudged way

Like children – gone astray

It called to me

And I entered

It was a cloth warehouse

Used fabric of any kind – an Ellis Island of textures 

There was a dim pall

A smell of sweat and soap and perfumes and wet wool and forgetfulness  

But it was the piles

Mountains of memory skin

Shed, discarded, abandoned

Tartans, brocades, crumpled velvets

Sack cloth, webbing, piping, calico

Chintz, organza, satins, laces,

Whole and shredded,

Mixing together

In a purgatory of

feel

I saw no synthetics there,

Perhaps they sank under the cream of

The real

I wound the thread of curiosity deeper and deeper into the

Haphazard softness – darker and darker - the light absorbed by

Endless, edgeless shadow

The leathery man emerged from wrinkled wefts

Gave me a large piece of heavy, dark, flowered velvet

With tasseled edge

A scrap of Virginia Woolf’s heart?

I have it

still

He gave it to me, perhaps

because I saw the magic

through the weave

The place has sunk now

under quicksands

of progress 

They were ‘The Europeans’

That’s all I knew then

They lived on the floor below – we had whole floors in those days

Rent, pennies a foot

Miroslav was an artist

and Vlad was an upholsterer

They had lived,

you could eat the feeling

The hair of Miroslav's beard had more experience than all

 our skin and bones and soul

put together

We would go to their parties

Homemade wine and politics

Subversion and revolutions and escape

Atrocities

It was vibrations in the air

Clashing with our white bread lustings

Sweet youth … barren of that kind of suffering

I went down one night

Just to feel the jab of something Foreign

I was a dull thud

I had no drums to meet the beat and left

Even hungrier

and the threads between my

Eyebrows deepened

I’m older now

I know

They were

Serbian

The old world and

The new

And now I wonder at

How much I undervalued

Innocence