From "A Dream Book" by David Harsent

Deep reaches of sleep until the unforeseen

moment, like fugue, like petit mal, some kind of sign,

a touch from a joker’s finger, to let him know what’s right,

what’s wrong with the dream-within-a-dream. A sudden, slight

shift in the order of things and all the past undone.

He left what was left of himself in her care that night.

•

They went to the river and dropped their clothes on the bank.

She struck out. He followed in the long, slow vee of her wake.

She could sound and surface, bringing back with her what

other lovers had dumped: hotel bill, gimcrack ring, a four-square shot

from the photo booth. Later, they dipped their bottles and drank.

She looked at him and laughed. “You think you’re safe? You’re not.”

•

In this, her fool is deaf and dumb and twirling a pink parasol. In this

he’s doing a chicken dance. He turns away and puckers up for a kiss.

He’s their stalker, familiar, spy, his slippy grin is all

lipstick and green teeth. Words to the wise, or coffin-laugh, or catcall.

In this, he watches from cover, maestro of the deadfall.

He goose-steps them out of the tunnel of love and into the house of glass.

Maps - Origin of WORDS - fascinating (and orange made it in)

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/fascinating-maps-show-origin-words-135610187.html

You Better Not Hit Me With That Truck

You can have it good for
a really long time
then the universe snaps
it's fingers, the lens distorts
the push becomes a shove.

Your mind turns backwards
to the day you knew about 
endings but never understood
them fully only a peripheral
sense that something was off.

It all comes down to blood
and how long it can circulate
uninfected and untouched.
Such a strong colour
such fragile liquid.

- Debbie Calverley

Nothing like a prairie sunset from a limo....

What a Tree - right next door to me. Autumn has not quite given up yet....

Soft Landing (He Never Loved You)

An inkling of him lands

flutters in the chest

chatters in her ear

pecks at her fingers

and toes until it nests

forms an eggshell

around fragments, words

until one day long before

first light comes a singing

an intonation a prayer

of sorts that offers

a glimpse into something

sacredly fragile a fraction

of what once was –

poem manifested
bright with feathers.

Debbie Calverley

And the true genius....

Last of the Leaves & the Summer Roses

Prelude

Overnight, the leaves turned

gold

they scratch against sky so

blue

every hue becomes a magic

realism

late autumn that time of

magnificent

colour:  last minute walks

clouds

scattered so high in the sky

touch

seems  endless, if not

impossible

as if we know the heart:

bursts.

-Debbie Calverley

Soft Tissue

There is something special

about meeting in the flesh.

Eye to eye, tooth to tooth

a blush of cheek. 

Laughter on the lips

sadness in the fine lines 

spin a complex orbit.

A swallow, then a nervous cough

fingers tug at a pressed collar

small wrinkle at the sleeve

- your brows so smooth. 

So much more

to at long last kiss away.

Debbie Calverley

From "The Desk"

Fair enough: you people have eaten me,

I—wrote you down.

They’ll lay you out on a dinner table,

me—on this desk.

I’ve been happy with little.

There are dishes I’ve never tried.

But you, you people eat slowly, and often;

You eat and eat.

Everything was decided for us

back in the ocean:

Our places of action,

our places of gratitude.

You—with belches, I—with books,

with truffles, you. With pencil, I,

you and your olives, me and my rhyme,

with pickles, you. I, with poems.

At your head—funeral candles

like thick-legged asparagus:

your road out of this world

a dessert table’s striped cloth.

They will smoke Havana cigars

on your left side and your right;

your body will be dressed

in the best Dutch linen.

And—not to waste such expensive cloth,

they will shake you out,

along with the crumbs and bits of food,

into the hole, the grave.

You—stuffed capon, I—pigeon.

Gunpowder, your soul, at the autopsy.

And I will be laid out bare

with only two wings to cover me.

BY MARINA TSVETAEVA

Late July 1933

Moths

A translator who has a phobia of moths
spent three years translating a book with a moth motif.
It’s ironic, she has said, that she knew more about the moths
than the author of the original, who was merely fascinated.
The translation contained a greater variety of moths than the original,
drawn from suggestions she had made, some of which were in fact
too perfect and changed back before it went to print.

Her moths, the ones that were too aptly named,
meant too much, her moths that she hated, where are they now?
The same place as all the versions of people
that have been undressed and slept with, in lieu of the people
themselves, by others. That must include a version
of almost everyone, lots of versions of some people,
some only a flutter, animated then decided against.

CALEB KLACES

Continual Conversation With A Silent Man

Continual Conversation With A Silent Man
Wallace Stevens
b. October 2, 1879 
The old brown hen and the old blue sky,
Between the two we live and die--
The broken cartwheel on the hill.

As if, in the presence of the sea,
We dried our nets and mended sail
And talked of never-ending things,

Of the never-ending storm of will,
One will and many wills, and the wind,
Of many meanings in the leaves,

Brought down to one below the eaves,
Link, of that tempest, to the farm,
The chain of the turquoise hen and sky

And the wheel that broke as the cart went by.
It is not a voice that is under the eaves.
It is not speech, the sound we hear

In this conversation, but the sound
Of things and their motion: the other man,
A turquoise monster moving round.

Wallace Stevens

Beauty is momentary in the mind —
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.
     Wallace Stevens

Sky Blue

Sky blue as ice
bruise on her hand
summer has fallen

geese on the wind
their wings whoosh 
over her bent head 

yesterday her uncle passed
harvest in the once full fields
everything turns
Into something else

-Debbie Calverley

Way Too Funny

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2758725/Apple-introduces-new-iTunes-button-allow-customers-delete-latest-U2-album-accounts.html

They always show up uninvited don't they!  Haha!

Birthday

A birthday across the street
a little girl wearing a pink and white
striped dress. Balloons on the mailbox
children arrive, one by one
attached to their mothers, 
not a dad in sight. 

One by one, birthday bags
drop on the lawn, mermaids
ballerinas, some simple plastic
shopping bags. The mothers gather-
chat, the little girls and boys begin
to jump up and down anticipating cake.

High in my spruce tree, another 
pine cone drops, severed by a squirrel
determined to head into winter prepared.
I shiver and turn up the furnace
sadly putting away all of my summer dresses.

Later that evening
I see the birthday girl being carried
asleep in her mothers arms
dressed in a yellow princess dress
complete with wings.
My phone unwillingly updates.

Debbie Calverley

Joan Rivers

Every comedian is furious. Age makes me angry. I'm unhappy at not being able to open packages anymore. I'm angry that libraries have gone. I hate children on planes. I'm very shallow, so they tend to be little things. To be honest, I think I was probably angry the day I was born, you know, about diapers or something.

Joan Rivers

Cookie

He told her a story

about a cookie

that made him lose a day.

Later, they walked then ran

ducking and dodging as rain

erased time.

A homeless man yelled:

“Don’t be sad!!”

over and over.

-Debbie Calverley

RIP Robin Williams.....

So very sad, and so very tragic.  Depression is such a horrible thing.

Not So Easy

I watch my cat limp across the living room
try to jump on the once so easy chair

My mind leaps to an article I read
about a 6 year old child locked

in a basement for years
eating only junk food

and pissing on his mattress.
I wonder how many others 

aren't discovered at all and just
live out their lives that way.

I wonder how many people
and animals

are unnecessarily being
brutalized

Right now

And then  my mind leaps to Putin
and the Ukraine

Palestine and Israel.
The downing of planes.

The taking of lives.
The stopping of oil and gas.

And I wonder why
I haven't responded to my last

email.  Or text message
I watch my cat limp across the living room

try to jump on the chair
once so easy.

- Debbie Calverley

I Knew the Selfie was old news......

http://www.vivianmaier.com/gallery/self-portraits/

No compromise.  Love it.  Nothing is new under the sun and so more creative.

Cheers, Darling - Watermelon Vodka St. John's

St. John's Nfld - charming harbour homes

St. John's - Whale!

St. John's Nfld - sunset in harbour

Poem

Do I write about you?
Have you gone? Or

are you perched on your throne
in my head pocket full of
beeswax -

faintly humming
your favourite song.

Debbie Calverley

Pride (In the Name of Love) Cover

Allen Grossman - The Ballad of the Bone Boat

The Ballad of the Bone Boat
(Meditation Three)
Allen Grossman (1932-2014)

I dreamed I sailed alone
In a long boat, a white bone;
Like a strong thought, or a right name
The sail had no seam.

The mast, and its shadow on the sea,
Fled like one high lonely tree
Bent with the weight of the wind-fruit sown
By the cold storm.

It was a dream of dignity
When I steered on that plated sea
With a seamless sail, and a boat like a bone,
In a fair time of the moon.

There was no rudder in the long bone boat,
The compass was a stone –
The air was empty of the deep sea gull,
And gone was the cry of the loon.

The sea and the sky were one dark thing,
The eye and the hand as cold.
Unbound was my hair, unbound was my dress;
Nothing beckoned or called

But the words of a song
That had death in its tune
And death in its changes and close –
A song which I sang in the eye of the moon,
And a secret name that I chose.

And this is the song: “Straight is the way
When the compass is a stone,
And the sail has no seam, and the boat is a bone,
And the mast is bent like a tree that bears
The wind-fruit of the moon.”

And now I sing, O come with me,
And be at last alone;
For straight is the way in the dream of the boat
That is a long white bone.

Happy Canada Day!!

Bobby Womack RIP a man with true emotion

Those were the days..... or maybe not but I still remember them

http://s205.photobucket.com/user/mpadawer/media/U2-ElevationLiveonSNL.mp4.html

Yay Summer Lilacs! (Lilac Wine)

Equinoctiial Honey Sonnet

Hold ceremony in the everyday
Suspend in equinoctial honey

Drink your potion with intention—
a poem can be descriptive medicine

you concoct for yourself
and others in ever-widening spirals

Seen and unseen, couplets
circle into DNA ladders

Eat Something Wild Every Day
and You Will become Wild

Wild on the horizon, circular, the plants
sing their songs of glee all round

So let us sing—equally in night and day to hold
mountains, time, balance deeper into the year 

LEE ANN BROWN

Thank You

Here's to June 11th - Chicago

Application For A Driving License - Michael Ondaatje

Two birds loved
in a flurry of red feathers
like a burst cottonball,
continuing while I drove over them.
I am a good driver, nothing shocks me.

MICHAEL ONDAATJE

RIP Maya Angelou

MEN

When I was young, I used to
Watch behind the curtains
As men walked up and down the street. Wino men, old men.
Young men sharp as mustard.
See them. Men are always
Going somewhere.
They knew I was there. Fifteen
Years old and starving for them.
Under my window, they would pause,
Their shoulders high like the
Breasts of a young girl,
Jacket tails slapping over
Those behinds,
Men.

One day they hold you in the
Palms of their hands, gentle, as if you
Were the last raw egg in the world. Then
They tighten up. Just a little. The
First squeeze is nice. A quick hug.
Soft into your defenselessness. A little
More. The hurt begins. Wrench out a
Smile that slides around the fear. When the
Air disappears,
Your mind pops, exploding fiercely, briefly,
Like the head of a kitchen match. Shattered.
It is your juice
That runs down their legs. Staining their shoes.
When the earth rights itself again,
And taste tries to return to the tongue,
Your body has slammed shut. Forever.
No keys exist.

Then the window draws full upon
Your mind. There, just beyond
The sway of curtains, men walk.
Knowing something.
Going someplace.
But this time, I will simply
Stand and watch.

Maybe. 

Maya Angelou

Theodore Roethke

The Dance

Is that dance slowing in the mind of man

That made him think the universe could hum?

The great wheel turns its axle when it can;

I need a place to sing, and dancing-room,

And I have made a promise to my ears

I'll sing and whistle romping with the bears.

For they are all my friends: I saw one slide

Down a steep hillside on a cake of ice, —

Or was that in a book? I think with pride:

A caged bear rarely does the same thing twice

In the same way: O watch his body sway! mdash;

This animal remembering to be gay.

I tried to fling my shadow at the moon,

The while my blood leaped with a wordless song.

Though dancing needs a master, I had none

To teach my toes to listen to my tongue.

But what I learned there, dancing all alone,

Was not the joyless motion of a stone.

I take this cadence from a man named Yeats;

I take it, and I give it back again:

For other tunes and other wanton beats

Have tossed my heart and fiddled through my brain.

Yes, I was dancing-mad, and how

That came to be the bears and Yeats would know.

Theodore Roethke

Czelaw Milosz

In The Middle Of Life (translation: Czeslaw Milosz)

After the end of the world
after my death
I found myself in the middle of life
I created myself
constructed life
people animals landscapes

this is a table I was saying
this is a table
on the table are lying bread a knife
the knife serves to cut the bread

people nourish themselves with bread

one should love man

I was learning by night and day
what one should love
I answered man

this is a window I was saying
this is a window
beyond the window is a garden
in the garden I see an apple tree
the apple tree blossoms
the blossoms fall off
the fruits take form
they ripen my father is picking up an apple
that man who is picking up an apple
is my father
I was sitting on the threshold of the house

that old woman who
is pulling a goat on a rope
is more necessary
and more precious
than the seven wonders of the world
whoever thinks and feels
that she is not necessary
he is guilty of genocide

this is a man
this is a tree this is bread

people nourish themselves in order to live
I was repeating to myself
human life is important
human life has great importance
the value of life
surpasses the value of all the objects
which man has made
man is a great treasure
I was repeating stubbornly

this water I was saying
I was stroking the waves with my hand
and conversing with the river
water I said
good water
this is I

the man talked to the water
talked to the moon
to the flowers to the rain
he talked to the earth
to the birds
to the sky
the sky was silent
the earth was silent
if he heard a voice
which flowed
from the earth from the water from the sky
it was the voice of another man

How Blue

The world is blue -
depressed valleys
surrounded by
rings of hills
the sky
wind and weather
the shiver of little leaves
over a tepid brook.

All lies 
as he leaned in for the kiss
all lies and eyes

she thought -
How blue.

-Debbie Calverley

Yaaaaaaaay Arsenal!!

Sting

Phantom Limb

Pain where I stepped on a pine 
cone

Pang from a 10 year old 
scar

Sometimes I think my left arm is
gone

Until I realize I'm still
attached

-Debbie Calverley

Poem by Spencer Reece

At Thomas Merton's Grave

We can never be with loss too long.
Behind the warped door that sticks,
the wood thrush calls to the monks,
pausing atop the stone crucifix,
singing: "I am marvelous alone!"
Thrash, thrash goes the hayfield:
rows of marrow and bone undone.
The horizon's flashing fastens tight,
sealing the blue hills with vermilion.
Moss dyes a squirrel's skull green.
The cemetery expands its borders—
little milky crosses grow like teeth.
How kind time is, altering space
so nothing stays wrong: and light,
more new light, always arrives.

SPENCER REECE

Poem by Martha Silano

The Poet Is the Priest of the Invisible

                        —Wallace Stevens

Dark-eyed, mysterious Meadowhawk,
the poet is the rabbi of the diaphanous,

scribe of the sheer, the barely-there
brief, pungi of the five o'clock shadow,

hint of rosewood and ghost. The poet
preaches a thin-barked willow sermon;

what she labors over is always prone
to sunscald, to scrutiny, its veins

visible through the skin. Gossamer
goddess, translucent muse, she lofts

a gauzy lug wrench toward the shadowy
freeway, where the alphabet—each of its

limpid clauses, each hyaline verb—
has once again broken down, needs a lift.

MARTHA SILANO

Claire by Rheostatics

RIP Farley Mowat

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/farley-mowat-dead-92-published-reports-173202001.html

Quote

Sometimes you can spend too long on a one sided love.

Downton Abby

Sandpipers!

Seasonality

The look on your face read wistful

on that gelid November morning.

“Could have beens should have beens” 
spun around the corners of your eyes, 
mouth mute with stories never told.

Bits of ice tapped at the window

a chilly day for resolution of the heart.

Only 3 months before everything had been

infinitely green, now even the sun

had turned its back to circle on.

I felt you leave slowly

ghost-like

a white bag  danced

strangely in the wind.

-Debbie Calverley

Passenger - Scare Away the Dark

Red Light

in the middle of nowhere

a guy on the street

holding 2 litres of minute maid

orange juice with pulp

I wondered when the bus
would come

-Debbie Calverley

Octavio Paz

As One Listens To The Rain

Listen to me as one listens to the rain,
not attentive, not distracted,
light footsteps, thin drizzle,
water that is air, air that is time,
the day is still leaving,
the night has yet to arrive,
figurations of mist
at the turn of the corner,
figurations of time
at the bend in this pause,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
without listening, hear what I say
with eyes open inward, asleep
with all five senses awake,
it's raining, light footsteps, a murmur of syllables,
air and water, words with no weight:
what we are and are,
the days and years, this moment,
weightless time and heavy sorrow,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
wet asphalt is shining,
steam rises and walks away,
night unfolds and looks at me,
you are you and your body of steam,
you and your face of night,
you and your hair, unhurried lightning,
you cross the street and enter my forehead,
footsteps of water across my eyes,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
the asphalt's shining, you cross the street,
it is the mist, wandering in the night,
it is the night, asleep in your bed,
it is the surge of waves in your breath,
your fingers of water dampen my forehead,
your fingers of flame burn my eyes,
your fingers of air open eyelids of time,
a spring of visions and resurrections,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
the years go by, the moments return,
do you hear the footsteps in the next room?
not here, not there: you hear them
in another time that is now,
listen to the footsteps of time,
inventor of places with no weight, nowhere,
listen to the rain running over the terrace,
the night is now more night in the grove,
lightning has nestled among the leaves,
a restless garden adrift-go in,
your shadow covers this page. 

Octavio Paz