Published on: 2/2/2011
My Dear Ganymede

I wanted to give you a gilt bower,
but only managed a guilt-work cage;
and today when you poured me this wine,
I read poison in your marble-smooth face

but in the night, I confess when I came,
I couldn't tell whether your submission
and whimpers were pleasure or pain,
as I lay beside you, watched you breathe

and the battle-trumpets took their cue,
lust and doubt swept forward, clash renewed;
you must have heard the war, the moans and cries,
each time I felt old beside your body

I was sure then Spring could never love me,
and while you slept I wonder if you dreamt
you heard a winter north wind sigh:
love, I'm no use to you at all.

Published on: 2/2/2011
These details

These details never actually happened
but they are true nonetheless:

once you said
you could read my face
like an open book
and you knew every time
when i was lying.

once i laughed
joked i should never
play poker, and
accepted your definition
of my emotions
of myself.

now you say
hey how are you
i read your facebook
the other day
it's been a while.

now i smile
agree it's been too long
i miss you as well, but
there's part i leave out:
i have learned to be honest
in these separating years
to both of us.

Published on: 2/2/2011
Ssssh

my poetry must not be very good
because i read it to myself and
all i hear is hissing,
my own voice hissing the words
with which i have striven to make sound ring.
where are the beautiful phrases
i thought i had composed,
where the assonance, where is
anything except the onomatopoeia
snakes snakes everywhere
in a poem that owes nothing to snakes.
my poems ought maybe to be shouted
from the top of the CN Tower, i think
except the windows don't open enough
so the shout would turn inwards again
perhaps my poems should be chattered
like the angry and confident squirrel,
or hymned across a vast and uncultivated space
i hypothesize the language
would open for me then
but i can't be sure because
i've spent a long time now
about 16 years or so i would guess
defining myself as quiet
not unconfident, but quiet
quiet and calm.