Benjibopper

Labels: 2013, love junk, nova scotia, Poetry

Labels: 2012, nova scotia, philosophy, Poetry

Uncoiling now
Letting time loose
Taking it off my shoulders

Labels: 2012, nova scotia, philosophy, Poetry

Monday again
a week since your death
And yet: Monday again

Labels: 2012, Fiction, nova scotia, Poetry

-
The unquenchable why of this living is mistaken.
We wail for the family lost eons ago
when this land was nutritious candy.

Now God kneels outside our iron bars
seeking hope in humanity's extinction
or survival.
He has created and is horrified.

We have revolted, and evolved -
met our Maker, apologized
for traceless political love affairs,
and demanded a map back to Eden.


[this is a rewrite of one I posted a while back]

Labels: 2011, non-fiction, nova scotia, Poetry

Twice I've seen rosebushes bloom ash
twice felt roots ensnare my skin
and known my remains would fly
with Grandpa and his sisters
and the ocean would take its share -
the grey darkening, solidifying, sinking
But only once has death given roses
You said to me, "I want this same fate
with you and your ancestors."

Labels: 2011, non-fiction, nova scotia, Poetry

Clear the floor.
Play the song.
Too hip for then
now too far.
Attack every angle,
your last kill.

Don’t mind the lens.
Just give me
one last shot of you
dancing before you die.

You ahead,
giant feet flying
farther away,
quickened by the thrill of
anticipated horizons.

Still you move,
still you whoop,
just out of range.

Make room,
shove close.
A duty and joy.
Zoom in:
one last shot of you
dancing before you die.

Labels: 2011, Fiction, nova scotia, Poetry

You did us profound
you wobbly walker.

Your visible symbols say,
"why do you have that cage?
Why does that cage got blood?"

The mean-saying lady says
her reasons are good.

You nod like you do when Big People
dodge questions.

Mom and Dad do that too
when you wonder on origins
through taboo paths to temptations.

Labels: 2011, non-fiction, nova scotia, Poetry

A war photographer measures success in scars
to see human things from outside -
his guard against impending sensory attacks,
like men wearing only balaclavas
ripping burkas from dangling corpses
in a theatre of oppression.

From the right he hears dark-robed shaggy faces chant:
“Wear it! Wear it! Wear it!”
And the Nike-swooshed hoodies on the left shout:
“Show your tits! Show your tits!”

In the balcony he cuts himself, sucks the blood,
macros his forearm’s red bubble,
whispers, “God is Great; Capitalism’s workings Mysterious.”
He’s faceless as the men on stage
in snatching the soul of the stoning.

Labels: 2011, nova scotia, Poetry, politics

into newness
or return to formerness,
with a twist;

from charged brown hominids,
some having orangey fur
bubbling like whitewater brooks
with magic-8-ball eyes -
scorn or desire;

from tough roads, jungle trees,
an island of effluent not affluence
food not polystyrene
service not manufacture
haggle not hustle;

from water clear as floating plastic
with a fulfilled destiny
lacking destination;

from thunderous motorcycle crashes,
loud and harmless,
idiots abroad facing
adventure not danger,
sunburned in a hot spring,
then painless goodbyes
with liked ones;

from foggy horizons,
bubbling ashen brews
viscous green goos,
easing down mountainsides
like goats
high on Bob Marley
and his kaya philosophy;

into Big Booming cities
of magazines, expensive cigarettes,
sweet sin and egotism,
books of great magnitude,
where newspaper salesmen
would fly but for the time -
so much pornography left to sell;

into newness:
the sweet, the stale,
the curvaceous, the limp,
the shaking, the et cetera
of this vast living’s
eternal march.

Labels: 2000, Indonesia, Poetry, Travel

[My brother wrote a great tune for this but it's not online anymore so here are the lyrics alone]:

Went into the City
Escaped from the trees
away from the lions
chasing me

Bought a robot
to fix me drinks
sat on my porch
so I could think

Planes overhead
through clouds and smog
shut the factory down
No more jobs

Homeless for miles
but the coal still burns
Bums on the freeway
amphetamine turns

Get me out of here
Can't take it no more
Get me out of here
Trash on the rat-race floor

Went back to the farmland
put the tractor in gear
Tilled my fields
until they were clear

Cut down the trees
for my fireplace
Looked in the mirror
at a stranger's face

Worked the good earth
fought the pests
Grew me some veggies
The flowers sold best

Lonely worked the land for years
Lonely now there's nothin' left

Get me out of here
Can't take it no more
Get me out of here
This life is an endless chore

Went into the forest
back to the trees
Prayed for redemption
on fragile knees

Walked through woods
lived on berries and leaves
Wandered forever
alone with me

Went raving mad
Fought with myself
spent seven years
In a paradise hell

Surrounded by beauty
Nothing to do
No one to share
What would you do?

Get me out of here
Can't take it no more
Get me out of here
This beauty's a bore

Went into the city
Escaped from the trees...

Labels: 2005, philosophy, Poetry, Toronto

Something I wrote maybe 13 years ago:


Salamander sits in a sitting pool,
eyes bulging through the water,
trying to get some shade and being cool,
while the day keeps heating getting hotter.

Fly flies by makes waves in the air,
salamander's snack causes fodder
'cause swimming nearby with streaks in his hair,
is a pudgy little cute littler otter.

Snapping of the tongue, salamander's undone,
his snack becomes snack for the otter.

Another day at the pond
and life goes on
not for all but for some,
in the riffles and the runs,
of the sitting pool in the water.

Labels: 1998, nova scotia, philosophy, Poetry

Labels: 2010, love junk, nova scotia, Poetry

In the future
they had an ad
for 23 scoops of raisins
in a package of K-log Raisin B.

When I bit into it
I said:
"No friggin way;
this tastes exactly like
two scoops from the past."

Labels: 2011, doodles, Poetry

-
You, your prized stories foretell
of crystalline reborn uprisings
ambiguous revolutions
revolt or repetition

Your doctorate language opaque
as you mount the charismatic healer,
lay us low with scorched-earth smiling

Our leader, you implore
with your brow's Utopian promise
All we're to do is sign

Labels: 2011, Canada, Poetry, politics

Desire is seed.
Your arms
snychro-waving in the dark,
flashing across the dance-cave.
My stillbirth reborn.
My feet walk themselves over.

Tears lubricate my body over;
Tetris pieces withhold seed
until ancestors are reborn.
Telephone chords mimic arms
poorly, cold as caves,
desiring touch in the dark.

Tree pastors towering dark,
our shivers gratefully ruled over.
The sauna a geothermal cave,
where idealized eternity sows seed,
across the arc of the other’s arms;
tradition is repetition reborn.

Desire is reborn
in the deepest dark,
stillborn with too few arms;
hungry voices’ journey over.
Our spinning globe scatters seed,
frees us from the cubicle cave.

365 exploration of continental cave.
365 labours daily reborn.
Restively flailed seed,
unharvested from the faraway dark;
ocean’s gravity heaves vagabondage over.
Ancestors require our arms.

Hands in sand and legs as arms,
an inverted tower till elbows cave.
Reunion summer’s over.
Old routines reborn.
In cavernous downtown funkitecture’s dark:
A desire, an egg, a seed.

With his birth we’re reborn
in a solitary cave.
Desire is seed.

Labels: 2010, love junk, non-fiction, Poetry

I was late to the clinic and
my adjustment counselor was pissed.

Wasn't that just like me?
On account of my oppositional complex.

I just had to stop for that quick hit
in the drive-thru alley with the junkies.

But if Daddy hadn't screwed up my order
I wouldn't have had to shoot up twice.

I'd sleep on a feather mattress
instead of this old gym-mat.

Labels: 2010, Fiction, nova scotia, Poetry

As the honourable member for East Sinsancto power-reads the Cautious Liberal amendments for a bill altering the unethical behaviours of all elected representatives, those officials snicker chat and spitball each other.

The Ever Forward Conservative representative of Nova Bay South next offers his party's amendments as the honourable member from Lower Downtown Pugington whispers sweet something-or-others into the ear of his assistant.

Finally the Chair, who backbenches the Ruling Central Left Leaners, submits his own written amendments and winks his deferral to the morning's 1st coffee. Relieved laughter ricochets as the sun threatens the west-facing windows.

Labels: 2010, nova scotia, Poetry, politics

Let us reinvent the wheel.
The old one takes us nowhere, fast.
Let us forget its existence;
let us strip its ill-gotten rubber
and beat it until its flatness engulfs
our hammers.

Let us kick its metal rims
as the rappers' gab is open-mouth muted
and they've only politics left to rhyme about.
Let our steel toes outlast it.
Let its nuts be eaten by spring's ravenous squirrels,
and its bolts be corroded by vinegar blasted from
our super-soakers.

Let there be no remnants of its perfection,
its blind efficient roll into oblivion.
Let us start anew with a wooden block,
balanced by its corner on a sealskin dome
as we drum like malnourished apes with
broken sticks.

Labels: 2010, nova scotia, philosophy, Poetry

God kneels outside the iron bars of my cage,
seeking hope in humanity's extinction or survival.
Having long pondered, He's got an action itch.
"Sit still. Hear," I command my captive Master.

"The unquenchable why of this living is mistaken;
this lethargy seared over agonized boredom.
We miss our eons lost family. Never wondered
who we were; we were part of the family.

"The land was nutritious candy,
not this tasteless mystery meat.
What makes you not an animal, O Lord?
What makes you not wild and dangerous?"

He rises Formidable with eyefuls of disdain,
says nothing. His eternal meditations
left Him traceless political love affairs
and no map home.

Labels: 2009, Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, Fiction, Poetry