Even between the barren oaks you can smell it. Even among the old oaks, the lifeless oaks covered in dust, in sawdust, exhaust – even when you’re walking between barren oaks, you can smell it. And on the busy streets – the Monday morning streets, packed with cars all filled with drivers clad in black and business cazh* – filled with drivers driving Audis, or their Civics, or Ferraris, city…

Do you keep the city lights to protect yourself from the stars? The fluorescent glitter and the neon that blankets you, the street lamps buzz, headlights flood crowded arteries. You could kneel in the alley and trace all the sources of light and what they’re for, you could draw diagrams and take pictures, create labels. You could sit in an office, plan ahead, other’s futures, carve up concrete…

today i saw a river it coursed around caving-in cliffs it moved with a convicting power and the movement was beautiful we are a river i am a drop today i saw a river i gazed at its turning banks was pulled in by the sound of the gurgling water and wished for one moment that it would all be still that i could hold all the world just as it was for eternity how unwise of me to wish that i could stay…

**I can’t claim full originality for this one — I think it’s inspired by the 1981 film Time Bandits So this is the afterlife: You see him enter and he doesn’t Even notice you in the crowd As he struts his stuff and grins At the politicians and paparazzi Shaking his hands and telling him, “A fine job, good sir, mighty fine. You really had them all worried for a while!”

In this life, right here, mixed in between all its longings and abuses Still I find my contentment

I think it’s worth it to mention – Before all your prejudgments settle in And you cast me in plaster as a loose woman, A slut, and shame me, a girl Who just won’t get her morals together, And then you bronze me, or Tar me and then feather me, And drag me through your streets, Your sanctuary, your conversations with bae, A pin-up girl, a poster-child for poor life decisions, And deride me, That I…

Arise, now, dear one, and trust. Stand on your feet just one more time, and see: You are alone now with the world – With the sparrow and her nest, And the lambent glow of sunset Trailing over the surface of the lake. Here the worries of your companions Cannot contain you any longer. Breathe deeply, little child, Let go the pain tightening across your chest. Help will come now, soon. See: the aged…

On those dark winter nights, long after the final wisps of smoke from our candle stub had drifted out of the room, the serpentine trails of the stories my sister told would weave themselves together like tapestries in the air above our heads. The imaginings of dragons and queens and enchanted gardens threaded through the dark attic, and our chilled and childlike bodies forgot the scratchiness of…

Here twilight blue skies ripple into Chemical clouds a deep smoggy red And underneath the pavement of the highways the Spinning soils tumble into The North Saskatchewan’s ice floes, Chisel away its banks, Inching it closer to all the fluorescent-lit High-rises on the northern shore. Mechanical motorized Edmonton rumbles By, the No. 4 interior dimly lit Against the falling of night that Whines a B…

Stay with me here, because I'm about to make a radical suggestion, and it just might blow your mind. This could get messy. OK, Ready? Alright, here it is: What if -- this is a big IF -- what if peo...