Lo-fi, Lo-res, analog primitive
stark and minor keyed
when recorded in mono
like a clay pot fired
on the last day of Pompeii
A final human gasp
of artistic expression
before ruin and enslavement
In vinyl, preserved ever fragile
Holding vigil
Still, even now
their voices carry forward
they rise with the heat
a flame of hope that burns
in the end of every year
These penitents and pilgrims gather
in annual purgatories circled
in calendars on their walls
The very last week of a decade
when these flames burn brightest
and your noisy exit echoes
on through ages long
With black and white stills
that you still recall in color
The place, the date, the time
Still belonging to a now
that most have never known
Now holding vigil
for fellow travelers astray
Hastings Street Coffee House, April 83
Three AM on Saturday
we were crowded in a doorway
Bars closed, we sheltered from the rain
The drops beaded on your poncho
like flower petals the morning after
I saw you before around the billiards
Two other pubs and fourteen bottles
A spark in your jade eyes remembered
I let you enter first
and never saw you again
But your jade eyes in the mist
saw me home in the dark
Our awful legacy
Black and white portraits
gaze innocent from the page
They give no indication
of the awful people we’d become
Black and white or grainy color
youth looks the same in any age
Their faces show no inkling
of the awful weight that is to come
Relentless time and gravity
will ever awaken the sleeping rage
when hopeful dreams face resistance
to these awful times that are now your home
Intersections
At the end of suburban matrix
where the macrosphere meets
Industry and consumer briefly intersect
In the concrete world
where all dreams are asphalt
Orphaned sub-lots overgrown with weeds
Amid cement barriers wire and pipe enter the earth
like a needle into fertile veins
of a patient sustained on life support
Nearby the flies swarm
over pedigreed road kill
Their flesh feeds teeming masses extant
manna from heaven in their exile
as they flee their urban chains
Dundas East, New Years Day 83
Cold, bitter, arctic mass
A low winter sun blazed brilliant
Searing hole of fire
in broad azure tapestry
All sounds traveled sharp
amid the steam of our breath
from the icy walk beneath your boots
I wondered did you hear it
through those purple ear muffs
I was afraid to ask you
I didn’t think you’d come
Je regrette, Mademoiselle Cameron
Once we’d arrived I didn’t know
Why you’d want to be with me
for I was no one
I had nothing
and you didn’t even know my name
Dance of the network shills
They dance a limbo
of innuendo and lies
set the bar lower
