Friday, June 14, 2019

my new book:: NOT HOMe




NOT HOMe

a collection of poetics and photo-imagery gathered from this blog depicting the jarring state of demolition, a few deserted buildings, some sad empty homes, and other romantic but forgotten places slowly fading away...


please preview this book in my blurb bookstore



Wednesday, March 27, 2019

once a home...


they perch on sites worth so many millions
above spanish banks and the burrard inlet -
these three modest pseudo-mansions of the 
last century now looking forlorn, abandoned


they have been sitting neglected for years 
in the overgrown and barely fenced off lots -
waiting for their inevitable demise to make
way for ever larger versions to rise again


once the residential pride of a few families
 such vanquished homes are now reduced to 
another boarded up desecration for those 
with the means to build bigger and biggest



Thursday, March 7, 2019

dispersing...


the passing of winter into spring
and a vaporous life rises on a wild bird's song
disperses wide over the affirming sea
that private sea calm to the heart belong...

Friday, January 11, 2019

lone bush on the drive


the lone bush is unheeded 
in a small parking lot 
on busy commercial drive
its slow growth unimpeded 
for another year alone 
against the bright pink wall
reaching higher undeterred 
into the next year on and
up towards the summer sun
it will survive undisturbed 
for one more year to shape
itself into an elegant stance

then in the last year, an unhindered hand lopped it down to size,
stifling its natural growth and free organic will...

at least it belongs to no one, 

but for an occasional passerby drawn to the simple contrast of 
a lone green bush leaning against a pink brick wall on any sunny day



"An anti-master man, floribund ascetic."

Wallace Stevens
(from "Landscape with Boat", 1942)

Saturday, December 22, 2018

la casa deshabitada... (after E.Diego)



"porque llega un hora en que todas las casas se despueblan de sus ruidos mortales..."*

(there were cut bunches in buckets and stacked in boxes
everywhere, and they came very early in the
mornings to gather for their shops,
for their homes)

the abandoned building sits on the edge of chinatown, slowly corroding in the rain...

***

"y las vidrieras son frias como esos invernaderos desolados..."**

(even on the coldest day, the tight blooms and bundled greens
suffused the air with their dying scents,
their fading colours so composed
for a little longer)

a warehouse filled with flowers traded in kindnesses by the 3 chinese brothers...

***

"y es como si no hubiese venido nadie, como si nadie mirase los recintos del hombre,
bajo los astros."***

(that was many years ago and most will not remember this
as a place for the joy seeking, for the death
honouring and for the every day
of the living)

and where the brothers now, where grow the lilies, where stars still shimmer on...



*selected lines in spanish from "Bajo los Astros", a poem by ELISEO DIEGO, 1920-1994 
(translation by Kathleen Weaver, 1982)
*"because an hour comes when every house will empty of its mortal noises..."
**"and window panes are cold like those bleak greenhouses..."
***"and it is just as if no one had ever come, as if no one had seen the haunts of man, under the stars."




Friday, December 14, 2018

the pale hour... (after L-P Fargue)







"l'heure passe que les mains de la nuit faufilent aux vieux murs..."

(when they are very old, you forget how long they have lived...
you feel that you should know them better, 
even if you have known them a long time)

as the pale hour steals by, leave shadows quiver in the fading light...

***

"on entend le bruit nombreux des feuilles partout comme un feu qui prend..."

(when they leave us, you realize you don't miss them so much...
even as you know they are gone forever,
but the grieving and the regrets remain)

a certain pervasive scent lingers on, infusing the amorphous life...

***

"un rayon rôde encore à la crête du mur, glisse d'une main calme  et nous conduit vers l'ombre..."

(and everyday is a little less - a little less of them, a little less of you...
you will not know them any more now
than when you had known them then)

the branches nod in silence, a black tangle upon the darkening sky...



*selected lines in french from "Au Fil de l'Heure Pâle" by LEON-PAUL FARGUE (1876-1947)

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

eyes water, nose bright


a certain subversive law of body averages is determined by randomly equal levels of intensive porus scrutiny and in puris naturalibus fleshhh apathy

the lack of self-form awarenessses
greedy eyes focus on virtual entities

only and only
for hours days years generations

eventual loss of lower body strength 

devolution subtracts toes shortens limbs simplifies genitalia
hair optional for twiddling in momentary ennuiii
soon enough so soon

eyes leak water
noses bleed white

internal visions of skimming round and round a pond of icedwater in the forbidden city

while flakes of snowcrystals pile upon this compounded nirvana for corroding anatomical vessels


Monday, January 9, 2017

ididiom, the book



101 photoimages from my ididiom tumblr site 
have been published in a new book:: 


ididiom 

my id ++ your idiom


a collection of idiomatic expressions, poetic scrawls and ephemeral inscriptions stumbled upon in Vancouver, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Hamburg and other cities



please preview the book in my blurb bookstore



Thursday, December 22, 2016

from a winter past...


carrying forward connotations of a winter past 
since the verdancy is lost to the whiteout of rogue snowfalls,

we purify, whitewash, spread the lye in outward calibrations 
towards the ficklefixated exponential reveal...

a most presentient congress of pre-raphaelite hues
gather in sodden joy on sidewalks and in garden dirt

why not a kale tree, 
why not sapient moss



winter solstice
seasonal solace
annual stimulus

anno mmxvii 
you are most welcome

Monday, November 7, 2016

bachelard's reveries...



"In a reverie of solitude which increases the solitude of the dreamer, two depths pair off, reverberate in echoes which go from the depths of being of the world to a depth of being of the dreamer.
Time is suspended.
Time no longer has any yesterday and no longer any tomorrow. 
Time is engulfed in the double depth of the dreamer and the world."*


"Confronted with witnesses to the past, with objects and sites which recall memories and make them precise, the poet discovers the union of the poetry of memory and the truth of illusions.
Childhood memories relived in reverie are really "canticles of illusions" at the bottom of the soul"**




"In every dreamer there lives a child, a child whom reverie magnifies and stabilizes. Reverie tears it away from history, sets it outside time, makes it foreign to time.
One more reverie and this permanent, magnified child is a god."***


"...reverie toward childhood will experience a great benefit of repose if it deepens itself by following the reverie of a poet.
Within us, still within us, always within us, childhood is a state of mind."****


*from page 173 of The Poetics of Reverie by Gaston BACHELARD, (1969 translation from the French by Daniel Russell, Grossman Publishers, Inc.) published in 1971 by Beacon Press, Boston
** from page 119
*** from page 133
**** from page 130