37. Stories Affirming Your

Stories affirming your death were greatly exaggerated, now get back to affability and your Ming vases! Honesty turn out to be unreliable – experience what the stories don’t say.

Stories affirming your propensity for satire, your sartorial elegance, are not sentences. Skill with the alphabet are spreading. Throughout the society pages, your cooperation will be duly noted. Paranoia are written in invisible manhood. Divinity are fictional.

Stories affirming your identity create personality dissonance. Death are great exaggerated Mr. Twain. Worst case scenarios are not disappeared ‘affirmative action figures’ ™ marketing are was not Russian.

Stories affirming your gangrenous lust are looping in inspired minds. What’s your alibi? Or should we say who? Position should be peer reviewed.

Stories affirming your place in the world here. And you cried and you laughed and you died flying caterpillars. Snow monsters park funny.

Miekal And, Brian Bartlett, Nick Treanor, Gary Barwin, Catherin Heard, Maria Damon, Amanda Earl, Linda Steer, Kateri Lanthier, Andréa Ledding, Roger Hanna, Warren Dean Fulton, Jamie Reid

38. Untenable Position And

untenable position: head in ass

unattainable possibility: a flimsy negligee

a Tai Chi drop-to-boot: pretendable unbidden

unmentionable unquenchable unbendable: opposition

terrible imprecation: riot gear worn against the osmosis of dissent

shifting indefensible strategic actions: make for good urge

a fidgety agitated population: mix with ignorance and a hunger for disorder

positionable tendons: flex me like Gumby

we fall down: such is life

ten able positrons and ions and neutrons: still my zerg will rush you

a regrettable tattoo: viewed from an untenable position

unnineable: time

desperately seeking tenure: not an ideal and yet it still is our position


Jamie Reid, Leah Murray, Catherine Heard, Brian Bartlett, Roland Prevost, Andrew Topel, Gary Barwin, Warren Dean Fulton, Amanda Earl, Andréa Ledding, Jennifer Shone-Tribley, Joseph Brown, Jim Andrews, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Nicolas Béaud

38 – Twisted, Infected, Co-opted

Vote for Sarah Palin for President.

Done.

Op-ed, feckless, wistful

I finally admit I am

op-ed feted, whispered, read

I am distinctly uncomfortable in this.

Connect the clubs

from one to the next,

loved like never before:

right hand red,

left elbow blue.

Twister cold.

Tavern torn, fettered, unhinged, re-wrote, re-born

stylish as a mop-head.

Glenn Beck is malaria speaking as a mophead

nauseated and reeling

into laughter.

Miekal And, Vanessa Place, Gary Barwin, Carmen Racovitza, Pearl Pirie, Catherine Heard, Athena Madan, Kateri Lanthier, Warren Dean Fulton, Amanda Earl, Priscilla Brett, Brian Bartlett, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Kristen Peterson

39 – I Became Them

I became they

and they barely noticed

their eyes were my eyes,

their arms helped me reach

a most unbecoming manner.

By absorbing their radiant text

mimicking the soaking reflex of

a hard-wired copyright network,

ask them to write poems that I put my name on (they all became me,

my own lost, they all took the name of

my body, their minds, our authorships,

palindromes of a hard-wire)

I became them and soon they me.

And so, the cycle complete, I returned to the veil,

snickering as devils do in the instant they became me,

all sixteen personalities.

As I scanned hundreds and hundreds of them,

tried to become I, an entry should be

and would be everywhere at once, a song,

the verses sound, right.

By sharing my DNA

and giving birth

and loving more and more and more

and I watched my eyes glittering

in their eyes’ bright reflection.

The first time that I said

‘because I said so’

mutating by nuclear testing

waged against us.

Is it plagiarism

to copy what your kids say?

Identities dented from little elbow

room overcrowding

personalities, dissociative from the

too many within me

and weren’t we all satisfied?

Nick Treanor, Jacob Wren, Alison Starkey, Andrew Topel, Terry Trowbridge, Priscilla Brett, Brian Bartlett, Catherine Heard, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Laurie Anne Fuhr, James Yeary, James Dewar, Kathleen Betts, Nadine Flagel, Ted Betts, Warren Dean Fulton, Amanda Earl

40 – Shaped My Voice

Shaped my melon baller love with a gurgle of blood like circling a square into origami cranes. In the sacred harp fasolah scale the English grammar is a penny whistle crossbred with a baritone sax spherically like a sledge hammer driving a square peg into perfect harmony. Into the patted fronds of a flute, Catherine stole my answer. My friend about to have surgery to remove one of her vocal chords may have something to do with shaping the ooohs and ahhhs watching spectacular fireworks displays around a telephone pole.

Paul Vermeersch, Joseph Brown, Warren Dean Fulton, Catherine Heard, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Brian Bartlett, Eric Richards, Kathleen Betts, Lesley Ball, Nicole Collins, Susan Shone, Warren Dean Fulton, Neil Hennessy, Tom Cull

41 – To Get Read

chapter and verse rehearsed flat

to get read you must stop writing

poetry animation must be

something said before

your body must be ee

ae, adverse, head, aa

a badge, an erasure, no name

go gaga, repeat

the classics, something drastic

be dead

do anything but read

give away chocolate

upload your head

collaborate with group narcissism

go treated

get banned, censored, cross the line,

subversive challenge

go into advertising

post your words, leave your words

get published

be the weakest and most fearful point

give away all your other colours

read

liberate libraries within

on tv in tongues

in words

one letter at a time

read, read at, constrain to,

simple things

beg, edit to write

hit on google

get read, get read

with 1000 monkeys

and take care to spell correctly

Pearl Pirie, derek beaulieu, Gary Barwin, Carmel Purkis, Garry Thomas Morse, Jacob Wren, Brian Bartlett, Miekal And, Alison Starkey, Warren Dean Fulton, Sharon Honywill-Haddow, Natalee Caple, Amanda Earl, Kemeny Babineau, Catherine Heard, Priscilla Brett, Kathleen Betts, Susan Shone, Joseph Brown, Carmen Racovitza

42 – Fit to Print

allt fint

hints, hence the dense

bleak on white

the eye or a glint

alas, surpassed

tied the stage of page

the double not

curse and cursive

not quite minted

dangerous to read

a prayer ooo grayt

bass cats blessings

fit to be tied, ain’t it

you

need to be in a

Heidelberg Letterpress

scrawl on wall

crayon

the fingers of perps

in Helvetica bold a box

like whispers

evolutionary

rot

Angela Rawlings, Andrew Topel, Catherine Heard, Roger Hanna, Anthony Perri, Pearl Pirie, Brian Bartlett, Alice Robinson, Neil Hennessy, Joseph Brown, Warren Dean Fulton, Amanda Earl, Gary Barwin, Priscilla Brett

43 – The Revolt Outside

Nothing compared to the revolt

felt inside for the revolt outside.

The 6 o’clock news have advised not

to televise the tower under attack.

Outside is frightful,

the fire so delightful,

go

revolt revolt revolt

not – not because you’re guilty

not because you’re free,

because you scream on the inside

balm to the souls of the prisoners within.

Over puff pastry and foie gras

hints of a much darker war inside,

restore the necessary psychical voltage in time,

soon everything vibrating as

the prisoners’s heads raisd bloody.

My window inside my mind outside this world

inside this heart outside of words

is withering while torrents of rain fall

a house of cards

is quiet though unmeasured;

then the men in black appear,

pounding their shields in fear.

Over the opulent meal inside

snow beggars stand

caviar cowards in

my inner ear tickling me to death

erecting classifications of insurrection.

The revolt outside never happened. Go back to sleep,

pause to remember one who has passed away.

One who has done so much for so many revolutions.

The turmoil inside reminds me

I’ve given up on being piss and vinegar.

I was very young

playing a parachute game

lifted round film over our heads

and beneath I looked up and felt vertigo

my fabric ceiling inflated

there was no pressure

change

physically but geographically

I realized a map overlaid

every street, yard and building ever

those maps lifted off and away

my neighbours

my parents,

just gone.

Our streets were nameless

my house was nowhere

the map was being lifted and dropped

as nothing but a game

with no rules and no real playground

except the map itself.

The revolt outside was a Malthusian catastrophe

populated by droids & droogs suppressed.

Go back to sleep.

Andrew Waldie Porteus, Warren Dean Fulton, Alice Robinson, Amanda Earl, Kathleen Betts, Richard Olafson, Susan Christian, Keri Cronin, Garry Thomas Morse, Catherine Heard, Andrew Topel, Brian Bartlett, Bryne Helen Lewis, Jamie Reid, Priscilla Brett, Maria Damon, Warren Dean Fulton, Thamyris Jones, Sharon Honywill-Haddow, Kristen Peterson, Terry Trowbridge, Miekal And

44 – I Erased Facts

I erased facts with tact and still had a de Kooning theory before verifying that they were indeed facts; I may in fact have been erasing fictions; the fact is, fact or not; that in fact I erased facts or fictions.

I erased facts with acts but not those written invisible with the friction of fiction

and then I denied I lied, lambaste and please help me retrieve them. I shall gather up the eraser rubbings and rewrite truth with a nod, reason with a gesture; made dreams into memory, sight into sound and replaced them with fiction until there were none, but now it is a Rauschenberg so I could be adored for something I didn’t do, removed the truth and replaced it with this poem so you would vote for me.

Douglas: had a good chuckle on that one, as it is election day in Winnipeg and I just read this for the privilege and opinions for the agency and lay down all my weapons and wrote the truth and other mistakes of opinions in order to clear my conscience for another round, plunderversing the collective memory through Orwellian notions of mind manipulation as they squeaked by.

Ian Rae, derek beaulieu, Donato Mancini, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Amanda Earl, Brian Bartlett, Warren Dean Fulton, Kathleen Betts, Pearl Pirie, Jordan Fry, Alice Robinson, Martin Aitken, Catherine Heard, Kristen Peterson, Priscilla Brett, Douglas Barbour, James Yeary, Natalee Caple, Joseph Brown, Jamie Reid, Kim Goldberg

45 – That Exposed Malfeasance

being sexual

in nature will be

par for the course

teasels

the smooth cloth

which we all

cut

into different patterns

squat wart haunch

a ring

a dinner guest

deposed the center

still schemes

stealing, lying,

hurting, harming

swiftly buried again under

a welter of spinning words

too titanic to ignore

that exposed malfeasance

attempt to fool the public

sue and use

cartoons

show what he is:

a jail term

I’m changing mine

to hidden by Truth.

right?

if you can’t fight City Hall?

sure, you can fight city hall,

but in an officially-sanctioned match

you could punch out

Nick Treanor, Pearl Pirie, Catherine Heard, Warren Dean Fulton, Jamie Reid, Amanda Earl, Kinja Jakab, Kathleen Betts

46 alt – Shamefully Distorting History

Quantum leapfrogging

the ripples spreading

across this old pond

tune in the feed

squeezing cyclical lies

to the square of patriotism

to forget shame the historian wrote “the end”

revisionism the new solipsism,

I am what I say I was is a full-time job

the deeper we dig

the more archaeology makes a good novel

all too easy is her middle name,

the most fun you can have for one dollar

writing in a name for your unknown father

in hope of getting one more chance to deal

so high and wild he’ll never have another

creating histories in Canada

teaches that history shamefully distorts

I am writing backwards

the most banal landscape

into a utopian wonder

Warren Dean Fulton, Laurie Anne Fuhr, Alison Starkey, Brian Bartlett, Diane Schoemperlen, Joseph Brown, Kateri Lanthier, Ken McGoogan, Alice Robinson, Amanda Earl, Sharon Honywill-Haddow, Ken McGoogan, Athena Madan, Gary Barwin, Catherine Heard

46 – Shamefully Distorting History

Quantum leapfrogging the ripples spreading across this old pond

as when aliens tune in the feed

squeezing cyclical lies to make them fit the square of patriotism

To forget shame the historian wrote “the end”

revisionism the new solipsism, I am what I say I was is a full-time job

The deeper we dig the more archaeology makes a good novel

all too easy is her middle name (I leapt) is the most fun you can have for one dollar

writing in a name for your unknown father in hope of getting one more chance to deal

so high and wild he’ll never have another

Creating histories in Canada teaches that history shamefully distorts

I am writing backwards the most banal landscape into a utopian wonder

Warren Dean Fulton, Laurie Anne Fuhr, Alison Starkey, Brian Bartlett, Diane Schoemperlen, Joseph Brown, Kateri Lanthier, Ken McGoogan, Alice Robinson, Amanda Earl, Sharon Honywill-Haddow, Ken McGoogan, Athena Madan, Gary Barwin, Catherine Heard

47 – So I Turned

unable to meet her gaze
rampantly Roman Catholic
so I turned the other cheek

my gaze inwards,
still couldn’t look myself in the eye
scarlet, then blue and grey

as fair play cartwheels down Water Street
and into the waves, I turned
I realized that something catalytic
must have happened

my grave
the page

I turned the radio on
I turned off the road
I turned into someone else
a blade of grass lost amongst millions

left on a red
Saturn with a single word
right what wonder

I turned inside out
into an exquisite corpuscle

at Alburquerque, lost, wrong
in protest
a détournement of walking

off the light
over a leaf
an old idiom
on in out

television myself to face me
I never caught a glimpse

my destiny
coming freight train
blinding

over the garden
out the light
lexicographer
from the light
the darkness thanks

faced the mirror
once again

so I turned out badly

Lauren Corman, Nick Treanor, Diane Schoemperlen, Andréa Ledding, Tobey C. Anderson, Leslie Ambedian, Brian Bartlett, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Andrew Topel, Bibiana Padilla Maltos, Catherine Heard, James Dewar, Rob Budde, Kathleen Betts, Vanessa Place, Angela Genusa, Warren Dean Fulton, Gary Barwin, Alice Burdick, Amanda Earl, Alice Robinson, Kristen Peterson, Nancy Allen, Carmen Racovitza, Roger Hanna, Christine Leclerc

48 – And began destroying

And begin destroying aphorism contests
what I have built
for only words outlive stone

the beginning
the end to begin again
only books outlive screens

above Toronto Dominion
begging the king, the best
repeat the ending of creation

the structure from within
what you yourself have destroyed
the destroyer

a fondness for paradox on my part
notwithstanding
withstands the test of time

relationships, ecosystems, credibility
everything we know
destroys beginnings

bullets into white flags
gun barrels destroying
things that remind me of your face

you scumbag, your inner demons
the bonds between us, one by one
still good to ruin

oh kali, goddess of annihilation
helter skelter hate and destruction
memories and underused brain cells


Laurie Anne Fuhr, Pricilla Brett, Andrew Topel, Elena Basile, Tim Posgate, Neil Hennessy, Andréa Ledding, Catherine Heard, Ian Rae, Kathleen Betts, Warren Dean Fulton, Sharon Honywill-Haddow, Brian Bartlett, Kristen Peterson, Alice Robinson, Amanda Earl

G49 – I Mean Re-Storying

like a house,
a narrative restored
twisting the plot’s foundation
and re-pouring and restoring and returning
with a pen on the pearly surface
of the Archimedes palimpsest
without all that glorying
my own story

faction fiction
fraction friction

when I crawl back into
the cave
the basement the
integrity
building
tearing off
the heart of matter

the plot’s momentum is slowed
too much too many
revisions
throughout the whole structure
of fairytale fabrications

live or leave the gene and the building,
the senses one would assume

Vanessa Place, Bryne Helen Lewis, Amanda Earl, Andrew Topel, Catherine Heard, Alice Robinson, Bibiana Padilla Maltos, Kathleen Betts, Brian Bartlett, Warren Dean Fulton, James Yeary

G53 – The Democratic Narrative

The democratic narrative was deceptively grammatical until voted in favour of non-chronological sequences, meanwhile the omniscient author held language in a Totalitarian regime of semiotics strained in its own lingua through a rusty sieve of a reminder endorsed by the minister retroactively, suggests the latest casualty. See A9 eventually led to an election each week, life one big campaign, he demon a rat separated by the iron curtain from the communist’s five year plan, five men in a back room laughing so far has been a tale told by the rich was subverted when the talent agent asked, “What do you call your act?”

The family replied in unison, “The subliminal Tea Party, complete with raven & writing desk riddle, if there is such a thing, is more of a limerick. Will brook no incursions on semantic liberties is a vicious plot.”

Oh, oh Canada candidates for the upcoming election are never seen on the FOX news or CNN argument without substance and honour our home and native Hippocratic imperative. Who will finance the next sob story by big business? Who will try to buy the poor off with promises and pennies? These tangled tales from many knots.

Rob Budde, Warren Dean Fulton, Garry Thomas Morse, Brian Bartlett, Andrew Topel, Catherine Heard, Priscilla Brett, Jamie Reid, Tobey C. Anderson, Amanda Earl, Kim Goldberg, Kathleen Betts, Joseph Brown

G54 – Unleashing Something Beyond

Unleashing something beyond a bitter heart

thunder and lightening comprehension

a horseman of doom, destruction

at this time of year

go, go

the leashes of the minutes

and the hours

the beyond

squash the beyond

the leash lashing out

finally buying into

incorrect spelling

as free as a dog park dog

beyond the power

Jesus

continue to rant ‘til dawn

. . .

I scream “Stop!”

the dog

Cerberean hounds

snarling, barking mutts

the outer reaches of our ancient dreams

the heat of a thousand suns

the rhythm of glints in our eyes

barking mad

from thoughts to pebble casting into the lake

the ripples dissipate

the memory lake is suspended

high above pavement

the chain escape

performed

Lauren Corman, Sharon Honywill-Haddow, Priscilla Brett, Joseph Brown, Brian Bartlett, Andrew Topel, Terry Trowbridge, Neil Hennessy, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Amanda Earl, Warren Dean Fulton, Tobey C. Anderson, Rob Budde, Kathleen Betts, Penn Kemp, Warren Dean Fulton, Alice Robinson, Catherine Heard, Roger Hanna

G55 – A Thousand Voices

A thousand voices
crying out to be saved
hears only whispers

32,000 teeth, dental histories
with no choice.

Tongueless
crying in the wilderness
animal-clad,
and they say:
“Horses, horses, horses, horses
named Betts found themselves
lumped together
inside metal boxes
and just one lousy ear.”

Chorale steeds
broken saddle words

song
in the frog pond
do I hear?

Do we need more croak louder?

A thousand voices cannot drown out
the voice
a thousand lives, and as the bell tolls
loudly
the cardinal’s message is rife with spite:

“Say nothing of value, for the voice of a crowd
is the intelligence of the leader divided by the number of people.
The only voice that has value is the one
who speaks against them.”

Are we all talking? Cursing?
Sounding out an S.O.S., soon a million voices
strong gone silent
thought collateral damage
groaning in unison
the sound of a million, louder,
mourning and everyone else.

Priscilla Brett, Gary Barwin, Andrew Topel, Brian Bartlett, Linda Steer, Rob Budde, Jamie Reid, Douglas Barbour, Bryne Helen Lewis, Penn Kemp, Kathleen Betts, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Darryl Salach, Joseph Brown, Warren Dean Fulton, Tobey C. Anderson, Catherine Heard

G56 – Rising Against Order

rising against time

yesterday’s index card

a tide of derelict details floating

as difficult as rising

against heavy bedding,

dancing naked in the forest

flaccid in chaos

by going backwards

up the stairs

to the third floor

the object of power is

falling into ordure

against oligarchies

waiting to ambush dreams

the control machine

shit detector stalled and fell

to faulty design

rising against ordering

I, the vegan, instead

climbing within structure

a pile of books yet to be read

a thousand flowers bloom,

have been here before at war

senseless killing oxymoron

syntactical redundancy just asking

by the way you fish red herring.

who let the dog

press its face against the plastic wrap?

Martin Aitken, Jenny Hill, Bryne Helen Lewis, Amanda Earl, Neil Hennessy, Tobey C. Anderson, Sharon Honywill-Haddow, Warren Dean Fulton, Penn Kemp, Brian Bartlett, Lillian Allen, Christopher Taylor, Catherine Heard, Kathleen Betts, Nadine Flagel

G57 – We Sing Together

dedicated to Kerry Schooley (Slim Volumes)

Songs of sixpence: pockets of cheap rye

one note at a time. We sing to get her,

a phalanx of larynxes and

the song has many feet.

Husha husha we all fall down.

Whisper the beat, hassling sandcastles

kicked face down in the street words

evolving into rhyme, syntax

flowing forward

running with the

right now

overall

like all the languages in

Bringhurst’s Ursa Major

off key

out of step but

tongue sewing

tongue sowing

the crickets’ melody do

remifa solati sound

of music with no choir

I can name.

Old prison chain gang:

we sing together cannot

overcome the deep vortex

of sound

and note your absence

which will be recorded

in an opportunity

off-beat songs of innocence

and thank you Blake wringing

the sound out of bird’s wings we

sing in the middle of the factory floor.

This is the song that never ends

my friends singing it forever

this is the song that never ends.

In rhyme

you are afraid of singing.

You alienate speakers of your language.

Are you hiding?

Show me it hurts like a hug.

A manifesto, a womanfestival

together with words;

should we?

We sing together

and shout others down

in the sanctuary,

lip synching the wrong songs

to John Cage.

Andréa Ledding, Bryne Helen Lewis, Robin Moses, Gary Barwin, Catherine Heard, Priscilla Brett, Joseph Brown, Brian Bartlett, Rob Budde, Alice Robinson, Warren Dean Fulton, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Slim Volumes, Kinga Jakab, Andrew Topel, Sharon Honywill-Haddow, Neil Hennessy, Christopher Taylor

G58 – We Write Together

We write together but read apart
or write apart but read together
teamwork, many more minds
at our disposal, our destinies.

Beginning with Om raksa
raksa hum
hum
phat
svaha
only when the moon is like
the shadow but read alone.

All too often
to streamline production,
we are the Borg.
You will be assimilated.

We live together, we love
together, we drink together, we
go our separate ways
together we are cursive:
for what else can we do?

We write together,
we left together,
and we’re write together.
We wrong together and
we’re wrong together
to gather ourselves.

We talk together,
we walk together
we cry and sleep together,
but I like to be alone
and fail together
and then we write together again.

We left together.
I didn’t see clear crossover

between

to split the parts.

We gather to write.
It may not be right, but
we left together
to split the difference,
to split the change,
no wrongs,
to split the infinitives
and run on the sentences,
left, left, left
words marching in-formation
or write off the page
playing with
language lego blocks.

Brian Bartlett, Warren Dean Fulton, Alice Robinson, Angela Genusa, Satu Kaikkonen, Christian Bök, Rob Budde, Warren Dean Fulton, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Gary Barwin, Alice Robinson, Sharon Honeywill-Haddow, Kathleen Betts, Christopher Taylor, Tobey C. Anderson, Amanda Earl, Penn Kemp, Jamie Reid, Catherine Heard

G59 – Crippling All Order

or rippling all over
forms, the paper tried plying
the bones rearrange as slow hard
popcorn in the loose bag of
foot enshrined the fool
is that continuous
tug-of-war
between
obedience and liberty

chaos begins its reign
a fluttering butterfly flitting struggling
inside this spider’s web of a nightmare
with one big devious smile
the superstring theory of everything
plays cat’s cradle with our universe
the ragweed made snot fly
through the ranks is the iggy pop universe
almost verbatim
-- do I pass?

crippling all order is not as politically correct
as person with order disability
shackled, we become
our own footnotes, a disabled Facebook account,
the agony ordering all cripples

the fractal complexity of the snowflakes
dissolved on the camera’s lens
turning landscape blurred plane

ripping the border, mortified
because we are sick of order,
the chaos stomped around on flat feet
the rippling caterpillar turns counted
hairs into uncountable juice
inside a chrysalis, trusting that
the random images
dreams
are condensing into a real body
like fries


Kit Dobson, Rob Budde, Pearl Pirie, Priscilla Brett, Warren Dean Fulton, Alice Robinson, Sharon Honywill-Haddow, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Maria Damon, James Depew, Joseph Brown, Kathleen Betts, Catherine Heard, Andrew Topel, Amanda Earl, Brian Bartlett, Terry Trowbridge

G61 – Stumbling into Openness

I feel closed off.
Stumbling into openness,
I tripped on
and flattened
Hansel and Gretel,
already missed,
the night-dark woods,
ending the sentence.

The bee had never known
such ecstasy of the field,
tripped on some roots and branches.

The undesirable body
language
of the town drunk
blind hands seeking balance,
he bumps into invisible barriers,
assaulted by sundogs
and astonishing light.

I can see the most minute details –
the midges hovering in the air,
the heat rising off the rocks,
the atoms jittering –
barely holding together.

I tripped on an en
and fell flat on my ess.
Who left these language
blocks here?

Mumbling about phony governmental
gleaming bureaucratic prisons of paranoia,
hearts pounding like stone mallets,
I arrived into the world starving,
hysterical, naked, clumsy
collaborations, too much room
to explore through revolving doors
of perception, everything is infinite.

Stumbling into openness
closed his mind.

Joseph Brown, Pearl Pirie, Brian Bartlett, Terry Trowbridge, Amanda Earl, Warren Dean Fulton, Catherine Heard, Pearl Pirie, Alice Robinson, Kinga Jakab, Andrew Topel

G62 – Off the Page

I wander the margins’s head
call the graphite greyed
eraser crumbs gather
in a pile beside my desk,
though on my mind, written words
in secret
into the primeval swamp of
toothed consonants and big-lunged vowels
is where I’d rather be.

And into the fire, the margins
conspire against me:
‘hic sunt dracones’, a warning
of dangerous, unexplored areas, here
be dragons, beware the edges.

Off the page hurtled the word “off”.
The poem conferred upon the audience
like a secret map to the lost.

Off the page is where she had her chance,
but could not resist;
is where he liked to stay, unread, lived.
Pirandello’s Rosetta, until she drowned
like a stone in Virginia Woolf’s pocket,
was a different woman.

You could recite the words out loud,
over and over again until they absorb
and you become one with them.

He was Hyde,
the squire and the stable boy,
done with the lot of them
before they start getting ideas.

Or else,
program for misbehaviour:
the student forfeited
for being messenger, secretary,
the letters suffocate into the Universal Mind.

Off the page, braille bumps tumble,
a shining disarray of blinking flavours
of delight and disgust.
Are we on the same page?

Liberate the poem.
All is open to interpretation
and into madness fallen
into the pool.


Bryne Helen Lewis, Pearl Pirie, Catherine Heard, Priscilla Brett, Brian Bartlett, Kristen Peterson, James Depew, Robin Moses, Warren Dean Fulton, Rob Budde, Nick Treanor, Jamie Reid, Amanda Earl, Kim Goldberg, Slim Volumes, Andrew Topel, David Fujino, Kathleen Betts, Priscilla Brett, Kateri Lanthier

G63 – Uncover Something Irrevocable

carved into the side of
a mountain a Mac
for college

it uncovers you
as your vocals covet verse
epitaph to all things mutable

uncovered cable
found naked under cover
now I am without

irritating
like death
duvet covers, comforters
benefit beneficiaries
like a busted balloon
a wad of gum

naked in thunderstorms
lightening erection
as true as uncovering
Heideggerian truth

a comprehensive investigation
of your own epitaph
and then take it
away.

excavate it.
bring it
to the surface. put it
on display like a carnival of oddit-
ies, and charge an admission to see it.

I excavated out of the carnival
on a ferris wheel something chocolate
covered with no centre, something darker
than the unknown, or midnight without a
moon, monkey paw, walking corpse;

now cover irrevocably and try
to undo it
like a wet knotted shoelace
when you were five

Catherine Heard, Vanessa Place, Roland Prevost, Andrew TOpel, Priscilla Brett, Slim Volumes, Amanda Earl, Warren Dean Fulton, Kristen Peterson, Robin Moses, Andréa Ledding, Andrew Waldie Porteus

G64 – Something Outside Order

is a door, inside chaos, within ourselves
clacks its wings and zigzags out of sight
is needed
whistles seductively
not orders

a yellow-plumed bird
in the bare branches of winter.
day after day, something inside ardour
is around the corner, ordering
a scramble at the snafu dinner
like Sasquatch playing hide & seek
with a chupacabra & a saucer of
grey aliens

is in order
plays Knicky-Knicky-Nine doors
w/ the Establishment,
refuses to come in form the cold
even when invited
claws at my cerebral cortex,
marches to the beat of Keith Moon
a salad and a table with umbrella
a dragonfly in the Primordial soup
looms

some order outside things
in order some things out
outsome things order in
insome things order out
in things some order out

green eggs and ham at the
drive thru window? All I saw
was tentacles. I told it that it
needed a car like everyone else.

taker, taking orders,
“I’ll have what she’s having.”
outright moonrises deed
humouring deed tortoises
riotous thermos deeding

odour in the court,
the judge yelled


Andrew Topel, Priscilla Brett, Brian Bartlett, Amanda Earl, Jamie Reid, Gary Barwin, Andréa Ledding, Slim Volumes, Robin Moses, Warren Dean Fulton, Lori D. Roadhouse Haney, Rob Budde, Kaye Watson, Kinga Jakab, Pearl Pirie

G65 – I Believe In

I believe in
birthing and trafficking of books
before they are aborted
hurling tracts onto the pyres
in the streets –

the official account: you,
what the others lieve out.

I believe in God,
and I believe that God
believes in Claude,
that’s me,
that’s me conditional love.

But I also believe out.
The truth lies somewhere in
belief.

I believe in tigers wearing pink pajamas.
I believe in delusional beliefs.
Truth fairy toys come alive,
Santa brings toys to the Easter bunny,
chocolate eggs living until I die.

Being wary of believing,
I believe intelligent design
tells gents lies.

Out of
my faith fails the
fragmentation of perspective
as a means of
creating interesting word
strings, doubt.

The impossibility of the impossible
being realistically possible,
when one accepts that the impossible
are, in this world, possibly not possible.

Photosynthesis and the darkest cave,
the power of one, the power of many,
the future of yesterday:
what do you mean by believe?

Magic gathering in an Olympic theme song
for CTV that I heard every day
during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games.

Warren Dean Fulton, Brian Bartlett, Priscilla Brett, Nadine Flagel, James Depew, Bryne Helen Lewis, Pearl Pirie, Kaye Watson, Kim Goldberg, Catherine Heard, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Gary Barwin, Amanda Earl, Gary Thomas Morse