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