G81 – One can Escape

one can escape...
.
and two can too
..

one can Escape Key press,
Control Key stress,
but not find keys
when you need.

but it takes courage.
but can never forget.
can’t one?
from purgatory, but not from hell.
pooping the landscape
only but for a moment.

one can escape
two bottle addiction.

one can escape
if you have a fast helicopter
and die of boredom,
raised in a lion's den,
oneself, but not one's demons.

one can escaped,
the other can didn't.

one can escape the Riddler,
but that does not make one the Batman.


Donato Mancini, Nick Traynor, Pearl Pirie, Sharon Honeywill-Haddow, Keri Cronin, Amanda Earl, Catherine Heard, Maurice Burford, Andrew Topel, Meredith Grant, Laurie Damon Boese, Lynn McClory, Geoff Smith, Lori D. Roadhouse Haney, Kim Goldberg, Joseph Brown

G82 – Two Lines Enter

Two lines enter the gates,
but once inside the park they
mingle into a single group of revellers,
their names in the drawing,
entertain meeting
enter a bar...
and refuse to leave.

One line leaves….
(And right now I’ve got two lines—
two lines with a gut full of fear.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,
“dyin’ time’s here…”)

One was a fishing line
and the other was a headline:
Body Retrieved From River Bed.
The mind of the condemned killer:
“why can’t we”
and “I didn't want to die.”

Two lines enter,
make a poem,
however brief;
two poems about lines
cause the author/authors grief,
a dimension that exists only as a dream
i have yet to have.

Miracles retrieved from river bed
cautiously and, after several cocktails,
dance their way out.
Two lines enter her ears,
each from different directions.


Paul Vermeersch, Bryne Helen Lewis, Jacob McArthur Mooney, Leslie Ambedian, Amanda Earl, Christian Bök, Kathleen Betts, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Nadine Flagel, Andrew Topel, Linda Steer, Lauren Corman

G83 – One line dissolves

One line dissolves and I cut right in.

One line dissolves as another one rises.

One line dissolves the smallest of particles.

One line dissolves underneath us.

One line dissolves the other words in a paragraph like acid.

One line dissolves a library of truths.

One lines dissolves the lining of his nostrils; the second line dissolves the drug as solution.

One line dissolves words into randomly scattered letters in his late night tired eyes.

One line dissolves anonymity unanimously and another dissolves unanimity anonymously.

One line dissolves my being, my strange being.

One dissolves as the power surges in uncontrollable waves toward Bertrand Russell.

One line dissolves & enters the bloodstream...



Chris Hodgson, Catherine Owen, Laura Nichols, Jami Kali, Joseph Brown, Susan Stach Anderson, Nadine Flagel, Papa Tee, Kathleen Betts, Andrew Topel, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Amanda Earl

G84 – In the Face

Nuclear disaster, duck and cover may not cut it, in the face was where my ice cream cone was scrunched after my wife took umbrage, ogling, you'll find a wooden nose, a sculpture strangely like your mother, a mane that tells people to run an opening where words flow in and out of reason ignorance stands unrelenting‎, bouche or beaned from behind neither civil, of all that is, that was, will you be greater than those who have come before; or will your small light be swallowed by history's long shadow? A distant mirror of God he could not pretend any longer.


Catherine Heard, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Sarah Cunningham, Bryne Helen Lewis, Joseph Brown, Tom Cull, Pearl Pirie, Priscilla Brett, Jenny Hill, Laura Nichols

G85 – Of the Army

Of the army of antics no one knows the truth.
We know nothing as they hide behind official secrets acts,
that they deserted and fled for the hills.

Fight only in times
when the talking's done.

My grandfather fights the Nazis back into Berlin,
the fruit flies that have invaded my kitchen this summer; pests.
Ants march on.

By the army, for the army, to the army
the army of text in my head, ready for war
of the army generally, he thought little.

Erotic thoughts,
the leggy, and the brindled state of the man I sing,
who, forced by fate, and haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,
expelled and exiled
of the army of armed poets.


Lillian Allen, Joseph Brown, Nick Trayner, Bryne Helen Lewis, Nikki Reimer, Andrew Topel, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Gary Barwin, Dennis Soron, Lillian Allen

G86 – We Tried To

We tried to make an angel together,
but didn't
conceive the inconceivable
with minds that could not understand conception;
tied two shoes together.

We tried to deter it,
ow tweed riot; we toe dirt.
we do trite, wide otter.
red toe wit.

Wet editor, it towered:
we tried to make Gregory think we were clever
but we couldn’t all fit in the volkswagen.
So many clowns.

We tried to
but could not understand,
rise above it.
We tried to welcome all voices
but we failed in all these counts.



Brenda Schmidt, Priscilla Brett, Bryne Helen Lewis, Pearl Pirie, Catherine Heard, Amanda Earl, Colleen Kett, Rachel Goetzke, Donato Mancini, Joseph Brown

G87 – Assertively Unimagine The

Assertively unimagine the
worst case scenario,
swallow hard the possibility forgotten
uinspeakable

whitespace
route to Paradise

heat
unassertive

the consequences,
time to enjoy the sin friends
you used to have
and the new bunch
who you will hate from now on

assertively unimagine the
legibility of this sentence,
the decisions you have made
and the ones yet to be made,
aggressive vocabulary
of the undesired
revolution,
sign on an office door that says “no entry today”,

‘Imagination’ impossibility
of having imagined yourself
the Assyrian magi.


Bryne Helen Lewis, Gary Barwin, Jenny Hill, Linda Steer, Amanda Earl, Tom Cull, Papa Tee, Joseph Brown, Susan Barbour, Laura Nichols, Laurie Anne Fuhr, Catherine Heard, Keri Cronin, Rob Budde, Priscilla Brett, Ian Rae

G88 – Fence that protects

doth protest too much imaginings
until they are big enough
to stand on their own

like fire that cools
your barking dog
has a silencing effect

the best is an épeé in the hands of a swashbuckling epicurean
me from my expansive back yard yearning
fence that projects, fence that protests
me from my expansive back yard yearning.


Angela Rawlings, Angela Carmella DeMuro, Priscilla Brett, Lynn McClory, Colleen Kett, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Bryne Helen Lewis, Nadine Flagel, Bryne Helen Lewis

G89 – We pulled down

We pulled down the trap door so nobody else
would stumble upon our discovery.
We pulled down the moon with the hook of a star.
We pulled down the fence, and waited for the tear gas to fly.

We pulled down when putting up broke our hearts
and pushed up
our pants
with all of our might
realized we were stronger than we first thought.

We pulled down on what we couldn't push up,
pushed up what wouldn't pull down.
We pulled down a vise in the air gripped & swallowed us.
We pulled down the gravel road
after midnight
and the stars burned the sky with their warm welcome

We pulled down all the molecules that hold these words together
We pulled down the towers, felled the kings and found; we were lesser for it.
We pulled down the corners of our mouths, clown frown faces.
We pulled down the pullet's downy feathers.


Keri Cronin, Angela Carmella DeMuro, Lauren Corman, Carmel Purkis, Joseph Brown, Papa Tee, Laura Nichols, Laurie Anne Fuhr, Rachel Goetzke, Andrew Topel, Priscilla Brett, Bryne Helen Lewis, Nadine Flagel

#90 – Their fence made

It was now safe to put the horses out to pasture.
Their grass looked flat.
Sure, Messi and the Argentine –
doomed from the first.
Their fence made the grass look greener .

Their fence made
(on the other side)
him all the more curious
about the teen-aged girls
who lived in the house
(–– perhaps in the summer,
they’d sunbathe on the lawn).

Their fence made me realize
it was the first time
I had ever seen swine
pen themselves...
off with the neighbour's wife;

coveted,
kept.

The police (off the grass)
... a huge gaffe ...
when he sold the stolen steed
to the undercover mounted police.

Their fence made it impossible
to catch any glimpse
into his neighbours' lives;
it was an impenetrable fortress
– 8 feet high and completely hiding their backyard –
with no gates or latticed arbours
through which to spy
on the mysterious family

next door their defence maid
there defenestrate
their deaf men's trade
defence men's aid.

Their fence made sense,
money by pawning
what the looters stole.

A wheelbarrow for the forlorn night stars,
their moat looks ridiculous –
itself a gateway to the stars at night:

a toothiness of night's gummy jaw
time difficult
the simulation complete.

Their french maid afraid
of white pickets and hot tin roofs
they had to lie on –

(Robert Frost, a great reputation,
no sense.)

– shadows that nearly strangled the heart
of money, the neighbours nervous.



Papa Tee, Pearl Pirie, Ted Betts, Joseph Brown, Catherine Heard, Bryne Helen Lewis, Priscilla Brett, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Lori D. Roadhouse Haney, Terry Trowbridge, Martin Aitkin, Christian Bök, Gary Barwin, Linda Steer, Rachel Goetzke, Laurie Anne Fuhr, Colleen Kett, Rob Budde, Larissa Lai, Amanda Earl, Nadine Flagel, Martin Glaz Serup, Andrew Topel, Meredith Quartermain, Lauren Corman

#91 Straight for Tyrants

Straight for tyrants
means never being the bottom.

Straight for tyrants
queer for lovers

Surged the demonstrators,
stopped by fences
shields,
swimmers foiled
the fake lake
the pulled plug
the jubilant royalists

swept towards
then past
the thug-bent among them.

Straight for tyrants
but hell bent
a stubborn heading
it runs
upon a course of doomed destiny
bent for the rest of us.

Straight for tyrants,
gay for rebels
such as Nero
a mien hard to affect
along a crooked road.

Straight for tyrants
reduces obliques and curves
in a tongue-tied state.


Paul Vermeersch, Linda Steer, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Pearl Pirie, Gary Barwin, Bryne Helen Lewis, Priscilla Brett, Douglas Barbour, Christian Bök, Papa Tee, Richard Olafson, Nadine Flagel, Andrew Topel

#92 – Ending up Here

A king with no kingdom
a frayed rope
landing
from five stories up
miles from the aisles of empty books
with rotting spines
without my jetpack
vertigo in my toes
as wannago rose

Ending up here was not what I had in mind
when I said I wanted to travel and see places

as if ‘there’ were not an end,
ending up here is quite discouraging
again, when she thought she had left so long ago,
was surprising, but not unwelcome,
made her angry as hell, and she let him know it.

Ending up here and there i was
after dark on a December evening
makes me remember how my Aunt Janice
used to complain about the winters
in Regina
nothing to show for myself but a smear

was not part of the plan

Ending up here to recover the goods,
but somehow that dame with her insidious cleavage
and cigarette smoke
had drawn me back
with one lousy phone call.

Ending up here
in the conversation
made my mind go blank.

Ending up here
isn't bad as starting down there.

Priscilla Brett, Bryne Helen Lewis, Jim Warner, Amanda Earl, Pearl Pirie, Andrew Waldie Porteus, Papa Tee, Gary Barwin, Linda Steer, Catherine Heard, Donna Szoke, Nadine Flagel, Laurie Anne Fuhr

#93 – Locked in Cells

Locked in cells
the chlorophyll shifts
left to right, right to left.

Locked in cells
the idea of galaxies

Locked in cells
the men ate jello
and told ghost stories

Locked in cells,
we held our ziplock bags.

Locked in cells
the mitochondria day-passes
to the basal ganglia
each movement stares
through black bars
motionless.

Locked in cells
to distract the public



Pearl Pirie, Gary Barwin, Sarah Cunningham, Kit Dobson, Andrew Walkie Porteus, Bryne Helen Lewis, Amanda Earl