enter literary
enter visualMe With You; Buds; Epic
"Me With You" was published in The Toronto Quarterly, Volume 4, in September 2009. It was my first formally published poem! It was reprinted by The Ontario Poets Society in the September 2014 issue of Verseafire. "Buds" was shortlisted in a contest adjudicated by Elana Wolff, and facilitated by Scarborough Arts, and digitally published in December, 2010. "Epic" was published in Word Salad Poetry Magazine in their Summer 2010 issue. All three poems appear in my chapbook, Scarborough Songs, published by Lyricalmyrical Press in June 2013.
Me With You
All day climbing the corporate ladder
Up all night treating the pain
Sleep in late on alternate Saturday’s
Wondering why it is all in vain
The blanket seems longer than it really is
Without a second set of legs, another body
To pull it out of the covers, from under
The mattress, to soak it in hot-cold sweat
Filling myself with emptiness
The things men do to define themselves
To get set apart by acting the same
When all I need is to be me with you
With you it’s always like a dream
The rest a nightmare I must wake up from
I will have the reality for which I yearn
Until then both ends of the candle will burn
Bud’s
Already trapped inside
As more snow pounds
The cellar window
False sense of security
from
being dumped on
yet being warm
Three men related because
they married three sisters
Completely in lack of
a sense of comfort
of commonality
Beyond the standard conversation,
The eternal frustration;
the local pro hockey team
Realizing they have
no place to go
So
they had better get along
“What we need,” the oldest one ventures, rubbing his beer-bloated abdomen, “is a power forward with some upside.”
“What we need,” the next one interjects, as he favours his balding pate, “is a number one defenseman not on the downside.”
The other one isn’t sure what to say.
He’s not a hockey guy.
He’s had too much to drink.
The youngest one in the group.
But he is smart, and wears thick glasses:
He decides to state the merely obvious.
“What we need,” with a sense of surprise and shock, “is a goalie who can make a save in the shootout.”
They grunt and groan, guzzle their drinks,
Belch and break wind,
Rub bare toes in shag carpet
Knowing they are all right.
Epic
My feet
Set squarely in
The present
My eyes
Firmly focused on
The future
The narrow way
Seems dangerous and hard
Wrought with strife
And lonely
But, when not absorbed in
Seeming circumstances
Or caught up in
wavering from
Side
to
side
It merely becomes
The surest, shortest distance
Between two points
The past has passed
The present
Is
But a fleeting gift
I will hold out for
The future
And trust in
What it brings
