112: 1612

Naked, listless windows used to shake with gusts
of wintry wind. Leak with floods
of summer showers, sticky June;
Rainwater spilling carelessly
onto wooden ground and unwashed carpets on the sixteenth floor.
Barefoot, we step into the lake (shallow depth, cool to the touch),
the autos speeding down below - just shapes reflecting
on the ceiling light.
From wall to wall, this glass concrete is ever-present.
Skylines all too clear to see. Ominous life beside the highway.
The room is brighter in the dusk,
Illuminated by living lights and city strife.

111: Davisville

Greenery entangled
With white brick life
We wave at the trains from the Belt Line
Bridge trembles
With the down town imports
And the youth, the young,
We run through cemeteries
Rich with granite and the deep, verdant green
Overlooked by the balconies
And roof top watchers
Each competing for the closest piece of the sky
Here, the skies recede to the shore, to the
Buzz of the highways, to the
Concrete glass standings, to the
Lush woodlands again
And the Roofs of Renown - their yards invested,
Eternal pristine,
Never contend with the view omniscient
All truth and beauty
minimized to that
of a
painted
square.

We pinch it with

the space

between

our

fingertips.

Thirty stories to tell, and thirty floors to climb.

110: Shadows, Dancing

What once lurked now came out in the open.
We are but sheltered thoughts
encased in flesh and mass. Sweet red congealed,
runs alive underneath - seldom exposed to night's breath.
Natural life in unnatural conditions: pavement, dim streetlight,
gas fumes from the autos;
Makes its rare exit, covered and caught red-handed,
it makes its print. Paints skin dry with dull vibrancy,
then dampened by light mists of dusk.
Never falling as the mist does.
Let loose the cage,
open the bottle.

109: Glass

It is real, permanent,
Transparent; Cold; seeps through the looking-
Glass
pieces itself together, sticks onto skin
like teeth-diamonds. The prism lies
Beneath
the thought, lingers like twisted smoke trapped in canopies.

108: Viridescent

Is there not love that resides in the heart of envy?
The truth is buried under the matters of kin and lore.
- -- in the wrong, while your grandeur is right.
Let me never speak of it. Windows locked and closed.

107: TS694

To go upstairs, while motionless; fleeting
bodies contained in aluminum tube.
Strangers encapsulated by momentary fear that is permanent -
it vanishes when eyes shut, but the motion continues. We
meet sky, destroy clouds, tear invisible spheres.
The mind, too, understands the unnatural condition.
From beneath our numb feet, the ocean bellows,
miniscule life goes on without. And to think that days did.
Never part of the puzzle, just admiring the product.
Old cities will never wait up for you.

106: The Declaration Rose

It crashed, the life, on the shore of the Aegean,
Sputtering rivers divided as the water's webbed cousins.
A reminder of the uncelestial sphere
that strains with unbearable force to be one.
My dear humanists, let us sail,
Let us swallow sand;
Shards in stomachs, the glass afterbirth
Remains delicate and burns with envy.
And the words - they stream eloquently,
hear the cursive romance the page
with sweeping motions of ink
they declare themselves written, read, solidified, shared.
Make a name for yourself - eternal names leave their imprints.
It begins with the crown, Mother, and ends without.

105: Absolutism

The lights are tired, let them rest.
Brilliance infused that glows dimly, weak
in the fog of velvet night. The ghost of Apollo surrounds them,
warming up the air with a linger, never shouts
But whispers unrestrained. Yet, their life commands attention
in the absence of Le Roi.
In daytime: phantom lights that never were.
Instead - The Leader of the Muses.

104: Tweed

Opal dreams of turquoise ruby-esque
Gems glisten sharply, a definitive cut
on the faces of these worlds.
How stable, how solid the strength!
Carved perfection - adored, and cherished to Rust.
Polished lust that is bitter
and wishful convenience;
and the tradition that weighs down on our ivory bones.
Catch the spectrum, encase it in a life of its own.
Bound by the unspoken, white porcelain dreams...
... Swallow crystals,
Drink diamonds,
They ravage the caves and savour the find
While we ravage the stone.

103: York Mills

The land ascends, rising from descent and reaching a peak,
It is concrete and real, these paved pathways that arch and bend.
The houses, large and hollow nothings, rise and fall with the hills,
Roofs ever reaching higher, constant growth spurts
are unnaturally disguised.
Driving past them, they are
just residential decorations.

102: And then, He saw

The Truth comes out; that
Total blindness absolute
Is seldom experienced, survived, seen
As Total blackness.

Some describe it as a grey mist.

101: Suburbium

auctumnus

On one road, the woodlands host the town and its childbearers,
Welcome - welcome.
Tread lightly on the pathways, tracks entrenched deep within,
It is still, yet it moves, this collective chorus.
Voices paint the air with echoes traced from redwood to redwood.


hiems

Myths From The Other Road:
"Please believe us when we say that days
are harsh, we are weary.
The yellow force freezes; dozer sputters and spits in surrender,
But a deity it is, for in its wake the ice and stiff-caked mud
Are resurrected in the awe of few.
Skeleton lanes; they lay their bones,
Cobblestone-quilted pathways hug the asphalt,
We observe their act, their futile bombardment,
Renaissance boom until they --"


ver

They paint the road gold,
Dionysian blessings taken and spent.
Who knew that earth and cement
would finally be equals?


aestas

The windows breathe in airs of sweetness: toasted honey.
We sat under maroon-glazed skies,
atop landfills of the past, now long erased.
Constant ra-ta-tatting
Rivals nature's feather songs.
The track has been made, so
Look on, woodlands! For next time
they may come to you.

100: J. Robert Oppenheimer

"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one."

So it began, with fury,
the birth of a project.
Masks were off and suits were on,
Dapper young fellows carry vigorous minds,
Wear angelic lab coats,
And with skilled hands they paint the pictures
of triumph, of smoke and radiant fire
that transcends earth and enters bodies,
expelling souls
(as if their hollow shells were not empty enough);
He hears it, those words singing sweetly to him:
The Song of the Divine One;
it chants, it roars deep
in his locked heart,
and beats its drum to the tune of a deafening blast.
What have they just seen, here?
Images once witnessed become reality once more -
twice more - and the tired man closes his eyes.
Become master of the race, and others follow his creed,
Appoint him as Father, creator of all ends
An unwilling prophet, undeservingly so.
But the secret is passed on, from mouths within buildings
the virus widens, as does its appeal
with the black-red-white trinity; gift-wrapped fear by the architects.
It soars gently in the air, and floats like a dove.

99: Hiding Buildings

Sometimes the city hides itself,
Powdered snow blessings make icy valleys
Shape-shifted by those windy kisses;
Mimicking dunes of the Sahara at a better time,
Images imagined in collective minds walking
separately, heads facing the ground
that is there no longer, covered by wintry makeup,
white sugary crystals crunch to remember them by.

Look up, if you can - fur-trimmed hood's like a helmet
as we battle this force, this common enemy.
Knee-deep mounds are burial grounds,
dead trees smile with complacence
As the arrival of old visitors take their regular places
Sitting on naked limbs and branches
(Can coldness bring forth warmth?)
and disguises imperfections with diamonds
- if the light hits it right -
Rooftops twinkle with newly-fashioned garb
as if they've been painted
with the most fleeting element that could ever be touched.
They know nothing of the disappearance,
the loss that awaits them with the coming sunshine,
the gold,
the life,
that rids everything away.

And at the end - hear the peace, the calm,
the aching stillness,
the absolutist power of falsified zen.
Everything muted - convincingly, and I was the witness
to the secret of frozen time, once and again:
And the stars cover me, rest upon my shoulders lightly,
with grace,
with reverence,
like I asked them to.

98: Lavender Night

From this angle, the sky is still,
lavender, frozen, in the beat of the night
as we lay paralyzed under sheets of cloth
weaved for comfort and (in)activity.

"To-night we dream to-gether,
alone, together,
everywhere at once,
and at once,
nowhere."

The night is bright, with the dark hue of lavender
shielded with chilly fog, dirt-crust windows, and golden curtains of yellow
I peel them back to glance down at the world, tiny figures zoom
north and south to the town;
But the lights are glowing, a permanent fixture
of the urban birth of nature, a monstrous hybrid --

Thoughts enter my eyes as the deep sleep begins.

It is a manifest of destiny, and the moon agrees
Watching our forced sleep while circling our domain
And the dew drops form from the thirst of the earth
(The plants, too, need their fill after being trampled upon.)
Like a blanket, we are covered; encapsulated,
serene. 'Till we are grappled, choked,
coldly strangled awake
by the amorphous seed of the sound.