Canadiana

The colour of her money isn’t green,
For she’s Canadian and stands to send
A message to the world that England’s queen
Is also hers, and will be to the end.
O Canada, she sings without a thought:
She waves the red and white of her realm’s flag
And cheers the toughest hockey ever fought,
Then stands to sing her anthem and to brag.
The problem with her country is the French:
They speak a different language, and they vote
For separatism all the time, to wrench
The sea from guarded sea, then sit and gloat.
If she could only make those Frenchies stand,
Then she could truly brag we’re free and grand.

Little Bo Peep Sees a Therapist

The dizziness of daily thinking swim
Within a withering pool of oh-why-me,
For Bo Peep thinks that it was vaguely grim
That she misplaced her flock of two or three.
This happens most at night when she’s awake
To all the pain of never counting sheep,
For then she calculates what was at stake
And deep concerns deplete her shallow sleep.
She’s told to suck it in and out when called
By thoughts like these along the Bo Peep path,
For, yes, her little life’s completely stalled
And she should light some candles, fill a bath.
So, yes, she breathes and treats her pain in kind,
And finds her sheep were lost within her mind

A Work in Progress

So know below the show of time and place
A googleplex of cupids fly and dance
And they give form and import to the space
Within a universe held in their trance.
They foam within the steel-grey seas off Spain,
And grow in trees that tower in Brazil;
In Canada they snow, in Java rain,
In China glow upon a distant hill.
This physics was developed (as we know)
Before our physicists imagined their
Mad quantum particles that come and go
With wacky randomness – all unaware.
If equally a cupid thinks as little,
It’s out of joy and joy’s joyful transmittal.

The Banks and I

The banks are evil, everybody knows –
They serve the Masons and Illuminati
Who in a New World Order will depose
The good and just in favour of the haughty.
The banks like debt; it makes us all their slaves –
What once were billions number now in trillions;
So while we spend and spend and no one saves,
They lounge on silk divans in gold pavilions.
I say this all with deep ressentiment –
I want it all: the silk, the gold, three cars;
And though my income’s just petit-bourgeois,
I crave the trademark trappings of the stars.
So with a credit card I make down payment
Upon a life tricked out with awesome raiment.

His Cat Mephistopheles

He thinks he’s sold his soul to his grey cat
(He’s Faust, and his pet’s Mephistopheles);
So in the dead of night, rat-a-tat-tat,
He hears its demon sound and dares not sneeze.
He counts instead, “So now I’m ten years in –
And I got twenty when that puss appeared;”
Next he awakes – a licking of his chin
At sunup lifts what he at midnight feared.
Then as he goes about his outside work
Charged with increasing dread as evening nears,
His waiting cat’s asleep, but its wide smirk
And constant pricking of attentive ears
Anticipate its master’s glad return
When they will play away the day’s concern.

The Persistence of a Dream

They fancy a Caribbean vacation;
It’s January after all, and they
Subsist within a colder northern nation
And crave that sand and sun a flight away.
And so they put their credit down and buy
Two tickets to a land of peach ice cream;
It’s in a week, and they can’t wait – they fly
Each night into their equatorial dream.
He dreams of Dedalus caught in old Crete
With waxen wings made for his freedom flight,
And she of young Snow White entrapped in sleep
Who knows a kiss and its daybreak delight.
And though they have to deal with snow delays,
Lost luggage and some rain, they catch some rays.

Dance Conversation in Three Steps

Step One

As we turn and turn, look out, not in,
For if our gaze is in we will collect,
Like gravity, slight sin on petty sin,
While everything else withers with neglect.
But if our gaze is out, our little world
Expands awareness to the outside reaches
Of our universe where, galaxies unfurled,
We’ll learn all that their furthest stars can teach us.
So therefore we should look to other people
For only then can we complete our love,
And, worry not, that always present steeple
That centres us will ever stand above
Just like it did on that our wedding day
When we avowed to love and to obey.

Step Two

No steeple stood above our wedding vows
Since we were married down at city hall;
And though I grant that poetry allows
Some play with truth, we can’t abandon all:
You set the cosmos as our outward gaze
As now we turn and turn on this small floor,
But it's all flat, and after many days,
We’ll circle back and enter at that door.
So I say, no, let’s look within and turn,
And find our true infinity right here;
But, love, I know – I understand you yearn
For galaxies that dance about out there.
So, okay, go and ask her for a dance,
But go without a single backward glance.

Step Three

That last bit carries some uncertainty –
You offer me permission but you don’t?
And by your look, some greater clarity
Won’t be forthcoming, so I think I won’t.
And, yes, of course, you’re right the small is just
As infinite as the extremely large;
And therefore you and I, as one in trust,
Will search the inner spaces in our charge.
So, please, my dear, stop looking at that man –
You seem to think he’s made of chocolate cake;
Don’t blush, I swear, I know if pressed you can
Renounce your cake if I surrender steak.
We’ll turn and turn, and as they play our song,
We'll dance our way through this attractive throng.