It betrays you, these meds

Always promising

Never quite doing everything

Right.

It is a trade-off

Meds for sanity.

What’s not said

Is how it slowly kills

Your ability to

Create beauty

You’re left with four walls

And a mental straight jacket

And nothing in between

Your life becomes a life sentence

Yes, you do pay

For what you get.

©2016-2023 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved

But didn’t want it.

Time is not all that

It’s added up to be.

By the age of seven,

I faced suicide.

I dwelt in her shadow with Time beside her.

At twelve, I realized I could never

Be a good mother,

So Time grabbed me by the womb

And stood still.

At twenty, I fell in love.

For the first time,

Time didn’t matter.

At twenty-one, my lover

Left me to chase his old flame,

Once too spiritual for him,

But, you see, I had brought him

Back

Into the fold,

So, now, he thought he had a better chance.

Time turned black and white, green, and red.

Ten years of waiting and being taunted.

Psychotic church leaders

Who meted out their dole of destruction.

Time was a cheat.

But the worst was the lie from someone

Whom you love

Who once was supposed to have

Loved you back,

Replying when asked,

What helps?

“Time heals.”

Of germanic essentials

Where jaywalking elicits reproach

Because the norm is not to set

A Bad Example

For children.

However, we do live in a Big Brother State

Where jaywalkers are lynched by law

Simply one of many sources

Along with flashing parking meters

And transit officers

For needy fare-evaders, all presumably Asian,

To buttress the economy.

But yes, the safety issue lies at the heart

Fast drivers

Pedestrians texting

And not planting two feet

On solid sidewalk pavement

Gives speed itself

The right to get away with murder,

Literally.

The old adage that

Pedestrian is King

Is supplanted by

The king is now a cash cow.

Nobody minds

If the boys in blue

Jaywalk.

Said I’d never make it

That my last chance

Was getting out of ignorance.

But, God had a plan.

Within 30 years of Mr. C. quoting

Falstaff to the woe-begotten Malvolio,

My God compressed a life time or two

Of intense heartbreak, loss, loneliness

If Mr. C. could see me now, read my writing

He’d see that the native dirt I’d been wallowing in

Had aged into carbon

And with just enough pressure and heat

Some dull but inherently transparent,

Adamantine substance has emerged.

And with some cutting and polishing,

It’ll be worthy of rich and poor alike.

I spent a lifetime chasing beauty

All this time, Beauty eluded me.

I thought I could capture her in a phrase,

Or in a cantabile dolce of one of Mozart’s finest

Beauty remained an an enigma

I would daydream of catching her and holding on

Fascinated with what lay beneath the layers of the golden orb

That I could unravel time, distance, secrets of worlds lost,

And all the mysteries of this life and beyond

Only I found, as I gently peeled back leaf after gilded leaf

That the centre was leaden, hollowed-out ebony,

And within it laid this mortal coil.

©2016-2023 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved

It’s not like I wasn’t trying.

It’s just that if by the age of two

You only knew fighting parents

And the bleakness of unavailable

Hearts,

You settle for the most ridiculous of childhood

Pretend games

So bleakness curled its tail around me

Until, one day

My father brought home

A record.

It wasn’t any old record

It was a gift for me

That he had scoured the city to find

On the recommendation of a friend.

My father, the tone-deaf, practical workaholic

Bought me a music record

Of a pianist

But all I heard was the piano

And of it being as exquisite as a father’s intention

For his daughter

I was simply unaware

Of the trap I was falling into

For at the tender age of three

Beauty entered my life

And I knew her by name.

Since then, I have been seeking beauty in all things

And whenever I’ve had to shun it

I become bitter and cynical

Wishing ill upon the many enemies accrued

And wishing that I could just die

But after each drought

I would learn that Beauty never left me

In a way, I always knew she was there

Patiently waiting, alluringly

Like a monument who never ages

But who dares you to look again

Upon her perfect, fascinating face

That needs no jewel to crown

But beckons you to hope anew.

©2016-2023 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved

Coffee is the one of the most traded commodities. Another one is gasoline. Both are black gold. Do we see a theme here? Thick, sludgy, olfactory-fatiguing, environmentally unfriendly. We humans are masochistic creatures.

Tea is so much better for you. But ah! Tea doesn’t have that kick. You need that kick, or else the day isn’t started right. Then you need that kick in the afternoon. Mornings, afternoons, what’s the difference after a while? Coffee makes it all the same.

Fable has it that coffee was discovered by a goatherd a long time ago somewhere in the Middle East. Since then it has been the object of slave plantations owners and rain forest harvesters. Funny how a simple goat dance can turn into something so nasty.

And it is nasty. People have killed for coffee. Fertile land depleted. But what would I do without coffee? I’d be a wreck. For a few days at least. Then I’d be this insipid and calm individual who can reason clearly and feel deeply without hypertension.

Nah, I wouldn’t want to give up coffee. Forget the DSM. Who cares what some of the most respected and learned people of our nation think? Who’s Berkeley or Harvard? What I want is a cuppa joe to get me lazily through the day and de-stress my fatigued nerves after a long day at the office. Just think of it this way: with moderation and self-restraint, coffee is a stimulant that doesn’t ravage the body the way street drugs do. Therefore, if something isn’t as bad as street drugs, it must be alright. Logic has never been a strong point of mine, I admit. Oh well, need another cuppa joe to get me through this one.

The geese returned last night.

I heard them.

Their honking made my boom-boom heart

Jump with glee,

“Here come the geese! Here come the GEESE!”

I waited patiently all January. February.

It’s an urban-Canadian thing.

As homespun as backyard ice hockey and maple syrup in buckets.

It’s our quaint yearning for our most quintessential of ontological symbols.

The beaver, the moose, and the doomed, drop-dead gorgeous grizzly,

Cannot compare with our delight in the V-formation

When we look up,

Or at the sound of honking,

While we’re are shut in by winter,

Writing poems such as this during our barrack days.

Canadian geese don’t forget their place.

If one dies, that phantom seat in the V

Remains empty in flight.

And every time they make it back

From their odyssey to Florida,

This old woman’s heart somersaults

Like a young girl at watching a homecoming parade for the first time,

Whose military band marches to the beat of Earth’s vernal and mystical drummer.

©2016-2023 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved

I quench my thirst with
Hard liquor
To take the edge off my existence
I would have more than that.
Un homme qui recherche les trésors
But none being available,
I sit perched upon a high moat
Afraid of the height to which I’ve climbed.
I’ve climbed this way because I was unable to stand
And needed out of my wobbliness
Now I see I’ve climbed too far
Beyond ever coming back

I keep hoping, beyond the silt-swollen river,
That there’d be a rider and horse
To wear my flower into battle
In chivalrous, shielding manner,
Unafraid of heights and moats.

But I think it is a dream
I once had when small
Of a Green Rider, bearing the glory of the phoenix
On his shield
He was unafraid of that moat above which I sat
And took on the challenge of heights.
I look for this Green Rider to this day
But do not find him.

He is lost I think, in a wide world of dissipation
And more harsh liquidity.
Perhaps, he hopes for someone to challenge his moat
But finds none but the occasional glimpse of a
Far-off, distant and guarded tower.

©2005-2023 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved

Squirrels eat away
Bore into and nest
In my mind.

I see their master plan
To take over the world
By the single act
Of gathering yet another nut
Like me

I don’t want to be a statistic
Told that I’m doomed to idiocy
In my dying years
Like when I’m past 40
And can’t lose the trail
Shake off the grasp of these critters

Go away, you rodents
Find another mind
To steal
And hide
And forage
For the winter.

It numbs you.
When you look at dewy-eyed lovers in
their near-sighted aura walking and
smiling in the snowy outdoors,
you wonder what right do they
have to be so happy when you’re not?
But you smile anyway. Young faces
softened by the cold air laughing so carefree
….how can you not smile?

You close your eyes for a moment,
and a pang like a deliberate stab
goes into your heart,
and you must walk away now
…and forget
…think of your art
…remember that you never lost
your youthful figure.
And thank God that so far
you don’t have or may never have
children who would ruin everything.

At 44, one grows weary
of the heartbreak. It is unfortunate.
Nothing can heal it because those
who are heartbroken won’t give up
the only emotion strong enough
to drive their creativity.
It is through heartbreak that
we realize the next best thing to divine beauty:
the devil’s systematic destruction of that
person through
the beauty of unfulfilled yearning.
It is not the next best thing; it is the next most moving thing.
It drives all demonic art.
I am too old to traffic in lies.

©2009-2023 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved

They were once my best shoes,
worn around until they became
so trodden down themselves
that I had to capture it’s pathos.

The story of a pair of shoes in a two dollar painting.
I’d rather be painting the way almond trees blossom
or how summer sunlight liquifies upon haystacks
Things in this life that give great happiness.

I am nothing, though. A nobody.
So I paint these shoes,
hoping someone could give me an
encouraging embrace
–is that too much to ask?
Even from my dearest brother?
Reminds me that the frost will come.

There’s a problem being the fairer sex
You look into my eyes because you think you’ll find love
Adoration
Pools of wormwood

I am a daughter of Eve, not Sarah
She poisoned you with the apple
She poisoned all of humanity with disobedience
She offered up her delicate frame for your pleasure
So she could enslave you

Don’t think it easy, my love, to escape a female
She holds in her hand a luminous, sapphire-blue egg
Nestled in finest, beaten gold
Which you cannot resist

And while you take that fire to your bosom
She drains you slowly of your life
Feasting upon your fire-warmed heart

It’s a City that sleeps like Leviathan

Slumbering under the Native’s Curse

Heavy-lidded and gasping for breath

We live out our days by asking, “Sorry, when is the next paycheque coming, again?”

All the precious resources that gave fabled, past civilizations strength are

Appropriated by cash registers, misappropriated by city hall

And wasted by the whining masses of adult children unaccustomed to hard times

Nobody wants this

But we are resigned.

We don’t read poetry. We don’t read novels.

We don’t write handwritten letters with a fountain pen unless we

Live on the west-side of the tracks and are octogenarian romantics.

Everyone on the metro

eats, sleeps, breathes

Micro-radio waves caught in the air by

Our garbage-in, garbage-out, ohsosmartphones.

Attributes,

Especially emotional ones,

Sink into the downward spiral of self-alienation and text-based narcissism

Baggage and hang-ups? Why, everyone who’s anyone owns

a Coach handbag with a matching mid-length trench coat. At the very least,

a parka from MEC, who gets a Mouthful of Everyone’s Cow.

Upgrading relationships constantly – why stay with a loser?

For Vancouverites, gossip is de rigeur, we don’t lie about it

Even if we’re not socialites

Friendly on the surface with our sun-kissed, Clinique foundation for

metro men and girly women

Eye make-up brings out our peacock pomp

Lipstick and fingers bejewelled with a wealth of gemmed rings say

“You can’t touch this,”

“But you can look, and try to.”

Pretensions of affording the given and

unforgiving standard of living,

While living in penury after

all the bills are paid,

Telling ourselves lies

to get through the wretchedness

Bid “Good Morning, and lovely liquid sunshine we’re having,”

Euphemistic for “I’m actually miserable about the drizzle

but I won’t let you know that.”

Here, we’re weather snobs with bad taste in togs and smocks.

Here, yogic Lulu women almost dance as they traipse into the

overpriced coffee shop

with their

90-dollar, camel-toe leggings,

130-dollar, chest-supported, flirty tops, and

occasionally, an obscenely expensive flare

out-at-the-buttocks, Prada parka

that an upwardly mobile girl had to sleep with some

ugly, forlorn CEO at some

conference in Whistler to get, whom she’ll never see again.

Mission accomplished. (breathe.)

Here, some men complain such women don’t deserve

protective rights while they ogle

them up and down

Men who are hard-working, 30-something and cynical from lack

In the end, how much is each of us worth?

Craigslist personals – men looking for soul mates

– Oh, please!

They mean free whores –

they just don’t want the cost of paying for STDs

They don’t want your head games either

Just your clean booty, that’s all

Oh, it’s not their fault, “C’mon, they’re just guys!”

Superficial, but everyone is deeply wounded.

Devious, everyone is madly looking for love.

Yet, Mother Teresa truly never did visit.

The crowds responded favourably when the Dalai did though

A maverick icon who says, “Compassion is my religion,”

Visits skid row, the beating pulse of every city

The poorest amongst us defines us all

Demon structures build into hierarchies over the City,

starting with the slums.

Unfortunately even the Dalai with his zen Yin Yan Tao Dao whatever

could not stop that

Devil-may-care, apple-core heart

In a City full of people, one is always alone.

My immigrant people despise me because I’m trying to be white

And they insinuate that I should remember my

Ancestors

I tell them to better their English more better

They scorn me in public with a jealous, arched brow

I despise them back.

They remind me of what I once was

And strove so hard to become more. Much more.

And yet, the day always

Ends with a whimper.

©2014-2023 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved

My mother’s unframed photograph sits there
inclined on a bookstand
The light focused on
her.

She stood there
In the dimming light
Against the barely-traceable sea
Her hair black against the black
expanse of sky, clouds, sea, sand
Rocks.
Wrinkles of gold in the darkening stretch.

She stood there
Shrouded in purple
a simple pearl pierced her ear
Firm, not pendent
Beneath her overworn, deep purple cardigan,
a neat white shirt
crossed with black.

She stood there
the once fair face now tanned with years
the brow that locked into place a treasure beneath the furrows
The pensive, upturned pinch of the lips
Caught in the pockets of her cheeks.
The diffusive doe’s eye has hardened and brightened with
knowledge and hardship
Ripened like a wild berry on a wayside bush
Insignificant to the passer-by in the distance
But a kernel that encompasses all to all who stop
And examine the portion, the whole
The affinity of composites and constituents into a sum
That is
And is
And equals, though nothing can ever really equal, more.

She stood there
her life an unknowing
Transformed
A reckoning settled into normalcy
of suffering understood
Expanding the heart until it sings
And dies singing.

As I turn the desk lamp slowly away from the photograph and toward me,
My reflection gradually grows clearer
And brighter in her image.

©1995-2023 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved

I dreamt of a girl
battered for having
badly ribboned barrettes
and looking for the insouciance
that only a dreamer can find.
I looked and saw a mangled, knotty tree,
half-submerged
under sand and
the voices of pretty girls singing…
“Sailing, sailing, over the deep blue sea.
It’s so bumpy because of Ally, over the deep blue sea…”

You were a half moon,
just about brimming with womanhood.
You had deep, lunar eyes that shone,
incandescently,
looking for a planet to grace your light upon.
The heart accrues more layers as time goes on;
but at its magma center is a profound silence:
The girl, who is whole, lives there,
unaffected by the passing of time.

I looked again and saw a girl peering
into the pond into where her barrettes had fallen,
and saw her looking at her beautiful image for the first time.
Beyond the painting brushed by others’ opinions,
she was a young-old beauty.
Painting upon painting peeled away when
the shimmering pond lapped its first ripple
to touch her clear knees.

Half-moons wax poetically to full moons,
the desire of the young
and the fond memories of bitter old maids.
Companions are necessary.
When the full moon arrives,
shout and wail and rejoice altogether!
Don’t desire for its coming
for surely the surface will ebb
and you will be left in oblivion.

There is a sorrow that a man never knows,
that they make into misogyny.
When one is past her princess prime,
what remains are leftovers,
broken pots and cracked surfaces.
There requires no haunted mirror
nor ensconced tower.
The woman is thrown out like a flower
that no longer suits the bouquet,
and the vase itself is an over-glorification of living thing.

The girl in my dream,
however, bends her graceful body at the water’s edge
and catapults the future a block away.
She is only too happy to find respite
from the taunting pictures.
She is only too happy to be in the moment.

©2003-2023 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved

Where fist meets sheet that shears shred up,
The rock is mixed and yet metamorphic.
Still, sharp mountains of shale and granite
Preserving, or paralyzing, the veils of wild growth
Wildlife.
I wish there were more baby grizzlies to photograph
Stuck in briar that lure curious tourists
Mama Grizzly too imminent to warrant adoring his baby fat

The shoe that is the city of jeweled fame
Shrinks to tiny airscape
The glory of some dead, jagged slate with crowns of reddening, beetled pine
Laced around the mountains, tempting, repelling
Thank God for the mimicry of tea and crumpets to provide conversation for the mediocre
As they fight for a place by the window
A moving cart, forty-five degrees angled, having moved us ever upward

Up. What is there to see? Stillness, and a couple of places to snap pics of…scenery?
One buys a trifle from the shop. It is a hat. But it has a name.

I rather think Bro would prefer a collectible
To the shine of a name.
I try to get more than one jewelled-encrusted pen with Darth or Luke on it
I already have one of Chewy;
But parents are adamant. He is too old to be given expensive kid’s toys.
I insist, but here I am just another child on vacation to the Rockies with septuagenarian parents.
There is no hope for growing up. Even I know that.

I recall the grizzly cub and how happy he seemed to think it inconsequential
Browsing for berries without its mother.
We Canadians know better than to meet the mother.
Perhaps I, too, need to run away every now and again to find a wider space
Available, if only for a short oscillation.

For where I end, I also come home.
I stop running
Even when I desperately don’t want to.

©2004-2023 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved

In this hellish Bedlam deep
There is no rest
From possessed screams
And demon dreams
No quiet in which to sleep.

Beauty fleeting, spare and sweet
Comes to me in bittersweet
I look and covet
Cannot have it
She, I cannot cheat

Self-importance rules my mind
I display my genius at every chance
But I fumble
On thoughts I stumble
The words I cannot find.

To the fortress would I go!
To take and overtake
Through jungles swing
I would be king!
And down I’d put my foe!

But who are then my true friends?
I can only distrust my allies
To my woe
All is foe
My mind to mischief tends.

My conscience is a faithful guide
Tells me all my suppressed lies
And my curse,
Unclosing eyes,
Leave nothing behind which to hide.

I turn and counterturn a quarter
Willy-nilly I despair
Stuck and dumb
I am numb
And do nothing but wait and loiter.

When will I find pastures green
Where heaven meets the earth?
A place to run
Beneath the sun
Where all men have their worth?

Or healing that arcane fabled stream
Where lepers are made whole?
And are accepted
No more rejected
But regarded for their soul?

These four walls hold all my world
I know none else but this
That if I fail
I cannot bail
Hell’s wrath is utterly unfurled.

©2004-2023 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved

The one haphazard mistake that
most women make in their early
spinster years is the notion of
eternal girlhood.
Companionless, they make their way
through this world with an umbrella in one hand
and a satchel in the other,
their shopping bags full of self-treats
that should have gone to their unfertilized eggs,
taxi drivers as their companions.
It is a sight to see.

You can always tell who these old maids are, or future old maids.
They could be as young as 18 or as old as 62
but they have in common the singular solitude of self-imposed hermitage.
Around them you can see,
feel and taste the thick, baked wall of aloneness.
They don’t want to be alone.
But they do everything to make it so.

Their buying power is all that is left useful of them.
When they had spurned would-be suitors
before even giving these men a chance in youth,
they spurned their would-be unit of utility.
Unfortunately, suitors do not pursue like they used to.
There are simply too many convenient fish.

Happily, there is a community of old maids.
They used to be called nuns.
Now they are called artists.
They find meaning in a brushstroke and eternal youth in a word.
Sex is a by-product, if ever it comes,
and not the object. Liberated and enlightened,
they reshape the modern woman into a form pleasing unto themselves.

In the event that death comes before all is fulfilled,
there is a notwithstanding clause:
I will put my affairs in order.
I will pay all my debtors.
I will sell all my belongings and leave it for orphans.
I will start a writer’s fund in my name.
I will live on in memory somewhere.

Miss Lilly had a purple hat
A very singular, purple hat
It was such a unique purple hat
That
She had a most difficult time
A most extremely difficult time
An extraordinarily
Terribly difficult
Time of wearing it right.

She wore it flat
She wore it round
She even wore it upside-down.
But still she had a really most difficult
Positively noxiously difficult
Absolutely tremendously
Difficult
Time of wearing it right.

She tried it to the one of each side
Forward, backward, left, right, crosswise
Still she could not get it right
And so she sighed after having tried
All possible means of getting it right.
Miss Lilly sat and sat and sat
Considering how to wear her hat
She sat till she was all affright
And said, “Oh my! I’ll never succeed
In wearing my purple hat just right!”

Miss Lilly was about to give up
When suddenly an idea struck.
“I’ll wear it like ones wears a crown
Not flat, not round, not upside-down,
Not to the side, front or back,
That’s just no way to wear this hat!”
And so she wore it like a crown
A most peculiar sort of crown
That dazzled everybody around
Ev’rytime she went about town.

So Miss Lilly found a way
Of wearing her purple hat just right;
She thought it very fine indeed
And said, “Now how about one in tweed?”

It used to be that
when young
Beauty expanded my heart
to the full
as such elastic young organs
are prone to be.

But after years of
walking
upon hard stone pavements
past strangers with
Trenched foreheads
Open hands
That clearly marked

Pain
(anguish)
That such pure beauty breaks my heart—
It being brittle and ready to crack
Simply imploding from the greatness of her
guileless art.

Beauty leaves her mark on me.
I am one branded with fire
That I might behold her brilliance
For one fractured moment.

©1999-2023 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved

You could have been
But were instead
A ballade in my heart
That sung its brightness
Into being
A sun from stars apart

I loved you with my
Purest love
No greater and no less
Yet you see I willed you free
To curse me though I bless.

Shall I mourn
For your lost love,
Your sickened heart to move?
What benefit, what kindled art
Should I a lover prove?

But lovelessness
Is harder still
And brings on greater ill
So I choose, that should you prick,
My blood an ocean fill.

In that day of poverty
When death to me draws near
I will remember you, O yes,
In death, of eye and ear

So you will never know the want
That haunts me night and day
Though you may
Another love
My love’s for you always.

©2003-2023 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved

The harlot, woman of reluctant
Easy virtue, is pushed before a wandering King.
Easier men, with disdainful, prying hands of
Greater Guilt,
Have touched less polished stones than these.

She sought for expressions of remorse
She found only gaps of white insoluble space
If only she could get past these inward-pointing arrows.
Her hands thrust out
To give
To be forgiven
To hold
Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.
Though she opened
The sound of wailing would not come.

She has heard
Stories
Of how God kept
The tears of men
In bottles
As precious testimony to
Their devotion in love
Yet another she liked better
How tears were recorded in a book
As if the salty, silent liquid
Splattered on a page
Gushed an articulate flow
And accounted the unspeakable.

Perhaps God answers inner weeping
—prayers offered in rending affliction—
And feeds the earnest mouth
With a repast of love
Until it is full again with singing for sighing.

©1997-2023 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved

Their wisdom far surpasses that of any beast,
though never clinically proven
felt surely by the casual observer

They have loyalty that makes them go mad
stampeding the villages of men
who have long stood between them and their tusks.

Merchants, until lately, thought it a good idea
to kill the elephant for the joy of an artisan’s labour.

Funny how we find treasure in valuable life,
Merchants who harden their conscience for profit.

Stampeding matriarchs look for their cows’ tusks,
while their corpses lie exposed, rotting in a place of final shelter.

The tusk is all, the tusk is all.

©2001-2023 Veekwriter All Rights Reserved