storefront poetry: 1-3

1

on the edge of the rabbit
hole on the grande prairie main
street wagon trail a special agent
of the regular canadian manual poets
writes types on his typer while
the drive-bys and the pied-footed
walk and sometimes look in at
the stranger observing the latest
new to him parking metred road fribble
en route to wherever they’re bound
atv and gas cans on a big truck
crew trucks with drive-thru coffees
and surprises for locals of however
long they’ve been in this place
more than books and music—new
used recycled attributed alleged
the dogs image wellers graving
yellow fire hydrant bait for
unsuspecting dogs and dog walkers
in a town growing wheels in webs
out out out across the landscape
but this is not a painting bucolic
nostalgic for the farmstead smithy
collected and catalogued years ago
by the glenbow for the remember when
of decades not centuries or millennia

17sept2008


2

willie on the road and joe
on the typer on the poem (again)
writing like he meant it or had
something worthwhile to say to write
and not just filibuster time
occupying an opening in the cloud
cover in the groundcover behind
the bush-beater’s known associates
another dead trickster on the edge
of the highway—struck by a truck
going driving outside the lines
of the mounted over grassed prairie
the not-so-far mountains obscured
by haze and the arriba dust of
the drive for more and more taking
and leaving less future here
abandoning emptiness when pressure
drops away or the price isn’t profit
viable for the guzzlers and reapers
far from this working field—an ex-
ocean pressed in rockbeds lifted
high above sea level as the rocks
slowly push higher into thinner air
than the dublin home of kilkenny
and guiness as the rift the mid-
atlantic ridge widens between olde
and new-to-then worlds on this one

17sept2008

3

battle brawls peace preserves and bad
girls made with love body piercings
tattoos accessories tools giftware
coyote of the fresh air team tagged
dimland almost dinsdale near here
garnet in the rough before arrogant
worms blue and pink-blonde hair
dyed dry as the d- word not spoken
yellow leaves on the downtown side
walk made of the same bricks and
country-wide improvement incentive
program federal funding sameness
fredericton to grande prairie and
beyond east west and north subliminal
tripwire poetrymines attached to
the hole the doorframe—come on
and dive into what you didn’t know
was here with cappuccinos out the
back door so far from bloor street
with no desire for that trophy
cats at my back i’m connected
with my lapdog no steer no boeuf
no noble bison wild and free here
some farmed as we are farmed
our growth our output harvested
and shelved in another bound book

T: highland radio 2005
loc: Rabbit Hole bookstore, Grande Prairie, Alta.
temp 22 C
sound: Tom Waits