Edward Nixon’s Blog

Wherefore profanity’s Emory Cloth caress,
you’d never like me
for more than about a day,
rough in the chat and soft in the sack
like me, too many poems (and this is one)
ache to tell you something:
the peaches are rotting,
the dock is lose of its pilings,
the veranda is collapsing into the lake;
so be warned (there is enough fact to go ‘round).

We agreed on your jet tresses,
us sweat-spent in your tawny quarters,
as I thought of The Alexandria Quartet
the island, the inventions of summer,
Clea in some colonial bedroom
but there’s not one truth in this passel
of wonder for an author,
a temporally correct racist, sexist, imperial European,
a writer of some renown,
punctured by Sappho’s j’accuse,
Durrell, a favourite of my high school crew.

Later in ever-correcting circles
some of us swapped him out for Ondaatje
but the tug of the tale remained,
like the taste of you ten years on,
a desert of ground cardamom
a forest of drenched cedar,
the sour burn of Salal berries on my tongue.

For Liz who is 24!

the sky is losing blue
my head is red-wine hammer & tong
images are ordinary today
but have a plangent majesty
this is silly stuff
but the branches desperate for breeze
waggle in the heat push
as fingers stall
a stickiness in the compositional sway
from QWERTY to G H J K and a lofty L
automatic ad hoc ordering
of this dappling now
itching at getting this, this spit
this cluck in the throat
this rumpling music of plastic clicks
this me here framed as an I
as writer triangulated
in the slippy now
an almost then
with frumpy summer trees
in bleaching twilight
as this sun falls
away from the frame of warehouse
glinting windows blackening
humid headstrong
me typing twilight

I am failing at this
backwards
it is failing me
yes
just a flower growing in a garden

me all petal patterned
light punched

yes I am failing to get affirmation from the roses
and the rhododendrons  are lying about me

I am failing
to get you here between crimson and persimmon
failing to show you something clean

there is dirt everywhere

this will never be finished

the weeds refuse to agree
spirals buckle
the labyrinth leaks
the garden has secrets
that no one tends

failure is in the soil
tucked under my nails

for Rob Welch

once there was a man
so it was said by reliable sources
and he walked, mostly through
the city at night, safe within streetlamp loom
his adventures could be measured
by the number of alleys traversed
but that was not important
he had subjects and objects in his hands
like golden balls orbiting a juggler’s flashy arc
he had tricks in his pockets for dangerous times
but they were tucked in, unused
like the air raid sirens that never blared

once there was this man
wandering from bar to bar as if alive
to every nuance and angle of smart chatter
as if he was planning to grift something of value
and knowing he was guilty kept thought close
not trusting the dim smudges that once were stars
not ready to pick a joint, get regular
concede that it was Guinness, he often drank
movement was the thing
entering or departing would suffice
no need for character, plot nor explanatory footnote
just a pint and a shot, and yes her, there, in that corner

once there was that man
who ate darkness in last hours
had a history for every block
knowledge of what this place used to be
had the pack of matches,
had known the owner
knew no need to make it art
and call it done
happy with the sharp tap of whiskey on the lip
the tobacco gust outside the door
her well-performed smile
it’s tangible distance from the moon

theory of yesterday

Turning     turn to known
we ate from copper bowls
beside a river thick with salmon

he could have told me
the words that were cuts in the log
bear or wolf
we all come from the clam
teased out by a raven