Something is up in countries slathered in pleasantries.
Like the passing days that to beer – that last thing
Which, imbibed with a stout throat,
Flowed into the conversation with dim resilience.

I knew something about beer, pizza, chicken wings.
They sloughed down in a slag of ill intent.
And then something about being a fag settled into
The equation.

Some how amber gave way to black,
Beer gave way to stout marshes.
Still I found myself floating in those mires;
Running with ire, grot, and blood.

Fags like blood – at least some of us –
And tensile-smooth skin… running over in gales
Of titillation and sooth-gloss. Where the
Times rolled over, into mindsets

Of old notions – antiquated ideas of
All of these things, that are Canadian and common.
Much as Molson washed over old scars, dead
Wounds – and that red shimmer;

Like dreams shrouded in pale cheeses and rubicund,
Rich sauces, ravaging the tongue with another blood;
Of flight, trounced Saturdays, and tomatoes…
Almost dead to men crouched around

Lawn chairs and sinking, illustrious reds, and
The dark glop revered in schoolyards as the whim
Of god, severing rhyme from reason, and totalitarian
Dictums that these things should be…

Or be it not.

Sometimes these things that floated in the streets,
Or bedrooms, or wherever aberration reared its head
And sleight-but grown from the day that
The dead ground rose into my black, my red, mine eternity.

Somehow cheese, and hops, and blood cascading
Across glimmering rubber-ignoble and
Fucked tenor drowned my lips in more humble reds
And ambers that would, otherwise, grow in marshes.