With an Axe

Sometimes I almost break, and break the backs
Of all the idiots who talk to me,
Dispose of everyone so messily
That no one figures out how the attacks
Began, or why. I’ll boil them all in wax
And send them, burning brightly, out to sea.
I’ll drag them from their homes, unskin each knee
Both front and back, and shear them with an axe.

The violence is underneath, unseen
Until the moment comes. Though overset
By terrorizing outbursts, which have met
With silence, icy laughter, grim and keen,
And thoughts about a wild threshing machine,
I haven’t murdered anybody yet.

Leech-Gathering

Correcting him about the tree, I said
The leaves were for the healing of the nations.
The rest, I pointed out, was intimations
Of immortality; but things were dead
That had been living yesterday. Ahead
Lay only dreams, heat, poison, degradations
Connected to our unexplored sensations,
And visions of that tree. Heal us instead,

Bring peace, succour from trauma, true delight
That comes from truth alone, not hope, not visions,
But in this world, based on our own decisions,
Our own plain-speaking bodies. Give us sight
So we emerge from never-ending night,
Avoiding injuries, mythic collisions.

Frightening the Horses

There’s going to be a lull now, while I wait
Through what they’re planning for my gammy leg.
Maybe I should have stayed in Winnipeg
Where nothing much went wrong — except the spate
Of shootings, my appendix, and no date
Until (no matter how hard I would beg)
I’d started university. (The egg
Matured, I left town, and embraced my fate.)

And as it turns out, Fate has brought me here,
Eventually, to rooms well staffed by nurses
And calm support staff who smile at my curses.
They tell me not to clamour my daft fear
And scare the horses, so I hold them dear
While working on a few more plaintive verses.