193. Victoria Park, July

Darren P. (Oct 12, 2013)

https://es.foursquare.com/v/victoria-park/4bdda1c00ee3a593bafd2db0

your eyes

glow gold

in the summer

sunshine

your smile

as warm as

Canadian

midsummer

can be

by the river

watching

swans and

children

play

time so

slow

and the

air so

sweet

even then

I’m not sure

I realized the beauty of

such a moment

simple,

wondrous

as you are

as we are

gold glints

shining in summer

sunbeams,

beaming

brilliant

March 21, 2020

Montréal, QC

191. Marius à Javert

hours & minutes

après minuit,

your call

dings

several times in my

barely lit

apartment

smiling in spite of myself –

I check and answer

other messages,

stalling before I answer yours

yet –

out of fear, and

excitement

the purple & white

square

glows sunset amidst

notifications

I check the little litany of

messages

once,

twice,

thrice -

still in

queenly

defiance

your photos

illuminate my screen

once more –

I imagine us together

by that twilit

lake, your

dark eyes smiling

into

mine

the first

touch of your

tender yet

strong

hand

hours –

minutes –

past midnight

I am ablaze and

afire with

pangs of new love?

infatuation?

or is it precisely

the mystery

that keeps us –

me –

enthralled?

is it simply

friendship you want?

my own crazed

heart spinning

imaginations and

prophetic

fantasies?

I think of at the love

my partner

and I

share

finally, a

deep and

trusting bond

safe and perhaps

not so

intoxicating

isn’t all love

a thrill at first?

perhaps I only seek

these virtual

sparks

which will always

dissipate

I muse on

love and

faith

in the darkness,

on options

and time seems

such a feeble

foe

to

intensity

buzz

buzz

goes my

phone in the

dark

beckoning,

taunting

innocent

conversation,

I tell

myself

April 24, 2020

Montréal, QC

187. A Love - Backwards

Ari I

Scene: Toronto Music Garden

http://www.harbourfrontcentre.com/whatson/music.cfm?id=8464&festival_id=0

In the green-dappled
shade; purple, yellow,
pink dots
flower the
foliage.

We wind the circle of
the Bach dance
and pause in the
quiet centre.

Only birds rustle
as you pull me in and
kiss me:
"I can be romantic, too"
you say, as I
smilingly acknowledge
its truth.

Well-played

despite your uncouth
tongue and
penchant for
alcohol; I
remember this
first kiss and your
last,
its opening charm
and beauty so
unexpected
and clever.

Ari II

Scene: City Hall

https://twitter.com/dilansen_/status/750419193774891009

City hall bench
finds us sitting in the
merciful shade
Kids in wisely light-coloured
T-shirts scream and chase each
other 'round sculptures of brains.
Just earlier we wound our
way around them, reading
the artists' reasons why
each one had a different
design.

The big, winding staircase
winds,
above and around us;
cool, stony
on its underside.
We are
listening
and you draw yourself
close to me,
calves grazing beyond our summer shorts.
You like me, I
can tell;
I smile at the thought.
It's been so long
someone has wanted to be near me,
to see through my eyes
and inhabit my
oxygen.
I revel in our
mutual presence
as we silently
flaunt our homo
love
amidst the breeders
with their
shrieking
tweens.

Ari III

Scene: Richmond Towers

Only breezes
shush the netting of the
window mesh;
a sliver smiles
through the half-opened
drape

early birds have not
yet began their day;
an occasional vehicle is the remnant of the
night's
activity:
your breath grazes me
dew-spun neck,
kisses trimming its
trembling surface

You:
selfish, steal my
dormant body;
I -
half-sleeping,
gazing out the tapestry's
small-squares

selfish, smiling in
my gloating beauty,
desired, embraced,
entwined, at
last.

June 28, 2018
Waterloo, ON

186. 3/4

I. A Library

It is the 2
of us:
china in the cabinet,
glasses on the side
playing house
in a borrowed
home.

You carefully
place olives, blue cheese,
and sundried tomatoes
on the
pasta sauce-slewn
bread.

We are eating.
You are talking of your
faithless
ex,
pink T-
shirt.

And I in a pink
tank-top.

Borrowed:

The room,
the plates,
the shirt,

and me.

On loan,
copy 2,
special archives.
Books do not
feel.

II. A Window

It is dark
and you
take the blanket off the
curtain rod

mesh separates us
and the
humming night

you want to see me,
you keep saying

but the light is too
harsh
we both
know

we kiss
in darkness

I tremble as I
melt in your assured
embraces,
helpless

as you reassure
and whisper
and pause to see
if I am
all
right

this is
care, I
think

this is
love

your lips on mine,
praising me.
I am so
desired in this moment,
so beautiful, so
divine.

A demigod has
discovered me
and thirsts for
me.
What must
I
be?

III. An Omelette

Chestnut lashes,
chestnut eyes,
chestnut locks:

I see you know
in the early
light

you see me see
you,
smile, and
return to sleep

you know your
power

we split an
omelette
four
ways

one for her,
one for you,
and
one for
me.

The fourth we
split between us,
like an
afterthought.

I sit next to
you on your
couch.
Our legs graze.

Your attention is already
on your
phone.

We have no
service

Aug 6, 2017
Halifax, NS

185. My Shoulder

As we laugh
and joke of stupid
things -
your tousled hair leans on my
shoulder.

I was recovering from the
awkward lack of
conversation
earlier in the
bar

so I am taken
by
surprise

I graze your arm,
hesitantly.

Your breath
smells of
cider

(I know
later on
it's also
halitosis)

You are a
puppy

I had no choice
but to sit, stunned,
silent

night continues swishing
past the
muggy
car windows

Aug 6, 2017
Halifax, NS

180. Part-Time Torontonian

i am
yet a
stranger,
tourist -
             visitor!

without your hand in mine,
it is all still magic and
miracle to
me!

the bustle, the
people, the
music, and
the
food!

But how it was nicest,
your hand in mine -

The fresh
breeze
in the October, bright-lit
city -

Breath entangled in
eager bliss!!

179. Love Betwixt Cities

Give me your eyes
and I’ll give you
mine –

Give me your love
and I’ll give you
mine –

Give you my heart
and you’ll take
mine - !

Give me your heart
and I’ll give you
mine!

These are what the
streetcars
sing…!

178. Torontonian for a Year

 

I am
full
of
goodbyes –

you
are full of
                 none!

I
  take

one
photograph for
posterity

in the room where
I would lay
wrapped with
you, early
mornlight
shadowing our
blind-checked
hearts

This –
room:
where once I played you
simple
Satie
while it rained outside,
and you were designing;

home of so many tears and
smiles and
ecstasies
and pains –

today I walk past
the apartment:
you are no longer
here, but here I
am,

waiting,
thinking,
remembering.

Strangers walk
by;
the time is long
past-

and yet the phantoms of a
desk, a bed, a bookshelf
                                       linger...

do buildings
                     stir
hearts?

Where was
yours?

177. Stubble on Adonis

The Magic of a
Body
is
self-made

lifting,
cardio,
jumping
rope;

so the stage is
also
craft:

sforzando,
cantabile,
da capo al
fine:

words and terms
and
counting
calories:

yet why is
magic
Magical?

174. A Shared Mile

The hills describe in pink,
of yawning suns descending:
it is an ode to love:
it is their adoration.

Our hands are interlaced;
our hearts are wrapped in silence;
it is the twilit dusk,
it is her mauve entreaty.

Paired in sylvan joy,
road the winding way
smiling to infinity
past the rose-gilt, silent trees;

My bliss swelled past our smiles
beyond the gold-drunk forests:
a love, that shared with them,
now separate, still remembers.

172. Meninas

Las Meninas, Diego Velázquez (1656)

Museo del Prado, Madrid

Slanted
sits the
artwork: physical
body hidden
in a
temperature-controlled
vault-laboratory
hybrid thing;
exhumed to the present day,
mounted and dissected,
eyes observing,
dissecting;
essays
hum;
editors scramble furiously on the
Wikipedia
page...

Backing away,
curtain falls
as the
chamberlain
clears the exit

Two girls awkwardly caught
half-sentence in
curtsies, well
one –
the other still
unawares,
el búcaro outstretched
from her imploring
arms, fingers of
one curled in
mid-
persuasion

Despite her mourning
garb
the
guardian chatters
animatedly with the
guard, name
lost to
exclusive seats of
history

mumbling,
bumbling,
buzzing mutely:
as Two imported dwarves
form spectacle, one
obviously teasing the
peeved dog,
the other remarkably
solemn,
questioning.

Nineteen years and one
wife
separate the uncle from his
niece,
her arm tucked
protectively around
his?

The artist
rests: self-
portrait,
photograph?
Paint drops speckle his
boots in
real
time

Time ticks:
ribbons like
captive
wildflower
flare on the
alabaster plains;
ethereal, the
five-year-old
serenely gazes into
eternity

Bent knees
hover expectantly,
silk rustling, mute

Centrepiece, she
stands:
the business
frozen, betraying the
Purpose;
yet faces glisten,
inquiring,
else incoherent
of the
Moment:

The high
green-brown
panels silently
concur,
stolid,
enigmatic,
slumbering with the
weight of
centuries

Emptied,
its physical forbearer since perished,
imagination and
interpretation can only resurrect

Quiet,
the
noon
buzzes…

170. Crabmeat

Scuttling over,
puts my hands on her
waist

“Breathe.”

We do so together.

Master and
novice,
experience seeping
through her
pores to
mine.

“Feel the depth of the
breath, it can
colour our
phrases
too.”

Soft flesh,
ancient and novel;
polyester fibres
crinkly and
taupe

As I am
processing,
understanding; we
breathe,
feeling the
depth,
discovering the
beginning

167. 天雅古玩城

Tianya Antiques City, Beijing, China

Image source: Sina

A strangest thing indeed:
round dishes on the roof;
the visitors, like ants,
all enter/leave the feast…

Escalators deceptively slow,
quicken
pace
excitedly as the shop-front
store owners
come to life as
visitors step upon their
domain

Smoke

fills the halls;
NO SMOKING sings
not to be seen
here

Teenagers,
arrogant old
women, and
what appear to be
street urchins also
man these
gates;
well-dressed,
well-versed
suited middle-aged
men and women, and the
exotic, distrustful
eyes of the
Uyghur:

Children eat rice
at the lacquer tables
as their parents
haggle
or discover yet another
childhood
acquaintance –

Some halls are filled
with more
idle
smoke
than others…

At the busiest:
count the tiny
diamonds
lining the precious
green jade
leaflets, glistening in
the
caged
light;
semiprecious stones
set in
much-handled
wedding bands –

How can we know
each
detail?
Each fold of
each leaf?

The grandiose:
purple cut agate a
basketball-player
tall;
jade and marble
slates,
cute in with
intricate tree-leaves,
lined with detailed lines and
anatomically impossible
people larger than the
pagodas on the
shining, speckled,
lithe green
mountains

Tea sets of
smooth
clay of
subtly different shades
of roam chocolate
and caramel feel
sandy to the
touch;
gold Bodhisattvas and
Buddhas line
shelves;
antique, or
not

Fragrant medicinal
wood,
cut
into
small
squares,
promise remedies:
Impossibly smoothed wood
create chairs
exquisitely painful
to sit
upon
(no wonder the
Emperors had
such bad
headaches)

People-sized plates
still sprinkle the
building top like
ribbons, red and
gleaming like a
kindergartner’s
First Day present;
gilt, the buttons
noon read, sprinkled
on the silver
elevators…

164. Floaters

silent tumbling strings
translucent and transparent
flee the clear ether

silken treasured song
weaves its tapestry in Sun
glistening in the day

embers of fire red
ignite the quiet white snow
look – a fin appears

curlicuing ‘round
a chlorophyll encounter
circling comets sing

of molten moonbeams
in such dappled harmonies
only spectres swim

163. Source of Spiders

Truffle
tumbleweeds
millimeter-long
tiptoeing
‘long the
windowsill

estrellitas

sentient:
little cilia
pulsate
on the
PVC

Twirling countersubjects
twining and
intertwining,
curling
‘round the
windowsill

162. The Caged Rhinoceros

Robert Wiens: 1987

"Enclosure with Sections of a Horse and Soldier"

Donald Forster Sculpture Park

Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Image Source: hanneorla on Flickr

green grass
spiralling,
Spring Sun
echoing:

remnants of an
artwork lay
imprisoned in
lattice.

Jade
head
patina
skin

quiet,
waiting for
resurrection
Day,
silently sleeping
dormant;

Rest, oh
Dinosaur, ancient
and new,
dappled shadows
tattooing agèd
limbs

shadows of
leaves
mutely
caressing
scattered
               beauty

160. X-Ray Machines

Indonesian visitors view escalators

HK Sai Ying Pun Third Street, near Centre Street (April 2013)

Image Source: Remyumksoa

Sea:
pink, identical –
What is this?
eyes
question

some
bespectacled,
others
bejeweled

All
imperfect from the
fuschia
crop

Crisps,
adverts,
nonchalant
passersby
regard
impassively:

one sees
more
than
the other!

Amazed by this
strange new
world,
difference
divides

and reveals:

158. BUBBLE

For whom?

do the
hollow shelves
wait

the dusky
archives and
yellowed
magazines
beckon –

The
ants still
mill about,
carts rolling,
volumes flitting
back
upon
shelves;

Frictionless
vacuums
where
children
play

algorithms and
formulae
[formulas?] and
conservation of
energy &
mass and
momentum;

acceleration,
inclined planes and
laws of
Newton:

Silence on the floor,
despite the
creaking of
cubicles,
clicking of
lights,
buzzing of
4-year-old
Sony
Vaios…

157. Au Cinéma

Electricity
moments
before the film
begins:

lights dim,
lips meet.

flesh on
flesh,
wet saliva
inter-
mingling:

Anticipation
requited at last;
darkened theatre in a
back-row
pair:

156. Violaceous

Image Source: Red and the Peanut

Chewy,
dark:
grape seeds and
fresh beet juice

acidic and
tart –
crunching letters
between
fruit-stained
teeth;

Words:
dissected,
curve and line
by curve:
cursive,
print,
and cathode-
captured

eternal and
uncharted:
opening as a
tranquil spring
fleur;
the
mysteries
of a
field yet
unpicked: