Showing posts with label afternoon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label afternoon. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

193. Victoria Park, July


Darren P. (Oct 12, 2013)

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

Monday, August 27, 2018

190. To the pregnant woman

To the pregnant woman that
missed the
Grand River Transit
bus 7B to Fairview
Park:

I didn't realize you
just missed the
bus I just
left:

by the time I
realized, you were
running after it,
desperate:
did the driver not
realize either?

your dark skin
glistening in the
hot summer air,
late for an interview
or from one?

I wanted to offer a
ride, I thought as I
already started back to my
apartment, and you
were already walking
to the next
stop.

Stay put, I want to
say - the next bus
will be
by in a few
minutes - (I
check this later,
for my own
conscience)

I want to tell you
this,
too -

but I was tired and
sweaty and
wanted to
get home
myself -

selfish or just
a missed
opportunity, I
wondered, and
still
do;
with a
twinge of
regret and guilt
as I write this,
hoping.

August 21, 2018
Waterloo, ON

Thursday, July 5, 2018

188. harbour dining


August:
and the seagulls
circle

smiling ship-sails
rest their
contented wings

scavenging above the
sapphire-strewn
surface,
cackling, boasting,
gossiping

children shriek
and call their
hungry
friends,
beckoning with strips of partly-eaten
lettuce from
lunch's ham
sandwich

sparkled concrete
blazes my
heat-soaked
toes;

gulls comingle with
assuming toddlers,
planes take-off of
life off,
unseeing

glistening, the water
hums and
whirs,
silver sapphire
in the
waning
sun.




July 3, 2018
Waterloo, ON

Friday, June 29, 2018

187. A Love - Backwards

Ari I
Scene: Toronto Music Garden


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

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

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

181. Torontonian Months

Sushi without
fish and
water without
ice!

Lessons back-to-
back and lessons just
alone;

Sweat and smiles and
suitcases and
backpacks -

birthdays and
cards and
Australia and
San
Francisco -

restaurants and
catching
up:

new friends and
old ones -
new buildings and
old -

smoke and homeless and
pizza and
LV:
these are the sights and sounds and
smells!

Thursday, June 18, 2015

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.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

171. The Opportunist

American Robin at Frank G. Bonelli Regional Park
San Dimas, Southern California
Image Source: Two Birders To Go

Noble:
red head
raised high,

the robin
bounces
steadily, beady
eyes glimmering
with the
spring rain

in such splendour,
lone on the
beaming emerald
do I notice:

Stringy worms
dangling from
its resurfaced
beak;
munching, it is
a mortal like any other;
the rain,
fortuitous

Cantopop sails
in from the adjacent
living room;
eyelids painted and
eyes scrunched in
synchronous exertion:
dolled-up girls
and girly
boys

Things
seem not so
cheap
anymore…

Monday, June 9, 2014

169. The Sidewalk Restaurant

Mapo Tofu (麻婆豆腐)

Cheery chatter,
Mandarin,
surrounds like fumes;
we are
no longer
alone

cigarette smoke
deafens

the air conditioner
whirs,
green Tsingtao
bottles
glimmer,
translucent and
half-drunk

The noisy little
toddler
reaches for his
distracted 爸爸’s
tempting beer, reaches
to his lips

caught
(nearly too late), he is
smartly
rebuked

watching, I smile a
little

the 麻婆豆腐
is excellent

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

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

Monday, May 26, 2014

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

Sunday, May 25, 2014

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

Monday, May 19, 2014

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:

Thursday, April 24, 2014

149. Cityscape

It begins again –
twilight dawns:
cars, like flecks of
light
upon the silken
highway
lanes

All ends,
all begins:
a kiss,
a touch, and a
city –

Peeking through the
tattered
blinds,
week-old socks upon
the
vintage
hardwood –

who would have thought?
bliss in simplicity
and
cityscenes

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

143. The Sublime



swarm of vultures,
high in the afternoon
sun;
slow and circular,
like a baby’s
mobile, suspended in morbid
listlessness above the
Florida
flats:

restless,
tension hovers in the
unoccupied molecules
buzzing between the
unfashionably active
fat mosquitoes;

boxed-up fish suppliers and
phony Chinese restaurants;
ghetto Black-men at the
7-11:
tank-top children in the
avenues and
dried-up yellowed
grass
roasting in the
sunburnt air.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

133. Skins of our fathers

After the rain,
the frightened insects
emerge,
surveying the damage,
knowing this battered land
is what remains
and what must be
lived through.

How many tears have irrigated
this unruly soil in
vain?

Suns will one day emerge,
but how, but
when?

In such darkness and
uncertainty, how
strong must one be,
to trust,
to hope!

Sunday, March 17, 2013

129. Un giro sol

Dawning on me

there are eyes staring back;
that what I thought was
vacant air is
occupied
by eyes and a
soul

Startled,
I am caught in a strange
reciprocity
and idle musing is
no more

Here
for only a slice of 5
minutes, it impossible to say
more, to do
more

Yet it is precisely
this impossibility of a
mutual stare,

resounding through the
lutes of centuries
that fill our minds with
perplexed obsession and
our hearts with
unexpected
longing

Dark stranger on a
spiralling bike:
snow-tipped tree leaves shift their
skirts
and uncommon beauty
glints in the
dappled light;

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

107. Temps pour rentrer

Like a Turner portrait,
wild trees cut the soft sky
in aggressive rebellion.
The fields are aglow in the
impossible, perfect sunlight
painters only hope for,
or plagiarize.

In the middle of all of this
a green and white farm sits,
cozy and quaint, unassuming
over the twilight
shadows.

Soybean plants stretch far,
some frenzy of
golden fire.
They are glowing bright now
in the setting sun.

It is almost too perfect for a
photograph, there is a
humid mist rising from the
torrid August rains.
Everywhere, there is this
impossible sparkle, gossamer,
and I think perhaps it is all
too lovely to be real.

Friday, August 24, 2012

104. Alcina’s picnic

Crows are eating in the backyard,
congregating under the shady
trees:

Dark and plotting, hunched over in the
shadows,
whispering…

Reflecting on a former mortal
existence,
bemoaning the trappings of
enchantment.

Chatter subsides to feeding,
mechanic bobs
puncture the sheltered
earth:

Noontime ends, and all the
inmates part,
save the stragglers, digging
past the noon.

Even these few gluttonous
ones depart,
and there are only worms
and yellow butterflies,
and all the other innumerable
insects, left climbing on
the windswept
grass.

Monday, July 30, 2012

102. Caenochrysis

Image source:

Dust settles mutely,
silent snow on gilded spines;
sunlight dyes the untouched leaves
more acrid shades of sand:

Turquoise glistens in the naïve lights;
photons dance upon the lacquered orb.
It is a scarab, it is some ancient
relic:

Pausing in the untold centuries,
a single timeless beauty rests,
beckoning amidst the desert of
celibate academia;

There is the long-faded scent of
crushed cigars, the strange perfume
of crystallized ink.
There are forgotten letters left
half-written on the desk:

How do we reconcile –
colours?
A catch of azul light,
ephemeral on the patio
furniture
reflects in the flower-stamped dress
of a young girl next door:

Some unknown beetle specimen
hovers soundlessly, brief on the false
lilies of the polyester fabric:
it’s like a factory, there is this
lovely hue everywhere –
but there is only one shade like this,
glistening everywhere,
landing noiselessly in the
obscurely dappled shrubs;

all others steal the eyes
for just as long,
but it is this precise,
indescribable swatch
we struggle the rest of our lives
studying, searching,
never truly describing,
recreating.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

96. Sketches of an Afternoon

It’s raining today;
it’s raining
quite a bit
today.

I get out my notebook;
I am lying on my bed,
and I scribble down his
name, millions of
times, millions.
The curlicues cross into one
another,
blurring into a haze of
black;
spider webs or
tangled
hair.

I become nearly
cross-eyed and I
have to pause for
breath

it’s hard to imagine that my
curly, swirly cursive
resembles
my love at all,
that this obscure,
dull word signifies his
being, his form at
all –

I take this criss-crossed page
onto the deck, into the yard.
I am soaked, bone-
deep, feet in the
unseemly
mud

and I tear the page to
shreds with the sharp end of my
black pen,
digging irregular
holes into its
dissolving
flesh,
watching as scraps
litter the eroding
earth

ink melts, draining like
waterproof mascara,
which, after too long,
runs too –

my own words
trail strange greenish
paths into the damned
soil
until I
can’t read anything,
I can’t even read
anything;

suddenly: it dawns on me that
I am wet and
cold, and that
the grass is getting long

but, no one cuts it:
and flowers lay, wilted and
forlorn;
trampled worms lay forgotten,
blood soaked into the
unforgiving patio
stones.