Undone - Sept 29 2026

Undone

Sept 29 2026

The unfinished novel.

The poem that lost its way.

The false starts, on crumpled foolscap

balled-up on the floor.

And the essay

I swear I'll get to soon enough.

A lifetime of good intentions

    . . . and things left undone.

Letters I wish I'd sent,

apologies

that went unsaid,

regrets, I kept to myself.

The love I felt

but never expressed.

Because the time was never right.

Because I feared rejection.

Because I felt unworthy

to even try.

And because it was better to imagine

than let the dream die.

But it did, of course;

she got on with her life

mine stalled.

Like a student who procrastinates

until it's too late

to ask for extra time.

Like the poem

too clever by half

that doesn't have a heart.

And like the novel, in search of an end

that goes off in all directions

until it stammers to a stop.

We regret the things in life we didn’t do more than the bad choices we made and things we actually did.  Because it’s easy to idealize the things we only dream about, while reality is never perfect. The life we didn’t have could always have been better than the one we lived.

Doesn’t every writer have at least 1 unfinished novel mouldering in a desk drawer? Or on a corrupted computer file? (I hasten to say not me:  I have neither a novelistic imagination nor a novelistic life!) And since I hate waste, every false start of a poem gets tortured to a conclusion — no matter how good or bad!

 But aren’t all lives undone? Never fully complete? Never come to a  definitive and satisfying end? I hear of dying people who say they have no regrets. I very much doubt this. Perhaps memory fails. Perhaps they’ve absolved themselves. Or maybe it’s the morphine. I already have lots of them. On my deathbed, they’ll still be there. 

Coming to a stop is not the same as coming to an end. An ending concludes. It reaches its destination, just as a good novel leaves nothing unresolved, no loose threads. While a stop just runs out of gas.

Pulp - Sept 28 2026

 

Pulp

Sept 28 2026



I have distilled my words

down to pure alcohol.

They will intoxicate

merely by proximity;

a whiff, with your eyes closed,

a kiss

with booze on her breath.

And unlike wine

these spirits

aren’t corrupted by age.

No mixers or garnishes.

No spritzers, or umbrella drinks.

Just a shot glass 

of hard liquor

tossed back in one gulp.

Concision, she says,

wielding her red pen

like a scalpel dripping blood.

Embellishment’s for sissies,

while 200 proof

is proof of manliness

  — absinthe

or whisky straight

my editor insists.

And teetotallers?

Ahhh, the abstainers

who claim to be virtuous

and high on life.

Who want to burn the confessions

and self-indulgent memoirs,

long Russian novels

with polysyllabic names.

Torch the sappy romances

with run-on sentences,

sex

too embarrassing to read.

But happily, recite razored poetry

they know by heart

or make up their own.

Then marvel at the trees

instead of turning them to pulp.

I began to write this as an antidote to my usual prolixity. An act of self-discipline. Because I’m my own editor, and apparently not a very good one!

I was determined:  10 lines max. A quickie. Unsurprisingly, I failed.  … On the other hand, I think if every word counts, it passes the test. 

But it came fast. Wrote itself. And — I think — propulsive enough to seem short! Anyway, while distillation is good, who wants 200 proof alcohol? It burns going down, and tastes like disinfectant. 

It’s about concision, yes; cutting the fat. But also — as the last two lines (as well as earlier in high on life) so abruptly clarify — about eliminating the intermediary and interpreter; and instead, living life first hand. Because language is at best a poor metaphor for the real thing.

I always instinctively distrusted poetry that came too easily. But later learned that those are often the best. This one was pure stream of consciousness. A flow state. I began with no idea where it would go: just took dictation, while letting it take me by the hand. ( . . . Actually, most of my poems feel like that!)

Filling the World with Sound - Sept 26 2026

Filling the World with Sound

Sept 26 2026

I wonder if the dog I hear in the distance

is barking at the echo

he's made himself?

Trapped

in a recursive loop

until his bark gives out.

But at least he doesn't shrink

from expressing himself.

Full-throated, he is fully present,

contained in a circumscribed world

of him

his listener

and their life-and-death feud.

While I keep to myself,

speaking softly

if at all.

Not so much humble, as fearful

 --  because the smaller the target

the harder to hit.

Although I too am caught in a loop

I've made myself,

an echochamber

of agreeable voices

that validate me.

Not to mention

enjoying the sound of my own.

Am I as territorial

as that excitable dog?

Saliva bubbling from its lips

strings of drool dribbling down,

rising up on 2 hind legs

then springing stiffly

on 4 extended ones

flinging flecks of spit?

Like a boxer, who taunts his opponent

by bouncing lightly on the mat,

then beckons

with an upturned fist

as if to say just try me!

Hardly, I admit.

I'm no watchdog, or protector

to-the-last-drop-of-blood,

no fighter

or brawler

at the drop-of-a-glove.

I don't even speak up,

habitually biting my tongue

for fear of giving offence.

More mouse than dog,

I scurry along the baseboards

in a grey blur

I hope goes unnoticed,

emitting rapid-fire squeaks

too high for human ears.

So while the dog prowls its borders

and fills the world with sound

I shrink into mine,

protected by silence

hunkered down out of sight.

One of my dogs was barking incessantly the other day. It’s relatively isolated where I live, so I generally let them: a barking dog won’t bother anyone, and I like to let them have their fun. But this was getting annoying, and when it appeared she was barking at her own echo, I told her to stop. Then wondered if I hadn’t, just how long would she have carried on?!

Today, the neighbour’s dog was going at it, frustrated she couldn’t join my girls who were chasing balls in the lake. I thought how free they must feel compared to me:  while I keep my head down and am acutely aware of making noise that could disturb others, dogs are little solipsists who haven’t any concern about the world outside themselves. They put their whole being into it. There is no restraint. 

 . . .How enviable!

Holding Up the Line - Sept 25 2026

 

Holding Up the Line

Sept 25 2026

I’m somewhere in the middle

as the line behind me builds.

And while annoyed by the wait, I feel a little smug

eyeing the late-comers

who drift in one-by-one.

After all, could always be worse.

We take baby steps,

shuffling ahead

while protecting our personal space

  — as if these were the strangers

our mothers warned us against.

Actually, not even glancing up,

because eye contact 

might risk inviting more.

Although there's always an outgoing sort

who’s irrepressibly chatty.

I have to admit, I wish I could be as happy

as she seems to be,

instead of introverted

taciturn

and too anxious to engage.

Some fidget and stew,

as if to project

how irate they feel.

The type who’d demand to see the manager

if anyone there

was even listening,

if the harried attendant

wasn’t busy enough.

Some stare into screens,

spending time no differently

than they do every day.

I catch a young couple flirting

out the corner of my eye

and feel a little envious.

While an older one has their hands full

corralling restless kids

tempted by the candy bars

and salty snacks,

cleverly placed

at arm's-length

on either side.

Like a diorama, in real-time

of love’s starry-eyed beginning

and its sleep-deprived end.

I stand still

but hardly stoical,

willing the line to move

and stealing glances

to see how far to go.

The groceries

perilously balanced in my hands

are getting heavier,

and as time ticks down, I feel increasingly trapped

in this over heated building

and this claustrophobic line.

How much of life is waiting?

If not in line

then for the one big break,

your one great love,

that mythical time

when all the work is finally done

and you can become

who you were meant to be.

No endless to-do list,

no putting in time.

No bumping up against a stranger

who gives the evil eye.

And no one

like the confused old man

at the self-scanning machine,

looking vacantly for help 

and holding up the line.

Just to clear the record. I am an introvert, but not very shy. (Yes, they’re 2 different things.) And, when I get the chance, hardly taciturn. 

Actually, stuck in a line with strangers I’ll never see again, the anonymity seems to give me permission to be uncharacteristically outgoing. Sometimes, I’ll actually initiate conversation: when I’m in the mood,  just an amusing observation we can easily share. Makes the wait easier. Keeps me occupied. Humanizes what can be an uncomfortable proximity. 

Indeed, a lot of life is waiting. How often are we urged (or urge ourselves) to hurry up, only to end up waiting?

(I think it’s actually called a “self-checkout” machine. But for some reason self-scanning sounded  better.)

Water-Strider - Sept 23 2026

 

Water-Strider

Sept 23 2026

The setting sun

reflected off the still water

smooth as mirrored glass

tinting it a golden red.

I looked out through slitted eyes

blinded by the glare. 

In the the glassy calm

it almost seemed possible

I could walk on water 

as far as I wanted to.

The way water-striders scoot along

and even stand perfectly still,

poised

with their gossamer legs

spread like tiny struts,

each pod

dimpling the polished glass.

An onshore breeze

sent little riffles

skittering over the lake.

A squall touched down

and touched down again,

skipping over the surface

like a smooth flat stone.

It was as if the wind

had become visible.

As if water and air

had conjured together

in a trick of léger de main.

   . . . Where, I wondered

were fire and earth?

A high pressure system

barrelled in from the north

under clear blue sky.

A brisk west wind

funnelled down the narrows

adding speed,

driving white capped waves

and lashing spray from their tips.

But this all from memory

in this ill-tempered winter

gazing out at the snow.

Now, the lake is still,

locked beneath the ice

in its seasonal sleep.

The biting wind

is a distant noise

just as well ignored,

while in the cool stagnant depths

the sun

has been forgotten for months.

All the striders have gone.

But now, I can walk on water

as far as I want.

But plod, not scoot,

and too cold to stop. 

Of course, it’s fall and way too soon for ice. But today, after 2 days of calm — such perfect glass, it looked firm enough to walk on — an onshore breeze from Lake Superior, which is a giant wind machine not far to the south, sent little riffles over our small lake. So I started to think about the various winds we get, and how they initeract with the surface.

As I wrote, the possibility of walking on water stuck with me. So of course, a sharp turn to winter’s ice-covered lake was the obvious ending. And a good way out. Otherwise, the poem would have simply stopped instead of finishing!

Daily Paper - Sept 22 2026

 

Daily Paper

Sept 22 2026

Everyday, like clockwork

I settle into my accustomed chair

in the warm light of my cozy den,

protected

by its four familiar walls.

Where I read about world events,

consequential things

happening faraway

I’m free to take or leave.

The news is relentless;

not a tsunami

where I could at least flee to higher ground,

but wave after wave

getting bigger and bigger

on top of a full moon tide.

A flood I can't wait out,

battering my coastal defences

even on slow news days.

Curiously, my life day-to-day

is much the same as always,

and the stillness here

in my quiet solitude

leaves the headlines feeling unreal.

Or real enough,

but still the same old noise;

like the animal sounds you hear out the door

on cold dark nights

that amount to nothing

when the morning sun returns.

But still, I follow the news

make my judgements.

Is this merely force of habit

I find hard to break?

A creature of routine

set in his ways

who finds comfort there;

like a workhorse

plodding along

ploughing the same old furrow.

Is it the example my parents set?

Back when people with ink-stained fingers

actually read

and trusted the press?

When after work

my father would commandeer his armchair

and disappear behind the paper, 

when on Saturdays

discarded broadsheets

would litter the wood-panelled den.

Or do I simply feel obliged

as a good citizen

to stay informed?

As if I wasn’t powerless.

As if my opinion mattered.

As if there’d be a test.

As if the four walls

enclosing this cozy room

really were the refuge I imagine.

My island of safety

my hardened redoubt.

My higher ground

against a rising sea

as the land recedes

and a faraway world comes crowding in to shore;

weary people

who are hungry and wet

loudly demanding their share.

I still read the daily newspaper I read in my adolescence. Which, believe it or not, is still being published and still doing well. (Yes, I was either precocious, or just a socially awkward teen!) And I still call it the “paper”, even though for years I've been reading it on a screen. …Do people still say “dial” a phone or “spin” a tune?

Hot black coffee and the news. 

But as I get older, I have to admit I care less and less, feel less engaged. Probably just worn out by the relentless sturm und drang. Trump hasn’t helped:  a daily diet of outrage and incredulity sure takes its toll. Or perhaps just consoled I’ll be mercifully dead by the time it all comes crashing down. Doesn’t make a difference how, whether it’s by climate change, geopolitical instability, natural disaster, nuclear war, pandemic, social inequality, or general human stupidity. My bet is it won’t be just one!

Dust Gets in Your Eye - Sept 21 2026

 

Dust Gets in Your Eye

Sept 21 2026

I rarely cry.

Sure, dust gets in your eye

allergy season.

But the kind that doesn’t stop?

When you can’t breathe,

gulping air

as if drowning

in warm salty tears?

When snot runs out your nose

and into your mouth,

spluttering and choking

and not caring how it looks?

When your face is clenched in misery

body wracked with sobs,

frown lines locked

as if they’ll harden there?

It can feel cathartic,

but you can also feel

unworthy of such grief.

It can bring you closer;

or leave you feeling alone

to be so deeply touched

by something so small.

Small, because that was the last brake left 

holding the floodgates closed.

When the dam

that all those years kept you in control

let go,

and the stoical man

who struck others as guarded and cold

broke down

   . . . showing, for once

real emotion.

They say only humans cry for no reason.

Who knows why evolution

has made us weep.

Is it to bring us together?

Because we know too much?

Or because words 

are sometimes not enough?

It was nothing, really.

No one died

no child suffered,

nothing was lost.

But still, I cried, bawled, sobbed.

Perhaps next time

it will take more

then come more easily.

When I won’t pretend 

there’s something in my eye,

won’t turn away

hide the tears 

or wipe them furtively off.

My beautiful dog Rufus is still strong and healthy in her 11th year. But the signs of age are there. And since the average lifespan of her breed is 10.7 years, I increasingly feel the anticipatory grief of her inevitable death.

So I identified with this story. Especially the opening line of the subheading: I rarely cry. And then identified with what might seem to some the exorbitant grief at the death of an animal — even a beloved one. That is, the some who do not understand this kind of love, thinking that only our fellow humans are worthy of it.

In the poem, it’s something minor that opens the floodgates: all the pent up emotion of a stoical person who doesn’t cry, and the unfamiliar feeling of simply giving in to it.

Evolution doesn’t favour a trait for no reason. So I think humans cry emotional tears because it allows us to grieve together and strengthen community: a form of communication that doesn’t need language. As social animals who depend on each other for survival, little is more important than strong social bonds and tribal solidarity. 

https://globe2go.pressreader.com/article/281754161230869

Forfeiting the Game - Sept 20 2026

 

Forfeiting the Game

Sept 20 2026

I never played pinball.

But I can see the shiny ball bearing

and the flashing lights,

hear the bumpers thwap

and the music bubble

like a calliope on speed.

See the man, eyes intense

bent over the glass-topped box

with his hands gripping the sides,

working the flippers

as if he could alter fate

violate Newton’s laws,

as if their furious waggling 

catching only air

did not remind him

of his own futile striving.

Can hear the legs screech

and table shudder,

see the TILT sign light up.

As if a level playing field

was the least one should expect.

As if a lucky hit

could make up for all the misses,

the way a bad gambler

puts all his chips

on the one sure thing.

As if keeping a ball in the air

a few seconds more

could make everything right;

if not his whole life

then at least the single night

he could call himself a winner.

In short order today, I read a poem entitled Pinballing(I didn’t like it at all, and won’t bother with a link) then — hardly scrolling down — encountered an article called The Pinball President.  Seemed an odd coincidence:  I can’t remember the last time this word appeared to me in any medium. 

I’ve actually never played (believe it or not), but an image came immediately to mind. (Which may or may not be accurate.) I also thought of the intense focus of the player on this ultimately meaningless pursuit. A player who is kind of a loser — who feels powerless, thinks he’s a failure — and has nothing better to do. (Or am I a snob? Am I too judgemental, and there is nothing better?!) Thought about skill vs luck, and the difficulty discerning how much of each. Thought about nights spent searching for something more than mere distraction; and how, nevertheless, small victories are sometimes all we need when life is disappointing. (Especially an aggrieved guy who thinks it’s all rigged: that the playing field is tilted against him, and the game has been pretty much forfeit from the start.) But also how small victories can too easily substitute for the real ones that make a real difference.

It’s refreshing to picture a simple analogue game in an old fashioned arcade in this time of elaborate digital games that come with all the bells and whistles.  No connectivity, no A.I., no multiplayers, no animated screens. Just a physical object in real time and hands on.

Street Smarts - Sept 19 2026

 

Street Smarts

Sept 19 2026

There are dumb animals

with an instinct for survival.

Cunning thugs

getting by on street smarts.

The witless savant

reciting pi

until someone makes him stop.

I’m pretty much average,

although like to flatter myself

perhaps a little above.

But intelligence is many things.

You can do algebra in your head

but be stunted emotionally. 

Can dunk a basketball,

but be incurious

about gravity

and the workings of the hand.

Can be a superhuman machine

that reasons infallibly,

but is immune

to moral constraint.

They call it artificial,

which I assume means man-made.

While we are organic,

either products of nature

or children of God. 

Embodied, not soldered.

In touch with the world

instead of determined by circuits

that either switch from on to off

or ponder

in quantum uncertainty. 

And enmeshed in reality,

instead of fed

a reductionist facsimile.

We know belonging and acceptance

love and loss

grief and death.

Are flawed

and hopelessly subjective.

Aren’t smart enough

to do simple sums in our heads,

or reproduce

the periodic table.

But we know that clutch in the chest

when we stumble on beauty,

the feeling of smallness

when faced with awe.

We are dumb animals

but have somehow carried on

for countless millennia. 

So when artificial intelligence

kills us all

will the machines survive?

Will they flourish?

Will mechanical life find meaning

in a virtual world

where nothing feels hunger

or dreams beneath the stars?

I’ve been reading so much about A.I. — mostly dire warnings of economic collapse and human extinction — and wanted to write about it.  But the temptation for someone like me is to write an essay disguised as a poem: a polemic, a point of view, a logical argument. So I needed a way in that would get me out that categorical and argumentative way of thinking. Nothing about the pros and cons of data centres, the potential stock marker bubble, the alarming cases of A.I. going rogue (incidents its creators euphemistically call “misalignment”), the stunted worldview of the tech bros, or the failure of geriatric politicians — who don’t understand the internet, let alone A.I. — to effectively regulate.

And nothing about the big question that looms over us all:  will the A.I. we have created always be merely instrumental, or will it achieve sentience, a form of consciousness? Might it have already? 

So I thought about types of intelligence. And the natural corollary:  can a machine be called super-intelligent when its intelligence is limited to a single kind? 

The Spider in the Sink - Sept 17 2026

 

The Spider in the Sink

Sept 17 2026

The spider in the sink

is like a marooned man

who somehow survives

on some godforsaken island

all alone.

No food, no web

no way out,

just a bleak terrain of hard white porcelain

and the weight of time.

I’m struck

by how dignified it looks,

planted there, utterly still.

As self-contained

as the wise man on the mountaintop,

sitting cross-legged

and serenely content

gazing out from his ascetic perch.

But, as spiders always are

on high alert.

How did it get there, fully grown?

They once believed

that life begins spontaneously;

that the flies buzzing around the excrement 

arose from it,

as if a restless God

hadn't stopped creating the world

on the 7th day.

And why does it remain

in this barren wasteland,

an ambush predator

where there is no prey?

So still 

and unnaturally calm

it seems as patient as Job.

Even contemplative,

as if meditating 

on the deeper questions

that dog us all,

as if spiders had an inner life

richer than we thought.

I open the faucet,

and from a dead start

8 delicate legs

unleash like loaded springs

as it scurries to higher ground.

High tide

has submerged the island,

a Biblical flood

threatens to cleanse 

its desolate world.

An innocent spider

caught by circumstance.

So I cup it gently in my hand

and ferry it to safety

in a dusty corner of the room.

Because all life is precious,

and this creature is as deserving

as any other. 

Because there’s a nobility

to this harmless spider

I can’t help but admire.

And because I am no almighty God,

sitting in judgement 

and careless with his power.

I seem to repeatedly find new spiders in the sink. How they keep getting there and why, I have no idea.

But I am always struck by how dignified and self-contained they look. How patient and meditative, as if the inner lives of spiders were richer than we think. 

I’ve always had a fondness for harmless spiders:  the good they do; their extraordinary silk; the brilliant webs they spin. I suspect I identify with their solitary nature. 

So I feel supremely guilty if I run the water and ignore them:  as if they were dispensable, didn’t matter, felt nothing. As if life wasn’t precious; and not just the intelligent life we tend to privilege. (Actually, hardly even that. We eat pigs, after all. Never mind how we treat our fellow humans!) 

I can’t help but imagine changing places: as if some higher power or more advanced intelligence were to incidentally glance down, only to let me figuratively wash down the drain before turning back to some minor chore. Doesn’t life often seem that way? Instead of a paternal God who lovingly watches over us, an indifferent God who is careless with his power. (I prefer no God, but for the sake of a poem will happily betray my disbelief!)