I went to an all boys Catholic high school. Boys from many different backgrounds. Rich and poor. In uniforms. Controlled by a series of rules on conduct and appearance. Our English teacher introduced us to many fine poems. And then there were lively discussions. Some points of view came from left field. Others were well beyond that. But it all came to a cacophony of voices. The conflicts of the school yard focused on a class discussion. A poem in itself.

A series of poems investigating the other and how we reach it. The self is a prison. Out there may be a phantasm. Outside the hive are nightmares. And darkness. We are the round stones on the shore who have eyes."pontius prophets playing plastic prayers as yndala zam exhumes a hole in her lap 'out damn's spot, out' for those of you whose profession it is to browse over this world tongue in cheek jotting your thoughts on parchment singing aquarius waiting for jesus to come out of the...

Thoughts on a life well attended. I may have been tardy but I was awake.'I wish I was handsomer. I wish I was taller. I wish my bank account would grow. I wish I didn'tsmoke. I wish I didn't forget so many things. That's right, I don't smoke. I wish I was smarter. (Isthat even possible?) I wish I'd met Trudeau. (Pierre) I wish I'd been more successful. And my parentscould have seen it. I wish a lot of things that I don't really care about it. Someday I'm going t...

The moon slept in its garden. Clouds as thin as lace were tangled in the treetops. Bats flickered in and out of the high branches. Down below in the long grass the crickets were too loud. Two teeth shone like nuggets in the dirt. The headlights from the Jaguar crawled across a young woman who lay naked except for the bra around her neck. Blood ran out of each corner of her mouth giving the impression of a smile. A clown's smile. A tear running over her cheek. Her eyes were closed. Her hand...

I don't know how stories are supposed to end. We are in the midst of our lives, when life seems to drift on without us, fading away into the future. Nothing ends. Things dissolve into a new story, someone else's story. What happened to Mackenzie Philips and his crazy death lock with God? Was Tom O'Malley able to nurture his tortured soul? And what about Frank and Monique? And Greg Tower? And the widow Henderson? And the killer watching from the shadows on the fringe of these stories? All t...

I was never good in school. Laziness mostly. I slept a lot which put my father in a hellish mood. I'm keeping down two jobs to keep you brats in bed and breakfast and all you do is sleep. He made me get a part time job. Which is where I got my first taste of titty. The baker's daughter. Margaret. She was a homely girl but she was handing it out for free so I got in line...When I finally graduated from high school, my father told me that I had to join the army.Somebody has to ...

I was born in Reykjavik. When I was four, we emigrated to Manitoba. We moved to a farm near Gimli Manitoba. Home of the three Viking graves. No one is sure how they got there but I'm confident they didn't take Air Canada, as we did. We lived on Sixth Street. There was a ditch in front of our house. It seemed like everyone had a truck. A lot of the houses sat on cinder blocks. Almost no one had a basement. Flooding. Highway 9 went in and out of town in a flash. If you sneezed, you missed it...

Children have nightmares. They wake up in a sweat and cry out for their mothers. A village can have nightmares too. The villagers wake up and cry out for each other. These stories are about that nightmare.Mackenzie Phillips sat up in his bed. He needed to stay awake. All the news about the dead body in the valley had spooked Mackenzie. Maybe Mackenzie was the next on the list. Glancing out the window he watched the slow sway of the treetops. His eyes became heavy. He began to dream...

There is a special place in hell for mothers. It is on Earth. Doreen Henderson lingered for months in a dark place few could understand. The psychiatrists called it post-traumatic syndrome. A young woman, the widow slipped into middle-age over night. It was as if Doreen's world had died on her that afternoon of the accident and she had awakened on a dead planet. She had been put on medication. There was therapy. Counseling. I tried to drop in on her every chance I got. When Doreen was rele...

"Leaving T.O. Train shivering between the rails. Wheels and rails grinding their teeth. IMPSTONE. A book of poems keeps tapping on my eyelids. Like rain on a tin roof. A commercial from Eden in Morse Code. Clattering of train. Percolates. Miles through my spine. The photo of Susan Musgrave on the cover of IMPSTONE is not. Flattering. I know this is madness. Crossing a continent to meet a woman I don't know. Hoping she'll introduce me. To the poet. Inside her."Across a continent. Wri...

"The stain on the cement stared back at me. I wanted to go home and get a pail of hot water and wash it off. Several ants were grazing on it. I looked around. Everything was the same as it had been a few days earlier. The telephone booth. The newspaper boxes. The Six Points Plaza across the street. The plaza was empty. Business was bad. Several of the stores were abandoned. The stain was the only sign that something terrible had happened."Detective Sam Kelly is in the last days of a...

The 8-bit home computer Commodore 64 was introduced into the market place in January, 1982. Volume production started sometime in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of $595. Dalton Mackenzie bought one. Under the advise of his teacher Mr. Stabler. "If you want to invest money," Mr. Stabler said to his grade eleven class, "don't invest in stocks or bonds or computers. Invest in pornography."A serial killer, triplets, a high school d...