Saturday, October 20, 2012


30

because our coast is our future
a space we share with the many
now working loving and playing
and the many who will come after
working and loving and playing

because this is where we walked
this is where we swam
and the pictures taken here
beneath the riverbed
are lines to our anchor souls

because the ecos in our economies
is the same ecos as in our ecologies
and our not dwelling on this fact
lays waste to all homes of all things
that may be dwelling here

because this is where we walked
this is where we swam
and the pictures taken here
beneath the river bed
run right through our lotic souls

because our coast is our future
a space we will share with the many
now working loving and playing
and the many who will come after
working and loving and playing

Capital—we are coming
and we will defend our coast
link arms and defend our coast
sing this song to defend our coast
walk forward to defend our coast


29

Defenders—Tsleil-Waututh and
Squamish—Yinka Dene and
Wet’suwet’en—Sto:lo and
Gitxzan and Lubicon Cree
and so many more in this
unbroken line—and day and
night labourers nurses teachers
fishermen and foresters—bakers
baristas clerks and caterers—
grandmothers uncles nieces
and friends and acquaintances
who love and console us and
children gamers activists and
students and immigrants of all kinds—

Rise up—we are the people
come upon each other in
streets and on paths through
woods—in parks and alleyways
along piers on rocks overlooking
the sea and amongst the mottled
sides of rivers and streams and
in suburban back yards or the
middle of farms of modest size—
finding we compose a world
outside states corporate profits
or trade agreements and we rise
up together and we rise up
to defend our coast together

Friday, October 19, 2012


28

Defenders—rise up
lift this feeling
for Cormorant and Gull
Sandpiper and Dipper
Petrel Shearwater Grebe
and Bittern and Egret
Great Blue Heron
Kestrel and Killdeer
lift this feeling
for Wood Duck and
American Wigeon the
Scaup Elder Harlequin
and Hooded Merganser
Stellar’s Jay and Hutton’s
Vireo lift this feeling
for Spruce and
Sage Grouse Rock
Ptarmigan and Yellow
Warbler for the living
web lift Bald Eagle Raven
Barn Owl—rise up
Flicker Harrier Towhee
and Thrush—lift this
feeling for the freshets
for the forms loving flight

Thursday, October 18, 2012


27

Defenders we travel inland
along rivers and in and out
of streams knowing lotic
systems and unidirectional
flow—riffles glides and pools
the angle at which light strikes
leading to light lost to reflection

Knowing biofilm and water column
algae—moss and liverwort
knowing duckweed and water
hyacinth invasive hydrilla and
cattail tops emerging from
slow water and bladderwort
feeding on small captured organism

Knowing sinuosity and substrate
crayfish with their feather-like gills
salamander and trout and
oolichan and the riparian zone
with otter and beaver and mink and
wolf and bear midst salmon spawning
then alevin then parr then smolt 

Knowing especially the salmon and
bear and cedar and salmon cycling
nitrogen back from seas knowing
magnetoception and the names of
rivers salmon return to and this
circle is love and nowhere does it
include oil spilling from burst pipes

Wednesday, October 17, 2012


26

Defenders—consider
Bull Kelp and Splitleaf Rockweed
consider Common Coralline Seaweed
and Staghorn Bryozoan consider
Sea Pan and Encrusting Bryozoan
consider Red Jelly Fish
and Crimson Anemone consider
Aggregating and Plumrose Anemone
consider White-plumed Buried
and Swimming Anemone consider
Fish-eating and Tube Anemone and
consider Tube Worms the Giant
Nudibank and Hudson’s Doris
and Yellowmargined Cadlina

See the waters ebbing and flooding
clear for centuries to come see
the play of light on and beneath
waves and the shape of shadow
and light on rock and sand beneath
surface—see Pacific Giant Octopus
and Swimming Scallop see Wrinkled
Dove Shell and Leafy Hommouth
Frilled Dog-winkle and Blue Top
Snail—Northern Abalone and
Speckled Limpet—Red-flecked
Chiton and Giant Sunflower Star—
see all of this and nowhere the stain
of bitumen in the endless days to come

Tuesday, October 16, 2012


25

because we have damaged it so badly
because of accumulation
because of plastic
because of our cars and motorcycles and trucks
            and RVs and speed boats and
because  of mining metals and smart phones
because we see it but keep doing it
because we find it too easy
because of the sleep called entertainment
because of airplanes and the beauty of the world
            and hotels and beaches in pictures
because of the distance between home and work
because of fruit in winter and a lack of canning
because of highways and innovations in paving
because we are longing
because of the creation of scarcity and want
because of the movie
because of the song
because we weren’t told to think we were told
            to go shopping
because our leaders get paid
because there are those who can pay for
anything and everything and they will
because of the media they own
because of our leaders they own
because of us
because we can change but don’t or haven’t
because of the frog and the pot

Monday, October 15, 2012


24

Folks they were always
here before erasures
no one should have to
face came ashore and
what is a pipeline? What
is an inlet where oil
fills fishing grounds
and rivers wash down
globs of bitumen to spawn
in synthetic seas
but the continuation
of centuries of colonization?

Defenders—elders—others
gathered from all around
see this parliament’s a shell
washed up on a beach with
nothing in it not even sound—
see this oil company it’s
only money burning money
to make money for no ends—
and see this massive crowd
forming—it’s called the people
and the people are coming to
decolonize and to defend

Sunday, October 14, 2012


23

Time—do not be
a devourer—
we will set aside
our lucent skins
take off hair and
lung—carpal and
sinew—set aside
heart and—skeletal—
dance along the sides
of the tar sands
along the length
of the pipelines
and in the hollow holds
of the tankers waiting
to be filled

Mother—is there another
dance we might perform?
Working in a circle
healing ourselves our
relationships and our world—
space is what we’ve
laid waste to
inside and out
accumulating the capital of
the crazed glaze of commodity
now—working in a circle
replace cell phone with bird call
jet ski with water fall
refinery with otter dive
pesticide with bee hive

Saturday, October 13, 2012


22

If we are like I am
which is temporary
which is often confused
which is folded
which is an array
which is hoping
which is under weathers
which is branching
which is self-inflicting
which is beholden
which is overflowing
which is a sad consumer

And if I am like we are
which is pointillist
which is echolocating
which is non-unionized but organizing
which is near spent fuel rods
which watches ducks and orcas
which puts the pedal to the metal
which is complex and contradictory
which is non-violent but gets angry
which sports various gadgetry
which is bullshit as we all know
which is our only hope

Then open every door and window
storm streets and seats of bad government
and lead by following in the defence
of the laws of mother earth

Friday, October 12, 2012


21

Defenders—I hear an elder
do you hear her too? These damages
to our mother are plain
though hidden under happy plunder
by imaginary people
drinking oil and eating money

Lost species are
lost forever—they are stories
no one knows anymore
islands lost to rising seas
are one thing—money made out of
the dead ends of days is another

We now confront
terminal crises of a model
based on submission and destruction—
have you seen the cops?
They are oily engine parts too
no mechanism without its kill-switch, eh?

I would walk one thousand miles
to get out of oil—the other option
is we’re all fossils to fuel no fires—
so our decisions are made “under the influence”
as the saying goes—but there are other
influences too—elder mother home—listen

Thursday, October 11, 2012


20

because economies can no longer trump
ecologies for they are the front and back
doors of the same precarious house

because we are always at beginnings
when at our ends and have to be thoughtful
of what comes after our getting there too

because the birds smoking cigarettes on
the wires outside our windows also need
something like healthcare and revolution

because whatever we carry we can and
must be mindful of the ground we cover
like great hollow forms in our passage

because governments and debts and
the privilege of the few will not stop
and listen to us somewhere on the road

because the slippages are many and
pipes burst and tankers tank and the
seepage is without profit for any animal

because we are animals and other
animals remind us of limits and we aspire
never to leave the shards of glass behind us

because the broken is a property of the
made and markets are vague consequences
without promises the next stop in our sequence

Wednesday, October 10, 2012


19

Listen to this prospect
this view of sounds
harbours bays and bends
that drift spendthrift through
our consumptive debts
and echoing projects to reclaim
social wealths locked in
private speech by public men
lying about their leisure and
the sound of their own voices
as the big banking thermostat
is set to up the oil flow
for the overheated planet to
what—spin a little faster?
make us all terrified of the earth
that calm and patient growth
of sweet light corruption
bent to our engineered ends
fluvial and Devonian we will
distill exquisite winds of
alternative energies and
lessened desires for divine
materials accepting leavings
from the gleanable commons
spread as this compost about
the ecos we house and hold

Tuesday, October 9, 2012


18

What chemistry this sea coast
to feed all kinds of terraqueous
forms and resiliencies the
bones of salmon in riverbed
exposed mollusk on storm beach
as we are heightened by sitka
spruce to overlook soup of
mists and spray where nations'
many songs came as compounds
formed out of Pacific ethers
and we will have no green-wash
spread about this cedared realm
because we know the winds
are not yet infectious and the
blackberries flavorous still

And that other chemistry
of social transformation
the thought network that
leads us to the edge of change
and pushes us over—Defenders
let’s take that courageous step
from the well-oiled machinery
we know into the ghostlier
realm of air and sunlight
we don’t but which yet beckons
the bubbling store of tomorrows
we may yet create if we still
harbor visions and if we still
see the orca spyhopping and the
village sprawl at forest fringe

Monday, October 8, 2012


17

Curious the resurrection
of bud burst and stem
in the round of seasons
I cannot help but watch
the sea water rise
and fall the harbor fill
and empty with the passage
of tankers which seem
to murmur the strange
psalms of capital as they
pass beneath the Lion’s Gate
and the lilacs might still
be blooming in the dooryards
of Delta where long trains of
containers snake to other deaths
less dramatic than pipelines
or tankers three times the size
of the Exxon Valdez its
honeysuckle heart the
rusting steel dream of
production’s fraught desire O
defenders of this long paddled
coast—beware this compost
of mind and matter this liberal
western ghost of soft change
soft rioting—behold as the
death we sought to thwart
arrives by other means
at the door of our endlessly
unconscious and unquenchable homes

Sunday, October 7, 2012


16

We withdraw from
the still woods we love
the hollow call of ravens
where no fossil fuel
drives their dark wings
through dark cedars

How can this
bitumen dream bring life?
Every continent worked over
for the sour dead
of millennia pressed
into layers of coal and oil

You see we became gluttons
gulping down generations
of possibility as foul liquid—
under this land earth burns
the machinery of thought
grinds and shakes and strains

This is no compost
no death for future birth—
gas pouring out of our shopping
oil spilling from broken commodity—
we throw death after death
and draw dark flowers from our eyes

Saturday, October 6, 2012


15

because of Cohasset
because of Wilmar Saskatchewan
because of Rusk County Wisconsin
because of Glenavon Saskatchewan
because of Fort McMurray
because of Neche North Dakota
because of Virden Manitoba
because of Kalamazoo
because of Romeoville Illinois
because of every place the oil spills
we are coming Enbridge
to defend our coast

because of Suisun Marsh
because of Walnut Creek
because of Oakland harbor
because of the Mojave Desert
because of Donner Lake
because of Inlet Drive Burnaby
because of Abbotsford BC
because of every place the oil spills
            we are coming Kinder Morgan
            to defend our coast
            and see our seas clean
            our rivers running clear
            

Friday, October 5, 2012


14

            for Neil Smith (1954-2012)


Defender—say what you feel
and what you can defend
not that which is
dead but still dominant
burning neoliberal mind
throwing all there is
onto fossil fueled fire—
but that which is
alive but still languishing
call it an occupation
a global uprising that
still seeks the singularity
of a unified voice rising from
the four corners of our struggles

we know there must be more
than the homeless the millionaires
and the lonely middle class—sing
a is for alienation
b is for the bosses
c is for capitalism
and learn where the leaks lie
in the catastrophic chain—
that the ecological collapse
is the economic collapse
is the ecological collapse
is the collapse of a dead idea
now sing—as soon as this pub closes
as soon as this pub closes

as soon as this pub closes
the revolution begins!

Thursday, October 4, 2012


13

How can it be
that the ground itself
does not sicken?
The tar is locked
in the sand for a reason:
what’s held in the earth
is not always meant
to spring forth to be burnt
not in this balance
of gasses we call air

Knowing is not
tested by the factual
but we go there
unreasonable in our
desires to find out
what transformations
fall from our social metabolism
taking up the material surround
to form our economies
and manufacture consent

But the understanding remains
a footprint in the sand
in which we will no clots
of oil to pool—no blackened
ducks wash up on this
imaginary shore so real
in its diverse life forms
a quick orchestral up-topia
where nothing dies for mechanism
and we wonder at living growths of spring

Wednesday, October 3, 2012


12

Petrochemical—
we’re all a bit queasy
plastic wrapping round
everything we hold
eat or sleep under or near
and effluent isn’t pretty
and the fumes are noxious
as we cower near
the chemical plants
while catalytic cracking
announces the cancers
of our daily routines
our fracked hearts open
our heads engulfed
in blue flames of progress

Petrostate—
there is a sort of resin
or film on my hands and eyes
I can feel it in my lungs too
like a lozenge melting
slow as polar ice
quick as changing climates
do you want to see every
possible compound
cracked from element?

Petrodisaster—
it’s because of all this
the soup we leech in
the particles we inhale
that we are coming to Victoria

Tuesday, October 2, 2012


11

Defenders—we will not
put our futures in
anyone’s blind trust—
these picture books
we are shown
full of cartoon
pie charts and
graphs where a
red line falls off
to the jagged right—
nothing says we have to
blindly trust them nor
the permanent precarity
they so coldly promise us

People of earth
everyday activists
defenders of this coast
here’s what we know
we can blindly trust—
the air our lungs need
the earth our feet walk
the water our rivers carry
the sun that fires our dreams
and the fact that together
we will stop these pipelines
allowing no corridors
for carbon—no fracked earth
for the accumulation of despair

Monday, October 1, 2012


10

because you cannot eat money
because the lung came from a swim bladder
because of the Burgess Shale
because we are aquatic creatures still
because of all the relatives rights
because of more than three billion years
because who the fuck are we to destroy all this?
because I like the idea of my grandchildren
            and my grandchildren’s grandchildren too
because once and this is true I worked on
            the water and an orca came close by
            the side of my boat and I could have
            reached out and touched its dorsal fin
            but I did not
because in the industrial revolution we
            outsources the body and now we are
            outsourcing the mind
because of the Exxon Valdez
because of Enron
because of Kalamazoo
because our representatives don’t represent
because of otters
because of shellfish and bivalvular life generally
because I have canoed many rivers and found
            them each a unique voice of this earth
because there is love and principle and
            responsibility which is the ability
            to respond and so I am responding now

Sunday, September 30, 2012


9

If only it were
this small matter
of one line on a map
one narrow channel
one pipeline to one
tanker port—but
it’s the tangle of all
this carbon carving
a wide corridor torn
stripped fracked and drilled
out of the land we love and
engulfed by money as it flows
through pipes to tankers
trains and trucks and then
into rivers seas and atmosphere
all this web of energy to get
energy to get home—see it all
flowing everywhere round
as in a carbon mist—but start
somewhere—start from home
in the resistance you bring
to this system of asphyxiation

Saturday, September 29, 2012


8

Bird—it’s very sordid
stocks and derivatives
desire to drag every
last drop of profit
out of any source
so you’ll agree about
weathermen and which
way the wind blows
when the spills come
because the spills will come
and the delicate vanes
of your feathers which
when soaked in oil
will mat and separate so
your skin is exposed and
Bird—you suffer hypothermia
or unable to resist instinct
preen your bitumen body
and so ingest our chemical
will to transform you
like we thought you were
just a symbol of our more
ethereal flight through image
and coin to roost amidst
golden light in a tree singing
as we approach in mechanism
to uproot and rip the dark soil

Friday, September 28, 2012


7

It is the habit of plants
to drink at nearest sources
it is a wet land—a wetland
slung along valleys or
spread at the ends of rivers
where we live
filled with mystery and
broken wings—Cuyahoga
on fire—Kalamazoo sinking
into a bitumen bog
condensate burning
the eyes of surface

All life hinges
upon air and water
where hinge is the way
our thinking or unthinking
swings into actions into
a world of environments
we gently or aggressively
compose—now—let’s be
hinges giving onto a world
we’ll enter carefully
the doors of other
possibilities swinging free

Thursday, September 27, 2012


6

Can you imagine
what if we did
if we left the oil
in the ground?

Think of everything
we don’t do
waiting and pressing
against no ideas

It’s said the human
is unique in picturing
what it will build in
the mind before building

Picture then what
you won’t build
broken pipe rivers
and carbon machines

Or some other structure
you might—wind and sun
gleaned from givenness
the need not to travel

Great distances to bring
some spice to the lips
of a hunger no longer
redirecting the clouds

Wednesday, September 26, 2012


5

Capital, we are coming—

because Paleozoic flora and fauna
did not die so condensate
could liquefy their remains
in rupturing pipelines

because these rivers have
directions of their own to follow
as they wander towards the
seas they began in

because a spirit bear once stopped
on the highway somewhere
between Terrace and Prince Rupert
and casually watched my car pass
as though I were the ghost
in the machine of its forest

because the Haida have paddled
these waters so long their island
is a shell of first peoples
and ravens are not made of bitumen

because the oil companies
don’t get to purchase the future
of every living thing yet to be born
yet to breathe in the atmosphere
yet to tumble into a stream

because governments were built
to be surrounded by the people
who came up with the idea
of governments in the first place
knocking them down
where they once put them up

Tuesday, September 25, 2012


4

Defenders of our coast
voices calling out indignation
bodies claiming streets
minds conceiving this vision
of a more giving world—
show me no solitary discontents
show me no pathetic policies
of  a meandering middle road
show me no compromise
with chemical economics—
every barrel that doesn’t spill
into our rivers and seas
spills into the air we breathe

Defenders—is it true
there’s never quite enough
of us to encircle power
or bridge the gap of privilege
where CEOs lisp dear heart
as they pump liquid assets?
Don’t fall into that trap
that the public is over there
waiting to be addressed—
no—we are the public
exploding back into existence
a whale rising to breach
off the bow of a rusting tanker

Monday, September 24, 2012


3

World,
macaroni and glue
or fibrous web of cells—
I test the edge of sincerity
the clarity of words
on a page ideology prepared—
can we go on like this?
I like you
and the sun comes up
one side of you
before sinking down the other
and we dance in small streams
just beyond our suburbs
or cast small stones
at the shores of you—
is this alright?

Do you see what we’re doing
for money and out of fear?
Come close to the place
where we made you up, OK?
And then push us through
to the other side of the page—
we’re ready to stand with you
and against money and power
and all this pretending
the gluing of shapes onto
surfaces of our kindergarten lives
though the kids are alright
and the world’s still
sometimes a defensible idea

Sunday, September 23, 2012


2

Who knew a canoe?
Who found a forest?
Came around a cape
with a tanker full of regret
and spilt it on paper
where we’d written
“over my dead body”
promises we keep
along coasts we defend

We wont refuse
what we see and know
because we see and know
what it is that we refuse—
the money from trees
and the money from soil
no one can exchange
for the flesh of salmon
the flesh of songs too

And this little window
I found in your boat—
lighthouse computer screen or eye—
it’s watching from promontories
and running for river mouths too
though you don’t need a weather man
to know which way the oil flows
or a pilot to show you
the long teeth of jagged inlets

Saturday, September 22, 2012


1

Defenders of our coast—
Indigenous elders
Environmentalists
(radical or otherwise)
Grannies (raging
or otherwise)—
let’s surround government
until it hears the people
at its heart—
let’s show a world
we’re a world too—
rivers and mountains
talking down to the sea

I think we know
what to say yes
and say no to—
our land in the hands
of the future
whose grandchildren
will listen to it
in a clean and curling shell
all of us hoping
no Kalamazoos near
our kaleidoscope coasts
and the precious that washes
clear waters and smooth sands