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