| Arctic Killer
Polar bear:
Hiding,
With a paw,
Your black nose
(Ingenious)
As you stalk prey.
You're eidolic,
A Portuguese man-of-war,
To the flesh
You eat.
Photographer-pilots
"Captured" you
In your white desert:
Click.
But you,
In an 8 by 10 paradox,
Weren't there,
Like a Hollywood vampire
Without a virtual
Image.
Even infrared fails
To capture you
Who,
Like a black hole,
Harvests solar heat
That black skin
Absorbs.
Ultraviolet film
Exposes you:
A great,
Black amoeba,
As unphotogenic as
The small,
White seals
(They too are
Heat-absorbing miracles)
That you eat.
You stalk men--
You,
The most beautiful
Of all bears
(Some say)--
Just as Nimrod
Stalked men
In war-play.
In a zoo-cage
You're adored
By awe-struck children
("He's so cute!"),
But in the wild,
Face to face,
You're a gargoyle
With teeth
That kill.
Best Western-Reunion
"I've got a twenty-five hundred
Square foot home,"
A man with breasts says as
Jacuzzi-steam fondles
Hand-held
Beer-cans.
Other fat men
Bathe in chlorine
And Visa,
And roll lottery numbers over
In their minds. But
They aren't like walruses
Spinning over an ocean floor,
Searching for fish
To eat raw,
Because they like theirs deep-fried:
Up one comes for air;
CO2 bubbles still
Fizz in his throat.
Then children arrive,
And laugh;
A girl in a peppermint bikini
Asks, "Can we buy some pop?
We're hot!"
The men climb out;
They're hot too.
The ice-cold beer
Is too warm,
And there must be something else
To do
Anyway.
Bullfight-Canvas
The wild bull,
Facing "Goya" in his
"Taje de luces"
("Suit of lights"),
Does not know that pharaohs
Hunted him on foot,
Nor that princes and princesses
of Crete
Somersaulted over him
As he charged.
Four years pampered,
He's never before seen
The "grey" muleta that
Lies.
But he has made up his mind.
He paws the ground,
Breathes heavily, as the
Amphitheater-Picasso
Prepares to
Attack himself.
The picador,
Like a blood-lusting
Moor on horseback,
Drives the steel-tipped lance
Into neck or shoulder flesh.
The head lowers.
Twice again the picador
Drives down the bull's head,
And then he exits;
Banderillas enter:
They shout, wave arms,
Swerve at the last moment
To lodge steel barbs
Into bleeding shoulders.
The "moment of truth":
Matador against bull.
Aficionados cry out for
Thrust and charge,
Blood and blade.
The matador--
Puppeteer and artist--
Reaches over the horns,
Plunges the sword between
Iberian shoulders,
Searching for the elusive aorta,
Until the coup de grace
Gives the bloody audience
Everything the bloody matador
Could ask for.
I have never travelled
beyond
I have never traveled beyond
The crack of gunfire;
O, I've visited backyard swimming pools
And steamy swamps
And mountain-locked lakes where
Dragonflies turn at 2.5 G's
And dance
In mosquito-air
And shore-side ballrooms of
Green.
I've seen them outperform
Timid damselflies
(That rest with upturned,
Not sideturned, wings),
In 60 mph sprints
And moment's-notice backward-, forward-,
Sideway-, or hover-steps.
30,000 images to 80% of its brain-mass
Locate mosquito-meat at 60 feet
At dusk--
And 24 frames per second of "In Love and War"
Are still-photos
For this sniper extraordinaire,
This metallic flash of blue
Or green or yellow.
The wet larva,
Sometimes after years of skin-altering,
Settles on a reed;
The change, the growth,
Like the workings of testosterone
In a boy's blood--
Watch the skin along the thorax split:
A new life,
A new hunter of aphids and beetles
And tiny frogs,
A new sniper in Philippine-
Canyons,
A new jewel for ponds and
Riverbanks--
A new insultingly-named
Helicopter
Within the zing
Of bullets.
I have never traveled beyond
The crack of gunfire,
But I have seen dragonflies
Everywhere.
I'm a poet, novelist, short story writer, and article writer. My work
has appeared 520 times in publications such as The Canadian Children's
Annual, Canadian Writer's Journal, Ahoy, Mamashee, Planet of the Arts,
Green's Magazine, Firm Noncommittal, The Artist's Journal, Redoubt 26 (Australia),
ars poetica (Australia), Purple Patch 90 (England), Current Accounts (England),
Breakfast all Day (England), Splizz 25 (Wales), Anthology Magazine (USA),
The Sunday Suitor Poetry Review (USA), Haiku Headlines (USA), You Can't
Take it With You (USA), The Blind Man's Rainbow (USA), Fresh Ground (USA),
Up Dare? (USA), Writer's Forum (USA), Writer's Exchange (USA), MOON Magazine
(USA), Arnazella (USA), Emotions (USA), Creative Juices (USA), The Poetry
Explosion Newsletter (USA), The Armchair Aesthete (USA), Poet's Market
(USA), The Sunflower Dream (USA), The Herb Network (USA), Our Journey (USA),
Improvijazzation Nation (USA), Omnific (USA), The New Horizon, To Do, Quesnel
Community News, The Westcoast Reader, The Cariboo Advocate, Quesnel Writers,
Prime Areas, The Cariboo Observer, The ATA Magazine, The Word is Out, The
Little Gazette, The Source, The Poet's Corner, The Path Not Taken, Pierian
Spring, Repository, Origins, The Charlatan, Quack, The Challenger, Alpha,
Waves, Shadows and Light, Teacher, The Student Voice, Tale Spinners, The
Brunswickan, Wordspinners, The Buzz, Western People, The Speaker, Coffee
Break, Meditations, Carson Communique,
Authors, CannedPhlegm (USA), Point Judith Light (USA), Entre Nous (USA),
The Neovictorian/Cochlea (USA), Poetalk (USA), Wildflower, Piedmont Literary
Review (USA), Moose Bound Tales and Other Stories (USA), Poetic Bridges
(USA), The Journal of Poetry Therapy (USA), Timber Creek Review (USA),
Fuel (USA), Poet's are Heroes, Too (USA), Poetic Realm (USA), You Sidewalk
Tales (USA), Poetic Page (USA), Afterthoughts, and Education Perspectives.
My formal apprenticeship as a writer includes intensive personal direction
from masters such as Canada's Professor Robert Harlow, the USA's Paul Bagdon,
and England's D.M. Thomas. I studied creative writing at UBC (The
University of British Columbia), and I graduated from The Humber School
for Writers' Advanced Poetry Writing Program and from The Writer's Digest's
Advanced Novel Writing Program.
I should add that for eight years I served as the editor of a literary
journal called The Challenger (listed in the Canadian Writer's Market,
McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1996). I re-named the journal Challenger
international (listed in the 1999 Poet's Market, Writer's Digest Books,
1999), and I serve as its editor.
For 22 years I have worked as a schoolteacher (B.Sc. (mathematics: Dean's
Honor List), UBC, '76; Teacher Training (First Class Standing), UBC, '77;
presently (1999 to 2002) I'm enrolled part-time in a M.Ed. Program at the
University of Northern British Columbia), but I have also worked as a learning
assistant, tutor, blues guitar teacher, workshop leader, car rental agent,
longshoreman, porter on a cruise ship, deck hand on many tugboats,
shipyard worker, cook, research assistant, janitor, warehouseman, gas
jockey, British Columbia Horseshoe Championship scorekeeper and judge,
paper boy, berry picker, speech therapist-assistant, editor, literary agent,
and
poetry reviewer.
I teach Creative Writing 12 to senior students at Quesnel's McNaughton
Centre. That course, which I wrote, is based on Professor Harlow's Creative
Writing 202 at UBC. My course has been published by the British Columbia
Teachers' Association, and is listed in its Lesson Aids Catalogue.
I have also taught creative writing courses to adults through the Quesnel
School District's Continuing Education Department.
As an actor, I have performed in four plays before audiences of up to
4000 at the Convention Center and Civic Center (both in Prince George,
BC, Canada). |
