ditch,

Jude Dillon is a graduate of Queen's University in English. He has studied painting at the Alberta College of Art. He has published poems in, iota, The Delinquent, Numinous Sprititual Magazine, Gloom Cupboard, Wascana Review, On Spec, Purple Patch and others.

He is a photographer and Contributing Editor of the ezine Gloom Cupboard based in England. Jude lives in Calgary.

from The Wind on a Witchy Road

                                                                    To Sally Graver 
                                                             for reasons that need
                                                            not be explained here,
                                                        -and to Theodore Roethke
                                                        for his poem, The Waking

In The Dirty Sheets of Luck
 
 
In the dark spit of oily light
the stale luxury of spilt beer
the closing face of happy hour
the skinny page of a book called solitude

I am starting to infect
I worry a face out of the woodwork
the fat man chews my eyebrows
the glum acceleration of traffic
the fabulous erosion of beauty.

Light glances off your uplifted face
the edge of pretty bites into thought
for the luck of sunshine and the power of clouds
in rooms you’re paying off for the future

I’m a long way off from anyone
fields backed out to the sea
corners of squarish clouds

a holy room of blue paint
rubs shoulders with the wounded
quibbles with the quietude
masquerades with the merriment

oriental accents in your cheekbones
a glow of warm skin, hands held
battered words line your wallet
antique phrases drive you –a warm dark sense of doom
a pale shimmering
a shiny bottomed sky.

 

 
 
You look carefully away so as not to inspire
a child finds her mind
down dead-end looks
shaking doorbells goodbye
the razor wit of slow tease
you wish a moment real and the light turns into us
and toasts the edges

you pour out slim wickedness
backwards, gliding away
a kiss of broomstick –a sweep of glances
stir the air with my ear
the pencil steady in the sharpener

a condom spreads a world apart
firm curves swing against me
to present the gift of you
blind favours of the lip and tongue
on the darker side of now
chin deep with barb wire

in the séance of lip struck
the poise of the whiskey glass
the blunt lipped world
in a black rain over a green island
charmed back into the wild
well-titted women
look out from troubled harbours
bare branches; a blue whipped sky
the deadline of the grave.

 

 
 
 
The cloud slips and runs under a bus
ticks the wounded nerve
that anchors me to you
but now I’m coming to forget
you name slips by like daylight
you smell of nothing –loved by no one

I call for a drunken moment
as love pedals furiously uphill

laughs that heave up out of continents
old flames hiss blue
the secrets that you keep from yourself
eyes that crawl by train up back-river.

Looks that look you back.

So I leave the town of you
the place no one happens
a prison glitters by the lake
stifled with hope

boats chuckle by the dock
quickly words turn into cheese
jiggle if I nibble or nudge
dull happiness in a fog of light

I doctor all the nurses uniforms
for a handful of warm
finger paint with my tongue
fill the glass with the guts of sunlight
always listening for your face.

 

 
 
I am squinting you into view
buttered with your compliments
I shudder you –Hello
bleed a gush of affection
the dark clammy crack of my armour
your touch that curls back the hand
the truest love never ignited

a long sleep with the dark lady who never moves
you are too lumpy to roll into bread
you didn’t call and I was glad for you
a wish and a smile
are two places
on the road

I see you as witchery and cold soup
in a contest for the view
a river ran through me once
an ache and a glance away
waiting for the imperfect woman
the one with the missing smile

where the windows look, the dark finds out
bulging clouds elbow in with news
frowns meant to encourage exits
keep the solitude intact
the blank stare that haunts your hills
sideways as the universe is deep
your drinks freely pour themselves
Everything dissolves in water.

 

 
 
 
In the dirty sheets of luck
exhausted –plotting oblivion
glances aimed to the not so sure
with the right tone for refusal
zipped up with chuckles
guide cigarette to last chance lip
slip into the glove of love
the desert of your fingertips

your hips lock into rhythm
settle on the surface of a stranger
suck black coffee through the straw of night
drunk on the poetry of trains

I see you walk naked around your house
a rope dangles from your neck
snap –that is the end of me
and the beginning of someone new

I don’t always see what I say
I don’t always do what I can
costume alert for Halloween.
 
Nowhere is the perfect place to do without
brighter makes you hard to see.