You remind me of my mother
who planted long rows of delicate flowers,
using only her hands and her coping mechanisms.
Every hole troweled with the fury of promises yet fulfilled
and seeds sown with deliberate, calloused hands.

She too could make anything grow.
No matter how hard the soil.
How acidic the water.
How unbalanced the bases.
She possessed an aspect of Gaia.
for she could bring new life to barren soil.

She had a greenhouse
lush with strange fauna
not fit for our respective climate.
She conserved an orchid.
Her mists fell like tears
and the stubborn bulbs flourished.

You remind of my mother
For you make me grow no matter what the climate
Even in the frigid months
When other flowers perish
I am shaped by your bell jar
Safe in possessive glass.

I plot my course by three stars:
Charlotte,
Edison,
and Alexandra.

Charlotte oscillates
With the energy of a frozen heaven.
Her hair, a weave of dust
Between my outstretched sextant fingers.
She slyly winks with a dark humor.

Edison is the sun.
His warmth creates worlds.
He bathes those who surround him
In compassion
And the wisdom of the gods.

Alexandra is the smallest,
but she sings an old song.
She may be hidden by her siblings’ shine.
Yet, everyone hears her whisper.
She speaks softly to Cassiopeia.
She lightly strokes Lyra.
We all dance to her pulse.

All three form the constellation, Potential.
I look to the heavens and I see a future unrealized.
I see a distant possibility.
I want to pluck them from the heavens.
I want to cradle them in my arms.
In each one, I see an aspect of the universe -
The mother who birthed them.

I pick my feet through the bones of my burned out house.
I step over a melted lamp, its fixture fused by the heat
As it juts from the wreckage like a survivor’s limb
The twisted metal vaguely resembles
A limp human hand.

I perilously walk across the untouched steel bar that reinforced the floor
I approach the island of surviving floorboards.
There’s a fiendish groan.
My foot cracks through a weak spot.

There is a pile of blackened rubble.
I lift each charred board.
I excavate the reams of smoked gypsum
I unearth a cracked throne
Still gleaming white beneath the soot.
It had fallen into the kitchen when the second floor collapsed.

I unearth the stone basement steps.
There’s exploded cans of stewed tomato,
Cooked onto the stone,
Like paint with plenty of texture.
I descend into what was supposed to be the family room
We were going to build it someday,
Have a lounge and a foosball table,
Maybe a bar and dartboard.
Whenever I had got around to finishing the basement.

In the corner, our trail bikes have melted together.
The water heater, an exploded cigar.
The unused exercise equipment, a jungle of fused metal.
All mutated mementos and refused requiems.

Everything is still wet.
From when the fire fighters perfunctorily
extinguished the smoking heap.
Long razed before they even got onto the scene.
By the time the alarms went off,
the home fires were burnt out.

I have learned many things.
Never live in the country if you want adequate fire coverage.
Always remember your wedding anniversary
Always buy her flowers
And never, ever marry a woman
With a history of arson.

There is a flower that drives men mad.
She only grows on the rocky bluffs of Nothingness.
Only blooms once in a man’s lifetime.
Sprouting where Hakuin clapped his hand,
She remains hidden,
Only to be claimed by the intrepid.
She awaits the bold,
Blessed with strong fingers.
She grants a solitary wish,
To those willing to lose themselves.
In time, in mind, amidst the vined cliffs,
In the waterfalls that ring the Staircase of the Gods.

Colour of the most sanguine red.
Eight petals shaped like tired blades.
Each one curling to the Right.
Four slender pistils,
Sit in a shapely cup.
She’s beautiful,
Deadly.
She obliterates the Is.

I climbed to claim her.
But when I clutched her,
She withered.
When I freed her,
She flourished.
I meditated on her scent.
And heard thunder –
A muted Mu.

I want to tell you everything.
I want to be vulnerable ala Brenee Brown
I want to cure my toxic masculinity
By embracing my “femininity”
And exposing trauma so deep you can drown.

After all, you have the degrees
A veritable mistress of butterflied psyches
Schooled in pin boards and dichotomies
joined on the patriarchy.
Motherhood meets mastery and empathy.
Listening without judgement
While leaving me to a jury of my own peers,
Erected egotic edifices eroded by the winds
Blowing through cryptic crossroads
that challenge me to slay my father.

Be my therapist.
I want to tell you everything.
Let me cry into your arms.
And hold me with the strength
that I will never know.

Creator of Worlds

You make art.
You summon emotion from a featureless plane.
Your slender hands guide indelible ichor.
through unforgiving curves
Where perspective means everything
And assumptions nothing.

A picture is worth a thousand poems
Regardless of the brevity of the imagery
I can describe a hand with allusions and allegory
But you start with a base of originality
You can sketch a hand that people can see
The same way we all see hands.
You can stipple in textures
Showing the callousness of over worked fingers.

They are the good time gals.
They are the women who make the world,
Who come in many forms,
Who cross all boundaries,
And struggle against stacked odds.

They are mothers born and goddesses chosen:
Some warriors, some healers,
Some brutal, some savage,
Some kind, some rude

• All equal.

This is an ode to the feminine form
in all its guises,
To the women who made my world.
Not all of them birthed me
But all shaped me
All equally,

Equally beautiful
Equally monstrous
Equally stormy
Equally righteous

Some were a passing light
Flittering across smokey windows
Some were lingering lanterns
Guiding the way down twisting corridors
Some were pragmatic nurses
Closing the dead eyes of fathers.

They are the good time gals
The women who remake this world
Who propelled us as a species
And might help us tear it all down.

An alphabetical analysis of anxieties

Prologue

When you are gripped with an unknown fear

or get spooked in the dark night

Remember we all have our worries

And can suffer from a fright

The first step is understanding why

so you can accept the cause

Whether you suffered from a trauma

Or a reflex gives you pause

You are not an odd aberration

Or suffer alone in this

Remember we all have our worries

Some are detailed on this list.

“A” adopts ablutophobia

when you are scared of the tub

and grabbing hands are moist and lathered

and getting ready to scrub.

”B” brings about bogyphobia

And bogeys beneath your bed

Grabbing you by your appendages

To start chewing on your head

“C” comes with some Coulrophobia

The feeling that clowns can bring

after that prestigious profession

Was ruined by Stephen King

“C” contracts coronaphobia

As an epidemic spreads

If only everyone wore a mask

Our Grandma might not be dead

“D” drives deep the dromophobia

that huddles you by the street

waiting for the crossing sign to change

so the bus misses your feet.

“E” embeds enetophobia

when pointy pins prick your feet

piercing along your pained phalanges

and puncturing through your meat.

“F” forebodes felinophobia

and the clowder that follows

as cats are hissing and conspiring

to hunt you from the shadows

“F” finds foniasophobia

When a killer’s on your road

Your heart beats fast and your breath comes quick

As your brain squirms like a toad

“F” finds foniasophobia

As mass murderers go free

Like they haven’t caught the Zodiac

With his cyphered mystery.

“G” gives you Geniophobia

a concerning of the chin

of mandibles and protruding jaws

And the rows of teeth within

“H” hemorrhages hemophobia

a pulsing fear of the blood

seeping slowly down your pallid thigh

to commingle with the mud

“I” inflicts insectophobia

as bugs crawl across your skin

Stinging you with their envenomed tails

and burrowing deep within

“J” just has no phobias that jar

But there’s a few that won’t do

They’re antisemitic and racist

And full of a wrong world view

“K” can kindle kenophobia

a fear of the void of space

from free falling through the nothinginess

to vanish without a trace

“L” lurks with Lachanophia

A timidity of leafy greens

Of choking on parsnips or carrots

or an allergy to green beans

“M” metes out some mottephobia

A fear of fluttering moths

Chewing through your linen wear

Gnawing holes in your wash clothes

“N” nettles with Nyctophobia

Those nightmares that stalk the dark

With shadows that are following you

When you are lost in the park

“O” occurs when orinthophobia

draws black birds to every branch

Gathering on their lofty perches

Waiting for their pecking chance

“P” picks with pediophobia

Abhorring those porcelain dolls

Watching you from your mother’s cupboards

Judging you with glass eye balls

“Q” quavers with quadrophia

A qualm of the number four

Certain cultures think it sounds like death

And can bring it to your door

“R” rains down Ranidaphobia

A revulsion of green frogs

that are croaking in your swimming hole

And lingering under logs

“S” serves Syngenesophobia

When your relatives come by

They’ve brought their bags and are moving in

And won’t leave until they die.

“T” taxes with technophobia

A terror of new machines

For they’re coming to enslave us all

With their batteries and screens

“U” unearths Uranophobia

A fear of heaven most high

Where gods and goddesses sit and judge

Unheeding your mortal cry

“V” vexes with vestiphobia

When your clothes refuse to fit

And your patterns have clashing colors

With sweat stains in every pit

“W” whets wiccaphobia

When wild witches curse your name

Stirring spells into their cast cauldrons

And manipulating thanes

“X” exhibits xerophobia

A despair of drying skin

When no moisture can ever slake you

As you wither from within

“Y” yokes you with ymophobia

When you contradict some creep

Even when you know you’re right

Conflicts always cost you sleep

“Z” zeroes in on Zemmiphobia

Worry of the great mole rat

Crawling naked with tremendous teeth

From it’s native habitat

So when you stare into your own abyss

And feel your guts drop to your feet

Remember we all have our worries

And that’s what makes us complete