Purge

The following is a series of small poems written in response to various pieces at an art gallery in rural Saskatchewan. I found them years later, written on scrap paper, and at this point can't be sure where one stops and another begins or what art pieces they were inspired by. I think it's better that way.

Feeling fat and out of place today
All the colours are off
Faded, misshapen, drifted together
in a sludge of pollution.

The walls are filled with text
Like parched newspapers from 1900
Can't quite read what it says
But in its backward receding way
It haunts me.

Men and icebreakers ripping in the sky
Rooftops: mirrors to another world
This is not my dimension
In the hidden hot tub
The hot girls strut and lol
Secret stageshow
For private and prying eyes.

Angry blue jay
Glaring down on me
Your disapproving beady eyes
Your perfect flashy foliage
King of the walk for all to see.
Fuck you
Fuck you because you're beautiful
Fuck you
Because of you, they don't listen to
Me.

Scratches, slivers, fragments of another place
Erupting through the granite
The crumbling ceramic
Holding me free.

Yer a funny lil fella
What's your name?

Plastic merry go round horse
Desperate to leap far enough
to get away.

Amaneta
You dangerous little bastard
All speckled with mace
You carry death
But sure is a trip.

Another frantic plastic pony
Neighing in terror
Of another captive ride.

The trail beckons
Long shadows stretching toward me
Crooked, withered fence
That godawful teal
Everything here is not quite straight
It reaches
But not for the sun
Except maybe to
Swallow it whole.

Frozen stream
Barren benches
Running of time
Locked out in the cold
Wasteland of misery.
Blur
Of gashes
Torn, gaping, bleeding, wide open
Purge.