GEOFFREY NILSON
The Rusty Toque | Issue 3 | Poetry| October 12, 2012
SCUBA VS AQUA LUNGto swim without surfacing
air pops out in long trails that roll up in cobalt motion, adamantly plumb with phobia past slow thighs black fins two pairs of human fish caught in a mighty push of H2O what good is sucking air from a can if my straw warps past four fathoms? who is saving us in this frigid dark? stuck vacuum of lung, raw in that cyan glum biography of a stubborn sick bastard who logs too many hours way down swamp oxford clumsy & colourful light won't slip through liquid murmur buoyant lust is truth in soft mud sway of salt bright bulb in dark grotto quick drag my soggy brain out of this cold abyss FIRES IN THE CANYON rock wrinkles
red earth, could be mars if I didn't have my glasses cleaned so early. wasted kill pine, black against layers like ants on a sand- hill. wedge cliffs at the far edge of where my vision ends, distance shorter than it looks yet twice as treacherous. trains stacked with coal snake endless through s-curves & bends, noisy river yards below, box-cars miniatured by the scale of vertical rise on all sides. it's easy to see why fire rips through these arid, low brush hills. too much parched fuel & a whole lot of oxygen to stoke the coal. RATTLES for mum
streets reveal amazing things if you let them. neon plazas, heavy feet, occasional alleyway soloist & a son, three months since emancipation, wrists thin as poly rope, fists like maracas in summer moonlight. wouldn’t think a boy so slight the definition of beauty. you didn’t watch him run hot across the asphalt into a blizzard. sixteen years he mutated out of sight. no more jangle of pocket coins, only knocks, hollow tone-wood & glass & fire. we flinch at the flicker of lamplight. around the corner a car starts, backfires. we both jump, 2 feet in the air. his bounty is on my head, his lesions spread down my hands, his face full with the desire still so much a part of him. |
GEOFFREY NILSON is a poet and musician who at one time went by Geoff but now believes Geoffrey to be more adult. After much youthful procrastination, he is currently completing his BA in Creative Writing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. His poems have appeared in subTerrain, Copious Magazine, and as a finalist for The Malahat Review's Far Horizons Award for Poetry. He will only live in river cities and currently resides in New Westminster, BC.
