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David Fraser Featured Poet |
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David is the BC Federation of Writers Regional Director for The Islands Region. He earned his BA in English from University of Toronto, and an MEd in adult education from OISE. In Ontario he taught English, Creative Writing Writer's Craft among other subjects at the secondary school level for 30 years. He was the ski school director for High Park Snow School for 8 years. He is currently a full-time writer who also teaches skiing at Mt Washington in the winter. (bio current as of June 2008)
This Sense of Time I do not like this sense of time counting days by the garbage that we make a schedule of the week's pick up five year plan, cycle of the bills to pay, shopping days, shopping days left, countdown to christmas successions of uneventful events christmas bleeds into new year, swoons into valentine's day, good friday, easter monday, the may hot holidays of spring, nationalism days, bank holidays of summer, days and daze, back to school days leading to the labour day, thanksgiving halloween to christmas once again. Images are splashed at us buy, buy, buy chocolate, buy candy, buy cars, shavers, perfume soap, clothes, chocolate-filled eggs, sweet, hollow rabbits, eat up, consume, tummy tucks , facial lifts liposuction, new cars with red ribbons and bows in the driveway, elves making things, making things, things we do not want or need, want or need, wrappers, packaging, mountains of this stuff, cellulose tape, decapitated trees, smashed pumpkins, wasted fruit, ghouls, ghosts, vampires, bloodsucking corporate mercantile hype, time dressed up behind a mask, the scurry of the people, day and night, ringing doorbells, phoning over dinner time, dumping email puke across the screen, all the school supplies designer clothes, labels now, me with one new shirt per year, new pants, one free pencil, the pink eraser, its pristine smell, burnt cork hobo face at halloween, not far from the truth. This march of time paced out in garbage days, recycling trucks each week, the robotic factories belching out their goods and bads. I do not like this sense of time. Copyright © 2006 David Fraser
Trading Dimes for Kisses in the Car Help me find the tingle when we traded dimes for kisses in the car. Help me find the sense one hand in a mitten in my hand the smell of perfumed wool forever in my mind the press of hasty lips teeth that clashed then mouths that settled in exploring tongues holding tension teased and raw. Help me find the tingle when you sidle up from exercise to lay your waist around my arm or when you are the slinky mama in your silver out in search of blues and food floating on the too long, too long, too long baby lyrics of a song in moonlight dobro sway of light hot air and alcohol when all the muses dance the table tops you wear me like your skin. Help me find the tingle when we traded dimes for kisses in the car. Copyright © 2006 David Fraser
Suicide Bomber Two hands, once soft on tender skin lie mere fragments, in their sangria sand and sacrifice, diaphragm and belly ripped by dynamite, the remnants of a breathing soul draped in mingled pieces of all the stolen lives he stood among. Such a misguided arc of passion tempted him to such a carnal house, rooms wrapped in little children, such destruction of a home, a lost mind's retreat from hope, such a mouth now, that once could kiss and love exhales a stanch of hate where nothing rational can be exhumed. Copyright © 2006 David Fraser
Chasing Sticks and Running Down the Wind On the good days Patches thinks she is a lamb kicking up her heels, propeller tail round and round for balance as she runs. On other days she clicks the night time hardwood of the house searching for her home, lost and gulping for some air. Her time has come; like all of us, we have a time, a time to return the elements that we are back to the fertile places we were born. Many fear this moment, speculate on conjured images of light and dark, forever peace or fire and pain, but Patches now led quietly by the leash knows only journey, like her life, knows only dreams of chasing sticks, running down four foot waves, digging holes in cool sand to lie in the shade of summer's heat, or chasing down the autumn wind along the beach, fur out flat, a rippling blur. I sometimes wonder why we torture ourselves with pets, knowing we are doomed to grieve for them? Perhaps they teach us how to love, to see each day as new, full of dreams. Maybe in their final days they show us how to die, how to take that moment as it arrives still chasing sticks, running down the wind. Copyright © 2006 David Fraser
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David Fraser lives in Nanoose Bay, on Vancouver Island. He is the founder and editor of
