goat

there is a faint tap in my head, a trip, trip, tripping of dainty cloven hooves echoeing one level above my conscious brain. the further west i get, the deeper into this trip the clearer he seems to ring.
 he comes and he goes, was gone for a while and like a goat sometimes wasnt welcome when he was here.
i imagine him roaming steel decks and void tank spaces in the barges and ferries where he was born bleating quitely just to here his goaty voice echo.
 The goat came to be suddenly, yanked from thin air into existance with one sentence. not even a sentence, an expletive. "Hey goat boy!" from across the shop floor a couple years into my shipbuilding career.
 I had done some steel work proven myself among the old men with scars and mustaches and dinge and stories. a few of them took real liking to me and amongst them my first friend and coworker in this tribe of shipbuilders was Brian Starling. he introduced me as the kid. "Hey this is the kid i been telling you about!" 
He wasn't around when Brent johnstone called me goat boy on my second morning as an aluminum fabricator for the provinces flop of a fast catamaran project. but enough people where there that it made it back to him. Hes still pissed 15 years later that he didn't get to nick name me. but he didn't. brent did. and would live to regret it almost instantly.
 I've never been really good at the snappy comeback thing and always kinda shy but it was obvious he was fishing and i had to say something or forever be trod upon. still it was a suprise to me even when i piped up with a question.
"Are you calling me goat boy because you know i'm from saltspring and your too chickenshit to call me a sheep fucker?" just 22 and not stupid, jaw drops and stuttering begins. Goat boy is born.
  It stuck like glue. i was goat boy for years, then the boy got dropped. bosses would introduce new guys to old guys they would be working with. you are with brian starling, you, pete maggoria. you go work with steve sharp. and you can get in the manbasket with the goat!
startled sideways looks, questioning voices. "umm....the goat?" which is where i would be expected to go baaahhhhh...
 Poor brent, he was a prick to everyone and he tried with me but i had him from then on. I really did feel sorry for him from time to time because he obviously never met goats before. I know goats.
 We had milk goats when i was a boy on saltspring. They are good people for the most part and pretty much anything they do to convince people otherwise is just in the nature of the beast.
 goats will survive on anything but they seem to actually relish the stuff others wouldnt know how to approach. roses. goats love to eat roses, and thistles! but roses never seem to get grown for food. so when the goat eats every last rose bush down to the mean spiky stem in the dirt someones gonna be mad.
 goats like to see around them and can climb very well, hooves on car roofs are never appreciated...
likewise eating clothes of the line, which brings us to another goaty point. getting mad at a goat is fine. if you like being mad. kicking a goat is a sure way to break your foot.
 So i lived a goaty existance it wasn't hard. the shipyards are a great spot for a goat. we worked hard and we played hard and sometimes the two would overlap to the point where living and working where the same and playing was something you did at both.
 The night i got my horns was like that.

steep as hell

We tiptoe in the shadows of giants


Steel claws bite the snows crust

Skirting headwall after headwall

On ever steeper slopes

The sun beating down and reflecting, searing flesh on the bone

...Snow blinding fear seeping through

Our armour of experience feels pitifully thin up here

Standing tall on front points, pretending everything is alright

With the glacial wall standing taller

Right in our faces, close enough to kiss

If the giant should cough

Shrug his cape of snow off in response to the suns caresses

These fleas who are we would disappear

Like a waking dream

In this steep as hell world


We face our dreams

And make love to our fears

sitting in a motel room with the ghost of tom waits
sunset outside thru the window and deepening fall colours
remembering the flavours of montreal next to this erie canal
flavours and aromas and textures and long shivering kisses
trucks lit up like christmas rumble past as my fish and chip dinner settles
another layer of my self peels back
landing softly on cat like feet and slinking into the night
and i decide i like whats been exposed
its got a whiskey and smoke flavour
a real patina, the blues practically seep from this place

ride your heart out

rode my heart out today


morgan jean the bmx machine

spiderbike and heatbag

my pal bateman was there

in the wall wall two feet below coping

...where his pappy laid his ashes

i kissed it with tires

and my body once or twice

josh was there too

little bikers in the sky

i live to love

and love to ride

i lived today

a little biker in the sky

when the dying day comes
i hope i go where i hoped all those before me went
not heaven with its sheets and white perfection
nor hell as much as the hedonists hope
more a valhalla for all
the riders who rode before me will have built ramps
gallager will be sipping whiskey from a fruit jar
and smirking
the giants will be stirring a mad winter storm
out one end of the great hall of the gods
tearing the sky and coating the land
with ice and snow
while out the other men race and climb in summer sun
just to feel the sting and sweat
women dance to music made by the ones we lost
and all manner of feast is heavy on the vine
this is where i hope to go when i die
and i hope you go to
so i can see you
on the other side

chaos in my mind like the colours of alpine glades in the spring
read to some people this weekend, another fear beat down
i can sit on a knife edge with thousands of feet under me and roll it up, burn it down, no sweat
put me on the spot i stutter and my face gets red
the things i fear make no sense
yet i face them and even when they do hurt me its not so bad
every hurt is a lesson learnt
every fear faced
opens a door

climbers prayer

oh lord


deliver us this dayfrom the mudane

protect me from rockfall

and my partner from manky gear

annointeth my clothes with woodsmoke

and my food with pine needles

i'll bend my neck to pray

not down but up

to the summits where you play