Honourable Mention - Best Country Album

An Outsider's Heart was voted "Honourable Mention - Best Country Album" in the Ottawa Xpress Magazine 2008 Reader's Poll. Thank-you Ottawa!

June 1

Cards

...I tell you the green olives made me go hungry. But my hunger is not up to you...

June 2

Museum

...The poor old pecan tree was in rough shape. It couldn’t have grown a pecan if it wanted to...

June 3

Distant

...Quietly reminding me, without knowing you are saying anything...

June 4

Stoop

...Small planes used to fly over the potato and cabbage fields...

June 5

Ticking

...He told himself it was “art nouveau” to make himself feel better about his treachery...

June 6

Across

...Someone says they’d run a coffee shop and bake all the muffins they sell...

June 7

Mindless

...One of them spent two summers as a factory worker...

June 8

Bars

...The jailor dragged me back inside. I did some kicking and screaming as he scraped me down the cobblestone corridors...

June 9

New Cold

...It aint a list of the reasons why we first loved each other...

June 10

Mars

Then I notice the cards you gave me

June 11

Window

...The veranda prevented any light from reaching the first five feet wide of earth...

June 12

Pro

...He produced a little tackle box and started an impromptu show n’ tell...

June 13

Ice

...I was simply there by myself. I was free. Or was I?...

June 14

Over

...Noone was thinking about her the week before...

June 15

Disappointed

...And that some common dandelions would grow...

June 16

Crumbs

...It was another one of her “sunny side up” statements...

June 17

Vanished

...I see you staring off into the distance silently...

June 18

Slice

...With red sugar gel lettering on top...

June 19

Haven

...And near brushes with irreversible disaster...

June 20

Written

...Possibly even thinking of me, on my birthday...

June 21

Choir

...I found a variety of snake oil and self-appointed shawmen...

June 22

Social

...Surrounded by fences covered in ivy...

June 23

Level

...I wasn’t all wrong about you...

June 24

Away

...It’s welcome sign is weathered...

June 25

Lists

...All of these motionless tasks were your path...

June 26

Occasional

...its flickering made it impossible to focus my eyes on...

June 27

Downstairs

...A colour print out of David Bowie is on the bulletin board...

June 28

Next

...There are condors out there...

June 29

Library

...Because they were only things, “other people did.”...

June 30

Stillness

...I had cut corners in terms of “wait times.”...

Chew Fast

...Forget walking by your door. That’s not nearly as upsetting as tasting the taste of seven years ago. I don’t think they’ve even changed the recipe...

Many Bills

...We fought back against, skeptics and fatigue. Feeling oppressed. Pushed back the impossible onto it’s heels and made it take notice of us. Even for a short time. It didn't split us in to. Nearly did. I shake my head...

Confessions

...Well, if you think of how a person has to feel about another person for them to want to tell them the very secrets of their soul. If you think of it like that...

Confessions

...Well, if you think of how a person has to feel about another person for them to want to tell them the very secrets of their soul. If you think of it like that...

Fires In Fields

...The air began to smell with the most beautiful fragrance. All of the ladies of France would throw their crystal vials off of their dressers into the cobblestone streets and yell, “We’ve been robbed”, if they could smell all of the apples of long ago...

Or Go Hungry

...Run over this bridge with me. The bridge I’ve walked alone. Thinking of another love. While you sat with another love in real life. Forget those miseries. Those crow bars prying open the door to our sacred love...

Creaking

...Creaseless young faces. We used to look at them as we kissed against the wall. They are all gone now. To research bacteria in test tubes. To pursue folk rock careers in Winnipeg. To wear the occasional tie and sit in a carpeted cubicle...

Kitchen Counter

...Can I greet you with the branches of a 1000 year old tree. Lashed by a hurricane as it watched all of the other tress around it fall?...

Morge Make Up

...“I really like the Oil of Olay Daily Best cream. But I can’t afford it. So I was thinking of trying a cheaper one.” “Well just try this dear. Do you like samples? This one protects from uv rays.”...

Idling

...The old man probably isn’t thinking about all the jobs he’s had in his life. All the hours of his life he sold to construction companies who needed drywall put up. All if the neighbours who offered him $50.00 to fix their backed up toilets...

Reading Aloud

..."Thank you to Elizabeth and the other program officers who finance my operation. I view myself as a Sheppard of Canadian content.” Crunch. Man, those Ms. Vicki’s chips were sounding good...

Line Up

...“Well people who go to counseling for years miss the point a bit.” “What’s the point?” “To sort out a specific problem and get on with it.” “Oh.”...

Occasional Lace

...I stand in the Bay on stained department store carpet that’s been walked on by 25 years of women buying themselves a bra to help them with their “grieving process” with one man or the other...

Glimpses

...They told me this joke last time I saw them. I had hoped there wouldn’t be a next time. But since the person I love disappears for weeks on end - ...

Ruins

...Wondering how many of the doves that came to rest in my hand were actually real. And how many were just the rushes of air from my lungs on my hands as I sighed laments composed of one silent note...

Lessons Learned

...What could be worse? I didn’t even get a taste of your mouth. But yet I have to deal with awkward silences and “Are we there yets?” racing in my mind faster than dinky cars down the railing of a childhood staircase...

Sound Bytes

...I hug your back as you sit on the bar stool. Your back is hot. Someone's tale of making it big in the music business has kept you waiting so long that you’re half asleep...

Clearing

...When we were walking back to the house, suddenly I looked ahead and saw you walking in front of me. Your body was laughing. He had lifted off of you. A shadow banished by Natives who are skilled at ridding people and rooms of evil spirits. You were there alone. Suddenly naked and free. Though fully clothed. I didn’t mention it because I thought I might seem weird...

Unearthed

...But yes we were happy. Before differences were differences. Or before they were noticed. Or if they were noticed, then before they were cared about...

Interrupted

...He's being upstanding. Honest even. But he's never asked if I stand by myself at the centre of the north pole...

Contagious

...Wasn’t I mean to ride a motorcycle with wind in my hair? Why am I letting money stand in the way? I’ve wasted so much already...

Destiny's Saviour Is Running Late

...Cuz your asses look good in tight jeans. And I’ve got an old hippie in my midst. An old woman who runs ahead of me,. Explaining my reality to old timers with white bristly beards. Little lesbians in thick black Clark Kent framed glasses working at the till. They understand the politics. So she tells me...

Sneakers

...But maybe the gold is already in my pockets. Marked with the best and worst years of my life on the faces of the coins. Rattling there. But can’t be heard because I’m chattering about how much more I need. And running to fast after the black diamond in the sky...

Melt

...What confidence do I have that I’ll ever hit the right target. All I see is an outline. Bullet holes in the wall. I could count them to see how many times I’ve missed you. And you’ve missed me. But I’d rather not...

Too Close

...The snow is flying around my ears like butterflies. And I’m leaving phone messages on answering machines so I won’t be tempted...

Tender

...You’ve shown up with wet hair. Looking like a child. Lost and disoriented in a crowd...

Repairs

...you appeared and disappeared within the span of these dark months. Plus another five odd days. But all those moments in your apartment listening...

Alive Again

...And in the morning the pipes were seized up. Someone forgot to keep the water running all winter. We forgot...

80s Rock All Over Again

...I asked God for your love for a lifetime. Now I’m trying to find a night when you could come over for an hour. To be alone. Oh Jesus, to be alone...

Upstairs

...I waited for years on end in little rooms without a lost soul calling. So now that I have a chance to go see you in the attic, I want to mention every mouse and every old newspaper clipping I see...

Another Night Of Theatre

...I stand outside myself and just watch the picnic blanket unroll with a crack into the wind. All of the extended family members of chaos have come to sit in the sun. Can I have a few bread crumbs? What about some of that suntan lotion that expired half way through last summer?...

Amusement

...Immediately inside there was a small iron train engine and some old fashioned cars. You could climb in them, but they didn’t go anywhere...

Footsteps

...Thought you were gonna tell me when you left. Play it on your homemade autoharp made of multi coloured yard sticks. In a cardboard box that should had an blue felt hat made around 1890...

Asleep

...In late Spring you’d have to taste every row of fresh green beans to find what’s left of me. But for you I would race through the traffic on a bus that was full of people and smelling of pepperoni. I’d bang on the door of the store that closed at 6 pm at 6:03 pm...

Fading

...I was ready to stand in the pit and look up at you at the edge. As we work the writer’s saw up and down by hand...

Dishes To Do

...There’s even peaches or pears on the side. Your choice. I got you both...

Aisle

...It's all such a boutique. Just a bit of wrapping ribbon to tie your wrists. Don't squirm too much...

You Can't Deny

...And as I lay there on the wet snow. With blood blooming as if it were a Spring rose, all I could think was “I’m too beautiful for this...

Resist

...And I played hookie from your padded cell. With every corner bright as the apocalypse under those florescent lights. Long and skinny and running with the heft of miniature subway cars...

Satisfied

...Should I watch the net rise with the incoming tide. Then return up the wooden stairs. Painted brown once a year. And wait. Wait the 8 hours. Watch the sky. Until the tide goes out again?...

Cheap Words

...On a dream that cost 2 thousand dollars at a minimum. And I’m exhausted from the fishing I have to do...

Only

...Of all the lies I told, there’s some truths I know. I know that love aint a sin. No matter how many directions it goes. I won’t have to ask the angels to overlook it...

Pocket

...Staring at the pursed red lips I got for Valentines and the starfish’s corpse outfitted with a decorative plaque that says “dream.” I prayed you would be back...

Verdict

...If that’s what it will take. For the jury to see that I can’t judge myself by the same standards of music, of beauty or even luck...

Brush Stroke

...And I was made to feel like a nuisance when I came over during the proceedings. And I didn’t get to see the watercolour results...

Tricks

...And somehow the word “Destroyed entered my mind in 3D...

Tricks

...And somehow the word “Destroyed entered my mind in 3D...

Scrub

...Silverware clutters under the soap suds. Deep inside my mind. Please. Not one more bent dinner fork...

Stitches

..And the truth is I’ve had an accident. I paid my life’s fortune to take that medicine man's ride...

Every Issue

...People say it’s all I talk about now. I recite the article aloud. I don’t need to run my eyes over the type face...

Wing

...Then there is silence. And I forget to check to see if they got out into the sky at the chimney’s top. Or whether they are dead on the grate...

Tred

...Right now the wind is whispering in my ear. Telling me that highway is the way I have to go...

Temp Work

...Staring at our temporary reflections. Being cast back down at us. Our noses and cheeks reflecting in the ripples of a slowly moving but ever so giant stream...

Dealer

...If noone came to buy the car of the week then we would eat just a little less boiled potatoes...

Not So Forbidden

...Went to the washroom. Looked in the mirror. Washed the diner taste out off my mouth. Only to come back to the table. And find the only shiny dime I’ve ever known is stolen...

Horn

...It took you coming out of the desert. Another lost soul showing me the shine of their soul under their dusty skin...

Reform

...Dragged in on winter boots and left there like memories of kissing you in the door...

Motives

...To stop feeling alone for one blazing instant. Just a crutch under my sweating armpit...

Tinny Sounding Tune

...And walking down the street with your arms around me. And coming face to face with people who hold me when I cry over you...

Bricked Up Window

...I havn't slept more than a few hours since the possibility of gettin' what what I want first came into my consciousness. Like an long gone lover reaching out to me in a dream. And me not being able to look away...

Precious

...Their arches no longer make giant dounut holes. Framing the sky between their knees and the red beach sand...

Chimes

...Just knowing. I said, "She is here." It wasn't cheesy like a widgy board at a junior high party. It was wonderful...

Morning's Truth

...And after I've sighed, When will you be back?" about a hundred times I turn my mind to other subjects. Turn it like a Pontiac doing handbrake turns...

Thrown

...And now we come to it. Decending the stairs I refused to tread down last summer...

Dance

...That's when it was cooler and you could go outside. Drive to the coast with your mother at the wheel...

Farm

...It's all what you focus on. The food in your belly or the chicken between your teeth. The view of the ocean we can almost see from here...

Still Searchin'

...Let a little gold dust fall from their cheeks when they open the door for me and start to smile...

Pictures

...More than the Dali Lama's love. At 50 % off...

Swing

...Oh set me free! Get me a small mirror. Or the face of a watch. So I can hold it up to the sky...

The Many and The Few

Sometimes it is best to remember some people would do almost anything to have these kinds of problems.

Legacy

...The legacy of your intimate and my stranger lives on in both of us...

Your Size

Oh miracle of thread, spool and supply .

Annonymous Again

...The world of stars is not for the mortals that yearn, grind and plead...

Proof

...I have someone to see tonight. A picture to put in their hand...

Last Chance At The Sea

...Have I been inland so long that I would even consider not going?...

Snow In The West

...The snowboarder is friendly. The only one who isn't trying to sell me something who speaks to me...

Cake

...I raised up the waves. Kissed my hands one at a time...

Your Eyes

...Walking down Granville St. with a hot chocolate in my hand...

Vancouver Tour

I will do some shows in Vancouver, BC between January 27 and 29 th. Following the urgings of my soul (and a friendly concert organizer), this seems like the right time to visit Canada's West Coast for the first time.

Phone Call The Same

...Was right to hesitiate four years ago...

Sky

...We go our seperate ways. For an eternity of a few days...

Further

...Reminded of all this. It was good. The soup at the Holiday Inn was not...

Escape

...Was really glad that I had a plane ticket and not a mortgage...

Signs

...What was so long denied. Actually at ease...

Trust

Trusting is best done after reading the warning signs correctly. Now you tell me. Why not me? Because I'm from the ocean. Because I trust too much.

Devestating News

...Lingered in a place once peaceful. Then chaos...

Storms

...Scrunched up some hair. What a look...

Been Here

...I did a lot of weeping at the Hayden concert...

Temporarily

...Chains weren't broken. Just loosened. Tight once again...

Cherry

...But still there is no silence untangling from the thorns choking the path...

Comedy

...It's squeaky, it's red, what fun - but it too will burst...

Mountains

...Rare and beautiful souls but much rocky terrain...

Damn Pet Circus

...I heard from a friend when all seemed lost...

Rumours

...Don't know the details. It was all hush hush...

Ocean Find Me

Every time I go swimming I end up imagining I am lost at sea. Out in the middle of some tropical sea. Trying to stay alive in the ways Terrified of being eaten by sharks. Then a life guard yells, "one at a time" to the kids on the diving board, and someone else floats by on a flutter board. I snap back to "reality". Sort of. I long for the open ocean.

Youth

...I'm in a whole new generation of myself. So how about that...

Concert

I will perform at Cafe Nostagica in Ottawa, ON. This evening. I have music to share without the burden of posters, sound crews and backing bands. It feels good. I am trying again.

Hot Stuff

I listend as a mother told her child, "Bethany ferns can be poisionous." Bethany stuck her toungue out further and fatter towards the fern.

Though it defies the good sense and survival instincts gifted to most mammals, humans seem to learn to knowingly reach out for trouble from a young age.

"He's not good for you." (Wonder if he'll go on a date with me?)
"Why don't you wait and see? (Because I want it now.)
"Spending time over there is going to cause you drama." (Let me get my coat on.)

If dancing with trouble is how humans learn, then you'd think we'd be smarter. The only rationale for this behaviour is others' expereinces of reality seems to be less beleivable than our own.

"The stove is hot." (Let me touch it for myself.)

Sometimes the best way to learn is to ask someone who's been through it. Whatever "it" is. After all the stove really is hot. Why burn your hand needlessly.

(Because sometimes a good burn reminds me I'm alive?)

Searching


Some people are looking for others' company in there standing stillness. I'm looking for my own company in my moving forward-ness.

Warning

...When you told me not to talk about the weird stuff...

Between The Rhymes

I finally got around to having that New Year's champagne. I'm celebrating being more honest in 2008 than in 2007 and I'm only six days in.

When I reach the end of my journey I'm going to smile to know that I've lived my life like poetry. Sure some people can't deal with it. They can read newspapers.

Amoungst the Ruins

In 1999 I was sitting in a frozen Chevy Cavalier in the parking lot of a Community College in the dark. Listening to the "Top 9 At Nine." Trying to will myself into going inside the building and attending my "Basics Of Accounting" course. I had no job. No prospects. Talents. But it was all in the wrong package. So decreed the world around me. Britney Spears, meanwhile, at the age of 17, had just had the #1 song of 1998. (The title needs no repeating.) ahead of even Cher's "Believe." ("Do you Believe In Life After Love?" is always a sentiment worth repeating.) Britney was on the radio this night in the Chevy. I hauled ass into the accounting class. Debits credits. Ledger lines. I still don't know to this day! Now, flash ahead 9 years and Britney has been taken from her mansion in California strapped down to a stretcher. Then put in a "mental lockdown" in a Los Angeles hospital.

As it is, here's too many office workers reading the celebrity pages of "Ottawa Metro Magazine!" as they ride to work on the bus. (An awful, yet compelling, sight I witness daily.) So my point is not to discuss celebrity gossip. Especially when there are children starving in the world and whale populations dwindling. Rather to rememeber that, while it is hard, try not to be jealous of others; because we never know where they're going to end up. Or where we'll end up.

I may not be at the Top of the Pops or on the cover of Meglomania magazine. But I am not strapped to a stretcher either. There's all sorts of local celebrities ass-kiss networking their way onto radio specials and leaving me in the dust. But I find being in the dust is such an artistic place to be.

I don't want to be a jealous person. I avoid the few misguided fools who have stated they are jealous of me.


I did pass that basic accounting course. I forget who did the homework assingments for me...

Show Me

Glad my book of "daily lessons" reminded me we have a lot to learn in this life, and some of it comes from what others observations of us.

"I've been told to work harder by the lazy. To be more on time by those broken down on the road. To communicate better by the brick wall. "

Not the easiest lesson: that others have lessons for us. I spent most of my teenaged years yelling, "Don't criticize me!" It became a quote people associated with me. (That and the Whitney Housten lyrics taped in my locker.) Well no more. Now I say, "Criticize me baby. Tell it to me like it is. So I can tell it to you the same way. Oh yes... just like that."

In Life the Milk Is Always Kept In the Back Corner

I walked through the grocery store, because I had a sense I would seee a friend. Wasn't sure which one. I did see a freind. Who I'd been thinking about. In this case, no problem. But it did start me thinking - thinking about thinking about people. It can be embarrassing. Or grand. It definately leads somewhere. Often to the person being thought of. It doesn't go unnoticed by the stars. this thinking about people. Help me. It's too beautiful.

Laugh Anyway

My grandmother has been gone 3 years today. She is still here.

She was a fan of irony.

She would have liked when I stood at the steam tables in the cafeteria with the other drones. What a contradiction. What an irony.

She would have liked to hear (the blind) Jeff Healey sing "Angel Eyes", up to and including, "I could look but I could never touch!" For politically correct zealots possibly offensive. For fans of irony - hilarious! Jeff Healey himself probably gets a laugh at this.

Anew

Who can say where the road leads, only time" - Enya

This year I'm getting away from the woman who loudly describes the 50 types of hamburger toppings available at the mall.

I will have a more healthy 2008 than 2007.

I visited my new friend. The one I have to carry.

I'm moving to a window with a better view.

Sidney Crosby looked gorgeous in Buffalo.

I'm going to ask myself for advice before I ask anyone else.