Paul’s book Burn is available from (ECW) www.ecwpress.com His anthology, The I.V. Lounge Reader, is forthcoming from Insomniac Press www.insomniacpress.com ______ Books available from www.chapters.ca Burn The I.V. Lounge Reader ______ For more Poets

Paul Vermeersch Mixing Grey: A Practical Guide For Painters I Industrial Grey 555555555555555 –a cold, flat tone, neutral in value, the grey of a shadow cast on fresh concrete by a vagrant sleeping in the afternoon near the doorway of a bank. 55555 Mix 2/3 sky with a broken ceiling 55555 6 hills on fire and their reflection 55555 in the eyes of spooked horses II Dove Grey 55555 –a very soft, even, bluish hue the colour of a young woman’s skin in the dark just after your eyes adjust. 55555 Add the ashes of a banned book 55555 to the tears shed in deserts 55555 by statues of virgins. III Gunmetal Grey 5555555 –close to the darkness lying behind the fog that hangs under streetlights, but with sharper edges, a glint, the silhouette moving quickly through the alleyway. 55555 Mix equal parts of air 55555 locked inside a steamer trunk 55555 with depressions left in wet grass 55555 by little boys running with 55555 towels tied around their necks. IV Smoke Grey 55555555555 –a colour not unlike a smudged thumbprint on an invoice for imported linen, but more like the idea of a smudged thumbprint on a invoice for imported linen. 55555 Combine the smell of pin lying on a bed 55555 together with the Earth seen from space 55555 by a dog about to die inside a satellite 55555 that will continue to pass swiftly overhead 55555 for another one-hundred and fifty-five days. V Battleship Grey 5555555555 –a light, frivolous shade, like the thin film of soot on a pair of eyeglasses worn by a chimneysweep falling off a roof. 55555 Rub the ink from a twenty dollar bill 55555 around the blowhole of a beluga whale, 55555 then light a match. VI Stone Grey 55555 –the same ratio of light to dark you might see gazing through a thick canopy of poplars in September when they go to seed, and the seeds float down as though someone’s lit a firecracker’s fuse inside a feather pillow, and you let the pistol drop because you can’t decide if being in the same place next September wouldn’t be just worth it, and you head home before they find the note. 55555 Add the chorus of a tune 55555 you hummed as a child 55555 to a verse of the one 55555 you are thinking of now.