Fine, Fine, Fine,

It is Friday today.
Oh, yes. It is Friday today.
I'll wake up. It'll be Saturday.
I would not have it any other way.

I hope the sun will shine.
Illuminate my mind.
I hope the sun will shine.
Cause then I'll feel fine, fine, fine.

My father is coming home tomorrow.
His smile will erase my sorrow.
My father is coming home tomorrow.
His strength I will borrow.

My mother is coming home on Sunday.
She's the one who taught me how to pray.
My mother is coming home on Sunday.
I pray her plane will be ok.

And I hope the sun will shine.
Illuminate my mind.
I hope the sun will shine.
Cause then i'll feel fine, fine, fine.

And if the skies are grey on Monday.
I'll be fine anyways.
Cause' my folks will be back home.
And I won't be alone.

Heart Raped

I have actually been heart raped.
Trust has been broken.
I have been turned on and
Abandonned.
I have been erased and
Severed from all ties:
Freedom, one might say
But I am not "one"
I am Mike and
When I said "I love you"
I meant it and
When I said "I will never turn on you"
I meant that, too

But in the end,
All my assumptions
Are right:
I don't matter.
I never will matter.
We are all replaceable and
We are all selfish and
It's moments like these
That push people like myelf
(The selfless, the self-loathers, the self-depricators)
To conform to the rest.

My heart was given
To one I could trust
Misused, abandonned
And left behind
For me to recuperate
A piece of me still with them,
A piece of them still with me.

I was never taught to live for myself.
I was never taught how to live for myself.

Halt, Fiend!

It’s a snowy, frosty morning when he rings the doorbell.

She’s finishing up her slice of toasted white bread with honey and marmite spread, complete with genmaicha tea with a hint of ginger mint. It’s a wonderful way to start the day, and she hops to the door without skipping a beat, flings it wide open without bothering to check who it is.

He stands there, quite handsome, and she figures that’s all a part of the ruse. With neatly coiffed short blonde hair just visible under a perfectly round hat, she thinks men and women must ironically fall for him everyday. He’s well dressed, surprisingly not in black, though she figures he’s not exactly bringing death upon her soul, but is rather sporting a soft beige coat with a white walking stick. The only things that are dark are his brown hat and his black sunglasses.

“Oh. Well then,” is all she can think to say.

He tips his hat, bows his head with a friendly smile. “Bad time?” he asks.

She blocks the entrance to the flat by sliding her body between the doorframe and the door itself. “Sort of,” she cringes. She had practiced the whole speech she would deliver to him in her mind, had yelled it in the mirror a fair amount of times, all concluding with epic finishing lines, hair tossing and swaggering away. But he stands as she stands, and they both know he’s coming in.

“Sort of the point,” he says with a grin, “For it to be a bad time and all.”

“Right,” she says simply, but remains where she is. That is, until he moves his cane forward and she realizes he’s coming in. She shoves off the doorframe and opens the door wider, reaches forward and grips his arm. “Do you need help?” She’s helped her fair share of blind men cross the street; never this kind of man, and never into her flat, but there’s a first time for everything.

“I’m fine thanks,” he says, motioning her away, “Fix me a cup of your tea, though, it smells great.”

~

Sip

Siiip

Siiiiiiiip

~

“Ahhh,” he sighs when he finishes, setting the teacup back onto its plate.

“So,” she says impatiently, can’t wait for him to just leave. “How does this work?”

He lounges back in the chair, lifts his arms up and leans on them like a pillow. Slowly he stretches, just as he’s stretching out this moment.

Bastard, she thinks. The prick knows this is torture, knows she wants to just get this over with, and he’s prolonging it. As though it in itself isn’t going to be a long enough journey.

He finishes his stretch with a particularly loud groan and then reaches down under the table to retrieve his briefcase. He lifts it onto his lap, feels around for the lock, twists and turns and smiles softly when it clicks open. She shifts in her seat to get a better look, gasps when she sees the insanely bright pink glow emanating from inside. He reaches in, takes something out, and closes it immediately. Sets the briefcase back down. “I really am quite sorry,” he says.

And in the moment she realizes that he is. Must have the worst and most satisfying job at the same time. She fights the urge to pour him another cup of tea. Maybe, she reconsiders, he sat down to share a cup of tea with her, stretched out the moment because maybe, he just doesn’t want to do this job. It isn’t the best, she thinks, and as he said before, the entire point of it was to arrive when people least needed or wanted him. She considers how many rude people he must deal with on a daily basis. “It’s alright,” she says softly.

He tries to smile, quirks the right side of his lips, but fails. Instead he simply brings up his hands, places the rose-coloured glasses on the table. “Put them on in forty-eight seconds.” He reaches around his chair and takes his hat he’s rested on the edge. He places it on his head, gets up.

She leaps up from the table, takes the glasses in her hands. “That’s awfully specific,” she says, put off by his abrupt message and now fast escape. “What happens if I don’t? When will I know when it’s time?” She’s already followed him to the door, and he knows the layout of the vestibule like the back of his hand. He grips the door and lets himself out.

“You’ll know,” he says.

Immediately after she closes the door behind him, the phone rings. Uncertain if she’s supposed to answer this, uncertain if she even has a say in her fate at all, she races back to the kitchen and picks up the phone. She squishes it against her ear with her shoulder, freeing her hands to take her teacup and finishes the last of her tea to clear her throat. “Hello?”

“Hello there,” is all that is said in response. And she knows who it is. And fuck. She thinks it’s ridiculous that there has to be a moment but christ, here it is. She sighs out her frustration. “You alright?” the concern is there on the other line, the worry and decency that she honestly had never given another thought to until this moment.

She takes the phone off her shoulder and slips the glasses on with one hand. “Yeah,” she says with another sigh. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

So I've been doing science stuff lately (as yet un-formally-titled)

Space is a vacuum, so I shouldn’t be surprised that your moving lips betray no sound. I shouldn’t be surprised at the thin trickle of blood from your left nostril where the veins have begun to burst from the pressure. I shouldn’t be surprised at the slow motion of your eyelids, blinking over spherical tears escaping unwillingly – you’ve not let yourself cry since I’ve known you.

There’s a galaxy of longing swirling away inside of me, birthing black holes in all my vital organs, exploding in supernovas of agony and spinning into a destructive frenzy – I swear I feel I could cough blood. You look at me and smile as another star dies a fiery death in my chest, just a little left of centre, and I smile back before you return your attention to your conversation.

Internal doctors check charts and make grave predictions – I know what I have to do to stop this madness, stop the tearing, burning pain, stop the universe and start it over from scratch. I know that it’s you, that it’s always been you: the uncaused cause who set these things in motion, who instigated the tightly clenched ball of matter that exploded into glorious life. I know that it’s you who has to go in this ever-expanding metaphor for what’s eating away me.

I don’t know how I manage to pull you away from everyone else, but the minute I do, new stars struggle to be born in the chaotic order that my insides have become, and each one of them shines with a tentative light fuelled by the rightness of your arms tightening around my torso, the rightness of your voice thrumming in my ear. I don’t know how I manage to pull you away. I don’t know how I manage to pull away from you.
You follow, of course, hand on my back, and the galaxies swirl and brighten and the black holes expand themselves to swallow, it seems, my very soul, or at least wreak so much havoc on my organs that I fall down dead.

And then you’re gone, and for a moment I do not see you, and for a moment my chaotic universe orders itself and the planets evolve life and the galaxies swirl on.
And there you are, drifting, the vacuum of space doing to your body what the vacuum of your heart has done to mine, ravaging everything, leaving nothing untouched, unsullied, unbroken. There’s a galaxy of longing swirling away inside of me, birthing black holes in all my vital organs, exploding in supernovas of agony and spinning into a destructive frenzy – I swear I feel I could cough blood. You look at me and smile as another star dies a fiery death in my chest, just a little left of centre, and I smile back before you drift too far for me to see, before I’ve lost you forever and my universe contracts in my chest too rapidly for the laws of physics.
[Apologies to Mike and Jordano, who heard this at the last Creative Writing Club meeting I attended. I've no acceptable excuse for not having something new.]

I am not ashamed of this

http://www.mydatanest.com/files/scathmandra/19004_zqbcj/meter.mp3

Okay, maybe I am.

If I had salt and sea and time

I'd twist them to unearthly rhyme

Resplendent in their curlicue.

And through the water I'd form you,

A droplet spattered on the sand--

A droplet from a trembling hand--

A shadow twisted in the sun;

And I would cry and rage, undone

Before the temple of the sky

That stands above those righteous cries

Like lifeblood in the memory's veins;

And crying to the sun in pain

To burn me from this twisted place

I would look up and see—your face.

I Give Up (or The Day I Gave Up and Bought into the System) [Part I]

[This is the story that got me in trouble this summer]

/
So I was thinking that night, sitting alone in my room, that maybe, just maybe I wasn’t missing out on too much tonight. Dan, Maya and beautiful Julie, the girl I had a slight attraction for, were out celebrating the first night of the Montreal Jazz fest in the pouring rain as Stevie Wonder played and crooned. And so, I thought, sitting down in my chair, reading Kerouac, that maybe just maybe, I wouldn’t be missing out on too much tonight.

It was last night at about three in the morning on the corner of Lapierre and Jean-Brillon that the weed was spinning my head and the music wasn’t working well with my stomach. The ambivalent buzzing of electro beats and foreign sounds that in no way sounded human, (realistically, because they weren’t), swung my head into an unknown field of fear and, (to sound slightly radical) oblivion. We pulled over and I puked out, on the side of the road, the recently-eaten chicken Shwarma bought from this Lebanese joint, Boustan. I don’t think I puked because of the beer; in the past I drank much, much more than seven beers, but ever since I smoked the joint it messed me all up, with the spinning and buzzing. I was convinced that shit was laced with something or other, probably speed, as I couldn’t control the shaking of my legs, and when I woke up in the morning I still felt like a part of my mind was under water of some sort. And so I let it all out, a still life to be admired, dried up by the rising sun on the side of the road (and slightly on the door of Matt’s car). A majestic piece. And then today I cured my hangover by smoking another joint.

Looking back, I guess you can say I lost my innocence at a relatively young age. I say relatively because age is mostly relative to the growing person, the individuals’ mindset on growing and learning. We all grow physically, but the most clueless are those who are still kids in their heads, grabbing onto every new toy they can get their grubby paws on; at least that’s what I think. Not that you care. Not that I care whether you care. I’m not talking child-like innocence either; not To Kill and Mockingbird innocence where Scout learns that she isn’t a child anymore, but nonetheless grows and learns a harsh part of life. Not quite. Really, I’m talking sexually, and I’m saying that I was only about thirteen years old when I went down with a girl in my bedroom on Valentines day, and I felt the pride swelling up in my chest, and it wasn’t the only place swelling up, either. Getting it from a young blonde girl when kids in my grade still didn’t even know what it was somewhat terrifying and gratifying. But after a while, and also at a young age, I learned that fucking around with people you don’t care about is more like riding a dead horse than a stallion.

So anyway, that’s what I was thinking. I was tired and worked all day. That morning on the metro on the way to work, I had a hard-on that was visible through my pants and I felt like jacking off so bad. That’s usually not something you tell people on an every day basis. But it was true that I wanted to fuck every tight-clothed living woman on that fucking underground train, and I just wanted my urges to guide me, like they do in shampoo commercials. But then I realized I had a headache and my mind wandered off.

Slowly yet willingly, these downtown visits were sucking the soul right out of me. I worked at a downtown bookstore where people hid their pain behind their smiles, and where the lonely made friends with printed-on pieces of paper in their minds. And on that ride downtown that night after puking out a perfectly delicious shwarma, a girl sat across from me and I decided in my post-inebriated state that I’d fall in love with her, and I decided that I would spend my life with her. I would always fall for the artisan types, and would always convince myself in love of every intelligent-looking girl I’d see. The ones who studied the arts or literature and who would go on to obtain a Masters in something or other and would eventually teach. These are the girls I fell for. ‘The sordid hipsters of America’, as Kerouac once wrote. And of course in return, all the hipsters read Kerouac. The brunette sitting across from me was dressed like all the other kids who tried not to dress like everybody else. A plaid shirt, low top single coloured shoes, ray bans and a tweed hat. It was so predictable that I’d convince myself to love her, and eventually I blamed her for my hard-on. But truly, I just wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. Then again, I’ve been told that I throw around the word ‘love’ way too loosely.

When I was younger, my older friend Zack, who also happened to be my cousins cousin, introduced me to a lot of things I would have normally never thought about at a young age. Things like smoking, sex, drunk driving, and most importantly, he taught me how to be social around others. It really is a formula once you get the hang of it. I’m still awkward, but at least I can be social. I think I was about ten at the time and we saw a shy small caterpillar slowly crawling up the door of my house. It was a fuzzy yellow one with two antennas sticking out of its tiny head; the sun shone brightly on it. Simply out of nowhere, Dave lifted his foot and smashed the poor thing as greenish yellowish ooze striped the door of my house in a line. I felt terrible for it.

So I’ve been thinking about that lately and I thought it was symbolic, as the squished caterpillar could be a metaphor for something or other, and I thought I wanted to share it with somebody.
So instead of hanging out with Maya, Dan and the beautiful Julie, Charlotte called me up and she was with Julian and Alicia, and they were going to roll a joint, so I ended up with them.
“How much wood can a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood.”
That is what Charlotte would repeat over and over in that indecent little mind of hers with unique pothead mannerisms. She’d recite over and over these somewhat childhood riddles, other times, philosophical aphorisms.
She would go on, and after the wood chucks would come more, and over again and blah blah blah.

We smoked up in an abandoned underground parking lot in Lasalle, row PP, spot 34. We sat in a circle, smoked, and chanted away the dreaded cold of a winter in Montreal. The lights shone mellow, as everything did when you were stoned, and flashed solemnly as we drove past suburban cottages and dug-up potholes. We drove and swerved, as we watched old Mitch Hedberg’s comedy skits on a cellphone (or multimedia device as they call them these days), and our synchronized laughs followed his unique one-liners, (rest his soul).
Then the four of us drove back to the underground parking lot as Julian rolled another fat one. As we were high, we continued to sing and laugh obediently in the backseat.
“I think I’m gonna’ write all of this later.”
“You should man, you’re a really good writer.”
“Thanks I…”
“Yeah I read your last short story. Amazing. I didn't understand the ending though.”
“Thanks, um…”
“If you write this down, can I be the star of the novel?”
“Okay Alicia, you can.”

Alicia was a girl of average proportions and a unique out-going smirk on her face every night, but she was by no means the star of this story. Just an idea for it.
This was when finally I got home, and when I cleaned up the newspapers that my dog pissed on. I usually let my dog, Cockhead, a half shiatsu half bichon breed, piss on the Gazette pages when she had to. Sometimes I specifically choose the pages for her to piss on, for example, ‘Top 24 reasons to love Quebec,’ or ‘this will make you smile.’ It made me smile anyway. Other times she pissed on the obituaries which made the souless side of me laugh, and the soulful side of me feel terrible.

And that night when I got back home alone and dizzy in my room, I tried thinking of irony. I thought around of such things like comedians committing suicide, or of fire trucks being on fire, or of Atheist churches. And thought that somewhere in the depths of my soul, I am a heartless Atheist. Between the supernatural and the natural. The metaphysical and the physical. The abstract and the concrete. And I don’t remember how, because I tend to loose my back tracking to how and about these things come out on the page; but despite the threads being cut, my conclusion was that there is no heaven or hell, and that life just goes on.
And so it did.

The Whale

Hi

So this week my "post" is something I can't really post here, for two reasons: 1, it's 2486 words long. 2, it's for the CBC Radio contest and one of the regulations is that it can't have been published ANYWHERE, not even if it's an "unofficial" publish. So I didn't want to take my chances and cut my own rope (is that even a metaphor?) before I even send it in.

So why am I posting this information here, you may ask? And why don't I just post something else, something shorter, something that doesn't require so much effort? Well, truth is I haven't written anything of worth this week because I've been busy editing this story. And editing is the right word because I wrote it a while ago and just edited the fuck out of it. In all truth, I'm almost positive it's not what they're looking for, but I'd rather submit something and say "I've tried" than not do anything at all. And hey, for a shot at $4000 or $6000 I'd do anything.

Anyway so I need your help: if you can spare the time to read a 5-and-a-bit-page-long short story, and give me hardcore feedback by the latest Thursday morning/afternoon (I want to send it out Thursday night), I would love you forever! (Not that I wouldn't anyway, but it sounds more dramatic like this). So leave comments saying whether or not you have the time, with your emails if I don't have them? And you know, even if you don't have the time now, I'd still appreciate feedback at some point, since it IS something I've spent time writing, so feel free to say you can't read it now but will later and I'll send it so you can read at your leisure.

Anwyay this is much more of a rant than I thought it would be. Sorry. But thanks in advance to anyone who is able to help me out <3

Gun

{Excuses for the length.}

“One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.”

- Anton Chekhov

The blow hits her hard on the cheekbone and resonates like a gunshot in the kitchen. She recoils and falls to the ground, collecting her limbs around her, planting her chin as far down on her sternum as she can, trying to make herself into a hard little ball. If only he’d just leave her there and forget about her, stop seeing her.

He doesn’t, of course. She’s an easy target now, a raw little pile on the floor. It’s worse when he doesn’t see her face, it makes him lose control; he feels like she can say things and make faces he can’t hear or see. He can’t accept that, so he kicks her hard. Once, twice, he hits soft spots. She falls sideways into fetal position, squashed there like a dead insect. Except he knows she’s very much alive, he knows she’s trying to penetrate the yellowed linoleum and get away, so he kicks her again. Soft spots. He can feel spasms of muscles in her thighs, back, and side at each blow. Then he misses his kick and his boot hits something hard – her tibia – and a jolt of pain runs up his foot. He yelps and turns away from her, grabbing the kitchen table to stabilize himself.

He takes a swig of booze and breaths slowly, feeling every heartbeat in his toe. It’s the one with the ingrown nail, he should’ve been more careful. The kitchen is quieter now; he realizes he had been screaming before. There’s only the sound of his heavy breathing as he waits for the pain to recede, and her sloppy, useless sobbing on the floor.

He pulls a chair out from under the table, and sits on it, facing her. Slowly, he takes off his boot. The toe feels better already, without the pressure. He notices a little speck of red has bloomed on the white cotton, just over his injured toenail. He takes off his sock and inspects the damage. The pocket of pus on the side of his nail has burst, and a bit of dirty blood has tainted the nail, but there’s almost no pain now. Through his pail, hairy toes fanned out before his face, he can see her lying on the ground, still crying in soft, anguished shudders.

“You cunt,” he says.

***

It is after. After the fight, after he continued to drink and got more drunk. After the shouting, after the crying, after he punched her in the stomach, after he pushed her onto the bed and forced her underneath his hairy thighs and moist, heavy belly and slobbered all over her face with his drunken breath and cold tongue. After he wriggled himself out of his boxer shorts and ripped off her pajamas and touched her with his fat, wormy fingers, and after he rolled off her with a deep groan and fell asleep because he was too drunk to have an erection.

He is asleep, now; his snoring resonates in loud bursts in the bedroom. She can’t sleep, though. Her mind is racing, thinking hard, creeping out of her and across the bed, over the mound of his body, to his bed stand. She can’t stop thinking about what lies in that bed stand, that little silver key. Her minds take hold of the key and follows its path: off the bed, out of the bedroom, down the hall, into his office, to the worktable, second drawer down on the right.

Not quite sure of what she’s doing and what she will do, she rolls out of bed, rather stiffly on account of her bruises. He keeps on sleeping, on the other side. She walks around the bed and opens the drawer of his bed stand, where he keeps the little silver key. In the dark she perceives the contours of his clammy, red face. Her disgust gives her power; she grabs the key and walks out of the bedroom as silently as she can.

The carpet is soft and warm in the hall; its thickness seems to will her feet into immobility. She wills them on, careful step by careful step, until she reaches his office. It isn’t as dark, there. Through the window the street lights and passing cars send jagged strips of paleness on the walls and ceiling. She finally reaches the desk and inserts the key into the second drawer down on the right. For a moment the key jams a bit and she’s sure it isn’t the right one, unless he’s changed the drawer. Then she hears a metallic click and the key turns. She pulls open the drawer and takes out the gun.

It is bigger than she remembers from the few times she saw him pull it out to clean it. She has never held it before, and she stares at its every angle in the crooked grey light. She knows it’s loaded; she has heard him tell a friend he always keeps it ready: “You never know…” You never know, indeed. Her mind starts racing again. She’s not quite sure it’s really her, holding the gun in the gloom.

She thought the gun would give her power, but all she feels now is a crushing sense of failure. Tears streak down her cheeks and she’s seized with a sense of breath-wrenching dread; remorse for an action she hasn’t even committed. She knows what will happen now. All sense of resolution has left her. Was there ever a resolution? She is powerless, even now, even with him knocked out senseless in the bed.

The gun falls out of her trembling hands and lands with an echoed bang in the drawer. She almost hopes he’ll hear it and kill her for it.

She’s back in the bedroom, now. He is still asleep, but he has shifted in the bed and his snoring isn’t so loud. There is almost silence.

She puts the key back in the bed stand and goes to lie by him resolutely, dutifully, like a dog. She falls asleep.

In the dream she won’t remember, she kills him. Except once he is dead, there is nothing. Only emptiness.

Overwhelmed

Everything in the world.
Leaves me arms curled.
Around my knees.
Someone make sense of please.
And enlighten me.

We Are Brain Twins, Separated At Birth

I can't keep having these conversations.
In fact, to keep me from imploding
I entertain the idea of myself appealing to you in the future and
That one day, we will be together,
But for now I listen to your rantings
About how cowardly you are and
How repulsive I truly am
Waiting for you to realize
That we were made for each other.
Specifically tailored to suit interests
Maybe not now,
But eventually.

That's the hopeful part of me.

(Alternate title: I Just Want a Promise About Us Growing Old on Porches With Shotguns in Our Rocking Chairs and Making Noise at The Kids Who Pass By, Hoping They Want to Be As Great As We Are When They Reach Our Age (The Fear of Abandonment))

love-sick

I'm sick of the love story lies, the happy-never-afters,
the false hopes and expectations.
I'm sick of the ignorant puppy eyes that only last a few hours,
till reality breaks in on them.
I'm sick of being told to wait for love, that one day a prince will come...
I've grown up and left fairy tales behind,
no thanks, I don't believe in love or magic wands.
I'm not and never will be a fair maiden for some shining knight.
Excuse me I have my own armour, and I don't need your sword.
I'm not going to sit here waiting, for some man to sweep me off my feet,
and into a corner. I won't be that damsel in distress.
I'll have my own happy-ever-after with or without you,
solo or paired, but I don't need to sing some lover's duet,
I won't be a wilted wallflower, waiting for a dance partner.
So I don't want your fake Hollywood happy ending,
I don't want that ridiculous white bridal gown.
I don't rely on anyone to make me happy
and I won't be given away.

So take back your frills and bows and hopes,
take away your stories, and fables and tales,
I don't care, and don't want to hear any more love songs.
I don't want any more advice.
I don't need an insignificant other to complete me;
I am a person, a being in my own right.

Sonnet

Making my days, my nights, my hours:
Your warmth and sweetness helps my heart
Deeply connected to none else
Ever I sadden when apart
All that I need to make me smile:
Reaching my nose, your richest scent
Only to press my lips to you
Never are moments better spent
Long is my waiting through these days
Yearning for the peace you bring
Leaving without you brings me pain
Only your sight does make me sing
Verily, loving you is me
Even you, my delicious tea

Some sort of inspiration credit should go to Charles for his book poem, which made me want to write about things that I love. :] Also, the metre on this is not my best work, so I might rework the trouble lines at some point.

My Body - Rough cut

My body is a thing
I leave out to dry
on the roof of my house
until it is white and parched
and ready to be written
once more.

My body is a contract
between the earth and its sun:
slow enough to lose itself,
strong enough to pull a soul
until the mud dries and
pushes it,
leaf-from-tree,
into the wind.

My body is a cage
whose bars I have defiled
by reaching through
prisons of bone
until the air crackles at my touch
with the promise of poetry.

My body is a temple
to a god I do not know--
but hear whispering
along the candles
and the stained glass windows
about the day stone will fall
and crabgrass will cover the shrine
and he and I
are released.

Heart rape is appreciated.

The Fool Was Right All Along

The Bearded Madman thinks to himself
& stares with apologetic regret
atop a melting hill
among the poor waterfalls of ice
the ice caps
the ice cracks
the water cracks
below him.
He never made the mistake of young love
for life is a career, after all
and death is a profession
that never goes out of style.
The heat rises from
industrial toaster ovens
blurring out images
of cell phone ads behind.
The loud downtown voices
of the hundreds below
eventually become a blur
a low hum
and just like the way everyone ages
everyone begins to look the same
climbing stone marble staircases
among the other morally ambiguous
into their safe haven.
The Bearded Madman hears the buzzing of a cellphone
vibrate mode
shaking across the floor
looking for a home.
He is catatonic
among the meaningless
and then it occurs
to his optimistic mind
that he too is meaningless.
He watches below
as they rape and celebritize these murderers of innocence
and scandalize the most brainless of targets,
don't tell him tis' not the truth.
Point form ideals of life
sociological norms
reality's oh so accepting eyes
-> more like constipated diarrhea out of the throats
of the long tied businessman or politician
choking his own circulation
'round his neck
along with the flow of air to his brain.
When the smile is is bright
and false
laughing in the eyes of his peers
watch carefully,
as it slowly slowly slowly fades from the face
sliding back to the miserable irony
of choosing his fate.
Watch this one day,
the transition. of smile to reality,
the slowing fade.
the closing curtains.
Burn,
burn,
burn.
Yet,
the Madman tempts not to be politically incorrect...
though who is he kidding?
We are all the cannibals of the Earth's body
& we are all the hungry wolves.

Choke

Silence
Expected wordlessness
It was rhetorical
There never were supposed to be words to fill this gap
It’s scripted
We know this is what comes next
No surprises
We know each other too well for those
We know
When this comes up
To press mute
We only need to exchange looks
Mostly
An answer would be nice
But not needed
Certainly not expected
So satisfaction lies in gestures
Simple subtle slowness
Working ways through thoughts
Crafting motion out of emotion
To let me know you heard
A smile would be nice
But not needed
Definitely not expected

A Gentle Madness

Books I have not yet read

Pry at me from the shelf.

They whisper incessantly;

Prayers of liberation

From their vertical captivity.

They wish to be opened:

Cracked spines, dog eared covers.

They want to be manhandled

And feel sunlight, dust, air

On each of their pages.

They yearn for my moistened thumb,

For my to lips murmur their words,

To know my eyes have skimmed across their every line.

They long to travel by metro or bus;

They want their covers to be blunt.

These books have stood there long

And will stay there longer still.

That cryptic Rushdie, the Rand, too long,

And Ulysses, of course. How long has it been

Since I dropped you halfway through?

I owe you better than that, I know,

But your prayers will not be answered tonight,

Though you haunt me -- the ghosts of reads to be --

Hoping that one day there will be nothing

Left for me to read but you.

N.B. I stole the title from a book by Nichals A. Basbanes called A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books.

"Oh... Well, Somebody Should Tell Her She's Got a Boyfriend!"

We both
Fell vulnerable
We both
Fight for each other
We both
Hold promises dear
We both
Can't think of things we dislike about each other
We both
Love one another
We both
Hate the situation
We both
Wish it could work
We both
Know it will later
We both
Still struggle
With the present
Knowing that
The future is
Ours.

(alternate title: Waffleshoes)

land-locked lament

I put away my wishing stars
I put away my dreams
I locked them in a treasure chest
And threw it out to sea
I hung up my fishing net
And folded up my sails
I took my maps down from the walls
And stopped the spinning globe

The sea still calls to me
It does
The waves, the wind, the whales
It tempts me with that treasure chest
That now lies locked upon the shoals

The wind still whispers to me
It does
Of salt and brine and fog
Ocean mist in the loch
And the map of the rocks on my palms

The ship still speaks to me
It does
Creaking through my dreams
Reminding me of freedom
Of how it felt at the helm
Of how it felt like home

I put away my wishing stars
I put away my dreams
I locked them in a treasure chest
And threw it out to sea

Two for One

It's been a weird week.
It's been a weird semester.
Don't read too far into this one.

“What are you doing?” she asks, her eyes wider than I’ve ever seen them. There’s a sick glory that accompanies that.

“Sit down,” I whisper. It comes out as a growl.

“Put the gun down,” she says, more as a plea than a statement.

“Shut up!" I shout, put the barrel to her temple.

“Please don’t do this,” she chokes out, her entire face covered in tears.

“Shut up,” I repeat. She’s pushing it. That’s all she does. Push.

“Please,” she babbles, “You don’t have to do this. Please, I don't tell anyone.”

“Shut up,” I whisper again. It comes out as a plea. A pathetic plea, and I’m crying, and sinking to my knees. “Shut up can’t you shut up why are you doing this?” I ask.

She stares at me. “Please,” she whispers, has enough courage to touch my cheeks, “You’re scaring me.”

I twitch out of her grasp.

explosion

“You think I’m not scared? You think I’m used to thinking of you like this all the time?” I run the barrel across her arm. She shivers. “You think I like thinking about you so often? You think I like being like this? You think I feel sane when I wake up in the morning, wishing I were dead than not being beside you?” The tears have mixed. “You think it’s easy being so...” I trail off. That’s what those points of suspension mean. I am lost in her eyes. I can’t say it.

“You’re scaring me,” is all she says.

“Don’t you see?” I sob, pointing to the empty room with the sten gun, “Don’t you see what I’ve done for you?”

“I didn’t ask you to do any of it,” she whimpers.

It occurs to me she never did.

Charlie, part two

GAH. I'm still not pleased with this. I think it ends too abruptly. I hate writing endings. >.<

You have to understand, you really do, that anger and heartrape and mindfucks make people do strange things. I'm not excusing what he did – nothing could ever do that, and he never tried to – but maybe I'm explaining it. I'll spare you the gruesome details because I don't know them. I wasn't there. He didn't write about them, either, and police reports are only so telling.

You'll judge him, I know you will, and I'm reticent to tell you because of that, but I promised myself that I would write his story, and it would not be complete – it would not be a story – without this.

"This" can be summed up with a colour, I think: red. At the beginning of the night, he was seeing it in the metaphorical sense, and by the end of the night it was all over him, covering his clothes, his hands, his face. He had intended to paint the town red with their festivities that night, living and loving and exulting in their togetherness, and he ended up painting himself red with first his anger, then his thirst, then his guilt.

It seems to be a natural human reaction to turn to violence, and, if Charlie was – is – anything, it's human. It started with a simple fight, calling someone out for absolutely no reason, feeling the thud of fist to flesh like most people feel the bass thrum of a dance anthem when the club's too crowded and you're standing next to the speakers. The slap, the crack, the thick sounds of laboured breathing and the sharp whistle of limbs careening through the air to land wherever they could in this targetless, blind rage...

I can imagine, because I know him, the fierce smile sliced across his face, stretching his lips thinner and making his teeth glitter in the moonlight, in the streetlight: a wolf-smile. The words come to my mind because he wrote them, later, in his email. He described feeling like a cast-off, lone wolf, hunting by himself, abandoned by the ones who were supposed to love and support him, taking pleasure in the kill, in the red-hot blood swimming beneath his fingernails, crusted onto the fine hairs on the back of his hand, splashing on his face, his torso, his shiny black patent-leather shoes.

The fight wasn't enough for a Copernican revolution, no; the earth stayed standing still, everything was the way it wasn't supposed to be.

At least, I figure that's how it was. I wasn't there, you'll remember, and he wouldn't have wanted me there anyway. What I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt is that, after the fight, he went on into the night and began to systematically haunt all the places she had been with him. All the clubs where they'd danced until the early hours of the morning – there he was, silently kicking in someone's head, screaming obscenities as he kneed someone's gut, chuckling bitterly as he brought his fists down onto someone's shoulders. All the restaurants where they'd shared a bottle of wine and shrimp cocktail or veal scaloppini or raspberry chocolate mousse – there he was, breaking noses, cracking ribs, bruising shins. The cinema, the theatre, the bars, the dress shops, the bookstores...

Over the next few hours, he beat people in all those places, imagining (he later wrote) that they were her. It was at the fifth or sixth place, about two in the morning, that the person who was her current incarnation didn't get up from the pavement despite the increasingly large pool of blood that was surrounding his head. That, I assume, is when he had his bright idea.

He described his insides like some demonic flower, slowly opening to kiss a sky of rage and despair, feeding on his pain and on the blood that he was spilling. He described his heart like a rotting cavern, ligaments un-stuck and muscles pumping irregularly with a sort of sickening sound at every palpitation, forcing a thick, black, evil-smelling liquid through his veins. He described his mind as locked up in a rusty cell, unshaven, sordid, and entirely unhelpful, tossing out the occasional mumbled burst of swearing and silent otherwise.

I can tell you that, if those things are true, then they offer some explanation for his behaviour, perhaps better than any I could give. You must understand: he can't be blamed. If his heart was ruined and his mind was gone, then if his actions are understandable, right? You're judging him. I know you are, because I did, at first.

His brilliant plan was to flip through the dead man's wallet, pull out the driver's license, and scrawl the information onto the front window of the silent restaurant in the slowly congealing blood conveniently pooled at his feet. And he did this for the rest of the night, fighting for real now, and using the spilled blood to announce to the world what he'd done.

I wish...I wish I could tell you that his lawyer convinced him to plead insanity, that the jury had pronounced him mentally unfit, that the judge had sentenced him to a prison for those criminals who had...defects. But none of that happened. He pled guilty, the jury recommended the strictest course of action, and the judge sentenced him to 20 years, no chance of parole until after the first five.

I wasn't in the courtroom, but I can piece together the action from everything I've read, and from his personal descriptions, and it all seems so cold, too cold for such a passionate heart. But cold it was, and sterile, and blandly antagonistic as only a courtroom can be...at least, that's how I picture it.

I know, right now, that you're judging. "Heartbreak wasn't enough for that level of violence," you're thinking, "he's overdramatic, or something's not right in his head, or she's telling the story wrong..." I understand that it's really easy for you to blame me, denounce me as someone with no grip on real life, a deluded fool.

I sometimes wonder whether someone will go through my papers, my emails, my police records, all of my everythings, when I've been dead as long as he has. I wonder if my story will have as long a shelf life as his has had, wonder if someone will fall in love with me through 200-year-old documentation and a description of a heartbreak.

I May Be Getting Over My Fear of Sex

Sorry for the Mikean title, but this piece is not my usual style.


It's been a dead week in the land of inspiration, so here is something completely different because it is 1)non-fiction, 2)non-poetry and 3)stream-of-consciousness. I'll pull my pants up for next week, I swear.

Context: Poetry is sex. Run with the idea.

Because what else is poetry than sex? Poetry is sex like sex is living, like sex brings us to throw ourselves whole(hole)heartedly into someone, something else because of a burning or a thought or a whimsy(let us not forget here that the first rhymes written by men were probably to impress women)--it's a compulsion as uncontrollable as the reproduction of our kind, of bringing an undivided part of ourselves onto a blank slate upon which the gods of biology and genetics and poetics may write, it's the action and the aftermath and the spasm all in one; poetry forces us out by bringning us in to create something we vaguely recognize through something we often rarely acknowledge. Sex is poetry because our bodies are language--our bodies are blank and open and never defined until they are together.

The Things I Hate about westmount

Oh!
How the world is so typical
as I walk down to Vendome Metro.
The retired old & rich
dressed in none other than complete ghost white
matching the so-called wisdom of their hair.
How they play tennis in the cold temperature
Raqueteering the fuzz green ball back and forth
barely breathing
condensation
visible air.
And as I walk,
all the good-looking youth
wearing their tight low cut leather jackets,
the fashion staple for this fall.
Oh!
how the typical disgusts me
when I am in moods such as this.
The typical French Nationalist,
complaining about the language I was raised with,
it seems like all issues begin with language.
Why shouldn't we just destroy culture?
Take away the importance of diversity.
Why doesn't everyone
just listen to the same musicians?
Constantly.
Someone should really invent a weekly top-40,
and replay that list over and over again throughout the week,
that way we can all be the same.
Oh wait..
I have no need for emotion,
PFFT,
So redundant.

But of course,
this is satire,
or a satire of satire;
of Satan dressed in lush Satin,
drinking down his red soda,
while ordering around the knowledgeable.
Let us destroy all, he says.

The worst of all,
Starbucks on Sherbrooke,
The platinum blonde moms
with lethally injected cheekbones
and sanded-down nasal bones,
kissing
cheek to cheek,
with forced smiles,
literally.
"OH MY DEAR! HOW ARE YOUUUUU?!"
they exclaim.
I cringe.
Why am I here?
When has the need for caffeine,
become a breeding ground
for overage desperation,
intellectually handicapped,
and constipated mothers I would not like to fuck
Oh!
And how I am bitter on freezing days like this,
when the average cost of an American Apparel hoodie
is twelve times the cost of Zellers,
they sure sucked me right in.

Whatever,
Do I care, really?
I might as well throw myself on the tracks
and scar some private high school girls
for the rest of their lives.
Oh, the satire.
When will I finally complete a Sudoku puzzle?
I'm getting old,
I might just die before someone will call me normal.
Until then,
Love me the way I am or hate me forever.
Or you can hate me the way I am.
I don't mind.

Middle Eastern Philosophies Meet Western Obsessions

[A collage poem exercise done in my poetry class]

Oral sex
And cigarettes
Running out
Running out of time
Not to worry
We’re all in a world of shit
Exactly like those damned
But we don’t need a mail call
To tell us
To tell us that
Nickel bags
And terrorists
And weapons of mass destruction
Are competing with
Car bombs
Dismount your mood
In Opel mechanics
You know
You know how
Because they do too
Ask them kindly
As they drive
To check they won’t explode
Shookran

Hand turkey cut-outs.

Mary had trouble with her cut-out,
her hand was too small. Her turkey did not look plump and tender like her brother's did.
She pouted for a moment.
Sitting in the kitchen with her back to the oven, the smell of pumpkin pie, cinnamon and an open can of cranberry sauce began to lick her nose,
teasing her gently. Little Mary's stomach growled, but the turkey hand project
had her undivided attention.
At only five, she understood the importance of this holiday,
how it wasn't about the food or the turkey,
but about giving thanks, knowing how to say thank you
for the things she had.
Her mommy had taught her that.
Mary reached for her brown wax crayon
"if my hand can't be as big as my brother's,
at least my turkey will be the prettiest"

The road to hell

There’s a painting on my wall,
of a ragged man alone,
He plays the guitar for all,
while he’s sitting upon stone.

I have met this man before,
living in the freezing street.
May not meet him anymore.
He has neither food nor heat.

There’s a painting on my wall.
of a man I might have known.
It might not have been at all,
If compassion had been shown.

Danger we want social rights,
And our protests will not cease.
We will fight all through the nights.
We have passed the time for peace!

Get the cocktails ready boys,
We want to give them a show.
Careful, don't make any noise.
Throw it there; through that window.

Not in there you fucking ass.
There might be somebody in.
In the car! Step on the gas!
God, I need a fucking gin.

Our top story of the day,
Fire kills family last night.
Police suspect foul play,
Witness claims no one in sight.

Anatomy of a Heartbreak

{Nod to Jessica for the title. This is not a rewrite of her piece, it's just a different spin on the same subject.}

The stage on which we lay our scene is one you know. It stands on every corner of every street of every city. It’s the caffeine hole, the place of community and capital. Starbucks: your library, meeting place, breakfast/lunch/dinner place, study hall, living room, office, conference room, life savor, escape.

Enter the man. Too early, too anxious. He orders (grande green tea with honey) and sits at a table facing the door. He waits, fidgety.

Enter the woman. She is late, flustered, she ran. She walks over to the table, kisses him on the cheek, she is late because of the metro that broke down again you know it seems like it breaks down every time you take it it’s the third time this month and the bus of course there wasn’t one until much later so ridiculous I hate public transportation…

Her voice trails off and goes to mute. She orders (grande double non-fat latte, extra foam), waits for her drink, and sits in front of him. He doesn’t move at all. For a fleetful moment, she looks at him, she sets eyes on him, almost sees him. Then she takes a quick sip from her cup and starts talking again about her friend Amanda she can’t believe what she did oh my God she went over to Mike’s house and Alex didn’t know about it can you imagine and they probably slept together or something like that I don’t even want to know can you believe it though it’s crazy although it’s Amanda so I mean I shouldn’t really be surprised…

She hasn’t noticed how he looks at her, intensely, almost with pity. He hasn’t said a word. He would be slightly annoyed by her loudness, her condescension, her incessant babbling if he could see more clearly through his melancholy haze. She asks him a question, which he doesn’t hear, she pauses mid-sentence and asks him carelessly if everything is all right.

“No.”

The word drops like a leaden weight. She pauses mid-thought. Silence. She looks at him, then. Really looks at him. But she doesn’t dare acknowledge what she sees.

Instead, she drops an acidic comment about his bad mood. He nods gravely.

“I think we have to talk.”

She pauses mid-breath. He cringes on the inside. He hadn’t wanted it to come out so cliché, so full of baggage. He hadn’t wanted his voice to be so broken, so intent. But then, there really wasn’t any right way of doing this, was there?

It’s not too late for him to smile and laugh it off. To pretend it’s just some poor joke, to acknowledge his terrible mood, to shrug this off to later, again. But of course, he can’t carry this on for much longer, so he says nothing. The silence carries on for too long.

There they are, fourth wall down unbeknownst to them, finally seeing each other for what they are, with no idea of what they are worth. Here they are, pausing mid-life, while around them the café, the street, the whole city is just going about its business. Here they are, seeing each other for the last time.

What they say isn’t important. They won’t quite remember it afterward. Empty phrases meant to explain and excuse. They speak them quickly, awkwardly, in hushed tones meant to sooth, which only instensifies the drama they create.

He wants to make this as quick as possible, and as painless for her as he can. He tries to explain briefly the why, the how, the impossibility of going back.

She wants to end this as quickly as possible. She doesn’t quite know what to feel. Her integrity has been raped. There is a lot of anger in this. Where’s the sadness, though? She knows she should feel that. She will feel the worst of it all later.

Hushed goodbyes, no contact at all. They are miles apart already. There’s nothing to say, there’s nothing to save. She gets up quickly and exits.

He stands alone, staring blankly at his cup. He expects some kind of alleviation. Instead, he feels a pang of pain in his chest. The weight does not go away. An acute tightness takes hold of his heart.

He can’t help but be surprised and think: this wasn’t supposed to hurt.

Oh, Captain, My Captain

I was sent to the floor by the forces of gravity.
I didn't expect this at all
For me to be turned around on my heels
To beg you to stay.
I was raised to my feet by my will.
I didn't expect this at all
For me to hold you as you wept.
To beg you to stay.

I know these useless words won't...

We shake our heads,
apathetic
mockingly sympathetic.
We don't have anything to give
but sorrow and regrets,
useless words
that don't put food on tables
or heal open wounds.
We have nothing to give but our thoughts,
but our thoughts aren't with you for long,
and they won't keep you warm.
We might be shamed into throwing some change
at the closest homeless street dweller,
but we won't do anything to find him a home.
We have nothing to give,
not even time, since
time is money and both are scarce;
and what it comes down to is
we have nothing to give
when we have nothing to gain.

So Hold On To Your Heart

No, I figure, no, there are better times to do this. Perhaps last night, when you were just engaged, and not right now: Minutes away from ‘I do’.
No, I figure. No, I don’t want to do this anyway. I don’t want to ruin this day, don’t want to proclaim my love in church-full of strangers, don’t want to put my heart on a broken line. I can live with the regret, can swallow my wants, can smile for you one last time. Can suffer on my own, can break a little bit more with each hug, can silently promise I’d treat you better than anyone ever could. I can

If anyone among us..

Oh no.

..knows reason...

I know so much more about you than everyone here. I know you, and I see you, and I understand you and I want you and I need you. I do. I do, I do, I do. I do!

..these two should not be joined in holy matrimony...

Please don’t do this. This is a mistake. This is a mistake. I would love you more. I do love you more.

...speak now or forever hol

I stand. It’s the word ‘forever’ that ticks me off. Forever. I can’t do forever. I’ve too much respect for marriage that I would never, ever, tell you. And forever just sounds too long. Too many days to go by while you spend it in someone else’s arms. Someone who doesn’t know your past the way I do. Someone who doesn’t understand that you’re not as strong as you want us to believe. Someone who doesn’t think of you first. I stand. I stand up, loudly, and exhale as I do so. Because I am here. I am here, and I am the one you run to. I am the one you tell good news to, I was first to hear of your father’s death. I was first to hear of your promotion, I was first in your new apartment, I was first to hear about your fucking engagement. I was first. I was first because I am first in your heart. And you just need to realize it. Contemplate it. Consider us.

Someone coughs.

You stare at me. Wide-eyed, more curious than shocked or confused. Everyone else is looking, too. I am aware of how far away you are. You stand, the one you’ve chosen by your side. And I realize I was the first to be called, even before your mother, your sister, your brother, when you officially set a date for the wedding. And that is who I am. The one at the side. The one to be told, never to be loved. The one to go to, not for.

It is too late.

You’ve made your decision.

I smile. Turn around. “No one better say anything,” I say, with surprising confidence, turning back to you, “Because those two are meant to be together.”

You smile and laugh because I’m such a jokester and leave it to me and such a good friend and good ol reliable silly-goosey me.

Everyone laughs.

I die.

You turn back around. Smile. Laugh. Get married. You’ve made your decision.

It’s the wrong one. You know?

Dreaming

So, I've been uninspired and therefore do not have a Part II with which I am sufficiently happy. Here, instead, have a somewhat delirious poem written late at night on a metro.

Half the time the world is ending
And then it falls asleep
I dream of you and dream and dream
Excruciating deep
I tear into my conscious mind
I cannot help but fall
And fall and fall and falling makes
Me understand it all
And then I wake and once again
The world begins to end
Snow and white and fire tonight
And vivid nightmares send
My screaming psyche gets its rest
Once tired of the world
I lose the fight and lose tonight
As Dawn, a rose, unfurls
I lose the fight and lose tonight
Tonight is all I need
Tonight is all my memories
Tonight is mine indeed
And then at Dawn again I wake
At damn light’s siren call
I walk the pathways of the day
And do not dream at all
At all at all I do not dream
Awake and dismal me
The world is falling round my head
So that I cannot see
And when the ending ends tonight
I’ll dream a dream at last
A dream of future ends to come
I’ll dream of ends long past
Awake again it ends again
The world begins anew
And as I wake vestigial dreams
Begin and end with you
Though I don’t know quite who you are
Or if you are at all
If I could dream at will I would
And in them I would fall
And fall and fall and falling down
I could be caught by you
But you are just a dream that I
Cannot quite say is true

And so the world it ends again
Before it falls asleep

It's getting cold here in Sackville.

We had never known snow before.

So when it came upon us
like crackling old sky,
covering us with its
eager innocence--
there was no rebirth.
There was no remaking
from a full year's sins,
no understanding of
season
for we who knew only
sun or rain.

All we could feel
was such a burning cold
that we cried aloud
in the agony of surprise
until the tears
melted the ice from our lips,
broke our fingers anew
and cleaned our eyes

so that we could reach and
touch again
and again
the skin of the earth
that crumbled
in our whispering palms.

An Ode to the Heart-Raped

[gibberish gibberish gibberish gibberish]


I can't sleep.
& I'm thinking about you.

My quest for sleep remains meaningless in comparison.
Is my lack of sleep making me sick?
Fogging my thoughts, sauna steam of toweled limbs.
Am I making myself sick?
Compelled to speak disparagingly,
I drew a happy face on a banana today,
and never knew such a simple act,
can give so much joy.
Even if I just wanted to sleep.
I don't sleep
because I think of you
of her,
my newfound beauty.
I found the one I think,
not The One from the matrix,
but the one in every romantic-comedy-flatulent-bomb-exploding.
Is it because I am simple minded?
Is everyone just simple simple minded?
Abstract thinking is merely a connection of jokes.
I am not unhappy,
therefore I am happy,
it's deductive.
I wonder how Bernard is liking school in the East...
And whether Charles can write any better...
And whether Mike's broken hearted words can be loved by the love for them,
and whether the writers rape hearts or are heart-raped.
The rape of a heart is with coercion,
something I don't want to be aware of.
Will Francis Bacon bake a cake the size of a lake?
Can the abstract be concrete, Tabia?
Will our hearts fall from trees, Marta?
Our raped hearts...
We should all be famous
and mesmerized;
A compiled work of the heart-raped club.
Where are you Cody?
Something like,
Where are you God?
It's me,
Vodka.
Cold Hearted Bitch, I am.
I love being an addict to The Drink,
And I love falling in love with an addict to The Drink,
it adds so much aesthetic value to the relationship, really.
--> Why die so young, Jack?
Sad.
But,
I'm serious,
really.
Let's make this it.
The seminal literary movement,
of the heartless generation,
the heart-rape club.
A club to the head maybe,
bam bam.
Like a fucking bomb to the nuclear family,
Let's fuck things up
I can't stop writing now,
I'm only getting started
page by page by page
of whimsical caprices
we are all so lost within ourselves
that it's like trying to build a sand castle out of dust,
the dust that collects behind your bedroom door and dresser,
the dust your mothers sweep before birthday parties and other family events,
you know, when people come over... hopefully.
A Castle In The Sky.
God, I'm so literary tonight.
I feel sick and loved.
An opposite I'm okay with,
sick in love,
it's contagious,
excuse the cliché,
actually don't,
for aren't clichés the hyperventilating truth?
A castle in the sky
(Imagine it) floating on the cloads.
Mike,
I had a dream we played a gig in a huge outdoor park and as we played we started building a huge concrete stairway of amplifiers...
I was so stoned before this dream that it made so much sense.
CONSIDER THE IMPLICATIONS.
I guess I have nothing else to say,
Sorry for the anti-climactic conclusion

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia

[I figured since we're all busy I'd just post a short one and save you guys reading time :) I wrote this for my Poetry class where we had to find cool words during the day and then incorporate five into a five-line poem]

Taciturn reader sitting by the wall
Ripping through pages to defenestrate feelings
Thinking dangerously in vociferous breaths
Unable to trim corpulent words
Unable to stop paroxysms of panic

Cover to Cover

“If all the books in the world were going to burn and you could save one of them – only one – which one would it be?”

“No! No, you can’t ask me that, it’s not fair.”

“You have to know, though. Imagine if it actually happened, you’d have to be prepared!”

“That’s ridiculous, Zack. It could never happen!”

“Okay, fine, it’s a completely fictitious situation. I still want to know which book you’d choose.”

“Why don’t you just ask me what my favorite book is? Why do you have to burn all the other books? It’s so sad…”

“Yeah, but it’s necessary. It has nothing to do with your favorite book. We pick our favorite books knowing we can read anything else and then turn back to those books we love for comfort and refreshment. The only book you can save has to be more than that…”

“I guess Jane Eyre doesn’t quite do the job, then…”

“I don’t think so.”

It is after love-making. They lie naked in the warm, wet patch of sheet, torsos exposed and cooling in the dark, hands intertwined between them, listening to each other’s whispers.

“I don’t know. It’s too hard. What would you pick?”

He hesitates, she imagines herself hearing the thought of his brain racing through titles and authors. The sound she pretends to hear is hypnotically pleasant, an energetic hum.

“I’m not sure. I think something like Ulysses would be a good choice.”

“That’s such an English Major response.” She says it in a softly mocking tone, he doesn’t take offense.

“Well, it needs to be a book you can read over and over again without getting tired. Like, you reach the end and then flip the pages back and start over…”

“Cover to cover, again and again…”

“You wouldn’t get sick of Ulysses for a while. It’s really long, and there’s a bunch of stuff you’d pick up on every time.”

“Would The Lord of the Rings count as one book, or three?”

“One, I guess. But The Lord of the Rings, really?”

“Yeah, I know. I’d probably get sick after a while… Then again, I could start Iearning Elvish!”

“True, that… There’s certainly an interactive aspect to Tolkien. Oh! What about the Bible?”

“I don’t know about the Bible… it would seem almost wrong to save it. Like, there wouldn’t be any chance of misinterpreting it if it didn’t exist.”

“Christianity would just…fall away.”

“A lot of things would fall away, Zack, if there was only one book left in the world.”

“I guess so… Homer?”

“The Iliad.”

“The Iliad it is, then.”

He yawns and stretches, inching closer to her side of the bed. She turns around and offers him her back. He pulls the covers back over them and nuzzles his face lightly in the nape of her neck. She falls asleep in his breathing.

There wasn’t anything special about this, really. It was just pillow talk. And yet neither of them had had such deep, elaborate, heartfelt pillow talk with anyone else. Amy could recall a string of lovers who brutishly rolled away and snored themselves into complacent post-coital slumber. Zack preferred not to remember the way his ex-girlfriend’s body creepily latched on to him in a sluggish embrace after he’d finally been allowed to pull out.

But together, it was different. The end of one love-making became the beginning of another, of an intellectual and emotional kind. They opened their minds and hearts, mingling their thoughts and cares, and talked each other to sleep late into the night.

The mysterious Cyrus Pekoe.

I owe you guys part II next sunday.

ONE: SWALLOW SOLITUDE

I had just moved into a small apartment building just off Carré St-Louis. The proud occupant of a small, blank void of a studio apartment that smelled of wet socks and newspapers. Most of the other residents in the building were either very Francophone or, at least to me, invisible. Although this was the place I now called home, I felt completely alienated. I was sandwiched between a bearded fellow who called himself Castro and a young woman, about my age, named Leona. Castro was a graffiti artist and would often climb out onto the fire escape to smoke cigarettes and plan his next attack on city property. He would occasionally slip artwork under my door donning post-it note remarks about the government and anti-capitalism as housewarming gifts. Leona, on the other hand, was a real space case. According to the kids who lived downstairs, she spent all of her time in the Square reading romance novels and sighing deeply as birds flew by. After only a month of living at Number Fifteen, she had already gone through five break ups and the loss of her third cat. I was pretty certain that she thrived on the thought of misery and angst. Something I did not need in my life. The last resident of the top floor lived down the hall, right by the laundry chute. All I knew about him was that he was male, twenty-one and a ghost. I had never seen him and when I had asked Castro about him, he told me that he only ever spoke to the landlady for rent payment.

Since my arrival in Montreal, I had landed a job as a clerk at a small bookstore on St-Denis. The size of a small classroom, the boutique was stocked floor to ceiling, wall to wall with books. My work space was at the back of the store, in the closet. All day, I sat there tagging new arrivals and fixing the older novels’ spines, cramped, my feet resting on an old cardboard box below a rickety old desk. Perhaps this is where I picked up the smell of old newspapers. My boss was a very lonely old man who loved to strike up conversations with customers, although there were very few. He would offer them coffee from his old rusty machine, tell them about his antique cash register that he was no longer allowed to use by law and compliment the occasional child in the most awkward fashion. I pitied Giorgio—which was his name—he tried so hard to make friends, connections. Much like myself, only I could not leave my cave at the back of the store.

I had gotten into the habit of getting a coffee at the Corner Café on my way home from work. Giorgio would sometimes give me spare change he had in his pocket and call it my ‘candy money’. He loved to treat me like his estranged grandchild. The Corner Café did not have good coffee. In fact, it often tasted like the water you find leftover in the bottom of your sink after doing the dishes. Not that I’ve ever tasted that. The only reason I enjoyed getting coffee there almost every night, was the young barista that would serve me almost every time. Of course I was too shy to ever say a word to him. For almost a year now, all we’ve ever said to each other has been “one regular coffee please, with a lot of sugar”, to which he would usually respond “you got it”, followed by a quiet “thanks” on my behalf. Every time I would lay my eyes on him I felt as though the flesh would melt right off my face and stain my work shirt. I would hide my blushing cheeks with my scarf.

“The usual?” he said smiling, his hand on the regular sized take-out cup.

I could feel my hands tremble inside my pockets as I fumbled with my change. I thought of Giorgio and the bookstore. I did not want to end up alone in a mouldy bookstore.

“You’re nice.” I blurted out. I must have sounded ridiculous, like a crazy person with Turret’s. Visibly surprised, he snatched up a cup, smiling, and turned to his coffee machine. Now the flesh had melted off my face. It was rolling off my collar bone as I stood there, petrified, a dollar and seventy-eight cents in my closed fist.

“One seventy-eight please.” He said as he softly deposited the coffee on the counter, extra sugar packets on the lid. I dropped the change into his hand, hoping my fingertips would graze his palm. They did not.