I am a sword. I am a sword and a flame and a flaming sword, a cutting heat cauterizing as I slice, biting into you to hurt, to maim, but not to kill, to leave you with livid, puckered scars.
I am a flood – a screaming, teeming, turbulent flood of water and memories and blood, blood, blood, splashing and bubbling malignantly over your head again and again and again, cutting your breath, filling your lungs, crashing over you until you stop fighting, can’t try anymore.
I am an altar; I am an altar open to the raging heavens, offering you up to the god of my fury, slicing you open at the core and burning, searing your flesh, letting the stench rot in my nostrils, breathing you in until nothing is left of you but soft, dark, bitter ashes.
I am a pen, I am a story, I am an immortalization of everything and everyone you have caused to suffer, forcing you to read, to see, to admit that all of this, all of this, all of this is yours.
I blame Medea.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
1. Bereshith
That was the summer of the storm;
the summer of no summers, of
buds plucked and husked by the winds
and sown to foreign lands
before they flourished.
Sheepherder I, not to lead any flock
but to cease being led.
(home is brick and burning oil
but here I breathe alone!)
then the thunder like a trembling sky-drum
darker, faster,
gathering dust,
tosses hearts like frightened birds
up, up, up
and begins
2. Prolegomenes
no no brilliant guy high school knew him deaf cochlear impla--anyways last week batshit crazy no note or anything gone. empty apartment mountains scrawled on the drywall. god knows where.
3. Kyrie
the churches are full, so I
sit in my pew and
dream I am a bird
that was about to sing
but decided to fly--
to cut through thick and foggy air
not for beauty but for movement--
and falls from the branch into the wind.
bells catch me before the air does
so I follow my mother's skirts
to the candles.
beside me, older than old, green-man
leaf-man, vine-man,
flesh from the soil.
My mother tells me of rebirth and I listen
As though not yet--but soon--
some crop has failed.
4. Broadcast from the archives
And last year's summer
like a beaten dog, falling halfway
and dragging--howling--
as we shed our winter coats.
everyone in everyone in everyone
--then picnics in the basement with mice
and canned peaches and static from the CBC
the world an endless thirsty ground--
and so we walked.
5. Damascus
O our brothers! they said
And followed me
as though I knew the way.
We are the shattered roots of this earth
that stumble up mountains like drunken trees.
(And mother said, hold tight--hold on
I can't be left behind.
And all of us with shopping carts
And only dead to find!)
north north north
there is the snow there are the trees
there are the reapers singing songs
in fields that yield all autumn long
with voices sweet as honeydew
to steer the aimless wanderer true
beyond the wastes and mountains steep
(for we have memories we keep
from all the miles) ANOTHER ONE
the summer of no summers, of
buds plucked and husked by the winds
and sown to foreign lands
before they flourished.
Sheepherder I, not to lead any flock
but to cease being led.
(home is brick and burning oil
but here I breathe alone!)
then the thunder like a trembling sky-drum
darker, faster,
gathering dust,
tosses hearts like frightened birds
up, up, up
and begins
2. Prolegomenes
no no brilliant guy high school knew him deaf cochlear impla--anyways last week batshit crazy no note or anything gone. empty apartment mountains scrawled on the drywall. god knows where.
3. Kyrie
the churches are full, so I
sit in my pew and
dream I am a bird
that was about to sing
but decided to fly--
to cut through thick and foggy air
not for beauty but for movement--
and falls from the branch into the wind.
bells catch me before the air does
so I follow my mother's skirts
to the candles.
beside me, older than old, green-man
leaf-man, vine-man,
flesh from the soil.
My mother tells me of rebirth and I listen
As though not yet--but soon--
some crop has failed.
4. Broadcast from the archives
And last year's summer
like a beaten dog, falling halfway
and dragging--howling--
as we shed our winter coats.
everyone in everyone in everyone
--then picnics in the basement with mice
and canned peaches and static from the CBC
the world an endless thirsty ground--
and so we walked.
5. Damascus
O our brothers! they said
And followed me
as though I knew the way.
We are the shattered roots of this earth
that stumble up mountains like drunken trees.
(And mother said, hold tight--hold on
I can't be left behind.
And all of us with shopping carts
And only dead to find!)
north north north
there is the snow there are the trees
there are the reapers singing songs
in fields that yield all autumn long
with voices sweet as honeydew
to steer the aimless wanderer true
beyond the wastes and mountains steep
(for we have memories we keep
from all the miles) ANOTHER ONE
After rifling--three dollars
two birds
three photographs (combustible)
6. We melt into rain
Sharna pax and up the pole
Riddley walks and drags the old
dib dib dib dib
DOB DOB DOB DOB DOB
and so we march
with dust on the breath.
7. Brendan the Navigator
his eyes!
oh his eyes
open and unblinking
terrifying to find him
alone on the crag
tense as the string
of an aeolian harp
but nothing,
nothing
next to the eyes.
scarred and blunted
as though some shde of fire
had passed its hand
over his sight,
as though the storm
had borne him up,
folded him in movement
and showed him--
what pulls a soul to higher parts
if only the feeling of infinity
pressing down,
down, down?
We shoved dirt onto him until he stirred
8. To Cure the Dead by Lightning
When summer folded into fall
And we heard winter's quiet call
We took our men to holy tents
And gave our blood for temperance
To choose he who would call the rain.
O hornèd god--o sickle-veined!
O saviour knotted to the oak
Beneath the virgins' fires stoked
until the sky wept from our strife.
(And so a green death brought back life.)
9. Ban Martre
(They found me on the mountain but
there is no pain here--
there are no eyes to pierce you here.)
Three men to bind him on the rocks
(I wished for blindness but there were no crows)
Listen (leave him) for the drums!
(but I saw it once)
and he will hang until he brings
(I was once wind)
and he will hang until we hear it
he will hang until
(this is the way the world
this is the way
this is the)
power and the glory
and after us
(after me the)
after
rain
rain
rain
rain
rain.
This is my final project for English 1800-Present. Modernist style, romantic context. Does it work? Please critique and let me know. Sorry for the length. Too much Eliot in me.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Metro
[I've been creatively lazy (creatazy?) lately, thus, here is another old story I wrote about a year ago that I kind of forgot about but believe it has its merits. Also gonna re-work on "Sporadic Flashbacks" and make it into something better and amazing. Stay tuned, folks.]
It was past midnight on the metro when he sat directly behind me, on the seat attached to mine. Technically, it wasn’t my seat; it didn’t belong to me, but it was the seat I was temporarily making use of, while on my night ride on the metro. I was instantly aware of his presence with out even seeing him; he gave off a stench of alcohol, cigarettes and Vicks cough drops. I stared at the reflection of him to my right in the train’s large window. He had long and greasy silver grey hair in a ponytail, and wore a pair of shining women’s earrings. Looking closer at his reflection, I noticed the undeniable use of eye liner, outlining and sharpening the look of his eyes.
The old man slept.
I had just watched Charlie Kaufman’s new movie, Synecdoche, New York, and I was thinking about the false purpose created by ourselves in our lives. How the failure of one’s self is directly in our own hands. And so is the ability to change.
That’s why I cringe when I see the people who need to be hand fed and cared for. Tax payers money, tax payers money, tax payers money. That’s why I think that sometimes instead of begging for money on the street, these people should get a job.
That’s what I think.
I sit on the metro and this man’s stench begins to get to my stomach as the train zooms through underground tunnels at light speed. I am full from the three course supper I just ate with a few associates of mine before going to see the movie with my girlfriend. My stomach bulges, but the smell of the man causes it displeasure.
I decide to move.
I stand up and get out of my spot, sitting a little bit further away. The old man stands up too, and heads towards the sliding doors, prepared to open at the stop. He wobbles on his two feet and almost loses his balance. I stare with the dirtiest looks. He makes me sick. It’s midnight and this man can barely stand, his 40 ounce bottle sticks out from his dirty plaid jacket, resting in a paper bag.
The man stares at me as the metro begins to come to a halt. His shiny women’s earrings glow and his eye liner accentuates the sick glaze he has in his eyes. This man is pathetic and is everything vile about the city life.
And he doesn’t stop staring at me.
I turn my head away, and look at him in the reflection of the window. He looks at me up and down, looking at my blue silk tie and long black jacket. The doors open and before he leaves, he speaks, voice like sandpaper.
“Hey, fuck you man. Get a job.”
And with that, he stumbles out of the cart.
It was past midnight on the metro when he sat directly behind me, on the seat attached to mine. Technically, it wasn’t my seat; it didn’t belong to me, but it was the seat I was temporarily making use of, while on my night ride on the metro. I was instantly aware of his presence with out even seeing him; he gave off a stench of alcohol, cigarettes and Vicks cough drops. I stared at the reflection of him to my right in the train’s large window. He had long and greasy silver grey hair in a ponytail, and wore a pair of shining women’s earrings. Looking closer at his reflection, I noticed the undeniable use of eye liner, outlining and sharpening the look of his eyes.
The old man slept.
I had just watched Charlie Kaufman’s new movie, Synecdoche, New York, and I was thinking about the false purpose created by ourselves in our lives. How the failure of one’s self is directly in our own hands. And so is the ability to change.
That’s why I cringe when I see the people who need to be hand fed and cared for. Tax payers money, tax payers money, tax payers money. That’s why I think that sometimes instead of begging for money on the street, these people should get a job.
That’s what I think.
I sit on the metro and this man’s stench begins to get to my stomach as the train zooms through underground tunnels at light speed. I am full from the three course supper I just ate with a few associates of mine before going to see the movie with my girlfriend. My stomach bulges, but the smell of the man causes it displeasure.
I decide to move.
I stand up and get out of my spot, sitting a little bit further away. The old man stands up too, and heads towards the sliding doors, prepared to open at the stop. He wobbles on his two feet and almost loses his balance. I stare with the dirtiest looks. He makes me sick. It’s midnight and this man can barely stand, his 40 ounce bottle sticks out from his dirty plaid jacket, resting in a paper bag.
The man stares at me as the metro begins to come to a halt. His shiny women’s earrings glow and his eye liner accentuates the sick glaze he has in his eyes. This man is pathetic and is everything vile about the city life.
And he doesn’t stop staring at me.
I turn my head away, and look at him in the reflection of the window. He looks at me up and down, looking at my blue silk tie and long black jacket. The doors open and before he leaves, he speaks, voice like sandpaper.
“Hey, fuck you man. Get a job.”
And with that, he stumbles out of the cart.
Cubism
[This is for my poetry class - in theory it's going to be the major focal point of my final project. I've decided to look at the art movement of Cubism and their obsession with time and perspective and use this poem (or the final poem from after my editing of it) as the basis for many other poems. I plan on, somehow, rewriting this piece quite a few times, always looking at it from a different angle to gain that sense of perspective and time passing, whether than be by substituting all the words with others, deconstructing it line by line, splicing it up all over the place, making it into word art....etc. Anyway, what I need is for this to be as strong as it can be, otherwise my project will just fail from the inside out. So. Be harsh, throw out suggestions, analyze, evaluate, EDIT! :)! ...I have a feeling my next few weeks of posting on HRC will be school work. So I'm counting on you guys for my grades.]
It turns its face, this dimensional being,
and tries to escape its oil encasements.
The paint strokes – painfully stroking each captured limb – enclose.
It tries to walk down and away but its legs trip
over its movements.
It curses the painter and shouts with a multi-faceted voice
that echoes in the still-framed reverberations blurring its form,
You can’t catch time!
But the painter is too busy trying to
to listen.
It tries to run
and the painter keeps on congealing its motions,
defining nothing to capture everything.
[This is my edit of the poem, if anyone happens to check it over :P]
Cubism
It cranes its face, this
subjective entity,
and tries to break its brush-slacked
cage.
Its form cracks as
the paint strokes –
painfully stroking each
captive limb –
enclose.
It tries to
stride, apart and
away, but its legs just
trip
over jagged stints of
instants.
It curses the
painter and spits with a
multi-sharded voice
that slaps against the
still-shot snaps of
jutted contours cutting out its
exoskeletal structure –
You can’t catch time!
But the painter is too
caught up trying to
to listen.
It is instead stabbed
in its spot like an
insect pin-stuck in a
collective box.
It tries to sprint for
escape
but its shark-straight line is
interrupted as
the painter keeps on
splicing
its progress, defining
nothing to capture everything.
It turns its face, this dimensional being,
and tries to escape its oil encasements.
The paint strokes – painfully stroking each captured limb – enclose.
It tries to walk down and away but its legs trip
over its movements.
It curses the painter and shouts with a multi-faceted voice
that echoes in the still-framed reverberations blurring its form,
You can’t catch time!
But the painter is too busy trying to
to listen.
It tries to run
and the painter keeps on congealing its motions,
defining nothing to capture everything.
[This is my edit of the poem, if anyone happens to check it over :P]
Cubism
It cranes its face, this
subjective entity,
and tries to break its brush-slacked
cage.
Its form cracks as
the paint strokes –
painfully stroking each
captive limb –
enclose.
It tries to
stride, apart and
away, but its legs just
trip
over jagged stints of
instants.
It curses the
painter and spits with a
multi-sharded voice
that slaps against the
still-shot snaps of
jutted contours cutting out its
exoskeletal structure –
You can’t catch time!
But the painter is too
caught up trying to
to listen.
It is instead stabbed
in its spot like an
insect pin-stuck in a
collective box.
It tries to sprint for
escape
but its shark-straight line is
interrupted as
the painter keeps on
splicing
its progress, defining
nothing to capture everything.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Cassandra
and then I died (murdered I perhaps should
add — by that controlling bitch, treacherous
wife of Agamemnon, who, if he could
would have killed me too): the end. The chorus
did not moan, not once, not one cry uttered.
They had lamented me enough alive.
Now let them tear out their hair for others —
but I doubt they shall find more woe, though five
hundred wretched virgins pass through the hall
of tragedy.
I commence my story
from the start, from princess of Troy, my fall
to accurséd tramp. We are all wary
of that word, "cursed", here in the afterlife —
moping souls, never forgetful, bloodless
and ever regretful. Yet truly in strife
with a god my toils began. A caress —
though it promised much more than a simple,
harmless stroke — from Pheobus Apollo who
descended upon me in the temple
one night. In the form of a snake he flew,
or rather slid, to my ear and whispered
such things I could never recount. Had I
known, then, what his tempting augured
I would have spread my legs, not been so shy.
Alas! Poor frightened priestess that I was!
Alas! Those sick gods who always meddle
with mortals! The vicious lisps, without pause,
numbed my ears with truths until the dreadful
ax cut me down, at last, chopped me into meat.
All because I barred the way to my womb
the divinity, in the passion's heat,
impregnated me with prophecies. Doom
I foresaw for my beloved Troy, and
dear Hector's corpse — I was first to see it,
and the Greeks' trick: to leave behind on land
that ill-boding horse. No one would admit
that I had divined verily, therein
lay the twist of the deity, that no one
should believe me. So my chagrin
I shared only with the god of the sun.
The rest of my life was a tangle of
ruthless men and unheard cries of anguish.
Ajax the lesser raped me first. So rough
was he — his fat member in me, brandished
like a club, strong fingers strangling my hair —
I bled for three days. Then Agamemnon
took me as his concubine. I dared
not tell him of his fate. He walked upon
those tapestries unknowingly. I knew,
of course, and seeing him tread the purple
I went mad with knowing, and to
my fate strode, head bowed like a disciple —
Saturday, March 27, 2010
cliffs and skiffs
I’m crashing upon your walls over and over
Like the ceaseless ocean waves
I’m being swept away and swept back
By the currents of conversations
And the undertow of insecurity
Your walls are as unyielding
As the cold cold stone
These rock faces are made of
Your gaze just as impenetrable
(face just as unreadable)
As these granite crags
You are as out of my reach as
The top of these cliffs
Who never feel the salty sea spray
I’m crashing and falling
And pulling away
Pulling together my strength
for another attempt (attack)
And one day I’ll bring some of you back
Down with me into the churning waters
Back with me out to sea
(please forgive me another poem that has to do with sea imagery I really can't help it...)
Like the ceaseless ocean waves
I’m being swept away and swept back
By the currents of conversations
And the undertow of insecurity
Your walls are as unyielding
As the cold cold stone
These rock faces are made of
Your gaze just as impenetrable
(face just as unreadable)
As these granite crags
You are as out of my reach as
The top of these cliffs
Who never feel the salty sea spray
I’m crashing and falling
And pulling away
Pulling together my strength
for another attempt (attack)
And one day I’ll bring some of you back
Down with me into the churning waters
Back with me out to sea
(please forgive me another poem that has to do with sea imagery I really can't help it...)
Mental Landmines Strategically Placed, Yet Sidestepped Due to The Kind Nature of My Heart
I'm trying my best to fight fair,
But I've resorted to digging into your mind,
Using the spoon you stir your soup with
To pull out chunks of the fears that restrict you.
But now I must find a way
To remind you that some fears are
Necessary and right
And fix the parts that I scrambled.
I am an amateur, but I seem to have
Reached in deep enough
To have an effect.
Go forth, my dear,
Be brave and shake hands with fear.
But I've resorted to digging into your mind,
Using the spoon you stir your soup with
To pull out chunks of the fears that restrict you.
But now I must find a way
To remind you that some fears are
Necessary and right
And fix the parts that I scrambled.
I am an amateur, but I seem to have
Reached in deep enough
To have an effect.
Go forth, my dear,
Be brave and shake hands with fear.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Infection through Desertion
So this is a compilation of two poems that meshed well together, something old and something new.
First came the silence
Pure and deafening in it's gratefulness
No more, No more
Broken words Echoing
creating havoc from their own lies
A cycle, deadly in it's precision
a damn unbreakable cycle.
Sleepless nights filled with languid tears
Dreamless moments stolen from memory
Echoing images of silent suffering
terminating with blanketed fears
As scattered pieces of a broken courage
lie in a field of hallucinations.
Layers stripped away
leaving madness in it's wake
Tricking those who once believed
sensing those who no longer care
Silence brought in this disease
leaving behind a queer tranquility
No more dreams, imagination lost
Fallen, broken, vanished.
Disease became my hope
Inflicting contagious ideas
leading to a fatal action
concluded with a caged demise.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Simply:
I find it an exercise in style
To contemplate you for a while
To map out inexorably
The way your hair falls perfectly
The way there’s so much subtlety
In corners of your smile
I think of every curl and fold
Of all the shadows soft and bold
I cast an artist’s measured eye
So that I cannot wonder why
It seems so purposeless to try
To sketch a one so cold
I find it an exercise in style
To rhyme you and your crooked smile
To stretch out my creative limb
To try a new thing on a whim
To through my murky feelings swim
And let my words beguile
I write on aspects of your face
Of things said that I would erase
In ways that make me cock my head
And struggle for a proper thread
Of words that only end up dead
When I run out of space
I find it an exercise in style
To drama in my head a while
To be playwright and actor too
To smile as I think of you
And change a conversation’s hue
Play on Miss Fortune’s smile
It polishes my acting skill
Allows me to do what I will
And allows decisions in advance
So I can keep this song and dance
Act like your gaze is not a lance
Whose in-heart punctures thrill
Dress rehearsal week = no time for new stuff. I did, however, have time to edit one of my few attempts at poetry. I like rhyme and meter. I am sorry if you don't.
To contemplate you for a while
To map out inexorably
The way your hair falls perfectly
The way there’s so much subtlety
In corners of your smile
I think of every curl and fold
Of all the shadows soft and bold
I cast an artist’s measured eye
So that I cannot wonder why
It seems so purposeless to try
To sketch a one so cold
I find it an exercise in style
To rhyme you and your crooked smile
To stretch out my creative limb
To try a new thing on a whim
To through my murky feelings swim
And let my words beguile
I write on aspects of your face
Of things said that I would erase
In ways that make me cock my head
And struggle for a proper thread
Of words that only end up dead
When I run out of space
I find it an exercise in style
To drama in my head a while
To be playwright and actor too
To smile as I think of you
And change a conversation’s hue
Play on Miss Fortune’s smile
It polishes my acting skill
Allows me to do what I will
And allows decisions in advance
So I can keep this song and dance
Act like your gaze is not a lance
Whose in-heart punctures thrill
Dress rehearsal week = no time for new stuff. I did, however, have time to edit one of my few attempts at poetry. I like rhyme and meter. I am sorry if you don't.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Letter
This has been, as they say, a fucking terrible week.
With that, I bring you half-baked, unedited crap! Because if I can't be an example, I may as well be a horrible warning.
know, reader:
every time I carve through the page
to reach your eyes,
I do not aim.
I have not isolated parts
of your anatomy
to pluck out and
turn over in my hand;
I will not be the surgeon
and make my poetry an art
of dissecting the immediate
and observably real.
I do not speak to your ears.
I do not write well
or, indeed, prettily.
I do not reach, I grab.
I do not cauterize, I burn.
I do not say, I shout
far across
arboreal distances
to send hearts flying
like a thousand frightened birds
into a sky I have thrown up
like a tent--no,
not to keep you from starlight
but to show you the
undissected world above.
With that, I bring you half-baked, unedited crap! Because if I can't be an example, I may as well be a horrible warning.
know, reader:
every time I carve through the page
to reach your eyes,
I do not aim.
I have not isolated parts
of your anatomy
to pluck out and
turn over in my hand;
I will not be the surgeon
and make my poetry an art
of dissecting the immediate
and observably real.
I do not speak to your ears.
I do not write well
or, indeed, prettily.
I do not reach, I grab.
I do not cauterize, I burn.
I do not say, I shout
far across
arboreal distances
to send hearts flying
like a thousand frightened birds
into a sky I have thrown up
like a tent--no,
not to keep you from starlight
but to show you the
undissected world above.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Sporadic Flashbacks
The snow is tumbling down desolate sky in Montreal, latching onto my black overcoat, and I stare at her runny, red nose and it is vibrant and beautiful. And I am nervous and cold with her body under my armpit, embedding herself into me. I chew on the inside of my mouth, biting off pieces of dead skin on my inner left cheek as they latch onto my tongue like leftover bread stuck in my teeth after rubbing incessantly at it with my tongue. I subtlety rub my index against my tongue, pretending to blow warm breaths into my hand, and the dead skin latches on it. I flick the fleck onto the snow.
That was then and now is now, and now I am walking down a street and the air is salt drenched, digging into my lungs and clearing out the leftover nicotine. Old Orchard Beach, Maine. The hotels spread across the ironically titled Canada street, boasting fluttering American, Quebec and Canadian flags. Why even bother with sovereignty when you can drive six hours down south of the border and travel to the french-american invaded colony of Old Orchard Beach. The colonists being mostly above the age of sixty. Even the store-owners are expected to speak french, and it is the only summer vacation spot in the States where french can be seen as the main language during the summer. I have been coerced here the past four years with family for, one month subtracted from my summer vacation.
Perfume lingers in the salty air.
I have had enough of associating ex-girlfriends with their perfume odour, because her vile smell reminds me of that easy girl I went out with in grade seven who gave me head every day and cheated on me every second day. She depresses me.
I walk past the fried dough bakery, among the mortally obese.
It’s a sad thing to think about, what I am thinking about. That every lived experience before this moment is now dead only to be remembered temporarily until forgotten and then death. This motion of strained muscles among the senile, who are in desperate need of a gerontologist is merely a soon to be flash back.
It’s a beautiful day for a parade on an intersecting diner road in a desert. Too bad I am stuck among bulbous males fishing on the beach next to young children. Safety precautions are merely suggestions, after all.
Cracked leather jackets and cigarette packs remind me of my youth, as I go through the hand-me down clothes passed on from my cousin in the duffel bag on the beach. I’d be at my cousins house every weekend and he’d tell me all about his gallivanting, his going out and drinking, his meeting hot blonde girls and taking them back home, his sneaking them through his window which luckily was connected to the balcony in the front of the house. He’d tell me how he’d french kiss them by sticking his tongue in their mouths and then squeeze their breasts. I pretended to act disgusted, embarrassed, but something sparked, a new found knowledge. I began to notice breasts, the girls who were unlucky enough to have them starting to grow early and getting all the attention from older boys. My cousin was the peak of cool.
I haven’t seen him for seven years.
I was driving around downtown one night, back home, and wandering all about the infamous deals going down the alleyways I crossed and watched the drunk girls hug the drunk boys. I walked into a bar on the main and there he is, but he is old, ravaged. He is fat and drunk, greasy. Disgusting. Yelling at the young girls as they laugh at him walking by him. Six empty beer glasses in front of him, haggling the bar-maid for another.
He is greasy.
"You're finished for the night, bud."
"I'm finished!"
Now is now and I am on the beach and I am alone and I am lost within my mind while the sun sets, dies, which emphatically symbolizes the death of something or other in most classical literature.
That was then and now is now, and now I am walking down a street and the air is salt drenched, digging into my lungs and clearing out the leftover nicotine. Old Orchard Beach, Maine. The hotels spread across the ironically titled Canada street, boasting fluttering American, Quebec and Canadian flags. Why even bother with sovereignty when you can drive six hours down south of the border and travel to the french-american invaded colony of Old Orchard Beach. The colonists being mostly above the age of sixty. Even the store-owners are expected to speak french, and it is the only summer vacation spot in the States where french can be seen as the main language during the summer. I have been coerced here the past four years with family for, one month subtracted from my summer vacation.
Perfume lingers in the salty air.
I have had enough of associating ex-girlfriends with their perfume odour, because her vile smell reminds me of that easy girl I went out with in grade seven who gave me head every day and cheated on me every second day. She depresses me.
I walk past the fried dough bakery, among the mortally obese.
It’s a sad thing to think about, what I am thinking about. That every lived experience before this moment is now dead only to be remembered temporarily until forgotten and then death. This motion of strained muscles among the senile, who are in desperate need of a gerontologist is merely a soon to be flash back.
It’s a beautiful day for a parade on an intersecting diner road in a desert. Too bad I am stuck among bulbous males fishing on the beach next to young children. Safety precautions are merely suggestions, after all.
Cracked leather jackets and cigarette packs remind me of my youth, as I go through the hand-me down clothes passed on from my cousin in the duffel bag on the beach. I’d be at my cousins house every weekend and he’d tell me all about his gallivanting, his going out and drinking, his meeting hot blonde girls and taking them back home, his sneaking them through his window which luckily was connected to the balcony in the front of the house. He’d tell me how he’d french kiss them by sticking his tongue in their mouths and then squeeze their breasts. I pretended to act disgusted, embarrassed, but something sparked, a new found knowledge. I began to notice breasts, the girls who were unlucky enough to have them starting to grow early and getting all the attention from older boys. My cousin was the peak of cool.
I haven’t seen him for seven years.
I was driving around downtown one night, back home, and wandering all about the infamous deals going down the alleyways I crossed and watched the drunk girls hug the drunk boys. I walked into a bar on the main and there he is, but he is old, ravaged. He is fat and drunk, greasy. Disgusting. Yelling at the young girls as they laugh at him walking by him. Six empty beer glasses in front of him, haggling the bar-maid for another.
He is greasy.
"You're finished for the night, bud."
"I'm finished!"
Now is now and I am on the beach and I am alone and I am lost within my mind while the sun sets, dies, which emphatically symbolizes the death of something or other in most classical literature.
The Plexiglass Girl With A Rewired Mind
[So this is something a bit different. I don't know how well it works as a coherent piece so I'd really like some input. Particularly on the end - should I keep it the way it is or lose the last paragraph? Please please please comment! I know we're all busy, but I'd really appreciate it :)!]
I can’t stress enough how terribly but wonderfully long this endeavored moment took, so that I could find myself within this carousel world. It took half the drugs known to man to get me to this state, but it was worth the burning.
With a wide smile and watermelon gums, I sit here and look at things as if they were the gilded butterflies that sat upon my shoulder and wept as my time in this life ticked and tocked away across the endless chasm of the mind’s void. Whatever that means.
It is important to mention that I didn’t feel my smile. I saw it was there, reflected like a fraction of a human being in the straight smart mirrors standing tall beside my armchair. I don’t reflect, I refract. I break these meaningful moments into a more coherent state so that I can understand them, but even then they start to glow and reach a different part of my brain, the part that has more to do with feeling than thinking.
My hands are starting to shake, which makes the blood start to leak down my fingers in thick rivulets, making maps of the directions I find around my life and never choose to follow. I stare and stare, trying to decode what each of these defined strokes of blood wetting and sinking into my skin are, not even attempting to remember how they got there in the first place, not even registering the sting-sting-zing of the throbbing cut in the crotch between two of my fingers, which is evidently the cause of all the sticky red liquid on my hands. Still can’t remember how it got there.
My body won’t respond to the pain. Which is wise. I never knew my body to be so wise as now. My limbs sit as amoeba creatures, the fingers a draping bunch of bananas reaching over my rainbow-arc knees. My chest rises and falls, falls, falls, falls, expands with new air and then falls falls falls falls….expands, burns, burns, itches, coughing.
In the violent fit of cough-laughter that follows, liquid begins to make its steaming way onto my face from behind my squeezing eyelids. On the desert of my cheekbones my tears and sweat evaporate into the hot blown suns of the ceiling lamps. My tears are the only thing that seem to be reacting to my brain. My brain is screaming, leaking, trying to flee. But not really. It’s not trying hard enough. I close my eyes and imagine the vultures of my face’s desert dipping from the sky in black jagged strikes to pick at the white and gray matter obviously pulsing away within my skull in such a useless manner. If only the world could be so helpful that I could have real vultures.
When I open my eyes again, my vision is straddled by the brightest lovemaking between a kaleidoscope and a meteor that there’s ever been. It makes me exclaim aloud my happiness and rumbling desire for sensation.
Then I look around and see that the room is absolutely empty. The walls seem to bend inwards as a tent or a hug or a net to catch stars in, but one that never fulfills the desired intention. I run my nails up the skin of my arms and look down, unable to bear looking at the vast expanse of ceiling that is now shimmying upwards and out to so many places that I never will see. I feel more stings in my eyes; swords, arrows, syringes shot chock full of champagne dreams. Diamonds fall from my face and onto my knees. They collect and reflect the emptiness of the room with all their shard sharp prisms. I gather them into my hands and swallow them because I can’t bear to look at loneliness anymore.
* * *
We all stared at her, as we came down from our highs, hypnotized by the pathos induced by watching her drink her own tears. I moved closer to her and wrapped my arms around her shoulders, burying my stubble-almost-beard into the crook of her neck. She just kept staring straight ahead, bones compressing, almost shrinking inside the loop of my body. I hoped she’d come back soon, and breathed in some deep burning breaths while I waited.
I can’t stress enough how terribly but wonderfully long this endeavored moment took, so that I could find myself within this carousel world. It took half the drugs known to man to get me to this state, but it was worth the burning.
With a wide smile and watermelon gums, I sit here and look at things as if they were the gilded butterflies that sat upon my shoulder and wept as my time in this life ticked and tocked away across the endless chasm of the mind’s void. Whatever that means.
It is important to mention that I didn’t feel my smile. I saw it was there, reflected like a fraction of a human being in the straight smart mirrors standing tall beside my armchair. I don’t reflect, I refract. I break these meaningful moments into a more coherent state so that I can understand them, but even then they start to glow and reach a different part of my brain, the part that has more to do with feeling than thinking.
My hands are starting to shake, which makes the blood start to leak down my fingers in thick rivulets, making maps of the directions I find around my life and never choose to follow. I stare and stare, trying to decode what each of these defined strokes of blood wetting and sinking into my skin are, not even attempting to remember how they got there in the first place, not even registering the sting-sting-zing of the throbbing cut in the crotch between two of my fingers, which is evidently the cause of all the sticky red liquid on my hands. Still can’t remember how it got there.
My body won’t respond to the pain. Which is wise. I never knew my body to be so wise as now. My limbs sit as amoeba creatures, the fingers a draping bunch of bananas reaching over my rainbow-arc knees. My chest rises and falls, falls, falls, falls, expands with new air and then falls falls falls falls….expands, burns, burns, itches, coughing.
In the violent fit of cough-laughter that follows, liquid begins to make its steaming way onto my face from behind my squeezing eyelids. On the desert of my cheekbones my tears and sweat evaporate into the hot blown suns of the ceiling lamps. My tears are the only thing that seem to be reacting to my brain. My brain is screaming, leaking, trying to flee. But not really. It’s not trying hard enough. I close my eyes and imagine the vultures of my face’s desert dipping from the sky in black jagged strikes to pick at the white and gray matter obviously pulsing away within my skull in such a useless manner. If only the world could be so helpful that I could have real vultures.
When I open my eyes again, my vision is straddled by the brightest lovemaking between a kaleidoscope and a meteor that there’s ever been. It makes me exclaim aloud my happiness and rumbling desire for sensation.
Then I look around and see that the room is absolutely empty. The walls seem to bend inwards as a tent or a hug or a net to catch stars in, but one that never fulfills the desired intention. I run my nails up the skin of my arms and look down, unable to bear looking at the vast expanse of ceiling that is now shimmying upwards and out to so many places that I never will see. I feel more stings in my eyes; swords, arrows, syringes shot chock full of champagne dreams. Diamonds fall from my face and onto my knees. They collect and reflect the emptiness of the room with all their shard sharp prisms. I gather them into my hands and swallow them because I can’t bear to look at loneliness anymore.
* * *
We all stared at her, as we came down from our highs, hypnotized by the pathos induced by watching her drink her own tears. I moved closer to her and wrapped my arms around her shoulders, burying my stubble-almost-beard into the crook of her neck. She just kept staring straight ahead, bones compressing, almost shrinking inside the loop of my body. I hoped she’d come back soon, and breathed in some deep burning breaths while I waited.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
The Bookstore on an Island (part 2 of 2)
A recent discovery in a Scottish antiquarian bookstore has allowed modern scholars to study the goings on at Leed’s Books in more detail. A ledger, written in Mr. Leed’s own careful handwriting, has been found. It enumerates in long lists the books (inscribed with the author, edition, year of publication, and notes on the quality) with their prices and dates of sale or acquisition, over the course of two years. From this document, we know that a surprisingly large array of titles that passed through the bookstore, and how quickly titles often found their way onto the shelves and were sold off again. Among the titles Leed’s Books acquired or sold over the course of those two years are: two Gutenberg bibles; one of the Shakespeare folios, in excellent quality; a fragment of the Magna Carta; four first editions, two of them signed, one with annotations by Virginia Woolf, of Joyce’s Ulysses (each of these were never present on the shelves for more than three months, being sold off rather quickly, which is surprising when we consider the pristine signed copy Cathach Books, in Dublin, has had for the last 50 odd years, and has never been able to sell); first, signed editions of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Frankenstein, The Sun Also Rises, Moby Dick, Gulliver’s Travels, and The Hobbit; 36 pages from the second edition of The Canterbury Tales, illustrated with woodcuts by William Caxton; first editions of Milton’s Paradise Lost and Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius; Macchiavelli’s copy of Plato; Milton’s copy of the Bible; Byron’s copy of The Rape of the Lock; Joyce’s copy of the Odyssey; Hitler’s personal, annotated copy of Nietzche’s Beyond Good and Evil; Pound’s copy of the Divina Commedia; Eliot’s copy of Donne…
This ledger is an important find for book historians, and allows a glimpse at how Leed managed his business. If there was no apparent organization to the books throughout the store, Mr. Leed was extremely meticulous in keeping track of which books entered and left the premise, as well as keeping careful notes on the pricing and quality of his prodyct. Indeed, Mr. Leed seems to have had a special talent for pricing rare books, which is particularly difficult for bookstores specialized in the old and rare, since they can’t rely on wealthy auctioneers to fight over the books and fix the prices through competition. However, always satisfying the customer with just prices considerably diminished profits, but may have helped in securing the reputation of the store, and make up for its geographical inaccessibility. All exterior accounts of agents and patrons visiting Leed’s Books agree on how knowledgeable and helpful Mr. Leed was. He also seemed to do absolutely everything in the store, from answering the phone (which rang almost constantly, calls coming in from around the world) to preparing tea or lemonade for customers who were browsing for a long time.
Sometime at the turn of the century, Leed’s books ceased to be a popular bibliophilic destination and slipped into oblivion. The 2000’s, characterized by a general disinterest in rare and antique books, a diminution in the circulating of rare materials (most old books having been acquired by libraries, museums, and public collections), and the economic crisis that marked the period, made for tough times throughout the rare and antique books industry. It was the end for Leed’s Books. It remains unclear exactly when the bookstore closed and where the remaining product, which must have been quite substantial in both quality and quantity, went. The store must have started with Mr. Leed owning a few rare books, selling them, and obtaining others in exchange, until his home came to be filled with books. Perhaps in the same way he started selling off his books without acquiring anything new, until he had nothing left to sell.
By 2010, people had stopped going to Leed’s Books altogether, until a large London auction house, finding a reference to the strange bookstore on an island in one of their files, sent an agent to investigate, hoping they could profit from some kind of liquidation sale. The agent dispatched to Tiga found the old colonial house deserted, in terrible condition, and apparently empty. A simple “closed” sign had been nailed on the front door, indefinitely. As for Mr. Leed himself, he had very probably left the island by this time, never to be seen again in the book world.
Despite the decrease in the interest for actual ink-and-paper books in the last decades and the little impact Leed’s Books has actually had on more popular forms of book culture and literary dissemination, it is important that this most exceptional institution not be forgotten. It should remain in the collective imagination as a last haven, symbol of an era in literature, and a beacon of hope for book-lovers, past, present, and future. Indeed, the fantastic aura, the beauty of the place on a cultural level, demands that it be remembered.
One must imagine a shipwrecked person – shipwrecks were a recurring problem in the South Pacific until the end of the 20th century – washed up on the shores of what he expects to be a deserted island. One must try to understand and admire the surprise, the pleasure, the sense of awe brought on by the incredible power of art and old things, as this salt-caked, exhausted survivor makes his way up the beach and comes face to face with the elegant colonial front with its large block letters: “Leed’s Books”. Imagine his delight as he enters the bookshop, as he is greeted by the gentle smile of Mr. Leed, offered a cold glass of lemonade, and is allowed to browse for a few hours in absolute safety and peace.
Existence of Words
I've had no time to post on my day (Thursday) this week nor yesterday, so today will have to do. This is a piece I wrote last week, except expanded as per Marta's request.
Existence of Words,
slipping through sand
As the trees of silk sway,
within the moist air.
Sounds echo,
carried out to uninvolved ears,
to whom the noise sounds like music.
A tuneless orchestra sits within the inner ear canal
waiting for a cue.
Dawn arises as music lifts itself up
driven by a conductor; miniscule in form
broken notes discarded,
left aside to be taken away,
to a place full of forgotten words,
undisruptive words.
Broken notes linger, creating distress.
Sun has risen, music stopped,
words are all that is left.
Sufferin' Sassafras! (Sylvester and Tweety reference, anyone?)
Fun news. I just headlined a show for the first time. By Polar, This Order and The Panda Attack! It was awesome. Anyway, here's my post. It's not the greatest and I'm basically writing as I go, tonight. No edits. Stream of Mike.
The Swingset Moved an Inch When He Swung Backward. Soon, He Will Let Go and Rocket to The Moon. At Least, That's The Plan...
When are you going to understand that I want loyalty and devotion?
"Where will you be when things go wrong?"
Will you be by my side?
Because I sure as hell will be by yours,
If we come to that agreement.
You say it needs to be more than that.
I think we are more than that.
You call me an attention whore,
I call you by your first name,
And I see nothing wrong with it.
I can be certain to a degree
That perfection is an ideal
That can not be attained
And that everyone settles.
I am a settler, but I ask you to join me
In this yet researched and discovered
Territory.
You call me a distraction
I call you by your full name
You're free to go. Why do you stay?
Bonus post:
The Problem of Evil (Stolen)
It's only natural for us to find excuses.
Even God needed a scapegoat.
But I think it's time I give up on them
And remain honest.
I like you because I can be honest
And you don't run.
"Your happiness doesn't depend on people," they say
But you understand that they're wrong.
Because, either way you put it,
My happiness lies within people
And it's my job to find it
I am a leech.
I'll stick around and make you happy in return,
But my happiness belongs to someone else.
The Swingset Moved an Inch When He Swung Backward. Soon, He Will Let Go and Rocket to The Moon. At Least, That's The Plan...
When are you going to understand that I want loyalty and devotion?
"Where will you be when things go wrong?"
Will you be by my side?
Because I sure as hell will be by yours,
If we come to that agreement.
You say it needs to be more than that.
I think we are more than that.
You call me an attention whore,
I call you by your first name,
And I see nothing wrong with it.
I can be certain to a degree
That perfection is an ideal
That can not be attained
And that everyone settles.
I am a settler, but I ask you to join me
In this yet researched and discovered
Territory.
You call me a distraction
I call you by your full name
You're free to go. Why do you stay?
Bonus post:
The Problem of Evil (Stolen)
It's only natural for us to find excuses.
Even God needed a scapegoat.
But I think it's time I give up on them
And remain honest.
I like you because I can be honest
And you don't run.
"Your happiness doesn't depend on people," they say
But you understand that they're wrong.
Because, either way you put it,
My happiness lies within people
And it's my job to find it
I am a leech.
I'll stick around and make you happy in return,
But my happiness belongs to someone else.
Friday, March 19, 2010
that girl
I’m not that girl
even if you say I am
I’m not defined
by any of your words
or any of your lies
I’m not that girl
you seem to believe I am
I don’t know who you met
or when you met her
but it wasn’t me
I’m not that girl
you won’t see me crying
not one to run home and hide
I fight my own battles and
I win every time
even if you say I am
I’m not defined
by any of your words
or any of your lies
I’m not that girl
you seem to believe I am
I don’t know who you met
or when you met her
but it wasn’t me
I’m not that girl
you won’t see me crying
not one to run home and hide
I fight my own battles and
I win every time
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Metaphors
Soren sits down next to me at Hatter’s one night, although I don’t know his name at that point, orders a pitcher of Rickard’s Dark, offers me a glass, and starts to talk.
“I wanna tell you something, Anthony,” he begins, punctuating his sentence with a deft pouring of another glass. The head on his beer is the perfect size, and we scrutinize it for a while in silence as the rest of the bar shrieks and chuckles around us. I don’t tell him that he’s mistaken me for someone else - I’m not entirely sober, and it’s quite clear that the beer he’s gulping with a speed that makes my stomach turn is not his first of the night, and mistaken identity seems such a pointless accusation for two people who probably won’t remember too many details of this night.
I poke him a little, right beneath his rib cage, at the intersection of two lines of his plaid, and he starts from his contemplation, takes a long pull, licks the foam from the corner of his mouth, and begins again.
“Something I wanna tell you, Anthony. About life.” I’m only half listening, the remainder of my functioning brain scanning for a waitress to bring me a tequila shot, but I nod for him to continue all the same. “Life is a flirt, a tease – life isn’t a bitch, she’s a whore.”
I’ve found the waitress and am gesticulating with what my inebriated self considers to be subtle grace, and his words don’t alter my determination to perpetuate the pleasant slowness of everything I’m doing and thinking. He’s insistent, though.
“Have you ever had that, a woman who you thought was gonna go for you – or at least go down on you – and it turns out that she already has a boyfriend or she thinks of you like a brother or she’s into your best friend? Life is exactly like that. Kisses you with her hands in your hair then turns around and makes you make a list of all the assholes she’d have a chance with.”
The waitress finally sees my pointed stare and mad waving and saunters over. Soren takes the rest of his beer in an extended gulp and pours himself another, spilling a bit on the table. He stares at the puddle mournfully as I order two tequilas and watch her walk away.
“I know the feeling,” I say to him. Someone crashes into us, apologizes with flushed, teenage cheeks – I don’t understand how anyone could mistake her for eighteen – and pulls herself back onto what passes for a dance floor here. We stare at her as she inserts herself into the middle of a group of equally drunk, equally young boys; they fumble awkwardly to find the beat as the song changes.
We turn back to each other when my tequila arrives, and though I offer him one, Soren declines. He does buy another pitcher while I’m searching through my change for a tip, and when our waitress leaves again, he claps my shoulder in a conspiratorial way and leans into me.
“The chick who cuddles up next to you and dances with you and always calls you the next day – the one who doesn’t seem to care that you told your best friend he couldn’t go for her? Who singlehandedly takes away everything you care about? You know her?”
“I know her,” I say. “I know her all too well.”
“Fuck. She gets around more than I thought,” he mutters as he raises his glass to his lips again, and I nod in miserable agreement before tossing back a shot and shoving the lemon wedge between my teeth.
I’m getting into his argument, and as he pays the waitress for his beer with a crumpled twenty, waiting for his change and almost forgetting to tip until she stares at him pointedly and clear her throat, I pick up where he left off. “She lulls you into a sense of security, doesn’t she? But she’s doing it to everyone at the same time, and she screws everyone eventually. Right, yeah! Definitely a whore. Looks really good when she’s treating you right, but she’s never actually giving you anything, not really – definitely not anything she’s not already giving to everyone else.”
The music kicks up to a screeching volume, and I can only see his lips move for a minute, until the DJ manages to turn the music down, and I have the chance to ask him to repeat himself. By then, he’s forgotten what he wanted to say, and we lapse into a comfortable silence.
A new crowd surges in around midnight, packing the place so tight that it’s hard to move. I’m glad I’m not the people on the pitifully small dance floor, who look like they’re trying to pick each other up, but aren’t succeeding very well: dance with one girl, you also dance with three others, your best friend, and a random guy you don’t even know. It’s like a lame sort of mosh pit, everyone jostling and bumping and getting into the music as best they can. I point this out to Soren and he laughs into his beer, scrutinizing the crowd to see if I’m right.
My buzz is slipping. I take my second shot.
As I bite into the lemon, wincing at the taste of the god-awful tequila they serve at this place, he sinks further into his chair, looking for all the world as if he’s hiding behind his empty pitcher. “She’s here,” he informs me, and my mind, swimming in an unpleasantly bitter tequila bath, wonders why I don’t see a towering goddess holding the threads of fate or something equally ridiculous.
“Who, life?” I wonder, looking up owlishly from my contemplation of my empty shot glasses.
“Life?” he responds, looking a little confused. “I was talking about Amy.”
“I wanna tell you something, Anthony,” he begins, punctuating his sentence with a deft pouring of another glass. The head on his beer is the perfect size, and we scrutinize it for a while in silence as the rest of the bar shrieks and chuckles around us. I don’t tell him that he’s mistaken me for someone else - I’m not entirely sober, and it’s quite clear that the beer he’s gulping with a speed that makes my stomach turn is not his first of the night, and mistaken identity seems such a pointless accusation for two people who probably won’t remember too many details of this night.
I poke him a little, right beneath his rib cage, at the intersection of two lines of his plaid, and he starts from his contemplation, takes a long pull, licks the foam from the corner of his mouth, and begins again.
“Something I wanna tell you, Anthony. About life.” I’m only half listening, the remainder of my functioning brain scanning for a waitress to bring me a tequila shot, but I nod for him to continue all the same. “Life is a flirt, a tease – life isn’t a bitch, she’s a whore.”
I’ve found the waitress and am gesticulating with what my inebriated self considers to be subtle grace, and his words don’t alter my determination to perpetuate the pleasant slowness of everything I’m doing and thinking. He’s insistent, though.
“Have you ever had that, a woman who you thought was gonna go for you – or at least go down on you – and it turns out that she already has a boyfriend or she thinks of you like a brother or she’s into your best friend? Life is exactly like that. Kisses you with her hands in your hair then turns around and makes you make a list of all the assholes she’d have a chance with.”
The waitress finally sees my pointed stare and mad waving and saunters over. Soren takes the rest of his beer in an extended gulp and pours himself another, spilling a bit on the table. He stares at the puddle mournfully as I order two tequilas and watch her walk away.
“I know the feeling,” I say to him. Someone crashes into us, apologizes with flushed, teenage cheeks – I don’t understand how anyone could mistake her for eighteen – and pulls herself back onto what passes for a dance floor here. We stare at her as she inserts herself into the middle of a group of equally drunk, equally young boys; they fumble awkwardly to find the beat as the song changes.
We turn back to each other when my tequila arrives, and though I offer him one, Soren declines. He does buy another pitcher while I’m searching through my change for a tip, and when our waitress leaves again, he claps my shoulder in a conspiratorial way and leans into me.
“The chick who cuddles up next to you and dances with you and always calls you the next day – the one who doesn’t seem to care that you told your best friend he couldn’t go for her? Who singlehandedly takes away everything you care about? You know her?”
“I know her,” I say. “I know her all too well.”
“Fuck. She gets around more than I thought,” he mutters as he raises his glass to his lips again, and I nod in miserable agreement before tossing back a shot and shoving the lemon wedge between my teeth.
I’m getting into his argument, and as he pays the waitress for his beer with a crumpled twenty, waiting for his change and almost forgetting to tip until she stares at him pointedly and clear her throat, I pick up where he left off. “She lulls you into a sense of security, doesn’t she? But she’s doing it to everyone at the same time, and she screws everyone eventually. Right, yeah! Definitely a whore. Looks really good when she’s treating you right, but she’s never actually giving you anything, not really – definitely not anything she’s not already giving to everyone else.”
The music kicks up to a screeching volume, and I can only see his lips move for a minute, until the DJ manages to turn the music down, and I have the chance to ask him to repeat himself. By then, he’s forgotten what he wanted to say, and we lapse into a comfortable silence.
A new crowd surges in around midnight, packing the place so tight that it’s hard to move. I’m glad I’m not the people on the pitifully small dance floor, who look like they’re trying to pick each other up, but aren’t succeeding very well: dance with one girl, you also dance with three others, your best friend, and a random guy you don’t even know. It’s like a lame sort of mosh pit, everyone jostling and bumping and getting into the music as best they can. I point this out to Soren and he laughs into his beer, scrutinizing the crowd to see if I’m right.
My buzz is slipping. I take my second shot.
As I bite into the lemon, wincing at the taste of the god-awful tequila they serve at this place, he sinks further into his chair, looking for all the world as if he’s hiding behind his empty pitcher. “She’s here,” he informs me, and my mind, swimming in an unpleasantly bitter tequila bath, wonders why I don’t see a towering goddess holding the threads of fate or something equally ridiculous.
“Who, life?” I wonder, looking up owlishly from my contemplation of my empty shot glasses.
“Life?” he responds, looking a little confused. “I was talking about Amy.”
A Heart Rapist's Limerick
I know it sounds bad - "Heart Rapist"
But I swear we're not cruel, we're the same as
Any other Joe Shmo
Who snorts coke on the go
Or spends time with French hoes
Or births pineapples
Or anthropomorphizes robos
Or speaks "sunshine." "stop." "oh."
To the beat of bongos
Or records awkward convos
With Cyrus Pekoe
Or gets high with his bros
With philosophic lingo
Between "hmm"s, "what?"s and "woah"s
Or whose oceans of woe
Tell old lovers, "No"
Whose dog chews corpse bones
And whose dark oracles
Speak to spirits below.
Clearly "rape" is not on our playlist.
Alternate ending:
Clearly "forcible non-consensual entry of a penis into a vagina (or rectum)" is not on our playlist.
But I swear we're not cruel, we're the same as
Any other Joe Shmo
Who snorts coke on the go
Or spends time with French hoes
Or births pineapples
Or anthropomorphizes robos
Or speaks "sunshine." "stop." "oh."
To the beat of bongos
Or records awkward convos
With Cyrus Pekoe
Or gets high with his bros
With philosophic lingo
Between "hmm"s, "what?"s and "woah"s
Or whose oceans of woe
Tell old lovers, "No"
Whose dog chews corpse bones
And whose dark oracles
Speak to spirits below.
Clearly "rape" is not on our playlist.
Alternate ending:
Clearly "forcible non-consensual entry of a penis into a vagina (or rectum)" is not on our playlist.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Tantramar
Marsh near our house.
There's no freezing here, no,
the seasons won't allow it because of
this -- can't you hear it?
This shift of sight from day to night
the sound of queen that bows to knight
two minds two hands two heads two hearts
tick-tock hello.
This shift of sight from day to night
the sound of queen that bows to knight
two minds two hands two heads two hearts
tick-tock hello.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Kali
[used bits and pieces of older prose to make a better story.. I think it is a better story]
I am sitting.
I am sitting in a cracked leather chair and a half-empty glass of Jack-coke rumbles and shakes on the low table in front of me. Kaylie is up on a platform near the speakers with some of her girl friends and Dave – her best friend. The sound emanating in the room is like a roaring chainsaw against granite accompanied by the rhythm of an accentuated bass drum. The carpeted floor, viscous from spilt alcohol, sticks to the bottom of my shoes as I watch two couples, who sit on each side of me, casually suck face. Both boys wear striped ties and both girls wearing low-cut dresses.
Everybody looks the same.
Kaylie is celebrating her birthday, already drunk and dancing, her loose top slipping and giving off glimpses of her red lace bra. Her cherry lips and dark piercing eyes entice the older men surrounding her, as they attempt grabs at her hands. She turns away every time. She bobs her head and shakes to the beat. She thinks everything is magical and spinning and infinite. She must in her state of euphoria.
I am sitting.
When things used to be good between us, it was momentary, somewhere in between the drunkenness – between the subtleties and lost glimpses of our glazed eyes. Now she dances up on a platform, her scantily-clad friends dance below her, yelling her name, telling her how great she is – how great she looks. She sees me and runs down, gives me a cigarette-tongued kiss and intertwines her hand into mine, but they just don’t seem to fit like they used to.
“Hey Kali,” I yell over the music.
“Don’t fucking call me that,” she spits.
I’d call her after the Hindu God of death at times; even tell her that she’ll be the death of me. I don’t know why.
“You having fun?”
“What? What’d you say?”
“I said…”
“Come dance!”
“...I’d rather not.”
“What!?”
“I said...”
She runs off, stumbling, and I am left behind. If it weren’t her birthday, I’d comment on how she’s making a fool of herself. She tells me I try to control her but I argue that I just want her to control herself. My reasons for loving her in the first place have come to famish us – her eccentricity’s have worn me thin. Now all I do is watch. I know it doesn’t make a difference to her – our relationship works best when we’re apart, it’s become a bad habit that seems impossible to break.
I am sitting.
Dave grabs Kaylie up on the platform and dances behind her, the stubble on his cheek caressing her freckled face. She rubs against him, her hips thrusting in time to the pounding music. Dave’s biceps wrap around Kaylie, the cuts of his muscles bulge in the flashing light, connecting to his broad shoulders. His blue eyes are sensual, voluminous. Something in the way he sways his hips makes it hard to look away, a sort of attraction followed by revulsion.
Katie jumps down from the platform and runs off to the bathroom, her girlfriends following her. Dave makes his way toward me, standing tall. I feel small in his presence.
“Hey, you’re Kaylie’s boyfriend right?”
“Yeah, Jake. Nice to meet you.”
“You too, man. You smoke?”
“No, not cigarettes.”
“Weed?”
“I ... yeah for sure.” I lie.
***
The alleyway behind the club is grimy, puddles a shaded grey under green industrial garbage containers. The smell is putrid, a mixture of piss and rotting vegetables.
We smoke a pinner and Dave inhales the last inch of the roach before cashing the joint. He lets the smoke out slowly through his sculpted nose, watching it disappear into the white glow of the moon. Everything begins to feel dim and hollow. Dave stretches out his arms above his head, his carved torso a giant in compared to my small frame. My body shakes in the cold, but he makes me feel secure.
“I don’t feel anything, is this normal? Hey, my shoulders feel heavy. Are you hungry?... Is this normal?” I ask him.
“Is this your first time, buddy?”
“No no no.”
His laugh booms over the echo of pounding music in the distance.
“Ah man, I’m so high,” he says, “I’ve been reading lately, like a lot philosophy and stuff. How nothing cannot be created from nothing, you know? Like how you have to consider the implications of the whole cause and effect principle, right? There has to be something… in order for there to be nothing... I mean something. You know what I’m saying?"
“Not a clue, bro.” Why did I use the word bro? I hate that word. Why do I even care?
“Philosophy! You know… the meaning of life! Existentialism, free will versus determinism.”
I have no idea what he is talking about, but he presents himself with a deep lion’s roar, an air of charming eloquence. I am dazed and Dave suddenly stretches his arms around my body, squeezing me close, and pushes his lips into mine. They are warm and soft, gliding calmly. He engulfs me. Frantically, I push him off.
There is a silence. He chuckles.
“I’m not fucking gay, Dave!”
The deepness of his laughter pulsates in my chest.
“Yeah, neither am I. That’s the great thing about it, isn’t it?”
He wraps me inside of him again, embracing, and this time I kiss him back. His breath is a musky taste of pot and mint. His hand descends toward my inner thigh, insistent.
***
I rush back inside, the cold clawing at my spine as I walk into the sweating humidity of the club. I look at myself in a mirror near the coat-check, and use my hand to comb back my dishevelled hair. My pale cheeks are scarlet from the frost and embarrassment. Yet, there is pride - a sense of fulfilment which I don’t understand.
Kaylie is sitting down in the club, her head bowed, face greenish.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t feel too good.”
“You drank too much didn’t you?”
“Don’t fucking patronize me...”
“...”
“You left me.”
“What?”
“You left me for all those fucking animals...” She points aimlessly. “You weren’t here to look over me, babe!”
“I...I’m sorry.”
“I drank too much... it’s my fucking birthday! Hey, do you think we still love each other?”
She is frail, sick. She leans onto me.
“You’re very drunk, Kay.”
She shoves her face into mine, her coarse cracked lips pushing hard. She intertwines her hand into mine, but they just don’t seem to fit like they used to.
I am sitting.
I am sitting in a cracked leather chair and a half-empty glass of Jack-coke rumbles and shakes on the low table in front of me. Kaylie is up on a platform near the speakers with some of her girl friends and Dave – her best friend. The sound emanating in the room is like a roaring chainsaw against granite accompanied by the rhythm of an accentuated bass drum. The carpeted floor, viscous from spilt alcohol, sticks to the bottom of my shoes as I watch two couples, who sit on each side of me, casually suck face. Both boys wear striped ties and both girls wearing low-cut dresses.
Everybody looks the same.
Kaylie is celebrating her birthday, already drunk and dancing, her loose top slipping and giving off glimpses of her red lace bra. Her cherry lips and dark piercing eyes entice the older men surrounding her, as they attempt grabs at her hands. She turns away every time. She bobs her head and shakes to the beat. She thinks everything is magical and spinning and infinite. She must in her state of euphoria.
I am sitting.
When things used to be good between us, it was momentary, somewhere in between the drunkenness – between the subtleties and lost glimpses of our glazed eyes. Now she dances up on a platform, her scantily-clad friends dance below her, yelling her name, telling her how great she is – how great she looks. She sees me and runs down, gives me a cigarette-tongued kiss and intertwines her hand into mine, but they just don’t seem to fit like they used to.
“Hey Kali,” I yell over the music.
“Don’t fucking call me that,” she spits.
I’d call her after the Hindu God of death at times; even tell her that she’ll be the death of me. I don’t know why.
“You having fun?”
“What? What’d you say?”
“I said…”
“Come dance!”
“...I’d rather not.”
“What!?”
“I said...”
She runs off, stumbling, and I am left behind. If it weren’t her birthday, I’d comment on how she’s making a fool of herself. She tells me I try to control her but I argue that I just want her to control herself. My reasons for loving her in the first place have come to famish us – her eccentricity’s have worn me thin. Now all I do is watch. I know it doesn’t make a difference to her – our relationship works best when we’re apart, it’s become a bad habit that seems impossible to break.
I am sitting.
Dave grabs Kaylie up on the platform and dances behind her, the stubble on his cheek caressing her freckled face. She rubs against him, her hips thrusting in time to the pounding music. Dave’s biceps wrap around Kaylie, the cuts of his muscles bulge in the flashing light, connecting to his broad shoulders. His blue eyes are sensual, voluminous. Something in the way he sways his hips makes it hard to look away, a sort of attraction followed by revulsion.
Katie jumps down from the platform and runs off to the bathroom, her girlfriends following her. Dave makes his way toward me, standing tall. I feel small in his presence.
“Hey, you’re Kaylie’s boyfriend right?”
“Yeah, Jake. Nice to meet you.”
“You too, man. You smoke?”
“No, not cigarettes.”
“Weed?”
“I ... yeah for sure.” I lie.
***
The alleyway behind the club is grimy, puddles a shaded grey under green industrial garbage containers. The smell is putrid, a mixture of piss and rotting vegetables.
We smoke a pinner and Dave inhales the last inch of the roach before cashing the joint. He lets the smoke out slowly through his sculpted nose, watching it disappear into the white glow of the moon. Everything begins to feel dim and hollow. Dave stretches out his arms above his head, his carved torso a giant in compared to my small frame. My body shakes in the cold, but he makes me feel secure.
“I don’t feel anything, is this normal? Hey, my shoulders feel heavy. Are you hungry?... Is this normal?” I ask him.
“Is this your first time, buddy?”
“No no no.”
His laugh booms over the echo of pounding music in the distance.
“Ah man, I’m so high,” he says, “I’ve been reading lately, like a lot philosophy and stuff. How nothing cannot be created from nothing, you know? Like how you have to consider the implications of the whole cause and effect principle, right? There has to be something… in order for there to be nothing... I mean something. You know what I’m saying?"
“Not a clue, bro.” Why did I use the word bro? I hate that word. Why do I even care?
“Philosophy! You know… the meaning of life! Existentialism, free will versus determinism.”
I have no idea what he is talking about, but he presents himself with a deep lion’s roar, an air of charming eloquence. I am dazed and Dave suddenly stretches his arms around my body, squeezing me close, and pushes his lips into mine. They are warm and soft, gliding calmly. He engulfs me. Frantically, I push him off.
There is a silence. He chuckles.
“I’m not fucking gay, Dave!”
The deepness of his laughter pulsates in my chest.
“Yeah, neither am I. That’s the great thing about it, isn’t it?”
He wraps me inside of him again, embracing, and this time I kiss him back. His breath is a musky taste of pot and mint. His hand descends toward my inner thigh, insistent.
***
I rush back inside, the cold clawing at my spine as I walk into the sweating humidity of the club. I look at myself in a mirror near the coat-check, and use my hand to comb back my dishevelled hair. My pale cheeks are scarlet from the frost and embarrassment. Yet, there is pride - a sense of fulfilment which I don’t understand.
Kaylie is sitting down in the club, her head bowed, face greenish.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t feel too good.”
“You drank too much didn’t you?”
“Don’t fucking patronize me...”
“...”
“You left me.”
“What?”
“You left me for all those fucking animals...” She points aimlessly. “You weren’t here to look over me, babe!”
“I...I’m sorry.”
“I drank too much... it’s my fucking birthday! Hey, do you think we still love each other?”
She is frail, sick. She leans onto me.
“You’re very drunk, Kay.”
She shoves her face into mine, her coarse cracked lips pushing hard. She intertwines her hand into mine, but they just don’t seem to fit like they used to.
Pinpoints
The teenager watched the fountain dribble over the sides like his baby sister drooling. Even in the rain they kept it running, as if by letting it stop the spirit of the playground would choke and die.
The teenager hated this park. And yet, he would stop and watch it for a few minutes after every school day ended. He didn’t know what it was exactly about it that made him hate it. Maybe it was the perpetual state of limbo it exuded, never fully upgraded from its sand-pits, exhibiting woodchips from its next trend, showing gravel from the one after that, and highlighting its hybrid rubber safety mats under the swings as the pinnacle of eclecticity. The children were always loud, too loud, their piecing screams stabbing through the sparse and skinny trees. They bothered him, and he wondered why he hadn’t noticed their obnoxiousness when he used to play here.
He didn’t know when he’d stopped playing in the playground.
He remembered the time when he’d cracked his head open on the hot summer slide, skin sticking and squeaking as he skinned his elbows and lost his balance, getting a face full of pebbles and blood. But it wasn’t then.
He remembered playing hopscotch with his older sister and trying to show off in front of her friends to be just as cool as them, then tripping over the soles of his cheap running shoes and humiliation staining his cheeks and neck. But it wasn’t then either.
He remembered going there the week after his tenth birthday (a little later than usual because his parents had let him go there alone after supper since he had hit the double digits in age), and running around, hyped up on sour candy, until he noticed the needle next to the limply breathing body. But, after all the shouting and sirens and promising that he’d never go back again, it was not then either.
The truth was, it had happened gradually. He’d hurry to get home and play the newest video game he’d rented instead of hurrying to the swings, not emerging from the TV until well after dark and the playground was locked. Then he’d started going with his friends to the depanneur after school where they’d buy a case of Root Beer and hang around the back choking on the cigarettes they’d stolen from their parents that morning. By the time he turned fourteen, he began using the park in similar ways to those that the girl he’d found had. It was when he was high one day that he realized he hadn’t used the monkey bars or seesaw in years. The realization had left him quiet; he sat on a newly installed green plastic bench and reminisced about the rotted out wooden one that used to be there in the days of his youth while his friends spat on the concrete and scarfed down Cheetos.
Ever since then, he would stop by the park after school and stare at squirrels and children, or, in the case of today, the spluttering rain coating the scene in a plastered sort of gloom. He wouldn’t stay long; he wasn’t even sad when he would turn away from the park. It merely perplexed him how it had happened, when it had stopped meaning something to him, what had changed in him that made it not matter now.
He would then walk slowly away, as if he wasn’t even sure what it was he was leaving behind.
The teenager hated this park. And yet, he would stop and watch it for a few minutes after every school day ended. He didn’t know what it was exactly about it that made him hate it. Maybe it was the perpetual state of limbo it exuded, never fully upgraded from its sand-pits, exhibiting woodchips from its next trend, showing gravel from the one after that, and highlighting its hybrid rubber safety mats under the swings as the pinnacle of eclecticity. The children were always loud, too loud, their piecing screams stabbing through the sparse and skinny trees. They bothered him, and he wondered why he hadn’t noticed their obnoxiousness when he used to play here.
He didn’t know when he’d stopped playing in the playground.
He remembered the time when he’d cracked his head open on the hot summer slide, skin sticking and squeaking as he skinned his elbows and lost his balance, getting a face full of pebbles and blood. But it wasn’t then.
He remembered playing hopscotch with his older sister and trying to show off in front of her friends to be just as cool as them, then tripping over the soles of his cheap running shoes and humiliation staining his cheeks and neck. But it wasn’t then either.
He remembered going there the week after his tenth birthday (a little later than usual because his parents had let him go there alone after supper since he had hit the double digits in age), and running around, hyped up on sour candy, until he noticed the needle next to the limply breathing body. But, after all the shouting and sirens and promising that he’d never go back again, it was not then either.
The truth was, it had happened gradually. He’d hurry to get home and play the newest video game he’d rented instead of hurrying to the swings, not emerging from the TV until well after dark and the playground was locked. Then he’d started going with his friends to the depanneur after school where they’d buy a case of Root Beer and hang around the back choking on the cigarettes they’d stolen from their parents that morning. By the time he turned fourteen, he began using the park in similar ways to those that the girl he’d found had. It was when he was high one day that he realized he hadn’t used the monkey bars or seesaw in years. The realization had left him quiet; he sat on a newly installed green plastic bench and reminisced about the rotted out wooden one that used to be there in the days of his youth while his friends spat on the concrete and scarfed down Cheetos.
Ever since then, he would stop by the park after school and stare at squirrels and children, or, in the case of today, the spluttering rain coating the scene in a plastered sort of gloom. He wouldn’t stay long; he wasn’t even sad when he would turn away from the park. It merely perplexed him how it had happened, when it had stopped meaning something to him, what had changed in him that made it not matter now.
He would then walk slowly away, as if he wasn’t even sure what it was he was leaving behind.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The Bookstore on an Island (part 1 of 2)
I got the idea for this piece from a recurring dream I had a few weeks ago. I find it turned out kind of Borgesian in its fantastical and allegorical vibe of fiction trying to look like non-fiction. Enjoy!
No one remembers, now, (if anyone has actually ever known, that is) exactly when or under what circumstances Leed’s Books opened and became so renowned. What is certain is that, by the mid-1970s, people had stopped asking questions about the place – it had already become something of an institution in the book world. All the booksellers, book buyers, books collectors, book historians, bibliophiles, bibliomaniacs, auctioneers, and antiquarians of the world knew of Leed’s Books as a place of exception, and indeed most of them had already been there at least once.
The one thing that was so problematic about Leed’s Books – but which, in a sense, also added to its fame – was its location. For reasons unknown, the proprietor, manager, and sole employee of Leed’s Books, Mr. Leed himself, had opened his bookshop on the tiny island of Tiga, in the South Pacific. Tiga, also known as Tokenod, is a six kilometer long island with an approximate population of 200 individuals, situated in the archipelago of New Caledonia, an overseas territory of France. Tiga is about 25km from the nearest island and its airport, which only flies to New Caledonia’s main island, Grande Terre. These geographical inconveniences made it rather difficult for book enthusiasts to reach the place at all (mind you, for reasons as obscure as the store’s location, Leed’s Books did not ship).
In any other place, a kind of book-tourism market would have developed around the store. However, by all accounts the New Caledonians were quite oblivious to the strange influx of outsiders wanting to reach the secluded bookstore, and made few efforts to facilitate transportation to Tiga. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some book collector had to swim to reach island. That people did go there at all, and for books, of all things, is perhaps the most remarkable of all aspects of the place. It is very difficult to imagine why anyone nowadays, when the demand for paper-and-ink books has diminished so much, would undergo all this trouble for an overpriced old volume. But people did indeed go. They flocked to that tiny island by the dozen, from Europe, the Americas, and Asia, buying and selling their rare books in the best store on the planet.
Richard Manney, the famous art collector, amassed an impressive rare books collection in the 1980s and had multiple transactions with Leed’s Books. Usually, he sent out agents to Tiga to secure what he was looking for, but he did travel to the island on one occasion to shop there in person and finally meet Mr. Leed. His experience was recorded in an interview he gave to the New York Times, in which he said: “There were so many people in the different rooms that it was quite hard to walk around and actually get to the books. I remember I was there for about a day and there were at least 30 other people, Americans, mostly, a few British men, and a well-known millionaire from the Middle East. The bookstore isn’t really big, and it was quite surprising to have so many people in that shop, seeing as how it’s on the other side of the world, and all. In the end I had to ask Leed himself for what I was looking for, which I think is what everyone does in the end. The place is filled with books, and there’s no apparent system of organization. So you go up to his little desk, hidden behind piles of books and papers, and ask him what your looking for and he goes off and finds it for you. He knows exactly what he has in stock and where everything is. I was also surprised by how young Mr. Leed was. Probably in his late 30s or early 40s, something like that. He was very nice, a bit shy, maybe.”
Leed’s Books was housed in a small colonial manor house, an elegant whitewashed building with large windows and a many-stepped and columned façade. Inside, the two floors were laid out like any colonial house with a large entrance and staircase, a kitchen, parlor, sitting room, dining room, breakfast room, study, and several bedrooms and bathrooms, except the building was filled with books. The walls were covered in bookcases and shelves, loaded with books, and similarly the tables, chairs, and mantelpieces held piles and piles of books, apparently stored haphazardly. Despite the want for a more traditional organization of the product, quality and quantity greatly accounted for the popularity of the bookstore. Over the years, many articles in magazines and newspapers recognized Leed’s Books as one of the top book havens in the world when it was still up and running.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
It's not enough...it never will be
It's not enough
what more can I give
when I’ve given
heart and soul and body.
what more can I lose
when I’ve lost all
shame and reason and sanity.
what else can I feel
(after love, scorned,)
but hate regret remorse.
what more can I say
I love you
I loved you
but I never had a chance
never had a choice…
It never will be
it never will be me
that you look at
with those sea-blue eyes
it never will be enough
just
being friends
it never will be anything
whatever I do
I can’t make you love me
what more can I give
when I’ve given
heart and soul and body.
what more can I lose
when I’ve lost all
shame and reason and sanity.
what else can I feel
(after love, scorned,)
but hate regret remorse.
what more can I say
I love you
I loved you
but I never had a chance
never had a choice…
It never will be
it never will be me
that you look at
with those sea-blue eyes
it never will be enough
just
being friends
it never will be anything
whatever I do
I can’t make you love me
Another Two
(Usually, when I get home at 1 on a Friday night, I like to post my HRC post. This time I wrote Les plaques tectoniques and posted it on my blog and neglected to post it on HRC. As an apology, I've included a new one.)
Les plaques tectoniques
You make me want to run.
Not from anything in particular.
Just run, free of worry and whatnot.
I don't know if you'll run with me,
But I know that I'll have
A hell of a time running
And I will thank you for it
When I make my way
Back around the world
To where you'd stay,
Because I assume that
Your legs are tired
And you want sleep.
I'll be back before you wake up.
Breathing Lessons (new By Polar, This Order song)
I'm pretty sure that I can teach a whale to fly.
But in return it would have to teach me how to swim
I hope he doesn't forget his wings
Because mine haven't grown in and
Now I've turned to the sea to find my way.
Les plaques tectoniques
You make me want to run.
Not from anything in particular.
Just run, free of worry and whatnot.
I don't know if you'll run with me,
But I know that I'll have
A hell of a time running
And I will thank you for it
When I make my way
Back around the world
To where you'd stay,
Because I assume that
Your legs are tired
And you want sleep.
I'll be back before you wake up.
Breathing Lessons (new By Polar, This Order song)
I'm pretty sure that I can teach a whale to fly.
But in return it would have to teach me how to swim
I hope he doesn't forget his wings
Because mine haven't grown in and
Now I've turned to the sea to find my way.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Arise
Clearly MDF has eaten my soul.
Please come to the show(s) to see what the fuss is all about.
This is reposted from my blog. I quite like it and would like to see what you all have to say.
It is entirely made up of 'I remember's and 'I know you do's.
The worst things are brought up, though we do (bravo) attempt to step around them. Uneasy topics, familiar talking points: Swings, cake, golf. Random words and phrases that manage to slip between the cracks of everything said. Eye contact lasting for split-seconds, (like a flash of light) a flash of acknowledgement.
We acknowledge we are broken.
Quiet recantations of a past long forgotten. We feel the pieces, (in our eyes, against our tear ducts, but mostly pushing hard against our chests) the pieces of a scattered story slowly sliding back and forth into place.
I am not who you think I am; and though the similarities of the mold you’ve preserved within you are striking, I am not. You are far from the one I had wanted, distant even moreso from the person you wanted to be all those years ago.
You are scared, I am hesitant, and we are broken.
It is a reunion made up entirely of ‘I remember’s and ‘I know you do’s and for a moment and a moment only we realize simultaneously that memories and memories only are what we’ve managed to keep. Not our feelings, not our love, not our trust. Most especially not our trust. Not in ourselves, not in one another. In fact we trust only these untouchable memories we have worked and fought so hard to store in a place so deep and secret that even we ourselves have forgotten how to rid the other out of our hearts.
And there was a moment in time when I had cherished this fact, relished in the truth that you were who I wanted, I was who you thought I was and we were not broken. I tell you this. Tell you, 'I remember'
You reply, 'I know you do.'
Please come to the show(s) to see what the fuss is all about.
This is reposted from my blog. I quite like it and would like to see what you all have to say.
It is entirely made up of 'I remember's and 'I know you do's.
The worst things are brought up, though we do (bravo) attempt to step around them. Uneasy topics, familiar talking points: Swings, cake, golf. Random words and phrases that manage to slip between the cracks of everything said. Eye contact lasting for split-seconds, (like a flash of light) a flash of acknowledgement.
We acknowledge we are broken.
Quiet recantations of a past long forgotten. We feel the pieces, (in our eyes, against our tear ducts, but mostly pushing hard against our chests) the pieces of a scattered story slowly sliding back and forth into place.
I am not who you think I am; and though the similarities of the mold you’ve preserved within you are striking, I am not. You are far from the one I had wanted, distant even moreso from the person you wanted to be all those years ago.
You are scared, I am hesitant, and we are broken.
It is a reunion made up entirely of ‘I remember’s and ‘I know you do’s and for a moment and a moment only we realize simultaneously that memories and memories only are what we’ve managed to keep. Not our feelings, not our love, not our trust. Most especially not our trust. Not in ourselves, not in one another. In fact we trust only these untouchable memories we have worked and fought so hard to store in a place so deep and secret that even we ourselves have forgotten how to rid the other out of our hearts.
And there was a moment in time when I had cherished this fact, relished in the truth that you were who I wanted, I was who you thought I was and we were not broken. I tell you this. Tell you, 'I remember'
You reply, 'I know you do.'
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Oddities
Ok so these were hastily done. I don't even know if I like them. But I guess their better than nothing...or maybe not.
Loneliness turning to spite
as a couple dances within oblivion.
Her mouth tasting of envy,
although the facts never clear.
They had just met;
He, looking for romance
She, looking for a good fuck.
Neither ended up being satisfied.
Existence of Words,
slipping through sand
As the trees of silk sway,
within the moist air.
Sounds echo,
they carry out to uninvolved ears,
to whom the noise sounds like music.
A tuneless orchestra sit within the inner ear canal
waiting for a cue,
one which never comes.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Three
If anyone knows any good cures for writer's block, I will pay you in baked goods.
There is a moment, a silent moment, and it hangs in the air between them like the rapidly descending night of a dark December, like a blanket, water-soaked, straddling a clothesline or a tree branch.
One doesn’t dare break it; holds breath, crosses fingers behind back, looks over Two’s shoulder, at Two’s feet, at a spot above Two’s head, suspends all thought and simply waits.
Two glances to the side, glances at One, glances, confusedly, down at slightly dishevelled shirt, glances at One again, and wonders what the tension is.
Seconds pass, and One’s face is turning a peculiar shade of blue and Two is beginning to worry about health and safety and sanity, and still the moment lingers in the way that rich and musky perfume applied too liberally leaves a trace of itself long after the wearer leaves.
Two considers the gap between their fingertips, considers a brush of hand on hand to see if One will wake from this comatose state, to see if One needs help at all. One considers the gap between their fingertips, considers a brush of hand on hand and nearly faints imagining the touch and the delicious goosebumps bound to spring up in its aftermath.
The silence is almost painful, now, suffocating, as if the blanket had been thrust over top of them and the wet folds had trapped them and stifled every breath, sucking up every last drop of oxygen as it weighed its oppressive folds over lids and lips and nostrils.
One takes a shaky, gasping breath to test lungs, and is shocked by how loud it sounds. Jumps a little, eyes wider than the night sky and as full of starshine, and lets out an awkward, reluctant burst of laughter, shattering the silence into shards of inky glass that threaten to cut as they fall.
There is a moment, a silent moment, and it hangs in the air between them like the rapidly descending night of a dark December, like a blanket, water-soaked, straddling a clothesline or a tree branch.
One doesn’t dare break it; holds breath, crosses fingers behind back, looks over Two’s shoulder, at Two’s feet, at a spot above Two’s head, suspends all thought and simply waits.
Two glances to the side, glances at One, glances, confusedly, down at slightly dishevelled shirt, glances at One again, and wonders what the tension is.
Seconds pass, and One’s face is turning a peculiar shade of blue and Two is beginning to worry about health and safety and sanity, and still the moment lingers in the way that rich and musky perfume applied too liberally leaves a trace of itself long after the wearer leaves.
Two considers the gap between their fingertips, considers a brush of hand on hand to see if One will wake from this comatose state, to see if One needs help at all. One considers the gap between their fingertips, considers a brush of hand on hand and nearly faints imagining the touch and the delicious goosebumps bound to spring up in its aftermath.
The silence is almost painful, now, suffocating, as if the blanket had been thrust over top of them and the wet folds had trapped them and stifled every breath, sucking up every last drop of oxygen as it weighed its oppressive folds over lids and lips and nostrils.
One takes a shaky, gasping breath to test lungs, and is shocked by how loud it sounds. Jumps a little, eyes wider than the night sky and as full of starshine, and lets out an awkward, reluctant burst of laughter, shattering the silence into shards of inky glass that threaten to cut as they fall.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
The City of Montréal Comprehends and Departs
Experiments with verse never turn out as I want them to.
Also, news! I got published. The "youth" sections of both the Antigonish Review and Wet Ink Magazine have put some of my things online, which I think is, as the kids say, pretty rad. I think you can find me here and here. I'm happy. Now if only the big-time journals would answer...
(4:00)
Philosophies, like blankets from a child,
Are flung aside; we shiver in our beds
As truth begins to curl around our toes
(arrived from holes in walls where Love had fled).
And shivering, naked, eyes and faces wild,
we stumble to the streets and feel ourselves
give way to baser hungers which bestow
not courage, but a sympathy in Hell.
Though roads be long and grasses far away,
though others stumble on with half-grown thoughts
that drag and scrape and cry out in dismay
from feeling old roots harden into knots,
we cast aside what all the wise men wrote
and march beneath the silent skies of hope.
Also, news! I got published. The "youth" sections of both the Antigonish Review and Wet Ink Magazine have put some of my things online, which I think is, as the kids say, pretty rad. I think you can find me here and here. I'm happy. Now if only the big-time journals would answer...
(4:00)
Philosophies, like blankets from a child,
Are flung aside; we shiver in our beds
As truth begins to curl around our toes
(arrived from holes in walls where Love had fled).
And shivering, naked, eyes and faces wild,
we stumble to the streets and feel ourselves
give way to baser hungers which bestow
not courage, but a sympathy in Hell.
Though roads be long and grasses far away,
though others stumble on with half-grown thoughts
that drag and scrape and cry out in dismay
from feeling old roots harden into knots,
we cast aside what all the wise men wrote
and march beneath the silent skies of hope.
Monday, March 8, 2010
An Existential Debate
[Okay so I actually do have a story I've been wanting to post for a while but the problem is that it's saved at school and not at my house. So it will have to wait a week. This is an assignment I had to write for a philosophy class last term. I didn't take it seriously and did poorly, but I find it kind of funny: a debate between the five most influential existentialist philosophers. Enjoy!]
The clock strikes noon on an early winter day as the Champs-Élysées’ whirling snowstorm suddenly dies off like a snow globe being thrust into nothingness. Café L’Existence rests on a cross street of the Champs-Élysées; an underground café, bohemian in its style and nearly one hundred years old, the location rests as a safe haven for the hip and intelligent beret wearing thinkers of Paris.
Today happens to be a day of monumental significance to the subjective thinkers of the world. As it turns out, the five greatest Existential philosophers only experienced death “in-itself,” but due to the on-going life of thought “for-itself”, the power of their contemplation materialized and their dead bodies regained consciousness for one more event: a debate on existence and death; mind, body and spirit.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky is the first to enter the café, flipping a poker chip in his left hand, a long repulsive beard hanging down to the middle of his chest.
Friedrich Nietzsche is next to enter, a thick moustache protruding from his upper lip, madness sick within his eyes.
Kierkegaard enters, wondering whether facial hair was a pre-requisite for this affair.
The three sit silently at a long table and so do all the on-lookers in the café along the various tables and chairs. They await and stare into each other’s eyes though do not utter a word. The silence is deadly; one might even call it suicidal. Suddenly, it sounds as if there is a train crash out in front of the café. The door slams open and Sartre and Camus enter, yelling at the top of their lungs to each other, like a clash of the herd. The crowd gasps.
Camus: I am not… an Existentialist!
Sartre: eet’ is z’enough! I have heard enough! C’est fini!
[The scene is set]
Sartre: Silence everybody! You were all summoned here today for one purpose and one purpose only, and that purpose is zee’ existence! Existence of being in-itself, and being for-itself. And thus, it shall be discussed…
Dostoyevsky: Yes allo! Waiter! May I have a mezzo mocha chai latte, double sugar and extra whipped cream on top?
[The other Existentialists stare at him with a look a revulsion]
Dostoyevsky: [slams table] With extra vodka!
Sartre: [Chuckles in French manner] Fyodor, you once wrote, “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted.”
Dostoyevsky: You cannot prove that.
Sartre: Umm, sure. But that, for Existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God did not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself… [E 211]
Nietzsche: Yes! I could not have said it better myself. God is dead after all. We must avoid the herd, find our own way, and create our own meaning.
Sartre: Yes… and there is no determinism – man is free, man is freedom. We are condemned to freedom.
Kierkegaard: I’m not quite sure I completely agree about the dead God you speak of.
Camus: Hah! Here talks the God-lover.
Kierkegaard: Now now, just because I am able to take that leap of faith, does not deem me useless. You cannot objectify a subjective leap, for life is a subjective individual experience after-all, as we all agree.
Sartre: But Kierkegaard… nothing can save man from himself, not even the valid proof of the existence of God.
Dostoyevsky: Depends who you’re talking to.
Kierkegaard: Yes yes, was that a witticism Fyodor? Very good one indeed. But Sartre, was it not you, who proposed that one must live a life through action! And the act of believing in God is a choice which involves an action of disregarding all of your attempts to re-direct me from my belief. God is subjective, not an excuse for man.
Sartre: Well…
Dostoyevsky: I don’t believe this is the question at hand.
Kierkegaard: You are right Dostoyevsky. I believe the real, ephemeral question at hand is how in God’s name, no pun intended, do you spell your last name properly? Is it Dostoyevsky with the S-K-Y or with the T-O-I-E-V-S-K-I, or is it the double I? And why is it that in every different publication it is spelled differently. Oh, how difficult it is to spell the names of us existential philosophers, we are such outsiders!
Camus: I am not an existentialist!
Dostoyevsky: You mock me, Soren.
Kierkegaard: Of course.
Dostoyevsky: Enough! Oh, how vile the human being is, the vilest creature on all of the earth! You, my dear sir, can go and take your leap of faith into a dark abyss of spikes and serpents.
Kierkegaard: My dear friend, you speak in platitudes.
Dostoyevsky: Go to hell! Since you believe in it!
Kierkegaard: Platitudes!!!
Sartre: [scoffing in a French manner] Enough! You bicker like zee’ children.
Nietzsche: Okay, let us reflect. God is dead because we have murdered him.
Kierkegaard: [muttering] in your subjective opinion…
Dostoyevsky: Therefore, with our own free-will we must create our own meaning in life, not by structuring it, but by acting through whimsical caprices.
Sartre: Thus, existence precedes essence, and every day we are consumed by anguish to escape and discover our meaning…
Kierkegaard: Amen! And all of this originates from the fact that all humans are truly subjective creatures, not objective.
Nietzsche: Naturally.
Dostoyevsky: Of course.
Sartre: Undoubtedly. Being-for-itself!
Camus: I am not an Existentialist!
Sartre: And in that respect you are right, my revolting, and otherwise silent friend, Camus. For Existentialism is merely a concept, a name given for a school of thought which, whether we agree on the concept or not, has come to define our thought. The concepts are created subjectively, but then passed on objectively, much like the roots of a chestnut tree. Unlike the actual “roots” which exist like being in-itself, the concepts only exist once we create them, and like the time I couldn’t remember it was a root anymore, I cannot remember what a God is anymore, because he too is a concept of an abstract cosmos. But our subjective free will has created them for a purpose, what that purpose is must be discovered subjectively, like in your case Kierkegaard. But why shouldn’t I decide to jump out of the window of a ten-storey building? It would cease my anguish…
Kierkegaard: Or angst.
Sartre: Yes, but this nothingness at the heart of our being-for-itself tantalizes me, and edges me to continue on. But whether I do or not, it is the action in doing so or not which determines man. Action, my friends, action.
[All of the philosophers sit and ponder, and the crowd gapes at the awe-inspiring message foretold, wondering about their own life and their life to come.]
DOUBLE POST OF POEMS!!
[So because I've missed some weeks, I'm doing a double post of poems (go figure from the title). Hope you like them. I've been enjoying writing poetry a lot more lately. It's fucking awesome. I have such a heightened appreciation for this writing medium. Please comment, even if you don't feel comfortable with poetry - honestly it's just writing with different line breaks :P]
You are the soundtrack to my life,
sitting inside my ribcage and plucking
veins like harp strings to tell me no
one feels about me the way you do.
You make me scream when you move inside my
chest, straightening your back and fingers
from your concentrated space so you can sing
more comfortably.
I have to sit down because my knees shake
when you do this to me, as if I’m done
from a thousand meter sprint and my muscles burn from your
cheering me on.
and
when the wallflower decides to
act beautiful,
cameras' digital flashes gasp,
highlighting insipid jawlines –
killer looks mask numbness.
overenthusiastic photographers quantify.
rouge stains
timidity under veins,
while xenophobic yens zero-in.
[This one is an alphabet poem, if you didn't already realize - so it uses, "chronologically", each letter from the alphabet as the first letter of each consecutive word.]
Minstrel
You are the soundtrack to my life,
sitting inside my ribcage and plucking
veins like harp strings to tell me no
one feels about me the way you do.
You make me scream when you move inside my
chest, straightening your back and fingers
from your concentrated space so you can sing
more comfortably.
I have to sit down because my knees shake
when you do this to me, as if I’m done
from a thousand meter sprint and my muscles burn from your
cheering me on.
and
when the wallflower decides to
act beautiful,
cameras' digital flashes gasp,
highlighting insipid jawlines –
killer looks mask numbness.
overenthusiastic photographers quantify.
rouge stains
timidity under veins,
while xenophobic yens zero-in.
[This one is an alphabet poem, if you didn't already realize - so it uses, "chronologically", each letter from the alphabet as the first letter of each consecutive word.]
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Windows
The kids will be home soon.
Susan reads the time on the oven's LED clock and registers this fact with the automatic efficiency always displayed towards events of modest importance which are repeated day after day. She reacts as she would to a car's alert that it's running out of gas (if she could drive): unconsciously and immediately.
From the fridge she takes a celery stalk, a red pepper, a carrot, and a roll of cookie dough. She turns the oven on. From the drawer she takes out her knife, the one with the large, long blade, carefully inserted in a plastic sheath with a push-and-slide button, for security. A chef's knife. She removes the sheaf and uses the knife to cut four slices of cookie dough, which she leaves on the baking tray. She puts the blade of the knife under the tap for a few seconds, scrubs it gently with a sponge, and dries it with the towel that always hangs from her apron.
Now she cuts the vegetables. The celery, first, slicing the blade down the middle, and then curving the blade down, cutting the stalk into manageable pieces. The carrot does not yield so easily, it requires of a chopping motion. The blade hits the board with force, a satisfying sound, after it has pierced through the dense, orange flesh. Then the pepper, which is more complicated. The tip of the blade is inserted at the top, by the tail, and sawed up and down and around it. A light pull and the green tail is removed. Then the blade is pressed down along one of the ridges along the side, the pepper is cut in half, the white flakes of seeds removed in the sink, flicked off with the tip of the knife. Now the halves are cut into thin slices. The kids want them thin, or they will not eat them.
The oven beeps, shrill. Susan almost drops her knife. She slides the baking tray into the oven, a puff of heat blows her hair back, like she use to wear it, before. Susan arranges the vegetables on a platter smartly, around a little bowl of dip. She cleans up the wooden board, the knife, again, the cookie dough goes back in the fridge. A quick look at the oven: the kids will be here in five minutes. The cookies will be ready in five minutes.
The kitchen was built two years ago to her taste, with Jason's money, as an extension to the house. The appliances are stainless steel, the counter is pale granite, the lamps are Italian, the pots and pans, French. There are two windows, one on each side. The one in back looks onto the backyard, and the woods beyond. The one in front looks onto the front lawn, which slopes down gently to the road, and the fields and farmhouses across it. Susan stares at all this, the views from the windows, which she knows so well she feels she could paint them by memory. There are photographs of those views in her mind, for each hour of the day in each season. She doesn't even need to look at them anymore. She surveys the kitchen. Everything is in order, as usual. Except for something reflecting the light sharply, by the sink. She forgot to put her knife away.
She walks over to the counter to put the knife back into the security of its sheath in the drawer and the oven beeps, again. The cookies are ready. Susan stands poised in the middle of the kitchen, knife in hand, the sweet scent of fresh-baked cookies wafting through the air. The sound of a motor, outside. Susan looks out of the window and sees the yellow flash of the school-bus. It stops in front of the driveway, and her two children come running out of it, their heavy schoolbags (Spiderman for him, Dora for her) bobbing up and down against their little backs, their little arms flying.
Susan, somehow, despite all her preparations, feels caught off guard. She has time, though. She has time to put the large knife away securely in its plastic sheath in the drawer and take the cookies out from the oven and while they cool poor two glasses of milk and greet her children with a smile and a warm, soft, welcoming, motherly hug. She does not move.
Why not leave the knife in the oven for a moment, heat it up, red-hot. Inadvertently. Forget it there, just the time it takes for the kids to come in and drop their bags and put their lunch boxes on the counter by the sink like she taught them to do (so she can then open them and clean all their little plastic containers, afterward). Then she would grab the mittens for the oven and take out the cookies, by now overcooked and dark brown, except she would bring out the knife instead and plunge it into their soft little bodies. The smell of searing flesh would mingle with that of burnt cookies. There would be a scream, perhaps, shrill like the oven's, muffled quickly with the towel always at her disposal. Then she would have to run way. She'd leave through the back door, knife still in hand. She wouldn't even take off her apron. She'd run across the backyard and into the woods, her hair trailing behind her wildly.
"Mom! Mom!"
Welcome home, my children. My darlings. You're home.
Boom
So. It's not my day. But - pretend it's Wednesday? This took me a long time to be happy with it. And I'm still not really overly pleased with it, but wanted to post it before the week was up.
"No one ever really wins in heartbreak warfare," John Mayer crackles through the shoddiest radio signal possible, and I'm thinking how perfectly suited the song is to the view above my dishwater. There's a moving truck outside the house two doors down.
Some of the neighborhood kids - just Elyse, Jacob, and Morgan now, but more are sure to come - are hanging around, hair bleached by the sun and, at ten o'clock in the morning, faces and pudgy hands already looking like they've been through some serious mudpie battles. They don't know the woman who's shoving a mattress into the back of the truck, but they know the girls, thirteen and fifteen, who are tearfully hugging the man standing on the doorstep.
Julia and Rachel have babysat the entire block, almost, so the six and eight and ten year-olds are out in force as, suitcases in hand, their icons walk down the driveway to meet them.
I can't hear the questions, but I was once the eight year-old tugging with grubby fingers on a teenage sleeve.
"Why do you have a suitcase?" Elyse is asking, as I once did, and Julia is answering the way that my own Julia, whose name I long ago forgot, did, saying something about moving and leaving.
"Why are you crying?" Jacob wonders, where I had known not to ask, but I was eight and he is six, and there is an eternity of wisdom to be gained in those two years. Rachel answers as my Rachel would have, I know: "It's just sad."
Morgan lisps as my sister lisped back then, struggling to ask why their father isn't helping pack the truck. Julia and Rachel look at each other as they hand pillows to their mother. "He's staying here," they answer, bracing themselves for the curious looks and childish questions.
"Why?" Elyse and Morgan ask at once; I know because we asked that question, then, not understanding what we asked, and not understanding the answer. Julia and Rachel answer in long, stilted, stuttering phrases, trying so hard to make sense of something that doesn't yet make sense to them - I see it in their faces, and I recall the struggle in the eyes of my idols as they put tentative hands on my shoulders and their mother glared from the sidelines, much as Julia and Rachel's mother does now.
The children are confused now, the three with their runny noses and faded shorts, and the others who, attracted by the anomaly of the moving truck, are gathering slowly around girls who only want to disappear.
I remember the confusion, remember being sad and not knowing why. Children cannot understand something that even, at fifteen, Rachel struggles to put to words, and I remember the confusion as I look out into the street, my crackling radio playing something completely different now, my dishwater getting cold.
There's nothing quite like heartbreak warfare; I know that now, with every fibre of my being; I have learned my lessons since that day when I abandoned my bicycle in the middle of our lazy street to watch and wonder at lamps and boxes marked "KITCHEN" piling their way into the back of a truck. Elyse and Morgan and Jacob will learn, too, and Rachel and Julia will one day understand how to put their sorrow into words, and I wish they wouldn't have to.
I wish that children wouldn't have to grow into understanding loss, that growing up didn't mean growing accustomed to heartbreak.
They don't understand, these small sun-bleached, sun-browned things, that this is their last goodbye, but they understand that something has changed. And as Rachel and Julia give them lingering hugs and wave silently at the man on the doorstep whose tears are rolling down his nose and soaking his beard, I watch the culmination of a battle lost before it even began and sigh.
Elyse turns around as the truck begins to pull away, and I catch a glimpse of her face beneath the dirt of a morning well spent. Her brow furrowed, her fingers tied in knots around each other, she's a mirror to the small self that I was, once, understanding only that something has changed, and I cry for her.
I cry for her innocence - will she, like me, one day replay the same scenario, bidding goodbye to neighbourhood children as she hands her mother a pillow and struggles not to look at the father crying bitter tears on the front lawn? Will she, like me, one day be powerless to stop the heartbreak from happening to her best friends? Will she, like me, one day watch out the window of her new kitchen, light glinting off the diamond on her finger, and wonder if, since no one ever really wins in heartbreak warfare, any of it is worth anything?
"No one ever really wins in heartbreak warfare," John Mayer crackles through the shoddiest radio signal possible, and I'm thinking how perfectly suited the song is to the view above my dishwater. There's a moving truck outside the house two doors down.
Some of the neighborhood kids - just Elyse, Jacob, and Morgan now, but more are sure to come - are hanging around, hair bleached by the sun and, at ten o'clock in the morning, faces and pudgy hands already looking like they've been through some serious mudpie battles. They don't know the woman who's shoving a mattress into the back of the truck, but they know the girls, thirteen and fifteen, who are tearfully hugging the man standing on the doorstep.
Julia and Rachel have babysat the entire block, almost, so the six and eight and ten year-olds are out in force as, suitcases in hand, their icons walk down the driveway to meet them.
I can't hear the questions, but I was once the eight year-old tugging with grubby fingers on a teenage sleeve.
"Why do you have a suitcase?" Elyse is asking, as I once did, and Julia is answering the way that my own Julia, whose name I long ago forgot, did, saying something about moving and leaving.
"Why are you crying?" Jacob wonders, where I had known not to ask, but I was eight and he is six, and there is an eternity of wisdom to be gained in those two years. Rachel answers as my Rachel would have, I know: "It's just sad."
Morgan lisps as my sister lisped back then, struggling to ask why their father isn't helping pack the truck. Julia and Rachel look at each other as they hand pillows to their mother. "He's staying here," they answer, bracing themselves for the curious looks and childish questions.
"Why?" Elyse and Morgan ask at once; I know because we asked that question, then, not understanding what we asked, and not understanding the answer. Julia and Rachel answer in long, stilted, stuttering phrases, trying so hard to make sense of something that doesn't yet make sense to them - I see it in their faces, and I recall the struggle in the eyes of my idols as they put tentative hands on my shoulders and their mother glared from the sidelines, much as Julia and Rachel's mother does now.
The children are confused now, the three with their runny noses and faded shorts, and the others who, attracted by the anomaly of the moving truck, are gathering slowly around girls who only want to disappear.
I remember the confusion, remember being sad and not knowing why. Children cannot understand something that even, at fifteen, Rachel struggles to put to words, and I remember the confusion as I look out into the street, my crackling radio playing something completely different now, my dishwater getting cold.
There's nothing quite like heartbreak warfare; I know that now, with every fibre of my being; I have learned my lessons since that day when I abandoned my bicycle in the middle of our lazy street to watch and wonder at lamps and boxes marked "KITCHEN" piling their way into the back of a truck. Elyse and Morgan and Jacob will learn, too, and Rachel and Julia will one day understand how to put their sorrow into words, and I wish they wouldn't have to.
I wish that children wouldn't have to grow into understanding loss, that growing up didn't mean growing accustomed to heartbreak.
They don't understand, these small sun-bleached, sun-browned things, that this is their last goodbye, but they understand that something has changed. And as Rachel and Julia give them lingering hugs and wave silently at the man on the doorstep whose tears are rolling down his nose and soaking his beard, I watch the culmination of a battle lost before it even began and sigh.
Elyse turns around as the truck begins to pull away, and I catch a glimpse of her face beneath the dirt of a morning well spent. Her brow furrowed, her fingers tied in knots around each other, she's a mirror to the small self that I was, once, understanding only that something has changed, and I cry for her.
I cry for her innocence - will she, like me, one day replay the same scenario, bidding goodbye to neighbourhood children as she hands her mother a pillow and struggles not to look at the father crying bitter tears on the front lawn? Will she, like me, one day be powerless to stop the heartbreak from happening to her best friends? Will she, like me, one day watch out the window of her new kitchen, light glinting off the diamond on her finger, and wonder if, since no one ever really wins in heartbreak warfare, any of it is worth anything?
Saturday, March 6, 2010
We All Think it, But It's Become Wrong to Say It
Stay.
(bonus post:
Jackrabbit Slim's
They're everywhere and brought back against their will, they stumble among the youth with orders of meat and pop-culture references.
They died by their hands and bad habits; They shall remain dead.
It's the way I want to go: by my own will and with bits of reluctant rememberance.)
(bonus post:
Jackrabbit Slim's
They're everywhere and brought back against their will, they stumble among the youth with orders of meat and pop-culture references.
They died by their hands and bad habits; They shall remain dead.
It's the way I want to go: by my own will and with bits of reluctant rememberance.)
Friday, March 5, 2010
The Magic Flute
It’s delicious. This sandwich, is truly better than any food I’ve had in the past month. An extra mayo, extra mustard, extra pork chop. White bread. I’m sitting in the hallway outside Joanne studio and I can hear Zoe's beautiful voice belting out parts of the Magic Flute by Mozart. Chunks of pork rolling around in my mouth, sliding down my throat. I can hear Joanne now, laughing loudly in the room. Her voice carries like a foghorn at high tide. She scares the shit out of me.
I had called Zoe earlier and she didn’t answer. That could have meant only two things; one, she was mad at me again and didn’t want to pick up, or, she had a lesson with Joanne. I guessed the latter and lucked out. On my way to the studio, Zoe called me and said that she was almost done, I told her I was coming over and that I would wait for her outside. So here I was stuffing this sandwich down my gullet with enthusiasm. It was a good day so-far, I wasn’t in the dog house, I would meet Zoe here, take her out for a coffee and I had a delicious sandwich my mother gave me before leaving home.
Zoe stopped singing abruptly. I cocked my ear to listen closer. They were talking, probably about a mistake Zoe made. I spotted myself in the window across the hallway. I was covered in mustard stains. Shit I looked like crap. My bag fell over on the floor and I remembered I kept napkins handy in there. Wiping my face off, I realized that Joanne’s voice had started to rise. Zoe’s was pleading. The muffled sounds coming through the door sounded like they were arguing.
“Please Don’t get mad...” I heard Zoe plead loudly.
“DON’T GET MAD??!!” her teacher’s voice booming. The people across the street probably heard her screaming. What the hell was happening in there?
“Joanne, stop, please he didn’t know any better.”
“IS HE OUT THERE RIGHT NOW?” I froze. Is “he” me?
“Um yes, He’s just waiting for me outside...” Joanne sounded Hysterical, and the subject of her hysteria was me. Thanks Zoe, you just fed me to the behemoth. There was more protesting, and I put my ear against the door to get a clearer idea of what was happening inside.
Heavy footsteps, “Do you know what you did?” I heard Joanne desperately trying to whisper. There was a small pause and... Bang! The door swung open slamming into my face. I was sent sprawling into the hallway onto my stomach.
Booming once again, “YOU PUT THIS SLOB NSIDE OF YOUR INSTRUMENT!”
I turned around slowly to face my accuser. Big is too small of a word. Joanne was a fucking monster of a woman, and she literally took up the entire doorway. I think that’s when I peed my pants a little. “You stupid son-of-a-bitch, come in here right now”, she hissed like a tea kettle. I obeyed, and walked quickly into her studio. I avoided Zoe’s eyes, but I saw her hands clasped together, tightly. I think she was scared too.
Halfway in, i felt a strong hand grasp the back of my neck and throw me onto the couch against the wall. I fell head-first into it. ‘Don’t hurt him!” Zoe squeaked. I turned around in time to see Joanne give my poor girlfriend the meanest glare I had ever seen. She shut her mouth and looked at the floor. “You shut up, I’ll deal with you later” Joanne cracked.
Her attention turned to me and I sank into the couch. Her massive breasts swung around after she did. Why am i thinking of titty fucking? She shows way too much cleavage.
“Do you know why I’m angry right now?”
“n...no”
“SPEAK UP!” her voice hit two different notes. Thus her aria began.
“no”
“TRY AND GUESS!!”
Exposition.
“He doesn’t know anything! He doesn’t get it!” Zoe protested.
“I said SHUT UP ZOE!” she looked at the floor again, “Now give it a try. Why am I angry?”
Recitative.
“Cuz I’m a bad boyfriend?”
“BECAUSE YOU’RE THE WORST BOYFRIEND!! Do you want to know why?”
Development.
“Yes?”
“Okay then, let me ask you this, do you care about your girlfriend’s career?”
Suspense.
“yes...”
“THEN WHY DID YOU PUT YOUR PENIS IN HER MOUTH!!!!!”
Climax.
“What?” Did I just hear that right?
“You ignorant FUCK!”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about!”
“SHE is a SINGER! And you DESECRATED her INSTRUMENT with you PRICK!”
Exposition.
“I... I’m sorry” I turned red hot with embarrassment.
“Don’t let it EVER HAPPEN AGAIN!”
Denouement
“I promise, I won’t”
She grunted in approval, “You are dismissed”
Resolution.
***
The nightmare was over. Zoe and I were back at her place. The traumatic event behind us, we both need some affection. We hugged for a long time, and it was soothing. i tried my hardest not to cry.
Slowly, we started kissing. Yes I thought, sexual healing, the best kind. I got up to put some music on. I had to get The magic flute out of my head. I found Zoe’s Ipod and put it on shuffle. We landed on some nice soothing Jazz.
The song changed to Die Valhkurie by Wagner. Zoe and I locked eyes.
“I have a head ache I think” she said.
“yeah me too” I turned the music off.
I had called Zoe earlier and she didn’t answer. That could have meant only two things; one, she was mad at me again and didn’t want to pick up, or, she had a lesson with Joanne. I guessed the latter and lucked out. On my way to the studio, Zoe called me and said that she was almost done, I told her I was coming over and that I would wait for her outside. So here I was stuffing this sandwich down my gullet with enthusiasm. It was a good day so-far, I wasn’t in the dog house, I would meet Zoe here, take her out for a coffee and I had a delicious sandwich my mother gave me before leaving home.
Zoe stopped singing abruptly. I cocked my ear to listen closer. They were talking, probably about a mistake Zoe made. I spotted myself in the window across the hallway. I was covered in mustard stains. Shit I looked like crap. My bag fell over on the floor and I remembered I kept napkins handy in there. Wiping my face off, I realized that Joanne’s voice had started to rise. Zoe’s was pleading. The muffled sounds coming through the door sounded like they were arguing.
“Please Don’t get mad...” I heard Zoe plead loudly.
“DON’T GET MAD??!!” her teacher’s voice booming. The people across the street probably heard her screaming. What the hell was happening in there?
“Joanne, stop, please he didn’t know any better.”
“IS HE OUT THERE RIGHT NOW?” I froze. Is “he” me?
“Um yes, He’s just waiting for me outside...” Joanne sounded Hysterical, and the subject of her hysteria was me. Thanks Zoe, you just fed me to the behemoth. There was more protesting, and I put my ear against the door to get a clearer idea of what was happening inside.
Heavy footsteps, “Do you know what you did?” I heard Joanne desperately trying to whisper. There was a small pause and... Bang! The door swung open slamming into my face. I was sent sprawling into the hallway onto my stomach.
Booming once again, “YOU PUT THIS SLOB NSIDE OF YOUR INSTRUMENT!”
I turned around slowly to face my accuser. Big is too small of a word. Joanne was a fucking monster of a woman, and she literally took up the entire doorway. I think that’s when I peed my pants a little. “You stupid son-of-a-bitch, come in here right now”, she hissed like a tea kettle. I obeyed, and walked quickly into her studio. I avoided Zoe’s eyes, but I saw her hands clasped together, tightly. I think she was scared too.
Halfway in, i felt a strong hand grasp the back of my neck and throw me onto the couch against the wall. I fell head-first into it. ‘Don’t hurt him!” Zoe squeaked. I turned around in time to see Joanne give my poor girlfriend the meanest glare I had ever seen. She shut her mouth and looked at the floor. “You shut up, I’ll deal with you later” Joanne cracked.
Her attention turned to me and I sank into the couch. Her massive breasts swung around after she did. Why am i thinking of titty fucking? She shows way too much cleavage.
“Do you know why I’m angry right now?”
“n...no”
“SPEAK UP!” her voice hit two different notes. Thus her aria began.
“no”
“TRY AND GUESS!!”
Exposition.
“He doesn’t know anything! He doesn’t get it!” Zoe protested.
“I said SHUT UP ZOE!” she looked at the floor again, “Now give it a try. Why am I angry?”
Recitative.
“Cuz I’m a bad boyfriend?”
“BECAUSE YOU’RE THE WORST BOYFRIEND!! Do you want to know why?”
Development.
“Yes?”
“Okay then, let me ask you this, do you care about your girlfriend’s career?”
Suspense.
“yes...”
“THEN WHY DID YOU PUT YOUR PENIS IN HER MOUTH!!!!!”
Climax.
“What?” Did I just hear that right?
“You ignorant FUCK!”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about!”
“SHE is a SINGER! And you DESECRATED her INSTRUMENT with you PRICK!”
Exposition.
“I... I’m sorry” I turned red hot with embarrassment.
“Don’t let it EVER HAPPEN AGAIN!”
Denouement
“I promise, I won’t”
She grunted in approval, “You are dismissed”
Resolution.
***
The nightmare was over. Zoe and I were back at her place. The traumatic event behind us, we both need some affection. We hugged for a long time, and it was soothing. i tried my hardest not to cry.
Slowly, we started kissing. Yes I thought, sexual healing, the best kind. I got up to put some music on. I had to get The magic flute out of my head. I found Zoe’s Ipod and put it on shuffle. We landed on some nice soothing Jazz.
The song changed to Die Valhkurie by Wagner. Zoe and I locked eyes.
“I have a head ache I think” she said.
“yeah me too” I turned the music off.
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