FATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATA

(Imagine Win Butler singing this (Arcade Fire))))))

They buried me today.
They buried me today with all the rings on my fingers,
wrapped into fists.

They buried me today.
They buried me with nails on my sides that I used for
the birdhouse in our frontlawn.

I know a ghost whose name I can't remember
and I feel guilty every night he haunts me.
But I call him what he is: a ghost,
a dead man searching for home.

I don't understand you

I'm alive! I thought it would be better to post something (finally) a little less than par rather than let another un-posted week go by.

I don’t understand you

With your whispered words

Hating

Tongues full violence

I don’t understand the way you think

And how your words affect me

They make me hate

And cry

And scream

Until one day I’ll rip my heart out

And lay it at your feet

A willing sacrifice

To counteract all your words

Mostly to free the things

Unspoken.

I hate to feel

Anything

Crying’s for the weak

It makes you weak

Until your bones turn brittle and you crumble to the floor

An ornament

For you to step over

For your decorative pleasure.

There Really Is No Other Theme

sit straight
uncross your arms
forget about your
penmanship
forget about your
broken heart

for this is
less serious
than you realize,
friend--

this is less of a
crucifixion more like the
scratching of
twig against leaf
in autumn

and the poem isn't
the blood on your hands
the poem is not the trace
the poem is holding the
leaf by its stem and
letting go

Seen Through a Window

{Hello all! I'm happy to announce that I'm taking an evening creative writing class in Bristol, which means I'm forced to cut back on all those long-winded ideas and write short, experimental exercises. I'm reminded of all those good times we had in our Marianopolis meetings! Our first homework assignment was "Seen Through a Window", like we did on the blog all those months ago. Here's what I wrote... N.B. I won't be tagging this as "away" because, although I wrote it away from home, it's not specifically about being abroad.}

*

I was interested in Don Miguel from a very young age, because Don Miguel was a writer, and that’s what I wanted to be. I was never good at sports, and my mother had always told me I was destined to become a famous man of letters.

Don Miguel wasn’t really renowned internationally, but he wrote sufficiently popular novels in an energetic, manly prose — reflected in titles like The Furious Commandante, Walking on Burning Suns, and Death and the Queen’s Gardener — to be something of a celebrity in the town where we lived. My father owned the town’s hotel. Don Miguel rented from him a small, one story guesthouse, which served as his studio.

One day — I was about probably 11 or 12 — as I was watering the flower bed of peonies that grew at the edge of the hotel gardens, I noticed that the guesthouse window was wide open. I approached and peeped inside, noticing that a peculiar odor, a kind of tangy sweetness, was mingling with the smell of the peonies. The window’s angle only offered a limited view inside: the opposite window with its curtains closed, a patch of tiled floor, a rickety chair in front of a wooden desk, a large black typewriter on the desk with spindly metallic strands holding the keys and a sheet of paper jutting out from the top, an ashtray with a cigarette still burning in it, spewing a thin plume of smoke that swirled and dissolved halfway to the ceiling.

Then, to my surprise, a naked woman walked into view. She was thin and inconceivably beautiful. It was the first time I ever saw a naked woman other than my mother. I made sure the hedge covered me and stared, hot blood thumping in my ears.

The naked woman went over to the typewriter. She took the lit cigarette, put it in her mouth, and bent down over the desk, giving me a marvelous view of her narrow backside.

I stood there, awestruck, frozen stiff. The hard, cold hose was still my hand, spurting water at the fat, fragrant peonies.

She started to type fast on the typewriter. I heard a man’s voice, imperious, from the other side of the room: “Make the dialogue more intense, guapa. Make it funny, like when I tell you terrible things and you answer with that sarcastic tone.” It was Don Miguel.

The girl typed away, sucking on her cigarette.

Soon, my mind became less crowded with the image of the woman’s naked beauty, and I realized that Don Miguel was not the author of his novels. This girl had written The Furious Commandate, Walking on Burning Suns, and Death and the Queen’s Gardener. Despite never having read any of these books, I felt cheated.

Then, it struck me that this woman was also Don Miguel’s lover, and that the faint, vaguely sickening odor that drifted out of the open window was the smell of sex.

Paint

I feel like paint.
It's a strange thing to compare yourself to,
but when I say it,
it feels true.
I cover walls of their imperfections
and with the passing of time and conversations,
crack under pressure and stillness.

I used to love to dance,
but you told me a secret,
and once you're gone,
I'll break into tiny pieces.

I gave you part of me.
Just realize that
you don't have me completely.

The Chapel in Vermont

[She liiiiiives! And is quite busy with school and such. Hopefully there will be lots more writing now that I'm in CREATIVE WRITING HOLYSHITHAPPINESS! Also my workshop class really puts me in the mood to read and review so hopefully I shall be rampaging through the archives :D This piece is one that I wrote just now actually...based off a photo. Enjoy!]



It was ten days after the funeral. I was boxing his items: dusty brass paperweights, the scruffed and grimey golfball that won him that tournament three years in a row, his pewter mug. These had been placed upon his bureau years ago where he could admire them. They left spotless shadows beneath them, their visible permanence.

Mother sat in a wooden chair, watching me from a corner. She had never sat in his leather armchair, before. I asked her why she wouldn't. "You'd be a lot more comfortable."

I pulled open a drawer and removed his fountain pen collection; each barrel was heavy with the weight of unwritten thought.

"I can't," she said, smiling warily. "I can still feel him sitting there, writing up some letter. Can't see him, but he's there."

"Does he mind that we're donating his stuff?"

Mother stiffened. "Doesn't matter what he minds. Just mind that he is there."

***

Between the oak bookcase and the plaster wall was a sizeable gap not visible from the front. I discovered it there when I tried to unplug the desk lamp - the kind with the glass green shade and brass neck, chain dangling - and traced the wire under the carpet and behind the bookcase. The plug slithered into shadow and hid there like a timid snake. Summoning my courage - who knew what dusty spiderwebs were hidden in the dark? - I stuck my hand into the crack, groping for the outlet. I felt something of an ornate bevel, something I thought to be a vintage switchplate but discovered was the carved edge of a picture frame. Grasping it by the wire, I pulled out a painting from behind the bookshelf.

Dust had accumulated in the crevices of the gilt frame, except those paths I had traced with my greyed fingertips. There was no glass to protect the oil painting within. In it were hundreds of trees, dappled red, yellow and orange, overlapping each other, forming hillsides. I could see the raised peaks of paint that cupped the dust like an unmelting snow, and a stray bristle or two. It was as if the leaves were being blown out of the frame to lick my face, earthy and moist, the bristle like a loose branch. A ghostly white chapel haunted the hillside, half-obscured.

The chapel was unfinished.

All around, the landscape was thick with colour, fleshy with broad, messy strokes, oppressed by a deep, ponderous sky. But the chapel itself was bare; only the light grey trace of a pencil outlined its tower and its slatted windows. I could see the weave of the canvas in the chapel-shaped absence, and the edges of the church flamed with a feathery whiteness where the paint was delicately flicked outwards and away, preserving this holy space.

"Your father never finished that one," said my mother from her seat, startling me. I had forgotten she was there.

"He painted this?" I asked incredulously. Then I noticed, hidden between the shadowy branches, his thin, black scrawl. "I didn't realize he was a painter."

"He never was. Not officially, anyway. Liked to keep it a secret."

"Well, he did a good job. I never saw any brushes, even! How'd he paint this without me noticing?"

My mother stared thoughtfully into the landscape.

"That one was painted just after you were born. It was the last painting he ever did."

I looked into the painting.

"How come he never finished? Is this where you were married?"

"Such a curious child you are," she teased, but the lines around her lips were grim. "That isn't where we married."

"Where is it then? This from a calendar or something?"

My mother stood up from her chair and stared down her nose at me as I sat on the floor, painting in my lap.

"Yes, a calendar," she said. She turned round - "You can donate it" - and walked away.

"Alright," I mumbled to myself, and traced each brushstroke with my eyes. There was something about the chapel that held my attention. It haunted my consciousness as I pulled the donation box over; I couldn't give this away. Where is this chapel, I wondered, and what is hidden there?


To Be Continued

Spell

I have a secret desire to be a hipster, so I'm not going to tell you all I'm alive in italics. But I'll tell you I'm alive. The only writing of quality I've done lately has been for academic purposes, although I have a scathing epic poem that really only makes sense if you know its subject. So, without further ado, I present one of my favourite pieces. I wrote it half a lifetime ago, it seems, but it's still proof that I'm alive.

If I could conjure you, make you of my deepest desires realized?

I would give you skin as strong and beautiful as a spider’s web, covering muscles made from the most ductile steel and bones of purest diamond.

I would give you eyes made of crystallized thunderstorms and fingers as long and graceful as silverbirch trees.

I would make every hair on your body from strands of love and all your cartilage from salt-sea tears.

I would give you a personality as rich and sweet and exotic and many-layered as raspberry ginger cheesecake with mint sprigs and a cocoa crust.

I would give you a voice as smooth and deep as dark chocolate melting slowly over a low flame and a smile made from three hundred half-burned candles; it would light up your eyes in a way that shamed the very stars and broke your face into a thousand perfect fragments.

I would give you a will of indomitable, steadfast silver and a heart of soft, resilient gold.

I would distil into you the best qualities of every myth that I love; the most tragic flaw of the most tragic hero I would lightly dust over your consciousness to avoid the jinx of desiring Perfection.

Winter comes around again

and I am left scribbling on the bus,
stuffing poems into cracks
between two walls
of academic sound.

What of the city keeps me pent
like water suspended before rain?
Is it the sky closed by the building-line,
the absence of marshwind through my heart--
the certitude of movement
that renders it boring and
unworthy of a thought?
But every snow piles upon me like
another failed downpour--
another reason to keep rewriting,
if only to warm up the clouds
for the flood.


It's been a rough time, lately. Too much to think about, future-wise, and too little time for scribblings. It'll get better, right? I hope, anyway.

A Writer's Writing

{I like Mike's idea of posting something to let others know we're still alive and well. For the record, I'm still alive and well. I'm also in Montréal until Friday, and then I won't be in Montréal until the end of June, and I'd like to see you all, so call or Facebook me.

This piece is the beginning of a story I've been working on for a little while. I'm almost finished writing the first draft. I don't think I'll be posting the rest on Heart Rape, but by all means please comment on this part!}

*

“When does Tom ever write?” Maggie asked, glancing outside the window at the hunched figure pushing a lawnmower to and fro across the neat, perfectly green expanse of grass.

“At night,” said Rachel. “In the middle of the night, actually. During the day he’s out and about. Walking the dog, toiling about the backyard, cleaning the shed, repairing some things about the house, or working on that old car. Three times a week he goes to the public pool, you know. He does 60 laps — in the slow lane, but still. He never stops. When the day’s over, he’s dead tired. He usually starts snoring before the news are over on TV, with the newspaper sprawled out on his lap. Then we go to bed, and he’s not able to fall asleep. He tosses around and sighs and stares at the ceiling — I can see that annoyed little glint in his eyes in the dark. He can’t stop thinking about his stories.”

“Really?” Maggie stared at her friend with mild curiosity.

“I asked him about it once,” Rachel continued. “He said it was like a voice in his head, telling the story. He can’t shut it off once it’s started, and if he lets it ramble on he’d lose the thread, if you see what I mean. So he has to get up and write it down.”

She took a long sip from her bitter black coffee and looked at Maggie over her cup. Rachel spoke of her husband’s writing as the most serious business — it was something important but obscure, which she did not discuss often.

“You know where he writes?”

“Where?” Maggie was surprised at how intrigued she was.

“In the laundry room.”

Rachel paused, for effect.

“Really?” Maggie’s voice had dropped to a whisper.

“He has a study, of course. Downstairs. But he says it’s too far, and since he’s too busy to write during the day it never gets used, that’s why I want to make it into a spare room, for when Sarah comes with the kids. Anyway, when he gets up to write at night he needs to act fast. So he walks down the hall and heads straight for the laundry room, for some reason. He writes on my ironing board, standing up — for his back, you see. He has to be careful with his back.”

“He writes on the ironing board?”

“Yes! I have to keep a stash of pencils in there. He writes on these little cards, and if we don’t have any left he grabs what he can: envelopes, bills, receipts. I found a bit of crossed out dialogue on the recipe for fennel salad you copied out for me last month.”

“Why doesn’t he keep a notebook in there? Some lined paper. Anything?”

“I try not to meddle in his writing, you know. But of course, I find it a bit strange, sort of counterproductive. But I think the spontaneity is what does it. It helps him to get his creative juices running, or whatever you call it. If it’s too well planned, if he feels like writing becomes the principal thing, then he doesn’t write at all. It has to be something done on the side. So he has to write in the laundry room, on scraps of paper. An afterthought… And I have to keep the ironing board out at night.”

“You know what that reminds me of? The writing habits, I mean, not the ironing board. It’s like Emily Dickinson. The poet. I read about her, once. It’s fascinating how she wrote. As she went about her daily chores, she would jot down bits and pieces of poetry on little scraps of paper. Then, when she’d written enough, she would sew the pieces of paper together into little booklets.”

Although Rachel did not read much poetry, or indeed any poetry at all, the comparison seemed to ring true.

“Maybe it’s a writer’s thing,” Maggie continued. “You know, we expect writers to sit down at a desk and just write all day. But writing is an art. You have to let your creativity flow freely. I’m sure it’s much harder than it looks. It takes time. Especially writing something good, like Tom does. You know, something literary.”

Rachel looked at Maggie carefully. She had always assumed Maggie had never read any of Tom’s books — she assumed that of everyone they spoke to in Baybridge. It was just that kind of town. But then, there had always been something different about Maggie, which was why Rachel had always enjoyed a special relationship with her. She enjoyed her company just a bit more than the two other girls in their gang of old retired suburban wives and widows, and that little bit made such a difference. On the surface, Maggie was like the rest of them — but underneath, Rachel knew there was a certain depth that was hard to grasp.

“Well, anyway,” said Rachel. “Even if it takes a long time to finish his books, I’m surprised every time he does finish one. It never lasts long when he writes at night. An hour, maybe — usually less. He just jots down a few lines, and then stares at them for a while, and either crosses them out or rewrites them with different words. I went to get a glass of water at night, once, and saw him there, just staring at the pieces of paper, completely oblivious to anything else. He stayed absolutely still for so long. And I run across the bits of paper when I go do the laundry, of course. I try not to meddle, I tell you, but it’s hard not to think about it when you have to have to shuffle through a pile of paper just to iron some shirts. It’s no surprise his books are so short, but let me tell you, it’s a miracle he gets anything published.”

“Is he close to finishing one now? A book, I mean.”

“I don’t know. He doesn’t talk to me about it. I suppose we’re due for one, anytime now. He finished the last one over three years ago. But I never know with him. He never tells me until he has to get his agent to send him a typist. For some reason, she has to come do the work in the house, so he can give her all the scraps in the right order, and change some more things as she works. That first book he wrote, when we were first married — we were in New York at the time — well, that one took him seven years! And it’s one of his shortest, mind you. Of course, he wrote differently back then. In some ways he was more serious about it — more open, as well. It’s as if he’s become ashamed of his writing as he’s grown older. I just never know with him.”

Rachel’s black coffee had gone cold. Maggie had long finished hers, creamed and sugared. She had sipped it in short, intense gulps while her friend talked.

“Well, it’s getting late,” said Maggie, slowly pushing her bulk up from the chair and grabbing the large plastic purse she carried around with her everywhere. Rachel was unsure if the creaking sound came from Maggie or the chair. “I’d better be heading home if I want to get dinner ready for when Paul gets home,” said Maggie.

“Did he go bird-watching today?”

“Yes. And we’re having chicken, poor dear. It was on sale at the grocery store, I don’t know what I was thinking!”

Maggie was already at the door, Rachel following behind her. The two women, lips pursed, pecked at each other’s cheeks. Maggie stepped out of the house and into the bright outside.

“Have a nice weekend, dear!” Rachel called after her friend.

“Yes, I’ll see you at my place on Monday with the girls!”

Rachel watched her friend amble down the driveway in the afternoon glare, which pulsed deeply with the sound of lawn mowing. Maggie was elegant despite her size. She was wrapped in an expansive, bright red dress with an African pattern of squiggles and dots. It billowed and sagged as she moved, and when the sunshine caught in it, the fabric became translucent and Maggie’s large silhouette was glimpsed underneath — a mass of cut out shadow, a solid anchor about which the red cloth rolled and lapped.

Rachel closed the door. She took the two cups left on the kitchen table, rinsed them carefully, and put them away in the dishwasher. She walked over to the window that looked out on the back of the house. She saw Tom shut off the lawnmower and carefully bend down, straining his knees, not his back, to empty the grass in an orange plastic bag. He was meticulous. He carefully manipulated the large canvas container, fitting the plastic bag properly on it so as not to drop some cut grass. He did everything with serious, quiet efficiency.

Rachel went over to the sink and prepared a glass of cold water to bring to her husband.

Right Down the Middle

(Hey, guys. I figured, since it's the new year, everybody should post a little something. you know...to let us know you're alive out there hehe.)


We made a bed together
and flipped a coin
to decide
who goes home.