essence of childhood

i want to die 1000 times over.


love. ing you
the way to be
please tell me
no direction
direct me
i will hurt myself
because i don't know what it means
i have no mind
help me

you want to
i don't need it
detach, please
i can no longer rid you from my mind
personal consistency
it's the way to be

"i have two minutes"

i don't want to die, but that's what you like to hear.
i'm quite fond of myself, indeed.
your satisfaction comforts me.

The Smallest Feeling

I'm still searching
for the smallest feeling
a sensation I lost somewhere
though now, I can't seem to remember
when I had it last or where it lived before
it didn't live anywhere

my hunt is like a grandmother
in that its fingers are curved
and they search
tracing something in thick air

raised as though about to speak
but hesitating
returning to my side
struck dumb so suddenly
like a Father
when for once you're honest
and he's frightened

I remember finding the smallest feeling
only once when I bit my cheek
or was it my tongue
and the blood all flowed to the end
and I felt it then,
the swollen pink sweetheart between my teeth
"found you"

But it doesn't work like that anymore
all my sweethearts just say "be mine"
"i'm yours"
and I say, "no, thanks."
no matter how hard I try to catch it
before it gets out.

This is how rumors get started.

This Week's Theme is:
2 0 0 8:
A _______ Odyssey

marcher dans l'eau

Turning once more to seize the night
i find an old weight
something's here around my hips
slung low and dark
washing up against my thighs

thread tied round my wrist
wavers and floats on its surface
opaline and sheer as I lift it
still dripping from a storm passed

i run my rings through the hole
my body's cut in this velvet
breaching around populous islands
where hair unsilken marks me unready
and unextraordinary in my sway.

Showtunes for the Sixth Grade

sweating into the same shirt
same sheets for days on end
twisting in fabric whether standing or sleeping
hoping for a line to become a curl

hesitation to a threat
"don't make me dance"

put on a sequin hat and cock it
to shuffle and tap you'll need a cane
be caned off the stage
once they see how you know the steps

"you must know what it means!"

to sing these numbers, how obvious
these sexless hips, how obvious
red lights on pink lights at the front of the class
and now it's all so patently obvious

all this dancing was nothing more
than a show to be put on
to show how you've been put upon

"spectacle will do you no good."

_

thumbtacks
my skin is thick
it doesn't care, it doesn't care.
thinking
about my food
cut up into little squares
hopefully palatable
the rope is pulling, the eso iso esopha gus
choking
on ideas
they're things not at all in the physical world.


deprecation.

For Thought You Couldn't Feel

I can feel it
my heart
it's racing, it's racing
four chambers firing at once
this head swimming at the top, pushing upwards
my fingers buzzing, blurring around the middles
arms somehow growing roots, feeling longing
and the too tired chest heaves, up and down
it heaves the way you dream chests would heave
something is swimming in the blood
my blood lubricated

Espionage and Research are killing my life.

When I go to parties now, it's not an exciting whirl of new faces and possibilities, because the faces aren't new and the possibilities seem markedly impossible. I've met everyone already. I haven't met them in person, of course, that would be absurd. I've just seen them on Facebook, where not only did I find out their first and last names but also their politics, musical preferences and what they look like when they're kissing other people. What this means is that while I know the most intimate and irrelevant details of their lives, I ultimately can't actually use any of this information in a face-to-face encounter.
When I see them from across the room at parties I can't wave them over, tell them I think they're cute and that I too think the Beats were assholes despite having produced some quality writing. I can't tell them that their hair has never looked better or that the grainy web-cam display picture doesn't seem vain so much as just committed to the act of vanity that is inherent to any sort of social networking. I can't tell them how much I admire their unselfconsciousness or how much I've idealized them in my brain. To do so would be treason of the highest order, it would be obscene to admit such a breach of privacy.
However, sometimes when left to their own devices, sometimes these people will be inexplicably drawn to you and in rare cases actually engage in conversation with you. This is where the espionage element comes into play. Because while initiating interaction using previously acquired information is strange, it's even more off-putting to hear previously acquired information coming from the mouth of someone who you've initiated contact with. So, because you can't just ignore the facets of a person you already know about you have to drop hints, lead a conversation towards information you already know.
"I was just listening to this band, The Arcade Fire. Do you know them? What, really? You liked Funeral too? I absolutely adore it, how odd that we'd both be here and adoring the same thing! Maybe we should talk about this at greater length somewhere quieter?"
This is terrible. This is a terrible thing. Actions like these are the territory of bad sitcoms, yet I still sometimes find myself commiting them, fully embracing the fact that I've become dangerously insane.
Clearly the only solution to my problem is to either be thrown into a lake and left for dead or just make a conscious effort not to use Facebook for Evil.

Naturally, I've begun researching lakes.

atmopheric blends.

sitting staring sipping smoking
killing the time the time is all mine
nothing at all is nothing i own
there is nothing alive that isn't alone
there is not a soul to finish
not to kill or quench my thirst
i feel fine.

This Week's Theme

Espionage & Research
espionnage et recherche

cut to;

so far we are
not in danger
at least
keep me in a place
where i can feel
afraid
because maybe then
i'll get creative
for once
but only when
i'm trying to stay alive

here we are/hall of mirrors

give me some time to reflect
to review and reconsider this
reflection reflected
what it is that i want, what i want to want and want
reflected as what i don't

all he wanted was a hall of mirrors
one million tiny white flowers
to bloom in the spring, round the pools

to ring my halls with narcissus petals
to ring my horns with cedar and garlands
tiny white diamonds within tiny white diamonds

it's the jewel we covet, the polished glass
having found ourselves so far beyond
these golden, flowered frames

mimicry & imitation
other skills I once imagined myself
to possess

when I was young

I knew a boy who could mask his voice
who could be anyone I needed him to be
and for that I loved him
the way you do as children

I could be a lover, but for
now I'm british now I'm french
now I'm a chainsaw ripping into
nothing, stumbling against the thaw



don't splinter as you young are wont to do
don't chip away under the weight of the machine
don't surrender or push east to satisfy history
don't be felled, but allow yourself to fall

because the way we hit the floor
or don't says more than these chainsaw birds
more than mimicry & imitation can undo

Sleep Alone

I plan to sleep and dance alone, when constructing an evening
I can envision the floor, the sweat, and ringing in my ears
I see myself, man on fire, dancing for not knowing better
My signals are grounded in a language I don't understand
each word a root that fans downwards and out
tunneling, blind as lizards, fixing my limbs to a place
where they swing cluttered and remote
dumb in spite of shouting
anchored in spite of constant motion.
It doesn't matter how articulate the roots
the endless jerking protrusions spreading nothing but rumor
unhollow fingers smearing through the soil
ugly as painting, ugly as songbirds.
I see myself there, man of earth on fire
knowing better than to dance
knowing better than to sweat.

This Week's Theme

Keeping Up Appearances

Moving places I've never been.
It was not spontaneity. There were no gutsy moves. I have no guts.
How could I?
I used to talk everything to death. I still do, but back then it was more safe. Back then it was just talk. Back then I did not make any defining lines between imagination and plans. Things never just happened, because things never happened at all.
But now imagination is something I find necessary to point at and laugh with. Who the fuck would want to imagine anything if it is not going to be beautiful?
The year has already let us down so many times.
Who the fuck wants to keep making plans when they know they might fall through and why the fuck would anyone think imagination would lend you hope or the chance of something beautiful?

This pessimist speaks to me at night, in dreams, when I'm not there to fight back. They get into valves that become too rusty to pump and blood pools out of my throat until I'm spitting it out, seedy and thick, screaming "I'M SICK OF THIS!I'M SICK OF THIS!"
I'm sick of this. I am sick.
The year had made me so fucking ill with this.

And how badly I have wanted to give up.
But the day does come, and there are phone calls home.
And you are always laughing.
And how dare I give up on the hope of good fortune when this year has gone by, and I can still hear you , despite everything, telling me your post-op plans...as though they sound delightful, and sleepy.
How dare I deny you of that resilience,
of that beauty?

I plan never to complete my plans

I plan to make better art

I plan to floss regularily

I plan to clean my room

I plan to stop crying so much

I plan to stop caring so much

I plan to fix my left foot

I plan to make you happy

I plan to start doing yoga

I plan to tell you to leave me alone

I plan to tell you to stop being a dick

I plan to be more organized

I plan to sleep more

I plan to stop drinking alone

I plan to expand my music collection

I plan to get a working phone

I plan to start my research project

I plan to start my holiday creations

I plan to buy more posters

I plan to make more art

I plan to learn to use a sewing machine

I plan to eat a healthy meal 

I plan to stop thinking about bashing my head through a window

I plan to hate my neighbours less

I plan to move out

I plan to spend all my free time with you

I plan for us to work

I plan for us to last

I plan to stop stressing

I plan to stop hurting myself

I plan to finish my homework

I plan to buy some school merchandise

I plan to move my furniture

I plan to make you not want to sleep with someone else

I plan to get a job

I plan to stop hating my own existence 

I plan to stop hating everyone else's existence

I plan to find some good galleries here

I plan to find a sheesha cafe here

I plan to find someone worth  my time here

I plan to call my grandma

I plan to call my friends

Cross, Cross, Cross

There's just so much foundation to be laid down
before we can even imagine what could be here.
Bricks, mortar, copper wire and bones
Work boots to help you leap the too high hurdles of
Yellow Caution Lines
you loved so much in school
marveling at the novelty of lines that people wouldn't
cross.
Now they're choking you
coiled over and over around your neck, threaded through
your lips and their lips
because a certain measure of safety is required
it's a prerequisite of sorts for working on this ambitious project
this architectural feat.
Because if everyone you've ever loved were a building
unto themselves, designed and shaped by the two of you
erected and maintained by the two of you
slept in and bathed in by the two of you
it's important to remember that you have a history
of foreclosure,
a brief history of demolition.
You're afraid to pay the rent and you're afraid
to put any nails in these walls, because you know how quickly
cement can form around workman's boots
how hard it can become to throw caution to the wind
when it's affixed around every inch of you,
even with buildings so tall as these.

This Week's Theme

A Brief History of
P L A N S

meaning for a word i used to hate

we put out a fire yesterday and we thought we found the ocean.
but it came back to us
when there was a warm wind today. it thrusted against me the same way the beginning of a new poem can. i can tell it doesn' t know where it's going, where it's intended to be.

we admired the wind and i walked south west, a direction i've come to love probably a little too much.

vegetables and the people that love them, vegetables and the people i admire
summer crushes on farms replaced by fall and appreciated kitchen mashes
and im so appreciative of your words, these words.
although muddled too much by frantic smiles and head bobs
( and god, how many times can one person say 'totally' ?)

but this fall i dont believe in falling
because i think there are
three rules for me to live by

1. never fall down
2. always get in the way
3. I can't remember the third

but we ended up by the canal, singing, the wind and I....my toque almost blowing away, my hand on my head, like nights before, nights spent dancing
and we howled away
about decision making, and beauty

Hollllogram

He didn't get the nod, or probably didn't, it's kind of hard to tell-- but he's pretty sure he didn't get it. He moved along the sides of the floor anyways, daring for once to inhabit a space. Somehow he did it, dared to carve out a place in a room, to keep it open like a wound; scarification. His mind went blank, his body given to convulsion and whatever else may have staked a claim.

He knew it wasn't really though. He wasn't there in even the most abstract sense. Every moment he's a hologram, some clumsy memory from the future; living life as merely something to be reflected upon; living as something to be regretted.

He's not there, don't try to touch him. He thinks about wearing a signs; a sandwich board or barbed wire, just to show how serious he is. Don't Touch Him. He's really that serious. He's really that frightened. He's not really real, but he's both of these things.

In any case, he flickers. His guts spill in a lightning bolt flash, a short circuit. For an instant, he's present. I'm present.
Then he's gone.

Now I'm gone.

...it's been a while.....

we regress to it,
the pantheon docketed as romance
some arriving in their clamor, some following lyric, chanced with the larceny of love and lust,
stealing looks with a language i never learned,
their pious prayers,

i come languid.
i come with quarrel.
shamefaced, vitrolic, in vertigo,
a vulnerability that pits itself quavering deep within the venter,
a pantheon poached of polytheism

but we all regress to it,
as if that last metaphor made any sense,
as if dialogs direct heartbreaks and crushes or attractions into discourse,
into something more than they already are.
as if alliteration could make any difference to what i am really saying,
the reality of human relationships.
of my relationships,
as if i've ever actually had any that felt real.

but i regress to them,
for the hope that at some point I can allow for the singular lanuage i've known
to rise from being more than infidel, to infest words once infixed in being incompetent, and solitary,
to rise up and progress into inflection.

Played Tape

You made a mix-tape about yourself and those
who've loved you, were that the proper word
plucked three minutes from the radio at a time
clear transmission burned to hissing static for the scarce few seconds
between the acts

You played that mix-tape about yourself
to anyone who'd hear it
until the magnets were worn through and the jewel case
splintered.

You crushed the splinters of that mix-tape about those
who'd loved you, were that the proper word,
into your chest and kept them there like a secret

because nobody wants to hear again
about mistakes you did and didn't make
on a mix-tape about yourself.

Cut the mic.

No Captain

Anthem for wasted stretches

with horns and lost bass by the orange

building across the street which may

be viewed through a living room window.



I dance and sleep alone, twisting my feet as though

something could be done about it

shifting restless and unsavory against nothing and the other

in emergency exit rows with ample leg and elbow room


I am No Captain

and you my Singular Beauty of the East are No Navigator

All I want is an exchange, the trading of places

No Captain and No Navigator, neé Singular Beauty of the East

returning to the state of being a singular
a we in the face of this us.



All collisions are accidents with no navigator at hand

All hands are accidents, all hands are collisions.

This Week's Theme

a Brief History:


the
L O V E
A F F A I R

Caught Between a Jerk and a Hard Place

"We're not puzzle pieces."

The thought sticks in a way that nothing has been lately
or that most things have been, it's hard to say,
by which I mean hard to tell the difference.
Maybe the thought is the only thing that hasn't stuck-
jarred itself between these rocks and an easy place

maybe the thought doesn't have a home

That's what the thought is about, really
the idea that nobody fits anywhere
even when forced together in the tiniest rooms and booths.
We can't cheat ourselves by sawing down corners or hollowing
out the flat parts to receive.
We can't force a connection.

We don't have a greater guide to follow, no matter how
we combine we won't form the picture intended

there is no intended picture, don't flip us over
we're not cardboard, god dammit we're not cardboard

falling coffin bones

We lay eachother down to remember climbing, and standing still we think to run.
We lay down and we're inexpiable on our craytons
And when we crawl up, we crawl up like Smilax, pre-emptively saving what was
from what could turn skeletal.
A necropolis, Indurative, and monochord.
So skyward we rear. Dog-clutched and clubfooted like sawhorses,
wishing for days without half-steps, days without lameness and sore joints
Wishing to be sound like nocturn,lenitive, and visionary,
Given to daydreams set in motion.

Sway

Shame these unfamiliar turnings
and this hunger in the body

shame the writing on the walls
of this which we have leased
and must return

must have returned

a personal debt is owed
paid in pounds of flesh
in pounds and pounds and pounds of flesh

wherein we house an ironic sense of hunger

detachment, accomplishment and envy

gimme shelter, gimme shelter
gimme a sign in the guts that love was once there

oh god, i'm so sorry
painted on bricks
oh god, i'm so sorry
carved in wooden hearts
oh god i'm so sorry
written all over our faces

shame these signs of times
who show not love or it's absence
shame these signs
these hunger pangs.

Invested

If we're still lingering,
afloat,
don't count on me forgetting to write you the perfect lines that point from every direction.

You know I've always loved each road from here leading to crashing stop signs in the sand.
The way islands force you together like plates to take long walks off a short pier
wetting ourselves to the skin with paradox.

You know I've never felt as trapped or free as when I'm at the end of something above high tide.

Just imagine if these pregnant pauses were markers of what we've invested here
The distance of lazo road to church street. Courtenay to Comox. Victoria to Port Hardy.Cliffe to 5th and everything pooling inbetween Comox Ave and Ryan Rd.
The either always lonely or always reflective bike ride home, and the carrides that were sometimes offered and accepted only for the novelty of saying goodnight to honest faces.
We've always been in walking distance to the realization that we're not all as awkward as we thought we were. As we think we are.
I want to retell and re-raise our secrets muttered between lampposts, intrevenously fed to internalizations in our bellies.
I want to carry them to term, sweep them up and flick them off like the dew on ungulated hooves ,
forgive them for blooming slowly as the buds of spring cherry trees.
It has always been time to personalize pains and celebrations that we forged somewhere irrelevent, somewhere mute, somewhere
where we've allowed the town to speak for us.As if we all interpret this experience identically.
You know we're cognizant that that has never been right.

Last night I wanted to promise that what we've hidden here is beautiful. Fucking gorgeous.
That it's still crumpled in our fists and thrown out like gradeschool notes that you find later in a trashcan, adressed to you and perfect, intended to be read unintentionally.
And sometimes when the weather is right you can feel it in the steam rising up from the concrete, or over a shallow cup of coffee that was expectingly unexpected to be poured out with deep news.

Let me count on you to count on me to get my lead out.
Because you know a miss is as good as the length of an isle,
and so we owe it to our undefined futures to never stop investing in these once seemingly temperate histories,
these fucked up and obvious but hidden insecrecies,
these strait up faults, the important parts of our stories,
the ones we've finally admit had ran too deep beneath our surfaces.

how ridiculous to imagine
death as a tap on the shoulder

a hand in the space between your hip
and ribcage
pressing the tissues
as you swing
trying to shake off enough of

the smoke and beer to remember
why they called this
the last dance of a man condemned

how obscene to remember such things

ludicrous.

spectacular

We've tried engaging and being engaged
wearing rings, committing
first to a pulse but failing that a hum

a grinding of gears meant to crush
broaden horizons and unearth rhizomes
correct the mistakes in the root

killing the flower

but my eight fingers
two thumbs and eleven ribs
are worn down and wet

ghosts pour out from books and hiss
smoke curling up from their mouths
as they remind us all
of what we've lost

my fingers too thin to hold gold
my blood and skull richer for its thrift

Nothing Brings You Back

I didn't recognize our song from before
and even now that I know
exactly what it is and I sit here
holding out for that teenage feeling
it doesn't bring me back to a time when
it was funny to drink vodka and orange juice
then crawl under the couch
to better view someone else's painting

It doesn't bring me back to when her hair was
brown, naturally and his went sideways
like parabolas or a fear of bullets
when they were basically like an item
but not really but totally they were
when you could tell she was hurt
before you could tell she was always hurt
and would always be hurt

I don't understand why it doesn't
bring me back there
where are my incantations, my spellbook
my delorean
and where did these drums come from

Why couldn't we go back?

maybe I just don't need anymore
what it has to offer to me
hands and lips and a tongue
the first of few that get to count
the first of few that I'd
remember
because now I don't want one of those
not one to which I'd owe nothing

No, these days we look for debt
for a balance that says
-pick me -pick me I need you now the same amount
I'll need you tomorrow and
even the next day
and the next day
forever and until ever after

I can't write because I'm all out of antics

My words have lost any freedoms they once had.
Too trapped by fear of confrontation. Of scaring someone off.
My actions? Governed by tiring questions and re-considerations.
Poetry provided a barrier from the worry of inherent allocations
but it now provokes internalizations of what seperation feels like,
and I am unable to poetically reveal the reality of feeling shitty. Because feeling shitty is
T o t a l l y p a t h e t i c.
There are no euphemisms worth using for
the stinging feeling of regret that loneliness leaves.
There is only the irritation always dwelling beneath the skin, until it swells and I reveal an unfair general lack of respect
for the concept of 'we'.
"We" in poetry, in fiction, the relationship between writer and reader.
"we" in relation to myself and anyone.
"We" like this thing other people seem to have, or have gotten really good at getting me to believe they have.
Like they have "we" without trying.


And fuckit I am still trying.
Trying not to resort to inaction. To paper without pen lines and computers with broken keyboards.
To a life left unfulfilled because anything else would be scary.
But I'm tongue tied, self pitying, and too concerned, to be interesting.
And half the time I am no longer trying to prevent disconnect because I don't believe I can.
I can't keep up with anyone, and I'm no longer confident that anyone wants to keep up with me, this town ,or these same words written.

A customer told me I looked lost today, and although they probably meant directionally,
I wonder if one can tell when they meet someone for the first time whether or not that someone is missing something.
I'm missing everything.
But what does that mean anymore in a place where I've always felt this way....In a place where I've always been?

Return to Form, Break in Format

This Week's Theme is:

I h a v e n't u p d a t e d b e c a u s e...

I haven't been w r i t i n g
which is nothing new
we've gone years without cracking fingers
s t r a i g h t e n i n g c aps and pressing
away at keys that f i r e like the worst
m m m m achine gun ever
and only ever hit on the bad metaphor
the one about
gunshots

I haven't been writing because
I haven't been living
but you have to know that from the way
I keep bringing it up in every
single
conversations I've had since
I joined the twin realms of stand-up gentle
men and women
a parallel not lost on the author

18 and employed

empteen and a ploy

W O R D P L A Y !
has taken over my everyday speech
replacing the old jokes about race and sex
as though my efforts to understand the
intent behind which letters we choose to lead
are some sort of brilliant non-sequiter
P O R D W L A Y !
as though the spaces between t h e s e words
aren't just e x p e r i m en ts in the literal r e c o r d i n g of language
as though I'm not just hitting t h i s bar to hear the sounds
but to drink t h e even ing.

I want to experiment more with text art.
The aesthetic side of language and the literal sense of composition.
I want to use words like aesthetic and composition
without having to break a sweat
or break out the flail
t h e s e l f f l a g g e l a t i o n o f t h e i n t e l l e c t u a l ?
How Boring.

choo chooo title title

Somedays are good.
Somedays I can judge the distance and the length of the bike ride home by the time it takes to listen to one of my favorite songs.
So Come Back I am Waiting, and then there are only three more minutes to go.

Somedays there are cool winds, long grass, and the rhythm of hooves reaching out for the earth like it couldn't come up to us too soon. Like it can't catch us, but we're not afraid to hit against it in splintered moments, in hoofbeats.

Somedays I'd love to forget about the fact your actions have affected me.
Somedays I love only to see my mother smile, or greet me when I come home, free of any conversation, of any reality.
But rash decisions are met with rash responses. And although omniscient letters make me believe that someday maybe it will be good, I can't match the words to the writer.

The day that I finally do write back, when I'm prepared to hit the ground without hoof, and on hand, I need a promise that someone familiar might actually be there.
That it won't always feel forced, and that somedays , although it won't always be good,
nothing has to be pretend.

like a goodbye party

it seems as if we could exist on land forever
like we've forgotten that only mere minutes spent under something more dense,
something like water,
could pop these lungs that we expect to inflate like helium balloons,
into the remnants of a successful childhood birthday party,
the cheap sound of deflated rubber shreds, used party hats, and old plastic cups

yet we still swim
we go down there to remember that they could deflate into something worse
a faded red once scarlet, forgotten and left hovering only slightly above the surface til it's too sad to even look at,
let alone pop
like a going away party when I jump into something heavier than air,
and I feel my lungs compress and raise inside of me letting me know there's no natural response to the pressure,
no feedback that demands a reaction,
the exhale or the inhale, the goodbye or the 'see ya later'
and the uncomfortability that comes with both.
I don't know what to say.

I want there to be noise in the water, I want us all to be there,
and I want those that aren't to tell me to relax, to trust them and not the surroundings,
to tell me that inspiration does not only have to come from what has expired
to promise me that I can learn to dive deep and make it back alive,
so I'll know that it's something more than just luck that allows us to breathe so easily on the same surface, the land, that has tricked us into thinking
that the act of respiration is something we can trust no matter where we go.

A quick, stupid note, between shifts.

you don't even know me
your choice of dedications lets me know that
if you knew me you'd know better than to say
anything that has to do with
something i've been trying to tell
the difference between for
years and years and
years and years

it kills
because
something
else dies.

Mr. and Mrs. Everyone

SO since writing has been a definite no-go as of late for myself, and this hasn't been updated in a while, here is some music with some very good lyrics (at least, I find them eerily fitting).This is Eric Ayotte. I'm putting it on here because it is one of those songs that when I listen to it I think 'fuck, I wish I wrote these lyrics because they're exactly what I feel'....but I guess that is just good music. Anyway, enjoy.

We Savages (Dancing for Our Lives)

We too are a merciless and resolute people
you’d never know it by the way
we’re dancing for our lives

our crooked feet don’t confess the skulls
we’ve trampled or filled
with wine and ideas despite ourselves
best intentions

our hips are actors
swiveling too drunk ballerinas
though we know them to be the ball
and socket machines at heart

our smiles are liars like all
great smiles throughout history
tight-lipped for the too-sharp teeth
that would give anything to say

“Stop, don't do it--she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do.”



We’re a merciless but resolute people
and my feet are too tired to dance.

"I can't trust the light"

It reads like something lame you wrote in grade five. Like the first time you tried to prove that you were intelligent, or that you at least understood symbolism, or maybe you probably didn't even want to write it. Literally it means that it keeps burning my exposed skin even after layers of sunscreen have been applied, and after employees keep assuring everything will be okay (at least after the sunscreen is lathered on.) And the only symbolism would be equally lame and expected: that I can't trust happiness because it comes with a sensitivity ...yet quite literally, to sunlight. Thus, the two have somehow combined. The literal and figurative. Like when I told you father's day didn't exist this year but gave you a figurative reason as to why it didn't-because it was a figment -because I thought I knew, but it turns out even I was wrong.And like how everytime someone says "I love you" I don't actually hear it, not because they didn't say it but because I can't ever believe it in any literal sense-so I get all overheated and flakey like a sunburn
Today? sunburned. but because a side-effect, not because who I am had anything to do with it. I can't trust the light, and I can't always anticipate its burning effects, because I've never known it to be anything real. And maybe I should have just moved across the country like she did. But even then I probably couldn't trust it, it's not as though she ever properly explained it-and I'm burning myself here to find where symbolism ends and literally caring about all this damaged skin begins.

Luckiest Girl in the World

My Mother is fifty tonight so I take her out
for dinner and free cake
four cups of coffee and silence to replace a feeling
of hunger when she says,
“I was so terribly lonely I went back
to Atikokan, because I missed Greg.”
Sparkler burns on the cake and she takes it off
one gold star for the drop-out tonight.

Her oldest son is missing
replaced and repossessed
by something strung out and asking for money
to be transferred so he can get off the phone
“iloveyougoodbye, etc.”
and coughing in the background
tells her he’s not alone
but no surprises there.

The Husband dropped in to have a piece of cake
candles this time no gold stars
“you’d like these guys.”
he says as he’s leaving
blood still under his fingernails
because the invitation was never really there
and she’d rather have a bath anyways.

I put away the dishes for her
boil the kettle while she disappears
for a moment
coming back just to say
“thank you for making today so special.”

my mother is the luckiest girl in the world.

In Cars

talking about death under yellow lights
we said we hoped not to die in cars
because where we were going
you could only get to
by going too fast
surrounded by metal that twists like irony
and bores through our skulls,
burning your blonde hair brown
and shattering my glasses into fragments
that could stick out of my spine
so that when you look into my bones
all you'd see would be yourself
reflected in a million slivers,
the way I see you

New Violence

the great brood

There's a brood of bees in the shed, recollecting an old humming song,

a complete buzzing, a deficit I need to rectify,

as though there has ever been any durability to my moral positions

dying poems

today relied on artlessness
and not even putrid hospital poetics can drill through this structure that was once soft like the feeling of home, warm sheets and loving wake-up calls.

today relied on artlessness
and I hate hospitals because I am nothing like the wire fissioned into these bones
nor the lungs so full of what the heart could not pump
and they can not help us if we are already drenched with what we tried to inspire
and they've never held anything in place

today relied on how much i hate hospitals
the cleaving to death, the distrust in the artistic
I could read all our dying poems by the fuck ups of materials that spilled onto the floor
hospital blankets, cheap jewelry, saliva,smashed fingers, all that you've been fighting tokeep inside of you, spat back out onto your chest
and i hate hospitals because even sedatives did not allow for the abandonment of emotional arrest,

but maybe that's just artlessness
and it's all we can allow for
until we just overflow onto our fur and seep lymph from these fragile bones and valves worn so thin from years of scratching at doors
hoping someone will release us from ourselves

and although artlessness has not yet found me relief
i hope you found yours,
goodnight my little sweet.

Hey Paula!

Whalebone

Exhausted in any number of ways
you heave yourself into the street
to walk off the fear of falling into it again
and to put light in your lanthanum bones
once again projecting against the moon
words like "I'm not sorry, but at the same time
I so am." or even just "Living is frightening."
Because living is frightening
and I'm not sorry, but I so am
and my lanthanum bones form a projector
and your copper wires form the moon.

show us

everything moves slower even though we are constant.

everything where you want to go : encouragement, criticisms

discourse

complying with those people, audacious, telling you who they think you are

and really, isn't that who I am?


yesterday you said you were in an existential crisis, so today I drew a portrait of you with my left hand to prove it.
said 'look around, you wont find anywhere else or anyone else with this same guarantee'
SOLD! but I was not actually selling
I was reserving myself for a great sunday.
one with more self-nullifying behavior.

we are not bitter, so why do we keep framing our portraits as the same?
we are constant,
better than bad
we are constant, we are good
we are constant, but need too much backing up
we are constant
we are trying to sell ourselves on the idea of
one
and I'm failing at it,
constantly.

Allusions to Owen

it's always been ridiculous and you've known that from the beginning, but it still hurts when suddenly you realize that all you're doing is leaving another message on Jeanne's answering machine.

'some kinda ecstasy'

just like i said i would,
i put cherry blossoms on the back of my tongue.
i broke every law, that is to say i denied every desire for the sake of other desires, which is to say i did not have faith.

this is what i have learned about faith:


sour oranges hide seeds like a poison scold

black cats run from me

the sun won't set at the top of the city

angels guard a person with eyes like theirs. children eat what tastes good, not what saves them.

angels watch a person who watches the city who reads the myths who suffers the loss of the city who slings the myth when they're just a child who does what feels good the way children do when they're watching and don't save the memory of angels, the myths they read.

grow like trees who hide grainy seeds in the pieces of themselves they're supposed to give away when ready, when sweet


time isn't real. it will melt in your mouth before you get the chance to memorize the taste of salvation

O' to spend an afternoon
methodically working one's way through
one hundred psalms and broken verses
trying to understand what you owe to them
through what they've taken from you.

This is my long gorgeous hair

I cut it off
because I refuse to hide my face in it

New Translations For Prince George

Be what you can make at the moment, extend your hands into jacket pockets, and guard a heart that pulsed irregularly offbeat because you forced it to slow down while you stood around waiting in your duckboots for far too long.
You've got to start treating this life like it was something that you consumed, you must not call here or there the victor, they are two things that recycled all the rivers into pumping veins, and though you've gone back to the south, you have yet to find all the different ways one can arrive home.
And remember, it's not who they made you, it's not how they asked you to abandon the revolutionary, it's not how you began to find wars on the land, worlds that reaked with the mask of death and threatened the person that was filming it behind euro-canadian camera lenses.
No, it's not only that.
It was the switching of pronouns. It is when 'you' became 'I' and 'they' became singular.
And these anxieties? I'll forget the written ones, they're just writings of themselves. I'll show the blood in dark blues and grays, because I've learned that when a leaf falls here it just depends on the growing discoloration of sky,a north wind, and the asthma that chokes us.
It makes us leave so soon, oscillating with the birds in mid-flight toward bluer skies with the power of an innocuous breeze.

So save up more sweet-tasting alcohol , I've got difficulties to raise flags for, to break bones with, and to hoist up next to hastily blowing sails.
And while I've kept you updated,
It's always had to go through translation,
Somewhere between the west coast and central mainland.
Part North and Part South, I come undone up on cranbrook hill, I lost direction and I lost place. I hoard ghosts and flood them with memories of hometowns, I focus on bleeding and the distant echoes of ocean tides, I live in music and count all the ways in which cynicism distracts from life,
yet I do little about any of it.
I become too conscious of closure.
I try too hard to translate my goodbyes.
I try too hard to make them clearly phrased and technical.
But this landscape holds more than a the constant brooding to find that perfect goodbye, it holds a wish for more.
More dirt, more frost, more death, more cancer.
Grime has a way of becoming romantic, and it sticks to you like a first kiss.
It's this northern BC thing.
It's this air pollution that does not let us see the stars that we once forged our hearts in.
And knowing we can search for more than dead trees and foggy skies, we modify our environment, we re-write our truths.
and I've given myself five days to re-write the definition of Fort George
because when a frozen town un-thaws, it leaves more puddles than a rain forest ever could.
and I see more of my reflection saturated in the dirty gravel ground every time I walk back
from the university to home,and so I know I'm already melting with it.

Truthiness

My body is not my body

we may stay updated on any changes

"You are thinking much better than I do. What is the solution? What have you been taught? If you are drinking beer or messing with drugs than...-I know, I know, I have never messed with my chemical equilibrium-What the fuck are you talking about?: I am looking for a mult utility solution (including that last piece of the puzzle with that story about the cliff jumping)..because you thought it would save you, make you money on being a champion instrument.Too often these metaphors never make any sense or comparisons . We are unfamiliar with these personalities and accomplishments- it's not easy, but it's sometimes good....there are mile markers on the road to happiness but we are worried about bulk, so we simply delete these lines ( our lines, his/her lines, their lines, zee and zer lines) we are being removed- Okay I am about to permanently delete this entry- What I am trying not to say is in all these blog things...- Well shit, are you shy? Be assertive, learn to relax, reduce swearing, go places together, stop reading so much into anxieties and what you are writing about. You could read this 500 times and still not be aware of the current state of 'play' within it............ in this space of handy low-cost technology."

Potential/Absence

They say if it's crowded all the better but lately you can't even stay up late
and the noises and bright lights don't make your vision swim
just buckle and double like knees or iron or any support really
and it does come apart, and they do always come apart
because 'points of articulation' is just code
that says "a man made this so other men can bend it"
or break it
with baseball bats or even just their hands
with a guitar, a beer bottle and the silence from the last record.

Tour by Bus

An iron ring was built around this city
to help the people living here
get from one place to another
faster and with fewer breaks
for history
so they can forget
their city was built on bones
and skulls and other dead things
that will never decay because
we wont let them
like the iron ring running
all around this city to stop
the people living here
from getting too far in one
direction or falling out
of orbit or
oscillating wildly
so as to shake history or
each other
so instead they kiss
both cheeks
pulling each other close enough
to whisper "history
is not the only thing that
surrounds us."
and repeat
"set me free
set mefree
setme free
setmefree"
until the words
mean nothing to anyone.

metaphysical response to bringhurst

I checked the cliff side to answer the theological question ‘which demon pushed adam?’, because nobody else would do it

Falling into the answer he inscribed on the vertical wall of the cliff
scratching his nails against rocks , too harsh, too trying, too desperate
It momentarily froze my descent

And the answer was concise in its raising of another question
How can anybody know it’s possible that they’re being
pushed downward when they’re already falling?

and although adam and I had already landed,
our demons who preceded our fall went unnoticed,

our bodies found,
theres lost,

yet they still ask
‘who pushed them?’

dulcius ex asperis

I hear them muttering songs through thistles nested beneath tongues,
breathing the taste of nectar stained purple and bruised,
where their roots protrude makes no difference,
in fact, it changed few chords.

for it was the misshapen pinkies writing beneath the earth that wrote this hymn,
spiraling downward entwined with soil like long necks of disjointed chord progressions,
digging out stems whose thorns only dare be pollinated by the humble bee.

humming 'you can never be hindered by progress,
and you shall ne'er be overlooked as mere parasite,'
but perhaps they meant weed

and so you were not

and so we grow sweeter in any soil
quietly replanted against clambering rocks and minerals
crushed by the melodramatic ocean
whose cacophony of tears remain still yet tidal
resounding soundtracks for mere humble moondancing

and so it too, weed or flower, remains humble
and it too will be found when replanted by pinkies,
by the art, the daydreamer, the drifter, the poet,
the bees

and there they'll be
blooming from purple bruises,
singing their jovial renaissance
to the difficulty
and to the sweetness that lives to follow

Seriously guys

why aren't you all online so that I can tell you I'm moving to Halifax to go to NSCAD because I got the acceptance letter yesterday and it only took them 2 days to accept me sljfhksdf;jksjfkl;s

what the fuck.

Little Moments

I'm so unfathomably different from who I used to be. Little moments change things. Somewhere along the line who I used to be snapped, shattered, crumbled. Yet here I am resorting to old bad habits, obsessions, addictions. Here I am giving up those years of resistance and diving all too willingly into a sea of my self destruction. I'm sincerely afraid I'm going to kill myself soon. I feel so not real. Somewhere along the line I switched over into this alternate universe where I do not emote, or attempt to share my emotions. Somewhere along the line I began to drink more than I should. Numb.
I've become all too accepting of the fact that I will never heal, I will never be okay, and I won't stop until I die.

hoarding ghosts

black nights against a white open sky,
spring is nearing
you cough open and endless and I wonder if you too are the winter
lost in snow blindness that edges on the last dark night of the frost moon
dying still
into a newly glossed-over spring
with trees so high we both can climb and scratch
in places where our marks will never be found
and when the heat hits
you can seek refuge behind drawers
under a bed where old chicken bones
will be jutting from your hips
and I'll gather you up in the heap...
that after the fact, never made any fucking sense to me...chicken bones?...
...yes, that's right...chicken bones
like every memory, like every nostalgia of flesh,
the old hungry bird skeletons that are now poultrygeist.
There was never a reason for them.
but their story will out-live me
like these ghosts that I've collected, unable to completely live down or leave behind.
My grave will read "here lies chicken bones!"
and I will not be found in the sediment,
just replaced by old marrow and knotted joints.
Apparitions that were momentarily stashed away,
found in my death, overly apparent and surprisingly foreign to those who had met me
or thought they had known me
during the life-span of all this unorthodox haunting,
unaware of the shame that had always rattled along with it
beneath my restless head

I don't know if this really belongs here

but listen to paul baribeau

Looking for the Perfect Party

I've been looking for the perfect party
one where everyone is nice and happy
one where nobody gets too depressing
one where nobody starts undressing
one where I don't black out for weeks at a time
one where I'm not constantly changing my mind
one where no boys leave too early
one where you don't take to acting surly
one where I don't have to feel alone all night.

when I was eighteen and didn't really exist, or maybe I just asked too many questions

I see flare guns ignite when they're past being more than warning signals. I don't allow being caught by their lure, it's only the same impermanence seen in the stars: they are just old light.I see the same decomposing thoughts flashed everyday. Concave lines crease into our face, and ivory souvenirs of good breeding or simple evolution, shine. Sometimes the head will fall back at the same moment when hair seems to land perfectly over the face, when we compose notes with no paper for them to imprint themselves onto...as if by purpose.
Because laughter
is not
to be recorded.
Its altruistic intent is in something which is not stability,something that can only be real in a short glimpse, and like everything, it too will die. And if giggle-fits and chuckles are the songs we make when brainwaves stumble across un-written thoughts for the first time; spat out to accompany old memories also destined to expire, how do I write their epitaph? How do you write for something that has no future, was never supposed to, and never really warned much of anything anyway? And if I cannot write how can I say goodbye,
how can I stop caring for something which I cannot write for?
And is this the first time the awkwardness of my shifting eyes and hands have searched out into this new melody, and what is the promise that resides in it? I had an epiphany when you laughed yesterday,
that I am something
that is
beyond
repair.

this is really fucking long, I'm not that pretentious it just got like this, feel free not to read it or whatever..ps it's not even a poem really

I think about Rapunzel and the haphazard approach she took to allow company to get to her.
I don’t brush my hair very often, but I still think it would be easier to cut it off from my head if I needed a rope handy. And why didn’t she climb down?
Maybe it was different. Afterall, nobody’s asking to climb up to me, and nobody is relying on the roots of my hair, except maybe myself.
But in a mess of tangles, would it even be safe for someone to want to approach me?
And would there be any point or fairness to put so much of my effort into into pulling a friend up to myself when they will just find me here ridden with tangles and unable to make a ladder from silk?
Could I not just yell ‘In this tower, without a risky descent, you may just all lose me.’?
But would I ever be heard? And would it ever be worth it to take that risky descent and climb down?
And when Rapunzel’s hair was cut off, if she hadn’t been tossed out into the woods,do you think she’d ever have the courage to get out of that mess? Would she have climbed down herself or lingered around throwing chunks of hair out her window just so people would remember her existence?
I don’t think I could ever rely on safety that grew from the hair on my head, something that is so frailly rooted inside of me.
So if I am to be forever stuck in my tower, I’d hope that you’d wait, as I stick my hands through tufts of my own hair, and tug them into ropes.
Pull the strands bleached numb and invisible into a braid that’s meshed with the security and permanence of black locks, ones that have already absorbed the insecurity of false-light and hope.
And I hope you’d keep waiting as I found it in me to admit they aren’t just dark, but truthfully inconvenient, almost annoying, still lamenting over every fucking loss.
And I’d explain how it hurts when they’re pulled tightly together by trying to move forward and pull someone close.
How when the black strands are mingled with the emotionally bleached
I just get all strung up in knots, and I can’t just keep brushing them over and off.
Because although I want someone to reach me, I’d rather climb down to meet them, than have them think I’d put all my faith into something so aesthetic as hair to keep them close, or risk them getting tricked and tossed out into thorns and becoming blind like Prince Charming.
So wait my friends, wait until I have the courage to demand it all be cut off
Wait till I can show you that I can weave specks of brightness in an otherwise bleak evening, into something that I can trust.
Because what I need is a twilight advocacy for thoughts that are honest.
What I need is something more than the chains that connect us by a false sense of security, the ones that were only sustained by the expected and routine.
What I need is something that doesn’t make me believe that without trying, I can always trust people would want to climb up.
So you can cut this braid off , make me bald, and while you’re at it, hand me the rope that’s left from it.
I’ll use it to dangerously rock-climb out of this place.

Now, I’m not saying I’m some fucking Rapunzel, but I am beginning to look out at the world with her eyes.And maybe it won’t be long until I’m screaming till my throat bleeds, “In this tower you’re going to lose me" And the witch will be the one who finds me with the scissors, and she’ll be the one pleading to have the permission to take them from my hands.
She'll grab them from me knowing that I’m more at a loss, and less likely to be saved, if I’m freed from the weight of my hair with the option of jumping down myself.
She'll take them from me.
Knowing that I'm worse off having to rely on someone to want to climb up.
Knowing I'll be forever waiting in my room to feel a tug.

Destroyer

I want to drink myself into oblivion

Just Checking In

The future makes my palms sweat
and my jaw quiver

and I wish I had the courage to do something
that would stop me from having any future at all

let us go then

Keep yourself amused at all costs.

Exhale the north wind and spill through a cracked door,
and if you're running on empty,
maybe it's worth just running away.
It's not such a bad thing
to try and makes your eye dilate while toppling over mountains
you once flew over but missed
hidden in a cloud.


because some things should last forever,
and the ones that don't won't kill you
but will leave you deepened by a space reserved for something new
or familiar
like the way my shoes feel
when I tread carefully to the ocean,
peering inside shells
to explore the limits of this sight.

Year of the Dance

...and everything is happening at once and for a second it seems like you're helplessly overwhelmed, but then you're standing in your living room, dancing to Patti Smith in your underwear and even though you're completely alone it doesn't seem to matter, all you care about is the pivot.

Step , swing, pivot, repeat.

We don't want to live lives that are better than those of our fathers, we just want to live with the opportunities to fail they've taken from us. It's why we smoke and swear and fuck like we don't know better, it's why we fall back on the step, swing, pivot, repeat while we listen to songs they used to know.

Swivel, swing, stomp, clap.

You're moving too quickly to care about the applications you haven't finished and the ones you chose not to start; too quickly to notice that you're not as aerodynamic as you used to be and you're stirring up a whirlwind of cat hair; far too quickly to notice the horses coming in from all directions.

Horses, horses, horses, horses.

Choke.

We give it time, but nearly everyone I know is depressed.
And some days the air is so dry none of us can swallow.
The more I grow nostalgic for this toxicity, the quicker my lungs harden into coral- and the best joke of all?
How I used to want to take up smoking to have a reason to be alone.

because a leaf depends on falling

just as I'm breaking it down






...proverbially
because so much depends on who we feel that we are
a bittersweet love for sickness
internal dialogue advocating for fuck-ups
puts down progress
like 'Holy Shit i'm eighteen'
and almost as old as we've ever expected ourselves to get
reaching my last habitual second
connected to a cross reference
pre-purchased souvenirs manifest against this minor inconvenience
let me stay distracted till moss grows over a dormitory
that read E.E. cummings [l(a] , but with instant meaning
that may be
(de[e])ceased
until unnecessary pontification
and please, I insist.

The Boy's Got Girl Problems

What's a girl to do when the punchline makes her cry
and she isn't the prettiest girl in town anymore
and nobody will ever love her droopy neck
and she feels like she isn't going anywhere with her life
and she can't talk to the prom king because she's scared
that he'll leave her with a split skirt in the back of a car
chubby thighs splayed like a turkey,
with cranberry sauce on the tablecloth
so he can prove it to his friends about later,
substituting her name for someone with softer features
and a sense of humor about this kind of thing?

What's a girl to do when she isn't even a girl?

My Too Oftenly Accepted Asshole Commentary

and I wish the word had not become a stimulant to some grand idea of liberation.
You're fooling yourself if you think it empowers everyone.
My better half truly wishes I could stop cringing every time I'm at a party or somewhere that doesn't involve my immediate group of friends
where these overly bohemian types who have learned to embrace this weird ideology of femininity (the one foreign to my dominant-asshole-nature), enter the room- tossing out the word 'love' like it's synonymous with 'know' in a constant state of giggle-fits and smiles.
"I love you"
When did this become hip? And when did you even know me?
and that's when I want this definition of femininity to just fuck off and stop making everything so pornographic.
and I'd take all the cynical bastards in the world over these people.
You can't get stabbed in the back when there is nobody behind you rubbing yours.

I've Made a Huge Mistake (And not the One You're Thinking Of!)

We can't spend our whole lives dreaming
but lately that's the only time I've been lucid.
When it comes to you, dreaming is all I can do
because when I'm standing the blood rushes
and it seems like a stupid idea to kiss you under a meteor shower
and it seems stupid to say that I shouldn't have ran when I did
but when I'm dreaming
the lies I've told are exposed
and I know better than to tell them again.

A stupid Poem
for
A stupid Mistake.

-and I don't know why I keep dwelling on everything and acting like if I had the chance I'd change things between us I would because the reality of the situation is that in six months I'll be gone and the perverse asymmetry of everything will be made apparent when you burn while I shiver.

it seems unnatural to begin sentences anywhere but the middle now because there is no use trying to relate how all of this got started, we just have to sit down and try and put the story together from what we've got.


This Week's Theme:
"Smooth Moves"

Twelve Months in Fifty Minutes

Start the CD on a high note; something reverent about girls late for class, then move on to the heavier songs about catharsis and coming clean out of love with your lovers. Document the malaise and the haze of two winter months in a chemical daze and the sublime machinery that lifted you out of it. Make a point of coming back to the beginning and recognizing where you've been before sprouting off into the second stem, whose petals have proven more ornate than their glass tipped sisters which serve no purpose but to whisper about the ominous changes in the weather patterns. In closing make a salute to sails and the hands hoisting them higher than anything, wish them good luck and let them know that it comes apart.
Let them know anything could come apart and that the fact that it doesn't is the greatest testament there's ever been.

Every Night Showdown

...so really when you get right down to it there's nothing new, just the same dysfunction; the same disconnection between the emotion and the response; the same old humiliation reminding you
that you've never kissed anyone sober and nobody cares how much you move your idiot body around.

So stop your fucking dancing

Upon My Blindness

Bruises with origins unknown and irrelevant
are still assigned a sinister quality,
as though it was them and not the drinks
which brought you here
along this path so winding and blind
to waking up on a couch after kisses
that are just starting to bruise.

La Stanza Distrutta

Ardea herodias

They shook dust from their wings.
Little cast-away particles from their hollow crushed bones,
Sticking to splintered hairs lying dormant on my face and sticking up rigid on my arms;The detritus of history balancing on bunches of skin cells.
Dead, yet somehow still growing.

And the rain was perfect that morning.
Breaking as it hit the concrete, gleaming off boney tree branches, making my eyelashes web, and gathering together small oceans at my feet.
The gravel crunched under tires that were tarry and black
like when we closed our eyes so the sleep would come to us
so that the earth would become shifting sand dunes as the car pulled into the driveway.
The heat and the dust rising off the tires and fragmenting the rain’s mirage opened different realities to be embraced within, and I could see myself starting the ignition as I prepared to drive back in search of home and the prior week.

If it had been more than imagination I would have diluted my orange juice that day, skipped the coffee ,and said “I like to do the dishes”. Or would I have been anything but pleasant, tossing away passivity, demanding myself as in charge? An informer, sliding onto the deck, slipping on saline, squawking out to the heron perched on the old branches, asserting that there's little use to come back here, unless to stay perched forever or to be shot. And his feathers hardened into bark , stripped from the rotting trees, and blown away as ashes into the wind, gusts that controlled puddle tides of the tiny oceans that were now soaking into the down of my pillow.

When my eyes did open, the freedom to pretend closed.
I woke up to slanted ceilings and odorous books,
Weary eyed-dogs and a reminder in twisted sheets that had folds creased like furrowed brows.
And out the window no herons perched on the tree,
But were floating serenely in the breeze.
The last remnants of a life blown away
burnt up into sunrise and tail feathers;
the drama that I never had, and the archaic cessation I was expectant for you to die for.

myheadmyheadmyhead

I have this reoccurring image in my mind of me digging my heels into your back
and your skin gathering up like mud or dirt
leaving indents in your flesh where I was


Then I'd melt into you


I'd melt into your back
my flesh into your flesh
and there'd be nothing left but you

Recent Architecture

An evening spent drawing fake homes for the affluent,
each one on a three inch wide and tall piece of card,
the bottom folded down to allow for convenient application of glue;
one of them my grandparents' house in Morris, Manitoba;
another the one belonging to the Brady Bunch on Glory Circle.

At the time it seemed a task of both import and relevance,
one to be remembered through the ages as an ambitious undertaking
and to be exhibited in large museums where Warhol used to scoff
and van Gogh would never have stood asking, "What was that?"
or tried to understand rock music.

I'm alright with knowing that such wasn't the case
and that the closest I'll come will be another boy
with proportions strange and tiresome saying things like,
"The beams are crooked" or, "Who would build a house like this"
joking against the facts, though the facts are jokes themselves.

But my God, how tiring.

Red Balloons You Forgot About

"Where are you off to now?"
I should have asked it that, as it bobbed across my path, but I didn't.
I was fourteen, I didn't understand what I'd just seen.
Now I'm seventeen and just enough time has passed that homes could seems worth revisiting.
Stupid forces call me back to them; to the time and place
where the Winters are more sincere
and you never needed to worry about red balloons or truth and beauty bombs.

Despite my better judgment, I have the insane urge to revisit Fort Frances. I don't know what it is I'd expect to find there other than the same old wasteland complete with marauding bandits. Maybe I'm looking for closure, or some obscure feeling of understanding. Maybe I want to understand where I came from?
There's nothing there to understand; just bones and railroad tracks and one highway into town; a cemetery beside a pulp and paper mill, and a lake.
Oh, and the bass tournament.

lingering on

Eventually we all may be frightened out of honesty and the consistent search to relieve ourselves of apathy
We’ll stay put, remaining concealed even when the covers have pulled in
but for now I may have to stretch across maps
two greyhounds, one bus, a taxi, and an airplane
found at a stop in traffic, deported to ask permission,
wondering,waiting, and reading all the signs
907 kilometers away
blasting track nine on an album that chased me out of the year 07
music pouring out of speakers
I no longer know which trip I was on, what trip I just left, and where I’ve vacated to
where the trees still glow white in the background, like the moon luminating down from a night spent rising over the harbour.
And I’ve awoke to a lot of things,
fire alarms, phone calls I stumbled to reach, an alarm from a neighbouring room, a noisy roommate
But not a single morning since I returned has left me startled with unfamiliarity and confusion, and never, not once, have tired,red,wet, eyes and heavy sobs of breath kept me up tossing and turning, posing as insomnia.
I may always want to turn back around, but when these anxieties are stripped down, I know now that there are no more excuses I can swallow to avoid learning what home means.