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.