May 2013
3 posts
it wasn’t a day that
i should have been dwelling
on us but i was
in between the ugly mess
of all things rational
floors that needed to be
vacuumed and phone calls
you know,
those unkind
obligations
i was still stuck
somehow
on you
in the face of adversity
there is a time to throw the towel in but there is also a time to tie it around your neck as a terry cloth cape, a time to run around the kitchen island singing like a six year old who gets to sleep in on weekends and believes in dreams we had so long ago.
medicine these days
You can cut out a kidney as well as a significant portion of liver and intestine. Remove one, maybe two eyes and ears-
they’re not entirely necessary- legs, arms; candidates for amputation.
And experts stand up, applauding, calling it miraculous how the human body can so tenaciously subsist with help from our 21st century pills and machines.
But they’ve still not yet devised...
April 2013
8 posts
swiss legend: legato cirque
happiness
doesn’t go on sale.
there’s no gift wrap
option and
it never comes with
free shipping.
it took a couple hours
of forced rationality
to figure that out.
as a result
i saved about $142
plus tax
but jesus christ
there’s still a hole,
there’s still a hole in my chest.
there was a garter snake crossing the road as i was on my way back. i swerved slightly to make sure its small body was in between the wheels, then looked in the side mirror to see if i saved it. a glittering black line on the pavement, it was still slithering across and i watched as the car behind me split it in half.
the thoughts
i had to leave so i drove to our house and it took only an hour to realize that 40 miles wasn’t far enough away to escape anything and also that i’d wasted gas and would waste gas driving back the next day but i just couldn’t bear another second sitting in that small dark space where other people made me wish i was alone
pick another time to write your tragedy the wind has kicked up and april is cartwheeling through my hair now right now is the very best kind of existence the kind of beautifully wholesome struggle that teaches a person what it is to breathe deeply and know their own name
the sunset really
has something going for it right now, it’s
bringing down the house
8th of April (18.30)
It takes a special kind of person to damage the day you made,
a day that was creative with the primary colours, carefully handled so when it set and dried, it could be something you would want to hang above your bed.
Yes, it takes a certain type of person to wrench that from your hands.
8th of April (7.00)
The sunrise this morning has charmed me irrefutably, it feels as if a dream has flown to nest within an arm’s length of my capture.
full of books and shoes alone, the room still echoes what creates a home
March 2013
3 posts
trying to find sleep on a bed already made soon the sun will rise
training the healers
i killed something today and they watched me, they watched while i fixed him to the table and he squirmed and twisted, all legs and arms but still pinned by his wrists. they ignored it, they ignored his motions. angry and shaking and i cut his chest open, clipped the last bit off his sternum with dull scissors; the best of what they gave me but he wouldn’t stop bleeding. i put a hook...
chapter 22
god, you’re beautiful and by now someone should have ground that knowledge into you with their hipbones; they should have given you a warmth you could carry in your chest
February 2013
2 posts
2am
You’re looking for answers
In a world where you are probably
Going to fall in love with a sack of flesh
That is 70% water.
i went swimming in the
internet and i drowned
January 2013
5 posts
awake
You sat too close to be
A dream straddling
The bench open legged and
With an open heart
I could feel my chest collapse
As you pressed your mouth
Against mine
Warm passionate saliva dissolving
A year of walls:
Building a gate in our picket fence
And I watched as
You set the sun with your
Hands and they burned
Straight through me
was that
what you wanted
After all of our unravelings...
we two know the truth
We sleep in different beds and
are loved by different people and
we gracefully allow them to distract us
reservations
never make plans
be they dissection
or construction
employ hesitations and
enlist the assistance of devices stronger
than yourself
resist
your caring tendencies
you do not need the charities of
lace and velvet napkins to wrap your
wounds
use only your bedsheets, use only your arms.
the glamour of tracing
a constellation of
freckles
down arched vertebrae is
terrifyingly
...
Insignificant golden
Specks visible in
The strongest sunrays
Bitter chill deceptive
Clothed in a fleece of
Grandmothers
Bodies in communion
Soon to find their
Caskets
faith
God must be
Very
Dissapointed
But the bar
Remains so
High
December 2012
3 posts
Merry Christmas
Wrapping Paper
you told me i was funny for still
believing in Santa when you really should
have told me i was mistaken for
having ever believed in you
20
it’s the end of the year and
i’m running out of things
like shampoo
staples
and patience
November 2012
5 posts
13.24 & not yet raining
it would be like the world
to run out of coffee
as you are approaching the counter
it would be my luck
to meet you standing
umbrellaed last
in line.
because they sold our cartridge games
you’ve grown up
she noticed
busy
making political decisions
doing things like
paying bills
and flying
alone.
you’ve never loved her
she noticed
busy
making pressured decisions
doing things like
road trips
and other
men.
You’ve said
Too much and it doesn’t matter
If one hundred people
have heard or
whether you’re in the bathroom
writing on your arms again
Because pain
isn’t that different
only ever changes
If you’re
bleeding from the
Inside out
Or the other way around.
The truth is
I care where you end up
It matters to me
Whether thirty years from
now you are drunk
And stumbling
Twisting through foreign
streets muttering the names
Of women who no
Longer love you.
the click
beep or soft silence
that the phone makes as you
end the call
is
my least favourite
sound.
October 2012
7 posts
Christopher
she is waiting for you crosslegged
pyjamed and long haired she
is sitting for you still and she
has placed the world on
hold the world is listening to
muzak and songs that are fit
for upholstered elevators and she has
opened up to you as flowers open
only to be beaten down
by the rain only to be
ravaged by the sun and crushed
between the palms of young
children they bloom in a place
...
every fight we've ever had
your silence is maddening why
must i worry so much as
you are sleeping can i not
simply lie beside you unconscious
forgo the earth and all its axes?
red eyes
i am
captive to
events i do not
have the power
to control
i am envious of
you and your
freedom and i cannot
contain your passion
for life and
those that
arrived before me
tell no one
hide your dreams of
rose petals
and candles
down comforters
and
chocolate strawberries
bawl them between your fists
and tell no one
because for the rest of us
it is a rushed morning
with cracked blinds
and obligations.
the alarm
is too loud.
and if we are lucky
it is only the blankets
that steal our warmth.
so if you are
courageous enough to believe in someone
conceal your
...
heal
i am doing my best to heal you
trying to take two
pieces of skin and fix them together
hoping that the
blood clots
and the stitches hold
i am trying to breathe life
back into you
as the world claws at your chest
and kicks at your teeth
and i am finding
that it
is difficult.
pour
It turns out
that having warm knees
pocketed
against yours
does nothing to fill
the empty space
between your
sternum and your spine.
that kind of work
requires plaster
or
maybe
something else
lightning
it was more of
two people
that found each other
with their fingernails hair and tongues
it was scraping it was finally
there a quiet corner of
existence pulsing
hot lightning
pervaded each movement
ripping through membrane like a rusted knife tearing
it was raw aggravated and baptizing
while the anchor
said rain would fall heavy; in sheets
September 2012
5 posts
onward
my people
spend summers with suitcases
we vacation through
worn
duffel bags
and breakfast in
the practicality of
backpacks
we are kind but have a tendency
to not stay
in one place
very long.
It is not about Pablo
It is not about Pablo. But
It should be about
how
he cracked your bones with
a silver mallet.
It should be about
how
he cut out your tongue
and scarred your soft palate.
He dug in your eyes
and cut at your wrists
and you get to still sit
with your hands folded neatly
and when friends ask
how
you are you just smile and say
fine
difficulties
i don’t know
how to make pictures with my words
anymore they are not even bullets
i can’t find the meaning in hairbrushes
and fragranced soap
the way she cradles her head in
her elbow
crook
the summer light that bleeds through the
dying leaves and
gravel that scrapes through the
holes in grey shoes
it’s not as simple
to walk up and ask
how they are.
all the useless
this is about waking up
and knowing you’re
going to spend
a significant
portion of your day
surrounded by people
that know next to
nothing about your life.
ziplocked
do not be mad
when you find
what you need and it is neither
sequined nor electrical
when your choice is scarred and
decisions are blurred and you
hold your hands out in the midst
of the fog.
store your disappointment in
sugar bowls
smother your frown beneath
sweaty blankets
save it
preserve it
ziplocked
pickled and jellied
on the shelf for
the other early mornings
days
...
August 2012
6 posts
have some faith
in the dark
take shots of it
and wince as
hope warms your body
when you can’t
find the candles
and the kerosene is
gone
open a bottle and
wait out
the night
who
what
if i am everything
all that has been desired in and out of
fall afternoons and friday nights
when you kept white walls
company
who was it
that was called to slam doors
and pull teeth
and lay naked on the bathroom floor
who designed eyes
that could accept
your passings?
you place my
face within your palms
and
ask
if i was built
to break you
youth
physical wet soft and mechanical
you speak to me like someone you’ve
never known and i smile through
my teeth and i push with my tongue
and my thoughts turn upon me as if
they are ingrown
my eyes say the things i cannot with my
mouth i am letting you in
i am forcing you out
kiss
you really think you would
remember it
more or something
but it
is fragmented just like
any other moment trapped
segmented and blurred
immune to capture
like every other
second
lost like the
words
of a story that is
over
12 or 30 or 304.8
what is a foot and/or a meter
you’ve halved my faith and rendered all
immeasurable degrees and decibels
sketch out the kilometers and the stones add
up saying I must support you the pressure is
unending and we cannot be converted
lost in the heat of unusable energy
my love is not soft
my love
is not soft
it is a scream when others are sleeping.
it is fanatical
a self induced exorcism
aborted by an iron mercy:
bent coat hangers ripping..
it is the slow asphyxiation of the soul
shallow breaths stain the inside black
while damaged tracheas collapse
in a fit of skin and disaster.
it is organic in construction
simple and
instable
it is volatile
flammable
red sweat...
July 2012
4 posts
i feel like seeing blood
i cannot hurt him
because he is as you were i am obliged to
use the most delicate of napkins
and dispose of brass knuckles
take my shoes off at the door and
shrug my coat onto the iron hanger sit in
velvet seats and clap with an institutional courtesy
but i’m waiting for the curtain of night to
fall i’m waiting for the wolves to circle crackling white
snow beneath their...
scaffolds
In the process
of leaving
You
Turn back
To watch the demolition
you constructed such a lovely
excuse
But now there is no escape
seven oh three
tired sighing
that it was really late
that the sun was up when I
laid back down
and that birds outside
were having none of this
going back to sleep business
so I pulled
the blinds and shut
them out
