play with abandon.

page 26

2010-07-11T11:36:00.001-02:30

all the apologies I’ve ever written
are serving roles as bookmarks, napkins, dustpans
everywhere.

you might say I wasted my time:
dramatic epilogues crafted but never sent.

but me,
I say you’re wrong.

today I used a memory of you to
mark a page.

not only will it help me remember where
I left off, but it will continue to serve as a reminder
of that place I never want to be
again.

quarantined

2009-06-01T12:17:00.001-02:30

I am a resident here,
an achiever, a victor
of all things unmeasurable.
I have earned this corner and
the shaky ground it teeters upon.
I have fought for the right to turn
away from space-invaders;
from those who extend my borders
just to casually march across
such a turbulent p(l)ain.

I am a star amongst beggars; they
lock in on me with eyes like saucers,
spilling over with jealous admiration.
they are strangers but they are proud,
almost sure we met once, before I
earned this corner, and really connected with me.
I sense envy that's urban and cover my head
with a sheet to ward off the stench.

I am an inspiration to the fearful and an
earthly god to the socially condemned.
they claw at the bricks that face me,
my brainstorm adhesive, mad after what's
keeping my sadness so compact
after all this time.

but still, I am due.

I have earned loneliness and a daunting
fear of never being entirely enough.
I have achieved sickness and permanent
paranoia that questions the intentions
of those peering in from the top.
I have been awarded madness and rage
and atrophy of the tongue.

since fighting so hard to hide from you,
I've become immune to all the things
that make outside worth trying for.

hedonism

2009-04-16T14:40:00.001-02:30

an erect finger, licked and curling
in the peripheral.
a subconscious tease, tickling,
a panting, illuminating death.
self-sabotage, warm like sheep
wings, shapes
me.

a
drowsy compliance
floats in, clings to my clothes, then,

my breath.

I am baited,
suspended,
piercing tiny holes.

I wait
loosely
to cover them in.

little red wagon renegade

2009-04-07T02:07:00.000-02:30

my heels were catching up to me,
trailing, like a miniature wagon
stocked with dirty memories
and a hand shovel, still
looking a place.

until now, I had taught myself to get by
on my knees if you were in a good mood,
on my ass if you were not, or on my back,
if you really made me feel powerless.

I had sworn off walking, especially running,
if I expected you.

they were gaining in, loud gallops
echoing resentment, my frail cower
manipulated with
unfeeling hands.

my softness may be sticky under my feet
but now I have time to waste;
to drag your loss for words around.

wallpaper hieroglyphics

2009-04-06T03:32:00.001-02:30

the tallies, scrawled in a powder of dead skin
encase this descent, shaping it
into a specific hole.

fives multiplied, I can barely find
the courage to mark these last days.

I have become fearful, scared of my shadow –
the looming dark entity itself. I have
lost the vigour you used to stroke
so admirably under my skin;

I have become thin, airy like the final sigh
of defeat.

an architectural tragedy

2009-04-01T13:00:00.000-02:30

I am sad like an orphan, I am sad
like expired milk.

the greatest of distances, dotted lines
of latitude, the lengths I’ve promised
I’d go, cannot always
be bridged.
somewhere in between the waiting,
spanning time like noise in the branches,
the thicket’s dead stare, I sink down and into
a reality of curdled disease.

I’ve shared space and air and sighs
with those too close for comfort; a
warm chair, dry-heave tag-teams
racing for the sink, an erect palm
waving a pride that should be mine.

I’ve had all the time in the world
to waste on mistakes. with make-shift
memories, I’ve built my own bridges
from bed to bed to bed, rising above
my sour shadow, their
telltale invitations to gape
or leave.

I am empty like the sky, I am sad
like sutured skin.

I’ve tried to build a bridge of love
alone, but it’s overgrown
and endless
and not strong enough to close
this widening hole.

that elusive winding staircase to something

2009-02-24T01:56:00.002-03:30

an escape stairway, sixteen
flights down, had your name scrawled
within the divide of every step,
usually where depth-perception
would fail me.

I’d descend slowly, imagining your palm
bracing the small of my back, stare up
at the two-way mirror with a cheeky-dissatisfaction
for a god’s time not-so-well wasted
on me –

my pious intentions.

it always seemed to take forever to reach
the exit; new ailments, another list of
prescriptions from a doctor who still wouldn’t
look me in the face, a firmer sense of my
withering parts; the acceptance of.

yet it would terminate the same way, every
time: I’d sweat another night’s sleep from
my gaping pores, lose my vision more times
than I opened my eyes to something worth living
for, hit the bottom, sound the alarm, and wait
for you to come.

with my forehead hung over the banister, I
hoped this time you’d find me, fold me
delicately into an origami beating heart
and fill me with treasures from the years
we’ve lost.

yet it would always terminate the same way,
every time.

even after they’d escort me back to my room,
I’d feel like you’d come for me, next
time –

should I miss a stair.

oxygen toxicity

2009-02-18T01:38:00.001-03:30

diazepam breath, a deep sigh
blowing the storm door wide open:

I hid my eyes in your hair, coiling bones
like a metal snake, and sought
comfort in your apathetic
use for me.

with lazy kisses, you made me feel
welcome enough to lie down
but stranger enough to fixate
on pupils that seemed to take
forever to dilate, on teeth that
only grinned while bearing it,
or me, more accurately.

I tugged on your collar, said
“wake up, it’s time I leave”
and you just pointed at the
intentionally broken mirror on
your floor, the piece of bloody
dental floss in place of a guitar
string, and the door

still gusting wildly.

I was my own escort and rode
out of there on a revolving agent:
I exhaled in combat and won as
your pretty cards fell, all their faces
to the floor.

it was finally quiet, the royalty now listening
for a sigh, or a heave, or even a slight splinter
in the flattened affect that once pulled me in,
and convinced me I could change you.

third-party amenorrhoea

2009-01-13T01:28:00.000-03:30

i.

A circle of women sit, crossing their legs,
weaving their wrists, their ankles in and out
of identifiable strangers, all
staring at the centre, assuming some
preconceived dawn, some feminized
rebellion.

None of them speak; they shift weight,
heavy set, saturated gazes onto one another,
connected by invisible sorrows, mounted
through a unified mutiny.

ii.

Sometimes desperation coagulates into
a mass of furred emotion, sprouting
slime glands, antennae, and a sixth
sense of congenital failure.

There are mistakes that grip you by
the knees, drag you down, open
you up and leave you with nothing
but your own warped self-loathing.

There are reasons to be found under
fousty pillow cases, between tender
thighs, along stammering, disjointed
confessions to link shame’s ring
finger.

There are reasons to break the circle.

iii.

I am a woman sitting alongside women
unlike me.

They renounce suppressive ideologies
and excel under the generosity of the light;
the freedom to choose rather than to
be chosen.

I am a woman sitting beside exhibitionists
cultivated from a field of banality.

I am a modern day woman living the life
of a traditional machine, bloating and
exploding in the heat of the kitchen, the
untamed fire of my ripening womb;

I close my eyes and buckle down
amongst the free-floating heirs
where my pangs of inoculation
are confused for roars of triumph.

a length to lesions

2008-11-27T15:57:00.001-03:30

I could, perhaps, etch some geometrics
when you’re not listening. that’s often,
days I just ramble about failures in the
design, my temper-mentality, the desire to
touch you, not the letters, linking arms and
swaying in my way.

I could, perhaps, invert your conceptions
of my gluttony; misaligned mandible, my
adulterous need to feed. you could help me
breathe with fewer idiosyncrasies, I could
teach you to replace complacency with
lustrous anxiety.

but when it is me, you depend
on visionaries I’ve struck down.
your dusty amygdala shifts face
as I keep reaching for a dropped
chin, not mine to guide, even in
modesty.

I could, perhaps, redirect my own hang ups.
decide four years is long enough to chase
a stationary body, thwarted by unrequited
talk of depths. I could, indeed, sleep this
off.

heat to the banana seat

2008-11-14T01:16:00.002-03:30

today I was eager;

anxious to find a cure, I
made nice with you
and your apathetic,
single-toned lull.

I forced myself between
the crinkles careening your mouth,
squat down, sat it out,
introduced myself to the women
huffing your scent, dampening
my awkward dress.

I poked you in the cheek
with my keys, no good now. I
wrote notes on your chin
with my finger only to have you
scratch the nouns away, replacing
them with dots, beads of bleach
exuviated from the skin on skin,
foreign to me.

I sang home-remedy melodies,
challenged a meteor man with
a single finger, and listened to a
raven’s theories on shame, self-
respect, the lust to be adored

just before she kissed your mouth
and swallowed him in one, hedonistic
predatory swig. you too.

I crawled to your cleft and allowed
my legs to dangle there, swaying with
infuriation, heat to the banana seat –

the retroactive interference
of your bigamous sneer was
red tooth and nailed,
so despicably low.

and as she rode away on training
wheels, you smiled sincerity. you
mistook my grinding teeth for
a parade march, or a dawning
light, or a passage of allegiance
to remain undermined.

I did make nice with you, eager enough
to mouth the words, rebelling only
once: scuffing my heels down along
your neck, I wanted to walk around
and around, and around.

I wanted to stop your breath, but
I didn’t. more so, I couldn’t.

snipping strings and erasing lines

2008-11-12T15:08:00.000-03:30

most times, I can’t find the line
you’ve woven until I’ve one tempest foot
already digging deep into the other side.
it’s when you don’t stare me in the face anymore,
your eyes better suited for an anvil – red tape
for puppet strings, trying to motion me
back.

and when I stand there, straddling the line,
either to be pulled unto my back or darting forward
to land on my face, the first gives me a
defeatist pride that I take with me, and the latter,
a pathetic urgency; an easy conquer.

I’m sore from two-stepping with mixed ideals,
standing on the toes of someone too high
to imagine middle ground with me. I’m
ridiculously self-aware, so much so
I know, the numerical appeal transcends
my organic thighs, my heavy heart, my
rumbling sighs.

I won’t try to pretend that once peaking
my interest, you have not rode your own
slick slope down onto me, here now
just as I won’t try to pretend I’ve
been elevated in your mind to
heights of star ships, constellations,
the puppeteers whisker.

now, the line is evident, your ankle
nearly buried by passive-aggressive
avoidance, kicking dirt onto
the back of my head.
you’ve never once said anything
that I’ve said you said, and in
waiting for any kind of resemblance
I have grown in size, in number
far past your line of what’s worth
your time and what is but a mere
distraction; a temporary doll
to perfect your unfeeling dexterity.

standing behind Golgotha, waiting for someone to notice

2008-10-22T21:54:00.002-02:30

everyone speaks of the hummingbird, its melodious
reserve, of shiny silverware, of parades,
of the lost need to speak.

they frame pastoral worn-out landscapes and title them
‘beauty personified.’ they check their mail boxes
every fifteen minutes and get the same
rush to the gut each time lifting the lid
to nothing.

they have many reasons to be discouraged:

winter months, larynxes too cold to coo;
fousty dishes no longer reflecting marriages
structurally sound, to the end of the rainbow bound;
taller nay-sayers blocking the view of elves, of batons,
of the homosexually proud;
conversations so far past the level of comfortability to admit
it just doesn’t do much of anything, anymore –

the empty wait for anonymous love letters
has stolen the place of those too apathetic
to argue, yet

i want to see things.

i want to be the author of your secrets, the
deliverer of seasonal change, of timeless
china, of the flute’s sheet music, swarming in
and baiting each successive, cinematic word.

i want to recreate your floundering definition
of beauty; i want to substitute your mail box
with scented pillow cases and an ear canal; i
want your letters to write themselves from
my whispers, in nervous avid motion;

i want
you to see things,
just as i see things, when
i see you.

even language is an erogenous zone

2008-10-02T18:13:00.000-02:30

and to think i was the one
reaping the conglomerate sighs
for the chastity belt.
i was the little dirty digger scuffing,
pointing crooked pinkie fingers, insisting
my asexual place.

i looked at you in all my disgustful glory,
covering my mouth, believing
you were sickened.

i believed you had been brain-washed
or better yet, redeemed.

and now, here i am, wasting time –

waiting for you just to say something
profound, not necessarily true, to
reel me in. lying around, imagining

conversation, free-versed and
spanning hours, and hours,
and hours

with the stamina of a full-fledged horn,
so lingually amatory.

i've been expecting you

2008-09-19T19:47:00.003-02:30

it’s been a long time coming,
you and I; a
universal you, a singular I

so long now all the others
on the same expedition know me by name
but dare not speak it in fondness,
in quarrel, in defeat.

they know me as the girl, not as
the woman. they know me as the inquisitor
not the prophet of my own steadfast sorrows

nipped and reaming.

and despite the things I’ve heard; the causalities,
the loonies, the promiscuity of those
too heavy to give back what they have
stolen from me,

the sonographer says he sees something growing
and that he’s a little concerned.

here, at the terminal end, I’ve little to be graced.
the years I’ve spent pleading and begging and
coercing you have culminated into this;

words that have out-grown their skins, shed
and are forgotten, words that are dipped
in kerosene and shine like shamrocks
on the foggiest of mornings, words that have
layered themselves into this fetal pit
of regret and shame and haste –

it’s been a long time coming, surely
I wouldn’t recognize you now, and the others,
they refuse to speak to single themselves
out.

humanoid

2008-09-01T19:35:00.004-02:30

you stand, staring, waiting
for me to lend you a line of leisure,
threaded and dictating the gestures of every one
of your rippled limbs;

your wrists, limply offered by a
fleshy brail.

I would take you, read you all over
and press my lips authoritatively against your dreams,
wound up and caught in the screen, picked at
by angry fruit flies.

I would find you, your core, and raise a green
thumb in every corner I’ve turned into
when the sky sags down on me, heavy
with subjectivity.

I would nurse you, each suture sound
and suspend you from the limbs higher than
your own, canopying me from the heat,

sugar flies deprived, shriveling in defeat;

your wrists would hold on, swinging on
the words I’ve erased from you
and since, buried myself joyously in.

jane doe

2008-08-30T00:43:00.001-02:30

I’ve lost my touch again, with
palm prints polished down, an almost
clean escape to cowardly
concentration, smudged marrow;
disheveled ideals
on coercing you to feel comfortable here,
with me.

so now I feel embarrassed
and spit up on myself
like a baby with apple-sauce breath that
usually gets me drunk pretty quick,

and I guess that’s okay, if I plan on
staying here.

the glass just keeps slipping from my fingers
and if I was urgent enough to create a scene
they wouldn’t even be able to identify it
as mine

or me, as yours, once

and I guess that’s all okay if I plan on settling
into this, not as myself.

soluble in water.

2008-07-18T01:51:00.002-02:30

I’ve been drinking in my sleep again

and in the bathroom and kitchen and
under the stairs

where our eyes didn’t meet but warmed me
like diazepam and summer swimming
down stream; like a love –

a break in the mnemonic chain.

If I dared to ask, I know you’d hex
these tremors. You’d swear against
all intentions of hurt while stroking
that bent-twig in your pocket,

connected to strings, strings, cowardly
things –

the potency of my breath disgusts you.