Full stop

I’m drowning in tomorrow

Pule back-beat thundering in my head between cranium mania and
Brow-broken sweat shop over easy scrambled
eggs where my brain should be thinking
of today

I’m festering in yesterday
Somewhere between ‘good morning’ and ‘pastrami on rye’
And trying to figure out why, why
The dome above us is blue when space is black
Between stars and supernovas
And taxi-cab meteors depositing carbon-based passengers from planet to planet
To make Martians out of molehills

I’m still trying to float above it all
The kettle between my ears throbbing and whistling
Cartoon steam jetting out of my ears in the mid-afternoon afterglow
Of hangovers past
This bus smells like pancakes and broken dreams
It’s raining maggots and candy canes today

So this is what you see through me
When it feels like my veins are filled with mud instead of
feelings
And they go to take my blood
But I faint because I’m just filled with hot air
And now I’m in hot water
Because I’ve forgotten how to feel today

So now yesterday and tomorrow make a
Tag-team low fat hold-the-mustard sandwich
With cream of fuck-everything soup on the side
And enough bagels to feed the whole downtown east side
This is the jumble of scrambled-egg brain
Between my ears, under my skull and skin
Veiled by hair
Holy grail female brain, they say, confused
I say I know exactly what I’m not doing.

This isn’t meant to make sense, it’s meant to make peace
With inner brain and outer space
It’s not supposed to make sense
So when I say ‘oo ee oo ah ah’
You’re not supposed to say ‘what?’ you’re supposed to say
‘ting tang walla walla bing bang’
It’s not supposed to make sense when I break down in Greek History
Because the Spartans killed thousands of people
And it’s not supposed to make sense when you say
‘are you okay’
and I say
‘yes’
and you say
‘are you sure’
and I say
‘I’m fine’
and you say
‘do you want a hug’
and I say
‘fuck you’

I’m sorry for that, see I’m not myself
When I talk about comets and Martians
and maggots and candy canes
and sandwiches and Spartans

I’m not myself.
It’s not supposed to make sense that between all these empty words is a
Very heavy message
Behind every ‘I’m fine’ is a ‘help me’
And behind every ‘fuck you’ is a ‘please don’t leave.’

I’m not who you think I am right now,
See, I’m usually the candle in the dark
Flickering like a beacon to let people know I’m here, and I can light them, too
They can borrow my flame
But today I’ve been blown out and will stay a smouldering wick
Until someone else comes along
To light me again.

I’m dying, in today
There is no way out of it
Before this brain pain ceases I’ll never forget
I’ll never forget how the sky looked the first time I walked out of the dark
I know this, it’s familiar, was normal for years before I broke out
Of this mind-prison

And I won’t hold you much longer, I just wanted you to see
What it’s like for me
because I don’t mean to confuse you, it’s not easy
I’m not who you think I am right now, I’m not myself,
I’m sorry for that,
It’s not supposed to make sense

I’ll cease this ramble now, go grab my bucket because
It’s still raining maggots and candy canes
And this candle
has to deliver perfume of pancake-dream death
To the Martians.

Sometimes

Sometimes
It’s easier not to let people in
Because if all your friends are strangers,
It hurts less when they change.

There is a rift like a yawning canyon
Running between us
No sky above and darkness below
Tightrope between sides, don’t fall
Fantasy and fiction become merged in the waking dreamscape of reality
Autumn leaves fall in spring and
You change like a season out of time.
No newfound reason or rhyme
It’s just another conundrum of the everlasting
Neverfailing
Occasional
Apparent
Unusual
Nonexistent…
Sometimes.

Sometimes I feel you, like a thorn in my side
Feel cold sparks of anger, pain, heartbreak
Trickling down like blood
Sometimes you’re gone
Absolutely and completely like a dreamer in a coma
Barely shed husks of your old self
And I heal
Sometimes
I am, alone. A sea of a thousand people surrounds me and I tell my stories
To myself, to keep me company

Sometimes
I never remember having loved. Other times it’s all I can do to
Stop myself from running faster breathing harder holding longer
Jumping paces closing spaces searching faces
Till I find that one
Who makes me forget that
We all go a little crazy,
Sometimes.

And that maybe if I just take a pause and breathe a breath of fresh air
The fog will clear
And you’ll be standing there.
Like a ghost from past lives
An echo, smoke signal from extinguished fires
Light long gone but hazy smudges left on window panes where we
Pressed ourselves and made funny faces

Sometimes
I remember not knowing you
I remember breathing in and out hundreds of times a day and not thinking of you once
I remember when my hands did not miss you and my
Lips never kissed you and my soul
Did not list you
As home

Sometimes
I will sit and listen to silent ballads
Playing symphonies through treebranches
The wind the conductor and gently tossing, turning like an infant in a nightmare
And in the third movement
I will dance
All by myself
Across the tightrope between canyon walls
To show you people don’t always have to change
Sometimes.

Little Green House

I miss you, and the memories you helped me make
When we constructed our little cardboard house and I painted it half green, just for you

Your horse lived in our backyard, buddied up with the toxic waste donkey
Before it puttered off to the unicorn paddock
We admired other homes, the bakery, the fact that overnight the empty lots turned into
Upbeat homesteads.

I built furniture and you were the postwoman
Delivering important messages from house to house
I sent you love notes, which you redundantly picked up and subsequently delivered to our own little house before opening them
We walked the streets of our perfect city, admiring the view, and then
The sun set that final day and it was dismantled, taken down
And too soon, we became just me.

I still have our house, although I guess I live in it alone now
The empty postbox on the side
Dusty furniture on the deck
And the paint still green like
The weeds that grew in my heart
After you left.

Quicksand (a haiku)

I’m drowning in the

Quicksand that filled my lungs when

You whispered ‘goodbye.’

Daddy

Daddy, look at me.

I am not your mistake, I am what you mistook
When you forced mommy down to the bed and didn’t even know her name.

Daddy, look at me.
They say, I have your eyes and smile.
Is that why you can’t bear to gaze into my face? Because you’ll see yours?

Daddy, look at me.
I am what you created, in a moment of anger
In a moment of rage and lust
I am from cursing, I am from blood and sweat and piercing cries
I am from you,
Double gift to mommy and me

Daddy, look at me,
Come for me in the night
When the monsters under the bed grasp at my ankles
Come running for me when I cry in fright
When the monsters whisper your name

Daddy, look at me,
I’m here, I’m what you wanted when you were little, like me
Scant five years old and dreaming, dreaming of your own family
Promising baby-dolls you’d never hit them like your daddy did
Naming them after your favourite flowers

Daddy, look at me,
I’ll be your Daisy, I’ll open up my petals and let you in
I’ll let you buzz around me like a honey-drunk bumblebee
If you promise to stop plucking my petals
If you promise to stop trying to rip out my roots because you’re ashamed to be in them
If you promise to stop trying to block out the sun.

Daddy, look at me
Not with fury and breath like whiskey,
With vengeance in your eyes at the child that did nothing, and the mother who said nothing
And the soft blue eyes that were yours looking out at you,
Just begging to be held by you,
Just begging to be loved by you.

Daddy, look at me
I am from, you. Your past gift to the present,
The baby nobody wanted but sacrificed for anyway
I am from blood, sweat and piercing cries,
I am from you, daddy.
Look at me.

Pink Underwear

Tired of walking down the street and
Being stereotyped even when you try your best not to conform, and not even in the hipster way
Where everything but breathing is too mainstream, but more in the way that
No matter how you wear your hair or the colour of your skin or the brand of your clothing
You are what the people say you are until you dare to stand up and say you’re not
And there are few in this day and age so brave.
I haven’t much to say today but, when it comes to mind,
I know for a fact I’m not what I seem
And I doubt you are, or you, or you,

I know that just because someone wears Ed Hardy clothing doesn’t automatically make them a douche,
Just like I know wearing your hair in a ponytail doesn’t automatically make you a pony.

It’s simply a matter of convenience that most of the people that call me a fag, muffdiver or carpetmuncher happen to be wearing Ed Hardy at the time,
Although really, when you’re wearing something more bejeweled than the Queen’s crown, you shouldn’t be calling other people faeries.

Tired of walking everywhere and being called a dyke because
I favour loose clothing and an androgynous look, doesn’t mean I’m gay
I mean, don’t get me wrong, because I am gay,
But I don’t need a horde of Captain Obviouses pointing it out day after day.
I don’t need beer cans thrown at me, I don’t need to be spat on,
I don’t need to have the gay groped out of me
I don’t want to be a man, I don’t wish I had a dick,
I certainly don’t wish I had your dick,
And no, your dick will not change my mind.

My favourite activities are not dirtbiking, fixing cars and stealing your girlfriend and/or wife and/or daughter (though that last one’s happened one or two times)
My life does not revolve around my sexuality. I don’t read every gay book in the library just like I don’t watch the L Word every night.
I don’t call them gay rights, because where I live they’re just called rights
Same with marriage, I don’t have to jump through more than eleven hundred extra hoops to be considered ‘equal.’
I didn’t wake up this morning and have ‘gay breakfast,’ the fact that fruit loops are rainbow and fruity has nothing to do with why I like them
I also don’t hang around the Drive simply because of the vegan fare and lesbians, the latter of the two is simply an added bonus.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, no matter how much you can claim to know about me from one glance, you simply can’t judge me right on how I look
Because, face it, you can’t tell a book by it’s cover

And here’s a little secret, between you and me,
I’m wearing pink underwear.

City lights

As i'm looking out my window, i see these city lights
Twinkling, real pretty like.
This neat-o shimmer like stars on water in the middle of the night
When your laughter and my laughter become one and
Caress the moonlight.
I think about science class
grade ten
Crusty old teacher 'hum-hum'-ing as the disobedient students
Throw spitballs back and forth and carve mementos into desktops
But never Sally the geek because she knows everything and will grow up to be
The next Einstein.
Grade ten science class
Where they taught me that lights don't glitter and stars
Don't shimmer
It's just the pollution in the atmosphere.
And, well, i think the pollution gave me some magic when i was ignorant
And maybe ignorance is ignorance but it's also
Bliss.
Bliss to not have to worry or wonder
If the stars would shimmer without 'global warming'
Or if the city would still flicker and glow outside my window
Or if they would both just be, still, like a rock or
Breath caught in surprise.
Bliss to not have to think about all the little things
Like 'is it safe to climb that tree, or will i get a rash'
Or 'can i go out without shoes, or will i step on glass'
Because life is no adventure without ignorance and injury.
Yeah, maybe i learned things that mattered but
When it gets right down to it, i don't particularly care if the Earth revolves around the Sun
(truth be told, mum always said i acted like it revolved around me)
I don't really care if the Earth is round or flat, so off the edge i might run
If i'm not careful.
All i really care to learn
Are the lines and shadows your body makes
Silhouetted against the night sky and city line
Where heaven meets concrete jungle
Where the pollution of love and life and happiness makes the lights sparkle
And we put ripples in the water
With our laughter.