the words

They say the words will just come
but i have to tell you they feel pretty stuck
stuck in lies
things i thought you had to know
in the end
not so
not so much
you ask me what i see
two kids
two kids caught up in eachother
i feel a crystal ball i have bribed stick in my mouth
i am ashamed of what i have done
i cannot write beauty into this
i wont write out the mistake

out of the light like ariadne, like helen, or how the great city fell to it's knees

It is the time of night where it will cling to me
search
search by candlelight
for the extension
of the other's
of eachother's
body
dig wormholes through cotton
burrow up and out
break open the blinds
arrive
half hearted
and weary
your fingers will unlace the stitching
not too fast
i am a latecomer to such romps
silicone sheets
linen drawers
you know you had me at “ok”
no need for ornamentation of your body
or of my own
search me out and you will find me dripping with wax and gentleness
i will tell you yes
take it
take it all away
i cannot look at it anymore
i can barely see

rose coloured glasses he lovingly placed upon her face

it is all whiffs and scents and blurs of colour and sadness
she has painted herself like a saint against the stained glass of his iris, but he finds that he can no longer believe

she's not listening

she hated the way you never knew anything about arbus
or the way a glance can change the room
that the idea of making a home filled you with regret and not with joy
that you didn't see the value of a quiet pot of flowers breathing on the sill
or the way coconut milk floods a space with home
she hated the way you spoke only with periods
and the way the next page seemed like a logical suite
how you didn't see that softness
or the brush of a finger
made the whole day disappear

the cat and the fox

aluminum thought he would catch it from plutonium
and plutonium thought it belonged to calcium
the dog told the cat that they couldn’t see each other anymore
it was too risky
the fox under the chain link fence slipped out protective gloves and tied his long red beard tightly to his body
coated himself with tape
the steps of the periodic table shivered then fell
elements
in the elements
rain made them corrode
zinc had to go home
the fox killed his young
none of them would touch each other
they stayed
in opposite corners of this far wide open globe
of this home
no table
no levels
no control
no continent line that could tell them they did not belong
they belonged to the earth and the sea
and those things can kill you know?
they stayed and waited
hoping for a reordering
for an omission of the things which had made them great and then thrust them to the floor with lust and anger
“we shouldn’t have done that” said the fox
“I’ve lost my only friends” said the plutonium
“my home…my life…the birds” said the cat
the world was wide, wet and scary
and they hid and they hid
clinging to clues like a ventriloquist in an audience of poker face
like a doctor scared of his patients
like those who think they will die soon, very soon
until they realized the only disease was in their mind

petals

did you know i wanted to be a petal?
my heart opening and closing with the weather
need become reclusion, become need
welcome
i want to be so skinny my bones make you cry
i want my hair cropped so short they all think im a boy
i want it to be a surprise
the crease of fabrics carry the scent of giving it all away
i want to give it all to you
without losing my own memories, my own bodily functions
did you know that i dreamt i was a petal?

a: petals
b: hanging petals
a: boxes, overflowing boxes…
b: of gardenias
a: it smells like tomorrow
b: i don’t believe in the past
a: i know
b: i don’t know anything about you
a: plant the flowers, plant the flowers
b: plant me, plant me
a: and if i told you
b: told me…
a: the meaning of the metaphor
b: I’d rather not know, i belive in aestheticism, not meaning
a: i’m so thin now
b: orange blossoms to your hipbones
a: too simple…try again
b: “you’re the one that I’ve kept closest”
a: that’s plagarism…but i know…and you’re right
b: one day we’ll have a garden, and a house
a: and a life full of gardenias, full of petals…

worldviews

A: every time I wake up I’m angry that this had to happen to me
B: that what had to happen to you?
A: its always like this, like getting ripped
B: away from?
A: with and maybe away
B: its like the womb
A: the womb?
B: think about how strange that word is
A: wooooooomb laughs
B: what else is spelt like that?
A: what time do you have to go?
B: soon i think, very sooon
A: what does his face remind you of
B: placenta
A: and blood
B: everything is always red
A: how often do you go?
B: he is angry very angry
A: does he feel lost?
B: no he feels departed, he feels split
A: its all a splitting isn’t it?
B: what is?
A: the world into views?
B: and the tower?
A: I don’t believe in building towers, you have to lay the groundwork and I don’t know how
B: is that what makes you angry?
A: groundwork? no. more like laziness
B: then couldn’t you stop being angry?
A: I don’t know what happens between here and there.
B: isn’t that the point? I think that’s the point
A: he wants a tower, I don’t have one to give
B: is that supposed to be a homosexual reference? laughs
A: no.
B: sorry
A: its like an analogy of a cup
B: I don’t know what that means
A: a cup
B: what sort of cup
A: a cup that drops out and refills
B: oh, is that your worldview?
A: i don’t like worldviews, they’re too divisive. its violent almo...

pas de deux

A and B, two ballerinas are warming up at the barre. They are executing identical movements as they speak.

A: I think i’d like to see you dance some time
B: I never dance for anyone
A: I know, that’s why
beat
B: I cant dance
A: if i saw you i think i’d stop trying so hard
beat
B: ya think?
A: just this once ok?
B: gosh…i don’t know
A: just this once, i promise it won’t hurt, you wont lose any parts
beat
A: how long we been doing this for ya think?
B: thinking i dunno maybe 3-4 years
A: and I've never seen you dance!
B: c’mon that’s not true, this is dance…sort of…
A: laughing no, no, no this is…warmup, this is just prep work
B: i don’t see the difference
A: well, in that case you'll never be a great ballerina!
B: playfully pushes her while continuing the movementt heyy….
beat
A: I just wanna see it, just once, they told me, before coming here that you were incredible, the best!
B: you think you can handle the best eh? she smiles
A: yeah, yeah i do
beat
B: I don’t like to show those parts of me anymore, well ever actually
A: why not?
B: i dunno, i mean, i think i used to know, but it feels like somewhere along the way i lost the reason exactly, but the feelings are the same
A: keeps you safe?
B: slightly aggressively Whaddou I gotta be scared of from you eh?
A looks at her, seems to raise her eyebrows, then looks down and returns to her warm-up
B: what the hell was that?
A doesn’t answer but busies herself
B: hey! I’m talking to you!
A: look, lets just forget it ok
B: no, no, i don't wanna forget it, what the hell was that look for eh?
A: looking up at her You’re not the greatest at all are you?
B: I am too!
A: you’re just scared like everyone else
B: I’m not scared of anything
A: youre scared of me
B: no, im not
A: prove it, dance for me
beat
beat
B: i, i, can’t
A: then i don't belive that you’re the greatest
B: fine, i don’t need your approval
A: don’t you?

shakespeare

Where is the satisfaction?
the exporer becoming the explored.
what would it mean to have you touch me there?
to have you touch me like that?
smudging my womanhood
crucifying and digging
“don’t you ever forget this moment”
i hate to call it a haunting
but
“a rose by any other….”


that’s exactly what it is.

myths and aqua jets

fill it.
glass box with the smoke of a thousand goodbyes
the water is settling, erotic, on the tip of your inflected and forked tongue
i guzzle it down my throat
swollen
and itching with the unsettlement of having been pushed too far
wandered off the path
to find
on the other side of aqua jets
the cold cement of blackened morose promises
you didn't keep.
Your mind
too rational
flows through mine with the liquid ease of forgotten time
mine, too wide
searches for it's perimeter
hoping to find the completion of it's angle
obtuse and lonely
acute and all alone
where do the diagonals of my thoughts die?
and dive?
when will the intersection be the cure?
the outer limits of the myth i have made,
allowed myself to take part in
allowed you to take part
have become nothing more than lullabies i sing myself to make the intersection near
tangible
sweating and warm
to wrap my twisted body between your meshes and holds might make me split
if i could tell how far the warmth reaches
deep below skin, blood, and bone

it finds itself singular
bathing and steeped in the myth of a longer day.

today

sex is only ever an expression of need
in this modern age, we cannot find eachother
we cannot find our way back



Surrealist Game #347

1. recall everyone you have ever spoken to
2. subtract all but their voices
3. create an orchestra out of these voices
4. remember how bossy everyone is

.

please please take me home
where i sit now i dissect oranges and kill sugar trees

i smoke too much and sleep too little
i learn too little and think too much

take me home beauty
take me & hold me
just take me home

where's the exit Barcelona?

if i were to trip right now...this is what i would say

“you think this moment is the only thing that binds us”

You think you can unwind, rewind the making of your intelligence, of your crowning.
What comes first? words or ideas? images or auras? Who will you see when you wake up grotesque. again.
Pigs munch on apples, and vegetal debris.
Who will be your pig?

I could draw meaning out of everything I write, but merely shade myself from disappointment.
Rework my tongue in and around the locus.
Where? Oh where does it hide?
I halt/start my beginning. over&over.
You tell me the moment has come. to write. to write and not to fight.
To kill the meaning, to crunch it, crushing the crucible with crying hands and tinny mouths and tongues which reek of aluminum and sweat.

Have I told you how much I love confused pears? or the meaning of a broken palm? Have I told you about your smell? or how much you really mean?

You. Hypocrite.

Acting like you don’t like cherry stained fingers or narrative stained palms.
Nails collecting the debris of your sexual experience.


Have I told you how much I love you recently? In fewer words than this?

cicada cicada

i miss the scent of summer
and the way you tell me to shut the fuck up.
show me the way to my redemption
to my unlacing.
in cicatrice-scars
i found
cicada.
cicada.
cicada.
cicada.
paint it pink.

paint me the colour of persuasion, perfection...or the poly-amorous lives of insects

a monologue to speak

she said...

"You think that I don’t break? A Russian doll maybe? something for you to pet? You don’t know anything about me. I KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU! What year did your mother die? 1968. What’s your favorite fruit? oranges. What keeps you up at night? the smell of loneliness and the flutter of a moth. What year did my mother die? What do I take for granted? Who makes me shiver? How long is my breath? Oh, if it could be that simple…if you could make me into an acrostich…I….It’s fleshy you know, the inside of someone’s sex. the inside of mine. it reeks, it’s acrid. It’s dead X. Perfume me. Perfume me with sweet sweet oranges and sweet sweet tea. And don’t you dare say that referencing Stein makes me a lesbian. It’s not my fault that you cant write."

do you?

“do you ever think about home?” the girl asked
i smoked heavily in those days, and i sat across from her chain-smoking and drinking sweet mint tea
i told her everything i missed about home
down to the shape of a Montréal snowflake
down the slush in my boots
down to the way people don’t smile at you in the streets

yes i said. i think about home all the time.



i miss the things i never had.
to speak only french….
i feel like i missed my rite of passage.

poplar trees and winegum; winegum trees and late book fees

pink poplars of people
purple frosting
porcelain, poking through
polar opposites
panic...
panic..
panic.
bi-...
bi-polar

oh how it sits so well on the tongue
in the mouth
in the mind
but not in theirs
not in theirs
damn poplars!

whisper it

they told me not to orgasm
but i did
and i did not die


that was the saddest letter i ever read/wrote

is what she told me before blowing the smoke in my eyes and ruining my morning coffee

a place that's scary, a place that's paved

Over steaming noodles i told the 12 year old poet what i mistakenly now call ‘the manifesto’. We do not write plays and poems and screenplays and scripts and short story feats for the same reasons. I also tried to explain this to the blond poet, the one who bubbles over with observations and images that bloom like developing photos.

There is something pre-existent in poetry.
There is something that existentially fails.
(maybe i heard that somewhere)

(light a cigarette)

let me try to explain what i want to mean
what i mean to mean
let me try to tell you what IT is.

a story shares with me. a play tells me something about myself. about the way i draw lines between motifs and metaphors and trains of thought. I am the reader. You are the writer. You know. Look how well you know. Look how well (i wanted to say good but i stopped myself. she would have been proud of me) look at how well you write. I know your characters I know why you want to tell me about them. About their idiosyncrasies, about what they ate for dinner, about the anchovies they spat out, about the way they tie their shoes, about the length of a breath, or the constellation of a smattering of freckles on their back. about the difficulty with which they see him again and feel their hearts beating against their small sunken make believe chests
buh buu
buh buu
buh buu
buh buu
bu…buh-buh-buuuuukhhjskka….

show me the way to your conclusion. that i might feel better about my ‘I’. that i might learn to understand why and when and how. that i might imagine myself a moral, a message, a lasting metaphor to fuse life, love, and all the things i try to justify. give birth into my arms. cover me with it. let me believe in love refound, in the symbolism of a pie, in the joy of birthday streamers. and i get one. and i do. like that! i get one. even if it is dialectical. even if it is confused. even if it is and is not. i know it is there. i feel it in every articulation of my body.

then the change, the flicker, the reason.

the poem offers you nothing. the poet gives you nothing. he writes because he must. he writes because he needs searches to come to terms with what? he does not know. always searching, yearning, aching for the perfect word, he never finds it. herein lies the birth of the anthology, the collected works, the life. none of his words ever come close to what he needs, what he seeks to find to eventually dissolve into peace. nothing satisfies him. each poem in its inadequacy burns him and he must try again, and again and again. and never will he find the word, the turn, or the taste of the vowel. he is stuck in the penultimate, the shirt with no collar. if he buttons it, he need only ever write One Poem, and in that wondrous collection of nouns and symbols, antithesis and prose, he would strike gold into the heart of truth, of the human experience, he would pierce us and we would fall. so clear and resonant would be those words (2, 4 ,6 , 8 ,10) that we could no longer live as we now understand it. we would all fall. we would all drop dead (except not dead) and remain there, perhaps half living, but never moving, paralyzed by the exactitude of the articulation of ourselves. with this in front of us, we could never complete another thing. the poet has written it all. it is the bible, it is the apocalypse, it is the big bang, it is birth and existence and finality, redemption and condemnation. he has killed the future, he has killed the past. and without them we cannot walk nor speak nor breath nor die nor live but rather stay and wait for his words to lose their accuracy. but they cannot by nature. thus, the perfect poem freezes us all, it penetrates us and describes us and re-appropriates us as part of its description, of its account. The poet too dies (but actually). peacefully, leaving behind what had provoked him to leave us with this legacy of temporal amputation. he has met his terms. in this glacial world, grammar itself disintegrates. the question mark dies, the colon dies, vocabulary breaks down. how many words in the English dictionary exist? they’ll ask. kill them all, except the (2, 4, 6, 8, 10) of The Poem. black holes, voids, comets, astronauts: pioneers of tomorrow all die. It is the moment of absolute present, of absolute certainty, of finality, of completeness, of understanding, and it kills in us any desire for art or creation or even life.

a poem could reshape the world
The Poem could reshape the world
and bring us to a place that’s scary
and bring us to a place that’s paved

there is only fxkinh

where you are meant to be to be to be to be to be learn to be learn to bloom learn to be learn to be what you said you would be exactly exactly where your supposed to be said you would be
just
there
just where learn to be where we learn to see
O
blossom
to be
to be
come for me and be where i want you where i put you where you are where you will be where we were being being then then and not then

be
be
be
be
be
be
be
just be something

sarah kane told me it was the witching hour. and then she hung herself.

at 448 i told him
i told him i could not love him
i told him i needed more
or was it less
of him
of myself
of us
of the dirty sheets and unmade table
of the broken shoes and rotten lilacs
of the way you keep me up at night
the way my arm falls asleep under your body
the way you tell me to make dinner
or do you ask me
i could never tell
or ask

at 449 he told me
he told me that he hated me
or did he cry?
would one cry
can you
cry
we cried once
and it troubled me for days
to watch you
a grown man (perhaps you are not grown)
to watch you
a man
cry to me
about how lost you feel
i cannot help you
i cannot hold your hand
i did not come to this cold city to be your mother
to tell you things will be ok

so at 450 i told him
i told him I was leaving
my suitcase was already packed
hidden under the bed
you’ve already packed haven’t you?
you asked me
he asked me
how did you know
how did you smell it on me
the nervous ticks?
the worn brown leather?
the smell of moth balls?
the black silk underwear you gave me for Christmas one year
balled up between my old suede boots
and that stupid woolen sweater with the reindeer
how could you have known
that i would have the foresight to pack my stuff


perhaps you know
perhaps you know how easily i am convinced
convinced to stay
perhaps you know a packed bag is
what
i
need

to know that I am really leaving
i am really leaving
i really am leaving

GOD tells me to GO-

the exposed brick wall came and blew away the william paper.
the bath, clawed, held two.
the sugary fig burnt, came to seed, pollinated
satisfied the maternal longing
it was the only summer i ever liked seared tuna
i used to cost you 600$ a time
vaccum packed, skin tight, the dryness of the ocular roll
we flew
made a scene
and made up
like we do
i wanted to tell you that I wasn’t worth that
i tried to tell you something about breathing
something about the bad poet who couldn’t be Odysseus and kill her
something about the soft center of Italian cheese

i wanted to tell you something about domesticity
and atlantic criss crossing
and screaming crispy duck

about how much i liked the creamy dessert
and the sound of your laugh
rolling through me