Back at it

O Canada

 

Pop song

The night’s just started
And all my friends glorify
What it’s like to be wasted
I’m standing in the corner
Waiting for someone to show up
And I hate that, I hate it

I’m dancing on my own
In the middle of the room
No one’s watching
They’ve got better things to do
No one’s watching, and I’m dancing

Reckless, times like this
I forget to keep my guard up
Check for dust in my drink
The boys are devilish
But the girls who drugged me
I still can’t remember, I can’t remember

Waiting

It could be an act of violence to force another to wait. To steal time is to empower yourself as one more capable than someone to decide what happens. And still, it is a powerful voice that hushes the young one, breathy and gentle, “Wait.” it suggests as if there were another choice. It is like a spell one barely recalls after the waiting is over, that someone else concocted in a glass bottle and roofied you, because once you are finished with waiting, you forget who told you to wait. It was because they didn’t want you to see what they were doing under the table, where their feet were cold and longing to stamp down on something to call their own.

Bent in shapes

Threw a dream hook into the sea
Look right through the waves
A stray cat in the grey road
Padding through the softening snow
Huckleberry flesh caught and baited
Drag the bloody fruit from the froth

Robins bobbing too early in the winter
In the lush holly trees
Waiting for interruption
If it only gets warmer now

 

Valentine

helicopter drafts
circles around in the dark
reckless dancing
always end up at the start

remember the moonbath
on the painful sand
shells still intact
washed up on dry land

forts made in bat caves
keep out of their house
ivy blooms, my skin
watch the clearing clouds

animals in model clay
canteens of dream dust
now had seemed faraway
along the way, time lost us

Ticketbooth

You are holding the tickets in your left hand, and you must act in the bright lights for the audiences who bought popcorn in the lobby. Make sure they hear the words when you sing, a spirit can appear if you listen in the echo.  The poor cat is sick and spits all over the floor, and you must continue the show smelling of Clorox.

Groceries

Everything goes out of style at one point or another. Classics are a relative classification. Sure, some things come back into style,  but that only proves my point. They have to go out of style to come back.

You weren’t ready to get married, but really, who is ready for marriage. And a few years later, you weren’t ready to become a parent, and you had to manage that. Things unravel over time, and that will inevitably bring some pain.

In the winter before the kid turned twelve, you were so entwined and enmeshed that you were strung out too tightly. And so when you went out of style, metaphorically speaking, to your family, it hurt like hell.

You were at the grocery store picking out peaches. Peaches in the winter were more expensive. Also, they tasted like crunchy tasteless apples. You couldn’t afford the peaches, but why not just this once.

And you felt like you were always about to cry, but you didn’t. And then as you reached for a peach and plucked it of its slanted display, the whole lot of them went tumbling out onto the floor.

You were too tired to try and pick them all up; still, you should have.

But everything falls apart. That is the very nature of our universe. Entropy. Chaos. And we are looking for the order and the patterns within the swirling madness.

Vie, for a while

Collections of stamps and coins in an old album, collect old blue jeans to repurpose the denim, collect peppery foil stars as a means of meaningless decorations. Bothersome little frills and cut angular speech. Matching shotgun covers for the children, of course, how else can they be kept safe.

Dear Katan

It’s harder for me to speak clearly than it is for me to write, hence the quantity of letters on this site. There are some things that I need to tell you in person, but I think it might be nice to write them out first. It’s important for me to know myself a little better before I can really think about others.

That is all, for now. I’ll send it on a postcard.

x

Fica

I don’t know what to say. Somehow, I feel a little cold, but at the same time, my skin is hot to the touch- perhaps it is fever. I want to tell you to stay. But I don’t want you to stay for me, so I try not to sway your decision. I am standing on a street corner beneath a lamppost and I cannot quite call my feet to move.