don't fall in love
with me, i whisper
into the crooked spaces
of your ribs

i say, oh, darling
you can do so much better
then throwing you weighed down body
into the murky sea below this bridge

i hug you tight, while i
wrap chains round your body
tugging on your hand
as i gently pull you
towards the sea

one day you'll be drowning
and forget what it felt like to breathe
all you will be thinking about is me
and how i ruined you

there’s a boy with a black jacket and green eyes jumping into your car
and he asks you to buy him a cupcake so you do
and he hasn’t told you his name and you haven’t told him that you stole this car
he follows you home and crawls into your bed
he tells you what his name is but you think he’s lying

so you let him tuck up to your body and tighten his arms around your shoulders
when you wake up he’s still there and it’s still dark outside
so he takes your hands and pulls you outside
you drink something that makes you feel numb
and you still haven’t told him that you stole that car
and he hasn’t paid you back for the cupcake so you sit in silence

and then you go to bed again and he’s there
when you wake up there’s a warmth pressed on top of you and hair in your face
he’s still there and you’re still not sure what his real name is
he says he has to leave soon and his voice is weak
and well, you don’t want him to leave

so one day you wake up and it’s been snowing all night
and it’s freezing and he’s not there
it takes weeks and weeks and you wondered if you dreamed him up
and you want to know why he got in your car
and why you let him get close to you
you still can’t stop thinking even when the world’s asleep

but then its 3 am and you just got to sleep and something crashes through your window
so its him, and he’s soaking wet from the rainstorm outside
he crawls into your bed and you say ‘took your time’
and you can feel him smile into your neck and he whispers so only you can hear him
‘i went away but then i remember you and i came running back’

Got home from the hospital late last night
Still can't seem to find my appetite
I can't seem to sit still
There's a hole that I don't know how to fill
I've listened to my ipod non stop
Headphones so loud I feel my ears are gonna pop
The dice will fall as they may
But at the end of the day
I know that they were always loaded
I feel like my life has always been encoded
Protected by a cipher I could never completely break
I never truly understood what was at stake
Until that day last week
When you and I were hanging by the creek
We were laughing and tossing rocks
Just relaxing having good long talks
When my vision started to go hazy
and I know this is crazy
But i knew then that I was dying
And you started crying
I felt a sharp tightening in my chest
I lost consciousness as the attack progressed
I woke up in my hospital bed
The doctors told me that I should be dead
They used phrases like "suffered major cardiac event"
I asked what that meant
I told me that I had a heart attack
I was immediately taken aback
I was only seventeen
This was almost something that was unseen
Arrhythmia was the name of the disease
They said it was easy to manage with medicine and their expertise
But now I can no longer rest
Knowing that I have ticking time bomb in my chest

The silent street erupted around me the moment I sat down,
a thunder rumbles in the distance
but only reveals a passing truck.

The white swan drifts past
without elegance.

I watch the youths drive by on fish lane
as the silent score of stoplights
play to an impersonal audience-
tonight the pizzicato is on time.

----

The air is dense with quiet conversation
of nighthawks
and the splash  of luck
on a steel  tray.

Elegant servants of style remove the unwanted things.

12:30
The air has cleared,
alone again
with two fat asians.

When did boring become stylish?

GET ME OUT  OF HERE!!

"It is truly a free nation that offers pancakes 24/7"

----

Normally, the solitude of wandering a sleeping city would elicit poetry.
Tonight only nothing comes out.

Not the people nor the smells or secret music. Only the flicker  of a dying neon sun assuring me,
that the parking is open.

----

1:00 am.

A woman in a pink burkha enters a white car, only to be driven off into the night, followed by two taxis.

There are ancient trees twisting their tops through the modern facade. For eras, much like fashion are discarded by finicky time.

They have stood as silent sentinels for longer than I have breathed, and with any hope, they will stand as soldiers long after I  come to pass. These reminders of the ravages of time.

I loved a girl who lived  here once.
She lived in an apartment that overlooked the city
and had  breasts like two soft moons
that tasted like honey.

1:40 am.

Other nighthawks wander as wastrels through the quiet Autumn night,
with a slow, soft  gait one never see's in the rush of day.
If all evenings carried a beat, it would be thus:
a slow jazz drum.

"...psssssh-bop! pssssh-bop! pssssh-bop!...."
would sound the echo of every evening heart
throbbing slow with power.
"...psssssh-bop! pssssh-bop!..."

The car's carry  white  blood cells to  the  suburban arteries.
Taxi's are cancer.

I walk
northbound.

----

Cold beer at 2am.

Faintly lit menagerie
an open cage containing
nighthawks.

Well spoken Eastern girls
corporate white boys
two old tradesmen,
one on a smartphone with a rosary around his soft large neck.
The antique street curves away toward the river,
sloping up
then down
I follow it with my eyes.


And run them back
to the fairylights.
They hang like glowworms
or constellations.

Glowworms hang like constellations, the inside of their cave  is the same fleeting feeling of being alone with the universe, it being caressed by your eyes.
For you are its lover and its mirror.
Inside the glowworm cave, I felt like the universe and everything reflected  itself in miniature. That to look upon their hanging, blue stars you saw everything else.

In receipt of penance posted,
As in a love letter,
Hosted, from a flower bud,
left rolling in the mud,

Letter screams,
I love you,
From in it's purple haze,
Lifted up and dropped me,
All in one day,

You gave me your heart,
I threw it away,
As ancient trash,
I wanted romance,
You led me a dance,

Was a rash decision,
Chasing on a mission,
A fight to flight,
When passion bites,
With vampire fangs,
One who never writes,
not poems anyway,
Pen chases pen,
In pursuance scarlet,
Drowning in blood,
As vessels spill!

I cared once,
Not anymore,
You used me as your rampant whore,
Saw you during day preceding,
Realised where I stood,
At last ,
First sweet fellow,
Here I leave you firmly in my past!

By ladylivvi1

© 2013 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)

(in the dream it is late March)
there's a light rain in Montréal & the sky
is a gorgeous, early-morning variety of slate grey. imagine the lid
of an old metal garbage-can.
everything is dismal, perfect. and quiet; even the people leaving the bars are silent.
dismally, perfectly, silent.

ghosts of old cats—belonging maybe to ghosts of old ladies who lived, say, just off St. Lau, back
in the eighties—ramble downhill, in the direction of rue St. Catherine (Saint Cat! O patron of felinity!) ,
between the legs of those spilling out from the trendy & shitty clubs.
some of the ghosts wander out into the street, flash thru car tires that would've (& have) (at one time)
smashed them to pulpy carpet on the asphalt.
(who goes to pick them up then? when the tires have had their way with them over & over?
when they are just hair & porridge by a sewage grate?)

after a greasy smoked-meat-on-rye or a nightcap at somebody's place, just off the drag,
i'm in a sodden, but warm overcoat, hands curled in the bottoms of it's pockets; mis-shapen mass
of hair plastered to my scalp; walking en bas de la montagne just past the McGill Medical Centre.
—this late, the busses back downtown are never on time.
(driver's probably having a few smokes before he starts that long tour down. full up of drunk kids,
taking one another back to their dorms, etc.)
(and what does he have, to look forward to at shift's end?
        i. a cranky wife—past her prime?
        ii. a buncha dogs—yapping for attention?
        iii. some fucking kid—who's disrespectful & won't shut up or turn his stupid fucking punk-rock down?

—it's enough to make me patiently wait.  i'll wait forever, as long as that isn't me.)

...'spose I'LL have a cigarette too. waiting
in the bus shelter on Ave. Des Pins looking down over the
football fields of the McGill Athletics Dept.
still lit up. no sun yet but
now at 4 AM a dull inch or two of lightened grey out there on the horizon.. dawn will come,

though i'd rather not face the day. all the mornings are so hard after nights like this.
bound to be hungover &
spend the day hiccuping in bed texting some girl; maybe get up
in the late afternoon t'fix coffee, toast & eggs.
sit on the balcony,
make my little guitar sigh,
and try to feel normal until i [have to] puke.

"—and who was that girl i spoke to for so long at St. Sulpice last night? how many gin-tonics did she let me buy myself, nattering on?.. probably too drunk to even get her number."
"—maybe Sean or Dylan will know if she came thru with anyone we knew.."

the bus is finally here. twenty-and-three minutes late. the back of it probably smells of
stale smoke, dim sun, and sweaty, rain-soaked cloth, absorbed from jackets into the seats—the eau du jour.
it's always a bump 'n jerk ride down the hill; bound to,
with the other handful of dumb & silent riders, drunkenly sway,
(or is it a natural compensation of the body, to groove along with the curves and stops?)
back & forth like carcasses of half-dozen slaughtered pigs
swinging on their hooks in back of a meat wagon..
(i'll end up getting on, but only for three blocks. i'll fucking walk the rest of the way home,
after that comparison. to hell with the rain.)

SIX MINUTES LATER:
(Avenue Des Pins still—4 blocks closer to downtown)

directly in line now with McGill campus via McTavish; this way i can
cruise down thru the silence of the main drag having a couple smokes drinking beer
(copped a 40 at a Dep before i left St. Lau—frosty under my arm enshrouded by brown paper.)
& be left to my own thoughts for fifteen minutes 'til i get to Sherbrooke
—i adore that fifteen-minute stretch down thru the jumble of
student associations, clubs, faculty offices, administration buildings, resources centres & the like;
all contained in the same red bricked, white trimmed victorian monster, multiplied threescore
on either side of the lane; all built in the early nineteen-hundreds, all acquired by the university in one of several expansion initiatives in a decade i won't bother to guess at, it doesn't matter. you don't care..

midway down the hill i stop and go sit on the verandah of one of the buildings,
the graduate studies in math offices —
cccrack that forty.
sit there with the sun JUST barely splitting the seam of the horizon feelin'
like the lyrics from a Sun Kil Moon song. nothing more or less.  
"off to a good start," says i.

Every night,
She dances in the red light,
looking to find a way to fill her emptiness.
She walks in the deepest of ghettos,
messin' with the dirtiest fellows.
She knows she doesn't want this,
but she thinks it is the only way.
Meaningless love, a meaningless kiss
is all she gets at the end of the day.
She goes home,
she shouldn't even call it a home,
her pimp supplies it
and occasionally calls her on the phone.
Is this what her life has turned into?
Surrounded by men?
If her life were put on repeat, would she do this again?
Just to get her name know,
she walks around in the skimpiest clothes.
But no one truly knows her name,
they call her obscene things,
only admiring her nearly naked frame,
but hey, it's what this life brings.
She thought this was the easiest way to get her money,
to give her freedom.
But don't think this life is freedom,
Her life is owned.
All her life consists of is to give men pleasure
and moans.
This life of hers is dirty,
and she is not the only one.
Walk down Van Buren
at a certain time at night,
2 hours before the sun comes up,
you will see replicas of her,
getting in cars,
driving away,
losing all respect,
just for a pay.
Stay away from this life,
Don't ever become a Mistress of the Night.

I can't help but think of you since that day,
Now everytime i see you i don't know what to do.
Everytime you walk by i don't know what to say,
I wish i could hear you say, i love you too.
Whenever i hear your beautiful name,
It brings nothing but sadness to my heart,
I know that you won't ever feel the same,
I just really wish we could restart.