There is no such thing as time,
Just Globe and Mails that go unread,
Mugs of tea that go unsteeped,
and musings, oh so many musings, that go unconsidered.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
In the silence it ticks on…
So keep sighing, with no means to
an end that is inevitable yet
elusive, advertised nowhere
in the bolded Times New Roman type.
So let those breaths rattle through your chest
and remember:
a stopped clock is wrong 22 hours of the day.

Remember the evening you took the windsurfer poster off the wall?
The one with the two strangers in green swimsuits
riding the waves
or maybe just trying to stay on their slippery boards.
I guess, in retrospect, that **** poster had no place on the wall –
an empty room really doesn’t deserve decorations.

You slammed the front door when you left
and it was strange because those you left inside seemed stronger
so, as proof, we smashed all the clocks and held their hands
because tears had never flowed so fast
for someone we would see again on the weekend.

It’s funny, isn’t it?
Under that waterfall of sweaty tears
and behind those blurry eyes
faded blue eyes, as if they were cut out from an unfocused photograph
there’s a smile, awkward and uncomfortable,
but it’s there because it takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown.
And it’s funny
that you’re smiling,
and he laughs because he knows
you’re too weak to muster anything more.

Does it count as hot chocolate
if its only lukewarm?
If it tastes like bitter raw garlic,
or acid rain?

It burned the skin off your tongue
and dulled your taste buds…

…And still on fire are your fantastical day dreams
inspired by watching those wandering clouds that,
as it turns out, were actually marshmellows
floating, not in a never ending sky,
but in a bounded, off-white mug
with a cracked handle
whose pieces were sloppily super-glued
back together.

She never said she was sorry,
And worse still,
She never knew that she had done anything wrong.
For while those ridiculously red lips of hers
Were biting viciously on the stale red rubber
She called Twizzlers,
I was pouring instant coffee into that mug,
The one she tried to paint the solar system on.
She gave up though when she realised only 6 planets would fit
and smeared that mug,
Handle and all,
In black paint.
I know it was fired at the ceramic shop,
The paint made dry as lips in late November,
Yet every time I dare to stomach a sip
Of my once warming brew,
My mouth is dyed darker than
a night that has never known stars.

While the wine and cheese and skinny upturned mustaches
Were all there,
Wrapped in gold tissue paper and tied with white bows
The passion, desire, and spark
(which were promised by the $24.99 guidebook)
Were nowhere to be found,
Not even floating down a gondola on the Seine
(or am I thinking of Venice now?)

I wrote home in two postcards
(not because I had so much to say)
But because I thought my family should see the Eiffel Tower in both day and night
As plastered on the pair of plastic, flimsy cards I mailed away.
Being away from Mom and Dad, I thought I’d enjoy it
But after investing in a French-English Dictionary
I learned that the love letters I’d been receiving here
(voulez vous coucher avec moi?)
Weren’t so lovely after all.

I told them that I’d tried French Onion soup,
That I’d walked down that street featured in Midnight in Paris,
and that between the guns slung over shoulders
(worn like fake Louis Vuittons advertised by desperate venders)
and the solicitors outside the Moulin Rouge
the city of love
had shattered my unprotected heart.

They say that lighting never strikes the same place twice
And so I ask
Who are they to quantify, compute, calculate or frame
The unnerving jolt
(One, two, three clear!)
That will not, will not
Leave my valentine’s day-pink
(That good ol’ colour of excess)
heart alone.