Tiptoeing over this week
leaving fingerprints of sleep
in every fold of your shirt.
Voices like humming birds,
echo of mint and
train tracks on a hot day.

Respite.
Sounds like its meaning,
feels like a sigh.

Learned a new word.
Cafuné.
To lovingly waltz
fingers through hair,
Portuguese stuck to the back of my hand.
The air smells of limes.

Hiding cherries
every day this month
made my tongue purple.

This is not a poem.
It shouldn’t taste like purpose,
lethargic bubbles rising in a cup.
Drawing peaches and crayons
between the millimetre increments
of your knuckles.

Tell me the windows aren’t really sweating.
Under the hostile glare of the sun,
With the soft breaths of the moon
In the castle perched on top of the gnarly oak tree
At the end of the block
Where children play dress-up and make believe
In borrowed old dresses,
The best stolen Sunday clothes and missing wool socks

Tell me the hunters in helicopters aren’t really chasing jokes across the flats.
What am I falling into?
A darker, dreamier state of mind?
No matter how hard you try to mask it or explain it
With books filled with fairy tales or complicated equations

Tell me what your saying isn’t really true.
I’m not going to believe you anyway

I try to **** time but time is killing me.
I’m sun starved
bleached spots on all my sheets.
I ran out of dreams today.

Have I ever told you I like the rain?

I always thought newspapers
looked better on lamp posts.
I can feel my heartbeat
pressed between my ribs and t-shirt.

I spent over an hour in his room
picking him apart,

putting him together.

A giant jigsaw puzzle
completely coloured blue.

You have stars in your hands
and you hold them like grenades.
The boats tattooed on your thighs
spread out like finger placements of the G major chord.
Synthetic drugs make chains
tying your first and second fingers
around the mechanically rolled paper,
canvasing your throat like too much sea water,
each breath as rough as the veins in your arms.
Close your eyes
there’s pollen in the air
spread out like imperfections on the skin of an apple.
Solar countries keep foreign coins
sewed into their cotton sails,
they put their money into the navy.
You have a comet in your circulatory system
leaving bright spots under your skin
a reminder to gather the sunshine back under your eyelashes.
Hand soap in ketchup packets
make bubble bath islands
and unhappy lips.
You’re as talkative as a poem and
as expensive as a poppy
with homemade constellations on your back,
staining your lumbar muscles with cherries.
I can’t wash off your fingerprints
with my favourite shampoo.
I’ll swim across the Georgia Strait,
dodge your dinghies and
make a home in handmade ships
where I’ll practice erasing scars from my arms
and washing the soap from my hair.

A chain of beautiful accidents
light up like strings of Chinese firecrackers.

I follow trails that may or may not be blue.
They tip toe to the coast and snake around wild peacocks.

Funny things happen when you close your eyes,
lines from A to B are never completely straight.

I come for the sun and stay for the drinks.
Sometimes my thoughts make spider webs in my eyes.

Twelve doves like fingers walk in and out.
Off centre circles revolve around shapes caught in my throat.

For the long nights I played movies
that I wanted and hated as much as cinnamon jelly beans.

I don’t really know what brought me here.
Perhaps I’ve fallen through the rabbit hole, but

Maybe it was only a chain of beautiful accidents.

This is the machine.

Tucked under necklaces, poppies and daffodils
calligraphic fingertip Xs
hurry across pockets.
Thursday morning job postings
markers on construction paper windows
exhausted by making parts.
Keep weddings in thunderstorms
to hide the sound of windmills in chests,
bittersweet directions to ticking clockwork.
Carbonated water can’t convince summer to stay,
musical breaths and tulip footsteps
remind me of the gears in my knees.
Always buy wallets used
daylily bank notes folded into stairwells,
the heels of my socks.
Blue collars in ochre wheelbarrows
soaking next to the white ones.

We are quiet machines.

With cogs in our wrists
battery powered bone and sinew.
Baby’s breath white in our hair,
tiny bunches piled into collar bones or concave stomachs.
You have stars in your hair
whispering in manufactured voices
to pull out your eyelashes.
Consumed by the concept of concepts
on ravine park benches,
marred with newspaper labyrinths
smelling of rolled up sleeves.
Hand held gummy bears
prompt me to check my fluid levels,
bubbly orchids in my left palm.
Sugar intakes and patterned pants
hide homemade pulses.

This is the machine.

If I had
Three
Wishes, I’d wish for
A unicorn
Nice skin
And you

If I could live on only
Three
Things, I’d survive on
Lemonade
Lasagne
And you

If I could only watch
Three
Things when I turn on the television, I would watch
That fireplace background
Futurama
And you, even if you are a runway model

If I was stuck forever on a desert island and could only bring
Three
Things, I’d bring
Food
Water
And you

If there was a zombie apocalypse and I had only
Three
People I could trust, I’d choose
A ninja
Chuck Norris
And you

If I could only cheat at
Three
Things in MAS*H, I’d change
To the mansion
To have less than ten kids
And to be with you

If I was in jail and I somehow got
Three
Phone calls instead on one, I’d call
My dad who would bail me out, maybe
Chuck Norris who would break me out when my dad refuses to pay the bail
And you, just to say hi because you’re broke and can’t pay the fee

If I had to choose
Three
Of my celebrity crushes, I’d pick
Johnny Depp, duh
B.D Wong, just for his voice in Mulan
And you

If I had
Three
Works of art in my room, I’d have
A stolen Picasso painting, shhh, look don’t tell
That painting where that guy gets knocked out by the apple
And you, chiselled into diamonds

If I somehow got amnesia and the doctors could only restore
Three
Of my memories, I’d want to remember
My name
That time when we killed those zombies with Chuck Norris and the ninja
And you

If I could only say
Three
Words, I’d say
Is
This
Creepy?

You’re wishing plus wanting
to win the other side
remove your pride,
you untied tidal pool,
the wide subdivide of these paper pages.

Unrelenting numbers
remind you of the next stages,
taking you wildly to Namibia,
surrendering you to Zimbabwe,
the terminal station.
The narration vocalizes the translation of quotations,
your obligation to the violation of the rules, the regulations,
vulgarization of spoken word.

Pretty paintings plaster typecasts,
the pitter-patter of pity’s pretty ******,
quickly shifting refurbished velvet sofas.
Overcast symphonies outlast
witty recast stanzas,
scores with notes naturally quote
verses romancing seltzer spines
noticing the negotiation of sore throats.  
Oblivion’s oblivious to the people,
obnoxiously obscene with syncopated
saturation of public vital signs.

You’re the vain strain of virus
photocopying yourself within skin,
waste your sin on tattoos trapped on shins
safety pins selecting prints
pinning sets of twins to tanned wrappers
protecting official reports.
The ossuary welcomes records printed on thick paper
suspiciously missing skeleton swords.

Writing stories reversed while tipsy,
quickly preforming risky poetry smog,
sweetly omitting secret words,
trying to spell simply without the proper prologue.

You’re basic,
a lengthy silhouette
miming the human experience.

Staying up late
to blind yourself,
blinking to the sounds of sleepiness
heart beating to Skinny Love.
What ifs,
pre-recorded scenarios
imagining that first hug.
Contemplate that bottle of pills by the sink
that new film that you want to see,
condensation in the lid of the teapot.
You’re candid,
unsure if all scabs heal
trying to remember when you didn't have a writing callus,
when you slept through the night,
when purple was the only colour you didn't use.

Purify infectious matter,
***** green-blue wine glasses overflowing.
Tinfoil vases and orchid flowers,
melting boxes of 64 assorted crayons.
You’re laconic,
often dying to create,
like the verbose and the wordy
sighing simply to translate.

Missouri gift exchanges,
loose blue jeans ******
stacks of classics.
Tales of the Jazz Age wrinkling
to a slow 50s song.
You’re a try hard
dying to knit,
only true fear is disappointment
burning in the lime light.
6000 voluntary hours
linking syllables to daisy chains,
dropping pesos to foreigners,
hands sandwiched inside
the front cover and the first page
of The Count of Monte Cristo.

You’re basic,
down for maintenance,
compressing the weight of the atmosphere.

They are the sparrows of silence,
they are the singers of the night,
they are the ones who fold, perfectly, before melting

They always see
the tiny sounds within the quiet.
They always hear
the sudden bursts of light that come with closing eyes.
They always feel
the hearts of glass, pitiful shards under the skin.

They are those who can
see the evil,
speak the evil and hear the evil

They are those
with open arms and
hearts of snares

They are those
sighing in the darkness,
the smell of rose petals dripping from their lips

They turn vinegar into honey,
they send your heart into your stomach,
they are like snow when you’re running late.
They change with the cycles of the moon
stretching away then grabbing you tight.
An arm of never letting go.

I wish you'd take

off
     your
              mask

and be mine.

I think

we're being watched.

You know,

people change.

Run.