"You are what you eat"
until one day you don't
and that's what you become
n o t h i n g (beautiful?)
your cognitions like broken clock cogs
s l o w s l o w s l o w (perfect?)

tabula rasa is the body unbefouled by
nourishment (enemy?)
And the walls are washed white
Nature sickly perverts vitality
The cornucopia becomes a conspiracy
To sully your porcelain
e m p t i n e s s (happiness?)

hypoglycemia makes you shake
but not as hard as eating a whole meal

Can one person be so myriad?
This identity could not possibly fit inside a body.

Dreamer. Comedian. Thinker.
  Friend. Musician. Writer. Smiler.
   Lover. Wisher. Runner. Fighter.

      Bulimic.

And there it is: ugliest of all words.
This identity could not possibly fit inside a body,
and you see, it doesn't.

It breaks it.



I don't know how
but


*I will win

I need a new vocabulary
these words aren't enough anymore
it's holding an ocean
in my cupped hands

The syllables erupt botanically
until the air is a garden
so I prune cautiously
three red roses
to signify primly
every forest in the world

I'm not a romantic.
I'm an architect feverishly pacing
with visions of the first cathedral
I'm a scientist riddled mad
with want of fathoming space
I'm a skeptic who is poisoned
by the mystery of death

the technology is antiquated
love outdates  itself
I love you is no longer enough
but it's all I ever say

It's every word I have ever said.

I’ve filled the emptiest spaces of myself with


                          the best parts of you

not breathing, warm like an homage
but sterile
    
                                                                          remote

a gallery of looped memories
beautiful and untouchable
and convincingly bright
so that no matter where I am
my retinas are tattooed with the space you took in the world
cooking in a scratchy sweater- your electric rants about Jung  
drumming jazz on the street corner for the pay of odd conversation
planting kisses in my hands because you hoped they would grow a wife
endlessly reminding me

                                              (from wherever you are now)

that the best things in life weren’t free
and though expensive beyond measure
how graceful- I hardly noticed how much
I was willing to give
just to keep at a quiet distance

                           this neuronal gallery

The bite and the breath*
These you do not forget.
Like a grade school crush,
the rush of the Atlantic in December
Embedded within the most physical parts of memory
like a rock in your knee.

I'm silenced by the quiet here,
the space between buildings
and the white gossip of the salt stains
Upon the sidewalk.
Spreading tales that only this dolly township could know,
Burning curious holes in the black ice
and talking to the snow.

In a year, a few new babies,
A shop or cafe proudly erected looking
Suspiciously new, admitting big dreams
To the peeling peeling paint corner stores
That will never ever ever go out of business.
These are the blocks that could never be
recreated in a movie set.

This is the willow where I told two boys I loved them,
once as a girl, once as a woman.
This weathered with the seasons.

This is the candy shop,
Whose floor once knew
my toddlish ire and snot.

This is the bay
that I explored for decades
throwing rocks into the clay
First to seek
Second to escape
Third to return
And fourth to stay.

This is the town where I was knit,
In the quiet of the valley
and the roll of the sea,
This is my body's kindred fit-

Trapped inside this sleeping town,
this is where I am free.
I'll stick around.

Therapy is a hospital gown
one that doesn't quite close
leaving your *** rather
perpetually exposed
and your extremities
pink and cold.

These turn of the century revelations
oh- don't misinterpret me
they're grand, they really are,
early childhood trauma
chronic necessity for control
attachment issues, oh yes?

One week, I'd like to buy seven consecutive days
Where all the ships are turned back to the Caspian
With their dead-weight cargo of clean-cut
shining golden bars
To add to the mortar
of muddled ******-upness.

"Looks like we made some breakthroughs today!"

Don't break eye contact.  Bare teeth. Upturn pink lips. Happy Face!

*"Breakthrough. Yes. Great. I feel great!"

He sneaks a bold finger into her navel.
She squirms in sudden protest.
He quickly lifts the damp hair from her neck
and kisses little apologies.
Her sigh forgives the intrusion, she rolls to her side
suddenly all hip and pale inner thigh.
He follows swiftly down the valley,
a little boy running home for dinner-
He hums a nothing song.
She quietly hums along.
He waits.
She says it first and means it.
His heart pulses twice at these prophetic murmurs.
Her mood quickly changes, leaps to her feet, flexing naked muscles
and pouting in comic exaggeration.
He laughs and softly adores her unselfconsciousness, this is new.
She bends to kiss him.
He remembers the oven is on.
She remembers the time.
He whistles Last Stand cheerily to the scorched vegetables.
All because she touched him inappropriately in the kitchen
in lieu of uncorking the wine.

Call me the Queen of Hypothesis
I thought it was a good idea

leaving this.

I want to take a razor to the hair I grew
(long enough to enchant you)
but I won't.
I want to spend all I've got
on nothing at all.
A painted, empty fool who is poverty stricken in riches-
filet mignon, a flight to Spain, fancy finery-
but I won't.

Instead I'll cry in the kitchen.
Cry in the bedroom.
Cry at flowers.
Cry at nothing.

But I won't cut off my hair.

I want to give up.
I want to run away.
Leave town, leave society, leave myself.
But I won't.

Instead I'll hurt.
Hurt in the day.
Hurt in the night.

But I won't give up.

This mouth, it does me wrong.
This mouth says goodbye,
when it only wants to be
on your fingertips
on your neck
on your back
anywhere

just not saying goodbye.

These eyes, they do me wrong.
These eyes have seen the truth of things,
when they only want to
watch you laugh
watch you dress in the morning
watch your body moving on mine-
Just watch you.
And blind themselves against the path we have chosen.

I want to take it back.

But...

I won't.

Instead I'll love you.
And love you.
And love you,
love you,

                           I love you

until I can love me
just as much.

So call us the King and Queen of Hypothesis, darling.
Look at our glass crowns,
how clearly you can see my heart inside,

saving for something more precious

than all the kingdom's gold.

there is a secret code
a safe word for days that i
i have won and lay myself down
with your body knowing i
i have not broken my vessel
this boat i'm
i'm trying to carry us both in

i feel your heat and breath
full of helpless understanding
with want of my salvation

and your: Answers

you wear my anguish as a sunburn
when my eyes shine hotly
radiation and rubble
bits of shrapnel from love
that embed in your skin
in your skin that doesn't have a home

i sweep and dust my heart
i scrub it ****** and raw
set up a kick drum and boil the kettle
i wish you were comfortable here

    (don't shift uneasy on the sofa
      hands clasped politely in
      someone else's living room)

i am as constant as the southern pole
i wish you would fly to me
without frog-dissecting the mystery
of belonging somewhere

i wish i could keep you
and let our roots entwine

i wish i could free you
wish you away with a dandelion

i wish i could know you
render English or some language
articulate the great ropes
that weave what has somehow kept us together
when the ship went down

will you be an autumn, love?
will you be beautiful and frosty as it dies?

will we season, love?
will we cycle as unbreakable as time?

there is a code word
for days that are alright
that will chase the calendar
    i) as i will chase you now
    ii) as i will stop chasing you
    iii) as i will chase you always

until there is a knowing
until we choose our winters glowing

   (not bound by chains
    just fortified by sewing)

with every stitch and pull
every ***** and row
until there lies embroidered
the archaic ancient murmurings
of the dead language
of knowing when
and trusting

"Happy."

Dark eyelashes
That flutter at my clavicle
Alight upon stepping stone freckles
And whisper-paint my canvas
With nothing-everythings of orange violet red
(Realizing reveries of your pretty head)

What blessed crescents

The sigh pumps slowly though my veins
The colour of sky after summer rain

well, now i've done it.
Got just what i asked for
fought for
and the sun keeps rising
and all horizons seem to picket-fence
the ruins of my waking life
when your head is beaten in and down
and your words are your banner
ripping from your throat
when you win the war
and all seems calm
larks and flower-like
you cannot fathom
the devastating cost

of rebuilding the world.

Grey. You are invisible to hungering eyes.
Except perhaps to mine. I see you with my memory.
You are anchored in my mind.
Grey. Grey. There.
The spectral photograph of your architecture.
Ensconced in mist. What have you to hide?

Your regal spine, adorned in halfsleep shades of midnight.
Rucked up around your amber skin.
There are mirrors everywhere that speak in half-light
As it gathers about you the blush deepens and ebbs.
I think of violets.
You are so very still.

I watch you magnetically with my entireness
With want of telling you tangibly
Coloured cognitions
My heart is yours.
It is all stained glass.

in the dark i saw a glow
    t he glow of a billio n
              s o f t       little cells.

and ******>   not yet feel ing any fear,
i became q u i e t-

                               i drew n e a r.  

y o u're so very   w arm.

I can
like you ever
love you always
celebrate your strengths
adore your weaknesses
cherish your mind
respect your distance
accept your path
make you laugh
support your passions
watch you grow
be your friend

I can't
ever give back
the days and hours
you choose
to keep
p u s h i n g
me out of
your life.

9 am I woke with a broken heart
it had been shattered, unbidden
in the place after empty and before disappearing
-That-

To jump in a lake fully clothed and
realizing that you're too weighed down
to surface...

it hurts in my tummy
it hurts in my chest
it hurts in my throat

I am afraid.
The past is a broken red balloon
dragging on the ground behind me.
Every glance backward sends me reeling
sick and dizzy to my knees.

the breathless sorrow petrifies.

There are ghosts in my skull
(I know them by name)
Perhaps, that's the trouble-
I know how to call my haunting.

How many years of happy will it take
to even the cost?
I cannot do this anymore,
but it seems both my destiny and my doom,

I'm suspicious I've already lost.

I quarantined myself in a still pool
tranquil and floating, waiting for the ice
to finally freeze my turbid heart
into a more peaceful *****.

On the shore you saw me
or I saw you
and perhaps I was a lighthouse
or perhaps you were a lifeboat,
gliding from the banks
you poured yourself in like hot oil.

As you slipped over my arms, legs, torso, face,
you breathed into my ear a steady stream of prophecy and promise
-It's not right for a woman like you to be alone. You are built to give.

And so I felt your mouth seal over mine
and allowed you to inhale the starry swirls of life
I had been conserving for winter.

As you pulled me far deeper with you
we could not emulsify
but we became inseparable.

I promised you we have no natural disasters,
not apart from us, anyway.
I think you liked my plaid.
Or was it my sleepy hair?
I had a crush on your vocabulary,
and a crush on your girlfriend.
The surprising accent and
the curve of your singing voice
didn't help matters any.

So for these and more reasons, I didn't mind lending you matches
during the biggest power outage of December,
over my sheepish Welcome to Canada.

You like the smell of cut wood, wine, and perfection.
I like the way you and your friends looked in my living room.
In my mind, your golden heads. Your scarves and linoleum,
sophistication in a hokey hand-me-down home,
and the grumble of stomachs that knew the fridges wouldn't
work for at least 72 hours.

And I fell in love with you a little bit.
You and her and her friend.
So for these and more reasons,
I would smile at her after you left,
because she was close to you.
And think of matches and little fires
in the library on the darkest night of 2010.

i am homesick from the outside in
weeping for the way love used to feel.

I alight upon the ivory garden
tended with accents of wine
and elegant gates of grey
I call your name: Poetry.
Hello, poetry.
then I hear it, the warmest reply
like the scent of lilacs and ocean salt
***, my monitor is supercharged with it
A myriad cry
From the baby-bird mouths of the heated young
From the sensitized woe-lines of the veterans of love
For a bolt of lightning and carnal tangle
Rendering memories of the trembling inside you
I click through the poignant, the broken, the raw
syllables weave pixels into cotton sheets
They twist under the keys as I type:

"Hello, poetry. What simple beautiful animals we are."

There are certain tones that pierce us-
the tremulous "I..." which precedes the first
halting "...love you."
The static of a stilled phone line
a lace tying two ends of the country
that carried happy birthday to a dear ancient man
"Thank you sweetheart," in the same voice as his son
knotting my throat in the lonely homesickness
of a true Father's Daughter.
There are certain tones that pierce us-
those which remind us of what is most beloved
and what we must accept to lose.

I roll the possibilities over my tongue
before I even allow them to breathe.

I carry my lids heavy, as if lost in thought
and pronounce:

"Salt, lust, and barrelled in frustration."

I am the salmon
that struggled all the way up to the bear.

when the words are spoken
and i draw in air to sketch my lungs
til they spin the clay of my being
like startled doves spiral upwards
in a rustle of light
the cathedral within my mind
glows in sapphire shards
made incandescent by
my stained glass window eyes
there is a music box strain echoed in my pulse
unborn lullabies
that i shall spend my entire life humming
from the highest bough of an elm
feet bare against bark
in the warm cosmic dark
in this sturdy little body i build around around my heart.

her mouth is an ocean of spells
her heart is a forest of beasts
her eyes are tinder for stars

Applying reason, she constructed logic sandcastles
that against waves of love were still hopelessly matched.

Come to bed?

               -I'm not tired yet. But I'll come for a little while.

So begins the bedtime story I recite in my head.  You and me were the stars, the loveable protagonists character-foiled by the scars that always found a way to nose between us under the cover of darkness and love.  Like the family dog who is always welcome (even when sometimes it's not).

And although the story is worn so thoroughly it frays my cochlea with overuse of the thought, I still grow hot to see you beside me once again. Even though I know how it ends, that when my eyes close you'll be on your way again- when the morning comes, as sure as dawn, you'll be lying next to me.

Maybe nothing has changed,

and perhaps the mend sewn deep into the pages of memory is the hope that when my eyes slowly open

there you will be.

For always.

The End

Who the-
What the-  

What am I?

I am misinterpretation
I am disintegration
I am abomination.

What is my destiny?
I'm writing, I am,
I am waiting
and searching
in the faces of
everyone I love.

Good guy?

Or...

bad guy?

Mean? No, you misunderstand me-
the lady is not cruel.

She's just a goodly heart
surrounded by a moat of alligators.

i watched as she picked
up her shadow like a baby
and rocked it i didn't understand
like a black lab laid down by
the front door for 20 years,
waiting to be seen, touched,
it submitted with a low sigh.
"The heart of darkness isn't
darkness", she said to the wallpaper,
glancing up from her bundle,
"the heart of darkness is
authenticity, the heart of
authenticity is love".
she didn't speak after that
the moment was not for me and
i was suddenly an intruder.
Quietly, i stood up
and slid away.

Sticky hands-
the price of touching delicious things.

And no matter how I handle you...
from the spout, with a mitt, upside down,
you get all over my mind
you sneak your way into thoughts that
haven't even come close to you.

And for each drop of soap
an ounce of appetite comes to tip the scale.

A sticky heart.
That's the price of touching delicious things.

There are moments I see you more clearly than ever

the taste of ginger on a Sunday couch, stretched out cat-like to watch our show.

And I laugh at all the moments I know you would laugh.

Unfair as the prettiest dream.

i was afraid of them
until i found her in a flower
and found she was the flower
buzzing little soul
colour shifter
dream
      c a t c h e r

autumn nights were cautious
the songs we sung
were the songs of those stung

in the winter we built
a secret warm glen
and she taught me to dance
   (in the way that bees do)
so that snow wouldn't weigh down my wings

sometimes she flies unseen
but she always comes home
her heart beats in my chest
and mine, her honeycomb

we don't belong here
   (i think we came from the sky?)

we belong to each other
     my flower bee and i