The air is as ice itself; maybe not exactly.
      It's hard to tell the state of the wind
From here, where the windows come together
             sharply as diamonds do.

She sits in waiting with her daughter and
      grand daughter. They play guard to
Her wheelchair, waiting for the wind to settle.
          It never does around here.

The car arrives before I turn my head.
        She's lifted into the seat. Forever
Now she'll be sitting, but at least she's home,
        where soup tastes like the milk of the gods;

Then the trio is gone. The clouds keep their steely coats.  
            Back To The Future still running on a tired LG.
She doesn't have long, but none of us really do.
         At least she'll be home, home, home.

Sun slits in through slats
of kitchen window blinds
and she is alone.

The art major is cooking
spaghetti,
pretending her thrifted T-shirt
bearing a cotton copy
of Campbell's Soup Cans
is not stained with tears and blood.
Oh, but that's hysterics and
hyperbole;
art has a tendency of making its worshippers
melodramatic...no?
The blood is only tomato sauce
and the tears...
well, what are tears but
water and salt?
After all, dramatizing the
mundane is just one awkward shade
of artistic temperament.
Visualizing life through
a heavy silk screen.

The art major sighs and
stirs.
The spaghetti is redder and
redder as she cooks.
Just as
her paintings bleed more blood
as she dangles a brush over them -
the teary-eyed watercolours.

The art major has decided
that drawing out extremities
of colour
might transform
her own life into
a pop of a Warhol painting.

The art major sighs and
stirs.

She thinks, tries to
think
in technicolour.
Today's thought-pencilled thesis
concludes (like a brush stroke of uncertain finality) that
love is the red of tomato soup cans.
Anger is the boil, passion is
the gulp,
danger, caution, warning,
the hot breaths, fleeting warmths,
the burn and sweet and tang.
She looks down at the
scarlet of
Warhol's soup cans,
blooming in worn out cotton
on her chest.

It might as well be blood, she
thinks.
It is,
it is,
it is.
Blood red love -
tomato soup cans.

Sun sets in slits
through kitchen window blinds
and she is still alone.

The art major sighs and
stirs.
The spaghetti is ready.

waking up to bbc your alarm
clock radio was the soundtrack
to our mornings at your parents
house where they only sometimes
knew i was there but we would tip
toe but the floors creaked anyway

your purple royal platform bed with
an angel floating above it sometimes
i would accidentally kick it and say
“sorry” and you would laugh and flip
me over like a pancake we spent
national pancake day apart but we
spent other days together and we
were in love like when you’d roll a
cigarette and make me some of
your moms soup and we’d climb
the fence in our socks and they
became damp like my eyes on
the train home from the fox

you made me breakfast one day
while your mom was doing yoga
and then she asked me about
paint colours and offered to make
me a smoothie i wish i could have
said goodbye one more time
i imagined what our kids would
look like they would be beautiful
they would be beautiful wild eyed
and dark pupils we thought we almost
had a kid but we replaced her with a pill
and 5 migraines

there is no true end to anything
for every moment
is the beginning
of something new

after the egg,
a chicken
after the chicken,
chicken soup

and after the soup comes something new.
just a small thought





in a big world

Grey skies
hanging heavy
winter calls
as the wind howls
through secret gaps
in the window frames

The day has become
like our passing years
not bright enough
a little harsh
and willing to leave us cold

Life has not been kind
we deserve so much more
but still
we hang in there
wounded soldiers
learning to lay our weapons low
time teaching us
there is more to life
than waging war

This day
this beautiful moment
is all that matters
to be sitting here with you
a glowing fire
warm soup
loving food
while we talk and laugh
of the days gone
days to come
grand illusions of the world
and all those things
we now understand

Sympathy
is all that matters
revealing
knowing
sharing
serving each other
with simplicity
our souls nourished
by the healing soup of life

Troublesome love . . .

will not let you sleep . . .

Sort of like a basketball game . . .

Questions are bounced mad and furiously
against the hard wood floor with only
more questions bouncing back .

Meanwhile someone is trying to steal
your dreams causing you to twist and turn distorting your image .

And you fight your way down
the court of life and toss your hopes and
dreams into the air and pray to God . . .
go in.

The Oppression of my people
can not be summed up in one word

A word that flies
Flies like a hummingbird

He eats soup
As I cry

he prays
As I sigh

You Do not KNOW ME
You only know my struggle

How Dare You come to me?
In your time of Need.

You need a fixin?
God Bless Juan Dixon.

A good metaphor for life is a man trying to eat soup out of a spaghetti strainer
He goes super fast
Cause hes trying to get the good stuff
But no matter how much he gets
He just ends up with a bunch of soup off over his pants
And then he dies of old age eventually

I am not good at metaphors.

Tania slurps her cheap beer and uncrosses her legs,
exposing fresh bruises from the soup factory.
She outlines them in marker and draws
a smiley face on one located on her right thigh.
These bruises tell me that my life is composed
almost entirely of bad decisions, she says,
replacing the cap on the marker. I ask how
a decision could form such a perfect,
purple circle. Between swallowing
beer and peering into the rain,
she burps. I can't say, but--
I mean, do you want
to have ***? Later on
I drive her to the
hospital and I visit
a therapist. For
a few months.

******* there is

hot soup all over my legs

what is even life