Monday, October 22, 2012

Finding Fortune



This mic is a matchstick, struck to illuminate a revelation too few of us make, and even fewer admit.

I’m lucky.

Like the bullets speeding from the muffled muzzle of this world’s cheat-code handguns always seem to find that bit of skin that scares them off like chasing mercury with a finger.

Like how the majority of my problems are first-world, and those that aren’t still only come in first-world doses.

Like I still find time to complain about trivial shit, but don’t acknowledge the fortune in having someone to listen.

Lucky.

Because any time my luck has turned for a moment, I’ve never been put in a situation I couldn’t survive.

Because I’m allowed more than just surviving.

Because I have a life with honest friends who love me, so even though there ain’t no such thing as a free 
lunch, I can still get some food for thought.

Because I can dissect myself on this stage, hanging my intestines around the mic like tinsel on a tree, and I can feel safe doing it, knowing that I can get past the blood loss – and I wouldn’t have to put myself back together without help.

Because all the world’s a stage, and there is nothing “mere” about being a player upon it.

Because I spent years damning the wall I’d built, locking myself away from honesty, and never took into account that I’ve had access to the brick and mortar from birth.

Because enough people can relate to that, that it’s become cliché.

Because I’m never really alone.

But I’m still afraid to dance where anyone can see.

Still afraid to tell you how I really feel.

Tell you how even the memory of your smile can illuminate the most demon-infested catacombs of my psyche like sunlight actually managing to fill a black hole – that its darkness would swallow no more.

Lucky.

Like it’s not difficult to find the luck in my life. I can see Lucky Charms around every corner before I even get there, like this world spoon-feeds them to me because I eat Lucky Charms for breakfast.

Like finishing dead-last in anything is still leagues ahead of those who chose not, or didn’t get the chance to start in the first place.

So when this world brings the taste of copper to my teeth, when everything I see becomes a fist either poised to strike, or held in solidarity against me, when the chip on my shoulder carries the weight of the world, and I lose the strength to raise my arms in a shield, I can be thankful for the adversity.

Because the damage I’ve taken along the way led me to paths untraveled by my blood’s history.

Like these acid burns are all on the inside of my mouth, and all self-inflicted

Because each sacred scar serves as a reminder of what I can overcome, and the knowledge that has brought me here lives within each sliver of dead tissue like angels squatting in a hostel.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Wax-Man Rhetoric


When the wax-man came
He showed us how brightly we had all burned
A clean, rigid slip of paper passed with machine precision to each hand that he said deserved it
Written upon them was our appointed value to the world
After 8 years when our fire was still elementary, and 4 years in which we burned on high
These values were the fruits of our education.

Some flames were almost extinguished on the spot
Some leapt in height and scorched the ceilings
Many remained just the way they were.
And mine, as always, was blue and flickering.

Sixty six. My number.
My so-called value.

Flip that Sixty Six average and you found my percentile in the ninety-ninth.
I’ve never been a stupid person. I just see with a different clarity.

See…I never burned yellow.
I blazed blue the way I did, and when their golden-flamed curriculum overlapped with my sapphire sparks, we found some happy medium, and it earned me that sixty six in dull ink, dot matrix perforations cutting as sharp as the cookie-cutter comments written below

“Daniel is an extraordinarily bright young candle, but his continuing unwillingness to apply himself is what has resulted in his poor grade”

My continuing unwillingness to change the colour of my flame, like tiger stripes into leopard spots

I knew the presence of his phantom hands early on, felt his frustration in failing to shape forms he found to be functional. Each frenzied flicker I fired, caressing so many elements around me, never focusing on a still flame meant my own wax never softened…he could not sculpt me – simply snap me in pieces, which only served to make me burn brighter for every bit of wicked spine and spindled wick he exposed.

I was not made to fit into holders; to adorn walls as a decorative piece of a matched set.
I was made to burn blue, and flickering – to seek out those other un-golden flames and add my hue and temperament to everyone around me. Let me drip my body’s blood across writing desks that I might be an inspiration.

I flicker and it frightened him that my fire might spread – adding blue to each yellow and making him see green.

He could try to douse me in oceans of Wax-man rhetoric, but he would never realize that the ocean has more in common with my colour than his, so god damn it, bring it on

Sixty six suited me just fine – it was a grade in a reality not in sync with my own.

All he had given me was sixty six reasons to follow my heart down darkened tunnels and emerge in a place that flickers like landscaped wildfire that burns cross-spectrum and thrives in the resulting heat it produces

All he gave me was the confirmation that I was burning beyond his understanding, so bright as to identify with my future.

All he gave me was a double digit acknowledgment that I was better than anything he had to offer.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Brought to you by the Finest in Dentistry

Futility is just an excuse for people who can't admit they want to give up.

She said "I don't mean to burst your bubble", pausing a moment to re-apply her lipstick to the tumbler siphoning gin down her throat. "But isn't it a bit unrealistic to want to be a career artist?"

"I mean, it's nice as a hobby, but you need to face facts and get a real job."

I feel a twitch at the back of my neck. It's the physical reaction I get when my mind stores something for an upcoming poem.

And in most cases...I would let it slide. I'd semi-seclude myself in a happy place and nod away the moments of this person reciting an empirical grocery list of failed artistry. I would confine myself in the bubble that she so convincingly assured me she did not mean to burst.

But this time...this time there's something about her. Something about the certainty in her voice clashing with the uncertainty in her eyes. Something about the wretched-dagger stilettos that look as though they were designed for nothing -but- bubble-bursting. Something about how her teeth are just too...fucking...perfect...

I ask her name.
She tells me.
I then ask the name of the actress portraying her.

"Excuse me?"
"You heard me. What is the name of the actress portraying Shelley?"

She looks at me like my third head has just grown a fourth head.
Clearly she doesn't understand.

"Because, Shelley. This. All this. This is a facade. It is a farce, a fractured figmentation of SOMEONE's concept of reality. See, I know your secret, Shelley. I know that you are an artist as well. You are a damn good actress portraying this caricature of life, and your practiced motions are so subtle, that we would pass them off as ideosyncracies. Notice, how you clear your throat each time you cross your legs. Notice that you swirl that G&T twice, counter-clockwise before sipping, so the ice hitting the side of the glass will be as sharp and loud as it can be. Every part of you is practiced, primped and prepared for the world around you to see and accept.

"The amount of falsehood you exhale out of that prize-winning smile, that is the culmination of what you would deem a 'real' job. And you're right. No amount of blood and spit on a stage can match that level of reality. I just can't say that I want to be a part of it."

"But the best part, Shelley, is that you spit these foundationless concerns, verbal bullets of envy in compassion's clothing, because it's easier than accepting that I have the courage to chase dreams around blind corners, while you, in your arrow-path hallway can see all of the nowhere you're going. You're losing touch with the character you're playing, because you're handing me this advice like you're my mother, and you just want what's best for me. But my mother KNOWS what's best for me. That's why she says "Daniel, I am so proud of you.""

Hopping off my stool, I pay the bartender for Shelley's next round.

I felt I owed her. Being an artist is thirsty work, and here she had just written my next poem for me.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Orpheus in Decline

It was the kind of music that painted the image of eyes running with blood, having dried up the tear ducts long ago.
His was a home of dust and non-life, built with perfect acoustic resonance in a time when the world clambered to hear each note he struck. Cursed melodies now poisoning the air, making willows of the forest surrounding.

Folk would say "Follow the forest until you find the gray leaves. That's where Orpheus lives."

And there he sits, and plays. Growing his melancholy patch. Lyre fused to his hands by mud and grit, strings caked in filth, seeping and infecting stale, slashed fingertips.

Songs soar out like carrion birds, like life-seeking missiles, tongue twitch, flex, spit, and bitter lyrics sharpen the teeth of this now fanged minstrel.

Though keen his voice, his image is a reflection of the Hell he traversed. Face lost in matted hair, fingernails obscene in their hues, cracked and jagged from striking strings - his skeletal body occasionally visible through holes in the rags we would once have called finery.

"Eurydice"

Her name escapes his lips at last, the inevitable destination of his daily ritual.

He no longer weeps or shivers at the sound of those syllables, though he manages with one voice to deliver them with a polyphonic weight

He plays now, forgoing sustenance or any idea of care. He plays as punishment.

He failed her.

When asp's venom took her on their wedding day, he sang sorrow, played truth from his lyre
And the underworld wept for having claimed her
Hades, in unprecedented sympathy granted Orpheus his opportunity to bring her back
"Play your song, little Orpheus. She will follow you above."
The sadistic stipulation stated that were Orpheus to look back and see her before emerging
She would be lost forever.

And when his patience broke, and his head turned back, he gazed upon the last image of her face he would see

And he read disappointment. In his mind, her lips spoke "You have failed me" Before her visage evaporated, and he was left alone.

Orpheus descended into hell to retrieve his love. Only his body made it back out.

She was the dance that made his music necessary
The harmonizing beauty that paired so correctly to his melody

And her absence has left rust on his strings, locked notes out of key

But he plays for her, and will continue to do so until they are reunited

Until then, he simply, slowly crumbles.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Consolidated Public

If you ever find yourself in St. Catharines, Ontario, follow Bunting Rd. to Queenston st. and head east. You'll see some townhouses and a field on your left. You'd hardly believe there used to be a school there.

A Kindergarten to Grade 6 establishment known as Consolidated Public. A building made of short steps for little legs, now a puzzling phantom for old eyes paying a visit.

I swear there was a school there.
I swear 8 years worth of my memories stood encased in red brick, surrounded by paved playground, swingsets and a field that stretched eternal to elementary eyes. Where winter would see the formation of a sheet of ice for students to simply slide across at recess, because who had the time to lace up skates? Where the best day of the year was the day the janitor took a push broom up on the roof, and for a moment, it rained tennis balls.

And suddenly, days became decades, and the student body became incorporeal, ghosts haunting halls torn to rubble and cleaned to make way for new homes. For new families. And I understand that populations need room to grow, but I can't shake the feeling that the evidence of my existence is just gone.

There was a kid with a friendly disposition towards teachers. A kid with a mercurial temperament. A kid who didn't quite fully grasp that a chemical imbalance translated to an emotional one. So this kid had a lot of trouble coping with a lot of things. He was known for crying at every opportunity, for writing endlessly, and for lying his ass off just for the sake of it.

Consequence is a vague notion when you're a kid, so when I came up with stories like "My parents made me play a baseball game at 10pm last night, which is why I'm so tired." I just wanted to be pitied by teachers. I wanted the attention. What I didn't want or expect was an inquisition to be brought down upon my family. This continued for a while, and when my mother was approached by staff and Children's Aid, asking through grave expressions why Daniel said he and his sister would get locked in the laundry room for a week any time they misbehaved, she could only roll her eyes, and ask "How many times are you going to be duped by a fucking 8 year old?"

So I'm sure teachers had some problems with me. I'm sure a lot of them didn't appreciate being told "it's your job" by someone wearing velcro shoes for purposes of practicality, rather than style. But I'm also sure every one of them hoped that I was going to be alright.

It ended with a kid on crutches, wearing a cast that matched the school colours to help mend a broken ankle, delivering a valedictorian address in 1997. And there's a graduation photo to prove it that hangs in a hallway that no longer exists.

The only remaining details of those 8 years lives in a small bachelor flat just above my eyes. Bits and pieces are scattered in other heads, but the entirety lives within me, and me alone. And to a set of guiding spirits who knew me by name, who knew me by my lies both on and off paper, teachers and faculty who may still remember today and wonder if that kid is doing alright

To Brown, Van Geest, Nield, Gosen, Findlay, Harris, Williams, Belzil, Tebbutt, MacMillan, Scarry, Quinland, Gilgunn, Telford - to every one of you who may still hold proof of that red brick structure and the lives within it - Please know that he has grown, learned, loved, risked, lived, and never stopped writing. Know that he has survived the worst the world could throw at him, that his name has been chanted on a national stage, that he has not forgotten you, and that God Damn it, he's alright.

He's alright.

Monday, June 25, 2012

The Dissolving Wall

Come brick it up boys
Come build that wall up ten feet tall
Brick it up, stick it up, crack the sky
Put it up motherfucker, don't be shy now!

It starts with a foundation
Creation-crafting concrete, feet framing flight inhibitors
This is for focus
Shoes cementing your place in society, pay attention
Cause you're no Billy Pilgrim
No, you're still stuck in time, love
We're gonna nail you down with nine-inch diagnoses
And force you to believe you have ADD before you can learn to A-D-D
So please S-U-B-T-R-A-C-T me from this equation
Because it's dividing us all

So here's your wall.
Construction underway, you stay in place, belief in your "disease" your new career
Fear tearing you away, shelter calling, walling faster to escape the world,
Every laugh you hear and assume is directed your way-ward glances and not-so-subtleties-ing
BUILD IT!
Build it past your line of sight and be sure to Van Gogh for your ears, hear no evil, see no evil, but speak it all behind your wall
And they'll call from up above, tell you that they can pharma-see where the problem started
You felt alone, dejected, different
In short - like every teenager ever
But they won't say that!
They'll say CLEAN SLATE!
MEDICATE!
But this prophetic Prozac will make the poetic prosaic
A mosaic of muddled meandering
signifying nothing.

But you're trapped in this wall...so as the pills pour in, it's either swallow or suffocate.

Get nice and comfortable. Wheel in a chair, set up a desk with a computer and stick up those picket-fence photographs; snapshots of everyone else's reality.

Emptying bottles just to fill them with your honest perceptions.
Like all bottles...answers are not to be found in the bottom of these.

TEAR IT DOWN!
Beat your fists until they crack on the concrete, let them know you've got more blood than balance!
Let them know you're NOT just another brick!
Form your rage into a jackhammer and shred this wall you've built until you're inhaling red dust
and when it settles, help everyone else out of theirs.



Sunday, June 24, 2012

5 More Minutes

It’s hard to stand sometimes.
When doubt holds you down with such force that your shoulders cry out for the levity the weight of the world can provide.
See, it’s not that I’m afraid to fail. I’m just tired of doing it. And my outlook’s getting bleak.
I keep serving myself sentences that all end in Kurt Cobain exclamation points, or trail off into ellipses…
And I ask myself, when did I get so cynical?
But it’s easier to sleep 5 more minutes than it is to answer that question.
So I’m lying in bed just like Brian Wilson did.
Because I like the illusion that under the sheets, the world goes away.
Under the sheets, I’m safe.
The toy in the bottom of my own private box of cereal. Just begging for somebody to find me.
Filling out tax forms with my favourite blue crayon.
Waxing poetic through a waning spirit.
And I can hear it, the foghorn leading me to shore, but I’m steering starboard to avoid it because disembarking would mean stepping on solid ground that I’m just not ready to handle.
And this fog accepts me as a ghost within it. I could land. I could let myself be found.
But I want 5 more minutes.
There are times I just wanna go home.
I hated my childhood, but I really miss the perks.
Someone used to make sure I got out of bed. I never thanked them for it.
Maybe I’ll do that when I get up.
Maybe I’ll get to work on getting my life together, despite knowing I may just fail again.
Maybe I’ll show everyone that I’ve been worth it, that I haven’t been a waste of time. That when I apply myself, I can accomplish any single fucking thing that I want.
But then, maybe I’ll just count some sheep, go back to sleep, and hope, with my head in the sand, that everything will somehow work out.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Psychophiliac

Who are you?
What makes you special?
I'd wager if I asked you, you wouldn't know the answer.
I'd wager with a gun to your head, the answer would come from friends and family a week later at your funeral.
But would you agree with it?
I mean if I sat you down with everyone you know, handed out paintbrushes and asked for a portrait, how many different versions of you would exist? And would they be compatible?
Would you end up as some artistic abomination with Van Gogh features and Picasso proportions, or would everyone be just as stupefied, and hand back a stack of blank canvas?

How do you prefer your perceptions?
Do you want them to know who you are?
Do you want you to know who you are?

Do you, or have you ever, engaged in psychophilia?
Letting your philosophies represent your psychology to those around you, adding lines and trick shading to yourself to present the illusion of depth like you were born of the vanishing point.

See we all have superpowers - granted early in life, we learn to project an illusion before our true selves - presenting an image of who we'd like to be , and staring at it just long enough ourselves to believe we're already there. Holding the kind of self-importance that would suggest we didn't spend the first few years of our lives shitting ourselves.

It feels sometimes like grade school never really ended. It just got more subtle.

Our swingsets have turned into cars, and we're still trying to go all the way around the bars - Those of us who go fast enough to do it invariably die in the attempt. We've all still got a little gravel in our teeth.

So between that time and this one...who have you become? Is it you our your image that's adapted and advanced?

I'd wager if I asked you, you wouldn't know the answer.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

30 Poems in 30 Days - #12 Poets

Of all the venues in all the cities in all the world...you've walked in here.
First timers and audience vets, you are here today as equals
And while you differ in what drew you in
Some - a wary curiosity
Some - a staggering addiction
Some - a desire to expand
We are all of us present through the draw of words, and the power within them.

To the night cats of the audience - play to the poetry in a unified rhythm
drum out a brand new beat generation - shoulders, hips, and finger-tips
rap-tap-tapping on the nearest available surface

Hit the mic if it's open - unclench those timid teeth and let go the flowing frustrations - give your shoulders a night off, and share the weight with us lest they develop a chip. And cast away what false application you have witnessed of the term "poet".

We are all of us, poets. Metaphor is common to the mortal mind, and with time, comes the ability to employ it. The weather reflects the mood of someone - and pathetic fallacy will follow.

We are all of us, poets - though we suffer illusions that we practice the elusion of allusion.

So speak, if you would speak - or listen, if you would listen. Just be sure to do as you would.

And to the listeners - we exist only due to you. Poetry inhales in the writing and exhales in the reading, The mouths and the ears - the heads and tails of this beautiful artform. Those receiving aurally what we deliver orally - let us inject ink through our words, and tattoo you in patterns of shared experience.

It is every writer's dream to change a fellow being to such an extent that it can be seen by the world around - so as to gesture to the effect, like an architect to a finished building, and say "I did that."

If you would, dear listeners, take our lives into your hands, heads, and hearts - take our experiences and our frivolities - take us by our hands, and let us march into eternity, marked by the lives of every poet we may or may not have ever met.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

30 Poems in 30 Days - #11 Reign in Ascent

I've developed a sense of self-preservation
spending sleepless nights staring heavy-lidded at tar pit skies
starting staggered strategies, soul-shifts, soliloquys, super-hero aspirations
Fixated to define myself, guideline myself and live by truths I won't possibly forget
Marking calendars as though each day were a new year, making resolutions when I lack the solutions required for the prefix.
I can visit a mental gallery with each previous incarnation of myself taxidermied and posed in genuflect to hail the me that exists this moment - each level an upgrade, signifying my status as 'most improved to date'

Today's model has developed a sense of self-preservation
having identified core behaviours known to tax my sanity so heavily, it would seem my mind was at war.
Behaviours that twitch the veins in my eyes, that curl my toes as though I were attempting to grow roots
Past instances of myself flash in the faces of those unaware of the aggravation piling up
And I see the history of everything I needed to change, everything I can't stand about every other person I was
plastered on every pillar of flesh and bone that speaks with a different voice.

I watch myself be insincere to women, and hide my true feelings from them, only to complain to the world that they didn't love me because I was too nice.

I shake my head in embarrassment each time I hear the words "I love all music except country and rap". The me who didn't see the blind arrogance in dismissing a genre because of a distaste for the examples he'd been granted.

I want to scream at the top of my lungs at every mask of me who sits quietly all night, eyeing the stage in the vain wish for enough courage to step upon it.

These compound as flash-fire images of regret upon regret upon regret
Every girl I never kissed
Every song I never sang
Every word I never wrote
Every chance I never took

These regrets are the newest ammunition loaded into the .50 caliber tongue in my head, and I spit them fully automatic through the skulls of each face before me.

I look forward to aging, to learning, to getting to a point of old where I can wield the kind of wisdom I've always wanted to have - the wisdom that can help me write a poem to leave this one in the dust.

See, I've developed a sense of self-preservation
To strengthen my sanity and build fires upon past mistakes, in oath to myself to never again develop regrets for things I didn't do. I will take this stage and aim no lower than I can imagine, and it will be my life's work to rule this entire god-damned world, or die in the attempt.

I will incinerate the hall of my once-was incarnations, and I invite you all to help me pour the gas.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

30 Poems in 30 Days - #10 A Moment to Reflect

Raindrops on the rearview stood stalwart
Automotive blurs flew past without definition
and somewhere in the middle, time froze
She unclasped sweaty palms from the wheel
unbuckled and exhaled, she swore she saw flames in the opposite lane
Clear signal...no going back.
Feeling well-seasoned in disease, cooked in a carcinogen marinade
seeing sick silhouettes of splintered spines and spindly fingers clawing the asphalt behind her
Off to meet the maker, though she felt like the maker's meat, slathered in sauces of otherworldly delicacies
To be served up on a plate for his dining pleasure.
Faces of fear in the mirror, so much closer than they appeared
Time, death, regret...catching up quickly
She knew time would return any second now.
Would that she could freeze it a while longer.
They told her she had one month to live.
Just freeze it a while longer...
One month to live...
Just a while longer...
One month...
One month when she still needed seven to balance out the loss.

Monday, April 9, 2012

30 Poems in 30 Days - #9 Bainbridge on Calvary Hill

In hindsight we were mad to ever think we could control it
We stood so proudly behind flimsy safety nets of semi-scientific arrogance
Never realizing our heads were already in the lion's mouth
even when its saliva fell from the sky

Strong minds unburdened by such restraints as subtlety
Under the corporate dollar, we cast modesty and caution to the winds of fate
Seeing the face of Christ each time we passed by a mirror
and the heir of Lazarus in each of our stolen corpses

FLASH

Five years and we're living in a filmscape highlighted by
greyed out borders between nationless stretches of land
Our precious things have been turned on their heads
The money we did it for now worth less than the paper it's printed on
throats are being slashed for mouthfuls of water
and we're all wishing to God that we could turn those diamonds back into coal

The safety was never there, but the illusion's gone now too
and safety has just become another word for death
Humanity's greatest regret - not replacing "could we" with "should we"

FLASH

To the moment they find us
The moment they remember the pride in our faces as we smiled and waved for the cameras
The moment we realize why celebrities wear sunglasses in public - so as not to be recognized
When they crowd us and damn us, beat us and call for our blood

These people have turned weapons on their own children
Some to save them the pain, some to save themselves
These people see us as the bringers of their downfall
As though we had "Enola Gay" tattooed on our foreheads

FLASH

To the moment the first one goes violent
To the moment the bites fester and kill in moments
To the moment our act of God is taken from us, and spread through infection
Now we are all sons of bitches.

FLASH

To the laboratory where we crowned our apostles
The room destined to be our Golgotha
As man shows the monster within, the rage and pain of a life unjustly destroyed
Howling, and weeping, and clawing justice from our flesh
And we cannot protest
For we are delivered to safety at last.

30 Poems in 30 Days - #8 3000 Miles From Grace

We danced at evening on the surface of the sun
A focused frenzy with intent to burn the star of its fuel
that we might prolong the cool evening breeze drifting through open windows
because I never grew tired of watching steam coil from her shoulders
Heart singing rhythm like an organic metronome, we stepped in time
Dancing Austen's dance - The Mr. Darcy scandal tapes

Three step movements to two step songs
Around every judgement saying we were doing it wrong

See...I don't dance. Not ever, really.
I mean real dancing, just letting go and moving.

But there have been rare occasions.
Sweet little moments in life I was overcome by emotion
By sheer absolute joy of living, and hell yes, I danced.
And it was clumsy as fuck. But I loved every second of it.

We danced to songs not made for dancing
awkward bruises, eyes rolling in the background
This dance belongs to none of you.
This dance belongs to us.
And we'll stumble and tremble and laugh
And we'll Dance Austen when we can
And yes. Our dance will end.

But I don't dance. And you made that a lie for a little while.
My feet moved in impractical ways
And while I may not now, I know I can if I want to.

And to every sneer baited with accusations of not dancing by the rules...
If I'm happy enough to dance, you'd better believe it's on terms and laws far above your understanding
And you can watch me and roll your eyes from beneath my clumsy, shuffling feet.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

30 Poems in 30 Days - #7 Final Moments of a Pest on a Quest

Cockroach lived in the pipes.
Emerged in the porcelain wasteland to hunt sustenance.
Skittered across checkerboard surface, tripping in shed hairs of the sentinel.
Wary...cautious...terrified...but so hungry.
Sentinel was a creature of territory, a creature of rage.
Cockroach knew to be spotted was almost certainly to be killed.
To be starved though...unacceptable.
First threshold breached...Cockroach found new ground...slalom of soft fur grass, grey, filthy beneath.
Much to cling to....much to tangle in.
Must be quick. Must be cautious. Must be fed. Must remain Cockroach.
Tremors felt...Cockroach froze. Sentinel? No. Tremors from above.
Journey continued. Soft purchase in each step, a joy to travel.
Shame these lands had become so dangerous.
Crumbs beneath carpet...not for eating. Cockroach maintained pride. Filth is trap set by Sentinel.
Shaking in air, metal ringing, deafening - alarm! Sentinel returning!
Cockroach readied an escape...but...cannot starve. Must find food! Will avoid sentinel.
Hid beneath great structure of dead hides, felt great portal slam shut, tremors grew in fierce magnitude. Cockroach clinged to soft grass. Felt tremors abate as Sentinel rested in distant area.

Opportunity seized!
Cockroach dashed mad, reckless and tearing through filthy grey fur grass - so soft, so comfortable, so deadly in a hurry
Hunting ground reached, Feeding box located - Blue, upright, open...left on floor. Possible Sentinel trap?
Too hungry to care. Painted beast upon box...orange and black striped, red cloth around neck, white belly, mocking smile. Must be meant to frighten others away. Cockroach not gullible. Knew sweet flakes reside within box. So hungry.
Sudden tremor...Cockroach did not notice approach...distracted by food.
Heard last sounds
"Aww fuck!"
Cockroach felt pressure on his back.

Friday, April 6, 2012

30 Poems in 30 Days - #6 Keeper

It's an open flame.
A brilliant element of endless utility, bearing warmth and illumination

Build a life of flames however, and watch the world around you burn
Faith, as is fire, is a situational entity,
and neither should be employed blind

Salvation and Death lay upon the same card
Be wary
Be watchful
Be not afraid of seeking other routes, if one would lead you into darkness.
A soul forsaken is but a repercussion of a dangerously irresponsible way of life.
Running blind, juggling torches in a field of children, doused in gasoline.
In the name of whomever you name - live with care in each step, or risk the plummet.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

30 Poems in 30 days - #5 Eyes Up

To the children of the twilight breeze - Let us venture North
To a place where the grass underfoot still feels alive
A place we are wary of unseen creatures, rather than they be wary of us
A place where the last streetlight can scream its false powers, but still never be heard

Children of the twilight breeze, let us fall to our backs and revel in the story unfolding above
Let us join great Orion in his celestial hunt, fasten our belts with the Alnilam buckle
Stand on feet of Rigel and Saiph, raise our weapons with Betelgeuse and Bellatrix
And let us hunt mighty Taurus across the night sky

Let us be fools in Cassiopeia's court, jesting of our importance while she lay recumbent on our longest-lasting source of astonishment - casting evidence of our ignorance as long as we dare to see - The hydra, the pegasus, the dragon - These are no myths in the twilight realm.

I ask you - What is Hollywood in the face of Andromeda?

In this place - The bear hunts us.
In this place - We are insects to the Scorpion

In this place - We bid the sky good morning as we lay us down to sleep.


Wednesday, April 4, 2012

30 Poems in 30 Days - #4 Ain't No Phoenix

Been so long since...ain't nobody recalls what did it.
Ain't nobody recalls the blue sky we sing about
Seen pictures, sure...don't mean a thing.
How you gonna explain sunshine to a man ain't never seen it? Or warmth to a man ain't never felt it?
Better luck explainin' colour to the blind
We live this land...beneath that grey blanket, snowin' ash and rainin' acid...and that lightnin' don't ever stop comin'.
We ain't explorers. Just scavenge what we can, an' take it back to the fortress. But time goes by, an' we find ourselves movin' out farther and farther, into more treacherous territories.
The fortress is a great structure, filled with level after level of history. "Library" stamped on the front. We got people assigned to readin' what books ain't been burned or eaten by mold. See if we can't learn who did this to us.

Got a funny feelin' we're not gonna like the answer, we find it.

Had a wife, once.

Threw herself off the fortress roof when Doc told us she was with child. Said she weren't gonna be held responsible for bringin' a life into this Hellish place. Told her suicide weren't right. She said murder was worse, and she jumped.

Funny thing is...I can't tell if I disagree with her choice or not.

When the world ain't sustaining. When the knowledge is slipping away day after day. When we lose another few lives every time a group'a bandits come lookin' for trouble, well then...the hell's the point?

We call the elderly "Teachers". They make sure to pass down skills like readin' and writin', so's we don't lose it all. But I'm beginning to question the purpose in trying. Life, and living it, have become futile.

Thousands of years of history...I don't even know where I live on the maps. All's we got is "Fortress".
Can't even see the god damned moon they say we once walked upon.

Another day. A few bullets less. A longer hike. A smaller amount of food brought back.

Ain't no phoenix risin' from these ashes. just the slowly closing hand around the collective throats of a once proud race.

Teacher taught me a poem the other day. Death be not proud. Fella thought he'd be immortal by writin' these poems.

Death ain't proud, son. Death is patient. And when he comes for us all, ain't gonna be nobody around t'see your damn immortality.

No matter how long it takes. Ash is how it ends.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

30 Poems in 30 Days - #3 Anything But Numbers

There is no force as devastating to illusion or reality as that of cold mathematics.
Our lives and bodies grow and shrink, across a length of time that seems relatively vast to our own consciousness - to the point where we most often don't hear the tick of each second delivering us one step closer to everybody else's fate.

Numbers and me...we never did get along.
Ever since 06/17/85, when I came into this world blue and strangled - maybe my prejudice against digits came then, when the first ticks I experienced could well have been my last. Maybe that encounter with the grim accountant left me jaded as green beads on an abacus.

My life has been one of words. Philosophies. Painting by anything but numbers. And while cold math has facts, and facts I respect, I hold more value in the truths I uncovered by stepping outside the lines.

Give me a number for something that can't be calculated.
Just give me a number.


In one second, the human body pumps 83 mL of blood.

In one second, 694,444 cells in the human body die.

In one second, a human takes on average 0.2 breaths, totaling 1 breath every 5 seconds.

For fun, let's add love to the equation.

In one second of love, the heart beats faster.
So give me a number for love.
In one second of love, the lungs take more breaths.
So give me a number for love.
In one second of love the body is washed over with the tingling sensation of each and every cell desperately clinging to life.
So give me a number for love.

This poem lasts about two minutes.


You've pumped 9.96 Litres of blood
83,333,280 cells in your body have died
and you have taken 24 breaths.

And if you loved it, those numbers get higher.
So give me a number for love.
Give me a number for this poem.
Just give me a number.

Monday, April 2, 2012

30 Poems in 30 Days - #2 Battle With the Saucer People

They arrived spreading filth. The saucer people had invaded, seemingly overnight, and infested the kingdom I call my home. Caked and covered in crumbs and curds, blanketed in forcefields of dust and general laziness - They were simply the filthiest dishes I had ever encountered.

Cups and glasses lay strewn about errant cutlery and stacks of plates, all varying in sizes and patterns, but each more wretched than the last. At first, co-habitation seemed a viable option. I believed we could truly live in peace, and learn from one another. The dishes had other designs. I was lulled into a false sense of security, thinking myself safe from harm, when the girl from down the hall swayed elegantly into my abode.

It was mere moments before she gagged and ran, tears of shock and horror painted a trail over which she would never again traverse. The bastards had tricked me.

"Fool!" They seemed to roar; "Week old tuna in a bowl is NOT an aphrodisiac!"

I was crestfallen at having been duped by their sinister play - Tagged out before getting to first base, when I had hoped for second or better. The sadness quickly gave way to rage. Oh, they would pay.

I threw open my armory, a man possessed, and donned the rubber gauntlets from Dollar-storia. And that was when I saw it.

"Hello, old friend" I said, as I took my faithful weapon, excalisponge, into my hands. With a maniacal grin on my face, and Dark Side of the Moon playing in the background, I filled the scouring pit with boiling water and a chemical solution intended to flay the very skin from the greasy bastards.

Collecting them was treacherous...for they were low of mobility, but excelled in hiding. "How deep does this go?" I cried, after discovering the fortress of spoons caked in crusted yogurt beneath my mattress. Clothing monsters and cd-case banshees all seemed to conspire against me, tripping me underfoot and hiding further of the dishy scum beneath their ranks. But they could not hide forever. I trapped my quarry, and threw them unceremoniously into the boiling chemical pit I set out for them.

Excalisponge in hand, I took to scraping and lashing madly at their bodies, watching their armour flake off in the hideous bath. Suds were their blood. I swear I almost heard screaming, but perhaps that was just the Great Gig in the Sky.

At last...breathless, sweating, and out of music, my assault ceased. I drained the scouring pit and rinsed each dish clean in a ritual of tidy baptism. I kissed Excalisponge and returned him to his home. "Rest now, friend."

And one day, they may rise again. One day they may seek to destroy me in full, as they so nearly did. But little do they know, I possess a secret weapon. An ancient artifact of dirty-dish-destroying power! I wield an ancient scroll, on which is scribed the spell "dishes be done", handed down through the years by the eternal tribe of roommates.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

30 Poems in 30 Days - #1 Mighty Jotun

The people of the country called him Jotun, and he lived atop the spine of the world
Last of the great builders, he was the guardian, the keeper of the spindle that rotated the Earth
Without the cycle, those in sun would be burnt and blinded, those out would grow cold and ill
His task was to preserve the world, and the life upon it, as decreed by the gods
And mighty Jotun, tall as thirty men, would sacrifice all he had to succeed
Thus, did he forever turn the spine

He was first approached by the people of the country in earlier days
"Great Jotun" begged the people, "The winds and rain throw and freeze us. The shelters we build of stone and wood do nothing to protect us. We beg you to build us homes out of pieces of the spine of the world."

"I cannot." Replied Jotun. "For if the spine were to stop spinning, the world would surely perish. But still, I am sworn to protect you."
And mighty Jotun, tall as thirty men, reached to his back and removed a section of his own spine - throwing it beyond the horizon.

"When you return" he said "You will have such homes as can weather any onslaught of nature."

The sacrifice had stooped Jotun, and he stood at a height of ten men less, but still did he forever turn the spine.When the people returned, generations had passed, and the world had changed much.
"Great Jotun" spoke the elder of the people. "Enemies from another country would invade and destroy us all. We request you to build us weapons out of pieces of the spine of the world."

"I cannot." Replied Jotun. "For if the spine were to stop spinning, the world would surely perish. But still, I am sworn to protect you."
And mighty Jotun, tall as twenty men, reached again to his back and removed a section of his own spine - throwing it beyond the horizon.

"When you return" he said "You will have such weapons as can defeat any army."

The sacrifice had again stooped Jotun, and he stood at a height of ten men less, but still did he forever turn the spine.

The people came again, many more generations later, and the world had changed much.
"Jotun" announced the representative of the people. "Our inventions can not function without the blood within the Earth, and we will surely die without them. We cannot reach the blood alone. Build us a drill out of pieces of the spine of the world."

"I cannot." Replied Jotun. "For if the spine were to stop spinning, the world would surely perish. But still, I am sworn to protect you."
And mighty Jotun, tall as ten men, reached again to his back and removed the last section of his own spine -
throwing it beyond the horizon.

"When you return" he said "You will have such a drill as can bore through any stone in an instant."

The sacrifice had rid Jotun of his spine, and he could no longer stand. He lay on his stomach, but still did he forever turn the spine.

It was but one generation before the people came again, and still, the world had changed much.
"Beast!" Called the Leader of the people. "Our status must be known to friend and foe across the Earth, but we have no such thing to show it. We demand you give us the spine of the world."

A fire came into Jotun's eye. "You would destroy this world for your shelter. You would destroy it for your wars. You would destroy it for your trinkets. I have sacrificed to give you these things, and now you would destroy the world for your vanity."

And mighty Jotun, tall as nothing, began to stand, fury raging in his features. The spine of the world began
protruding from the Earth, supporting Jotun to his feet. He stood again - tall as thirty men, and roared a sound the likes of which no man had ever heard - toppling them all to the ground, leveling their buildings, shattering their weapons, and annihilating their industry. And finally, the spine of the world broke, and Jotun fell back, impaled on the fractured remnants.

The world stopped turning. Those in the sun were burned and blinded. Those out grew cold and ill. The people perished one by one, and the planet grew dark.

Mighty Jotun turned the spine no more.

Friday, March 23, 2012

First Meditations

One of these mornings
You're gonna rise up singing
Then you'll spread your wings
And you'll take to the sky

"I can take you there" she says to me
mouth quirked in vexing appraisal
"All I need is your soul"
One raised eyebrow, one dark smile from perfect lips
a soft laugh rings through my ears like such sweet cruelty
Hungry eyes betray her gentle facade...she wants to make the sale

She tells me her name is art.

And in my beauty-blinded foolishness, I ask if that name isn't normally intended for men.

She laughs silk and smiles pearls, chestnut curls bat her hips with a natural sway.

Art, she says, belongs to all genders.

And I'm so captivated, I barely catch one entendre in the double.

She is the image Coltrane was painting with his saxophone.

Manifest memories of fresh mint and raspberries in the bushes behind my Grandparents' house.

I am lost in her existence.

"I can take you there" she says to me
mouth quirked in vexing appraisal
"All I need is your soul"

And I swear, I see horizon beyond her curves.
Tears caress my cheeks in eternal surrender
She takes my hand into hers
and leads me into the future.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

The Boneyard

Welcome to the Boneyard. Burial of nearly established yearnings and righteous demands.

Where change never progresses beyond the spreading awareness stage - and this awareness is so often constructed on a foundation of half-truths and poorly researched information. We live in a shopping mall of false revolution - clad in our Che Guevara t-shirts, playing My Little Kony down by the Guantanamo Bay, hoping we don't drop the SOPA and feeling a level of self-satisfaction that would suggest our Facebook Status actually fixes a fucking thing. All we do is find new ways to Occupy our time.

While the Vatican CEO stands in a Jesus Christ Pose holding Mother Earth bent over an oil barrel. Tell me that we're on the right track. When we strip our ideas of their armour and shackle them to a table, running water over their bodies and up their nostrils, hearing them choke and spit, damaged enough to lose their effectiveness, but alive enough that we can parade their condition around for all to see, to solidify our positions as free thinkers and world shakers, and ensure the world we're not just looking for a cure to our waterboredom.

Welcome to the Boneyard. Built over negative energy yearly, and rapidly deteriorating.

Living in search of elusive lucidity, creative clarity, and metaphors mixed with cannibal seasonings - Where family money allows full use of cheap scotch and cherry-flavoured Rohypnol with not a whisper uttered - and yet a man forced into the streets for over a decade is arrested for masturbating in the privacy of his own home. Where the roads are repaired before they're finished. Where children hold signs reading "God hates Fags" before they're old enough to truly understand the ideas behind any of those 3 words.

Where we shake hands and pat backs, showing gratitude for platitudes, growing gardens of funeral flowers to convince ourselves we're not just waiting to die. Where each tick of the clock burrows beneath our existent shell as we cry cyst and pay to have the time removed. Where doubt gestates at twice the rate of a new idea, and we still find time to gloat about that project we're considering.

Welcome to the Boneyard. Betrayal or neglect. Elsewise, you're a rare dish.

Bargaining over nothing except yachts and renewable dictators.

Binging on narcissistic empathy, animal rationality, death.

Building our numbers each year among ransomed destitution.

Welcome to the Boneyard.

Welcome Home.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Love Letter

This is a love letter
To a beauty so deep it makes the ocean look amateur
To a pair of eyes so indescribable in colour I have named them Aurora and Borealis

I would liken you to a rainbow, but that underestimates the contrast between you and the world surrounding so, if you must be called a rainbow, then you are the rainbow that appears in the face of an oil spill.

You are the feeling of night-flying a kite, and when I can't see you, I know your presence by the gentle tugs you provide on my strings

This is a love letter
To every bruise earned by running too fast to answer a ringing phone.
To every tie that's just a bit crooked, every flower that's just a bit wilted, and every guitar that's just a bit out of tune.
To a mind so brilliant and a voice so enchanting that when you gifted me a decision over the behaviours of your tongue, all I could ask of you was to keep talking.

Were I to compare you to a summer's day - it would be the day we declared meteorology impossible; a day where the sun shone brightly on a blanket of snow-covered flowers beneath a canopy of red and yellow leaves being softly struck by a timid rainfall - the best parts of all seasons and still a day unapproachable in its individuality.

I stand clueless as to how you've so completely entranced me; and asking you would be like asking a magician to reveal their tricks only to find out that their magic is real. And if you ask me why I hesitate to see you remove your clothing, it's just because every colour is so much more vibrant when you wear it.

I can't say that you've numbed any of my pain, or that you stand as a beacon in a darkened existence. I can't say that you're what's right in a world gone wrong, and I can't say that you've healed a single wound of mine because you have taken over the part of my brain that can see those things, and with you, as far as I know, they don't exist anymore.

It feels like I stumbled backwards through a karmic baptism while the judge was asleep at the wheel, because I sure as hell haven't earned this privilege, and what man could?

Still.
This is a love letter
To ink and paper declarations with little literate alliterations
To the tiny imperfections that appear when you smile that way
To you, for smiling that way because you want to show them off
I love you

And I wish I could capture you accurately - have a reservoir of language so guided and precise to present a linguistic watercolour in the air before me, forever shifting and changing because still life is your own antithesis.

I want to tell you that you are the double-speed recital of unmitigated embellishment from an egotistically wordy cerebellum bridled simply by a vocabulary incapable of achieving description tantamount to what you mean to me.

That I am forever in automation, scribbling madly each inspiration you pass my way, and always speaking more profoundly with the specific smiles only you can coerce from my lips.

That we are the very image of what happens when a dreamer meets a dream.

And that this..

Well...this is a love letter.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Hearts & Crafts

I want to tell Carly that this poem is for her. Hey Carly! This poem's for you! Thank you for the craft supplies!

I want to wear a suit of bubble wrap, so if I get hit by a car, I'll still be badly hurt, but I'll have something to do while I wait for the ambulance.

I want to smear my chest in glitter, so I can run out of the woods, flailing and shrieking that I was shit on by a unicorn.

I want me and my art to be stuck together like two bits of wood acting as the bread of a PVA sandwich. I want to treat my art like a lover. Play back and forth, always offering, never asking, knowing when to fuck and when to make love.

I want my poetry to read like footsteps on a path of drying cement, so everybody can know where I've been, and where I am, and when they reach me, I can tell them where I'm going.

I want to shut my brain down for 24 hours, so that just for one day, I can craft with my heart, and heart alone. So that just for one day, I can appreciate that everything I create; every poem, song, and painting is a love letter to art itself; so that just for one day, I can live without the critical eye that looks at my own creations and says "Well that's no fucking good."

I want to know what the poets know. I want to get closer to Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs. So I think I'll treat myself to a naked lunch on the road and howl when they come to take me away, ha ha.

I want to spend a year in a strait jacket, so I can learn to write with my feet and say "Yeah, that's right world. 4 pens at once. Try to stop me now, motherfucker."

I want to think up some brilliant new expression; something to lift the chins of folks who are having a hard time with life at any given moment. Something like "If you don't trudge through the sewers, how else are you going to meet the Ninja Turtles?"

I want to treat each step like it's helping the world rotate. I want to snap so loud that I can't type when I get home. I want to care less about money and treat each purchase like it's only ten dollars (Only TEN dollars?!). I want to laugh so hard that I ejaculate confetti.

I want to deliver quiet lines during big laughs, so the audience has to buy a book to know what I said.

I want to quote The Simpsons like it's still 1998 and relevant. I want to live, Marge! Won't you let me live!

I want to get five zeroes at a slam, because it seems more difficult to achieve than five tens.

I want a world where the righteous aren't so damn righteous about it. I want a world where everything goes up to eleven. I want a world where you get strange looks for NOT singing alone in public. I want a world where I can say Snooki, and everybody else will say "who?" I want a world where everything's coming up Milhouse. I want a world where everybody has a sex tape so we can all calm the fuck down about it.

I want to leave an audience in constant suspense. I want my audience to always be unsure of what I'll say next.

I want to...

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Damage

We're all a little damaged.
Everyone in front of me has some kind of baggage, some kind of damage, some old scratches covered up in fresh paint. Some of you have written poems about it. Some have shared it with a close friend, and some have never let it out. Some have forgotten it entirely.

But it's there.

We all know it so constantly that we fail to notice its effects on each other, like we're painted black and blue but we're only seeing skin tones.

The time was right, I thought, to talk about mine a bit.

Diagnosis: 9 years old - Everything is making this kid cry. A fetal ball was my fighting stance. Seemed like my only goal was making my weight match my IQ. Of course, these days, that'd be a good thing.

Diagnosis: 9 years old
Diagnosis: Can't stop crying
Diagnosis: Highly intelligent
Diagnosis: Can't identify with other students
Diagnosis: Major Depressive Disorder

Lucked out being the smart one - most kids couldn't spell the name of the pills I started taking.

I couldn't tell you how long I was in therapy. I can tell you that it happened Tuesday afternoon. Every Tuesday afternoon. And I can tell you that it was getting tense, trying to convince the more skeptical of my classmates that I was at a "doctor's appointment".

These days I laugh in the face of anyone who asks me if I wish I was a child again.

We're all a little damaged.

And some of us try to wear it like cosmetics - to show the world the empty glow of our hollow-eye-shadow.

I have a simple message to deliver - to anybody who will hear it.

Stop trying to diagnose yourself to be different. Being Bi-polar is not a fashion statement. Depression is not a buzz word that means "attend to me, peers" - It's sitting awake at a computer screen at 3am holding a fucking knife to your throat, eyes burning red, shirt collar soaked in tears cried out because you force yourself to keep going. You just can't bear to give anybody another reason to be disappointed in you.

You're accessorizing yourself in the choice methods of the suicidal - and while you wail for attention to your glittering malaise - another father has hanged himself with your necklace. Another mother has cut her wrists with your cufflinks. Another scared teenager has used your shoes to step out into traffic. Another human being has swallowed 30 doses of what you're selling and has died in foaming convulsion while all eyes rest on you.

We're all a little damaged.
We've been there. We've done it. We got the t-shirt.

But none of us actually want to wear it.