exodus laughing

both sides now

2008-06-25T01:21:00.000-07:00

Exodus Laughing 2005:

Exodus Laughing 2006:

Exodus Laughing 2007:

lady labyrinth

2007-12-06T10:52:00.001-08:00

this is where you slow your beating wings. rest here in the fibrous tunnel of my heart that will protect you from the throbbing world that rises all around like so many streams of blood and hard muscle. crack the wishbone of my mind, close my eyes, and repeat those terrible words that shock my heart open.

but wait - do these walls move? do sudden shifts invade these tunnels like waves? i would be a fool to guarantee any safety here in these cracked channels; clods of hurt fall like earth and kisses drip stinging tears. This heart blooms like a warm flower in the sunlight of your worship, but the hot shock could singe these too-willing petals.

if this lead anywhere, let it be back to ourselves, if we know them or not.

Lotus Hurt by the Cold

How many times, like lotus lilies risen
Upon the surface of a river, there
Have risen floating on my blood the rare
Soft glimmers of my hope escaped from prison.

So I am clothed all over with the light
And sensitive beautiful blossoming of passion;
Till naked for her in the finest fashion
The flowers of all my mud swim into sight.

And then I offer all myself unto
This woman who likes to love me: but she turns
A look of hate upon the flower that burns
To break and pour her out its precious dew.

And slowly all the blossom shuts in pain,
And all the lotus buds of love sink over
To die unopened: when my moon-faced lover,
Kind on the weight of suffering, smiles again.

D.H. Lawrence

sea-change

2007-12-02T11:08:00.001-08:00

somebody opened a floodgate in the sky. but my tiny chrysalis sticks firmly tight, seams don't show a hint of bursting. people permeate my skein like particles of needing, and it does nothing to alter the fluid of my being. i fail to understand the se-change, and perhaps won't until i am entirely swallowed by the crisp mouth of creation, then will spout sparks like tiny arrows of misfortune, explode like an car engine under the desert sun, stranded in a place of expansive beauty. perhaps someday i will be able to choose who to let in; for now, it is a free-for-all, a misguided attempt at free love and total abandon. its purifying as an armageddon, required before i terminate entirely into light and art.

lazy posting

2007-11-22T20:07:00.000-08:00

alright. here is an draft for a poem i was working on in june. it will find its way into a form at some point.

Pelicano

On our evening beach walk, a pelican
roosts on the lip of the sand bank
carved out by waves's same clutching fingers
that caught his wing and plucked him from the air.

He sits stunned, his wing's joint broken;
a terrible miscalculation.
I hover, an indifferent god, creating tragedy
and feel my spirit harden like the clay desert.

He will not live, you say;
he will be eaten or drown in the sea.
You are listless as the two identical birds
that glide near to observe his riteless passage,

divided by the merciless current
That ferries them to fulfill the line of flight
and leaves him on the bank to drag his snapped wing
and catch his beak on the sand.

The sky that night is brilliant, unfathomable orange and green
we sit close as the fire burns to dust
silenced by the terror of the bird,
his shadow forever wandering the bank.

He torments my sleep, screeches
and tears through the air, spilling bad omens.
We drive South, and the round trip begins to circle us like a noose,
whose tight knot was North.

alone again, naturally

2007-11-02T20:16:00.000-07:00

sitting amoung the things i have owned i feel much like a relic myself. i run from inspiration like a lover. i am only concerned now with the surface of objects. i am tracing the outlines, expecting that once i connect all of the disjointed lines, a form will push itself outward and shine brilliantly. dull objects mock me. words are so painfully artificial. i am seeking purity and it continues to sidestep me - it is like chasing firelies whose fickle bodies flash sporadically. reality, unreality, reality, unreality... chasing them is futile so i sit in the rooky wood waiting for them to land and anoint my body in a green fire, then go out.

i soak chard in butter, sip mulled wine on a quiet fog soakd night sucking on half a cigarette, patiently, ardently. i am thinking of all of the birds that flock my yard - where do they sleep? have they found a way to dodge the reality of their environment or do they also sleep with one eye open? are they possibly more real even than i imagine them to be? am i spoiled by this overfertile imagination? perhaps all it does is wrap me up like seaweed in a beautiful ocean drowning ritual. picking off the salt of imagination exposes blank strips of blue sky that gape like breath. i am transfixed and floating in a dawn that is empty, save for the birds that cut across, solid, black thoughts so real i can pierce them with a needle and push them against a blank sheet to keep.

fiddleheadless

2007-10-19T07:41:00.000-07:00

The Fiddlehead rejected a batch of poems yesterday:

Dear Ms. H--,

Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, we are unable to accept any of your poems for publication in our issue. We did enjoy reading them, and our favourite piece was "Three Women."

Kind Regards,
K----

I expected rejection. I didn't expect feedback. Very good. It is interesting that they liked this poem, and didn't mention the one that always receives strong feedback. Maybe I'll wander over to the black stilt tonight to read it.

Three Women

Old photographs evoke
the affinity to death I feel
in graveyards; the mock
of the sunken plots like the sharp,
flat smiles of black
and white mouths.

Like these three women, burned
into sepia tones, translated
from time to eternity.

The one in the center, in white,
with bullet-hole eyes, white
coat, stockings, layers
of gauzy white like the haze
of memory; in her bag she clutches
the secret of a moment, which always lies
somewhere unreachable.

Suspended like petrified fruit,
these women; flattened
by time, like a stone;
three pressed flowers.

The slice of sunlight under their feet
reaches like a scythe, drags them
to this snapshot, their afterlife.

Time clutches at us, from
the world that lies beneath
experience; the inverse of photographs;
your face in the mirror
whose changes no one sees;

You clutch to roots you believe
are branches, turn the world
inside out like the back of a photograph
against a window
in the moonlight.

The fear of becoming memory,
or worse, to slip out of memory
like an accident;
to gather time within
and leave, knowing.

the heart of a broken story

2007-10-17T21:40:00.000-07:00

the storm parts to reveal a new season. the days are darker, but the wind is entirely unfettered, a pure violence shaken loose by the summer sun's incision. A wound so clean there is no blood at all - a scrape like a kiss. Aloneness is like going home - rising up to the sky you always imagined you fell from like overripe fruit. now my languid peach flesh hardens green and huddles roots into its stone. its earthy sweetness breeds comfort's growing vine, twisted around days, like so many sharp sticks, only to turn around to creep down over its own shadow. I huddle inside this great anticipation and my voice echos against its shell. I eat candies and read poetry in a white bed, insenced like a shrine. i seek purity, spun some like some fine sugar in an impossible chaotic tangibility for sinking teeth.

summer scraps:

jun 8: the green leaves spin in the tumult of the rain
the air circulates in discomfort
they sob and shake and dance
moving lucidly, pinned to their branches
trying to loosen their clutch to the root
and blindly locate the sun
but the spindle of the air
winds gray round it like
a spider's nest, cottony lightness teeming with black urgency
the oak's green fingers applaud, applaud
clap, soundless, against the air
whispering: down, down, hush
the great roots simmering
the earth heckles and moans

those on the outside are being born
into sunlight like perfect, gold gods
that crystallize, finally, when the sun
stakes their small hearts in a blessing
their glory filters into my dreams
small inside my nested mind

june 12: the house smells of lamb sausages and chanel. i haven't had a drink in 11 days and am feeling remarkably serene.

july 7: my face, the little circle of madness in the window. . . the madness of trying to sort out the madness of the mind.

some broken lines

2007-05-26T21:25:00.000-07:00

I launch myself like a ship into the night, spinning alone, nearly pitched by every wave, though from the shore I appear only to be gently rocking, steady, resilient. In truth I am held together only by the tense concentration of my panic. The black violence of the waves, like erotic viperous kisses, suspends me in desire.

I am blinded by the love of truth, so that I cannot see truth directly. As I finally approach it, it expands in my double-vision and stitches itself over me, a coverlet of burning. It burns me up.

Like a bird with no natural history, I screech and tear through exotic air, spilling bad omens.

Nothing can take form, take flight. Everything dies, stillborn in its too-frantic desire for life. Nothing stands still long enough to name it - everything cries to be named.

The Pelican was an omen I could understand. As we stared into that fire, hearing the forlorn cries of the bird's terror, we knew the finality of the voyage. The round trip circled us like a noose, and knotted tightly as we headed North.

scraps from fall/winter

2007-02-12T20:29:00.000-08:00

when i look at you, i think 'i don't hate anything you say, and i hate so much these days'

even when i was making horrible mistakes, even then, i had a raw energy in my destruction. now my destruction is hidden. it is small and it is evil. it is a deeper dishonesty

love made me common and i can never forgive it for that

i saw in them what i did not want to come into: the inevitability of girlhood. i heard myself crying in my quiet pink gloom - felt like a lost angel, my soul misplaced by some forgetful god. i have not changed. still i sit in a rocking chair and rock and weep and stare blankly at walls. i remember so many walls that i have stared at for hours. every window i have looked out of

after the edges of life, it is only empty whiteness - it is only the long stretch of nothing before heaven. or blackness. in darkness at least there are shadows. whiteness illuminates all and makes it very clear that there is nothing wthin or beyond it.

in the white dawn, the earth lifts temporarily
in a crescendo of atonement
arms upswept like a fervent spirit
but arms grow tired, and the dawn comes down;
loves goes, as predictable as dusk.

2006-12-18T20:44:00.000-08:00

why are you calling me so late while he sleeps? you make this even more of a nightmare than it already is. brainhell for all.

2006-12-17T23:45:00.000-08:00

. . aging is a privelage. i understand now. a body dies. quickly. slowly. we are not all lucky enough to become old.

post one hundred

2006-11-30T21:03:00.001-08:00

your words circle my mind like terrorists. . . gunmen heavy at the door and all i see are tears. life or death seem meaningless - i am nonexistent. i am pinned, an angry wasp, entirely guilty in all of my innocence. in this crysalis, i shake in terror that i may rot and wither on the branch. i will never again snap a new bud off of a tree in the spring, now i know the horror of it. why do i quake in the face of the mean wind? how did i lose the source of strength? strength is only true when it is tested, though what is it when it quivers, wavers, fades? cowers. I cower in my innocene...i flake like a diamond...am shredded to my black coal heart. my ego is lost and i do not miss it. i do, however, still possess all of its memories. they torment me. i need to go away and scatter the ashes over an ocean. my biggest fear. .? . . my ego was the writer i wanted to be. now that it is gone, i know me not. i am desireless and want only purity.

2006-11-27T16:47:00.003-08:00

it rarely falls so low below zero here. thirty cm of snow dumped on us in the last 48 hours. . .
and as it is usually so mild this time of year, there are still hummingbirds.
my neighbour has set up a light and a feeder for them and they have been zipping in pairs to sip all evening..
it is so beautiful.
will they survive the night?

snow day

2006-11-27T08:20:00.000-08:00

"its true"

2006-11-25T17:09:00.000-08:00

the sun came out for three minutes this morning

2006-11-20T23:04:00.000-08:00

ok. i'm feelin better. but give me a few days and i'm sure i'll come 'round.

how pathetic

2006-11-15T11:25:00.000-08:00

the sky is moving. the lights are flickering. the dark has crowded in my mind, seeded little beasts to sprout. The rain pours down in sheets that wind and twist in the wind. happiness is becoming impossible in the face of all of this darkness and trial and boredom. All I want is to be active and to want to work. I know it has to come from me. I have poisoned the well of my own mind and it is clouded in this black spurt of self-loathing. It must be another phase and I dare not shun it or cover it up, as frantic as it makes me. I must allow myself to hate myself for a time, it seems. I miss my ego, which has shattered. A phase, a phase - I move continuous and slow as the moon and her low burning filament. I claw desparately at love, as a bird slams her small sparrow's belly against the glass.

my Xmas card this year

2006-11-11T19:33:00.000-08:00

so long

2006-11-05T22:14:00.000-08:00

hey there out there. cant complain. so long. tell me how are you feeling? if you're covering the silences than youre not alone. all that weve inherited are the dusty corpses of angels. i dreamed i found a bat at the dead corpse of a tree. it had dried to dust, and crumbled when i held it in my hands. the following message could not be delivered. i pick up the phone but no one answers. we're all connected, but no one will answer the phone. and i wont dial your number. pour yourself another one sweetheart. what is your manifesto? where is your stage presence? why is language so important? love is real. love is real. its the only thing here.

winter is upon us

2006-10-29T17:14:00.000-08:00

o. denial. self-denial. this choke-hold of time. i spin around the tether of weekends, solid blocks of work, and a week of variations on the one note that plays across my life now. my sleep is torment. i have to drug myself asleep, drug myself awake. a life of addictions as reward for doing the right thing. all for what? i have to believe in what will come of it. i used to be such a good little investor. i have never wanted to see the future before. but now this uncertain certainty wraps its fingers tight round my skull and sings, high pitched screams. torment. dull throbs of anger. those good things are so damn tangible. . . but out of reach for now. life, though a small part of my time, can be so good. time stayed. future stayed. life stayed. you are my salvation. you, my water tiger, on this silvery bright morning, lit a tiny fire in my heart. creation is my promise.

as tears roll by

2006-10-08T11:09:00.000-07:00

wet and gray, dreary perfection like those old days. time alone for the great mysteries to penetrate. On the porch I smoke, examine a broken fragment of a papery wasp nest; perhaps these long spheres were once torn pieces of poems i discarded in spring, chewed fenceposts where sylvia twists her bones to slip through, old news stories from mornings we curled with our coffee in the sun, cardboard put out on the curb; pieces captured on ominous flights across the yard and reassembled into a hive of birth and destruction. the bees dance to the music i hear floating over garry oaks from the park, sunday symphony plays on even through the rain. it all falls at my feet - these pieces of a day i appropriate and spin off to my own hive. he brings me a dozzen pink roses, two for he and me i place in a milk bottle on my little table above where the birds claw curiously at the feeder while my cat sleeps heavily, exhausted by her restlessness through the rainy night. While the birds scold me through the pane and swarm the peach tree i read Chaucer's Parliment of Fowls. . . the "dredful joye" of love, cupid's "myrakle and his crewel yre." so nice to know this sweet mystery sleeps beneath the dullness. I know I have not lost it at all, it merely sleeps like so many lions. My arm throbs, glass beneath the skin - the terror and peaceful mortality of injury, blood marching like armies of soldiers. The beauty of love rising up forever out of ashes, like the papery waspnest, built from a million pieces of nothing. the pieces leap through my mind to eternity.

nothing

2006-09-30T11:29:00.000-07:00

my marble heart. . . the marbleness of my heart. joy can empty a heart as thoroughly as grief. i unfold my heart to read it and it still screams, screams bleed out of it like brilliant streams of light and my self is annhialated as if by atomic love. i move towards a space of nothingness, obliterate my self, step out of the oscilation of events as if up onto the hot sand still wet, cold, and covered in weeds from the turbulent ocean. i shake them off like chains. this place is very quiet. . . an open, indifferent desert. my destiny has been carved out like a shelter in the rocks after thousands of years of pounding sand and flash floods. its mine and can never be another's, so i love it. will i meet others here where it is all mine yet i still do not know it. miles and miles of desert and the womblike edge of the sea where i can exist, exist, and exist. . . be, be, be.

thank you so much. . .

2006-09-17T10:59:00.000-07:00

i am still here...
my persona has been eclipsed by my own lack of identity
i'll let one or the other speak soon.

fragments for fish

2006-06-04T21:20:00.000-07:00

and fragments for the fish who, though meaningless, have hearty souls and bite at worms:

She is coming she is coming
Hooray it is like a parade
And I am like a child
Waiting for it
The clowns, and the serious dancers, who
Lift their skirts ceremoniously
And make the ruffles dance
like laughter. The long procession that goes
on and one, then ends
abruptly
like a silence
and leaves only streets,
and candy wrappers,
sad children, wondering
what comes now.

...

There is a wolf pacing outside the door.
It paces like the world
that lives outside my heart,
my skin: thin enemy to onslaught

...

Danger rocks itself
open, like a fissure in the earth:
done unto itself,
a violent motion, like crying
out, something startling
that comes from the self.
Danger is a doppelganger,
a dark double with a light soul. My
practically invisible spirit

Danger still holds its mystery.
It never lies still
like a baby, and you never
approach it as helpless.
It is always a stranger,
yet only as strange as
part of yourself

Danger
transforms its meaning over time.
It moves like shadows:
some, like an embrace, you duck into;
others, you run from like
secrets

or you run into secrets and duck
away from embrace

tongues and sounds

2006-01-01T16:36:00.000-08:00

my heart is breaking for nova scotia. going home this year was like coming back around to myself after all of the changes the last two years have held. All that I felt had splintered drew itself together and rose up out of the ash of memory to form a beautiful and painful vision of a future. The one splinter who digs herself into the blue sinew of my heart pushed in a final shove and now will never leave it. Promises were made that will never be broken but which made leaving all the more painful. I have to make a life away from it all, some reason and purpose still drives me though the path is wild and ripe with the unknown. I am so sad and it is so difficult to work it out. I'm going now to live on the beach and eat fish and avacados, strengthen my body in the sun, beat it with salt to purity, and write as if sweating and purge, srtive to understand, these feelings.

beach weather

2005-12-12T16:57:00.000-08:00

walked across a deserted city beach this afternoon: clear, grey puddles, tinged a bleak green or a surreal crystal blue, so still, reflections of a saturated silver sky, deep, sealskin-gray cloud like a globe overhead and crisp, light, bright edges. The sillouette of a lone tree hanging over the water nearly blended with the sky, a murky silvery fog.Walked onto green glowing moss against the crags on the point; gulls, seals, crows, and terns everywhere eating bits of salmon and fighting, locking beaks, swimming under currents to peak natural as waves on the surface.

just another (glorious) day

2005-12-08T20:48:00.000-08:00

i could disappear through the flare of the sun, in that brilliant orange like the center of your heart. while it went down your face turned color through the window. lunch at the beach hotel and a matinee. listening to meg white sing 'in the cold, cold night' over and over all day in my head and now johnny and june chime in. slept twisted together through the darkening sky and woke up to a surreal night. last night screaming like a maniac through the beautiful syrupy red and white wine candy striped haze, smoke like a nimbus. the clock said three a.m. and i was seeing about seven rufus' singing 'art teacher' so it was time for sleep. tonight is rehab: green tea and my guitar ready to pick itself it wants to be played so badly.

boo

2005-12-02T11:12:00.000-08:00

frightened of exposing myself more and more and more and more. i used to be so open. i wish i could turn myself inside out or shuffle backwards into a shell, with windows. i've been wanting more and more to look at the world and not have to suffer participation. i suppose because its so comforting to stay in all day and move my life around in little undisturbed circles like ripples of water. i have been freakishly happy these days. no one but him would indulge in this lifestyle with me. my lungs should be killing me but they're not. this calm is invading every black hole in my life. my dreams are peaceful. i reach for things more slowly. i can finally stand to wait for the kettle to boil.

our limbs are merciful
as a mind asleep
and sing in our submission
to some peace

we smoke and watch the fire
melt into sinew and bone,
filter the air through
the soft pink of our mouths.

the light darkens, we dim
like dying fireflies
in the jar of our room,
burn out into sleep

heiroglyphobia

2005-10-25T21:21:00.000-07:00

a little day. the postman woke me up too early with a package that wasn't for me. a darkened morning spent in bed and a late start on my work. words didnt come. all of the ideas contract and expand and contract like tiny storm systems. pages and pages of grey. the sun filtered through the clouds and i ate spicy noodles on the roof of his shop, on the big red canoe with my cat who chased imaginary spiders while chestnut tree-leaves fell. read critical theory in a very hot bath with the window wide open to let the birdsongs in. saw a film tonight and biked home through hades, which emerged from under the black roads in a torrent of dead leaves and a falling ocean. tomorrow arrives too soon without any brilliance. all i have are these fumbly words. when i print them off tomorrow they will appear solid and finite; but they are no different than guffaws and snorts.

its quiet

2005-10-22T08:36:00.000-07:00

a morning where the sun and every gold leaf web the sky in silvery threads. this loneliness so precious. every sensation like a marble rolling over my skin: hard, cool glass. the phrases waiting, like children. wait, must wait some more. now hot syrupy coffee in his mug and soon i will rise like the sun to the top of the hill and race down to cadboro bay. learning to bring all the pieces of these days together to a peace, like all the jarring colors of a sunset melting to a glow. a nimbus, like a cradle, fragile as snow.

sea change

2005-09-01T15:29:00.000-07:00

feeling so much better. i now have a weekend job with many perks and possibly will be working back-up at one of the city's best, certainly most popular, restaurants. i will almost always have five days off a week to write and enough money to cover my ass. at this point my resume should be impressive enough to snag a cooking job in any city, provided the job exists. thrilled.

insufficient funds - card declined

2005-08-28T17:24:00.000-07:00

though i am officially broke there are still ways to feel like i have money: 1. spritz myself excessively with my christmas gift purfume 2. eat almond butter straight out of the jar 3. read my roomate's daily paper 4. slowly spend $25 bakery gift certificate won at hoola hooping contest (true story) 5. use my visa to buy chcolate chips and soy milk 6. read Star magazine online 7. print resumes on boyfriend's computer using his paper 8. calculate how much money my trillion books and cd's are worth and consider them capital

Some old houses have ghosts, ours has a cat.

2005-08-28T12:42:00.000-07:00

Last night around 7 o'clock i looked out the back kitchen window to see an orange cat standing politely by the door. He wasn't wearing a collar, he looked healthy, I had never seen him before, and I knew he didn't belong to any of my neighbours, but he seemed to want to be let in. I thought, Is he here to visit Sylvia? Has he run away from his new home to find his way back here? He seemed friendly so i gave him a treat, a move i would soon regret. Since he asked so politely, by a mew more like a high pitched screech, I gave him two more. Then he became persistant. He pushed the back door open and walked into the kitchen in the direction of Sylvia's food. I nudged him out the back door again and he immediately jumped up on the window ledge. Sylvia walked casually into the kitchen and stopped, wide eyed, when she saw our visitor. Every single bit of fur on her back stood on end until she realised she was protected by a pane of glass. She leapt up onto the window ledge, he jumped onto the steps, and she stared him down while he stared up at her. The two kitties stared for about half an hour. I finally opened her window and the hissing and growling began. She jumped outside and ran down the steps to look cute under the japanese maple while she waited for him to persue her. It became clear that he was not interested in Sylvia but determined only to get inside. He jumped in the window and barralled downstairs. I ran after him and got him outside though not without hissing and scratching. He repeated this, more blood and hissing, and finally settled at the top of the stairs to wait for his next opportunity. J warned me then that if Sylvia returned to find his smell everywhere she may not come home. I got J to chase orange cat off the property, which he had to do several more times. I had never seen such a persistent cat. Sylvia didn't come home so I left the window open for her and went to bed around 10:30, drunk from whisky and worry. At 3 I got up to see if Sylvia was home and found her sleeping on her chair. I noticed that her food bowl was empty so I filled it for her. I closed the window and went back to bed. Around 3.30 J and I both heard a sound in the dining room so we got up to check. Sylvia was crouched in the living room, hairs standing on end, growling, and the orange cat was sitting casually under the dining room table. Who knows how long he was in the house, how much food he ate (probably all of it), and what the hell he thought he was doing. I put him outside, petted Sylvia who was very, very upset, and went back to bed. We haven't seen him since. Is this a routine? Were we just a stop on his neighbourhood rounds or does he think this is his home? Is he a cat-food burgler? A cat rapist? Has anyone else ever seen a cat behave this way?

april fresh kitties and bread with butter

2005-08-26T18:24:00.000-07:00

happy and broke. last night i made an herb rubbed roast chicken, new potatoes, roast carrots, and my first attempt at bechemal sauce, then drank whiskey and read Plath in my "library" corner.

dreamed i held a very large, pink, slippery, beautiful baby in my arms.

woke up at 6 am to the sound of my cat in my bed, which we constructed yesterday from free palettes found on the side of the road. had a satsifying domestic and physical day. baked french bread at 7 a.m. and waited for the sun to creep up to the back steps for sitting, reading and tea-drinking. my roomate's girlfriend made us yummy crepes with blackberries they picked on the gallopping goose bike trail last night on their ride home from Thetis lake. pruned and staked my tomato plants. let my cat out for the first time and watched as she and the white cat from next door chased one another. satisfied that she knew where home was i went inside to make chicken stock from the leftover roast chicken. picked about fifteen little tomatoes to have for lunch with leftover new potatoes and spinach. transplanted a rhodedendrum (how do you spell that?) and funny little artichoke/cactus-like plants to the front of the house where i discovered millions of bulbs. got covered in dirt. had a bath in my claw foot tub and then biked around the city for an hour before going to see my friend dana. returned home to a quiet house and chicken stock ready for soup with homemade bread. it is an absolute luxury to have so much time but i quite literally have no money and need to find an immediate solution.

2005-08-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

i have no practice for what is happening in my life. i am happier, though, when I have less. there is a feeling of superiority in owning so little. i dont know how long this feeling will last. i am caught up on a spinning wheel and i have had no time to reflect on where it may stop.

so long

2005-07-30T08:33:00.000-07:00

moving to nowhere. he, kitty, bodum, and I will be reading Shakespeare out of the back of a van. through wireless connections across town you may hear from me again. goodbye beloved Pendergast.

luminara

2005-07-23T23:00:00.000-07:00

the clasp of someone's hand a vice, a grip like a clamp, a resentful leader taking me away from me. The feeling building in me that resembles hate, but couldn’t possibly be related. My hair in my face is suddenly like ten thousand moths swarming and you’re on all sides of me like walls. My words meld into yours like a face tranformed by acid, leaving them unrecognizable and putrid. Silence hangs like a suicide, swaying, thick rope creaking. I selfishly want to go off on my own, liberate myself and I know that you want the same. I don’t understand it and admire and detest love for being so strong.

i’m held down like a sea-creature under water who looks up and sees the sky distorted, wonders what the breeze feels like that moves him so deeply. Each of my thoughts outlines the truth in silhouette; a vague shadow I can never quite make out. What expression does it wear?

i don't have any wine tonight and its bugging me.

july is. . .

2005-07-22T21:02:00.000-07:00

moving in 8 days. up at 7 every day for class. drinking 6 days a week. packing for 5. transplanting 4 varieties of plants. 3 days to write 2 essays. cleaning 1 vw van. nearing 0 dollars.

not to mention my psychological realities.

2005-07-12T21:43:00.000-07:00

i am so inattentive to the fact that this month, this entire summer, is competing agressively for the position of the second most stressful time of my life, the first being 1996. this is an official request for a miracle.

visions

2005-07-12T17:17:00.000-07:00

I rose like a giant seashell to fan the earth, squeezed my thighs together in a knuckle of white stone, bright like the morning.

the sun cuts through the shower curtain like broken diamonds. my words echos off white porcelain, a canyon of angels.

the pages of the book fall off my fingers like white feathers ripped from a wing.

the animal lay on the road, exposed skin like the flesh beneath a torn nail; spongy, innocent, and strangely bare.

The blooms of roses like open sores. memories of clotted blood swell to unshrinkable grievances.

night rose like a silent mother and I climbed into its shadow

chez moi

2005-07-11T23:09:00.000-07:00

part of me just wants to move to montreal. start smoking again. read leonard cohen, naked, in the window of my cheap forth floor apartment full of white sheets and write bad poems until i write a good one. the rest of me thinks i would get lonely and is it really the right decision to begin with? i am torn. where do i want to live? what do i want to do? do i have the strength and fire to know what I want and do what I want? I need to find it or else i will be disappointed. i'm not good with disappointment, though i suppose no one is. i want to free myself from the trappings i create out of others. he says he sees the fire even though i hide it.

whiskey

2005-07-05T14:41:00.000-07:00

Cruel habit who chains us
to what we fear, and love
who blinds us to fate’s hard game.

Tight telephone bells in my
belly like fire, a coil of wires
send electric shoots to my tongue.

Your confession, my cue
to forgive. I can never tell you
anything because I am always

following your lead,
and my words fall behind like
spilt coins from a torn pocket.

Your futile dreams are
as rotted as my own.

sundays

2005-07-03T22:38:00.000-07:00

jorane was blissful tonight under the fading sky, gulls floating, curious, overhead. had to close my eyes to block out the grisly faces of pale old and old-before-their-time people, and scary dancing volunteers in orange and purple. but. . . jorane was beautiful with her wide eyes, entourage, and cello. seeing her throw her body over it, hair falling, made me think of a photograph of someone even more beautiful. . .
my arms are tired from working, my guts swirly from a strong mid-afternoon gin and peppermint tea, my thoughts are still with a novel i finished this afternoon and will have to read over again this week. i'm ready now to take buck65 to bed, slip cool thighs between warm sheets and slip earphones in, to be alone.

going home?

2005-06-30T09:47:00.000-07:00

a monumental up week: didn't tell anyone and went up island for four days to nit nat lake. swallowed a few bugs the first night but got a breezy spot looking out on the beach for the rest. walking alone up a river, thinking about bears, a giant dog rushes out of the bushes and jumps on me. oh my heart. his owner laughed and called him off: "Tiger!" other than that i was completely alone on my walk through the giant dinosaur forest. went swimming amoung river jellyfish. wrote extensively about fire and its effects, since we spent at least a third of the time watching ours. roasted marshmallows and hot dogs to his absolute disgust. ran out of beer. launched kites, caught kites, followed kites up and down the beach, met a nice british guy who did tricks on the water and taught me to launch, flew a trainer kite with his girlfriend. had coffee on the beach, calm glass lake and seals, every morning with him. made two big decisions, on very big. guess i just needed some space to decide.

yesterday: mowed, clipped, washed, moved branches around. staked and tied all of my tomato plants and my poor flimsy dahlias with tied together branches and thick white string from his shed. felt i was putting my children in straight jackets. my first tomato appeared, then i found three more. smaller than my pinky nail, green, a burst of life that i grew with my own patience and hands. something anyone but myself would miss.

today: an unexpected day job.

time for revolution

2005-06-17T09:54:00.000-07:00

an unbelievable week. my disappointment in the north american human race has escalated and nears bursting point. the battle between good and evil continues. i scrape off a layer of naivite and beneath discover a hard layer of distrust. i never thought i would be victimized by the legal system and by other canadians to the point of being kicked out into the f'ing streets. no one cares about kids, or pets, or plants. it is all profit and squirmy, slimy, evil, sexually repressed assholes and women on power trips. f'in hell i am disapointed. and somehow still making the most of it. though it appears that in this society evil is rewarded, my belief in karma gets me through. i wrap my white wings around myself and build up strength.

the big step

2005-06-12T09:50:00.000-07:00

that was the week i came to realize my impending financial destitution. last night i scraped a dime off the floor of a convenience store. i must ascend above my fear of a job sucking away my time and self and stoically proceed to sell myself part-time at least. i am not real-world enough and it is a weakness. making some dollars here and there helps significantly. I much prefer it to the predictable world of pay cheques.

i am perpetually conflicted with my desire to be truthful and the outer demons which coax me into mediocrity, cliché, and expected behavior. i chopped off my hair this week and i already feel closer to myself. torn between this action being vain or an act of un-attachment. I was told that i was concentrating very hard when yoda spoke in the movie the other night, and its true. how lame.

trying to decide which modernist painting i should write on, really want to write on Duchamp's "explosion in a shingle factory" as one critic puts it. i think its perfect.

read about Sartre and De Beauvoir all morning in bed with black ,black coffee. I am far too hooked on reading biographies of writers. I think I have read ten this year. I wish I could read everything at once. I need to push myself towards devotion. entire devotion to only walks, reading, writing, and spending no money. going to start to sell off my belongings. I need to get off all of theses “ideas” and act. “If man is nothing he can only justify himself by doing.”

alternate lives

2005-06-05T10:04:00.000-07:00

woke up on the couch this morning, slept there to give and get space and rest. though i didn't get rest. he is so happy to sleep alone, it hurts. self-pity. i drank a bottle of wine by myself, a chai soy candle burning. an electric switch in my brain turned on and led me through strange dreams. had dreams like those i did as a child, in which i surrendered myself entirely and forgot that it was a dream, more like sleepwalking through another reality. both began with a vision of myself where i was sleeping, then waking. one, i look out the window and he has left a fire blazing near the shed. i am terrified and i wake up afraid of the dark like i haven't been in years. the other i wake up to mist shrouded mountains and a hill next to me. it is early and i decide to get up and walk up the hill. at the top is my sister, in a building i have never seen, with two men i have never seen. his head, plump and dead, hangs around her neck on a thick gold chain. i stare at it. she talks about it and the two men look at her as if she is crazy. she walks with me for a while and then must go. it is so good to see her, even in a dream.

i feel as if i can't find any time for myself, though that is the most popular complaint around here and i have no right to it. once the legal crap settles things should look up, but i know there will always be something. i see now that it is so easy to look after only your own life. i feel lazy and selfish and i know this year i really have to work. forget about the fiddle, the drums, day trips, daydreaming. especially daydreaming. work and write.

wanother

2005-06-01T22:48:00.000-07:00

oh hooray another drunkan blog do the little people say who live in the other world, the bottom half who dream about these words but do not get to read them. a house fly is dying on my keys as i type, he is dying so quickly that he does not move very quickly as i move toward the f, the h, the l, the ;. he has given up the fight. imagine a time when a house fly is more noble than any common american, and yes we are amoung them.

i am thinking about him. about how i think that he can not not be alive in me. (i almost stamped out the fly by hitting the "E") anything in me that beats and wails proclaims that he is alive, maybe even more alive than me. everything in me tells me he is alive. but i know that he is not. so i know that i must lie to myself. can anyone give me another conclusion?

you know what . . .

2005-05-28T20:35:00.000-07:00

i've got some damn good material. its going to be good.

self-reprimand

2005-05-28T20:04:00.000-07:00

i'm wrong i'm wrong i'm wrong again. i am so mediocre. it is the last thing i want to believe but it is true. i think he tries to make me angry. he says i need to be angry. not in this way. i wish i would not say things that i do not mean. everyone does. have to let it go. he gives me more than i have been able to give me at this time. unless i start to produce. then it will all transfer over to me. i want the life he urges me to find. he says that it is now. now. now is my opportunity. i need to get off the continent for some time. i truly truly need to. i am afraid that i am lazy. i am afraid that i won't do it. i am so deathly afraid i am paralysed.

i lost my necklace today. i lost it walking around the city and i don't think i will ever see it again. i cried when i realised there was no weight on my collarbone and rode around the city sidewalks, retraced my steps. the hot sun was consoling, but i'm mourning the loss.

where is this place i am trying to find?? it is in me, but where?

after the night

2005-05-18T08:59:00.000-07:00

whiskey on ice led to dreaming through the night...soldiers in the woods, rape, bathtubs, shooting under and out of water, escape, survival. violent like my old dream world used to be. the second dream of a classroom in the late 40's, sylvia plath as professor telling me about novel she is writing, two beaming soldiers enter with a single spiral telephone cord with a blue reciever on each end, they hold it up, marching in officially and i think they are coming for me but they hand it to my professor and she leaves the room, a reciever on each ear. the soldiers return marching she and another professor into the room with clear glass bell-jars on their heads, hair florescent blonde, faces distorted under them. she explains that she sold banned books, not only to us, but to soldiers. they are taken to court where they sit in the back and sing eerie songs about the wind blowing only for one night.
perhaps fear over what i want to write and how it will be recieved? plath haunting my style, must banish her. had my latest poem very well recieved and myself encouraged by two published poets and one editor on the weekend. putting together a short manuscript this month to send out.
yesterday was a celebration. the house is ours and we will stay forever if we wish. i love it's whiteness and sun fading up and down on the walls, the amazing silence it seems to embody. the sound of kitty paws tapping on wood, tile, carpet, porcelin, in the silence.

we sisters three

2005-05-13T16:36:00.000-07:00

marvelous friday the thirteenth. all three sisters were favored by the superstition gods. the planets are aligning for us, finally. very good long chat with poet prof this afternoon in small room teeming with canadian books. i wanted to peel open every cover at once. tried to remember titles with little success. very full weekend ahead: literary fair, another perennial sale, donuts at the market, walking around the city, exam preparation, writing, writing, writing, pink cupcakes and tea party sandwiches for the little one. bottle of wine tonight and mocambopo poetry night. wish i could forget about my birthday. a bit of self pity that i am not with my family. however, i will be with a canoe, a river, and spirits -- lovely.

sylvia ate a bee

2005-05-08T21:10:00.000-07:00

for mothers day i did just what my mother would do. i fought old ladies and children at a charity perennial sale, came home, poured myself a glass of red wine and planted two gardens of phlox, hostas, primulae, and bleeding hearts and many pots of herbs, tomatoes, and lettuce. i have dirt under my nails, cheap wine stained tongue, and my body feels...well, it feels.

just went to sundays at the jbi to hear an acclaimed (bad) local writer read about (what sounded like a bad) trip to india. tables of leechy girls laughing at jokes about yoga and masturbation. we left early and stepped out into a beautiful downpour which tore all of the very heavily scented blossoms off the trees to cover the streets.

had a marvelous day with sylvia. she has slept beside me every night he has been away since thursday. she dug, climbed, sniffed my plants, and ate a bee. little daughter. i came home from poetry night and called her and she walked sleepily out into the hall "mew?. . . mew?" she wants to know where he went. muuummmmm. awie little one.

what we decide to keep

2005-04-23T21:32:00.000-07:00

some feather
and bone
these relics
teeming with the crowds of my past
beating on me
like a shower of nails
like the dream dreamed by my eight-year-old self
strapped down to a board
stinging bees fired at my innocent body
like bullets
i hold onto them
these fossils and these dreams like
a baby's translucent finger
to almost touch her hand,
her fleshy arm, blonde eyelash,
and beating heart
a fossil i keep
because it was hers
salmon teeth and jaw she brought me from a walk up nit nat river
a snails shell
a bird wing i found
on the top of a sand dune in death valley
a blue china mug i found in his kitchen cupboard
and took because -
my memories promised me -
it was really hers
picasso's nu de dos
that hung over their nuptual bed

why save these
"companions of no weight"

the godess of small things

2005-04-23T19:24:00.000-07:00

giant cup of coffee and several hours to get through Shelley's "Alastor" too much tequila last night and up early to drink coffee in the sun, snooze and cuddle in the hammock, and cut a garden for my bleeding hearts. sylvia helped to dig.
last night was surreal. i hadn't played a drum kit in years, but the ryhthm survived somewhat and now i will need my own set so i can learn the entire War album as i have always said i would.
a travelling poet named Joe came to my door today pedelling his wares and i turned him away. i imagine i will be recieving some bad karma soon.
both cats are in the bird bush crashing around. you look out and they look up at you all innocence, with feathers and tufts of cat hair in their mouths. sylvia sticks her head under leo and kicks his face with her back feet, a rather compromising pose. she continually takes advantage of his lack of front claws and swipes at him whenever they cross paths.
i learned that sarah slean has a blog today, which makes me very happy. through complete chance i saw an interview with her on channel 81 today. she performed one of my favorite songs "Out in the Park." she also showed us her tiny box of paints which she bought in germany from a store which only sold very small things. she had used up all the white.

eighteen degrees

2005-04-19T14:34:00.000-07:00

drank coffee. breakfast together in the backyard then said goodbye to you gone down to washington again on yet another profitable adventure. shifted my chair with the sun, flip flopping around. she and i got thai food, picked up bookshelves for free on the side of the road, bought bleeding hearts to plant, made ribs and ate with chopsticks outside not very ladylike with our beef short ribs and peanut sauce. went respectively to our hammock and wicker chair. teased the kitties with strawberry leaves, squealed as they tossed a little brown mouse back and forth. embarrassed because the mailman saw me in short shorts. read Faulkner and dozed in the sun.

"studying"

2005-04-19T14:33:00.000-07:00

miss L

2005-04-19T14:30:00.000-07:00

did you know that strawberry leaves are an aphrodesiac for kitties?

2005-04-19T14:29:00.000-07:00

sylvia the great

jbi reading

2005-04-17T22:27:00.000-07:00

the men are seething
what are they really thinking?
their women to shield them from thinking
their fathers hanging over them like
rulers breaking
i hate to go to poetry readings in this town
they are full of old people
clapping in comfortable dementia
long grey hair daring you to
swear

the one lone soldier
who mounts the podium like a man walking on the
first crackling layer of ice
to reveal it is actually solid beneath

i love that breeze a person makes when they walk by you
leaving the room
a touch so human it doesn't even belong
here anymore
you notice it because it doesn't belong

writing words onto a paper napking with a red crayon
conserving words
i lov 2 abbreivate
the small of wax which you forgot
of crayons on napkin
which you forgot

that slow way people always read poetry
like margaret atwood
who did it right the first time
its rude to point
dont you all know that?

people staring
can they see you?
that would be
miraculous

sunday

2005-04-17T19:31:00.000-07:00

the woman at the chinese grocery store who always asks me how to bake things, who once said with a tongue full of tenderness and sympathy "ooh i love editing!", told little one not let her ten lb bag of flour get wet in the rain or she would turn to glue, who i thought might be crazy... she lost her glasses and now she looks down squinting ringing through the groceries and she doesn't smile or ask how to make rolls anymore, and she can't afford to buy new glasses because she makes minimum wage at a grocery store. for some reason this really gets to me.

i made potato leek soup with tarragon.

dug eighteen deep holes for my dahlias this afternoon ripped apart the bulbs with my fingers. eighteen or more in the back row of my plot just the size of a grave. planted lily of the valley too. a rustling noise then a mother duck arrives on the scene, gnuack gnuack, then fourteen little ducklings barely days old follow her across the yard and through the fence over tree stumps.

napped in the middle of the day in the middle of the house with the sun streaming in on the lumb of a cat on the floor.

going to the jbi poetry slam...

ponderings over merlot infused with godknows

2005-04-14T22:13:00.000-07:00

whats come over me? i'm acting differently, think im coming into my own if that means anything its always a phase forever changing. im amazed constantly at the perpetual transformation, i feel mine is so fast i'm always running after myself to keep up. do the effects of life speak at all to the cause? I'm in that cave where the echo sounds and the walls become a thousand mirrors of pure voice and memory. that echo comes from the place i thought i had left behind. all of these people stepping forward to claim me as part of their history, when years before they left me behind.

where were you then? that snowy night at the bottom of the railed steps, cough gripped my lungs and you kept me there, explaining why for an hour and while sure my heart was breaking all i wanted was to go inside. you talking and me watching the snow flakes in all their shapes melt against my collar. that last kiss on my step in summer. the fear that gripped you, i hated it then as i do now. why so much lament and confusion? oh the agony, none of you had any balls at all. the irony is i am now with someone twice my age and think none of it. fools, you all. and now that it is behind me you come forth with wisdom held out to me like petrified fruit. ha. i laugh. its all i can do since there is no time travel machine to play with. i cant do a thing about your regrets.

some bottles of wine and pull out some maps and we'll plan another adventure. this time it will take us somewhere new and we'll sail around in the blue goddess once more our little hole wherever we wish. rest stops and american beer and bumping our heads against the ceiling. end up back in canada where you will finally be my citizen.

the new friend is so much like the whiskey bottle and grease-on-my-fingers-swingset friend, the one who couldn't figure me...couldn't put me anywhere. will you have anywhere for me?

my backyard in april

2005-04-11T16:51:00.000-07:00

the daffy dill path

2005-04-11T16:46:00.000-07:00

sylvia with bells on

2005-04-11T16:45:00.000-07:00

eliot's lilac

2005-04-11T16:42:00.000-07:00

budding apple blossoms

2005-04-11T16:40:00.000-07:00

wee daisies

2005-04-11T16:39:00.000-07:00

dandies and bug

2005-04-11T16:37:00.000-07:00

sun through lilac cover

2005-04-07T17:51:00.000-07:00



THE WHITE-BONE MOON


Memory is the lilt of time 
between seconds, the space we crave 
to enter, like a cat who twists her web of bones, 
casts off her skeleton like moonlight,
flouting time, to travel through narrow space.

                                I’m thinking of the time
I slid like snow falling into my 
dogs open, backyard grave.
My pink boots withered to black
and darkness closed in on me like panic. But I could see
my breath, which the thirty below temperature 
had transformed into something 
solid.
      At eight years old I held time in my fist 
like a stopped heart.
                     Twelve years later
this moment 
fell into a poem and I became 
that cat, twisting its bones, 
dreaming them hollow.

                     The moon 
glints, her beam a wand which makes 
time invisible, so 
we too may shed ourselves, and 
enter into that equivocal space between.

the clatter of bills in the mail box

2005-04-07T12:19:00.000-07:00

the first hour i've been alone in this house for, probably, eight months... i'm writing, drinking coffee, eating lamb, listening for the postman's boots on the stoop. its very quiet. too quiet. i can't seem to get anything done. i never expected this... not that i ain't enjoyin' it!

hesitant

2005-04-02T23:01:00.000-08:00

i have produced so much in the last weeks. i am in disbelief as if watching someone else, while all my selves past congratulate one another. one standing to the side, watching with distrustful eyes always. won't she walk away someday? push push ahead as if walking not wading.

there will be no avalanche if i hold time in my fist like a stopped heart.

i hold my envy like a bird with injured wing.

i let it fly and it falls.

i am stuck stuck somehow stuck on a nail in this moving picture frame. my life speeds ahead, once more i run behind it like a cat that has stepped out of its skin.

e + j = m apparantly

2005-04-01T21:14:00.000-08:00

You scored as Hedonism. Your life is guided by the principles of Hedonism: You believe that pleasure is a great, or the greatest, good; and you try to enjoy life’s pleasures as much as you can.

“Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!”

Hedonism 100%
Existentialism 100%
Strong Egoism 65%
Justice (Fairness)50%
Utilitarianism 40%
Nihilism 30%
Apathy 20%
Kantianism 10%
Divine Command 0%

More info at Arocoun's Wikipedia User Page...

What philosophy do you follow? (v1.03)
created with QuizFarm.com

i love

2005-03-15T19:57:00.000-08:00

i feel severed from my family stuck inside a glass box and outside everyone screaming secrets i cant hear. i feel actual spiritual connection to my sister, strange since i cant speak with her. i keep having nauseating moments of sharp contrast between here and there. he is a swan. she is a blessing. she has had to sacrifice so much for knowledge like some golden inedible fruit. all my love goes out flying to her at the light of speed...

some thoughts before the fog

2005-03-10T14:32:00.000-08:00

the fog rolls in from clover point and only the pink cherry trees shall keep the integrity of their color. the sun is about to be swallowed and the mood will change suddenly. i write about the tension between memory and imagination and wonder if they are so different. Is not one dependent on the other? I would have to say the imagination is the stronger and least dependent, but memory can be its fuel.

on saturday we will be taken to a beach up island by one of the v-dubs and we will light a fire and dance around it like warlocks, brew and all. he will let the swell swallow him and come in like a fish with the waves to land and for a moment forget to breathe air. i will walk to the waterfall where the rush and crashing muffles speech entirely and the cool mossy rock walls convince me i must have been a salamander in my last life...

sunday night

2005-03-06T18:11:00.000-08:00

i had a day dream that i found a path of branches to the sky. i could climb a garry oak and the cathedral of branches would go up and up (body suspended in black spider veins against the blue and white sky) until i could look down and think if i fell i would crack my skull a thousand times before the ground could find me. oh to be alone and so much closer to the sky.

i love to run at dusk when the peacocks cry in the park. do they try to sound this plaintive? their cries echo and evoke dying knights and dead ghosts of maidens. when you approach the blue and gold gilded pear her tail opens like a switchblade, and you are suddenly trapped in the gaze of thirty-seven hypnotic eyes.

objectivity is a lie. subjectivity is truth.

"there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too clever, I only let him out

at night sometimes

when everybody's asleep.

I say, I know that you're there,

so don't be

sad."

-charles bukowski

i anoint my lucid skin with a tough white cake of mother's milk. the path my hand follows, the only one possible at this moment, travels my body as the heat rises and stings my skin, now white, now red, now pink.

tickets

2005-03-03T17:16:00.000-08:00

my two seattle u2 tickets are up on ebay - come one, come all.

tumult

2005-02-26T10:28:00.000-08:00

last night a blissful and frightening stone was thrown down my throat, on a knoll looking down on the tumult of waves and lights of ships, piled up like corpses on a final sailing somewhere. a confession so stark it shook a tiny creature deep in my heart or liver or lungs to unlatch baby claws from my side and come out quietly, skittishly from hibernation. stretching out its fingers it clutched at some grass before the riverbeds washed out and carried it screeching away from its soft, bloody and dank home. i am again alone in purpose for a while but happy and still full of love and so much faith you may as well call me mad. i need this for any given reason but for the biggest reason of all, the thing i can never let die or it will come back and take me with it in one final bang and i would watch the red and fire-orange tail feathers of the phoenix disappear under the moon, gone forever.

dreams

2005-02-22T21:02:00.000-08:00

i keep thinking of his dream woke up sweating and cold midnight the only time i have ever seen him afraid of anything. disembodied, floating through hospital floors. ominous. terrifying. a man with three feet, a mouth emerges from a back, visions melt into other forms. trapped in an elevator, travels up and down and up and down and finally zooms around a tube like a wheel caught in cycle. falling back asleep i tried to tap into his energy but came up with nothing. it comes down to me wanting his disacarded dreams.

click buzz whirrr click whirr

2005-02-11T18:33:00.000-08:00

fuck im cranky cranky cranky cranky this hangover all over me sitting through four hours of dribble drabble with strong up and down creative outbursts, well contained and fallen out the bottom by the days end. once ths sun dissipated all moods unravelled and fuck fuck cranky cranky not wanting to have anything to do with myself or anyone. fitz is depressing me, and now a pile of food i do not want and i forever the orchestrator I already feel like running away from all responsibility want to feel like a child again for a while. i suppose im lucky i havent felt this way in a while. going to write every day for the next ten days and feel good.

wear all black and close my eyes and its summer

2005-02-10T14:13:00.000-08:00

bought three hyacincth flowers this morning. i saw a purple one bloomed on the corner of my street and thought immediately of my mother. most flowers remind of her. a crocus doesn't look right without a bumble bee in it, and black eyed susans remind of bike rides on pictou island. flowers on pictou island never seem to exist anywhere else, like cat tails. i was blissful lay outside in the sun for three hours this afternoon drinking beer, watching him work on the van, and listening to the red-alert birds chirpideeing over my cat who makes primal "ca-ac-ca-ak" noises when she sees one. Sun is heading into the haze and i'm going to make spanikopita, humms "bummus," and greek salad to accompany scrabble and a lot of spicy ceasars tonight.

2005-02-07T13:22:00.000-08:00

my new view of u2, floor tickets! sadly they will be 14 years older...

2005-02-05T17:13:00.000-08:00

in 2.5 months i will be sitting here and u2 will be on stage. they will be tiny dots, but none the less...

double me

2005-02-03T22:41:00.000-08:00

i see an image of myself in a faraway mirror through the double doors, slid open now. that must be what i look like, and i think "I look lonely" seeing myself so far away and in context. but then, i lean back and there are two of me reflected in the corner mirror. thats more like it, thats more like what i feel now. "how appropriate" i think, because i am writing about doubles, and about Margaret Atwood, and she always puts her rhetorical thoughts in quotation marks.

2005-01-31T20:51:00.000-08:00

two spooks

fright night

2005-01-23T11:54:00.000-08:00

the giant abyss that opens up between us threatens to swallow me and my tears and peakles of laughter collide in an unconvincing sound that I try to explain is the worst hurt I have ever experienced. he tries to tell me that we're doing far better than most and that these gulfs are bound to loom up, or down, between us because we are two different minds thoughts forever travelling down separate chutes and it is a wonder that we can get along so well all the time save these times (and god isn't it?) and dont i want a passionate love? and i do and im silly to think it can be dancing around naked in a quilt all the time, our cat climbing all over us, hot coffee and elbows knocking together reading in our sad foam bed since she took away our other one. he tells me that I am afraid and god can the wall in myself be so tall that I can't see over it? my biggest fear is to be forever unable to crack my single perspective, to have limited access to truth and he puts that possibility out there and first i am angry, then I am delighted because without someone to push me I will never grow as a writer. i used to think i was privilaged to have been born here, and now i think it is a curse. there are so many trappings and glass walls.

good

2005-01-18T22:12:00.000-08:00

drunk bibble babble for two: insomnia on the ghostly point + sullen drunk solitary creeper. one long late conversation leaps up. i grab it and its wonderfully familiar, snickers and grim confessions, love letters and forgiveness, and my entire existence congeals and firms up for at least an hour setting off sparklers in the hands of the ghosts of two eight year olds somewhere in a dark field out in the world, neon green firebugs snapping their wings all around.

2005-01-17T21:17:00.000-08:00

responsible for two.i fill out the frame both man and wife tonight. interesing. it took a bottle of wine to calm the tears of being left even for a while. i am so sad i even need the only friend i have. haha. i must be in love. aaahh miss my baby gone to oregone.

a green penny left too long under an oven

2005-01-13T21:06:00.000-08:00

when he says my name it rings like electric shocks and i know he has been listening with his heart turned on i feel guilty that im surprised as if everyone rehearshes and speaks through masks as much as me and he wants what i want and i want what ive always wanted except now its become crucial. time is a nasty mother and doesnt forgive. i couldnt identify the bird and he said woodpecker no i said too fat and no crown he said you would be surprised and i had to admit that i was wrong which happens far too often i need to stop being so god damn stubborn. the last thing i want to be is a bad loser. i want to be graceful always though i never am not like her who seems to want it as badly except it comes more naturally. ive let it go though, now. i am disappointed by my own past build ups about writers which i let down now and let go free like beads off a string bouncing all over the kitchen floor. all the best there is room for others and maybe room for me.

a hat changes everything

2005-01-10T19:59:00.000-08:00

i bought a hat from Robertas and the whole world looks different from under it though ive lost some peripheral vision and im not sure thats good but the world is a warmer place. so my hat and ten-percent bunny make it a new year. officially. seven new plays, eight more poets, ten+ more novels and tons of philisophical dialogues to brood over. all day ive been finding myself in a place that has to be broken into to be reached and its fantastic. maybe its the bunny but it could be organising spices to bela flek and the snowy white thats odd for this new city. i missed crunching ice, but it looks funny here because the grass is green poking through and roses and pansies bloom everywhere. ive got someone on my mind and its making me sad.

2005-01-02T11:23:00.000-08:00

southern california the blue goddess on route 66

all is quiet

2005-01-02T11:03:00.000-08:00

he brings hot coffee and liquer, me white under down and half folded pages contemplating plath and hughes' married life a misunderstood jangle of fixed stars and hot stink of love. my own life folds out in front of me like ribbons blown forward in a hot sudden wind left to rest in a jumble of silky piles upthrown continually by sporadic gusts. the up and down back and forth movement of life so much like birds that bob on waves, still they move, the wave a perfect symbol for all of it sex and life and the mind and the heart. Surprise at the happy anticipation of today and tomorrow and the rest of it, never before so much excitement over possibility. so much has to come before any of it fufilled, hard determination and pure strong will.

2004-12-14T15:46:00.000-08:00

sylvia expresses disdain for our roadtrip

softie

2004-12-10T21:01:00.000-08:00

the bent pronged branches left hanging, a trace of me in the woods. he made a cage of chickenware and i filled it out with an image of my mother, bright rounds of red and fat cones. my floppy failed scones a lesson never to make something only to use something up. a end sacrificed by a mean me, heavy as stones. she comes tomorrow. fewer pleasant afternoons. she stinks of error long in past, rotten cloud rising from a dungheap. she will not ruin aims at invisible targets. it warms me that i can laugh, that we can laugh. keeps us up high out of reach. such a day with him, so much love in my life softens me. no surprises, i conjured him began when i was eight and knew it though he was off in the world already.

drafts

2004-12-05T20:06:00.000-08:00

panel of poets

Slick words stolen from thesauri,
Whispy loud whispers of
Love love love.

Eyes bored through like nails
One speaks the other glows with envy
One falters an ego blooms like
Red warm blood

Their words artifacts
Canadian soul food
Sting the air like
Rancid curdled cream

At ease in their tall red chairs,
Water, books, microphones,
Versed speeches meditate on
Old dead things

Afraid to look forward
The path clear before us
A bridge of fire
A curtain between us
Sewn from scraps of

Paper, will fall
to ashes.
And our only armor
These dead words

splitity lick

2004-11-29T22:12:00.000-08:00

gold white brown chestnut blue green orange black red blood rainbow coral grey violet starry milky. wanting so badly to write poems (hola) instead left to write essays on irrationality on nothingness on lossgriefabandonment in childhood on joyce gods little poets. thinking of my sisters and how much love so far away from them both all else disappears and we are a strange trio of stars all lit up and jangled like soul circles snapped together. saw a photo of mum standing with dad and the past closes in like a bouncing tickling tiny glass box like rolling die their faces imprinted on all side like stamps.

margin notes

2004-11-27T21:31:00.000-08:00

birds in naked branches like mice slimy squirming in a tangle of hair. by open cupboard door sylvia stands vigilant with a knowledge i cant understand she waits and suddenly after one month rises trimphantly her trophy with blood and snapped neck. she looks for it for days after once we throw it down onto the lawn. i sit with her and we sit and she sits and she waits and I watch and try to learn, she says mum i have to go out on my own and makes her deer leap up and away her head still spun towards me smiling if its possible with her thin lips. when she climbs up on my notes sniffs candlelight and pushes velvet nosebud to my chin i break my heart with thoughts of her as daughter my gray girl. and he my old man sleeps on fevered bodies growing age and i feel strange guilt of not being able to speak to him. how do they move me more than men?

substitution for green notebook

2004-11-26T21:45:00.000-08:00

no notebook. these hot outbursts of acid. his incorruptible surface. on they fall. the best place. would be no good to burn he who i love and it makes it impossible. people wont read these meandering words like staring into river without seeing the bottom. can you see it? sandbanks time eternity riverbottoms. like that escher i saw above the torture chamber chair big gold fish plays tricks he hides from most of us. today i wanted to stop and. start. finish where my thoughts began at the first memory. i want to work and tackle this thing that hangs about me like her ghost, which i know is only uninvoked incantations and language left too long to sour. i met with a great mind today and she together with the other and I read and they said to look at the moon and see the bees and see it all transform, but then they said that death is coming and so i turned away and wondered could i change where they are going?

colossus

2004-11-25T21:39:00.000-08:00

this voice telling me that in order to go inside i have to go down and I may never comeout alive and the question does suffering lead to art art suffering. is it necessary i will take up my life force its mine i claimed it in my first memory of being alive those impossible images. only dreamed of magic until i met the devil and when that card flipped up i knew he would shock me into myself into those dreams that so long i held in my palm a wish faraway throwaway. if any part of my life has been a test this is it and i have been tested oh oh. this a different kind in which i may lose limbs, but i am growing a collosal fibrous vibrant pulsating pheonix of a heart big enough to keep all i thought id have to let die in order to live. now i can have all i was afraid to clutch.

+ self

2004-11-23T19:23:00.000-08:00

im getting rougher with them wonder will this be me when i am mother? the answer comes no. i know that it is no. they are -me and +she. baptised in the contaminated water of feminism and me me me. tired though. i have learned a thing or two... writing glass window separates me from the musty haired do-gooder hippie with the mickey mouse voice doing his part standing in his place on cue perpetually ready for action... it isnt that i belong to ireland more than ireland belonging to me inspires chortles amoung the group while I stare out and see joyce right through his words they label it truth set it aside bury him in the graveyard of their minds and i see the truth in the words and it comforts me to know that i am in communion with true great spirit... plath reminds me that i should work work work though i cant stop reading her. wanting to defend myself to strangers on the bus who see me with these books tell them that i am only trying them all on not looking for a source and i have read so many but they dont care while i do nothing but care.
talking to her today i get so much out what is it about become so practicaly passion tempered by rationalizations though i think mostly honesty.
we never get to our full moon these days but i know its still there, with its white bone hood...