From before.

Blocked
And blocked
And out there
Somewhere
Thoughts
Trapped
Hiding
Blocked like ink from a dead pen
Like fish in nets from the freedom of the ocean
Like bears caught in a steel trap
Like your hand squeezed tight around my wrist
Blocked
Hopeless
No chance, someone whispers.


He just looks at them
And says
Fuck
That.

Steps.

Fall down, come back to life,
be breathed into like they spit into you, made you grow
made you realize quickly what it takes sometimes to
become a human being.
Reimagine your future;
it's not as far away as you may think.

Height and memory.

Mention:
memory
and it's forgotten.
Maybe:
mobilization.
Moreover:
modesty,
and an honest attempt.
Mission:
completely possible,
just like everything else
in this bird's eyes [views].
Mountains:
never were higher than when
she was photographing eagles.

she's back.

She steps out, timidly.
Takes a step back.
Peeks her delicate face around the corner of the curtain,
brushes her fingertips against the velvety air
and jumps back in surprise,
exclaiming a silent "ooh!" in shock at the sheer volume
of coat racks that sit, waiting,
necks elongated,
hooks focused in front of them,
coats hanging off like dead bodies.

She takes a breath, lifts her bare foot and points her toes,
and
steps.
A beam of light finds her arch and illuminates it like it's a star on fire.
"ah," she breathes, and floats her arm so it's parallel to her pointed toes
and it too, falls into this radiance, the tiny hairs lit up
shining.
She then giggles, and takes an entire step with her whole body
so that she is standing in the middle of a fire and everyone can see.
The coat racks, say nothing.

She holds her fingers in front of her face, palms up
and she begins to play with the light.
She pushes it down, she picks it up, she lets it trickle
and spill between her fingers, down on to the wooden surface.
Like butter, it melts quickly and
soon is pooling at her feet
A coat rack coughs, another fumbles for a cough candy.
She is somewhere else, beginning to disassemble
she removes her sweater, and quickly the light finds her
vanilla shoulder smooth as a stone.
Her entire body is vulnerable, is being attacked and admired and
beautified by the brilliance.
She is white and shining and red hair is spilling down her back and over
her shoulders and tumbling everywhere as the beam explodes
and now beams and beams of light are on her,
from every direction
and she is dancing,
she is lifting her entire body up and swimming,
taking great long strokes, coming up only to breathe occasionally
when she forgets she still has air.
She does flips and turns and the backstroke
and yellow is all around her white and red
and she is smiling and suddenly,
the coat racks in the audience have all revealed their human selves
and they are clapping - clapping! for her,
for the brilliance, for the light and the sunshine that is now
catapulting, jumping, dancing out of her own body
the white and the red and the vanilla smoothness and she cannot remember
the last time she felt so alive and okay and free and careless.



and she slows down, and she stops swimming.
She plants her feet firmly on the ground and the lights fade,
but just a tad.
She pulls a cloth of light with her as she lifts her hand again to her face,
the cloth falling between her fingers like silky sand.
She touches her face and the audience - gasps in unison.
[For there is much uncertainty, you see]
She imagines she is something much bigger than the imagination
because she is light and she is alive.

The coat rack humans erupt in applause, spilling bright yellow marbles as they do
they, falling into them and rising up as they too begin to swim, to disassemble,
the hooks coming off left right and upfront.
as she brushes the velvety softness, slips back behind the drapes into black
and takes a bow.

Be forward

and I will respond likewise.
be unafraid,
be brave.
Be willing to be turned down,
to be hurt,
to be exposed to the elements.
And I will, in turn, do the same.
Tell me what you're thinking
and you'll find out what's on my mind.
Stand up straight, stop fidgeting
Just get it over with already.
Stop freaking out.
Just be a man for the sake of confidence
and heroism and all things right in this world.
Be a little forward
step up
and then be prepared
cause I'm not scared
of being a little forward too.

vertigo

m

a

     y

  b


      e

                ?
?
   ?

^^^

Have you been seduced yet?
love
love
love

dear/you

has everyone seen the state of the world today?
my
my
my
goodnes.
what a mess.

tadaaaa

writing has become a bore
and my hands small
like olive
olive
olive
butter.

smooth

the wind whistles and whips
as sun warms my skin
from the inside out
butter melting under the surface
a pleasant slippery sensation
lubricating my insides for optimum pleasure
and I am smiling to myself as I walk along the sidewalk
dress whipping in the wind
whipped butter underneath my skin.

a quiet work in progress.

It's raining outside. Quietly, she pours hot water from the shiny red kettle on top of her tea strainer. Honey Bee tea leaves peek out. Yellows hinting at some form of happiness. Caffeine though, is what she's really hoping for. The kettle doesn't pour right. After months, she still hasn't quite determined why a little bit of hot water always manages to splash on to the counter beside the cup. Usually it doesn't hit her.

She sinks into her chair as steam rises up from her bowl-mug. It's one of her favourites. Strong beliefs in her life: that coffee is a necessity and that hot drinks need to be held on to. She needs to wrap her hands around them. Something about the flavour, the comfort being absorbed into her skin. The kitchen table is wobbling again. Business cards she doesn't use anymore sit underneath one leg. Some must have slipped or shifted, because the left side is definitely falling when she puts her elbows in their usual spot. There might be a groove.

Cat jumps on to the table and her heart starts beating quickly. She laughs out loud at herself. Too many scary movies. Too much imagination in that head. Cat settles onto his normal spot in the very centre of the table, and she pets him, scratching his ears and moving down his body. The action relaxes her, and she breathes in through her nose, out through her mouth. The way she loves doing during the occasional yoga class, but otherwise forgets to incorporate into her everyday life. It takes too much energy to breathe. The rain is hitting the narrow balcony outside the sliding doors. She contemplates wandering out there, sitting on the railing. But one time she almost fell off when it was slippery and that memory - her heart pulsating like it was going to burst - stays in her mind like it's holding on for dear life. That terror repeats itself when she can't sleep, late at night.

She glances at the newspaper that lays on the ground. One hundred twenty thousand people in this city and the one who was deemed front-page worthy was her? A failure, it says, in big Helvetica type. A failure, indeed. She sighs, audibly and forcibly enough that Cat looks at her in disgust, before he begins to lick himself. Even the cat is offended by her. She pushes her chair back and it hits the rug, forcing her to grab the table so she doesn't fall. Cat is pulled by the movement and hisses, before jumping on to the counter then the window sill and laying down there. No sun, but no possibility of being disturbed. "Well fine," she says, and pushes the chair in a little too hard, upsetting more business cards, forcing the left side of the table a little further down. Then she turns and walks away.

The living room is a mess. The dreary curtains have holes chewed through them, the walls have long since been marked as scratching posts when Cat was just a kitten. The couch she found outside - one of her neighbours had it out there on the sidewalk to be taken away. She had brought it inside and put a cover on it. But something that smells like tuna floats every once in awhile from somewhere within it. No amount of Febreeze has been able to hide it - regardless of what the commercials show. The curtains are drawn, save for a sliver and the light stretches across the green-flecked carpet and up on to the Ikea coffee table. And there it is. There. The Book. Lit up right now like it's God's greatest gift to man. She scoffs. As if.

She kicks her heel against the coarse carpet and recoils at the dust that lifts off. The rain outside falls harder and she can hear it pounding on the pavement, the cars outside. She walks over and throws the curtains open. It's dark. Cloudy and blue and miserable. She closes the curtains, moves her hands in the opposite direction. The sliver remains. The apartment seems too small now, all of a sudden. It swallows the life within. This place that seemed so open and full of promise sixteen years ago. Cat was little and loved it. The open space was big enough to do workouts inside and then to lay research on the floor. The tiny little balcony was just big enough to stand on, look down at the world from.

"And now..." she says, her words melting into the peeling paint on the walls. All that work. All that time. All that energy and excitement. Gone. And all those arguments... those, even now, are the most painful to remember. That horrible, horrible evening, when he had come over. She'd been nervous, excited, anxious, freaking out at the thought of showing him this space. Would he like it? Would he approve? Would he start coming over and sit on the carpet and have his own drawer  in her room? But he hadn't been happy. He'd walked in tentatively, as though his mind had already been made up from before the idea was conceived. And she could tell. She'd burnt the chicken parmesan. A bad omen. He'd played with it, silently. Looked disapprovingly at the table, with Cat's shape in the middle of it. Looked out at the balcony. And she'd been embarrassed. All of a sudden, this wide, open space seemed no bigger than a matchbox. And she shrunk, visibly, her energy gone. She faded into the background, the grey-specked counter top, those tacky white and black tiled floors. She became the music in the background - noise, nothing more - until finally she played his way out the door.

The next day, she'd picked up the couch. She'd bought a typewriter. She'd pushed Cat away from his usual spot and she'd typed, like there was no tomorrow.

"And all at once and then quite nothing at all. A space, a place for someone that means nothing to anyone...."

Philosophy flowed from her fingertips like it had been living there, begging for years to be let out. She was one with the universe. She understood why some people were upset. She realized how she could make people happy. Five hundred and twenty-seven pages later, she'd produced The Book. Full of wisdom for all ages - children and adults alike. She began having dreams at night where she would wake up, overcome by euphoria because she, single-handedly, had solved the world's problems.

...

Mind blown.

It hurts to move.
It hurts to sit still.
It hurts to talk.
It hurts to stay silent.
My mind can't stop pulling at whatever it is that's in my head.
Pushing, prodding.
What the hell is going on.
And in the meantime,
It hurts to multi-task.
It hurts to write.
It hurts to text.
It hurts to listen.
It hurts to eat.
It hurts to drink tea.
All my favourite things.
My head is telling me it cannot do.
So I ignore it, push through.

Hoping, praying even [!]
It won't hurt more
Tomorrow.

11.47 p.m.

let's be sappy for a moment.
can we
can we please.
can we please stop.
can we please stop
for a moment
and focus on this
it's monumental you see?
the first time this has ever been said
[drum roll please]
goddamit

I can't help it.
dizzy
hot and cold
brilliant
lit up
about to burst

I'm in love,

so
so
so
fucking in love.

headed home.

all at once but really not at all
she begins to shudder
to shake so violently they can feel it, rumbling in the ground beneath their feet
and they wonder from which belly of what monster this terrible trembling has come
unable to stop, she begins foaming at the mouth
seemingly lost behind her own eyes,
unable, unwilling to fight
so the terror continues
much to the dismay
of the rest of the passengers
on the bus.

lines slightly blurred

happening

and because it made me just fall in love
all over again.
hug me hard.
kiss me harder.

facebook photos.

because the best is when you realize that we haven't actually all been here before.
we were different people, we led completely different lives
irrelevant now in our rush to try and convince the world we are perfect.
and we are, I suppose, if you want us to be.
but we come from corners of the earth no one else has even heard of,
little pockets of fresh air in an otherwise stagnant town
we created the sunshine
we were the ones who dove into the deep end
we were the ones who took chances,
who stopped to laugh,
who thought about our futures and then promptly forgot how to act.
and these are the people who walk around now, so cautious,
so cautious so as not to offend, to have too much fun, to let their hair down.
these people who took pictures of passionate kisses,
who watched dirty films in their basements to initiate new ones to the club,
who lived like they gave a damn about being alive.
and we forget it,
stuck on these buses, looking like we'd rather be anywhere else but here.
because we were at one point, we were somewhere else and
lost in our memories now we tend to forget
it's far easier making news ones than reliving old ones.
but goddamn, everyone thinks it's just too hard.
and what, I ask, beg and plead of you,
what has to happen to make you remember not who you were,
but who you are?

v day

have you found it yet?

snow*rain

too insensitive to the flow of information
the access of words
the choice,

the imagined thought.
truth of the matter is it's far too difficult to have any idea
whatthehell anyone is saying nowadays anyway.

but still,
taking it personally seems to come as second nature.

[shed your skin]

flash.

a move.
amor.

fit.

spilled on to paper.
overflown, a missed destination.
over compensation for
what should have been.
what should have been?
but whispered words mean nothing compared to fear
the unknown, the known, objectives.
many, sporadic.
escaped on the wings of forgiveness
imprisoned otra vez - la misma cosa.
cyclical, you see.
all in this together, they shout. scream. parade, a giant cacophony of songs
thunder, bells -
those soft, quiet ones no one pays attention to
all screech when left to their own devices.
nasty, brutish, short.
are we the spawn of our environments?

have you forgotten how to breathe?
relax. fall down. sink into solitude?
be in tune.
underground.
sitting at the edge of the atmosphere looking down into abyss? freedom?
death.
a terrifying silence. those words still left, as breaths.
tumble.

10.10 a.m.

move over morning.
I'm writing the story now.

truth

seems appropriate right about now.

forget to breathe.

Is it quite possible it's a lack of human...engagement?
an itching of the skin to be wrapped in someone else's?
There is this urge.. to strip. take everything off and proclaim loudly why exactly
the universe twists in the way it does
while mimicking, of course.
Just a desperate wish for lights off, curtains drawn.
a secret world, somewhere
where the only thing that matters is how loudly [she] breathes,
how hysterically [she] laughs
how [her] hands move under blankets, in dreams.
Heat.
Fingers interlaced.
and [she] has whiskey on [her] breath.
When the mind forgets to whir and [she] begins to settle,
to relax, to act without thought,
windows steam up, time slows down.
pure
fantasy.

That
is what's missing tonight.

re-inspire

take two.

latin.

burning.
twisting.
loose hips.
exposed flesh.
moves like sex on the dance floor.

nothing
is sexier than confidence.

precipitation

drops of

rain

in her hair.

make it hang heavier,

in the way, 

in the puddles.

dancing with the atmosphere

breathe into it.
it gets easier
as you swing, hanging miles above any sort of ground you've ever known
feel the air rush through your body
in one ear and out your big toe.
imagine you are dying
imagine you are craving the most delicious thing you have ever thought of
and then
imagine
you
get
it.
that is where you are standing.
at the top of everything.
the place reserved for those people
who truly, honestly feel it.
who get it like that's what they were born to do.
embrace it.
admire it from afar.
reach out and grab it - wrap yourself in it.
it feels silky, no?
fall into it.
plunge, headfirst into the icy depths of it
and twirl as though you have nowhere else you will ever need to be.
imagine it soaking into every exposed part of flesh you give it
and then give it more.
because for this moment, this second, this instant.
it's you.
it's you and all you and pure you and clothed you and naked you and smiling you and devastated you.

it's in the air you have crawled out of and the oxygen you will breathe in.
breathe into it.
(it gets easier.)
and then continue on.

god.

Well can we change the background?
She whispered
a voice, floating somewhere above the water. ripples if you touch it, even for a second
leaving an everlasting echo of "ohhhh," somewhere on the bottom of delicious, smooth skin.
But that's not the problem here.
Vintage covers covering potholes fallen into by stray animals, people parading the streets as though they were God
"I am God," they yell
and they are not, is whispered, silently back
words that hang in the air like crystals
frozen, about to fall.
an escaped breath, just not quite far enough.

black.

Long, underground
tunnels to nowhere
to daydreams
to nightmares.
Followed around by men
wearing ill-fitted suits singing
ill-timed tunes no one's
listened to, seriously, before.
Violins chasing pathways
eating holes exactly the size of
mothballs, through pillows
that litter the ground,
underneath,
remnants of the night before.
A pillow fight.
A brick.
and red tints the floor.
Treading through the mess,
these neverending pathways
in their mouldy green
distress
cry out suddenly from
somewhere one must assume
is deep inside their cracked
cores
grown weary with the
weight of hopes and dreams
and unfinished masturbation
that is the public transit
system
powerless to help the victims,
the unanswered, under-
appreciated, forgotten, straight
shot -
where caving roofs are just something
else to get used to,
figures stepping in and out
of oblivion,
some choosing never to resurface
again.
It is in these cracks, in these
broken, water-filled,
feathered, seaweed-drowned
areas of longing
that my pace quickens,
paying attention to something,
anything besides the call of
the violins
beckoning, promising to keep me
away from the sun
for good.

a thing of beauty

forgotten

 because then we saw that it was all an act
take two, fast forward to her standing ovation.
let's screw the rest of this first?
he whispers.
a dark theatre.
cell phones off.
breaths held in anticipation,
or in attempts to make abs look like abs exist.
all too busy, anyway.
and lights, but not before
someone somewhere up ahead
coughs,
a slow, practiced cough made to sound exactly like what she remembers.
throws her off balance.
what? he whispers.
a dark theatre.
as she loses her balance and
just as the curtains begin to rise,

she falls.

21.01.12

arms raised in victory.
do you remember the first time?
lights down, sunset on.
because it was that day
i knew it would never change.
arms raised in victory
do you feel like you've won?

Simple.

The Barefoot Boy With Shoes On [b.Asa Martin]

It was midnight on the ocean 
Not a streetcar was in sight 
The sun was shining brightly 
And it rained all day that night 
It was a summer's day in winter 
And the rain was snowing fast 
And a barefoot boy with shoes on 
Stood sitting in the grass 

And the cows were making cowslips 
And the bells were ringing wet 
The bumble bees were making bums 
And smoking cigarettes 
A man went in a stable 
And came out a little hoarse 
He jumped upon his golfstick 
And rode all around the course 

While the organ peeled potatoes 
Lard was rendered by the choir 
The sexton rang a dish-rag 
Someone set the church on fire 
Holy smokes the preacher shouted 
In the rain he lost his hair 
Now his head resembles heaven 
Cause there sin't no partin' there. 

it was midnight on the ocean 
Not a horsecart was in sight 
I went into a drugstore 
To get myself a light 
The man behind the counter 
Was a lady old and gray 
Who used to peddle shoestrings 
On the road to Mandalay 

My husband's dead the lady said 
Her eyes were dry with tears 
She put her head between her feet 
And stood that way for years 
Her children six were orphans
Except one tiny tot 
Who lived in a house across the street 
Above a vacant lot 

It was evening and the sunrise 
was just setting in the west;
And the fishes in the treetops 
were all cuddled in their nests.
As the wind was blowing bubbles, 
lightning shot from left to right;
Everything that you could see 
had been hidden out of sight

As I gazed through the oaken door
A whale went drifting by
It's six legs hanging in the air
So I kissed her goodbye.
This story has a moral
As you can plainly see
Don't mix your gin with whiskey
On the deep and dark blue sea.

An overwhelming sense of anxiety rises up into her throat, and she is stunned into silence. A familiar feeling that grips her in the worst way, anyway. She should probably just be used to it, right? But there's that sinking realization that she can't get out of it this time.

look closer.

Colour.

Rain.

Would it be lying, said she, if I danced? said he.
And she nodded, in exasperation.
Dancing, said she, is atune to romancing, said she.
And you sir, are no artist at that.
But he looked in her direction, eyes sparkling in perfection,
And not for the first time she was lost for words.

It would be lying, said he, if I began denying, said he,
I am not curious at this that you mention.
But for the moment, said he, I'd rather dance with you, said he.
While you glare at me like I'm a fool in the making.

to start.

I begin with a backwards cartwheel, into the open rain. 
As it lashes fury that we know has nothing to do with me, 
My dress flares, bounces up around my waist
and I am exposed.
The rain abruptly halts
and I am embarrassed.

Inspire.