Month: April 2005

rather than explaining to the world that I’m dying

Too light to hear anything, the wind is echoing too loudly against the side of my building. I want to leave the house but there’s no-one to go with, so I’m instead waiting for my brother to show up. I have to be in charge then. I’ll have to put myself together, pick up the little pieces and snick them into place. I need to appear like I know what I’m doing, just a bit. We used to make giant puzzles, unwinding the picture on the table like spilled illustration. I’m considering starting it up again, but I don’t know why. As a group thing, it could be a nice way to spend some time in the evenings when it’s cold and the rain outside is too drenching. A night of hot chocolate and herbal teas. To make it challenging, we could do it by candlelight.

this morning

I was on a beach, suddenly the sky went black. Lightning was going to hit, and I dragged people from the waves. We were dressed, we were stranded, we were in a dangerous place. When the crack came, the ocean exploded at impact. I didn’t see the electricity hit, I had looked away, trying to pull one last person to shelter. I’d got them all out, now we needed to find a way around the water. To the left there was no egress but to the right, around an outcrop of rock, there was hope. Wooden stairs, out of the lee of the storm. Black hair almost, mahogany, she was sweet and held my hand to her face while he watched. We were on a loveseat together, her on her back with her legs curled to my lap. I felt warmth and I felt him watching us, but not paying attn. This was to be expected, after all. The porch had rotted wood, and mice lived in the buildings. They were artistic shanties, a row against the cliche ravages of time, taking rust and chipping paint and creating something beautiful. Inside were balinese carpets, inside were people. Some I loved. The neighbor had stolen my brother and we had to steal him back. He was demanding too much money for a photograph and my mother was too poor to pay him.

Somebody tell me what grown-ups buy at the grocery store that isn’t sandwich fixings? No, -really-

Dreaming with my eyes open, it’s like I can taste the rain that hasn’t fallen yet. I want to tear open the sky and let it cry down the back of my neck like the feeling of your fingers in the dark. Eyes, burning coal look, you tilt your chin down and try to look at me seriously, but too late again. I’m onto you, I can make it not matter again because I understand that angle, the harsh stretch behind it. Wickerwork emotion, look where the strands go and thread them in. Weave in appropriate places, feel down and down and into the weight of feet, of legs moving. Sing darling, swing, you have the earth to move. My secrets are all out in the open, that’s how they’re hiding. There’s truth and then there’s truth. Will and sun rises, they’re unrelated but I want to go to Egypt, pretend for a moment that there was once a man who took the weather into his hand. Climb ancient rocks with someone and explain the old stories of all the stars I’ve never seen growing up under these constellations. Varied paths, tales longer than that of hyena laughter. Tales longer than our fur finder history, building our cities day by day into a place where people can begin to try and pretend to live. How shiny, how glittering, this awful lack of architecture. I want to turn off the lights and tuck this place in. Wake up somewhere, new horizon, dawn blush. I caught her naked, legs wide open. Everyone sleeps in my bed, even the sun. I have a number, I’m in line. Shame drifting driftwood start and spackle my plastered face onto the wanted poster. This doesn’t make me holy, but it makes you a deity. You’re the only one allowed to hit me.

Snare drum quiet snap, occasionally it makes me think of trains, of jumping tracks on the prairies. Sometimes I question how perfectly I recall being under three feet high. The sticks of wood were so far apart, the bells I imagined on my fingers with gold and in my head I could hear them ring for miles. Shimmer cold over the rolling gold as if it were out of a movie. I know exactly what filter I would put on her smile, that little child, and what colour her plastic boots and summer dress. But it was fall, wasn’t it? It was wheat.

If I turn on the radio I want the perfect song to be playing.
So I won’t.

metric wins over miles, but not really


metric
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

I was left unconscious, defenses stripped slightly, but not enough that the act of honour could be persuaded to leave the room. Metric was tonight, a lovely affair of bodies pushed skyward. A music flushed press of too many, my feet left the ground trying to defend myself. It was mass and gravity, it was swaying and jumping and plastic earrings. Andrew behind me held me down, he was my anchor as I wielded female hips to stave off the asymmetrical haircuts that were bigger then me. If I were to lift up my arms, it would be like I was flying in a salt sea of nodding heads. Next to me for a song was the shortest Metric fan ever to live. I feel beaten now, bruises are blossoming like little flowers under my skin. Petals of red so far and ache. I fought back, protect protect. When someone leapt from the stage, they impacted on my head, my arms trapped by my sides, my hands caught in someone’s nasty woolen jacket, by the lack of air to breathe. Peaceful protest, hands sliding down shoulders and heads resting on shoulders, there was no independent movement but only the mecca surge, the sweaty crush of beat and sweet voice belting out from a slim shaking frame. We were crowd summary, we were laughing.

However, a fauxhawk mosh pit does not stop me from taking video clips.

letting down

Because it’s not the stars in your eyes that bother me, those I love and cherish and adore, the beautiful nuclear flame I can’t touch. My hair is wet and I look down to see it looks like I’ve been crying, a small constellation of damp drops have gathered in my lap. There is a river trapped in my heart, the gates are closed. Lines of prose inspiration breathing from my mind in the dark don’t help very much, it’s not my own imagination they attack. I only want to hold your hand and fall into sleep.

Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life.

Nicole and I are going swimming today. I put on my bathing-suit and was struck by the image of a line of men in army uniform dancing in a ballroom with a row of women in evening dress bathing-suits. Formal steps, movie magic. Glittering straps and flower bracelets strapped to their wrists. Somewhere I want this to happen. Even if I never see it, even if I never know that it existed, I think it would be a gift. We need more surreality. We require wonder to live this world.

Some people say magic is dying, but I believe that we’re entering an age of technological mystics. What scientists do with cells is past our fiction, the education of the modern philosophy is still learning to throw away our christs and replace it with stepping on the moon last century. Dreamers are shifting focus, finally creating something that we can all hold onto to. There’s a melody to the breadth of it. Music carrying ideas to infect precisely where it needs to be, spread it. Dissemination of information is sexy if you let it be. I’m tired of the stigma attached to reading, I’m tired of minding illiterate children. My eyes are ruined for all the words. I could go blind but it’s worth it. We’re living history today and I need to find it.

she says only: “to walk, alas, to fly upon these human efforts, and actually climb”

I want the rain to nail the sky to the streets tonight and take me with them. I can’t stop shaking. Where is my breath?

To walk, alas, in endless rain, to by wet from the moment of flying forth. It’s too much, you and your rain. It’s this city I swear. Your reign, my heavenly learning. Thine sword – soul hung out to dry somewhere else. Now I only have to find it.

1665
Sorry. I thought you dropped it.
august
about 5:30 on the 12th

Now. That is going to be hard to fly to. I’m not sure the airport will listen. That’s the best I can do. I’ll wander empty shelled until then, I suppose, assuming that time is circular. Cyclical. Either/or. Never circular. Those are two different things. The circumference is what I’m curious about, how long must I go without? We speak of different things.

there are more hours than 24

Together we are drama. We are cartoon hearts tainting the air with palest skin-flush pink, bloodiest warlike red and starless tarry black, that are born to swell unto bursting. -Pop- We are star-crossed, brave, and idiots. We are in love. It happens.

Complete with balcony scene, wherefore in the garden of my heart, my love, you are a flower I carry with me, I missed the last bus of the night, go, you, sleep, it calls you. No matter, I was feral. A cat predatory that stepped into Numbers and scanned for possible recognition. Eventually I danced, last call ushering my feet to the floor. I was the only female in the entire five level club, the lean boys looking at me as if I were an unexpected creature. They tried to pick me up anyway, wrong move, bad times. No word spoken but for stiff arm, flat hand pushing away, the exhaustion pouring off me in sticky waves backed by something much harder and far more frightening. When the lights went out, I didn’t know my name.

Skully works at the sex shop now, has for five months. A nice discovery. We talked for an hour plus, playing catch-up and handing out tokens to the 25c movie booth people. His night shift looks to match up to the days I might be caught downtown in future. I lost a lot of people when I vanished into my accident and my last relationship. Testament fact, the bus strike, my life caught in the middle. I walked with a cane, I said, and his eyebrows rose. You? No fire spinning anymore? That’s like saying “Well, I’m a writer but my right hand’s been cut off”. It’s a reminder to run into older friends, the ones who have a gap in our time seeing.

The rest of the night was spent in the Davie Street Blenz. The barista and I talking about education and russian history until watery light seeped into the sky. I’m glad I’ve found a friend. He lives by Tyler and works most night. Eleven to seven, time to drop by.

I woke this evening to find that my friend Bobbi might be losing custody to his son Tempest. I’m needed. I must go.

I still can’t help her keeping twisted hate in my heart

I didn’t see Nic and Sandi until they were dancing. Then it was impossible for my eyes to wander elsewhere or to keep from smiling. They dance as if they were music, hands together and apart, swaying and flowing. They dance together and it’s like I can see how I have always wanted to move with someone in a perfect world.

Lexxi, I found you. Tag, you’re it.

I killed my shoulder on the floor last night. I forgot that I was wounded and dropped backward onto my hand. My legs gave out with the spike it tore through my joint. It used to be so effortless. Down, then up, spring off the fingers and up and around. It’s the little things that remind me. No more high shelves, no more reach, no more winning fights. Days like this even my mouse is a problem. I’m tempted almost to toss my arm in a sling, but not quite. It’s merely irritating, I tell myself, because I’m an idiot. I’m trusting a burning water shower will ease some of the pain.

Jenn and I will be spending time together today. I suspect it will never occur to me to call her Mrs. Brown. It was impossible, her wedding, spitting delightful eccentricities left and center. There was family there that hadn’t spoken to eachother for seven years minus a week. She brought it all together. I felt that she should have had wings, white feathers to scrape the sides of the hall. Her heart was glowing, practically visible through the rippling silk of her dress. I wanted the skill for decent photography then, so as to capture her with some sort of grace. The other girls cried when it came time, but I stood on stage and felt laughter bubbling upward, trying to pop in my throat to spill my delight into the air. There was no mercy.

magical adventures: the worst thing an astronaut can say, “there is somebody else out here”

Jessie and I have been discussing the odd things we wrote when we were younger. I’ve been finding old journals and papers as I unpack. She’s telling me of a journal she kept when she was a depressed teenager. In return I’ve unearthed my carefully hand written copy of a Philip Larkin poem I used to have pinned to my wall. However, I’ve had a bit of a realization. It’s a bit odd that I used to have it up, that I wrote it out at all, because I wasn’t an angsty sixteen when I agonized over the loops and curls of the letters, no. It’s from when I first learned cursive. It’s from grade two.

Beyond all this, the wish to be alone:
However the sky grows dark with invitation-cards
However we follow the printed directions of sex
However the family is photographed under the flagstaff-
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone.

Tyler‘s asked me to join him at Sanctuary tonight, the vancouver goth night. I’m considering it, though there are other options I’m weighing. There’s a sort of odd balance at work; do I lazily wander out close to home to dance hard for hours or do I force my extra mile and drag myself up Main St. to sit quietly for some brilliant poetry? It’s all about the when of the effort, of tossing the body beauty around in gravity. Katie is proving a brilliant distraction conversation and perhaps winning the war for me. (You should all go look at her pretty pictures). If she keeps me on-line long enough, Tyler will simply arrive at my door.