Tag: morning stars

he came closer while I was being pushed away

I am left by the side of the road, a fugitive leaning silently against a wall as I listen to his truck drive away. I’m tired, he said, of being the one who always has to be strong, and in that moment it was like he had wrapped me the most beautiful gift even as I crumpled, destroyed by the echo of those words leaving my own mouth, over and over again. I wanted wings, then, to furl around him, great feathery things, mythical and incredible, powerful enough to erase pain, the better to protect him from the world. Pinions that scraped the ceiling. Instead my arms found him, found him and held him, while a part of me shattered, horrified, against the promise that I would never be that person, as I resisted the sour memory of times that should never have been.

And so, standing in the street, solitude, the desire to howl down the moon. Anger at myself, at the past that robbed me of what this could be. Such a gift should mean more to me, I should be thrilled, yet here I am, incapable of carrying it, too weak to shout, too weak to even speak, too beaten down. Years of inequality choking me, I rest against the wet cement blocks of an anonymous warehouse office and try not to hate. If such a treasure had been presented to me a few months ago, I would have been beyond grateful, filled to the edges with joy, a flower in bloom. It was the only thing I wanted, just for myself. I would have been able to cradle it, this admired jewel made of fire, but now feels too late. Instead I have been broken. The devastating distance I tried so hard to survive has finally claimed me for its own.

exploded in flames and left ashes by the water for the ocean to take away


you made the world
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

“I can’t come back here,” instead of “I can’t back here like this,” is important. A subtle difference, but a vital one. It’s important not to have distraction. Communication claiming different veins. I like neutral ground. Statements of starry nights, I was raised by multiple rapes and madness. Don’t ask this. Fairness, you stand at the edge of the precipice with me.

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

Walpurgis Night. Happy fucking anniversary. That’s what the subject line said.

We were fire fit to break my heart. I didn’t realize I was counting until I looked at the clock today and my heart twisted. It’s Beltane, a mark of where the sun is in relation to our skies, the day I looked up, trying to memorize the texture of your voice, and we kissed goodbye. It’s May Day, the day I stood by the shore and shone. This used to be my playground. Another world. There’s a photograph, but not of you. It’s the 229th birthday of the United Kingdom, the day I walked out as if I owned the world. Science fucking fiction. It’s the day the Czech population kisses under the statue of a poet to celebrate National Love Day. It’s the day. A gallery of moments. I hate that post-modern relationships are still the new black.

Once upon a time, before music knew how to be written down and words didn’t know how to sing, there was a boy so beautiful that the goddess of the sky wanted to lick his tangled eyes.

It seems my anonymous fairytale letters have stopped. Every day I check my mailbox and find nothing. Their continual absence is chipping at me, like perhaps I was to have guessed the author by now. I’ve read the letters over and over, inflamed by how devious they are, prying at them for clues, but I still don’t know who to pin them to and now it’s too late. They seem to have guttered out. I feel like I’m letting someone delightful down, someone with a more magical imagination than I have, like this was some sort of enchanting test and my curious intelligence went into retrograde.

I’m so tired of being the responsible one. The star in my heart wants to go out.

A. FOUR JOBS YOU’VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE (all previous jobs):
1. He sent me a letter
2. I met him dancing, I was sitting on the stairs
3. Brought to his theater, we had a friend in common
4. It was a new place and he was standing by the bar

B. FOUR MOVIES YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER:
1. When I replied, I laughed, he thought I would know him
2. He tapped me on the shoulder, acted like I knew him
3. I took him up on a roof, surprised he would not know it
4. We went home together, though we didn’t know each other

C. FOUR CITIES YOU’VE LIVED IN:
1. Smiling, we corresponded every day
2. I was stunned to discover he had a wife
3. Standing outside his window was so difficult and necessary
4. In the cab, his english was better than mine

D. FOUR TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH:
1. There were happy pictures, and clever sounds, and fun videos.
2. I kissed him on the cheek and told him to ask permission first.
3. My lips were hungry and two years later, so were his
4. His apartment was neat, plants in the window, books in the glass table

E. FOUR PLACES YOU’VE BEEN ON VACATION:
1. I ran home through the park to meet him on-line
2. We held hands when we walked and strangers told us we looked good together
3. Curled up on the couch, slowly we curled into each other
4. I sat on the counter and he explained his red wine

F. FOUR WEBSITES YOU VISIT DAILY:
1. Description sufficed to make my bed less lonely
2. When I slept over, it was on his side of the bed, not hers
3. Queen size bed now and we still almost fell off
4. There was a wide mirror above the bed framed by two guitars

G. FOUR SONGS THAT MOVE YOU:
1. johnny boy – U are the generation who bought more shoes and u get what you deserve
2. lamb – gorecki
3. emilie simon – graine de etoile, lamb – gabriel
4. marvin gaye – let’s get it on

H. FOUR OF YOUR FAVORITE FOODS:
1. Then the letters came less frequently and I didn’t know why
2. Eventually I couldn’t deal with the fact he was married
3. He was so beautiful, but I knew he never loved me
4. The next morning wasn’t too late, but there was a phone-call

I. FOUR BOOKS YOU’VE READ & LOVED:
1. Hurt, I assumed that work was taking his time
2. Hurt, I broke down, dissolved, died.
3. Hurt, I tried to tell myself not to believe in illusions
4. Hurt, I explained to myself that it’s what I should have expected.

J. FOUR PLACES I’D RATHER BE RIGHT NOW:
1. Then I finally went for a surprise visit.
2. He divorced the wife, I took him back, he went away on a trip.
3. He never calls, so I walk over to his house at night.
4. Today he called me back, canceled our plans.

K. FOUR THINGS YOU FIND YOURSELF SAYING:
1. There was another woman.
2. There were two other women.
3. There might never be anyone.
4. There’s another woman in potentia.

L. FOUR FAVOURITE ALBUMS:
1. He never apologized.
2. I’m fragile too.
3. Living with little is better than nothing.
4. At least he’s sorry.

the prospect of suffering

Toronto is measured now more by time than distance. I leave at six, get there close to midnight. I still have nowhere to stay.

Traditional News Year’s is coming, as well as another city, and I’ve been considering if it means anything to me. Today as I was cooking my meal for the train, I was trying to tally up my last three hundred and sixty-five days. So far I’ve been instrumental to one divorce and three affairs. Both my lovers this year ran off on me with someone else and let us all find out by accident. I discovered someone else never loved me in return and one that night stands can be frighteningly easy.

All of it adds up to so very little that it hurts me. It used to be that my passions repaid me in kind. I don’t know what happened or how to fix whatever it is that shattered. Where is the bowl I kept my heart in? The one I used to offer in dreams to passing strangers as an alms cup. I want to think that my soul is racing to find me and that all the time in between is time standing still, but I know that it’s crying for no use. Apologies aren’t coming, I’ve been forgotten somehow. I’ve seen this face before in the mirror, it’s unhappy. At least when I’m not in Vancouver, I don’t have to think, “He’s walked this street.” It’s like changing where I live in my head. There’s a hi-hat hit and a deep thump of bass and the place I was forgotten isn’t inside me anymore. It’s in front of me, on this keyboard, and I’m emptying everything painful into the ether for you to see and read and maybe understand. You’re out there, it happens, just like everyone else. Why did you never call me back? Only the musician ever told me how to find him.

I see your picture, all of you, any, and I smile with a sting in my ribcage. I lie down my walls and I let you in again like the best kind of refrain. I love you, yeah yeah, baby, let’s do it again. The part of me that marries people is still carrying you.

Do-wop-she-bop-pretty-damn-bang.

There are some basic elements that pain shares with surprise, but I couldn’t tell you what they were right now. I’m too busy trying to open my unfinished business like a dried flower in my mind that’s going to draw me back to Vancouver. All I can find is a job offer, Creative Director of a Friendster-type website, and maybe that I need to pack my things properly. My dream machine is hiccoughing, refusing to process anything that isn’t movement forward. What I need versus what I get. The end of this story has yet to be written so maybe I can fight my way through the ranks of mediocrity with a pen. Ink my skin the same way some people use school to charm the corporation. Electric glass pages, as many as I can collect, strapped to the back of my night time invitations. Writing like lyrics, writing because it’s what we came here for. I want to feel my hand in the hand of the world, keening with me that things have to change to be better, that what we have isn’t enough to live off. There’s too much starvation and not enough education.

I just might get that tattoo here. Just to carry something with me.

winding up in the sort of movie that middle aged women would take me for the hero


city glance
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

I wish you were here in my empty bed so it would not be so hollow. It’s been filled with clothing to mimic the twisting forms of company, but last I checked, sweaters don’t talk. They don’t try to keep me. I wrote once that my sheets felt like sand, that if I were to turn over in the middle of the night, absence would hit me like a blinding storm. They’re doing it again, right now, with this soft music playing that reminds me so much of your hands tracing my cheekbones when my glasses are off.

because

You are small beautiful simple things, like a line perfectly written, the only one in the novel that you’ll bother to remember later, but when you’re away is all the time. It reminds me of the time I missed someone to death. When it happened, my pillows and blankets quivered, shuddered, and stopped breathing. My heart was dazed, dropped from a great height, and I have yet to recover its wings from the wretched broken mess of glass shattered connection.

because

The shape of you fills with mistakes when you are not around to fill in. The secondary characteristic of your absence is my dwelling on how much I can’t deal with it. When I’m missing you, your smile bleeds out of my mind, to be replaced by how often I sleep alone and never with you. You right now are someone else. A heavenly creature I don’t know, who sacrifices something that looks like my integrity to an altar I’m not allowed to approach or respect.

because

Then it slips out, my joan of arc moment, seeping through the cracks in all my routine and argument. It’s the pattern. You cut here and put these seams together. You prick your finger on the pins that have somehow found themselves between your lips. My fear is a foot on the pedal, the sway and yank of social fabric. I’m uncertain. I can’t wear this dress, it’s heavy and the embroidery’s just tacky. Not already, not so soon, but then your voice is crashing into me. I’ve been tackled by a thousand foot wave of feeling like myself again. You push me up to the firmament.

Tonight I thought I saw you standing on the corner of that memory, just enough out of vision that I could place you where I wanted to. It was a conversation about skin, about nerve endings. The technology that craves contact. Our first hint of compatible loneliness.

what’s broken will keep us safe


lostatsea
Originally uploaded by avolare.

we show up on front lawns at eleven
in the morning
in the evening
afternoon
what could you see in me
this is embarrassment and some
pained looks
they’ll have to explain now
it’s like a fear of intimacy
we can’t be their friends
we might slip up over dinner
and move them
their hands and our
bodies loved but rejected
we would cry and come inside
tidy places, these homes
they hide us in the piles of paper
and always remember to let us
straddle them on top
because that way they get to remember
our breasts a little
better than in
that photograph

new icons when I wrote my newest resume

I barely know me. I stand in doorways, unblinking, standing and speaking words of conflict. I collapse on the sidewalk in heavy rain and half an hour goes missing. I hold him warmly close to me with a smile in my mind. I put my head to the side and try not to cry. Inside of me, things are changing. I remember compromise. You say this wasn’t your intention, I say that’s okay. You say and I say then they stood up and had too many words to say. Remember, this is what a little bit of love looks like.

I don’t like that I carry this so she won’t have to.

Every part disparate. I’m still unbalanced, so much is broken. I’m tidying now, brushing the pieces into a pile for later sorting. Which loss caused this jagged edge, which loss caused that. This year was many. I could make t-shirts. Arrested, Fired, He Lied, They Died. My humour’s the right sort. On the back would be a list like tour dates.

Which reminds me: support my Jesus Monkey Pants. I have this one. It makes me sexy like Snakes on a Plane would, which is something I meant to mention weeks ago. I have an excuse, I’ve been eating multitudes of candy bars. They’re not very healthy, really, and they’re making my thoughts shake. They popped into existence to fill the space left by the cessation of hallowe’en proceedings and they’re cadbury tasty, which is to say, not as good as pumpkin pie. I miss my pies. I didn’t carve a pumpkin this year, so I didn’t bake. Ah well, the Lesson is Learned but the Damage is Irreversible. (Also an ancient thing, I know, but it fit. You want something new, go find out about the underground city in Briton that’s now up for sale. Then buy it for me. I will send you nekkid pictures. Lolz. Now bugger off.)

I really should be in bed by now, but I’m waiting for dye to set in my hair. My hands are flecked with purple, a nice reminder of what the bathroom will look like in about twenty minutes. I’m being patient, though I don’t feel like it right now. The bed’s empty, it’s all cold tumbled gold pillows and scarlet bands of silk and I feel like the faster I fall into it, the quicker I can pretend it’s morning. Red shift myself into a different day, one where I might be sleeping next to someone. Alone is not terrific for me now, but I can deal with it. Alone without promise of company, however, is bad.

Nicholas will be here tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it. He and Esme are coming in from Victoria for a concert and dinner at Andrew‘s with me and Ray. He asked for Chris too, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen. I deked out of rehearsal today before I could ask. There were issues with my roommate James that needed sorting, and tonight was really the best time to get it done with.

p.s. world, send new Explosions In The Sky, Porcupine Tree and Bethurum. thank you.

With apologies to Max Ehrmann as initially I was only trying to remember the Desiderata

I don’t know you, but we refuse to go placidly amid the noise, which is good. For once, the haste is ours. I warn you, however, this is familiar; how I bring joy. You’ve crawled into my life smiling with a whimper and the promise of bang, both unexpected, and I find myself bound to your responsibilities because I like you in spite of them. Unexpected is understatement. You steal what I steal and replace it with truth spoken quietly with affection. We avoid the loud and the aggressive, and violence escapes us, vexations to the spirit, except in our hands clutching at each others hair. That knowledge is comforting to me. If you don’t look to force your religious opinions or your political surfeits upon others, than I will keep respect in my heart warm and welcoming and stand with you as far as possible without surrender. As long as those traps remain empty, it is not my business how you continue your life apart from me. As long as there is love there, I need not concern myself. If you choose to adopt a child and raise it, you have my utmost respect. My concerns will remain with myself and I will offer as placid a pool as possible and attempt to rinse myself of my frustrations. If you choose to raise that child into a specific lifestyle, that’s fine, as long as religion is not an excuse for intolerance. You are already braver than I. (When half a million people led by their religious leaders gather in a 21st century city to protest a law that gives opportunity for two people who love each other to raise a child, it gives me pause as to whether this is a world that I would ever want to introduce a child to.)

I am usually complicit in the world, not comparing myself to others, for there are always be greater persons than myself in my estimation, and I make every effort to know as diverse a group of people as I possibly can. Diversity brings the new, insights and experiences that I would never have discovered had I remained wrapped in my own existence. But fundamentally, I don’t know why you like me. My mien’s been trampled, there are only a fistful of similarities left; we are on good terms with most people, we find good humour in the world, we listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. My skeleton is not made of such fine stuff as yours, it was spun messily and without comfort. I feel outdistanced.

My employment leaves much to be desired, but I do my best when I am present, however much I would wish to be elsewhere. When I leave, I wish to leave a positive impression and a place where I remain accepted. The world is a frequently hostile place, I want to have as little negative impact as possible. If I am to raise my voice, it should be to combat intolerance and promote distinctiveness. It is my own blindness to virtue that gives me discomfort where I’m positioned, not a lack in the striving industry of local friends. I want that as clear as the happiness in your eyes when you see me smiling back at you, granting without cynicism that you are not enough for me to stay as much as I am not enough for you to leave. In my adoration is hard knowledge sharpened on ‘I should have known better’ that states with great clarity that there can always be another human being to capture me, that there are enough souls alive to capture you as well, that we can’t find ourselves alone unless we choose to be, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass. I was not raised to be a child, though I had a right to be, instead I was raised to be strong in spirit. It may yet save me, but not from you. You are a piece of the universe unfolding the same way I am. It would be a gift to let go of everything I hold so tightly, but I don’t know how.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

Subliminal Mind Software – Achieve Superhuman Mind Abilities

I fell entirely in love with Lost In Translation, did you?

It’s one of those strange little times, when you and I haven’t spoken and we’re left wondering. I’m reading the notes toward a paper of sexuality and it makes me laugh a little at how little I think about this sort of thing. I’m infatuated with history and mood and mythos, but the holiness of sex? It smacks of religion. Play as something apart from the self. I don’t wax full of jesus metaphor when I think of my desires. Yes, I miss you. I think of my repairing self in terms of myth and archetype. Visions of archimedes screws, that’s sexy. There’s the pun and the history and the lovely lilting action. I think in quivering multi-layer presentations sliding past innocence into carefully arranged chaos.

In celebration of 50 years of spoken-word publishing, Caedmon has released “Dylan Thomas: The Caedmon Collection,” available as audio cassettes and a beautifully designed 11 CD set. They are all available for free download here, at Salon. Non-subscribers, like me, have to wait through an advertisement. For such a treasure, it’s a ridiculously cheap price. Dylan adds an unimaginable depth to his own work. It’s a rare gift to find an author who can read as beautifully as he does. Even if you’ve never heard of Dylan Thomas, (and for damned shame, if you haven’t, get out from under your weird rock), for the sake of decency, I demand you take this.

When someone today used the word dragon, I brought to mind more than fantasy and scales. It’s no fun unless every meaning is evident at once. I supply large soaring creations of imagination, terrible art from the 80’s, wicked claws that tore poets apart in medieval Japan and young mythical virgins who were really fucking the millers son, millers sons being all the rage back in the day. They were rich, you see? Not like you and I. We are pulling on opposite ends of a very similar rope. It’s not the McEmployment but it’s as close as pretending can be. Stability and the risk board, all those coloured squares mocking the agonies of war. Roll the dice to find out where you get to kiss me. I need out of my job as much as you’re thinking about me when you shouldn’t be. We only sell those dice to women and that bothers my personality. The western world irritates in it’s persistent subservience to christendom.

I suspect there’s a line between words that you’re not delineating, but that I might be seeing when you’re looking the other way.

this is for two

A 13-foot Burmese python burst after it tried to swallow a live, six-foot alligator whole.

I eye the car-seat and laugh to myself. This is my little escape. I could cut off all my strength with this. I could hold up the pillars of any quiet holy place. The back windows have stickers in them, obviously applied by tiny fingers. This is my beehive caged in the bones of a lion. Instead of pulling down stone, I will pull down delight. It’s just as devastating. Again, I’m not going to be alone, even when I’m by myself and standing in the rain, looking at the sky, and wondering what England is doing. We all have to tie back our hair some day, but my day was last year and this year once more, like a heart-felt coda was hit. Time to let it down. This is my scarlet banner. I will wrap it around my body. Your whisper. Life came crashing down, wasting, and now it’s time for me to remember the outline of my shadow. It’s not as scorched into the wall behind me as much as it used to be. Remember that icons are (beautiful/fallible) painted. Taking a hand in mine, over the lines, I did that. It made me happy. I never knew how before and it’s obviously the season to recapture the flag. My big guns are that I make them laugh, that my affections are devoted, that my hands remember how to pull hair airtight over the keys.

Tonight is SinCity. This means dressing up and dancing from 9 until 2 in the morning. I’m going to be exhausted by the end of it, and I’ll be lucky if I can walk the next day. Exactly how I like it. I need to let go and stomp around in a giant evening gown. It will help. My angel will be movement and my devil will be my entire lack of breakfast. Brian’s picking me up from work, however, so perhaps we can remedy that. Now it’s time to leave for work, a bag stuffed with black tulle in one hand and a corselette under my shirt. Black and rhinestones. Black and pale skin. Off to sell sex toys and stockings and very short skirt Little-Bo-Peeps. I’ve received a strange gift, one that may let me loose myself from this job, but I’m not certain yet. I want somewhere to go before I leave.

Scientists have taught dolphins to produce music, namely, the Batman theme song. Next, the escapee killer dolphin form a revenge team, sing their own themesong while hunting down nerdly scientists.