Author: foxtongue

“You said you would show me another country, and you have. It’s right here, in me.”


isn’t she pretty?
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

There was flying yesterday. I opened my eyes in Reine’s bed, not having slept at all. Karen and Patrick were downstairs with her mother. Ten minutes later, we were driving. Smooth ska on the stereo, too early for people to be aware. Up Victoria, up fourty-first, taking the bridge past the airport and out onto highway. I held my breath through the tunnel and wished I could remember how not to be wounded. I let it out half way, feeling empty and futile. A child thought, how hollow they make these places. The way the music played made me think of movies, of black pvc.

The plane was small, familiar. Fuselage white, pale as they always are in such places. Karen and Reine looked like headset angels. I rode in front, co-pilot pretender. Once I took the handles, but all I did was steer on course, something anyone could have done. It dragged to the left, heavy somehow so far above the earth. We flew to the airport outside of Victoria, touching down and lifting back up without pause. I held my hands out with my camera on top and said, “do you think we can do it?” to Patrick. Zero gravity, it lifted and fell upward, my fingers cradled under it as it swooped for the windscreen and I could feel my hair twisting away from my scalp, it was beautiful. Enough to unknot my eyes, to pry open my muscles enough to move.

Light seems different when you’re flying, like above the clouds there’s a different texture. I thought of marbles, cats eyes glittering, and agates, how I dearly wanted to walk back in time and say, “teach me now, not later, before you make mistakes.” I wanted twin handfuls of them, glass smooth and clear. I wanted them to spill and fall into the ocean beneath me, a mystery to any witnesses as much as my relationships. I miss him, of course I do. His hands hold my heart still, that burning thing. Blood, however, has left me barren. Think of burned houses, only the shell and metal remaining. Let my honour be my unwarped steel. Picture red hair and eyes like blue quick silver. My strawberry heart is useless, obviously, or else I would be able to stop my crying. I could return it home and let it flutter back into my breast like a nesting bird.

I have a doctors appointment this afternoon. A question asked of me demands it. The other women are likely wonderful people, but.

I remember trust.

My lovers, of late, have been dying. Piece by piece, becoming less of people and more of liars.


Better Living
Originally uploaded by cabbit.

I’m still awake.

The sun is well up, we’re slowing stealing the light from across the water, too imperceptible for the unaided human eye. Hindsight, however, can tell you what happens next. I’m bloody tired, my friends, bloody tired and feeling grounded in being lost. I have some strange assumptions, like trusting people is not a bad thing, nor is telling the truth. Everything we know should be brought to bear, all the stories seen for what they are. Divinations and mysteries shown for wonders, but also for frauds. We are predictable, we the people. We the people who demand a revolution while forgetting that means we have to do something, communicate with the rest of the world what we really desire and intend. If such assumptions were more common, perhaps my life would have been happier, would have not been such a trial. Hanged from the neck until dead, days like the kerchief they would place upon the judge’s head. Deeply aggravating, for my need to minimize myself has been shot down. It’s not a reclamation, but perhaps an awakening.

Matthew has been false in every direction. With pooled information, we are willing to believe that he is married, yes, that he worked at VanCity, yes, but nothing much else. Everything we have to say matches in disparity. Lines upon lines, whole paragraphs of identical promises, identical reasonings, excuses. This has cemented things for me, hopefully for us. Us implying my voice raised with other women. There is a bloody trail of us torn across two continents. I see no reason for silence.

because I think it’s time to say it

This week has been insulating, my heart too bruised for anything but a cotton wool retreat. Reina and Ryan have been mild life-savers, smiling circles floating on waves. Underneath my feet I can’t bear to see, though I should look. Matthew is coming back this week or the next.

Apparently he’s been fucking around again. Not only on me this time, but a couple of others.

Welcome to the lie, ladies. Take a number.

Matthew called and my heart stopped

Fields of fire that passed the train
The sky is victorious but here comes the rain
Friday is taking me home again,
And I’ve nothing but you on my mind.

Grass is greener without the pain,
I think that I’m changing but I’m just the same
My sun is ascending again
And I’ve nothing but you on my mind

Sometimes I feel like I’m glad to be free,
Sometimes I still want your arms around me,
Sometimes I’m glad to have left you behind,
The Crazy English Summer has put you back on my mind.
Life’s a riot, a lover, a friend,
Pity the day that it has to end
Friday come speed me home again,
I’ve nothing but you on my mind.

Sometimes I feel like i’m fine on my own,
Fifty thousand miles from home.
Sometimes I’m weak and the past is my guide,
Summer returns and puts you back on my mind.

    • the history books never mentioned us

    Cohesion drifting: goodbye James. He’s left now, on the plane for Montreal. If he has a window seat, he’ll have already lost sight of Vancouver. Soon even the mountains will fade. Echoes and footsteps in departure hallways. We saw him off last night, Reine and Ryan and I, my friend Steve caught along for the ride.

    We wish you luck, boy, wherever you land.

    medousa will be opening her apartment up for pre-fireworks meet-ups again on Saturday. Meet on the North West Corner of Barclay & Thurlow beginning at 7:30. (By the firehydrant). Any who are inclined are suggested to drop in between 7pm and 7:30pm, and we’ll probably head out around 8ish. There’s a possibility of heading out sooner as it’s the finale and will be more insane than usual.

    edit: I’ll be attending the Leo party after the fireworks.

    I’ve been out of charactor today, but would like to mark for the record that I blame the eye-liner


    City Girl
    Originally uploaded by cabbit.

    St Peters wolf is hunting me, licking at my traces on other peoples skin. My nails ask for defenses back please, they ask for water to drain from my eyes somewhere not in public. I saw today that someone’s referred to me as an ex, and when night falls, that’s what it feels like, though I know it only as a convenient term that explains really nothing of what happened or what might have been. He kissed me, you know, when he shouldn’t have. I understand deeply, like standing under trees, that there’s been a fundamental shift, that I forced myself to remember that I am a star collapsing. In waking to myself, I had to be alone of this one, this gold skein mannerism. Otherwise, when my heart was beating, it would be a violence, a darkening room without a coloured door.

  • stencil art billboards
  • the wooster collective

    Amusing to me, I realize as I write this that I’m wearing a stolen ring. Usually a sign of solidarity, this time it means a freedom in vocabulary, it means someone I feel quick enough to keep up with. These round celtic knots tied one into the next, this band, this loop, I’m twisting it around my finger. Metal there feels right, the flesh feels righted, but the implications, the loose ties of acquaintance versus friendship, they nag at me with a peculiar fascination. In my mind, there’s something waking. A fierce creature with steady cravings, I can’t see it, though I feel it growing restless. What it is I’m uncertain, something to do with words, with expression.

  • pictures of wall
  • intricate x-wing t-shirt

    Yesterday was long, a golden musical chairs of people in and out. It began merely an hour after returning from Beth’s delightful house-warming. Navi was over in the morning, and Ryan, with James visiting in the afternoon. We went to dinner with my mother, Vicki, and her father, John, at Wild Ginger. My first time meeting my granda as an adult. It was, shall we say, illuminating. He reminded me that I’m a quarter gypsy, which is something I had almost forgotten, but that we are related to the highest placed mafia family in Canada. This is especially delightful considering that I’ve finally discovered what it is he does. It was rather surprising. I knew that he used to be a salesman of sorts but I was entirely unaware that currently my granda is a bootlegging gigolo. I swear, my family only gets better. The best part? He’s a British Citizen, has been for thirty+ years. A landed immigrant back in the day when bombs still fell in first world countries. The way the laws are, that means that so am I. When I get my passport, depending on how soon I reapply, then it just might not be Canadian. (So anyone I asked to marry for citizenship, if you’re still interested, you’re going to have to supply another interesting country or two).

    • hold the wheel



    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    I saw you and looked down. I changed the subject of conversation. You walked past like silver, as if I could touch the air you had just walked through and feel solid flesh.

    I counted my lovers the other day, using myself as one unit. My body, my bended bones and muscles, an abacus bead. Click, like this, and he slipped in here and my back arched taut, hips drawing the strings of shiva’s bow. She bit me once, hard, at the bus-stop, one of the first times we kissed. I’m at twelve consensual, my friend at thirty-four. I thought about water falling, how many times I’ve held hands in rain. The contrast of skin colours, how I loved to see my white against the wood colours of tanned skin, how I loved the white of my skin matching the belly that I kissed. I would like to meet a boy this time who wants things I’ve never thought of, tells me the secret names of roses, tells me that he likes touching me in public. I would like to not be shot through with sacrifice.

    There’s a girl sitting alone in a room, her music is as lonely as she is and she can’t find anything else. Her clothes are piled on the floor among too many books and papers. She’s scared.

    Newly minted life, that’s another thing coming. Bill and I were talking about technology the other day after fireworks, and I felt for the first time in a long time that I was aware, like I’d been roughly shaken from a trance. He argued that new things weren’t that, only the newest illustration of an age-old idea. I pointed out that new species only come from previous iterations of animal, that everything comes from somewhere. The system self-propagating. The New finding you because you’ve put the settings that way. I know enough for two of us. The trick is in the procedure, the knowing how to act with it, the finding out what to do next. I feel distinctly unintelligent because I have so many tools, so many pieces of information, yet no ideas.

    I like the hydrocarbons


    Lisa 459
    Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

    if you mix an acid and a base, you get salt

    Life lately has been slightly less than hectic and at best a distraction. War has raged back and forth over the hours of every day I’ve been awake. Ryan put me to sleep earlier today, a blessing, one hand on my head like an affectionate priest. Half an hour to clear my head. Fireworks and fireworks, it’s been a western world meets east things-are-eyes-averted two weeks. I look in the mirror and I see a face that looks like it’s been minutely sewn to a skull. I was fired on Friday You’re a creative person, and I’m sure elsewhere you will go far. It was a little speech, she walked up to my desk, said, “this is close enough” then control room said LAUNCH. Her black hair is pretty, but her smile is not as frequent as mine. My reading outpaces, a personality conflict, multi-tasking apparently a sign of inattention. As I walked away I thought, “This has been just as long as a theatre run, this has been a show.”

    the core of the earth is a molten ball of lead

    Saturday before last, I went similarly to the fireworks site. No change in confidence, but with a settled step, accepting the ground I was pacing. I arrived smiling. A steady walk in unfamiliar boots, all of this looked familiar, I knew what I could do and how much I needed to learn. Jay looked me over, we hadn’t seen each other in a while, our interactions being defined by fire and firewater and neither being a matter of course anymore, and his eyes checked for boots, but stuck at my throat. “I can’t believe you’re wearing jewelry.”

    core of my earth is molten : my thyroid gland is a fire-engine : my earth is molten

    There was a hawk that circled the site for hours, it snapped open its great wings against the bright gray sky and looked down at us and our trestles as if considering prey. Later the sun burned off the clouds, banishing both the prospect of rain or a decent temperature. The reflected sun off the water and sand was dreadful, a burning reminder that the bright thing in the sky is made of fusion. We stripped off our shirts by mid-day and danced with conversation, touching upon everything internet terrible. Linda Lee, ostensibly one of the more experienced pyrotechs, wasn’t as internet literate as the rest of us and it left her laughing in shock as we continued to up the edgy. She had a wonderful guessed definition of slashfic that went beyond irony somewhere into painfully appropriate.

    I love you

    No one took pictures of my miniature inferno.

    fireworks – I could listen to this for hours.

    Meet on the North West Corner of Barclay & Thurlow beginning at 7:30. You will be fetched into medousa‘s nice apartment. We will begin walking soon after 8:00.

    Also, um… Mike is god. If you’re not on djspazblog then you’re bloody brain-damaged.

    I could listen to this for hours.