grecian urge

i want to live in a house with no glass in the windows
no doors in the door frames
no carpets on the floors
no junk in the closets
no lights on the ceilings
no clocks on the walls.

there'll be white billowy curtains
let loose in blessed breezes
and cool stone tile underfoot and cheek.
and a long wide patio bleached pale in the sun
as my skin goes bronze, my mouth fills
with icy wine and the vapours tickle my nose.
on the table, a bowl each of
afternoon-warmed grapes and musky salted olives as
dozy wasps abscond with beads of nectar and oil.

the ocean is miles away but if i shade my eyes
and lean back just right it floats just below the patio ledge.
leaning forward, i see small, noisy cars edging their way
along distant cliff roads, but the sound never reaches up here.
just the creak of a bicycle chain and the flap of laundry on the line,
and once in a while, the odd strained sound of the neighbour's piano.
a mile down the track, it's a trick of the sea breeze
that you only hear every second note of every third song
between the cicadas and warblers, gaia's meditation.

an evening bath in near darkness is a favourite
a sunken tub and the dim glow of a single lantern
i run the water cool and soak as the cliff roses just below the window
recover from the heat of another day by releasing their perfume
it's a joyful but quiet celebration, day to night
we are transformed, all.
i barely dress, hair still wet, leaving wet footprints to dissolve
as i cross the little open house all gloaming
and seat myself at a heavily scarred wooden table, you facing me
soft smiles, vinegar'd vegetables and chilled grains on stone plates.
we hardly talk anymore
it'd be like talking to oneself, so easily we read one another;
so little that happens each day.

the expanse of cool bed under pinned straight gossamer netting
the nightsounds of the cliff sides and distant village and sea
a heavy book rests open, pages-down on gently rising, then falling, belly
your hand finds mine as you scribble something on a tablet on your knees
i wonder about the weather, about a tempest, about a teapot
about a rowboat expedition the next week to swim in the deep sea
about the souring dough under the tea cloth and the dwindling wine supply
about tending the small vegetable patch and sharing the meagre bounty
with a warbly little piano player, a mile down the track.

i want to live in a house with no glass in the windows
no doors in the door frames
no carpets on the floors
no junk in the closets
no lights on the ceilings
no clocks on the walls.

a common but natural wonder

they were aluminum steps, just three, the kind that dig into the backs of your knees
that odd yellow morning you left me.
there was a certain sound each footstep made on those pointy metal planes
and i sat on them a long time after you were gone,
anti-slip peaks digging through the thin cotton of my shorts and brown grass
between my bare toes
cold and dying.

just sitting there with the door wide open behind me
a queer thunderstorm morning, thirsty daisies all dayglo
the gravel spat out by your car's tires little cairns all in a row, seeds unsown
no one else was home, i was all alone
the whole neighbourhood sparse, a stray with a hungry rib cage
stopped to lick my hand
but didn't stay.

there was that long line of hemlock trees a few yards off, denoting borders between
this park and that park,
the wrong side of the conifers was where you loved me most
all that long dry summer, then again all that long dark winter
inside my tin can, inside my white trash bungalow, my hideaway, my drafty lair
our backs on a thin foam mattress
fingering a frayed blanket.

it would sometimes seem to me the hemlocks' boughs spoke to and caressed each other
soft summer wind or roiling winter storm
looking out the porthole from the far side of my bed
i'd wonder at their secret languages and loved them offhandedly
a bit like the way you loved me, as if i were a common but natural wonder
appreciated in small gusts fueled by
mortality, or liquor.

that morning the hemlocks were moving, or seemed to move, though there was no breeze
and though i was distracted at first,
with the heartache of loss and all, the sound of your last words
reverbing in my ear canals like some kind of maritime dirge
i came to be aware of the unfamilliar fluttering as something not tree-like
something decidedly birdlike
filling every bough.

in silence they sat, narrow and fat, covering every itchy inch of branch
feathers ruffled here and there
but otherwise still as the air, and watched me carefully from the hemlock trees
as if they'd always been there and always would be, all black eyes
shiny beaks, the looming threat, a rookery
bearing silent witness
to the aftermath of your retreat.

Not Waving

If I must, absolutely must, go about the business of drowning,
I make the following requests.

That I sink slowly and thoroughly,
That I slip thickly and knowingly,
That my eyes remain open,
And my throat keeps humming.

That the medium be warm and enveloping,
That it be glossy and smooth,
That it saturate every part of me,
In the swirls of my ears & tender spaces between toes.

If I must, absolutely must, go about the business of drowning,
Let it be that I suffocated in you.

mardi gras!

so i had this dream that i was at mardi gras in new orleans and it was really hot and sunny out so everyone was wearing short-shorts and bras and beads and face paint. we were following this float that had beth ditto and the gossip on it, blasting out a wicked rendition of "on the prowl":

I’m a firecracker on the 4th of July
I’ll make your mama beg, I’ll make your daddy cry
I’ll walk a million miles for just one piece of your pie
I’m not a stranger, darlin’, so don’t you be shy,
I'll give you something that you'll never forget,
We're gonna do it till we're both outta breath,
Come on darling cause you're making me wet,
So give me something that I haven't had yet,
I'm gonna treat you right, just let momma take your hand,
You betta hang on tight
I'm gonna treat you right,
Gonna take you home tonight,
It's gonna be better, darling, than you ever thought it could
I'm gonna give you something that you'll never forget,
We're gonna do it till we're both outta breath,
Come on darlin cause you're making me wet,
So give me something That I haven't had yet.


the float turned down this alley way that was really just an over grown dirt road. the ruts were deep and jagged and uneven. the grass was knee high. i was marching and dancing behind this girl i used to work with at the fat chicks' clothing store and she was wearing these high-waisted bright red shorts and i remember thinking how enormous and gorgeous her ass looked in them.

suddenly from behind us there was a loud honking and we turned to see this ridiculous Hummer-type vehicle trying to drive up the dirt road behind us. it was painted in lurid reds and yellows and clearly would not fit through the narrow space. my old co-worked and i started yelling at them to turn around and go back, but the driver wouldn't let up. we just scoffed and turned around to follow beth ditto again. suddenly there was a horrible noise behind us and we turned to see that the hummer had hit a ditch too hard and turned onto it's side.

we walked back to see if we could help the driver out. it was ronald mcdonald. we climbed up and pried the door open and yelled at him that he was a complete idiot and to get out of the vehicle, but he was unconscious and bleeding from a wound on his head. my co-worker said, "there's a mcdonald's a block away, you should go tell them their guy needs help." so i took off.

when i got in the mcdonalds i stood in line for a long time. finally i got up to the counter and who was the person working the till, but robert fuckin deniro. i said, "holy shit," and he just looked around nervously like he was worried i'd rat him out. i said, "you're...you're..." and he put up his hand to shush me. "yeah, i know. i know who i am. what can i get for you?" this was the last till, at the end of the counter, so there was a little gap where you could walk in behind, so i did that. wounded burger-shilling clown completely forgotten, i hopped up on the counter and put my arms around his neck and put my lips near his ear and said, "you don't really wanna be workin here during mardi gras, do you? you wanna earn some beads the hard way?" he turned completely red and swallowed hard and nodded. THEN MY ALARM WENT OFF. ugh.

new ideas about why we dream.

last night i dreamed i had taken LSD and was running away from home. instead of causing the normal feelings LSD causes, it gave me the power to control how gravity affected me. i was bouncing like an astronaut on the moon, down fields of grass and onto a big ferry. i saw this guy i've only met once, in victoria, and he was on LSD too and told me to follow him off the boat, leaping across the water, and led me to a restaurant where my huge number one crush was working as a bartender. huge number one crush and i flirted crazily for a while while crush fed me vodkas. then we had a playful wrestling match in the 'lounge' area of the bar and i got flipped on my back and we started to make love right there in front of everyone and i was so happy, i used my anti-gravity LSD powers to float us right up to the ceiling.

snow day

this morning, the sky faints pink, watery yellow, blue
and this damp cloth is pushing spilled coffee grounds around the counter.
i'm listening to a forecast that i'm totally numb to .
outside, my sparrow heart is trapped in a snowbank, fluttering softly and cold.
she was blindsided by the flurry of white from above
but i have no sympathy because she had warning.
the boughs had been groaning all night.
i'm washing a dish now, i've washed it twice, tinny radio news
has a flat effect on my face, i can't hide this broken rib much longer.
i keep pulling at the hem of my shirt, stretching it out, fatiguing it
the rib pokes out anyway and it aches purple, it aches black.
no amount of careful movement, no amount of gentle prodding
puts this rib back in place, it just burns there halfway between my gut and heart.
hey! you didn't owe me anything! and who would have been surprised,
everyone at that movie asked for a refund because the ending was so cliche,
and the starring roles were taken up by plain people
with predictable lines and worse, the camera work was shaky. amateurs.
the glamour was steam on the lens from the humid air
not the memory of some perfect night
not memory of compulsion nor the dimming of light. just hot air, all hot air.
i can't bend right
to sweep now and i hear the snow plow coming! oh, dammit.
i run outside to rescue my sparrow heart, deep inside i am tender towards her
even though she is stupid and careless and needs to be
taught a hard lesson. just not today.
i'm on my knees in an icy bank,
i'm scooping up handfuls of snow with raw red hands
it feels colder when my skin is hot from dishwater
and at the bottom, on patchy dead grass, there she lies still now,
still as an icicle, feathery chest lifts.
one glowing hand yanks at my shirt hem, it hurts as it pulls on a rib.
the other hand deposits her in the pocket of my spattered apron,
next to the crumpled movie ticket stub.
heat from the oven will revive her, i think.

i have had this dream before. several times before, actually. in it, we remember that we have two more floors to our house, upstairs, behind a built-in bookshelf, sort of 'diary of anne frank' style. we don't know why we keep forgetting about them, because they are fantastic floors...better even than what we normally live in.

in this dream the topic comes up because we are talking with the children about how to re-arrange their sleeping quarters (this is happening in real life - julian wants to comandeer the rec room in the basement and astrid wants to take over his larger bedroom upstairs) and i said, well actually there's a top floor to our house that has a beautiful, beautiful attic bedroom with a big window that lets in lots of light. do you want to see?

of course they do! they are shocked we never brought it up before. i'm shocked that we've been forcing guests to sleep in the basement when all this time we had some beautiful rooms upstairs.

misha pulls open the bookcase and the children are wide-eyed at the staircase in behind. it's wide, and there is natural light pouring down from the upper floors because for some reason they are more windowed than the floors we have been living on. there are two upper levels. we begin to climb the staircase, and i note that the wallpaper and carpeting there are a bit tatty, but not awful. there is the sound of wildlife directly ahead of us and i wonder if we left a 'sounds of nature' tape running the last time we'd remembered to come up here.

the first floor we come out on is a luxuriantly decorated library. it looks straight out of a victorian better homes and gardens. floor to ceiling bookshelves lined with all manner of hardbacks. overstuffed antique chairs here and there. even a small wet bar tucked into a corner with a large mirror behind it, reflecting the scene back at us. everything is wine coloured velvet and mahogany and big lush plants. i hear the sound of a fountain. i look up and there is a glass dome in the ceiling with daylight pouring through. a butterfly floats past astrid's nose. we are all standing and spinning around in wonder at the room we had above our house that was apparently too good for us to live in. i begin to walk around, tracing my fingers here and there, joy and wonder filling my mind, my heart, every muscle. suddenly i recoil my hand as it touches something rough and scaly on one of the little intricately carved side tables. i look more closely and there is some kind of odd lizard there. small and dark blue, almost black. i summon the children and misha over to gaze at him with me. he has a large frill around his head, spiky. his eyes are mere black pinpricks in a sort of squat face. he regards us balefully when suddenly his tongue shoots out and he captures a butterfly with it, a butterfly at least half his size. we shout in surprise and then watch in morbid fascination as he attempts to eat it. its wings struggle against his mouth, against the air, against death. astrid is both horrified and philosophical: "poor butterfly. but lizard has to eat." the butterfly is gone in a few big chomps. and then even more suddenly, our little blue lizard is attacked by a larger lizard that had been camouflaged amongst some of the books on the table next to it. this one is a chameleon, i tell the children. its mouth is huge and wide and it seeks to devour the smaller lizard whole. the smaller lizard puts up a big fight and the children beg us to stop it because it is so brutal. but we don't, we just wait patiently. the bigger lizard has no teeth and his mouth seems too soft to do any real damage to the smaller lizard but in the end, we hear a critching sound indicating a crushed skull and the small lizard stops struggling immediately. i can't watch anymore. i turn. birds are flying around the glass dome above our heads and landing in the potted trees and palms around the room. i realize this is not only a library but some kind of self-contained ecosystem. how had we been living underneath such a marvelous thing for seven years and not visited it every day?

i continue on towards the next flight of stairs, the one that leads to the attic bedroom. this one also has plenty of daylight streaming down, casting dramatic shadows and showing me that the wallpaper here, cornflower blue and cream stripes, is also tatty and neglected. i move from the victorian botantist library upwards into a country house's attic. it is spotlessly clean, with faded blue-painted floors and whitewashed walls. centered under the peak of the roof is a huge round window, from where all the sunlight pours in. on either side of this window are double beds, blonde wood frames and thick mattresses, made up with warm handmade quilts, feather pillows, and crocheted throws. each bed has its own little white night stand that holds a reading lamp and a stack of books. there are small framed pictures hung around the room. a wardrobe at the opposite end. wooden chairs on spindly legs near a desk with a roll-down cover. at the foot of each bed, a chest. on top of each chest is propped a doll that looks to be made of raw cotton and stuffed with straw, its face painted on in raggedy-anne fashion. it is so quiet and bright. no sound floats up from the library below. i can hear my own breathing perfectly.

i walk softly across the faded blue floor to the window, expecting to look out over the parking lot of our townhouse complex. when i get there, though, i see the view is of a vast meadow, filled with waist high grass and tall yellow flowers. there is a hill that curves down and away and i suspect there is come kind of creek or river that passes by the house just beyond that slope. even further in the distance i see a swatch of trees, deciduous trees that don't belong here in BC at all. i put my fingers on the glass and wonder how to get out there. i know that if i walk back downstairs and out our front door, it really will just be our old townhouse parking lot. this bothers me a lot, and i wake up.

little lady

what's it like to be so tiny?
with bean pole wrists and a long curved neck
like all the great poems describe?
a featherweight waist and martini glass breasts
what's it like to be so very,
very small?
the chiseled jaw-line and aquiline nose...
are your eyes really that big or is it
illusion as they perch, doe-like, over
high bones on gaunt cheeks?
and those ankles!
they could break like glass, like sugar!
in those teetery high heels
after only one gimlet
("but a double!" you insist).
i wonder how it feels to be smaller
than every man you meet
would i be (more) afraid, or would it be nice
to feel big arms around me
and to know i could be easily carried home
if i did fall down in those
impossible stilettos. those
twizzly shoes from a shop that
looks like a bright delicious candy store
from the outside looking in.
i think about those slender fingers:
they would be chilly, if they touched me.
rings would fall off if you didn't get them sized
and your thighs must never rub together
so your jeans don't grow thin in patches there.
your jeans could last your whole life!
probably everyone thinks you don't eat or throw up what you do
eat and maybe that annoys you or maybe it thrills you
but either way you
know this is just how you were meant to be.
so tiny. a silhouette of a bird creature.
silky soft and leafy light.
folded up in a window sill,
apt to take flight.

in my dream last night, i had a job in an office, i think it was at my mom's school, where she teaches. and i had to work late one night, and misha was also working, and while julian was ok with watching astrid til i got home, astrid was pissed that she was going to miss her evening theatre class. after much finagling, and talking it over with misha, we agreed that she could take the bus there by herself and then afterwards take it to my office, and we would go home together. i was under the impression that it was in our neighbourhood when i agreed to this and astrid kept insisting that she knew the way because daddy had brought her on the bus several times before that.

however, when it got dark outside, and the office clock said 5:00pm and it was time for me to go and she still wasn't at the office, i started to panic. i called misha and asked him exactly where the class was and to my surprise he told me it was in richmond (which involves riding the skytrain and TWO buses from our place). totally freaking out, i wandered from cubicle to cubicle telling people what was wrong and they either scoffed at me or acted uncomfortable or ignored me. i felt frantic. i kept saying, "i didn't even give her a cell phone so she could call me. i just let her go out there by herself. i'm a total idiot. should i phone the police or wait a while?"

then mom wandered in and i told her what had happened. she immediately told me to call the police. i was standing at the top of a stairway and there was a wall-mounted phone right there. mom was on the top step holding on to the handrail. i picked up the phone and started to dial when i heard the office door down below open and astrid was there, crying. my mom turned around and ran down the stairs and i hung up the phone and tried to follow. astrid was saying, "i hurt my knee, i hurt my knee, i want mommy," and my mom was clutching her and carrying her up the stairs saying, "don't worry, baby, we'll get you all cleaned up, it's ok, you're ok," and a bunch of people were crowding around and i had to shove my way past them all.

mom had astrid in a bathroom and was filling up a bathtub with hot water and undressing her. astrid was crying and holding her knee. i started crying in relief to see her and her little scraped knee and was about to embrace her when one of the other women said, "stop. stop touching her, stop cleaning her up. the police will want her to go to the hospital." she said it in this very weird, calm voice. i looked at her and then i looked back at astrid who was now stripped down completely and saw that it wasn't just her knee. her vulva was bruised and swollen and red and there was blood all over her. she was still rocking back and forth saying, "i was running and i fell and hurt my knee, mommy."

my mom realized what had happened at the same moment i did, and kind of doubled over and said, "oh god, oh god, oh astrid, oh god." i put my hand on mom's back and tried to reason with her to keep her head, to not let astrid see how upset we were because she'd clearly already been through too much and we had to be strong instead. but seeing my mom fall apart like that, and seeing my daughter all pale and shaken and clearly in shock and understanding what must have happened and knowing it was my fault for letting her go out on her own like that, well....i closed my eyes and tilted my head up to the ceiling and howled in anguish.