wayne coyne took a shine to me. at first it started out that i was shy and uncertain and feeling weird about being with him, but he talked soft and kind and spent days warming me up with trips to vegan cafes, to record stores, and toy shops, mechanics to get my motorized bicyle looked at, and kite flying and hand holding. finally it culminated in me giving him very bad oral sex. i was awful and also mortified; i couldn't get him off. but he still loved me even afterwards. i thought that there was no way for him to love me, i was entirely unworthy and a bad lay to boot, but he wouldn't abandon me.
the second dream was filled with birds and islands and ocean. we were on a tour of cortes island's most luxurious and expensive homes. several of them could be launched out to sea. the most interesting one was enormous, like a west vancouver mansion, and when it was time to put it out to sea, it curved down around this long, sloped ramp from the top of a mountain. part of the trip down was through the mountain, like a tunnel. the owner said, "look out the windows to see where all the ducks hide at twilight," and i looked and sure enough there were billions upon billions of mallards all swimming in a panic away from the moving house. finally, the house bumped out onto the open ocean. my mom was with me. we saw there was a dinghy and asked if we could row around in it and the owner said it would be fine. as we are floating further and further away from the houseboat, i saw a bald eagle not too far above us, flying and looking predacious. i saw, "wow, mom, look! i think it is going to dive for a fish!" we watched in awe as it did exactly as i said. it plunged, talons out and menacing, into the ocean only a few yards from our dinghy, and came up soaked and fishless. not discouraged and clearly able to see the fish still swimming, it rose, higher and keening, and plunged again - this time even closer to our boat - it's yellow eyes rolling back into it's head. my mom and i were dumbfounded and could only manage "wow"s and "holy"s. the eagle missed the fish again. at this point it seemed to finally notice us and looked at us menacingly, as though it thought we were to blame for it's failed hunt. instead of flying away, it did something i am quite rationally aware of eagles not being able to do. it folded up it's wings and sat bobbing on the surface of the ocean, then began swimming towards us, eyes huge and wings wet. he even looked a bit muddy or oily. as he got closer, i realized that he was at least the size of my mom. huge. he stared and stared and mom and i began clutching at one another, terrified. his beak was sharp enough to make a mess of our dinghy. the look in his eyes was murderous. we were far, far from the houseboat. but luck was in our favour, or perhaps the eagle changed his mind. he floated past us, not even a few feet away, and continued floating. his eyes were trained on us the whole time, but he made no move to attack. mother and i rowed the dingy to shore, relieved, and then found ourselves unable to make our way back to where we'd started from. lost in a huge, endless, urban-style cement parkade on cortes island, filled with tourists and elevators that made no sense. their buttons said things like, "april 5.5" and "several stories up from the tea party."
2005/08/26
2005/08/24
revenge
in my anger i moved mountains and stacked them nolens volens onto my roof.
as the beams below creaked and shuddered, i heaved
water-logged limbs up, around, slapping and struggling
over crags and bark
over logs and mulch
and moss dry like wool and
insects vibrating
in the tombs of their ancestors.
the air withered under my breathing, turned sheet ice and lightning in my lungs.
as i passed the summit of one palisade, i felt no relief
only grim determination in anticipation of the ascent of the second peak
and the breath went flat and sharp
in a labouring diaphragm
and arms trembled, agonized
heart murmmering
in protest of my self-made demise.
i climbed and climbed in self-sacrifice; how the atmosphere grew dark
and darker from blue to purple to velvet painting
all shot with stars sharp and clear and cruel, each sing-songing
about universal entropic loss
seas, and the salt of seas, and rocks
dissolving unknown to me and
dark matter groaning
under weight of its own, en masse.
the final butte had no parting words of wisdom in my wake, it only chuckled.
i haughtily flipped my toes from its tip and launched
the mound of mountains collapsed into my old home as i flew off,
determined and predetermined
to pitch battle with light
all my lives and novas
every gas and flares to swallow
that never again would a day dawn on me singularly.
in my anger i flew toward the sun - that judas of all dark, secret things - to swap blows.
heat intractable, furnaces untold, oh nebuchadnezzar lives there
but rage burns brighter, revenge for every morning that bloomed without you
my fists out, and rushing
to plunge the sun, insane.
i'd blister and bruise him,
my mouth open - concious with flame -
to consume, and in the consuming, be consumed.
as the beams below creaked and shuddered, i heaved
water-logged limbs up, around, slapping and struggling
over crags and bark
over logs and mulch
and moss dry like wool and
insects vibrating
in the tombs of their ancestors.
the air withered under my breathing, turned sheet ice and lightning in my lungs.
as i passed the summit of one palisade, i felt no relief
only grim determination in anticipation of the ascent of the second peak
and the breath went flat and sharp
in a labouring diaphragm
and arms trembled, agonized
heart murmmering
in protest of my self-made demise.
i climbed and climbed in self-sacrifice; how the atmosphere grew dark
and darker from blue to purple to velvet painting
all shot with stars sharp and clear and cruel, each sing-songing
about universal entropic loss
seas, and the salt of seas, and rocks
dissolving unknown to me and
dark matter groaning
under weight of its own, en masse.
the final butte had no parting words of wisdom in my wake, it only chuckled.
i haughtily flipped my toes from its tip and launched
the mound of mountains collapsed into my old home as i flew off,
determined and predetermined
to pitch battle with light
all my lives and novas
every gas and flares to swallow
that never again would a day dawn on me singularly.
in my anger i flew toward the sun - that judas of all dark, secret things - to swap blows.
heat intractable, furnaces untold, oh nebuchadnezzar lives there
but rage burns brighter, revenge for every morning that bloomed without you
my fists out, and rushing
to plunge the sun, insane.
i'd blister and bruise him,
my mouth open - concious with flame -
to consume, and in the consuming, be consumed.
2005/08/21
2005/08/16
last night it was this:
standing on a beach with leon. it is sand, but there are some huge, barnacle-covered rocks blocking our view of the actual sea, in front of us. leon tells me that he has done something to himself to change himself fundamentally and that he wants me to undergo the same change, so i should trust him, because it will be for the best for all of us. i am willing but nervous. he tells me the first step in achieving said change is to run to the sea. we hold hands and walk around the boulders in our way. i am telling him that i cannot run, not really, because of my knee. he isn't listening, his eyes are eager and focused ahead. i look at what he's looking at and see the tide is out so far, the sand is actually stretching to the horizon. the sky is blazing blue, it is incredibly hot and it looks like a desert wasteland. i tell him, pleadingly, there is no way i can run that far, it is literally miles to the sea from here. he laughs and grips my hand tight and starts to run, dragging me a long beside him. i am stumbling, kicking up clouds of sand, and begging him to slow down, that i can't keep up, that my knee will burst! but he ignores me and ignores me and ignores me and soon i am chugging along beside him as best i can, being half-dragged. he keeps going faster and faster. i suddenly notice he is wearing a long black trenchcoat and boots, and i feel like his from "the matrix" or maybe his a vampire like spike, from buffy the vampire slayer. suddenly i can feel the magic in him. i feel my legs grow lighter and looser and they begin to move in time to his. and then, i ecstatically realize that as we run we are rising off the ground, and the going faster and faster, and higher and higher. and soon we are maybe six feet in the air, and no longer making running motions with our legs, just soaring, soaring so fast, the sandy earth below us is rushing past. i feel terrified and exhilerated. leon lets go of my hand and then i am out over the immense blue/grey sea, and all i can see is water, water, water, and sky, and i'm flying faster and lower than i've ever flown in a dream before. endlessly.
then, this morning:
we are living in a tiny, run-down house in vancouver proper. it is night time. everything in the house is untreated wood. plywood, lumber. nothing is finished. no carpets, no drywall. it has been like this for years and things are looking worse for wear. i complain and leon says that as long as the house remains "unfinished" we don't have to pay taxes on it. but i am getting tired of every drop of food staining the plywood, ever spill of water warping the walls. i get frustrated and take liam out on a walk to a local park where there is some kind of free entertainment. laurel is already asleep so i leave her behind. liam and i have fun at the park. there are firedancers and we watch them intently. it is somewhere downtown, maybe pigeon park? only there is grass, we are sitting on a grassy hill.
suddenly people are screaming and pointing at the sky. i look up to see it too, a huge, hurtling, satellite falling towards the downtown core. it has USA flags painted on it - stars, stripes, blue, red, white all brilliant even in the darkness. it is coming down so fast there is no time to run away. i get up and try to carry liam as far from the point of impact as i can, which isn't far, because the satellite hits the ground only a second later, only a block or two away, behind a couple of office buildings. everyone is screaming, the impact and noise is immense, i can hear glass shattering, buildings roaring as they rain down around our ears, everything is deafening. i push liam to the grass and lay my body over his and realize i'm screaming, too. it goes on for what feels like forever. liam is totally still beneath my body, frozen in terror. screams, screams, crashings, explosions. and then i feel it, against my back, the wave of heat from the explosion. inside i'm terrified, it gets so intensely hot so fast, i think that we might just vaporize, and there's no way to run from that. i wrap my body around liam even harder, and try to roll away from the heat as best i can, shielding him the entire time, but i can feel my clothes melting into my skin, i can feel my skin going tight. this is it, armeggedon, the end of the world, i am going to die and there's no way to save my child.
but i am wrong. soon the screaming tapers off. i hear people calling out to each other, and crying, but no more terror noises. liam is shaken, pallid, white, but unharmed. my whole back is hot still, and i'm sure i have serious burns. i try to get up, to carry him, but can't. we hold hands and begin the slow walk back to our little unfinished shack to check on leon and laurel. when we get there, [info]angelstrange is there with her kids. they are all sitting in the dark livingroom, watching t.v., the light flickering and wavering over their rapt faces. already the footage is there for the seeing. newscasters are raving. leon looks up as i come in, and tells me he knows how to heal me. we have to go to the westernmost seashore. i should pack to leave in the morning, and [info]angelstrange offers to mind the children while we are away. i nod, tuck my son into bed, and wonder what it is at the shore that will soothe all my burns and trauma.
standing on a beach with leon. it is sand, but there are some huge, barnacle-covered rocks blocking our view of the actual sea, in front of us. leon tells me that he has done something to himself to change himself fundamentally and that he wants me to undergo the same change, so i should trust him, because it will be for the best for all of us. i am willing but nervous. he tells me the first step in achieving said change is to run to the sea. we hold hands and walk around the boulders in our way. i am telling him that i cannot run, not really, because of my knee. he isn't listening, his eyes are eager and focused ahead. i look at what he's looking at and see the tide is out so far, the sand is actually stretching to the horizon. the sky is blazing blue, it is incredibly hot and it looks like a desert wasteland. i tell him, pleadingly, there is no way i can run that far, it is literally miles to the sea from here. he laughs and grips my hand tight and starts to run, dragging me a long beside him. i am stumbling, kicking up clouds of sand, and begging him to slow down, that i can't keep up, that my knee will burst! but he ignores me and ignores me and ignores me and soon i am chugging along beside him as best i can, being half-dragged. he keeps going faster and faster. i suddenly notice he is wearing a long black trenchcoat and boots, and i feel like his from "the matrix" or maybe his a vampire like spike, from buffy the vampire slayer. suddenly i can feel the magic in him. i feel my legs grow lighter and looser and they begin to move in time to his. and then, i ecstatically realize that as we run we are rising off the ground, and the going faster and faster, and higher and higher. and soon we are maybe six feet in the air, and no longer making running motions with our legs, just soaring, soaring so fast, the sandy earth below us is rushing past. i feel terrified and exhilerated. leon lets go of my hand and then i am out over the immense blue/grey sea, and all i can see is water, water, water, and sky, and i'm flying faster and lower than i've ever flown in a dream before. endlessly.
then, this morning:
we are living in a tiny, run-down house in vancouver proper. it is night time. everything in the house is untreated wood. plywood, lumber. nothing is finished. no carpets, no drywall. it has been like this for years and things are looking worse for wear. i complain and leon says that as long as the house remains "unfinished" we don't have to pay taxes on it. but i am getting tired of every drop of food staining the plywood, ever spill of water warping the walls. i get frustrated and take liam out on a walk to a local park where there is some kind of free entertainment. laurel is already asleep so i leave her behind. liam and i have fun at the park. there are firedancers and we watch them intently. it is somewhere downtown, maybe pigeon park? only there is grass, we are sitting on a grassy hill.
suddenly people are screaming and pointing at the sky. i look up to see it too, a huge, hurtling, satellite falling towards the downtown core. it has USA flags painted on it - stars, stripes, blue, red, white all brilliant even in the darkness. it is coming down so fast there is no time to run away. i get up and try to carry liam as far from the point of impact as i can, which isn't far, because the satellite hits the ground only a second later, only a block or two away, behind a couple of office buildings. everyone is screaming, the impact and noise is immense, i can hear glass shattering, buildings roaring as they rain down around our ears, everything is deafening. i push liam to the grass and lay my body over his and realize i'm screaming, too. it goes on for what feels like forever. liam is totally still beneath my body, frozen in terror. screams, screams, crashings, explosions. and then i feel it, against my back, the wave of heat from the explosion. inside i'm terrified, it gets so intensely hot so fast, i think that we might just vaporize, and there's no way to run from that. i wrap my body around liam even harder, and try to roll away from the heat as best i can, shielding him the entire time, but i can feel my clothes melting into my skin, i can feel my skin going tight. this is it, armeggedon, the end of the world, i am going to die and there's no way to save my child.
but i am wrong. soon the screaming tapers off. i hear people calling out to each other, and crying, but no more terror noises. liam is shaken, pallid, white, but unharmed. my whole back is hot still, and i'm sure i have serious burns. i try to get up, to carry him, but can't. we hold hands and begin the slow walk back to our little unfinished shack to check on leon and laurel. when we get there, [info]angelstrange is there with her kids. they are all sitting in the dark livingroom, watching t.v., the light flickering and wavering over their rapt faces. already the footage is there for the seeing. newscasters are raving. leon looks up as i come in, and tells me he knows how to heal me. we have to go to the westernmost seashore. i should pack to leave in the morning, and [info]angelstrange offers to mind the children while we are away. i nod, tuck my son into bed, and wonder what it is at the shore that will soothe all my burns and trauma.
2005/08/15
pearly pink pencil erasers extending under your magicks
silky red blooms in the vortex of her cheeks
dull blue fire erupts
in her sleepy-lidded eyes, and lasts weeks.
she stuffed journal entries about you under her mattress
and drew arrow-pierced hearts on the windows collecting steam
and made jokes
out of every one of her most very secret dreams.
you may be tempted to philosophize and theorize every touch, or kiss
or force each blazing feeling into its own dark little cube
but don't be surprised
when the months go by, and you find that you are still love's rube.
there is no why.
it is what it is.
silky red blooms in the vortex of her cheeks
dull blue fire erupts
in her sleepy-lidded eyes, and lasts weeks.
she stuffed journal entries about you under her mattress
and drew arrow-pierced hearts on the windows collecting steam
and made jokes
out of every one of her most very secret dreams.
you may be tempted to philosophize and theorize every touch, or kiss
or force each blazing feeling into its own dark little cube
but don't be surprised
when the months go by, and you find that you are still love's rube.
there is no why.
it is what it is.
last night i dreamed that [info]romp, [info]ambeaux and i were all getting on a plane together to go somewhere. we were in the airport and i confessed to them that a guy had approached me after i'd bought my ticket asking me to check a package for him onto the flight. when i asked him what was in it, he said, "coffee filters and pot." and i said, "pot pot?" and he nodded. because i am such a sucker and can't say no, apparently, even to dream people i don't know from adam, i said, "welll, okay," but when i told this to ambeaux and romp, they said, "uh, no, you shouldn't do that." but the box had already been checked through and we were about to go through security to get to our gate for boarding. so we panicked and cancelled our trip and ran out of the airport as fast as we could.
when we got back to my house, leon was there with the kids and i had to explain what happened, feeling very stupid and sheepish and bad for ruining our trip to wherever we were going; and also feeling nervous because the drug dogs would surely sniff out that box and my name was associated with it. leon tried to get me to relax with a cup of tea, and romp and ambeaux went for a walk somewhere. as i was dozing, leon was reading a book next to me. suddenly the door to our room was kicked open and two men came in, scary white guys in black suits, pointing guns at me. i shut my eyes and put leon's book over my face and started crying. leon was pleading with them to not hurt me, that i didn't do anything wrong, but the men just yelled at him to shut up or he'd "get it" too. i remember very clearly swallowing very hard, and then BLAM BLAM! two shots right into my skull. it hurt like a very bad migraine. leon was screaming and crying next to me and i laid there waiting to die.
only i didn't die.
in a couple of minutes, i sat up. my head was still aching but there was surprisingly little blood. i was blind in one eye, and couldn't keep my balance. leon was freaking out and heaved me up onto my feet with my arm around his shoulders and started dragging me outside to the van to drive me to the hospital. i couldn't really speak but i started to feel this weird, hot, heavy sensation in the back of my throat, where the nasal passages intersect with it. as i sat in the passenger seat, i started to cough, and blood welled up in my mouth, and i felt a very heavy, hard, hot thing kind of drop from my nasal passages onto the back of my tongue. i opened my mouth and blood came pouring out into my hand and all down my chin. leon was just starting the van and looked over and started hollaring again at the sight of all the blood. i kind of drunkenly leaned over and patted him on the shoulder with my clean hand to try to calm him, and then coughed again and plop, and two little bent, blackened bullets fell out of my mouth into my bloody palm.
"fuckin' crackin'!" i shouted, laughing my ass off.
when we got back to my house, leon was there with the kids and i had to explain what happened, feeling very stupid and sheepish and bad for ruining our trip to wherever we were going; and also feeling nervous because the drug dogs would surely sniff out that box and my name was associated with it. leon tried to get me to relax with a cup of tea, and romp and ambeaux went for a walk somewhere. as i was dozing, leon was reading a book next to me. suddenly the door to our room was kicked open and two men came in, scary white guys in black suits, pointing guns at me. i shut my eyes and put leon's book over my face and started crying. leon was pleading with them to not hurt me, that i didn't do anything wrong, but the men just yelled at him to shut up or he'd "get it" too. i remember very clearly swallowing very hard, and then BLAM BLAM! two shots right into my skull. it hurt like a very bad migraine. leon was screaming and crying next to me and i laid there waiting to die.
only i didn't die.
in a couple of minutes, i sat up. my head was still aching but there was surprisingly little blood. i was blind in one eye, and couldn't keep my balance. leon was freaking out and heaved me up onto my feet with my arm around his shoulders and started dragging me outside to the van to drive me to the hospital. i couldn't really speak but i started to feel this weird, hot, heavy sensation in the back of my throat, where the nasal passages intersect with it. as i sat in the passenger seat, i started to cough, and blood welled up in my mouth, and i felt a very heavy, hard, hot thing kind of drop from my nasal passages onto the back of my tongue. i opened my mouth and blood came pouring out into my hand and all down my chin. leon was just starting the van and looked over and started hollaring again at the sight of all the blood. i kind of drunkenly leaned over and patted him on the shoulder with my clean hand to try to calm him, and then coughed again and plop, and two little bent, blackened bullets fell out of my mouth into my bloody palm.
"fuckin' crackin'!" i shouted, laughing my ass off.
2005/08/11
mudwater rafting
There was only one way for her to get across the murky waters of her river-mind. She set to the difficult and bleedingfingertips task of winding rough fiber to rope to wood she had severed from living trees with only her callouses and pungent leather boots as leverage. Everything she had managed to accomplish in the last five months of her life: the fires of a forge creating fevered feelings, the hard and unwavering beliefs of a zealot converted to love from atheistic longing for nothingness to be truth, the umbrellas she'd held aloft to winds so strong they ripped inside out and shredded and bent metal leaving shattered plastic handles behind in her grasp (to be saved and used later in the building of a raft she never thought she'd need) had been swept away by the churning and silty flow of the unbearable force behind his rejection.
While she worked, she sometimes cried. Other times (most times) she made no noise at all, nor were the two mutually exclusive. She set to the task like a pilgrim woman, a pioneer muscling her way through the hard frozen ground to dig a pit for poles and mortar and fire, the things she felt her body were made of. Her teeth were clenched, grim; her eyes grew hard and dark and glittery as they were sunk into the purpling bruises above her cheeks, below her brow. Sleepless and yet not sleepy, each moment that passed was one more moment she was rushed further downstream from the aching, yellowing memory of everything about him - smells, glances, mouthed propositions while everyone else in the house puttered, slept, prepared cocktails or snacks. Her desire for his lanky frame, her need for his voice pouring frothing honey-juice into the heretofore clogged, waxen holes of her ears, her craving for a bite of his bellyflesh, peppered with wiry black hairs and the skin beneath pale, quivery velvet: all of these things turned rigid and angry and hot in her gut. It wasn't as though she were a stranger to being dumped at the edge of some unfriendly and mud-wallowed riverbank at the end of her usefulness. But this was the first time she felt she hadn't deserved it. This was the first time she had ever felt as though the small of her back was crinkled up from bending backwards. This was the first time her throat hurt from uttering words she never believed she meant until they'd already been said and heard and disregarded. All the other times, all the other people - the tall ones and thick ones and bright ones and sluggish ones; the artists and rugby players and LSD dealers and firewalkers and construction workers and slackers-turned-cafe-royalty - they'd left her too. This river wasn't new. This river had been flowing all along, deep in the caverns of grey and pink matter, not that any of it mattered, so what a funny noun to use.
But his car had seemed safer and warmer than any of the cars before his. The construction worker would leave drywall dust in his seat as he leapt across the front seat at her reclining form. His hardhat would slip off his forehead and mark her own forehead with a deep red crease as he thrust a tool so hard, so cold, so fearless and sure of it self, into her dry and barren box. The LSD dealer threw endless jealous fits while he drove in erratic patterns all over the road, which at the time felt flattering and romantic, but soon became a disease that infected her own addled vision of the world, and turned her into someone who would never trust that she was good enough for you, or anyone - the demons he saw in her face were real, because she saw them in his, too. The rugby player could chew an aluminium beer can up in his mouth without drawing blood as he piloted his dad's caddilac around the suburbs, and the day that he bruised every square inch of skin on her generous breasts was the day she clamped his mouth shut on the metal and watched as he struggled to breathe, then swallow, then laughed when later his bowel movements forced screams from his throat like the ones she'd refused to allow out of her own mouth as he'd brutalized her; and more laughter when he ran from the house, leaving a toilet bowl full of blood because yes, if you are a nasty girl with aching tits, you laugh at gory shit like that. The queen of the cafe had only her height - 6'4" - and a good haircut going for her. Even the minivan she drove, the drugs she took were all stolen or borrowed. She only feigned her love of coke, the creative arts, and women, to play with every hanger-on that needed to be a part of someone's court, and now the pioneer raft-maker knew and could see clearly, how fake every moment with the queen had been. The firewalker, clearly the lover with the most exciting sounding job and who drove a smoke-belching diesel-powered pick-up, was only using fire as a cover. Inside, her spirit was a limpit, a nudibranch, a sea cucumber - impotent, cold, damp as davy jones' locker, without flame at all. Overcompensation at it's finest. And so her disdain and ever-present judgement, even while she was a willing participant, was also her armour in all of these relationships. She didn't deserve these lovers, this love, because she didn't really love them. Her actions, her willingness, they were all nothing but numb motions that kept her barely afloat, barely registering, a somewhat worthwhile human being with what appeared to be interpersonal relationships with others, however dysfunctional. At least, oh, at least she wasn't fucking alone. A death worse than fate, that is. With this thought she chuckled, and the noise that emitted from her raw and infected throat scared her. Her voice was gone, like every other part of her that had been worth anything at all.
She looked deep into the lines of her hands, which had gone blue-ish and numb and cracked from the hard work of binding her feet to the still-green poles meant to brace her above the current of the dirty river before her. All she saw was the blood pulsing underneath. Sometimes death and death-throes would bring bodily fluids like blood, semen, urine, out from their hiding places in the body. She wondered how long she would be able to contain the rest of her. Every other part of herself had been released into the universe already. Breath. The light from her eyes and heart and hair folicles. Gas. Flakes of skin. Parasites, a billion on the tip of each baby fingernail. And that is just the physical. Who knows what was left of her spirit, now, after everything else was gone? Sometimes she felt so empty she forgot that it wasn't always that way. All of those who had come before him, they had seen how full she was and had longed to lay in it, submerge in it, feel it on their skin and over their mouths and through their waggling toes and fingers.
It was at this point in her thoughts her raft was complete, her bindings tightened and secure. No matter what rough breeze, what brute of a wave or current should thrust against her and her wooden brace, she would remain attached. The raft's fate was her fate. Rapids, rocks, storms, she would go to sea in a sieve, just to transverse whatever evil lay beneath the surface, just to fully surrender and know one way or the other what the universe had in wait for her. A test with no grading curve. A dream where the ending was known before sleep's arrival. She used a pole to shove herself away from shore. In the trees and their shadows there, she saw some people, people she maybe knew, rolling their eyes and clicking their tongues. "You don't know the half of it," she thought, trying to ignore their doubt and shame of her as she felt the current pull on the raft's wood under her feet. "This river, flowing so fast and full of mud, is all of my dirt, all of my mess. If I make it across here, intact and still breathing, whether the raft survives the trip or not, will tell me the truth. Am I here to stay or will every moment I glimpse but don't grasp love...I mean, Love, with a capital L, and instead see it float off to take shelter in someone else's harbour, will I drown like a sailor from a poem in my own dirt? In my own currents? In my own self-obsession? Or will I float on green logs and hemp rope and scramble to the other side, untouched, and ready for something new and newer? Will the rough water harden me, or will it wash away hardness? Will I breathe or will I sink?"
Each lick of water, small or large, that heaved over the sides of the raft pressed her clothes to her skin, her hair to her face. Rain came and passed. Oars creaked in their rope casings as she pulled and pushed, her shoulders and back fiery, her head full of mucous and sound, twigs glued with pasty water to her bare feet and cheeks, her ankles bled in their gruff bindings. The river roared, the sand moved, the eyes in the trees kept rolling, and she realized that's all they were capable of. Determined and unwavering, her goal loomed. When you think of her, ask yourself: did she sail into warm, healing goodweatherbliss or did she tumble from the raft into rapid, jagged stonesaltysorrow. It is not yours to know, but it is yours to wonder.
So wonder.
While she worked, she sometimes cried. Other times (most times) she made no noise at all, nor were the two mutually exclusive. She set to the task like a pilgrim woman, a pioneer muscling her way through the hard frozen ground to dig a pit for poles and mortar and fire, the things she felt her body were made of. Her teeth were clenched, grim; her eyes grew hard and dark and glittery as they were sunk into the purpling bruises above her cheeks, below her brow. Sleepless and yet not sleepy, each moment that passed was one more moment she was rushed further downstream from the aching, yellowing memory of everything about him - smells, glances, mouthed propositions while everyone else in the house puttered, slept, prepared cocktails or snacks. Her desire for his lanky frame, her need for his voice pouring frothing honey-juice into the heretofore clogged, waxen holes of her ears, her craving for a bite of his bellyflesh, peppered with wiry black hairs and the skin beneath pale, quivery velvet: all of these things turned rigid and angry and hot in her gut. It wasn't as though she were a stranger to being dumped at the edge of some unfriendly and mud-wallowed riverbank at the end of her usefulness. But this was the first time she felt she hadn't deserved it. This was the first time she had ever felt as though the small of her back was crinkled up from bending backwards. This was the first time her throat hurt from uttering words she never believed she meant until they'd already been said and heard and disregarded. All the other times, all the other people - the tall ones and thick ones and bright ones and sluggish ones; the artists and rugby players and LSD dealers and firewalkers and construction workers and slackers-turned-cafe-royalty - they'd left her too. This river wasn't new. This river had been flowing all along, deep in the caverns of grey and pink matter, not that any of it mattered, so what a funny noun to use.
But his car had seemed safer and warmer than any of the cars before his. The construction worker would leave drywall dust in his seat as he leapt across the front seat at her reclining form. His hardhat would slip off his forehead and mark her own forehead with a deep red crease as he thrust a tool so hard, so cold, so fearless and sure of it self, into her dry and barren box. The LSD dealer threw endless jealous fits while he drove in erratic patterns all over the road, which at the time felt flattering and romantic, but soon became a disease that infected her own addled vision of the world, and turned her into someone who would never trust that she was good enough for you, or anyone - the demons he saw in her face were real, because she saw them in his, too. The rugby player could chew an aluminium beer can up in his mouth without drawing blood as he piloted his dad's caddilac around the suburbs, and the day that he bruised every square inch of skin on her generous breasts was the day she clamped his mouth shut on the metal and watched as he struggled to breathe, then swallow, then laughed when later his bowel movements forced screams from his throat like the ones she'd refused to allow out of her own mouth as he'd brutalized her; and more laughter when he ran from the house, leaving a toilet bowl full of blood because yes, if you are a nasty girl with aching tits, you laugh at gory shit like that. The queen of the cafe had only her height - 6'4" - and a good haircut going for her. Even the minivan she drove, the drugs she took were all stolen or borrowed. She only feigned her love of coke, the creative arts, and women, to play with every hanger-on that needed to be a part of someone's court, and now the pioneer raft-maker knew and could see clearly, how fake every moment with the queen had been. The firewalker, clearly the lover with the most exciting sounding job and who drove a smoke-belching diesel-powered pick-up, was only using fire as a cover. Inside, her spirit was a limpit, a nudibranch, a sea cucumber - impotent, cold, damp as davy jones' locker, without flame at all. Overcompensation at it's finest. And so her disdain and ever-present judgement, even while she was a willing participant, was also her armour in all of these relationships. She didn't deserve these lovers, this love, because she didn't really love them. Her actions, her willingness, they were all nothing but numb motions that kept her barely afloat, barely registering, a somewhat worthwhile human being with what appeared to be interpersonal relationships with others, however dysfunctional. At least, oh, at least she wasn't fucking alone. A death worse than fate, that is. With this thought she chuckled, and the noise that emitted from her raw and infected throat scared her. Her voice was gone, like every other part of her that had been worth anything at all.
She looked deep into the lines of her hands, which had gone blue-ish and numb and cracked from the hard work of binding her feet to the still-green poles meant to brace her above the current of the dirty river before her. All she saw was the blood pulsing underneath. Sometimes death and death-throes would bring bodily fluids like blood, semen, urine, out from their hiding places in the body. She wondered how long she would be able to contain the rest of her. Every other part of herself had been released into the universe already. Breath. The light from her eyes and heart and hair folicles. Gas. Flakes of skin. Parasites, a billion on the tip of each baby fingernail. And that is just the physical. Who knows what was left of her spirit, now, after everything else was gone? Sometimes she felt so empty she forgot that it wasn't always that way. All of those who had come before him, they had seen how full she was and had longed to lay in it, submerge in it, feel it on their skin and over their mouths and through their waggling toes and fingers.
It was at this point in her thoughts her raft was complete, her bindings tightened and secure. No matter what rough breeze, what brute of a wave or current should thrust against her and her wooden brace, she would remain attached. The raft's fate was her fate. Rapids, rocks, storms, she would go to sea in a sieve, just to transverse whatever evil lay beneath the surface, just to fully surrender and know one way or the other what the universe had in wait for her. A test with no grading curve. A dream where the ending was known before sleep's arrival. She used a pole to shove herself away from shore. In the trees and their shadows there, she saw some people, people she maybe knew, rolling their eyes and clicking their tongues. "You don't know the half of it," she thought, trying to ignore their doubt and shame of her as she felt the current pull on the raft's wood under her feet. "This river, flowing so fast and full of mud, is all of my dirt, all of my mess. If I make it across here, intact and still breathing, whether the raft survives the trip or not, will tell me the truth. Am I here to stay or will every moment I glimpse but don't grasp love...I mean, Love, with a capital L, and instead see it float off to take shelter in someone else's harbour, will I drown like a sailor from a poem in my own dirt? In my own currents? In my own self-obsession? Or will I float on green logs and hemp rope and scramble to the other side, untouched, and ready for something new and newer? Will the rough water harden me, or will it wash away hardness? Will I breathe or will I sink?"
Each lick of water, small or large, that heaved over the sides of the raft pressed her clothes to her skin, her hair to her face. Rain came and passed. Oars creaked in their rope casings as she pulled and pushed, her shoulders and back fiery, her head full of mucous and sound, twigs glued with pasty water to her bare feet and cheeks, her ankles bled in their gruff bindings. The river roared, the sand moved, the eyes in the trees kept rolling, and she realized that's all they were capable of. Determined and unwavering, her goal loomed. When you think of her, ask yourself: did she sail into warm, healing goodweatherbliss or did she tumble from the raft into rapid, jagged stonesaltysorrow. It is not yours to know, but it is yours to wonder.
So wonder.
2005/08/03
do you think you, boy,
scraped all the joy
out from between my thighs?
climbing over me in the pale
stapler's light through the bars of the jail,
a steeplechase into my pussy.
puncturing two holes in the mire
leaving behind a weak bent wire
the wounds heal, i'm not wussy.
do you think you, boy,
scraped all the joy
out from between my thighs?
"she recovers, that mother,
she uncovers every sister and brother,
exposed in her vast white expanse
developed a new flavour of adulterous underpants."
haha, i bled in them, fresh and stinging
and running through a new field, flinging
off skin and matted hair and dreams
squirting out the used condoms and your creams
scarring and screaming and laughing, away
i've uninvited you to my play.
do you think you, boy,
scraped all the joy
out from between my thighs?
scraped all the joy
out from between my thighs?
climbing over me in the pale
stapler's light through the bars of the jail,
a steeplechase into my pussy.
puncturing two holes in the mire
leaving behind a weak bent wire
the wounds heal, i'm not wussy.
do you think you, boy,
scraped all the joy
out from between my thighs?
"she recovers, that mother,
she uncovers every sister and brother,
exposed in her vast white expanse
developed a new flavour of adulterous underpants."
haha, i bled in them, fresh and stinging
and running through a new field, flinging
off skin and matted hair and dreams
squirting out the used condoms and your creams
scarring and screaming and laughing, away
i've uninvited you to my play.
do you think you, boy,
scraped all the joy
out from between my thighs?
i was sitting on the couch in gramma and grampa's old house in brampton, ontario (9 dorchester drive), watching t.v. with uncle eric and his wife yvonne. uncles robert and mickey were also in the house somewhere, i could hear them talking. everyone else was at the care home. we were all waiting to hear from pallitive care about gramma passing. so you can imagine my surprise when she appeared in the doorway of the t.v. room, peered in, and then moved on. no one else noticed and in my excitement to see her up and about i decided to keep the news to myself because i wanted to have her alone for at least a moment before the whole house realized she had recovered, and had come back. i tried to just casually get up and walk out of the room, and it worked, no one noticed. gramma was standing the hallway, waiting for me. i walked over to her and whispered, "thank you, thank you," and put my arms around her. she seemed so small but that was okay. i hugged her tight and said, "i'm so glad you're here, you're back, you're rehabilitated." and she didn't say anything back, she just shook her head slowly, and i realized that she wasn't really there, that i was having a dream. her eyes were still bright and cheerful, however, so i felt silly getting choked up, but i was. i rubbed my hand up and down her brown, soft, wrinkly forearm. i pressed my face into her grey, pale hair and smelled the du maurier smoke and the unrefined and pungent odor of instant coffee. she was wearing a retro dress, something from the 70s, white with brown and orange and black flowers on it. "i don't care that you're not really here, and i'm not either," i finally said, pressing my palm into hers, feeling her wedding ring dig into the tender joints on my fingers, "i don't care. this is okay. let's not be scared." she took her other hand and put it on my head, still not speaking, and just softly brushed it along the length of my hair, and i leaned my forehead down onto her shoulder, and watched as my tears fell onto her dress, leaving tiny dark spots on one orange flower.
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