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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

i woke up in the pearly morning light and
my skin had speckled mica in the night
drinking down all that water from all them copper pipes
striped light falls easy on stripped down tights as
my tongue ached against all our silent fights
i'll slice down all your pirate kites with my powdered glass string might.

and this is how to write a song
this is how to right a wrong
this is how to right a wrong
that is how we'll get along.

how hard can it be to be me?
harder than using a sandal to stem the sea
harder than writing a dear john, and harder than to flee
when everything wrinkles under palms sweaty
when you squint your eyes against the clouds for being too sunny
you'll know how hard it is to be me.

and this is how to write a song
this is how to right a wrong
this is how to right a wrong
that is how we'll get along.

my wet glassy spheres roll around in their places
find the glittery dots in my skin and count thirty-six paces
i pass every alley and all them blacked out anime faces
and all costello's detectives throw in the towels on their cases,
while 'round and 'round the memory-dog of you chases
and all the dripping scent markers i left leave no traces.

and this is how to write a song
this is how to right a wrong
this is how to right a wrong
that is how we'll get along

plains of abraham

i had a dream that was really a memory
of drifting along, a long, with you, on the shimmery grasses of the plains of abraham
i had forgotten that day when our hands had yet to touch
and the ocean breezes were like me: teases
and i laid under the swingset and you poured wine between my lips
the whole world ended on the shore
the horizon was an illusion.

up that hill in jericho
lost in a maze of million dollar babies
antique roadsters and the giant front yard trees only the rich keep
shading their excesses from a curb dotted with bins
never touched by can collectors
we were stoned
and laughed harder the more we puffed around cul de sacs
youth and forever were the illusions.

so when i woke up i had to ask you, "was it real?"
and your memory had changed too, you said it was but the baby was there, too
out there on our version of the plains of abraham
maybe he swang in the swing and maybe it was water on my lips
but either way your hands found both my hips
and the isolation was a beautiful illusion.

s/he & me

when i see it happening again,
i see it happening again
and i want to pull out every eyelash
pluck every cumulus cloud
sink every boat-shaped moon
and save you from it all.

she
oh, she
leans so heavily
hard into me

and he
oh, he
slips so deliciously
wet into me

when i see it happening again,
i see it happening again
and i want to yank out both those arms
thrust my fist into every garden
and gnaw through each worn-out smile
just to save you from it all.

she
oh, she
has anger unrighteous
directed unto thee

and he
oh, he
knows every synonym for lightness
when he is with me.

when i see it happening again,
i see it happening again
i want to smell each of your digits individually
press my cheek to your ankle longingly
and tie my legs to all bare branches
just to save you from it all,
yes,
i'll save you from it all.

this is actually from 1993 or something.

Day is over you're alone grab a bottle unplug the phone she's there waiting, anticitpating a sweet speak but you talk dirty when you're drunk and there's no use in faking it
Damaged mind you're the crusher and you can't get past the fact you don't really love her does it matter she already knows you can tell by the way she throws a fit every time day is over
Nighttime runs in rivertime you try to sleep but life is there permeates the air bares its teeth and starts to speak another bit of dregs to swallow rest assured there's more to follow
Damaged mind you're the crusher and you can't get past the fact you don't really lover her does it matter she already knows you can tell by the fit she throws every time day is over
Drink it in, the drug, the fog, the moonbeam fuck, you tell yourself it's typical of your rotten luck you're cursed in the heart you're not totally human something missing in the zodiac on the day of your birth she doesn't care she thinks theres some worth in the damaged mind you're the crusher
Her blood shines bright on your hands you broke the vessle that carried her and now she's dead beside you in bed when you knew all along you didn't really love her
It's not going to happen you tried to say she'd do anything to twist you around and she did with those wide wihite thighs and the dew between to tempt you salty tears in the seas release
Damaged mind can't resist the slutty taste of Venus kiss and the velvet tongue and razor lips and now she's dead that girl you had you had no choice you had to hurt and now she's dead, Crusher.
Crusher.
Crush Her.

last night i dreamed i was staying as a guest on the flaming lips' compound. only instead of it being situated in oklahoma it was in the desert canyons of utah. the dream started with leon and i and the lips and all their friends and hangers-on standing at the precipice of a huge canyon, 1000 feet down, and looking across to the other side, at sunset. across the chasm the desert was on fire. every scrubby bunch of shrub, every cactus, anything that could light on fire, did. and it was spreading, quickly. wayne coyne seemed unperturbed. i asked him if we were really going to be safe or if we should start to pack up and move on. he shrugged and said that if the fire managed to leap across the chasm, he would be very surprised. he didn't seem that interested in talking to me. i got the distinct impression i was a nuisance somehow. i tried to just stay out of his way as a result.

everyone wandered back into the house after the sun went down. the fires across the way kept the light level even. i found my way into a deserted guestroom and lay on a single bed in the gloaming, a mexican-style blanket tucked under my feet. i looked out the window to watch to make sure the fire didn't spread across the canyon to the FLips' property. i was shocked when suddenly a large flame licked up at the window, from directly below me, and jumped down my throat. it didn't hurt. it felt, in fact, kind of nice, though my entire body was immediately dulled and soothed and made slow and incredibly warm. i tried to get up to tell everyone what had just happened, and that i wanted them to check the perimeter of the house to make sure no more rogue flames had appeared, but moving was incredibly difficult. i could feel the fire in my belly, hot and hard and firm, more of a coal than a flame. i managed to open the door to the room i was in and make my way down a long, dark hallway covered in pictures of the FLips from when they were touring. wayne coyne was crossing the hallway from one room to another when he spotted me stumbling along. alarmed, he walked towards me, saying, "hey, hey there, girly. are you alright now?" i was bent over at the waist and the heat from inside me was making sweat drip from my forehead. i had one hand on the wall as i moved, and i accidently knocked picture frames off the wall as he approached me, and i felt embarrassed.

"i think i'm sick," i said. "i swallowed fire." he put one arm around my waist and his other hand on my forehead. "you're burning up," he said, "come on, come with me." he started to lead me down the hallway to a different, more brightly lit room. his wife was there, watching television and chatting with a bunch of other people. i tried to tell them about how i'd see fire right outside the house but every time my mouth opened all that would come out was smoke. as wayne laid me down on his bed, i could see my skin was turning red from the inside out. little splotches of redness would bloom on a the backs of my hands and then spread quickly from one to the other, until i couldn't see normal flesh colour at all. "she has a fever," wayned told everyone, "a real high one. come on, now. let's help her, okay? i'm going to get some medication. michelle, you make her smile or turn the channel, whatever she wants."

michelle, his wife, was a good nurse. she pulled the blankets up around my chin and kept her cool, ringed hand on my forehead and told me funny stories. i could feel my feet turning red, then my legs. as the burning rushed up to my crotch i started to panic a little and writhed. "i'm going to burn from the inside out because i swallowed fire, michelle." she laughed and said, "you're delirious, hun'. just try to relax." the t.v. was flickering and people were smoking cigarettes and pot and i would have given anything for a margarita or a beer or even just water. but it wasn't happening, because i realized that if i opened my mouth, the fire had gotten so big inside me, it would jump out of my throat, desperate for more oxygen, and set everything in the FLips' home on fire. i did not want to be the woman that burned down their house. i kept my lips shut. i started to doze a little, feeling hotter and hotter and unable to keep my eyes open.

finally i was shaken awake by wayne. the room was empty then, and dark, the t.v. off. he was sitting next to me on the bed. he'd opened the curtains on the windows so i could see how the desert across the canyon was completely in flames now, like a great wall of fire, held back from the house only by the chasm. "look," he said. he turned so we were facing the same way, and then held my hand nice and tight in his. "everything is burning," he said quietly, and i felt in love with him suddenly. i wanted to talk to him and tell him this, but i was still afraid flames would come out of my mouth. "it's okay," he said, "we're safe." he leaned in and kissed my forehead. the bliss i felt at his cool lips, the feel of his beard and mustache pressed against my sweaty forehead, was too much, and i opened my mouth to say, "thank you, thank you," and my throat felt raw and dry and no sound came out and no flames did either. i was happy and feverish and turned my face up to meet his, and he put his lips on my cheek, then my mouth. we kissed and it felt hot yet chaste. when we parted, i looked down my legs and the bed to the window again and at the great desert fire. wayne stayed silent next to me. and that was when flames erupted from my toes, under the blanket, and burned through, casting an eerie, flickering light across the room. it didn't hurt. we both stared at my feet, but neither of us seemed particularly amazed or shocked. "i'm burning up," i said, softly, almost to myself.

"that's alright," wayne said, "when it's all over, you'll lay your fertile self down on the ground, and make rich soil, and everything will grow out of you. my sweet volcano."

"this is the worst fever i ever had," i said, watching the fire climb to my ankles and begin to consume my calves.

"the tylenol did nothing," he said, sadly, shaking his head.