invitation by omission

early autumn rain caused her lips to bloom succulent
and her limbs to cool and soften as petals unedged.
gossamer drapes gently swelling and shrinking
and releasing wafts of her faint perfume lured you;
she had all the windows open even as the air turned chill.
all the fat rain drops on her window sill
smeared and slick under your fingertips as you
smuggle yourself in as a thief
would attend his own funeral.
gladly die a thousand little deaths there, dear
smother under her downy covers and drown in honey hot
in relation to (and defiance of) the turning season.
there is no love like the love of your murderess,
languid summer days fading: panther-like, undressed.

i had the most terrible dream last night. i was having an affair. i was meeting the man at some kind of sex club where he'd rented a private room. when i got there, we started to have sex right away but soon another man came into the room and tried to rob us. the man i was having the affair with went completely beserk and murdered this other guy brutally, right in front of me, and then ran away. i pulled on all my clothes and walked out of there going holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. i didn't want to tell anyone what had happened because the fact that i was cheating would get out. but i also knew that it would only be a matter of time before the cops came looking for my lover and me. it was actually a really terrible, terrible feeling.

then somehow i was sleeping at the top of this multi-story circus tent, on an air mattress, with misha on his own mattress next to me. we were out in the woods. it was probably four or five stories high. early in the morning the big top tent started to fall down and we fell with it. but we were safe because of the air mattresses under us. the fall took a long time, it was kind of like floating. i was worried about the poles hitting me on the head on the way down.

then i found a notebook julian had been doodling in. it was full of porno he'd drawn. i didn't quite know what to make of that so i just put it back where i'd found it.

then i was naked in the woods, behind a puppet show screen. and there was a strange naked man behind me. we were putting on an adult puppet show. he was having sex with me while we performed and the audience had no idea. his penis was a very strange shape. sort of flattened and rigid and thick. then i awoke.

wiping the sheet of morning dew from the inside of the windscreen put beads
of water on her palm and streaks
of oil on the glass
and didn't quite clear the vision of the road anyway.
smoothing out the hastily hand-crafted map
you'd written her the night before the residual water
blurred the ink lines on the paper and stained her skin blue
so it looked like an old prison tattoo
and she felt tough.
the car wasn't running great but she gunned it and chunked it
steadily into 5th
and followed your smeared directions perfectly over
a dawn-kissed highway, pavement still chilled from night
a bridge, or two, over fog banks and lapping rivers.
arriving with her jacket pulled up tight
around her neck she threw your paper to the floor of the car
and swung out of the door onto a path
to the place you'd directed her
without understanding completely
the arms she fell into that morning
provided the last comfort she'd know or need to know
for the rest of her natural life.

last night i dreamt that my old pal and former roomate, chris d., was sitting on a couch with me, watching t.v.

we were eating snacks and conversing with the t.v on in the background. it'd been a couple of years since we'd spoken and so it was a lot of catching up. he was telling me he'd just moved back to vancouver after being in victoria for six years. he and his partner had broken up and he was trying to start over. then we were reminiscing about when we were roomates in north burnaby and how that all went down. what a dramatic time in our lives, he said. i nodded knowingly. we should hang out again some more some time, he said. i replied sure! he said, we should have like, a naughty night togehter. i froze with a chip in my hand halfway between the bowl and my mouth.

"a...a 'naughty night'?"

"yeah...you know. where we're naughty."

i put the chip on my tongue and chewed thoughtfully. "what do you mean? like, go out and vandalize stuff? or..."

"no no. nothing illegal. more like, you put on some lingerie, i wear my boxers. and we bake erotic cupcakes and read, like, erica jong out loud to each other."

i couldn't believe my ears. i nearly choked on my chip trying to hold back my laughter - more from shock than disgust. i mean, i'd always dug chris and thought he was hot and funny and sexy (and once he'd even gone in for a kiss and i didn't exactly resist, but it ended there) but it'd seriously been YEARS since we'd seen one another and already he was asking me to get sexy with him? so i was trying to not snort and i said sort of wryly, "yeah, and we could, like, watch porn together."

"YEAH!" he said, as if the idea hadn't crossed his mind. "WE COULD!"

we ate more chips and watched more 'price is right' for a while in silence.

then i said, "if we could find porn that i actually enjoy, that is."

"hm," he said. "it's difficult to find stuff that you can enjoy is it?"

"i'm sort of picky," i said.

"have you found anything at all you like before?"

"oh sure. there's one actress i really like. i think her name is spring? i can't remember. i'd have to look it up."

"you...you go in for girls?"

"sure. sure, yeah. certain types of girls."

"you're more fun than i even thought possible," chris beamed. i was suddenly in a kissing mood and moved in for the kill. i figured after this conversation he wasn't going to mind a little make-out session. to my surprise, though, when i started to put my lips on his cheek, he pulled away slightly and looked uncomfortable.

"oh. no naughty?" i said, feeling a bit embarrassed and confused.

"not NOW. on naughty night!"

"oh."

i stood up from the couch then thinking i needed to clear my head. i walked from the room and into another room just down the hall. it was like an office cafeteria with sandwich and coke machines. i decided i wanted a coke and put my two dollar coin into the big glowing red machine's slot. chris came in behind me at that point and my coin seemed to get stuck. i got mad and hit the machine. chris came up behind me and put his arms around my waist. but i was obsessed with getting this can of coke. the coin fell out and i put it in again but no coke came out. i hit the machine again and a bunch of coins fell into the "return money" slot. chris's hands were moving up my body from behind, grabbing at my breasts. i was scooping the coins out of the slot and laughing, "there must be twenty bucks here!" i hit the machine again and suddenly it was like a slot machine, coins and bills pouring out the place coke cans were supposed to be coming out, just gushing. i slipped from chris's grasp and got on my knees and started to use the skirt part of my dress to gather up the hundreds if not thousands of dollars from the floor and the machine. i was so excited. money was pouring out from my dress and still coming out of the machine. i tried to stand up, lost my balance, and then chris steadied me.

"i think i'm rich!" i said, breathless into his sly face.

"you're also not wearing any underwear," he smirked.

then i woke up.

for a young boy i once knew

i've sat here quietly weeping into my wine glass
thinking that you think i wish i had one over you

but i haven't.

any power i had was given freely in a moment i cannot finger-point
but it had something to do with
a story you told me, unwilling.

when i made that wish long ago,
long before i even knew you,
or myself
i wasn't even sure what i was aching for.

through incidents and coincidence i feel
we pry one another from our shells
white underbellies exposed
and we don't even care
if the other devours us whole.

one day your life will be turned inside out by a knot
someone else loosened. it won't be your fault and it won't be a punishment
or consequence of some action you took
or failed to take. it'll just happen.
you'll be tempted to blame yourself - that's human.
oh ego! keep your feet on the ground. you'll be tempted to beat yourself up, oh!
it's about you!
and me too.
that was the swipe of a feather, the misbeat of a drum, the pebble you tripped on
the crowd that swallowed you whole
the tears your mother shed the day that you were born
the longing, the sweat, the easy frightened laughter let loose at a funeral;
the out of tune piano, the lost child, the tiny blue-black ant
you failed to notice on the edge of your coke can
and the subsequent sour-tasting bite on your lip.
it's a language you don't understand (but love)
and meringue on a pie, and clacking of high heels across a schoolroom floor.
it's your hand clenching in excitement and your mother's perfume
floating down hallways long after she's left.
it's not anything you can control, is what i'm saying.
you need to just feel your body hit the ground and pay yourself some mind,
you just need to put on your dancing shoes once in a while, yeah?
just to stamp around your living room and you need to
fall alone into bed with your heart open to everything it can feel
and answer my text messages
at midnight.
that undone knot means you're free and unbound by
what held you tight before.
i know it's scary, but i'll be waiting way down here
floating, all a-lonely, in the black water, waiting.
so jump.

i was out in the woods with my family. we found a carved horn and i blew on it for laughs. it made this horrible deep blatting noise and suddenly the whole earth shook and the sky grew dark. it seemed i woke some sort of terrible process from deep within the earth and the end of the world was imminent. there was nothing we could do to stop it. the first sign that this was really happening was when a distant mountain began to smoke ominously like a volcano. misha said, "it's frickin mordor!"

we went back to this hotel place we were staying at and walked into the restaurant where all the guests had gathered to stare out the windows at the gathering dark and the smoking mountain. a woman was sipping on a drink and suddenly she started choking. i ran over to her and pried her mouth open to find a creature trying to crawl it's way down her throat. i grabbed it by its reptilian tale and pulled it free, though it was hard to keep a grip on because her saliva had made it's scales so slippery. her throat was bulging and her eyes were watering and she was making a terrible noise. i finally got it out and slammed it hard against the table and knocked it unconscious. it was a tiny dragon, complete with little fairy wings.

a man behind me put his hand on my shoulder and said, "hey there, good job." i turned and it was bill murray. i said, "wow, hey, thanks. i didn't know you were staying here." "yeah, i come up a couple weeks a year. i'm impressed with how you have single handedly saved one woman's life while simultaneously bringing on the end of the world. what are you doing later?"

"er, not much, just going back to my room, probably. to wait to die."

"what room number is that? i'm here by myself and i'd rather not be alone for this, if you can imagine that."

"well, what room number are you?"

"why, you wanna come up?" i nodded. "great, come on." he took me by the hand and led me to the bank of elevators.

once we got to his room he fired up his laptop and had some music going. he had to have been on like the 20th floor because the view out his windows of the smoking mountain was amazing. we were looking out over a lake that had turned black from the reflection of the dark sky and woods and hills. it didn't occur to me how strange it was to be in a skyscraper style hotel in the middle of the woods. we started chatting and he was making laugh. "got anything to drink?" he asked me. "i've got some southern comfort in my room that i could go get," i said, laughing. southern comfort is such a teenager drink and i felt totally stupid telling him that. he laughed and pulled out his own giant bottle of it. "no need for that, missy!" he pulled out tumblers from the bathroom and poured us a couple of huge glasses. "to the end of the world!" i toasted, and we drank. i started to instantly feel drunk.

"hey, what's one thing you always wished you would do before you died?" he asked me.

i thought for a minute and then said, "get a tattoo."

"oh yeah? what stopped you?"

"the one i wanted was pretty detailed and would have cost a lot of money and i could never justify it," i replied.

"did you know i learned how to tattoo really basic stuff, when i was on SNL?"

"no! really?"

"hell yes. and i even have my equipment here. you want?"

"YEAH I WANT BILL MURRAY TO GIVE ME A TATTOO ON MY LAST DAY ON EARTH!"

he pulled out this hardshell suitcase from under the bed and popped it open. inside were inkpots and needles and odd liquids and cords and things. he started making space on the nightstand for all his equipment and i couldn't stop laughing, between gulps of southern comfort, that is.

"oh hey, but you know what? i mean we're gonna get pretty drunk and you're gonna be pretty sore after i'm finished here, so...if we wanted to, like, fool around..." he said, looking at me with that funny puppy dog look, "you know, end of the world and all, one last hurrah and what have you...we should probably do it now."

i thought about it for a sec and then said, "huh. ok. makes sense." i laid back on the bed and he climbed on top of me and started kissing me. but i kept laughing because it was so ridiculous, and his foot kept knocking the nightstand where all his tattoo ink was, and he was laughing, and the sky outside was getting darker, and then suddenly there was a pounding on the door.

"shit, we gotta hide all this stuff!" he said, jumping off me. he started to scramble to try and put away all the tattooing gear. "i'm not licensed to operate in this province! they're gonna bust me! help!" i was still laughing but started to help him. the person on the other side of the door pounded again just as we got everything tucked under the bed. i stood up and looked out the peephole. my mom was on the other side, looking afraid and teary eyed, so i unlocked the door and let her in.

"what are you doing in here when the world's about to end?"

"me and BILL MURRAY were having a drink and talking is all," i said, feeling guilty.

"don't you want to be with ME? with your FAMILY?"

"well, sure...but i didn't think it was going to happen instantaneously. bill was gonna give me a tattoo and then i was gonna come right back down to our room."

her face softened a bit. "oh. ok. what are you drinking? what tattoo were you going to get?"

bill poured her a stiff one from the giant southern comfort bottle and handed it to her. "southern comfort, madam. and we hadn't decided on the tattoo yet, had we, christa?"

"i think i just want the word 'vegan' on my wrist," i said. the both nodded in approval but my mom pulled out a sketchbook and some pencil crayons from somewhere and drew a really amazing, elaborate peacock in a japanese style water garden. "what about something like this, though?" she said.

"wow, mom, you're drawing skills have really improved!"

"i know, right?"

"that looks good, but it would probably take too long. we'd be dead before the peacock was finished."

bill pulled his works out from under the bed again and said, "let's go with the word vegan to start with. then you can take off your shirt and i'll start on the peacock between your breasts."

my mom was drunk by now and looked at me with a fluttery eyelash face and fell over laughing. the mountain in the distance rumbled loudly and i squeezed the blankets on the bed with my one good hand, and woke up.

it was probably three summers ago the last time we laid together on the beach
and it was quiet or abandoned
our blankets were ruffled and slithering sand made it's way through the creases
i was laying with my cool white feet on your bare chest,
reading my book while the breeze took issue with whatever page i chose.
i got to an exciting part and dug my toes into the flesh of your torso unconsciously and
that woke you from your nap
so you stretched a little and patted my calf softly.
i rested the book open on my body and peered at you from behind my sunglasses, half-smiling
as you sat up to take stock of our surroundings.
a thick swatch of scotch broom behind us rattled off scratchy songs in a wind-driven brogue
from the other side of that thicket a university student squealed over a frisbee toss.
you stood, wiping thin patches of sand off the back of your swim shorts
and raised your arms over your head in a little yoga nouveau.
i closed my eyes with the weight of my hardcover
comforting my belly for i don't know how long in all that quiet.
when i opened them again you were wading into the tawny ocean and shade was creeping over our oasis
the frisbee game had degenerated into peals of laughter and an awkward game of tag
the girl in her white bikini being caught by young men in board shorts and
the whole heap falling in grass breathless
i watched with amusement and felt glad of the fact that
i'd already made my impression by that age.
you were swimming far out into the inlet by then
and i watched your golden head bob slowly away
what perspective i had to wonder at
when i took into account the north shore mountains beyond
and the oil barge you may have stowed away on.

i was walking down a street window shopping with a couple of friends when i noticed this gorgeous, tall, dark-haired and dark-eyed man crossing the road towards us. i thought in my head, "wow, he's amazingly intense looking!" but then quickly forgot about it as my friends were pointing at some cool things in a boutique window. we then turned and kept walking but i felt like i was being watched. i turned my head and glanced over my shoulder and sure enough, the sexy man was following us. he was intently staring back at me, and i got the distinct feeling he was admiring my ass! i was wearing jeans and felt suddenly self-concious about it but what could i do?

then, my friends disappeared and the pavement turned into a raised pathway made of wooden planks and all the storefronts looked like they were from the bygone days of the frontier - all brown wood and old fashioned gold lettering. i realized i somehow walked into a revival society's theme park or else gone back in time, because when i looked down i was wearing a lovely long 1800's style dress, with a corset and bustle and a full skirt and a lace shawl. i was still window shopping, though, and i when i paused to look in at a millinery's display, i saw not only my own reflection, but that of the incredibly gorgeous man, standing directly behind me. the look in his eyes, in the glass, caused me to feel at once aroused and afraid. he moved up close behind me and slid his hands around my corseted waist and drew me tightly up against his body. in the window reflection i watched in fascination as his head leaned down towards my neck and then i closed my eyes as i felt his lips raise shivers of pleasure from my flesh. we didn't speak or even really seem to breathe.

i felt i was in a daze. he stopped kissing me but kept his hands on my body, guiding me across the dirt road to a saloon or tavern. he pushed us through the door, threw coin money at the bartender and led me straight up the stairs. still we did not speak, i didn't even know his name, only that he was absolutely the most desirable man i'd ever laid eyes on.

the room was rustic, sparsely furnished. he shut and locked the door behind us by turning a skeleton key. he walked directly to the bed and pulled the covers completely aside, and then grabbed my hand and pulled me to him as he sat at the edge of the thin mattress. it didn't take him long to undo the corset and then all the buttons of my pretty pink blouse underneath. freed from my trappings he pushed me down onto the bed next to him, not smiling, not talking. i couldn't recall ever being so turned on in my life. i couldn't have wanted anything more than i wanted to make love to this stranger in the wild, wild west. he began pulling at the pearly buttons on the front of my skirt and i was all fumbly fingers at his vest and shirt. the room was mostly silent and warm, sunlight streaming in through filmy windows, wood beams of the floor and the bed creaking slightly. his hair was tousled, he could not stop staring into my eyes, i felt the shirt fall open and my fingertips sang against his bare chest. once my skirt was laid open he began to yank at his own belt buckle and i was so eager, so eager to see what he was about to unleash...

AND THEN I WOKE UP.


WHAT A RIP OFF, MAN.

folding t-shirts

there is this tiny place way down in my solar plexus
where things like wistful singing, jagged sunsets, the birth of babies,
sincere laughter and evil wrongdoings live.
it fills and empties like a tight little bladder
waiting for and triggered by signs of the apocolypse
all seven signs:
a heaving sigh, restless fingertips, dark eyes,
thinking about you, abandoning pretention, forgetting laws,
typical city traffic,
that kind of thing.
i am trying in my way to both nuture and quell every vitreous humour
that attempts to fill that little physiological sac
as it inflates, i'm drastic
a poetess, impulsive and frightening, flooding the world with feeling and
crying herself to sleep, begging for heart agony, for jealous retribution,
for living severe hollywood romance.
as it deflates, i'm sensible
filled with terror and superstition, pragmatically neverminding the signals
and investing nothing but money, effort, and time,
doing the right thing by puritanical standards.
either way
i'll win, i figure.