letter to a former lover

an integral part of my beauty is my size,
the shape i take in your eyes,
the mutual-attraction surprise
when my hips-no-tize.
i trapped you in my thighs
and you sighed
'oh my'.
and i thought i'd feel more on guard and jaded
when it turned out i'd been berated
by a predilection unabated
since your desire was fated &
heretofore unsated;
you were only casually frustrated by
such a fetish unrated.
so what, who cares, if i'm only flesh for your eyes
and toes for your lips and
hips for your kiss
the spirit incidental, unmissed
just fractionated bits,
sectioned, unwhole
your stolen glimpses
of my fat eclipses:
the dionysian side of an apollonian life.

i dreamed i was watching a reality show about people training to become chefs. and one of the contestants, a young guy, in his 20s, was diagnosed with "a very rare but very aggressive form of adrenal gland cancer" only a couple of weeks away from graduation.

the show went on and on, and showed him going to the doctor, and breaking down in tears, and having to leave the dormitory of the school, and then had him going to some sort of cancer support group or something. and he was a kind of a big guy, on the heavy side, and one of the show's producers said to him during one of their private interview moments, "you do realize that you could have prevented your cancer if you'd actually taken care of yoursef. if you'd not let yourself become so fat. if you'd listened to all your family and friends and teachers when you were a kid and not been so lazy and gone and gotten exercise and everything, right?"

and the guy stood up from his chair and said, "what all those people did to me, the way they treated me, from the time i started to show signs of being a big kid, was not teach me how to take care of myself in a loving way, ok! they didn't teach me that! they taught me to hate myself! not to love myself. and how can you 'take care of yourself' when all you can feel is loathing when you look in the mirror and that's all reinforced by every person in an authority position your whole life! i didn't give myself cancer just like i didn't make myself fat. if anything they're as responsible for my current situation as i am. and you, sir, can shoulder some of the blame as well, for being a hate mongering exploitationist." and he totally just walked off camera and the voice over said he never came back to the show and they couldn't find out how he was doing anymore.

and i remember i was just laying on the couch watching this in disbelief and laughing and crying at the same time. i woke up feeling really fired up. sometimes it pays to have a smarty-pants subconscious.

i dreamed that julian went missing for the better part of an afternoon and evening. we suspected he'd taken the bus to the wave pool so i went on a big hunt for him. he was supposed to be carrying his dad's cell phone but he wouldn't answer it. it took forever and i was becoming frantic. just as i was standing on a street corner begging people to help me, my cell rang. on the other end was julian, only his voice was deep like a man's. i asked him where he'd been, and told him how worried i was and why didn't he call us? he said he was busy. i said, doing what? he mumbled something and when i asked him to repeat it, he wouldn't it. then it dawned on me that he'd gone and had sex with someone. "BUT YOU'RE ELEVEN," i cried. "not anymore, mommy," he said, in his big man voice.

*shudder*

two

dream I
i was living in a co-op townhouse situation and was having trouble with one of the other famillies that lived there. a single mom with an impossible number of children (8 or more) of varying ages from infancy up to pre-teen was being very irresponsible and neglectful of them. one day one of the kids knocked on my door and said there was a problem in their house and could i come help? so i walked over and she directed me upstairs. i went into the one of the bedrooms and there, propped up in the corner like a kind of oversized doll, was one of the older girls - 9 or so - dead. the smaller children were crawling all over her lap and combing her hair and putting gold lipstick on her. she looked kind of like an egyptian queen or something.

i became very enraged. no one could tell me how she died. and the mom wasn't home (of course). so i decided i would hunt her down and began walking down towards a shopping centre in the area. as i got nearer, i had to cross a very busy highway situation and there in the middle of the road was a shopping trolley with another one of her kids - this one not more than 2 years old - just sitting in it, abandoned, and crying hysterically. i rushed over and picked him up and pushed the cart across the street. i then stormed all through the strip mall looking for her. i finally found her in a hair salon getting her nails done or something. i shoved the baby into her lap and started yelling at her. "your oldest daughter is dead and your younger children are in danger and you're here getting your make-up done? what the fuck is your problem, lady?" her demeanor was flippant and uncaring and i wanted to smash her face in. instead i pulled out my cellphone and started to dial 911. then i woke up.

dream II
i was in the lounge area of a huge fancy hotel (i think it was called 'the regent'). i was sitting at a table, naked, and seated across from me was naked jeff goldblum (shuttup). i slowly came to the realization that this was some kind of swinging sex club thing happening, and he was my date. it was very exciting! i got up to get myself another drink from the bar because the waitress hadn't been around for a while and jeff said he didn't feel comfortable standing up "right that second" (again, shuttup). when i got to the bar, i was ordering my drink, when i heard a woman behind me say, "look at that disgusting fat cow over there. who let her in? i thought this place screened their participants. the quality of clientele is really going to shit. god, seriously." and her friend said, "yeah, ew. who feels like fucking when you have to look at that beforehand?"

this infuriated me. after i got my drink i turned around to look them in the eyes. they were your typical tight bodied bleach blonde LA aspiring actresses. i stalked (and jiggled) my way over to their table and said, "who are you two to talk, you scrawny bimbos? you WISH you could make your fake tans look as good as i make my fat look. if you were smart you wouldn't try to pick on a woman twice your size, either. you're as dumb as you are talentless."

they threw a few more insults my way as i walked back to the table where jeff was waiting for me. he was furious.

"you're not just going to take that from them, are you?"

"what?"

"well, they're still over there, looking at you and snickering and pointing at you. you should put a stop to it once and for all."

"you really think so?"

he nodded.

i thought it over for a couple of minutes. then i downed my drink in one fell swoop, stood up, and walked back over to their table. only one of them was missing. her compatriot said, "you got a problem, fatty?"

"where's your friend?"

"she went to the powder room. why?"

i ignored her and walked into the ladies room. just as i opened the door, the woman i was after was walking out. "what do you want?" she said. "to kick your ass," i replied. i only meant to rough her up a bit, scare her into shutting up. for some reason i had a handful of those tiny, multicoloured, crumbly wax birthday candles. she was backing away from me, up against a wall, and i threw a couple of candles at her, that hit her in the face. she said, "what the hell, what are you doing?" i suddenly grabbed her by her shoulders and shook her. then i smacked the back of her head against the wall. to my surprise, it made a very wet cracking noise and she slumped in my hands. i let her go and she slid downwards, leaving a smear of brains on the wall behind her. i'd killed her. weirdly satisfied i shoved the rest of the birthday candles i'd been holding in my hand into her gaping mouth. then i walked out and back to the table.

"what happened?" asked jeff goldblum, "did you beat her up?"

i nodded, the shock setting in. "yeah. and...uh....i think i actually killed her."

he choked on his beverage. "you...what? you killed her?"

i nodded again, taking a sip from my own drink. "not on purpose. i banged her head against the wall and her skull just cracked open. i didn't mean to."

at this point several of the other naked patrons were listening to our conversation. one of them said, "well, good for you, honey...she was a total fucking bitch."

other people started to clap a little. her friend stood up and said, "hey, look, i'm sorry about my friend, she had too much to drink. her behaviour was inexcusable. i don't blame you all for hating her. i just went along with what she said because she was such a bully."

i looked a jeff. he was very amused by everything. he said, "well, we need to do something with her body." the bartender said, "we can keep it in the walk-in cooler for now?" he and jeff walked into the women's room and came out a moment later dragging the corpse behind them. it left a trail of brains and blood behind it. jeff came and sat down with me again, put his big hand over mine. i was shaking and in shock. jeff said, quietly and leaning in over the table, "you know, christa, i think too many people know about this now. we're going to have to do something about that."

"wh...what do you mean?"

"kill them too. kill them all."

"seriously?"

he nodded.

he stood up and made a small speech about how we need to actually move the body down into the basement of the hotel. and since we all agreed that the world was better off without that type of female in it, we were all partly responsible for her death, and therefore partly responsible for hiding the evidence and protecting me from the authorities. everyone agreed, and put on their clothes, and the trek down to the underbelly of the hotel, with the dead woman's body on a make-shift gurney (kitchen trolley, covered with a table cloth).

when we got to the basment, jeff opened up a pair of double doors and lead us all into a huge storage area. it was filled with junk and clutter and old furniture and shelves covered in useless stuff. before i knew what was happening, he'd grabbed a small woodcutter's hatchet from one of the shelves, turned on the bartender, and began hacking him apart. "come on, christa! now! do it now!" people realized what was going on and a woman near me tried to run away. in desperation i grabbled a pair of rusty scissors and went at her back with them. it was hard to stab with them, especially as they became slippery with blood. people had made it back to the double doors but somehow jeff had locked them. it didn't take long. we cut everyone down. it was a gore-fest. both of us were drenched in blood. the only other people left standing were a pair of teenagers, one girl and one boy, and jeff allowed them to live because when they'd realized what was happening they gleefully began to help us.

i sat down hard on the cement floor and started to cry. jeff came over and said, "look, i know it's hard your first time."

"i just feel so guilty and sick, i can't believe i did this."

the teen girl smiled lovingly at me and said, "everyone feels that way at first. don't worry, you'll get over it."

the boy said, "yeah, you'll feel better tomorrow. don't worry. i threw up the first time i killed someone but in a couple of days i was totally over it."

jeff helped me stand up. he put his coat around me and helped me step around all the bodies as we walked towards the door. "let's go up to our room. i'll get you into the bath and tuck you into bed. don't worry about a thing. i'll take care of you." i let him lead me away from the nightmare.

suddenly i was in bed with him. the sheets were white, we were clean, the sun was shining in through the sheer curtains. he was brushing my hair back from my forehead. i was talking to him about an interview i'd read where he'd been talking about how important your appearance is in hollywood.

"do you really believe what you said? that people who aren't conventionally attractive can never truly be movie stars?"

he nodded.

"so, me? i could never be one?"

he shook his head.

"well, that's stupid, and mean! and uniformed! look at....look at philip seymour hoffman. he's not attractive in a conventional sense but he's very successful!"

"oh, the rule doesn't apply to men, at all," he laughed.

"so it's sexist, too!"

he nodded. "but don't worry, babycakes. i would never want you to be a movie star, anyway. your beauty is too special for that sort of vulgar career and lifestyle. no. i like to keep your sexiness and gorgeousness to myself. all those skinny bitches are on coke and speed and don't know how to cook, anyway."

and then i climbed on top of him and we had amazing sex.

the end.

two nights ago i dreamt that misha and the kids and i were in an office building downtown. i'm not sure why we were there or what we were doing, but when we tried to leave, police in SWAT team gear told us we weren't allowed. they were blocking the glass doors with their batons out. i peered over their shoulders and saw that they had put up big sandbag barricades around the centre court of the office building, surrounding a man sitting on a bench. the man was wearing a trenchcoat and a hat with a floppy brim and he had a big suitcase next to him on the bench. i demanded they tell me what was happening and one of the cops said that the man's suitcase was filled with enough high powered explosives to destroy everything within a mile radius of him and they were trying to talk him out of doing it. he told me to take the kids and go hide behind the big counter in the building's foyer with everyone else.

for some reason, though, misha insisted that we leave immediately. he said that it was stupid they weren't evacuating us out the back way. so the kids and i followed him down a dark cement stairway and into a parkade under the building. suddenly, though, the suicide bomber was behind us and started chasing us through the darkness. i was trying to urge the kids on but astrid fell behind. i stopped and turned and saw the man grab her, pick her up, and throw her as hard as he could against a wall. she fell and i screamed and ran back towards her. the man didn't try to stop me. astrid was laying on the pavement, totally still with a blanched face and closed eyes and her legs at weird angles and i knew her back was broken. i woke up in horror.

so this morning i had a very strange dream. i'd woken up to my alarm but hit snooze and immediately drifted into that half-sleep state i tend to hover in once that happens. i felt that i might have been awake, even, but of course i wasn't. in the dream i was laying in bed in the dawnlight, and i decided to masturbate before i got up. i reached down inside a cloth bag that was next to me on the bed, which contained my vulva. i remember thinking how strange it was that i'd cut off my vulva and stored it beside the bed instead of just keeping it attached to my body. anyway i started to masturbate and i could feel every pleasurable sensation even though it was seperate from me. however the creepiness of it was preventing me from really enjoying myself and eventually my thoughts turned to wondering how i was going to keep my vulva from decomposing in the cloth sack and how i was probably going to have to see a doctor and possibly even end up in a psychiatric facility because no well woman would actually do that to herself. these thoughts (and other, even more disjointed ones) finally made the attempt at self-pleasure totally impossible and i could not achieve climax. so i folded the little bag up and put it away on my nightstand.

i went into the bathroom and when i looked in the mirror i was shocked to see my entire lower body was covered in blood. so the amputation had been recent, maybe even as recent as last night. strange that i wasn't in pain. i wanted to take a shower but the water was turned off due to some plumbing problems. i didn't seem to be bleeding anymore so i decided to just get dressed. the bed was totally stained and soaked in my own blood. i couldn't wash anything, though, it would have to wait. i wondered what i would tell misha.

then astrid woke up and to my surprise she was only two years old. she was very crabby and overtired, like she hadnt' slept properly. i kept trying to talk to her like she was seven still and she just wasn't getting it. i wanted to tell her to stop acting like such a baby and get ready for school but she just threw herself on the floor and had a tantrum. i decided to ignore her and tried to get her brother up out of bed. he was already awake, though. i went downstairs and it was time to leave, we were late. i told the kids to go outside and wait by the car. when i got in the vehicle, and before the kids could get it, it started to move without me turning it on and in fact i was half outside it. the emergency brake wouldn't respond and i was having trouble getting my legs in the door to operate the foot brake. i was rolling very quickly at that point towards a parked car. my mouth was full of something (toast? sawdust?) so that i couldn't warn anyone on the street and i knew i was going to ram someone or something. i woke up before that happened, though.

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.