Times of Imperfection

Do you remember when we met the
Sea God trapped in silver
by the shore?

We were skipping pebbles in the sea
and he
was everywhere.

"Love," he said, "has been forbidden
in this place since time and tide
came knocking."

He was tall and terrible in chains
so seaweed strong they choked us, he
was oyster blind, his sin was made
of sand.

You took my hand.
We trembled.

He sent me to a room with white-washed walls,
a ruler in my hand, alone.

He said, "When you have traced
ten thousand perfect lines
you may go free."

But it was nicked, my ruler. Each line was chipped
and the creamy stream of paper
spooled forever
out ahead.

Then you said
(in the emptiness of my hopeless head)
"Love, have you never leaped between the lines?"
And so I slipped through imperfection blue
into your arms.

Do you remember?
When I woke, you were breathing
there beside me, and I whispered,
"What a dream,"
but just as always, you
were sleeping.

Star-crossed

.....................

I have a visitor
who does not care that
it is late;
he has come
(as always)
unrepentant
and undeterred
to beat his head
and bruise his breast
against the brick wall
that is my lightbulb.

His wings press
frantic shadows
into my page.

This to a moth
is heaven.

The Hopelessness of the Egg Condition

..................

I haven't posted any rhyming poetry lately, so here's one I finished last night. The rhythm isn't perfect yet, but at least I (finally) have a working draft.

The Hopelessness of the Egg Condition

Old Man Dumpty had a fall
last Wednesday when the lights were out;
they say he climbed his garden wall
and fell pell-mell without a shout.

They say he meant to clear away
the ivy growing thick and fast.
They say he must have slipped and swayed
and landed on the stones and smashed.

No one wonders whether he
was happy on that Wednesday night.
They only tried to patch him up;
they cried and tried with all their might.

To no avail, as well you know,
for Old Man Dumpty died.
The story in the paper showed
of course, his sunny side.

We think of him quite kindly,
as an old, old-fashioned grump,
but no one ever wonders whether
Humpty Dumpty
jumped.

Self Doubt

....................

Here it comes again:
the steel-legged
spider
with the many marbled eyes
that's been biding
its time
in hiding
beneath my bed.

I know where it's headed.
Last time as I lay
with both eyes closed,
it crawled the line of my spine
knuckle by knuckle,
to slip atop my skull
and squeeze.

All this week it has been creeping
closer
as I sleep.
Soon it will hold me captive
again,
twitching its limber limbs
to the tune of my troubles,
watching with wide
vindictive eyes
as I writhe.

I am lying tonight
with two eyes open -
too afraid of myself
to sleep.

Snowshoes

...............
I'm actually posting without being prompted by Jesi. How's that for a miracle? This is a poem I wrote for my online poetry course, two weeks ago, and have only now managed a draft I actually like. It is, of course, far too late for the deadline.
Douglas Adams once said "I love deadlines. I like the wooshing sound they make when they fly by."
Well anyway. I'm not Douglas Adams, am I?

Snowshoes

The snowshoe hare
is one
with his feet
as he races the cloud of his breath
on the crust of the snow.
I, on the other hand,
have never been
one
with mine:
they are cumbersome
wire and wood
(and twine in the place
where I slipped
and they snapped)
and in spring
they are heavy
as heartache.

This year I have left
my feet
alone
in the woodshed
at home -
here I am
in the land of rain.
The island
of seldom-snow.

Rubber boots are light
as laughing,
made for splashing dry
through streams,
not standing firm
on powder.
Some days I forget,
tread mud across the carpet
in confusion,
trace my tracks
backwards
to try
to shake
this feeling
(I am wearing someone else's
feet).

Poison

Jesi is a bully. She makes me post things to my blog even though I'm swamped with work. Guilt, Jesi! Feel lots of guilt!

Poison

The apples are rotting on the tree beside the cottage. She smells them for the first time in November – a sickly-sweet notion that creeps through her nostrils and calls to her as she passes.

She keeps her eyes on the road. There’s homework to do, and she’ll never get it done if she wastes time spying on the neighbours.

In December, she notices that the manholes in the street are shrinking. Not so you’d see unless you paid attention, but she knows they weren’t always like this. Something is afoot, and those apples are smelling better than ever.

She takes the opportunity to eye the clouds. “Looks like snow,” she says aloud.

It’s late January when she steps on the little white-haired man who’s sitting in the middle of the street. He’s wearing a housecoat and is pulling on one of his long ears, anxiously eyeing his watch.

“You’re late,” he says. “The ways are shrinking. Follow me down to Wonderland, oh won’t you, won’t you?”

Alice sidesteps him. “I’m done with that kind of thing,” she says.

After that she pays more mind to her studies, attending to the D’s and C’s that have been following her around like stray animals hungry for attention. Let someone else worry about the manholes and the birds and the bees.

But the apples. She passes them every day, and every day they seem more intriguing. A biology teacher once told her that the edible part of a fruit is the ovary. It’s one of the few things she remembers from biology (she’s failing now)

The branches are empty of leaves, and the rotting ovaries hang swollen and drooping as she passes them by.

The last straw is in February. She is passing the cottage again, and this time a squirrel leaps down from the tree and scurries over to block her path. It is cradling an apple in its forearms, and a square of white paper attached to the stem reads plainly, “eat me”.

Alice kicks the squirrel. It squeals in anguish and flees, leaving the apple to roll innocuously against one of her feet.

When she picks it up, she breaks the surface, and the cold coarse pulp settles between her fingers like unset cement.

It smells like cider.

She sighs. She lifts it to her face, inhales gently, and places her open lips on one of the wounds left by her fingers.

She closes her eyes.

“I never was much good at much else anyhow,” she says as she shrinks into the yawning mouth of the now tiny manhole.

Wonderland awaits, as it always does.

The Making and Breaking of Habits and Hearts

.............

There was too much time -
I had fallen out of the habit
of breathing,
so the clovers on the lawn
were four-leafed
and brought nothing but grief.
Sometimes I wondered
why it was
that the Tin Man
wanted a heart.

Loneliness is a lovely thing -
(at twilight the rain
turned the streets to
silver) but
it is lonely
(late at night
the crickets
chuckled
in the depths
of the hedge) and I
was lonely.

Now I have slipped
from the habit of sleeping
into the broken hours
of your arms.
Nobody told me
time could tick apart
this way
(could take me apart
this way to find
my heart).
I wonder why
I ever thought
I had to breathe.

Instructions for the Locating of a (Charming) Prince

I posted a version of this ages ago, but took it down because it seemed unfinished. This is the final (I hope) version.

Instructions for the Locating of a (Charming) Prince

Did no one tell you,
dear, about the prince?
It is a well-kept secret
I will share with you:
squander your fortune,
set out alone,
turn left at the swamp,
and faint.
He will turn up
like clockwork or the turning
of the sun -
predictable
as ants
at a picnic.

There are other ways:
prick your finger and waste
your life in waiting.
Sell your voice for the chance
to hear him speak.
Suck in your stomach
thrust out that chest
and smile.
Suffer for love
my dear, because
even if he's green
or seems
a beast,
there's nothing that
some kissing cannot cure.

Have faith
be true,
pay heed and you
are guaranteed
your very own
home-grown
organic
trademarked, sealed
stamped with an expiry date,
(pre-nuptual agreement
signed in advance)
fat-free
(for a limited time only)
happy
ever
after.

The Night of my Conception

I would like to stress that this poem is not my fault. The last thing I want to think about is the night that I was conceived. And if you don't want to think about it either, please feel free to skip over this poem. But it was an assignment, so I had to write it, and to be honest...I found it really interesting once I got past the squick factor. So:

The Night of My Conception

When I ask her, my mother says
she knew I was there. She says,
I don't really believe those kinds of things - I think
they sound new-aged
and flaky, but...
she pauses and
with quiet certainty, she says,
I knew.

There is a secret, though,
I cannot bring myself to say:
the truth about the night
of that conception
is that it wasn't mine.

The little girl
with chubby cheeks
and a rolling grin
who was born some
nine months
later,
well...
she
died.

It was an accident - she was too
breakable.
She thought the world
was safe, and kind,
but it was not.

So. She died.
I was born fully-formed
into thin air, to the sounds
of a slamming door
and my father's fading
footsteps.

I was conceived by the smell
of alcohol,
the cold hard touch of anger,
and the warm wet wealth of
my mother's
tears.

Pud-Muddle Poem

There's a little
muddle - puddle
in the middle
of the park
and it's huddled
in a hollow
and it's happy
as a lark.

It is catching
al the people
that it's splashing
by surprise,
cause that little
puddle-muddle
is a big one
in disguise.

If you're quick
and oh-so-careful
you can
hop
right
past,
but the old-pokes
and the slow-folks
they get
sssplash
sssplash
splashed!

The Art of Procrastination

The assignment for this was to look at a published piece of work and write a poem that followed its form exactly. The second one is mine, and the first is 'Comfort' by Robert Service, who loaned me the rhythm and rhyme. My poem was written (very obviously) at the absolute last minute, in a state of desperation.

Comfort
by Robert Service

Say! You've struck a heap of trouble -
Bust in business, lost your wife;
No one cares a cent about you,
You don't care a cent for life;
Hard luck has of hope bereft you,
Health is failing, wish you'd die -
Why you've still the sunshine left you
And the big, blue sky.

Sky so blue it makes you wonder
If it's heaven shining through;
Earth so smiling way out yonder,
Sun so bright it dazzles you;
Birds a-singing, flowers a-flinging
All their fragrance on the breeze;
Dancing shadows, green, still meadows -
Don't you mope, you've still got these.

These, and none can take them from you;
These, and none can weigh their worth.
What! you're tired and broke and beaten? -
Why, you're rich - you've got the earth!
Yes if you're a tramp in tatters,
While the blue sky bends above
You've got nearly all that matters -
You've got God, and God is love.

The Art of Procrastination
by me

Well it's midnight and the weather
is as nasty as can be;
dreary throughts are all around you -
they are all that you can see;
you're left without inspiration,
fingers frozen at your sides -
but your wrist is still a-ticking,
and you know you've got to try.

So with desperate desperation
and a steely stubborn will,
you find determination
and the pages start to fill.
Words a-flowing, verses a-growing,
tossing caution to the breeze,
you are typing up a whirlwind
till your thoughts begin to freeze.

Freeze, and still the rain is falling -
freeze and none can lend a hand.
What! You're on the verge of failing!
(this is more than you can stand)
Still at heart you are a poet,
and you'll find that rhythm yet -
it's so close you nearly know it:
once you do, you won't forget.

Civilization

........................

For a moment I am
home again
on the hillside;
hearing the marmot whistle
alarm
through the rock-pile ruckus,
feeling the shale
slip away
beneath my soles.
For a moment.
Then again
it is simply
the shriek of my neglected
kettle -
the kiss of cashmere
against my soul.

Prose Poem - Nobody Has Ever Died of a Panic Attack

...................

Nobody Has Ever Died of a Panic Attack

she says as she strips herself, sits naked on the edge of tub and trembles. It is soothing-cool and solid against her thighs, but she knows it is just atoms jostling together, and that there is no real reason (indefinable facts of quantum physics aside) that they should not simply choose to slide apart. Her nails slip across slick porcelain as she grips tighter.

Three Pieces of Advice to New Dishwashers at the Eldorado Hotel

.........................................................


It is easier if you can be friendly
to the face of the embittered French-Canadian
(with the gotee)
who owns you.
Do not tell him you are a poet:
once
he was a poet too.
Smile and say - Absolutely! Right away!
(Inside your head you can
sentence him to fifty years hard labour
in the stone mines.
It helps.)
At any rate, after a month he will stop
making you scrub the ceiling
and the grungy wall behind the deep-fryer.
He will,
I promie,
stop laughing when you burn yourself.

Sometimes it is easier if you can be angry.
Mopping the long linoleum floor
at midnight
when your hair is thick and wet with
steam and sweat and grease,
it is easier
if you can hate him.
Or someone.
Anyone, to be honest, to whom
you can direct the thought,
"I'll show that so-and-so
I will get out."

(It is easier still
if that is true.)

Missing In Action

A short-short story I wrote for my fiction class, ages ago.

Missing In Action

She cut her heart out in the morning beside the kitchen sink. It was the only sensible thing to do. Afterwards she lit a cigarette and smoked it standing up, and the grey ashes fell onto the grey linoleum floor without a sound. She flicked the butt into the crowded sink and it hissed.

Once upon a time the floor was white and the dishes got washed twice a day and she didn’t smoke because of the children.

Once upon a time, before Jim got shipped overseas and the phone calls stopped coming and MIA turned out to mean something. After that she stopped noticing colours, and the dishes didn’t matter so much, and the kids smoked pot and locked their doors to keep the smell inside.

Last night’s coffee catches like sand in her throat. All the sugar from the cracked tin on the counter doesn’t help, and the milk has gone sour, so she drinks it black and bitter and cold, and the caffeine makes her shiver.

Six steps from the kitchen to the living room. Today her feet drag and make it seven, and her trailing toe snags on the unravelled edge of carpet.

Three more steps to the bathroom cabinet with the little bottle full of nothing-matters.

She cut her heart out in the morning beside the kitchen sink because the dishes weren’t done and she didn’t care. She cut her heart out in the grey morning beside the dirty dishes because last night’s coffee choked her and there was no sugar left in the world.

She cut her heart out because it was broken anyway.

Afterwards she smoked a cigarette and went on with her life – what was left of it – and nobody noticed the difference.

Definitive Proof I am Living

See? When I pick
at the sensitive slips of the skin
at my fingertips,
I bleed.
You see? When I breathe
in the cold, it is there
in the air,
to be seen.
You see? When I sleep
and I twist in my sheets
I am dreaming.
Please.
Doesn’t that mean
I am here?
Shouldn’t pain
be proof
of living?
Shouldn’t the wonder of warmth
and the depth of my dreaming
(I-think-therefore-I-am)
be decisive
definitive
proof?
I breathe and I bleed
and I dream
but still
I wonder.

poems

These are a few poems I found while clearing off my desk (a monumental project, believe you me) in preparation for moving out.

................

Taking Responsibility

Am I right to believe
that the butterflies in my stomach
belong to you?
I suspect you set them loose
when first we met
for fear
I should forget…
now, in the absence
of you
they are fluttering
to death.
They drift
to the walls
of my insides,
crumble to dust
discreetly
one by one.
they are making me sick
and sad
and lonely,
and you see,
I do not want a stomach that is full
of dead butterflies,
my friend – you’d better
come
collect them.

The Frustrations of Dealing With Me

It should be simple when two people
have this peculiar electricity
particular to
us.
It should be as simple as one plus one –
you and I together make
a certain something
which is certainly
something more
than nothing,
although
that is the only certain thing
about it.
This should be simple but you see
it’s not
particularly when one of these two people
is me.
You see?
I am incapable
of making this easy.


(This next one is still a fragment. It needs another stanza, and I'm not sure if this first one should be in past or present tense. It also (as bloody usual) needs a title.)

Inexplicable

What is it I need?
I have fallen out of the habit
of breathing – all the clovers
on the lawn
are four-leaved
but they bring only
grief.
Sometimes I wonder
why it was
that the Tin Man wanted a heart.

Seasoning

We cook with silence
in the kitchen – it clings to our fingers
like bread dough,
pools on the polished counters and drips
to the floor
slips
to the door.
It has become
the one ingredient
we use in everything –
we used to say that was love,
and laugh,
do you remember?
Silence was stowed away at the back
of the cupboard of spices
half-hidden always
by thyme.
Now you and I
are connoisseurs
of silence,
but even we
can see
how bad it tastes.

dreams

A description of the last five dreams I've had. I'd typed them out to send to my cousin, so I thought I'd post them here and see if anyone had any kind of...I don't know...interpretation? I find them a little creepy, but very intriguing, too. Any thoughts at all? Does anyone have dreams that are remotely like this, ever? Mine are usually really intense, but they've never followed a theme before.

Also - I have no idea why the Almost Man calls me Kate. No idea.

Dream # 1

I wake with the memory of an old woman, some coins, and the words ‘the place where dreams are made (born?) and stories go to die’ in my mind. There is a terrible, lingering longing to find this place.

Dream # 2

I’m walking along a smooth stone road that passes through a desert. All is gray, and there is nothing to be seen anywhere but the long flat road stretching into the distance. The wind is strong, and in some places has blown drifts of sand across my path.

I am wearing loose dark gray pants that billow around my ankles, and an old-fashioned white shirt that fastens at my wrists with pearl buttons. One is missing. The shirt ought to lace up at the front, from about my navel, but has come undone. My skin is very pale, not tanned at all. There is a scarf around my head. Under one arm is a rolled-up rug, and across my other shoulder is a waterskin. I can hear it sloshing, half-empty, against my side.

There is no other sound except for the wind – my footsteps are muffled by the sand.

I am dreadfully thirsty and tired. I walk steadily, not hurrying, as if I know that the place I’m going to is very far away.

In fact I have no idea where it is, except that it is almost certainly not at the end of this road.

I am going to the place where dreams are made and stories go to die.

I walk and walk and walk, all night, but nothing happens.

When I wake up, I am refreshed, but filled with longing to see the place I am going in my dream. I have to go there. But how?

Dream # 3

It is night time. I am standing in the street in Dawson, and it is raining. The rain is beautiful – sparkling and deep black all at once, as it falls around me. It is like crystal tar. Some of the drops catch on my lashes, and I see the world for a moment in a haze of light. But more and more drops catch my eyelashes, and they are so very heavy, and so very dark that I am a little frightened. My eyelids are steadily dragged down, and I can feel the rain sliding thickly down my cheeks and my bare arms, and down my ribs, coating me. I don’t raise my hands to wipe away the water, but I try to blink it away and fail.

Then, suddenly, Matthew is in front of me. I can hear him breathing.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

“I’m standing in the rain in the street,” I say.

There is a pause and a sigh. “How silly,” he says, and suddenly my face is in his hands, and his thumbs are brushing gently at my eyelashes, and I can see again.

His eyes are brown. My face is cold and his hands are soft and warm.

The rain looks harmless again, like crystal sliding down his face. He might be crying, except that the would-be tears run up against his smile, which is as wolfish as always.

“Come inside,” he says. “It’s warm.”

Between his hands, my face is burning. I want nothing more than to follow him, but instead I gasp out, “I can’t!” and tear myself away, and run.

The streets are slick with tar, now, and I slip but keep my footing. I pass lampposts smothered in black, oozing with it.

I must find the place. The place where dreams are made and stories go to die. I must go there because it is the only safe place left to be – the rain is painting the windows of houses black, walling them off from the world. I must go there, but I don’t know the way, and this is suddenly like the old dream, the familiar dream, the night terror. I am running and running, gasping for breath, and everything is crisp with fear, and somehow I am not moving, and my feet are caught in a pool of blackness, and I am stumbling, falling, and waking...

Dream # 4

I am back on the road. My feet are bare and blistered, and the sand-covered stone is cool against them. My waterskin is nearly empty, and the rug is so very heavy. It drags my arm down so that I must balance it against my hip. I have been walking for nights without end.

The moon is over my shoulder. It is a sliver of silver in a gray sky.

Nothing but desert forever, and the wind blows through it, and I walk.

Dream # 5

I am alone in a subway station, and I am studying the map on the wall, but instead of being two-dimensional, it is a three-dimensional model made out of brightly coloured yarn. Each colour represents a different train, and it is impossibly intricate and knotted. I am trying to find a train that will take me to the place where dreams are made and stories go to die, but none of the strings are labelled, and several of them change colour as I watch.

I reach out and touch a strand, thinking to untangle it, but it is so sticky that I recoil, and have to wrench my hand free of it.

As I do, the lights flicker off. I gasp.

From behind me, someone says, “That’s just a train leaving from upstairs. They take the lights by mistake sometimes. It won’t be a moment and they’ll be back.”

Before I can ask who the person is, the lights flicker back on. The platform is bathed in light, and I look around it for the first time.

The walls are gray stone, and a thick black line is painted on the floor about three feet from the drop to the tracks. The tunnel itself stretches left and right into blackness.

The model on the wall is the only colour. A ways to my right, a bench is set against the wall, and a man is sitting on it. He is wearing a wrinkled suit, scuffed shoes, and a shabby bowler hat. His newspaper is held in front of his face.

I look down at myself and see that I am dressed in a light gray sundress, although I feel very strongly that it ought to be blue. This worries me.

I turn back to the map, but the man says, “You’ll never find that place that way.”

I look at him again.

“What do you mean?” I ask. “Do you know something?”

He shrugs, and suddenly I am on my knees beside the bench where he’s sitting.

“Please,” I tell him. “I’m trying to get to the place where dreams are made and stories go to die.”

He grabs hold of my wrist with one hand and then lowers the paper slowly. His face is somehow very hard to look at. I look at his hand on my wrist, instead, and notice that his nails are dirty.

“Well,” he says, “I know a thing or two, but it isn’t free, is it? Nothing’s free in dream-time.”

I stand up and try to pull away, but he pulls on my wrist so that I’m bending down towards him.

“Everything costs, doesn’t it?” he asks. “Tell you what. Give us a kiss and I’ll show you how to get to this place of yours.”

His breath smells very strongly of fish. I lean forwards and kiss him on the forehead, but he snarls at me.

“How about a proper one?” he says.

His skin, although it looked gritty and wrinkled, was very smooth against my lips.

I shake my head and try to pull away again, and his expression becomes very ugly.

“Oh no?” he asks. “What if I looked like this, then?”

Suddenly the person holding my wrist is a tall young man with black hair and a french beret on his head. A cigarette burns in his hand.

“Hey Kate,” he says, and stands and pulls me closer. But his breath still smells like fish, and I lean away, upset.

“No?” he says, raising his eyebrow. There is a silver piercing in it, with a dice on the end.

“No,” I say.

Then he changes again. A girl in her early twenties, dressed in a low-cut black dress, with long wild black curls, has her hand lightly on my wrist. She smiles and slides her hand up my arm. Her eyes are all pupil.

“Stop it,” I say, and the wrinkled man is himself again. “Oh,” he says. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t kiss her.”

He sneers down at me, and then laughs.

“I know what you want,” he says, and changes again. This time the face is mine. It is like looking in a mirror.

“It’s really yourself, isn’t it?” he asks, and grins cheekily with my lips.

I stare.

There is a slight rumbling noise, from down the tunnel, that has been growing louder over the past few minutes without my noticing it. He hears it at the same time as I do, and turns his head, changing back into himself as he does so. The last expression I see on my face is a worried one.

When he turns, I am suddenly not-irrationally terrified. The back of his head – everything behind his face and ears, and under his hat – is hollow. It is as if a white mask has been balanced atop his shoulders. There is nothing but empty space where his skull should be.

“You’re the Almost Man,” I whisper.

At my voice, he comes to his senses and whirls around so that the back of his head – or lack thereof – is hidden.

“Fuck!” he snarls. “Every fucking time!”

Furious, he pulls me closer, still gripping my wrist. “Think you’re so clever, do you?” he asks, and leans down, and I can see the wall of the station through his hollow eyes, and am terrified. But the train is pulling into the station. There is a sudden rush of wind, and as it hits him, he seems to crumple.

The hand on my wrist slackens and falls through my arm, fading away into a dusty sort of nothingness. The rest of him follows, imploding into a wisp of ash that is swept immediately away by the wind, into the dark tunnel behind the train.

To the ground by my feet there clatters a white, blank mask, and the tattered bowler hat. His suit crumples empty to the ground.

There is a roar and a rush, and then the train is gone. It passes straight through without stopping, and it takes the light with it. I am left alone in the dark, and suddenly I am waking up.

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