… being the rookie that i am, and very new to regular blogging, i’m only just beginning to learn things about it. such as: if i want my writing to have a chance at publication outside the blogosphere, i shouldn’t be posting poems and stories in their entirety online. so, from here on out, in spite of bursting to share with you all, i will only be posting the first couple of lines of each piece here on tumblr. thank you for all your love and support <3
[watch this space]
it’s been a long day, I get it.
and the train doors only stay open so long….
the whirr of the propellor on the nose
of my fugitive flight to the mainland
shook even my hand…
You really have no idea how you’re going to react until it actually happens to you. I mean, you can think about it as much as you like. You can stay up nights, chain-smoking and drinking strong-as-fuck tea, and think it over and over and freak out on the inside and even cry a little until you are thoroughly convinced that you know exactly how you would feel if it happened to you, because you have “basically just put yourself there,” but I’m telling you now, all of that will not give you a fucking clue….
bruise, she said, my favourite colour,
back to what i know so well….
still-frame images
(pictures of you)
stroll through recent memory,
dance their fingers on my sun-kissed mind….
your smile broke all over me this morning.
I was looking the other way, counting the seconds
her laughter was so sweet to me.
little lady
she said she’d go anywhere with me.. i said how about everywhere.
I’m on a train through the countryside of East Anglia.. there is something about being on a train which, for me, guides my mind down the cobwebbed paths of my memory. Today I imagine walking down the road I grew up on, Strathyre Avenue; a curved, grey side street off the London Road in the southwest part of the city. The sidewalk is narrower than my child’s mind’s eye recalls; the houses which line the street feel too close to the road. Everything seems as though it is in miniature, a mere caricature of a London neighbourhood rather than the real thing.
As I picture this, a little secret part of me misses the unknown companion I’d expected to have in adulthood; the one with whom I’d share these memories…. As I’ve grown up, I’ve understood that I am my companion, as is my sister, and those who read my words. Rather than lie in the determined memory of one who is invested in hopes of my present world, instead may my memories be scattered wide, to be understood in part by companions I shall never meet. Let them be reminders for others to know that their own memories are worth something and need no other reason than that they are worth something to the hearts and minds which encase them. Mine are so wrapped up in the dreams and daydreams which have revisited those old streets in distant homes, that at times I cannot tell dream from reality. I don’t worry too much, though; what we call reality is mostly created by the same perceptions, hopes and regrets which spur dreams anyway. Memory is an imaginative construct. And so often, fiction is realer than the tangible.
I can’t wait to walk down some of those old London roads again… and to let my dreams and memories walk beside me, mutable and full of colour.
…how freeing would it be to become love once again?
space-cleaning.
head-clearing.
heart-freeing.
strong-making.
.brave.
imagine. an earthquake on the west coast. the big one we’ve waited for. and the ensuing tsunami. and there is no power because everything has been compromised and wires are down everywhere and only hospitals and emergency shelters are allowed to use reserve power because saving lives is the only thing that matters right now.. but the hospital beds are full and people are laying in the hallways and the doctors and nurses haven’t slept in three days and everyone is running out of supplies and they can’t get them in because bridges have collapsed, and those which haven’t are backed up because parts of the highway simply disappeared in the second aftershock.. and fires are breaking out left right and centre and gas stations are danger zones and communities of people are out searching in the rubble for their neighbours kids and turning around to see their apartment building on fire because someone left a cigarette lit or a propane tank wasn’t quite closed properly at the last bbq and it got knocked in the quake. water mains are broken and the house down the road has had water pouring into it for four days and your friend who lives on the 17th floor of her westend apartment hasn’t been heard from and you can’t get in because you can’t even get out of your neighbourhood because all infrastructure has collapsed but you know that even if she made it out, her three elderly neighbours sure as hell can’t make it down those emergency stairs and you doubt they’ve got first aid supplies if they need them, or adequate amounts of water to survive until water services are re-instated, and you don’t know when that will be. right now, any random squirts of water which are gurgling their way out of your faucet are brown and smell and you know there’s an e.coli scare, especially since some neighbourhoods are flowing with open sewage from where the roads opened up and spewed their piped contents.. and a state of emergency has been declared so there are armed soldiers on every major corner and they are patrolling your neighbourhood and there is talk of a curfew and a teenage kid from around the corner had a head-on collision with the butt-end of a rifle the other day because he was mouthing off about not being allowed to get through a check-point to try and find his grandma because that route was designated emergency-only… but you’re canadian so you behave yourself and you refrain from using your cell-phone, at least after the first few days you do, but mostly because it’s dead and you’re panicked because your friends and family who live only a 10 minute drive away may as well be in another country for how easily you can get to them, and you’re exhausted and you are bruised and cut up and you consider your injuries minor but that one on your leg is starting to ooze and you wonder, for the first time in your life, if your life could possibly be at risk from such an inane barely-an-injury.. and you’re scared and you can’t let yourself think about the fact that it’s a heatwave and how the hell are the elderly and disabled people in this city alive right now, and your food is rotten and you’ve already helped loot the wrecked safeway around the corner but you’re living on non-perishables and you’re just so hungry and where the hell did your cat go, and your poor dog hasn’t been heard of and he is probably terrified… and you, and everyone like you are not really sure what you’re doing now, but you know, somehow, that you’re waiting.. you’re waiting for the help that you just know will come. because your whole life you’ve known that if something really bad happens, they will come for you. the police, the ambulance, the fire truck, the government, *them*. so you wait. and wait. and they hAve to come, because this is a massive disaster and people are dying and now there is disease and desperation.. and still you wait..
and help never comes.
please sir, i want some more.
or some different.
actually both.
i want more peaceful.
and more love.
more calm.
different language.
more language.
language of the heart without fleeting reaction feelings interrupting.
mOre??
yes. more. please…
…sometimes they are the same thing: i can’t speak either…
and often, i don’t know what the feelings are until later. my mind is so hard at work that feelings shut off and i need time and i need to go away and i don’t know anymore which end is up because feelings are not allowed and feelings are untrustworthy to be honest because feelings change and ebb and flow throughout the day, week, month based on all sorts of things so how could there be any truth in feelings when i could just be hungry, or tired, or high…
marshall i need you to talk me through the language i can’t speak.
