A Proposal

No, I know that you and I

Would not work out

But neither do I and I

Half the time

And you seem to be a mess too

So why don’t we just be messy

Together?

Squirrels

Yvonne and Flanders are colouring pictures with crayons in class. Missus orbits around. Rachel and Francine are sitting at a nearby table, also colouring.

YVONNE. I drew you a watercolour. I forgot it at home but I drew you one. It has lillies and lilacs and blue. I know you like blue. I like it too.

Beat.

Did you draw me anything?

FLANDERS. No.

YVONNE. That’s okay. Maybe we can draw something together.

FLANDERS. I don’t feel like it.

YVONNE. Watercolours are my favourite. Do you know a lot about flowers?

FLANDERS. I know poppies.

A Responsible Guy

TOM. [leans in] My girlfriend eats money. I mean really. You think it’s funny but I’m not kidding. I don’t mean she eats money like I have to take her to restaurants all the time and buy her expensive shit or whatever. I mean she eats money. Like she takes the bills and puts them in her mouth and chews. Look, man, I know you think I’m crazy but I’m telling the truth here. Here, here, look [he produces a half-bitten toonie]. Toonies are her favourite.

Shorthand

My time moved in such summer ways.

I was stoic, I was frantic, I was stasis, I was storm.

I missed things so completely, it was almost

Like not missing them at all.

My emptiness and I had tamed each other

And grew wild in the tangles of those parts we couldn’t know.

Together, we decided that love passes sometimes

On such sweet, such quiet days

That only someone sitting in the whirling of my inside

Could discover

How like the sunset

I have made my loss.

This and That

Lifeblood

Harpooning

The mountain that dismounts from the little bike

A woman whistles as you walk right past her in the well-lit street

Railways of streetlights vanish

In the restaurant window you catch a half-glimpse of someone you once knew

Then the rip in your favourite stained white shirt disappears

Miraculously

As if it were never there

And you begin to turn around anticipating miracles

Like scary circus clowns popping in and out of boxes

But only shadows fester around these corners.

You begin to fear words like this and that

You refuse to make conclusive statements about yourself because what if

Someone hears you and it has to be true, it has to stay that way

But now you

Then Again

Alone, this rain and I

Are like lovers never meeting

I on this side

Of the glass

And he weeping

Against the side of my home

Some days I stop to listen how he pounds

Wet and thundering

Against so close to me

But then again we turn from the glass,

The two of us,

Both indifferent to the light.

Gratitude

Though these arms did hold you once,

Fed you nightly from a spoon,

Wrapped your head in pretty warbles,

Helped you through the great lagoon,

There will come a day when all your sometime thanks

Will be disdain

Or you might push away

These arms when they still try

Smothering your fears

With love you can never repay

Krystofiak

I was sitting beside the drawer in the doctor’s office

Waiting for my cue

This particular morning when out of the corner of my eye

I saw the roll of old white yarn

Waiting for warm hands

By the window.

That was in those six months when I hated doctors, when I thought

They would tell me only all the things I didn’t like to hear.

I was sitting beside the drawer where they kept the magazines

And papers

Somebody started to speak Spanish right beside me

So I pulled out my collection of bilingual Neruda

And read the poetry in Spanish

Perfectly positioned for the Spaniards

To admire.

They might have mentioned something about how cool I was

But I didn’t speak their language. So.

Hipsters in Drag

Living in our time is a nuisance

Some say

With our rooms and heads all messy we provide instructions

To clean it up

And pass them on to our future selves

Of course, we’ve yet to invent

A system of mailing things through time

Because when we get there, our future selves

Have not received the memo

And our rooms are even dustier

And our heads ache

Then we dress ourselves in plaid and canvas

To please the mirrors

And we walk outside in shoes

From an ancient generation

Clicking along, paying so much attention to forgetting,

That we look like accidents in our own photographs

An intentional case of bad timing

Paper Boy and Rapunzel: Part 1

            Paper boy glides in/ leaves his number in porcelain leaves, dust, doorstep. He clambers down the steps.waits.clambers – and from the crackling shutters, showers of loose paint, the tenant calls out

She:     Wait, hold on.

            The boy turns around.waits.and-but the tenant stays behind the wall of shutter-showers.

He:      Yeah?

She:     You're supposed to ring the doorbell, you always ring the doorbell first.

He:      I thought maybe it annoyed you, thought I wouldn't this time.

She:     It doesn't annoy me. I'm used to it.

            Paper boy smiles his back-up smile, pulls out the rock he's keeping in reserve.

He:      I left my number, thought that might cheer you up.

            But the tenant hadn't wanted cheering, she glowers down on him, and Paper boy crumples the rock into loose molecules, flings it up – it flies – and settles in the dry-paint shower/ the tenant grips the rock between its pieces and somewhere in the boy they blur into gravel mountains full of hillside dugouts

and the rhythm of our youth was sacrosanct

and the rhythm of our youth

was sacrosanct

and the grapevine buzzed though we

would find our news

upon each other's lips

sweetened by old wine and silence

we studied in the book of skin

reading Braille upon our

soft and eager fingers

such stories that the chill would run

marathons up and down

our supple spines