May 2012
6 posts
2 tags
You can't imagine, sweetheart
(you can’t imagine) I am arrogant (sweetheart) I am (you can’t) arrogant of my imagination (imagine, sweetheart) Even though it is where you put everything (you can) around me, you said You can’t imagine, sweetheart and I realize (sweetheart) that you are arrogant as well.
3 tags
a synthete watches fireworks
a synthete watches fireworks and sees more in the afterboom than she’s seen all day someone says, the sound delay is something else eh?
Yes she says, the sound delay really is something else. a poet might see the little ones the squiggly ones the bursting squirming tingly ones and say Tadpoles! a different kind of poet might see fire curling and wonder what it would feel like to hiss...
4 tags
Sunburnt?
Perhaps my whole body is still blushing from the sparrow song water-logged already with the dew of tomorrow and thrice-duped by an ice-cube in a syrup drink warm with stick.
What if my skin is razz with the friction of flutter leaves and bumble bees whereas the jazz of it all leaves you pale and no wonder you find the air stale I could starspin beside car-din after bar-been just to get dizzy and...
if every train whistle is a song only my soul can hear
is every fallen tree still a balance beam?
6 tags
Friendly advice to a lot of young women
This poem is part of a series of poems I’ve written in parody of Charles Bukowski’s Friendly Advice to A Lot of Young Men. Also see Friendly Advice To Charles Bukowski.
___
Go to a football game. Drink a beer. Lift weights and eat protein. Show off your muscles. Imagine all the places that baseball has been. Be a man.
Wear lipstick. Show off your figure. Paper mache your boobs. Wear...
7 tags
At a Train Station
It was a window to her soul.
She thought these words, standing among one hundred wobbly-legged strangers, and immediately imagined giving herself a face palm. How utterly cliché. How obscenely boring. The women beside her dove headfirst into a stroller to retrieve her screaming child. It was this sort of unwilling bravery that made her want to stay on a train forever, refusing to get off and...
April 2012
13 posts
3 tags
5 tags
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Dr. Einstein Is Dead
“I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly” - Albert Einstein before his death
at 76 Dr. Einstein is Dead
He is dead in the Princeton Hospital Dr. Einstein is dead in the news he is dead in the kitchen where his children played he is dead where his ashes hit the side of the road Dr. Einstein is...
4 tags
le sens d'indécence d'un swimming pool
Up until this point when I heard the word piscine I always thought Just to myself My word! That word’s obscene
I say: Je sais! Je sais! C’etait étourdiment. I only realize now c’est car ils font riment.
3 tags
Einstein Water
Time is a thing that Einstein dreampt about. One morning while boiling water for porridge He said something to the effect of: Time is only here so that everything doesn’t happen all at once.
His first wife walked in worried, wanting to see who he was talking to. She was waiting for the right moment to announce her pregnancy. She was waiting to find out if they were still in love.
He was...
2 tags
What does it feel like to roll down a coaster...
Straight from the mouth of mister roller derby guru himself:
it feels like you are the last hornet in the world buzzing with this white hot desperation your whole life and you’ve finally realized that there’s nothing left to do but fly around.
3 tags
a sidewalk girl
a sidewalk girl remembers recent muggings and walks in the clacky way of someone wearing out-of-their-league boots.
Boots that say Fashion is coming or that you might be a teacher Boots that say No my basement is not infested with ants And yes I am allowed to keep candles in my room. Boots that lie. Boots that will lie in a crumpled pile beside student shoes later that night if she makes it...
3 tags
Silence Is.
Silence is eraser shavings.
It is the space in-between a smile and a goodbye. A word and the page it is no longer on.
Silence is a mouth interrupted. A hug halfway through. An arm around the waist for a second.
It is the last three words of a sentence cut short. Because no one was listening anyway.
Silence is an unsent letter.
It is signing your name by listening too hard.
Silence is a siren...
3 tags
Fragments, darling
he told me to Stop thinking in full sentences
he said Fragments, darling We’re in a new era now.
In response I thought How do I stop thinking or writing for that matter in full sentences?
He laughed because he knew that I was already spinning a poem about this conversation; that I knew that he knew
He told me to at least leave it unpunctuated to let my (impossibly) full sentences tickle...
6 tags
walking among silences
To a poet each unique snowflake might scream “I am a cliche” I am a cliche.
But to a tree the snow is a gentle finger-press shushing what was about to be a chilly complaint.
To the rest of us snow is the kind of fairy dust that makes you see sound
forcing us to become synthetes the snow is a white silence and each of our sniffles an obstruction
We cannot speak the same in snowfall...
4 tags
Sudden Bursts of Shyness
I become a library in my sudden bursts of shyness
All of my thoughts all of those pages bound together edgy one by one on their own they are as sharp as a finger pointing to a part of the map that falls off the page
But softness becomes them bound and lost in each other: A closed book can’t give anyone a paper cut.
When I am shy I am a collection of everything I am And there is no lexicon...
8 tags
5 tags
Friendly advice to Charles Bukowski
Go to the washroom. Clean your hands. Accidentally lose that girl’s number down the drain. Write poetry. Stumble onto a bus at 2am. Make a 5 minute friend. Pretend to be in love for a moment.
If you write poetry to be understood. To find a lover. Or worst of all to get famous. Young man, don’t write poetry. Go to Tibet.
But If you can sense a hiccup in a line break or an...
March 2012
5 posts
5 tags
4 tags
To Be Seen By The Moon
A boy stared at the moon The whole moon: her soft-spots her pregnant-pauses her impermeable vagueness
and the way her flush yelled out through a thousand clouds
A boy wondered about the pit of her collarbone and the weight of her thigh the white warmth of a thick thrill suspended the long fingers she must have and he tried to count the bruises seeping over light and yes even her ears would have a...
4 tags
They Belonged in Libraries
There are no animals in libraries, but there are dragons. There’s a dragon breathing fire onto a sentence moving light-speed in the bean bag corner, there’s a dragon slowly pushing that shelve of novels over all night, there’s a dragon standing guard to the dungeon washroom, and there was a dragon in my eye. In the eye of little girl who smiles at the librarians - even the scaly...
6 tags
Like Commas, Curled
You said my eyes held a thousand secrets A thousand things you wish you knew You said I’d kept them to myself for far too long You said you wished you could see what it looked Like when I blink. I said no one notices When they blink. But I should’ve stopped at Notices, cause I’ve never met another Whose focus is clear enough to see Something special about my eyes beyond Their size. But you did....
4 tags
Thing Moves.
Nothing moves like you think it will. Nothing Besides your mind, will understand the tracks You painted for it. A swallow is going to dive As unexpectedly as a nervous Adam’s Apple does when you ask the Adam A hard question. That girl isn’t going to look Up at the right time, and that boy wasn’t Going to have enough nerve even if she Did look. Look! She did look up! What’s this? He Is step...
February 2012
7 posts
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Static
They were stuck in traffic.
Across the table she studied her own wrists, looking as gaunt as ever. A truck rattled by, forcing some of her unfinished tea out of its mug. The air sighed with the relief of sound. A moment later it clenched its invisible fists again in silence. There was nothing else in the world but this moment. There were no ceiling fans in any other restaurants, accomplishing...
4 tags
kaylamaiolo:
Anti-Gravity Laughter
Lyrics...
4 tags
Just a few Infinities
Tomorrow morning as I carve spirals into the bottom of my cereal bowl I will remember the round and round pattern of my feet as you twirled me and said “It’s time to set you lose” when it was time to go.
Meshing cream with coffee in figure eights I will watch as just a few infinities disappear, tainting each other, pretending to be the same for just a moment existing dizzily as something new...
3 tags
I Want a Poet's House
I want a poet’s house Filled with poet things I want enormous windows And a door that opens often I want a moat of experience And a drawbridge driveway left down I want several pens in every room And paper in every pocket. You’ll find scrawling on the back of receipts (that I will write in parking lots) and grocery lists (or on the side of the road) and maybe on my hands (if I am desperate) which...
4 tags
Dance With More And Write Only
Go to a party so you can wear that dress Buy a dress so you have to find a party Dance with strangers and imagine that the way they move reflects some deeper part of them and then dance with more strangers and notice the difference. Write a poem that no one will read and try really hard to make the line lengths match even if you have to break the wo rds in half, even if everything else is blurry. ...
1 tag
If I Were a Place I Would Be a Meadow
The other day in class we were reading a poem in which a forest was personified. Meaning the place was described in a way which made it seem human. It was attributed human qualities. The river panted. The trees cried. Et cetera.
I thought…what if we reversed that?
What if we “placified” people?
I then spent the rest of the class turning myself (and a few other people I know) into vivid...
January 2012
9 posts
4 tags
Papercuts and Brainscars - a story about imagining...
Once upon a time
There was a girl in a library. Actually, this girl had been in the library Hundreds of onceuponas Maybe thousands But this on particular time, the girl was working. Mostly collecting payment for printouts Explaining how to photocopy And sometimes kicking hide-and-go-seekers out She spent a lot of the time sneezing, And the rest of it studying But she liked it a lot. Even though...
2 tags
There's a lady chopping onions in Denmark
right now. She stands alone in the kitchen of a youth hostel, thinking about the strange man she met today, how he reminded her of someone from home.
Where is home for her? Judging by the accent in her “damnit” she forgot to pick up vegetable oil, it is certainly not here.
She laughs aloud at something, looks up, there’s no one to tell. She goes back to her onions.
She is going to try a new...
4 tags
An Almost Palindrome
Deem something Beautiful And it is. You invent something By believing it’s there. You invent something And it is Beautiful. Dream something.
4 tags
I want to tell the story of the world
By being a part of it.
If I could, I would get on a plane tomorrow and leave.
I don’t know where I would start, but it would definitely be place that was extraordinarily different then what I’m used to. I would spend a week as a tourist - seeing monuments, getting lost, taking pictures, meeting the locals and telling them I’m new and am excited to see and hear it all.
I would get lost at least...
2 tags
Why are we always tired?
When you cannot sleep at night, and when the trail of your eyes is slow in the day, and you wonder:
Why am I always tired?
When your face is warm but your feet are cold, when your steps seem to take forever, when fractures turn to tingles…
And your body wants to give up. It wants to sleep, to start afresh, but it never can. It whisper-yells “why”. More as a statement than a question.
And your mind...
3 tags
Sometimes we forget
To imagine.
Sometimes it’s hard to see past our own problems. But somewhere out there, while we are in our minds, right now:
There’s an abandoned field with a hundred black birds, flying in a way we’ll never understand. One broken twig causing uproar.
There’s a girl taking a picture of the boy she’s in love with. A climber 15 minutes from the top of a mountain.
There’s an exam writer realizing...
Meaning is a Matter of Perspective.
Does your perspective matter? When you were little you had a lucky keychain. A teddy bear with a rip in it that you loved anyway. An imaginary friend. You had a favourite everything: colour, number, crossing guard, Arthur character, freezie flavour. You made things that “didn’t matter” matter. And you were happy. Now what do you have? Well, maybe you have a project in the back of your mind...
2 tags
A Brief Peek Into My Sidewalk Imagination
This morning, on my way to a test, I missed my bus. Instead, I took to the sidewalk. Where all of my best thinking happens. On this particular morning, I was thinking about what it means to be a poet. I thought about all the ways we repress expression, and why. I thought if I had caught the bus I would’ve had more time to study for my test. I thought about what it means to grow up. I thought...
2 tags
The Beautiful Intuition of a Stranger
I love going to the bank.
People who work at the bank have got to be some of the most friendly people I’ve ever spoken with.
I’m a friendly person too, when I’m being myself. And today, I was.
The teller and I were chatting and laughing away as she ran my cheques through the system. (If you treat your tellers like human beings, banking can be this comfortable.)
Suddenly she stopped me, and...