Pink socks

Pink socks in my nose
on the brown couch, in a row
are somewhat better than sweaty toes
but above both of those, is-not ironed clothes, not your feet decorated in red rows
-the warm winky weirdo I chose.

my little lady

works hard all day
much work no play
my little lady don't stray she's
wearing her silver blues and needing new shoes
and lying on the deck by the flowers at a quarter past
two - maybe just for an hour cause who knows who
will call the hotline?

do I buy red roses when asked to now
she still smiles at the power of flowers I
shush her now she calms right down she works so hard
and right downtown so proud I tell her that; how she is my
champion

Love in the Diner (04/07)

I had a strange experience today
After a 30km bike ride to the Beaches
and back in the spitting wind,
I finally made a break at Bathurst and College
at the College St Diner which
serves excellent pancakes although it has been known
to charge 50 cents a packet for strawberry jam.

In my recent streak of sheer psychic excitement
I've concluded I must be having a telepathic effect on total strangers
so wrapped up am I in this, this thing for which I have too much respect to name
that steam is pouring out my ears and infecting others

anyway it must have been a sign when
just after I ordered the 'Can't Talk, Eating' hungry-man special
four goodlooking philosophers (definitely not Toronto natives) - one woman, three men -
well coiffed, toned, erudite and inquisitive
sat down next to me and proceeded
to hold forth on
LOVE
'what love is' one of them asked
and that hooked me
and what's the difference between love and being in love
and whether love is an overused word
how it means whatever it wants to mean to whomever wants to use it
how the word means nothing at all, really
and how words generally do that.

I couldn't believe my ears
these philosophers
thirtysomething professorial types
the kind who can breezily discern semantics over brunch
the four most intelligent people on the planet, really
having this analytical argument
about the meaning of love
in which
my universe hung in the balance
they were talking about me
everything seems to be about me lately
- I deserve a healthy shake, I know -
I would have banged my sugar shaker on the table
to get their attention
saying 'hey folks, love is war and
you're looking at one of the foot soldiers!'
but I'm trying to give up sugar
in favour of healthier smoothie-type things
and so I kept silent
and they kept mocking me
four feet away

but the coincidence was too precious so
resourceful as I am I
asked the waitress for a pen
so I could jot this down for later
that was my revenge for
them talking about me and my war
ie me writing about them
so I unfolded my bike map of toronto
with the entire city depicted
(I use that map to figure out how to get around)
and wrote all over it but now it's ruined as
in scribbling in all of this
my words filled in all of lake ontario and half of the downtown west end.

(i know I must be preoccupied these days
but there are sensible ways to deal with it and there are crazy ones for
instance
on the way out of the diner
thinking about what it all meant
I accidentally walked right smack into the
women's bathroom
I guess I was looking for you
luckily no one screamed
but boy was I red.)

To/from us

We tumbled head over shoulder, face down on the sidewalk, end over end, jacket on the pavement, quite literally on the way to the movies, metaphorically much more. Open doors, evaporating clouds, hearing music never known because our hearts are turned up loud.

We got a little left tonight, we stroll along the lake, we won that right, your day off today after all, and I see your eyes are made of light.

My job's making music out of music. I mix it up to make it right. Now you've meta-musician, skip the sounds and wave to the waves, each song a ripple stitched together, interlinked as levers, free, no cost except what we couldn't save.

On the wall is the picture of the shadow of the kiss in the sand, and the stereo plays the eternal band, it's Mick and Keith and Bowie and the Cult and sweet soul sister, your little hand is in my hand.

CNE

sweet smells my mind

remembering her hair,

jetscreams everywhere

airshow blow-by

blonde with blue eye

what time wasted I

and now must we die

having lived just now

alive

These are your eyes

multicoloured flashes
green blue lightning
strangers ogle, waitresses gush
lucky me
I bask all day
puts a stupid grin
on me;
the irony is that
wherever you gaze we
see the
brilliance only
you can't see.

(and mirrors aren't the same)

rhyming as sleep aid

(a week with no words - wakes you up at 2am with itchy fingers)

After midnight with no one around
the wolves are silent, well profound
atop a mountain, climbing down
to the heart of an ocean underground

what sleep may come with a beating drum
nobody now to rub my tum
lie on the floor and pray for sun
when morning makes you run

the glow persists, vigil screen
too old to pretend to scream
no nightmare pillows, it's you I dream
and plunder what it means.

O fog sit thick atop my brow
tired bones beat back the drowse
warm words rock me gently now
[I see no point asking how.]

Channel changing blues

(hey - by the end it starts to makes sense!)

Witness this
we words work wonders
deliberate misses, don’t strike the missus
“Today I was threatened with a baseball bat”
so I’ve been saving kisses, and I’m
done compensating with a kitty cat. I
switch too fast, hang on
get steam, make it last; we
oscillate, can’t let your logic penetrate – I don’t
have time for eventual comprehension
we have a seven-city tour of
the
septic tanks.
If you were exhausted like me
these little bits are plenty feed
so don’t choose, just beg
be satisfied, signals collide we sigh
don’t die yet, go on a diet
of fibrous thoughts, roughage regurgitated
for rectal rumination, when you
barely gather your carcass
after sweat and elation
victorious and arbitrary
competition is something scary on your
face and I’d

marry that face to mine
and await my bottle of wine
we circled that date
months in advance
and now I’m ready
done floggin’ the remote
or switching sides in my one-paddle boat;
let’s watch every program; I don’t interrupt.
[Although I might occasionally curse the sky and get up if
it’s one of those two-hour documentaries
on the history of the menstrual cup!]

What is anticipation?

"From this distance, I think I might love you.

I am beginning to hate this distance."

Have no doubt

(I want this to be talked about.)

Truly, I’m tizzied. Has it affected me? Certainly, since last week I’ve dreamt, not slept, swept and checked my countenance for cracks, carefully counted my steps and spent sweat, pain, laughter all spun together in this mind-churning infatuation with your brain.

And your name! I am ashamed; I have not yet said your name to you. All of the above has numbed my voicebox, a blow from which I can’t recover, and beyond my lyrics and drums, I do confess: I fear my rubber tongue.

And “Oh but reality,” the fingers wag, citing polysyllabic nonsensicalities, eventualities, uncertainties, contingencies, superstitions and fragilities:

For instance, it is true, we have not met. And do we both clean our apartments? Do we disdain four-legged pets? Do we like the mornings? And do we both eat meat??

I do, I love meat. I do. I’ll get my fill at our first meeting, with eyes that taste every inch of you. And I’ll call the banquet hall tomorrow, if you like what you see too.

But do not doubt the serene certainty in my insanity, surety in my naivete, Samsonlike strength in my devotion to this realism. Full of bull? Oh no. Ole!

Backflips

(folks, we have arrived)

The written word is a funny thing.
I get the feeling you're
less sentimental than I
so you won't think twice
about me waxing
about how
important it is that
since I discovered your
existence I have resolved
to meet you
as soon as possible.

Oh I've been plotting suddenly
-and this is nothing like me-
and scheming,
every song selected
for maximum meaning
and melting of
your shivering hard diamond heart.

Call me a wacko
but a sliver of me
suspects
for the longest time
I've been writing
about you
-wacko, yes-
bet you didn't
know that
but here just now
I catch myself staring
at you
and reading you
in disbelief and
afraid to tell anyone
lest
they pinch me
and
I can't deny
this egocentric eccentricity
-so indulge me, please-
that if you were conjured
from poems
I've been writing for years
'Measuring the best of me,
awaiting her, clandestinely'
then it's nothing at all for me
to wait a bit longer.

I'll do what I have to.

Wait, yes.
When it's
blind love, Tom waits
But today I got my wish
and
will
see you soon enough
thanks to two unlikely cupids
and boy yeah now I'm being mushy and stupid and
be warned that
in person I tell shockingly horrendous puns!

Fanning an old flame

(and smothering it to death)

I don’t remember how
we touched
but won’t forget
how it touched you:
my remembering
how touching it was
that you remembered
my touch.

Preparing for my latest embarrassment

(the calm before the rejection; also - why our friendship has a hole in it)

either I’m disingenuously naive
or superstitious
or fatally me,

pretending honesty isn’t my fault
that ignorance of your mindset isn’t my fault
spoiled by innocence, expecting too much of
grace. Just like a poet.

oh me
falling victim to the
memory of her honesty
again
expecting someone else to love honesty
as much as she

expecting ‘I like you’ not
to become
‘I freak you out’
just another sweet dismissal, or
fodder for an elegant epistle
planting seeds for the
bittersweet reversal, ie
years from now
when you look at me with big eyes
but all I hear are echoes of
my honest mistake and
your stupid pride
and then my stupid mistake:
my wounded dishonest pride begrudging
your self-inflated, knee-jerk
retreat; you so ignorant
of all that's stillborn
and me painfully aware of what never was and
we both teased by what
could have been sweet.

The miracle worker

(She pinched me on the bum
it was 2001
I didn't expect that
or what was to come)

There's a picture upon my dresser
letters for her
that need an addresser

she grows smiles in her eyes
transplants them on faces
hellos like embraces
so
discard the bitch mace
bigcity paranoia, cynicism
sequoias blocking
forest for the trees
she lives in Atlantis,
yes! So
I am led to believe.

I will call you again

After two years,
everything you said is clear

people say what's the point
- ti trovo un posto

the first words I learned in your language were the most beautiful

first thing learned is last forgotten

Hope

come back and you won't get away
burned in me

Dress up Thursdays

When I was 19 I would dress up in a shirt and tie - every single Thursday.

I'm not sure why I started it.

"So..." people asked, "why are you all dressed up?"

I had no good answer. But I kept dressing up. It had the makings of a story.

"Because, um. It's Thursday."

I wore a tie every day for five years in high school - but it was a non-issue. When you go to an all-boys private school, having a physical appearance is mostly a non-issue. As a teenager I was all intellect and brain vapour. I had no use for mirrors.

Then I got to university. 'Feel good by looking good' was my new philosophy. It worked. People got to expect it - the tie, the style, the smile. It was strange for me, because I don't really like attention. The direct, staring 'who's that guy'? kind. I still don't like mirrors; they force me to stare.

Anyway, my first haircut at Queen's was on a Thursday. It was early November, my hair was criminally shaggy. And my new hairdresser was hot.

"Why are you dressed up," she asked, "on a Thursday morning?"

She had an incredible figure and bottle blonde hair. But Christ - her first name eludes me now. It was one of those blonde-bombshell names.

"It's this thing I do." I was half in love already. "It's dress-up Thursday."

Jaclyn? Holly? Amber? Sonja? Kendra? Tricia?

"Ok.... Why do you do it?"

Cuz I'm an eccentric baddass daredevil, I wanted to tell her. Glad I didn't. It was a great haircut. She cut my hair every two months for the next three years.

"I guess because it makes people smile."

I was 100 % faithful to her. Her scissors, my hair, three years. I've never been committed to anyone that long.

She moved to Ottawa in 2000 to open a salon. I think of her every time my hair grows shaggy. I'm sad about her name now. I'm sad because she asked me the best questions - and I'm letting her down.

"It gives people something to talk about."

I've never told any hairdresser since Keira about Dress up Thursdays. It was our thing, and besides - they might think I was strange.

Ah. Yes. Keira. Keira. Keirah? No.

I miss you Keira. Move back to Kingston. Thanks for indulging this incoherent anecdote. I wrote about you so I could remember your name.

Song for lonely jazzheads

Some things are insufficient to express, me not prone to the mental undress.

Always sharpening. Sharpen yourself into electric current, until your eyes are a solar eclipse - and you draw blood by being invisible.

You sitting on a bench, by the tin, in the park, beside the swing, sit and sigh - skyscrapers are selfish; they make the sky dark.

Traffic pumping blood; open door equals flood, metaphor equation, permanently transient nation, this tree in spring – I remember tiny buds, thanked each leaf, chased each in autumn to rescue gratitude from the thud.

Nobody dreams of work. They dream of fringes, exceptions. I dream of Mediterranean vacations with my rose-coloured queen. I don't recall dreams much but this one reoccurs. She has straw hair like cornstalks, laughs three millimeters from my cheek. That night in Ottawa I told her how proud she made me. She didn’t expect that; choked up. I never complimented her but this time I did. She could not speak, eyes watering. I forgot how intimidating I can be. ‘Love is an action’ I told myself - but women aren’t made that way. I felt like an alien. You can't speak... I choke up. She couldn't read my music for the notes I wrote her. Like a jazz pianist with mittens.

Me high? On pork tenderloin, cab sauvignon. Medications, milady, we’ve taken a few. I’m wrapped in butter and slippery do, and no no no - I never ever did stop loving you.

Victim of Doubt

(making peace with angst at the Golden Wheat bakery)

Doubt

She doesn’t know me at all, wish I was tall.
think of her dress, don't place weight on a failure to impress.
Her lips don’t move in lockstep with reason, just a little too curious about self-destruction.
No real me, just addiction to irony, epitome of liberty. Constrained to this hunk of meat, can’t taste ether, or see in ultraviolet either.
I don’t smoke, who needs to - surrounded by so many jokes?
Every drawn out conversation could be summed up in a picture. Better to torture each other than produce art.
A paradox pun. A skinhead on the run.
Why choose, my instincts shine in reaction. Fit myself into every puzzle.
“I am not your rolling wheels; I am the highway.”
Broke his own body, God forgave me because I asked. My father’s house, I will live in my father’s house.
Every pain a reminder that the ticker will run out.
Hang your head at your failure to love.
Remember tomorrow. Forget yesterday. Think about the present means getting locked in a mirror, lasts forever by extinguishing time and your soul stopped in the headlights. Only love can distract us.
Narcissus - fatally fascinated with his own existence. I guess he didn’t love himself enough.
Nothing new here. Old truths are best. Old clothes don’t impress, but I welcome every comfortable wrinkle.
Keep forcing myself to talk, hope one day my keyboard will make a sound.
You can’t plan for an epiphany. Waiting, waiting, waiting.
Pass me the salt. That is love.
This poem is an insurance policy against future disappointment. Wisdom is an insurance policy - or maybe it's preventative maintenance. There is no more profound loss than an unexpected loss. When we leave our bike unlocked there is no blaming the thief.
Act in a rational manner? Impossible with so little information. All life is an incomplete experiment at how to be happy – if only I knew everything, I would plant my garden right and everyone would eat the fruit. Let’s play. The dice were loaded from the beginning. I’m the last to leave the table, stuck my whole life paying the bill for Original Sin. Garnish my salary or I’ll wash dishes in the kitchen forever. Look at the bright side though – fig leaves are in style and the apples were delicious.

Smell The Roses

(a real ridiculous doozy. handwritten in the hour between rainbows)

*ahem*

Smell The Roses

In the pouring rain
in the Monday morning rush
we talked for an hour in my head
I was that guy
cycling on the sidewalk with an
open umbrella
though I was soaked
to the bone already so
- why dry out in vain?
dignity, it
slows me down I
know

but I
don't get pleasure from
solving these mysteries
cant dwell on dying or the rain
- prefer endless epiphanies, exiting
every cul-de-sac through secret garden escapes

I left out pieces
on purpose and perforce,
it's what I
always do,
I'm not lazy nor can't not leave untwisted thoughts for you but
I'm giving you credit, the wonder you are
and
in five years' time when
it finally makes sense I
won't gloat at how you
figured it out but will be
ready
with an uncondescending kiss on the
lips that
was yours all along, and
that - that kiss -
is something I will have
immensely missed.

(it's a whirlpool
flowing in a circle with different levels to skip
between
a cotton-candy spinning machine
sugar and magnets make it
crystallize so
sweetly on the tongue)

Monday evening and still
raining
the city calm after 24 years of fire,
washed out in downpour, extinguishment
oh
to desire no more, except the
satisfaction of a
clean slate

I'm preparing each day;
some days napping but
some days I'm painting the walls
twenty thousand and twenty-two shades of blue
- just for you

I lost my title along the way
smelling roses, tracking butterflies
stomach fears chasing rabbits down a hole
but
is this Wonderland?
It's not every day I feel so
lucid:

sometimes the joy is palpable, bright red with
orange streamers, shuttling through dusk in a
shiny blue Venusian carapace
- indestructible to
frowns and whispers

I can't do this in a vacuum
I'll stick everything in
formaldehyde if I must, if
words can't live free in your heart, I'll
tie em down on paper
like every educated
caveman, hunting my
mammoth in mammoth-cliques with a big drunken stick, oh
to flame once high, twice,
thrice before burning out!

I see no end to the rain, but I
see you're impatient so
don't wait up -
I've got the whole field to enjoy. And
tomorrow the desert blooms, technicolour
kaleidoscope and the smell of morning mist
seducing the
Sahara and
the cracked dead earth weeps
colours as double-rainbows encircle the
storm

email I never sent you on my birthday

the truth (emotional, not objective. hard on the stomach but it sets you free?)i guess i come on too strongi should never have told you that i like you so much. it's given you a big head.and i know this is none of my business but -i can't kiss you any more if you're sleeping around.but you're right, it's actually very much my business. but what i mean i have no right to wish you wouldn't mess around, which is another no-brainer. or maybe i do have a right, not an objective one but certainly an emotional one.i guess that is my fear, that i'm just another notch on your scorecard, a one-dimensional idiot in one of your stories. maybe some guys could deal with that buti can't, ie can't still want to be intimate with you even when i know you are having 'personal time' with others. it's not that I believe in monogamy so much asi deserve better. or maybe i don't deserve better, buti would eventually want you as my girlfriend - this much i have come to understand about me and my developing feelings for you, feelings you are trying to stamp out in their infant stages, perhaps because i'm simply not that attractive (um, no) perhaps b/c you don't want to hurt me because i'm 'nice'. and you don't trust yourself not to hurt me, because you seem to have a lot of baggage which you don't hesitate to bring up in order to scare me. hey, nothing helps a neurosis like spreading it around. everyone has a past, i can live with that. i can deal with baggage. but what i can't live with- you are sending out so many signals that youdon't want to or can't be with me, at the same time you lean in to kiss me. now i enjoy kissing you immensely but i'm reading the signals loud and clear.i know i deserved to have my mind fucked with afterthe way i dealt with the m____ thingmaybe you felt like second fiddle, which i feel truly awful about, but ireally i thought i was doing the proper thing by telling you i couldn't go out with youbecause she was there first, which is really the only reason, ie that she and i had more ofa history which when i read it over actually sounds gutless and even more horrible. but that is so in the past, an immature relationship with absolutely no intimacy - and i'm trying i'm trying to move forward.you keep bringing up her name whenever i tell you that'i like you too much', which makes it basically impossible to move forward,as though for some reason youdon't believe that i like you, like you as in like you for you, not just because you are hot or pretty or it's what i need to say to get you to sleep with me. trust me i don't want to sleep with someone who isn't madly attracted to me or who has doubts as to whether i'm worth it. i am realizing now i should back off. that's what you want. you suspect that i'm not worth it.some things i guess i shouldn't tell, or ask. but you say that you like the truth, well here it isi really do like you, am seriously attracted to yo, mind and body, and perhaps yes i'm looking for a little soul.i wish you could believe that; you choose not to, or you just like to play games i'm not sure, or perhaps i suspect this worst of all - that you don't trust yourself not to screw it up if we were serious so you'll sabotage it from the getgo and hey that's why you keep telling me how you're moving out of town within the year. ok i get it that's a pretty obvious hint. but part of me suspects it's an attempt at fooling me into thinking it could never work but really you're fooling yourself to believe it will never work because you realize to your dismay i am a goddamn good catch and oh the irony now you've got me on the hook - there for the taking - but you're afraid to get tossed overboard yourself, lose control and so you're trying to throw me back before your life gets jarred from its newfound comfort zone. well on a superficial level i can understand you value comfort and but really that's just cruel and for someone who hates fishing it's damn hypocritical to let me danglei'm sorry. really not in the habit of being this conceited. unforgivable really.- I still think we can be incredible.(no pressure)