August 2011
2 posts
2 tags
Freight Train
Stay up late, watching the hours pass by through the thick lens of sleep. The computer glows against the dark shadows of the room. A song plays and replays, the whistle of a train passing through endless stations. Fall asleep, wake up, work, repeat. (I’m On Fire from Born In The U.S.A.)
My mother’s own Bruce Springsteen
3 tags
Rococo
The half moon glares down at us as you stand opposite to me on the small balcony. Below us the city is a ghost, dead in the depths of winter and night. The snow stopped a few hours after sunset. Our breath billows out in fleeting clouds which can only be seen if I squint, just so. Here, like this. It doesn’t matter. I wrap my scarf tighter around my neck, tuck it into my jacket. The...
June 2011
1 post
But, You Can't Get There From Here
Dear,
The weather is much warmer now. Today the world smelled of sunscreen; coconut and summer. I traveled, secretly giddy with the sunlight, to the small beach near the old Chinese cemetery where the geese lounge during the day. The rocks were hot to the touch, and I shifted my feet amongst them when the chilled breeze rolled in from the ocean. My book, pressed upon me by my mother, was of...
May 2011
9 posts
I watch you look out to the horizon, past whatever stands before it. Sometimes I think that everything makes sense, you confide to the ocean that breathes loudly below us. In this moment we seem to stop and stare out before us, blind. Sometimes I don’t understand you. Sometimes I think it doesn’t matter.
3 tags
Sleep
Sometimes I can’t believe it.
A midnight thought, alone in the darkness, is almost never welcomed. Yet it rushes to meet you like an unfriendly winter breeze. Asleep as you are, defenseless as you are, it is believable. It is a vivid reality, a memory warped by time and want and dread. You grasp it, desperately press it close to you even as you wake. Then, like a whisper, it slips...
1 tag
Cecilia
A wild cannon, she ran restlessly to the ocean, stopping only when her toes brushed the oncoming tide. Her wide brimmed hat waved as the wind rushed to meet her. The blanket and wicker basket sat abandoned near the line of sun drenched driftwood that lay along the shore. Her auburn hair, long now, flew about her face, kissing the ocean breeze as it flew by. ”Hello,” She whispered...
2 tags
Take Care, Take Care, Take Care
I can feel the ocean’s waves rushing up to meet me, rumbling below my feet. Wildly, I wish I could become them.
Dear Someone,
The new house is charming. I love the beach. It smells like early summers, waving goodbye from a shaded ocean lookout, picking blackberries by the road, and cutting my feet on hidden barnacles. The spring hasn’t quite warmed up. I am wearing a sweater,...
2 tags
Oh, I Love You
The sun rose silently above the Greyhound that ran along the USA 40. Kathy shifted in her seat, wary of waking her companion. She paused for a second before pulling the old travel blanket closer to her chin. Beside her, he slept with long, low sighs. Once again she rested her head against the warmed glass window.
She was so far from home.
It was the end of March, near her mother’s...
2 tags
Sylvia
I knew you, once.
As you thrash in your bed, fighting hard against the nurse and I, you scream with your desperate eyes. A wild stream of hate echoes from you with words I thought you didn’t know. You hate me; don’t worry, I know. I try to soothe the mind buried underneath what you are now. I know, I say. Please, I repeat. You are a shivering mass of blanket and skin and...
1 tag
Alice
Some people say that the moment you meet that person, the rest of your life begins. The second you shake hands, or awkwardly nod to each other over the roar of a Saturday night party. In that second, according to some, the direction of everything shifts; you are Alice falling through the rabbit hole. They say it can only happen once.
They must have met in September. It was a communications...
1 tag
Let's Call It Off
Existing alone in a house is eery. The floorboards creak, the old doorknob that hangs on the bedroom door clanks when you slip out in the middle of the night. It is often cold. Humanity is missed. Those you avoided last month are wished for. At night, alone is a terrible word.
Morning is a relief. Sunlight streams in through the thin curtains and highlights veins of fabric. You sing a...
2 tags
Skinny Love
Come on, just last the year. It was something she thought every once in a while. She hadn’t been to the lookout, dark over the pacific ocean, in weeks. Her house was close to the water, a small basement suite that would grow unbearably cold in the winter. Even now, as summer began to stretch, a chill sprang like a weed from her fingertips, creeping up her arms.
Now all your love is...
April 2011
7 posts
2 tags
Morning Thought
It started as an average day. An average day which began with an average cup of coffee, not more weak nor strong than the day before. A shower at the normal time, a glance in the mirror, as usual.
But it was not a normal day.
This was the day many things would change. (Morning Thought, a single)
Of Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.
1 tag
You're A Goddamn Fool, And I Love You
Alone, the scrap of paper sat beside the telephone. A pen rested upon it, slanted in such a way that the scrawling writing was obscured just so. He hadn’t noticed it before he left in the early morning such was his hurry. Absently, with the milk still heavy in one hand, he shifted the pen aside. You’re a goddamn fool, it said, and I love you. (Wolves At The Door from Kut Radio...
I'm Losing Myself
He hadn’t seen the sun stretch across the trees since that day in early November. It had been a long winter, through working and living and endless nights of wild thoughts. They hadn’t talked since December, when he called her after several drinks on a Tuesday night. On the first ring a man’s voice had answered, his breath throwing static into the receiver.
Once, sometime...
2 tags
America
“Kathy,” He said as they boarded the old greyhound, “Michigan feels like a dream to me now.”
She did not reply, but instead sat, letting her head fall against the window as she absently scanned the passing fields. Hours later his quiet laughter woke her, “Look at that man in the suit,” he whispered with a grin, “he must be a spy.”
She offered...
The Shrine/An Argument (II)
I went down among the dust and pollen
To the old stone fountain in the morning after dawn
Underneath were all these pennies fallen from the hands of the children
They were there and then were gone
And I wonder what became of them
What became of them
Sunlight over me no matter what I do
Apples in the summer are golden sweet
Everyday a passing complete
I’m not one to ever pray for...
El Condor Pasa
I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail. Yes I would. If I could, I surely would.
The fence runs along the cliffside. You walk alongside it in veiled sunlight, runners passing by along the narrow paved trail. The smell of ocean rushes past in a gust of wind from the shoreline below. Turn at the familiar trail, along a row of grasping bushes which stand bare from the winter. Your bench...
The Shrine/An Argument
On a strange island an old woman and a dog live, far away from the world. In her life she was free, and traveled to distant, vibrant worlds that many only read in National Geographic magazines. She wrote the articles that would fill magazines such as this, of people and buildings and their lives and deaths and sometimes things in between. This is fondly remembered by the old woman, though the...
March 2011
12 posts
All The Girls In Their Summer Dresses
The room is warm and smells like laundry on a spring day. Once empty, the room is now filled with memories in the form of scraps of paper and photographs. It is comfortable here, familiar, but temporary.
All I Ever Wanted
I can tell that you’re scared of turning into your mother,
and I can feel myself turn into my father.
So we can lie to ourselves like they do and say we’re still happy.
I guess it’s easy when you’re young and you still want it so badly.
On a cold day in April she sat on the cliffs that met the Pacific Ocean. Her mother had an angry face and a sad heart....
Coincidence, noun: a striking occurrence of two or...
Van Morrison and The Moon
In a dim room, an old record echoing through the needle that brushes past it. Here nothing is only imagination.
I find I can’t get that beach out of my head...
She says, Come on don’t be like that. It...
I am whispering through a strange place with an...
Years ago I had a rabbit named Buttercup. This is...
Dear Friend,
You are an idiot, and it makes me...
The things you don’t say are an ocean....
Peaceful, the world lays me down. This time last...
I Guess It's Late
It had been a long time since she had stopped wondering about how things would turn out. The girl realized this as she sat in her small room, hours after she had told herself she was tired. Hours after she had decided sleep would not come. About twenty minutes since she had resolutely slipped into bed again. Fifteen since she received a text message, of course. It is difficult to stop...
February 2011
8 posts
What would happen if you were to turn left on that...
This song always makes me smile somehow. The...
I can’t sleep before 2 AM anymore....
I’ll have a shower, get ready, and leave...
Cold instant mocha on a winter day is not...
Nothing is quite good enough for you, you think to...
I pushed the needle through,
Knitting...
They had been travelling for a long time. During...
January 2011
3 posts
How do you like your toast in the morning?
One of us sang this, to my right, in the trailing silence left by another’s guitar. He plays Johnny Cash, the soft twangs wash through the room and twist along as they sing. The one man room is nearly crowded, and they belt along now, their voices must seep through the crack in the door, down a hallway. I sit as they shout their labyrinth...
This is the first time I have ever been completely...
I’m not sure which anniversary it was this...
December 2010
5 posts
2 tags
A wide black river would flow before them, as they...
He had been here for a long time. In his mind at least. A long time since the last day of November, when it snowed for a few hours. When a song about a Beatle echoed through the lonely street from a window above him. He watched as the invisible girl walked away, steady along the icy sidewalk.
But that was a long time ago.
November 2010
4 posts
2 tags
In the centre of the narrowed street is a couple...
3 tags
You sit in a crowded school auditorium. Beside...
6 tags
Right now you don’t know very much. You don’t...