wedding poem for my uncle 9:12 p.m.

the architecture of them

In November the prairie winds howl with memories
of winter and the voices of a thousand wheat creatures
make speeches about loneliness on Wild Rose Ridge.

In November he admires the design of her smile, traces
the slope of her spine with a gentle hand and finds her eyes
fighting bright in the darkest parts of night on Wild Rose Ridge.

In November he recalls the marquetry of her spirit by the glacier
lake, the youthful embrace, amidst dancing leaves, of his
now wife and he is rich with the promise of life on Wild Rose Ridge.

In November great structures of timber and glass cradle the child
soul of spring and the smothered whispers of two score ten bear
witness to the perfect architecture of them on Wild Rose Ridge.

it seemed as though i would give up 12:48 a.m.

and somehow, through some measure of fate, i'm here. sitting at an open window, typing.

the store was a mess of things: cloth,
shelves and earrings, brightly
coloured relics of a decade made more
than broken and the man behind what would
have been a counter asked if we were
sisters. we weren't and admitted so.
the virgin soap, he said, makes you sweet
and young again. mah girls, he said. you'll
have to come back.

best hamster picture ever 4:59 p.m.

not quite right. 9:22 a.m.

the divide between my dream life and my waking life is beginning to collapse in on itself. things have happened but other people haven't lived them. my speech is slurred and my eyes are tired. i know that i'm not right. not quite right. crooked, you might say. or crazy.

perfect 10:45 p.m.

is the silence. and nothing is as complicated as it could be. it isn't hot or cold, late or early...it is, simply. i am sitting on a fire escape, the bars are making lines on my white legs. my blog entries are getting progressively worse. i have nothing to say and everything to confess.

so sayeth the west wing 10:36 p.m.

president bartlet and mrs. lanningham reveal, during an interaction in the fourth season, that if you're the president of the united states you can choose any number of paintings from the national art gallery and have them hung in your office. how cool is that? i'm salivating. what kind of president would choose a pollock, i wonder. i'm not sure that they even have warhols in the national art gallery, but if they did, would any president elect borrow one to hang? my guess is no.

there is the kind of art, as far as i'm concerned, that makes movements: creates them. art that does something unusual and is worshipped by those who toil, wreckless privately, smothered by themselves. can you believe internationl klein blue?

art: what an empty handful.

unearthed 11:00 p.m.

i was moving and sorting through old journals, as i do when they're unearthed. i came across a particular entry and it struck me. hard.

Sept 6, 2003

I am at camp and I need to vent because he doesn't love me. My back is beginning to sweat. The wasps are flying aroudn the orange juice that I stole from the dining room. I feel like a wasp. I linger around him , hoping to smell his smell. Laundry detergent. But I know if I get too close he'll swat at me with a few looks and words and then I'll have to sting him and then I'll die. I don't want to be in love with him. I miss him desperately. I know he is a beautiful person.

The CD I'm listening to makes me think of walking to work in Ottawa. It reminds me of Josh and of parliament and of the heart and crown and of Graeme. I don't know if it was a summer that I would like to be reminded of.

Somebody hid diamonds under the waves and they're glistening now. I want to go swimming but it's not hot enough yet. My skin isn't melting yet.

I guess writing is sort of like playing the piano. I'm out of practice. Who has time for this kind of thing anyway? Maybe I'm senile. Maybe that's not the right word. Maybe I'm fat and unattractive. Maybe I imagined that I was thin and beautiful and desirable and all of sudden, thanks to that asshole, I hate myself.

that was the last entry in the diary (the only one I recall using for any lenght of time) i bought the day after we first slept together, the so-called asshole and me. he's not an asshole at all, actually. his only sin was honesty. sin enough, i guess, at our age. for symmetry, here an excerpt from the first:

18 December 2002

Today I bought a journal. I have so much to write, I do not know what to say. I saw a book in Coles of Kurt Cobain's diaries and maybe one day someone will publish this because I will be famous and they will care. Claire says that she wouldn't write most of what she does in her journal if she knew someone would read it. I am not sure I care. I slept with ... last night. No, I've slept with him before. I had sex with him last night...

karen kain dances like a war fairy 9:06 p.m.

if you have ever taken an art class you will remember what it is to be asked to draw a person without lifting your pen from the paper. remember that and imagine a dancer, a woman with breasts and spirit, moving her limbs, muscles strained.

i have a book of her. a coffee table book stolen from a dusty pile in my mother's house. the photos are black and white, all of them. karen's hair is tucked neatly into a bun. her legs are longer than measurement. and the pictures are simple, plain. a woman dancing. why then, is it so erotic, so moving, so interesting to see her on a glossy page?

yarrrr 4:53 p.m.

before -- pirate themed streetcar party. need i say more? yes. i've showered, blow-dried, moisturized and feel that i'm ready to conquer the red beast. after - it was crazy. we showed up expecting to be the only ones sporting earings, mustaches: pirate costumes. but we were wrong, they were everywhere. we worried, for a brief moment, that there wouldn't be any music on the streetcar. we were promptly corrected: a few men in black pants and t-shirts spun happy hardcore followed by breaks. nick was especially happy about the breaks, as he generally is.

i'm listening to a cd that i used to play when i was in highschool. remembering is so good...

the ugliest part of town 10:41 a.m.

finch and dufferin: i dare you to find worse. i come up here every now and again for work -- my company has access to a boardroom on alness street. the landscape's unreal this far north. hideous high-rise apartment buidlings, noisy four lane streets framed by stripmalls containing businesses that all look as though they're having a closing out sale. shitty restaurants, bridal shops, a strip bar or two. second floor nail salons and dental offices, bus benches that remind you to call this real estate agent or that personal injury lawyer. it's thoroughly depressing. and accessible only by bus.

it's five hours to august 5:53 p.m.

and the apartment is hot, really hot. i'm listening to schubert's ave maria because someone made reference to it on the west wing, but i really do prefer palestrina. my heart's racing as per usual and anyone who knows me is sick of hearing about it.

the heat doesn't come from the sun, it seems
to come from the sky, the sidewalk, the open
mouths of men and women on telephones talking
about last night, how their employers fucked them

on that last paycheque which won't cover, it
seems, the goddamn hydro bill and it must be
the airconditioner which hums clumsily in the next
room and was purchased to ease sleep but doesn't

care much. and why should it? our sleep is the no
thing, not the nothing, but the no thing, useless
and funny. do you mumble words in your sleep?
toss and turn and hug cotton the way i do, unknowingly.

wanting to be beautiful but instead drooling. do you
wake to find yourself staring at the other one in your
bed? and if only it were the least bit like the movies,
if only i smelled sweet and looked peaceful. i am

a hurricane in my sleep. twisting, kicking in a violent
dreamland of water, which is my favourite, but dirty
always in this hot city. sleep is a heavy hand on my greasy
head and i can't help but crumble and be ugly. i sleep.

in explanation 6:48 p.m.

the blog's going dark for a while. if you read, check back in august. it's too hot and i'm uninspired.

i'm definitely infringing on copyright 9:07 p.m.

posting this poem, evie christie's. it's too good, i want the world to read it:

That We Could Let the Season Fall

Not so long ago your parents loaded
you into the yellow Dodge -- a meteor
shower made you forget
just how much you hated your sister. The rusted flatbed,

the smell of gasoline and blackness
were a universe. These days you are never
far from pills that keep you three feet
from anywhere, half a mile between thought and speech,

and your mother calls too often for even
you to believe it's okay -- believe
there is a universe, stars ablaze and falling,
burning, settling into darkness. That we could let the seasons fall

around us without recalling the times
we smiled artlessly at the buckled skies
would be mad. Let the scar
beneath your chin remember a hostile winter, a BMX

and flying, books studded with bus tickets,
ash smudged verses, your fervent youth.
Let a voice remind, across cities tonight,
how you hitched Highway 7, out of your village, .357 replica

tucked in your waistband, to meet the world half
way. Now there are cigarettes and weak syndicated
TV, now there is instant coffee, blinds drawn
and a phone that sings from that world you cannot bear to answer.

the national tonight: a translation 8:56 p.m.

mansbridge: are you guys fucking up the evacuation effort?
mackay: absolutely not. we're completely on top of it.
mansbridge: so there's a reason that other rich nations have already gotten significant numbers of their nationals safely home and we haven't moved a soul?
mackay: yeah, there's a reason. well, you see, peter, there are logistical issues...we haven't got a fleet in the mediterranean, we're halfway across the world. we're dealing with big numbers. there are fifty thousand canadians in lebanon.
mansbridge: right, and none of them have been moved?
mackay: well, it's not so much that. the french are on the same continent, dammit.
mansbridge: the french rented ferries from the greeks.
mackay: i don't like the greeks.
mansbridge: is canada backing a cease-fire?
mackay: people should be reasonable. we made a statement. it was at the g-8 conference. we're a g-8 nation, didn't you know. we made a statement.
mansbridge: right, so about the cease fire?
mackay: ever notice that we have the same initials? it's great interviewing with you peter. i love that name.

pinecones versus my new red shoes 4:33 p.m.

pinecones are small, brown crunchy things, not summer
creatures either. some were huddled together today on the
sidewalk and i stepped (shuddered) as they crunched
beneath my new red shoes. they were hiding from
the heat, i think, beneath the shade of some urban tree.

kensington market 7:12 p.m.

this neighbourhood screams dirty beauty on saturday afternoons. it is a sweaty oasis which defies sunday, which denies sunday, always. it's part of the appeal. and the drippy, hungry tongues of scruffy dogs are a staple here, pink. as are the women.

you can always tell when a woman is on the heels of sex. she smiles wide, has a satisfied glow about her. she is a bit slower than usual, a little more luxurious. she scrapes the sweaty strands of hair from her neck with confidence.

morning at 592 7:46 a.m.

the street is loud when i sit at my desk. it's seventeen minutes to eight and traffic is at its peak, pigeons coo on the roof near my window and trees everywhere are wilting from the heat. i see my favourite books lined up, in the spaces near to me. a collection of twice-read grisham paperpacks are heaped on the window sill. slivery poetry chapbooks are jammed between hardcover copies of barney's version, sowing the wind, a russian textbook: troika. donations from my mother: rankin, thayer and tanenbaum have been chucked lazily about the place -- i haven't read them.

janejanejane 7:56 p.m.

my sister is a very warm person. forgiving as all hell. she glows and it's not sweat either. i feel myself around her. unjudged and happy. the two of us soak in laziness, leave the apartment only to eat or to rent. we've seen years of television series since she moved in a week ago. i feel as though if we didn't have to earn money or be real people we could luxuriate here together until the end of time. it would be lovely, too. who needs to be thin and successful when you've got take-out and a bosom buddy? a sister and years of ER still to go. hand me the remote. STAT.

this is my friday night 6:29 p.m.

an hour and a half spent feeling sorry for myself, listening to sarah harmer and devendra banhart on repeat, drinking heineken and smoking belmont cigarettes (which can be challenging with a fan blowing at you on high, for the record). a cold shower because the hot water tank simply isn't big enough, followed by a few minutes in front of the mirror with a pair of dull tweezers. squeeze my fat ass into a pair of jeans, fish through my collection of equally unflattering shirts and select one. inevitably get deodorant all over it and pick another. go meet gay friend who has eleven o'clock date but is willing to entertain until then. find some patio, drink a few pints, check cell phone three or four times for missed calls. smoke more cigarettes. stumble home flushed by 1045. check tv guide for anything promising. find nothing. crack open another tall can of heineken, light a cigarette, mix things up with a little ariane moffat and wait for sleep.

of course, that's it 5:51 p.m.

the sky is sticky, my yellow room busier than
ever with the electric fan blowing at things...
there is a salt shaker on the table and it has
nothing to shake at. waiting is unhappy activity.

time would be better in different directions, many
of them. i am sick of navigating flat space, walking
on two feet towards things or away from them.
i am tired of sleeping and waking and eating simply.

doing or not doing, drunk or sober, quitting or staying,
shitting. and that it should be chemical is offensive. right,
i should run, have sex, eat strawberries, feel better? flat
little strawberries with price tags and pesticide jackets.

make of my little life a party, dream travel, look bashful,
wear pretty dresses. it's the heat, of course. my ovaries
complaining to the estrogen parts of my brain. it's the light,
of course, not enough of it. it's my blood sugar, of course.

of course, of course, of course that's it.