sarah lee cherry cheesecake 11:42 p.m.

is clearly god's gift to hormonal women, fabulous with all of its colourful little frozen bits of ruby fruit and graham crumbs and cheese that doesn't really taste like cheese but is really fucking awesome anyway. i fee like it understands me.

i will not eat an entire sally lee cherry cheesecake tonight. i will not eat an entire sally lee cherry cheesecake tonight. i will not eat an entire sally lee cherry cheesecake tonight.

i have eaten an entire sally lee cherry cheesecake tonight.

shit.

it's back on 8:52 p.m.

head viced between the hard noise of the nine to five, the cigarettes and the dog (which is not mine but eats my underwear anyway) i've made a decision. i've decided that my precious insanities may be more precious and less insane if shared. so the blog's back on. word.

i have a video camera 8:19 p.m.

I have a video camera. When I am filming a person with my video camera I can zoom in on whichever parts of them I like best and nobody need be the wiser. It is the camera’s single most important feature.

My girl, had a number of single most important features. It was loud in the room: voices, laughter, the rhythmic thumping of some stupid kind of music I couldn’t name and didn’t care because she was wearing a skirt and had goose bumps on her skin from the open window. People were smoking, you see, it was of those parties. Vodka on the kitchen counter, cocaine on the coffee table, footprints on the floor and she was wearing a skirt and I had a video camera.

An oversized birthday card found its way to the kitchen table and lay open, pages spread like legs as people touched it, marked it. There were four thick black sharpie pens, three men, two women and the birthday card was having a fine time of it.

So was my girl, though she had better things to do than sign cards – she was busy with the business being beautiful, humming along to some stupid kind of music I couldn’t peg and didn’t care because she was wearing a skirt.

Cameras have a number of defects, the greatest of which is that they don’t capture smell and I stood over her under some drunk and dubious premise, filming the side of her neck, the bits of shadows sprinkled about the secret parts of her body, she had a smell.

Throw the camera across the room, smash the window, seek the floor, Michelle I want your smell inside me.

She might as well have been naked. She might as well have been standing at the foot of my bed, naked, arms swinging shyly by her sides with that skin like the sweeter tasting milk. She might as well have been, devastating as she was.

Minutes and the birthday card was spent, used, page-legs closed and the birthday crowd progressed to the drinking of the birthday booze and as the sound of ice-cubes hitting cut glass tumblers distracted the liquid hearts of the habit-warmed few, I stole a few more moments from my girl.

I spent them in the dream curve between her ribcage and her hip mouth full of lust words. The kind that soap wouldn’t wash out: my hand, nails bitten to the quick, will slide beneath your breast and live in that fold. Will scrape across your skin as the room echoes and moans, will find your other folds soft, wet and warm and will inhabit them. Inhabit them until you are full and I am blind, until you are hurt and I am deaf.

Make of me some Helen Keller oblivion beautiful, with those legs. Throw the camera across the room. Smash the window. Seek the floor.

She squirmed in her leather seat to the sound of some stupid music I couldn’t name but was beginning to like, because it made her tits move like she was fucking me and my camera were watching her tits move like she was fucking me and my camera watched until the vodka was spent, used, empty, until the record stopped spinning, taxis were called and boys began to make b-lines for last call.

I watched her ass as it approached the door, stocking feet on hardwood floor, redefining fiction with every step.

My girl, you can’t ever see this tape.

finger nailed 8:15 p.m.

My mother tells me over cheap wine that I need to be more conscious of my corporate work environment. Look around the office, she says. I’ll bet you won’t find a single VP…I cut her off, or bite her off, if you will. I think you’d be surprised by what goes in and comes out of those people’s mouths and furthermore, it is without doubt that if I followed the general moral example of the management team, I would be condemned to burn in hellfire for all of eternity. Is that really what you want for your first born, I ask? That’s not the point, she says. Of course not, I think.

I am an adult and as such I heed the advice of fellow adults. Especially when they’re related to me and Christmas is coming up. Therefore, I am trying to quit biting my fingernails. Having recalled the existence of some toxic sludge my parents used to paint on my thumb in an attempt to have me stop sucking it, I haul ass to the Pharmasave and find a clerk. I’m trying to quit biting my fingernails, I tell her. She looks at me as though I’ve got the clap, fiddles with her hair which has been died some soft shade of radioactive and tells me she’s got just the thing. Parents come in all the time, she says, trailing off with her hands comfortably by her sides, that haughty bitch.

I whip out my VISA card, which I hope the lovely Melinda will notice is a step up from the student kind and bow in complete deference to the great corporate mogul that is me. She does not. I pay, grab my toxic sludge and leave.

Seated in the comfort of my Victorian low-rise apartment, away from the judgmental eyes of the properly finger-nailed world, I apply the sludge gently, at first. Then, mesmerized by the activity, begin to apply more aggressively. Minutes later, my fingernails, hands and select areas of my thighs and calves have been doused. I sit, turn on the tube and wait for my invitation to the world of non-compulsive, have-their-shit-together, people. Several commercial breaks later, distracted by the pretty lights and intelligent dialogue of primetime, I try and sneak in a quick chew. To my dismay, I begin to gag, dry-heave, attempting in an apoplectic frenzy to get the evil taste of childhood out of my mouth. Noooo!!!! I scream. Glaring at the bottle, I wish hard that looks could bring inanimate objects to life and kill them, not in a nice way. The grey, orange and white label innocently proclaims “Nail Biter.” I decide that it would more suitably be labelled “We’re secretly trying to poison you because anyone who bites their fingernails is CLEARLY a terrorist.” But admitting to myself the importance of the covert in the great fight against minorities and their inherent evil, I digress.

I was promised a safe, effective method of healing from a dirty habit. Instead I’m chugging a beer in the shower, trying desperately to rid myself of the evil stuff. Fuckers, I think again.

Newly washed, moisturized and thoroughly upset, I scan the package for customer service numbers and begin to imagine the string of expletives I will unleash on the unfortunate Sally Hansen rep who will answer my call. Sadly, there is no customer service number to speak of. And even if there were, it’s half past nine on a Friday night and they’d surely be closed. I begin to imagine the string of expletives I would’ve offloaded had there been voicemail. Fuckers, I think.

In an effort to maintain some semblance of sanity, I call my best friend and invite him over for a joint. By this I mean, in an effort to maintain some semblance of sanity, I call my best friend and coyly hint that he come immediately over with weed and sandwiches. He is of a good breed, being related to the Guttenberg character who invented the printing press and as such, appears promptly, bearing gifts.

After a few good drags and a quick bite I am decidedly less insane, though still pissed about the obvious conspiracy between Sally Hansen, my parents and the rest of the properly finger-nailed world. Don’t think I don’t know. Best-friend Jonathan, sensing my anger still brewing, leans over, passes the joint and exhales, lesbians all have fingernails like yours, he says gently. They’re considered practical, cool even. I, in turn, exhale and with a deep sigh of relief think to myself: what a civilized bunch, these lesbians you speak of. After a brief moment’s thought, I forgive Jonathan his fingernails, make peace with my own and with Melinda and settle into the sofa with a fair-sized roach for what will now undoubtedly be, an okay night in the world of the compulsive.

an experiment in colour and god 8:10 p.m.

He was accustomed to walking
grey city streets, dirty silver
lampposts conspiring, black
Mise van der Rohe shadows
impending. He was accustomed
to pasty white bodies pounding
pavement, their peach-coloured lips
humming off-key tax returns tunes
under pregnant clouds. He was
accustomed to Toronto.

Convertible top down, prairie
wind, gofer children scurrying
golden wheat paths to underground
schools of sunset, he was

unaccustomed

to the country’s midsection,
its slender waist sweating orange
ceilings, he was unaccustomed
to the country’s expansive belly.

Scream the cranberry words
of ruby-red cross-country conclusions,
he wanted to scream the lavender lyrics
of freedom from the black-fabric seats
of his champagne rental.

Conservative dog-brown shoe pedal
to the metal, fast forward to purple ends
of possibility falling from the sweet
grass heaven. He was unaccustomed
to the road’s speed and linearity.

Dirty blond stubbled release from
frames, doors, the ninety-degree
angle pressure to pay bills on platinum
geometrics of plastic. Dirty blond
stubbled permission for faster.

He was unaccustomed to the flushing
hushing undulating currents of loud
navy dark wind, stars picking
birthplaces in ebony sky, to this.

Scream the blind midnight words
of irresponsible time sand syllables,
he wanted to scream the white blank
page erasures of urban burgundy
madness and did.

And God listened.

storm at the family cottage in thunder bay 8:07 p.m.

Tree branches slap angrily against aging siding
Like the master’s whip against the bare skin of the
Boy who stole bread from the kitchen and was caught.

Rain hesitates in the parts of the sky nearest to Heaven,
Parts which I have seen only from airplanes, sipping tomato
Juice, reading newsprint and fearing death obediently.

Wrinkled palms smack laminate counters with familiar rhythm
And a fat yellow Labrador retriever barks at the screen of the
Door which confines it to its allowed space like a stupid beast.

Dirty towels and cedar panels, the latest publication on wealth,
music, how to keep the weight off, and this season’s best in pet gear
and top-of-the-line ice cream makers confine me to mine quietly.

Life is the thing which keeps the women in the kitchen reddened
Like fight-filled children, squealing hatred from all available orifices.
What fiction, rattle the blackened skies, that blood is thicker than water.

Thunder ten pins through the heavens like a chorus to the hotly felt verses
Of angry speech that the mistresses of the house pitch to the walls intently
As though words could meet and conquer wallpaper to reveal some antique

Truth preserved in flour-water.

Truth like fabric woven through years of antagonism and strife, bloody
Miscarriages of justice and faith and sisterhood and the dog
Now barks past the screen to the world and it is undeniably a prayer

Or proposition for a cease fire, a laying down of arms and words as the rain
Changes it fickle mind and leaves are silent with the smell of crushed
Revolution and the sky is painted a fresh shade asphalt with all its promises of

Destruction/Freedom

Still in tact.

on what it is to be an urban woman 8:02 p.m.

I’ve lost my cell phone and the walls
are ringing like they want to talk like they’ve
got something to say. The man knocking his rock-filled shoe
against the lamppost says I have a text message,
something about sanity…

Disregard emphatically.

I am in a forest, cell phoneless, making friends
with mute rabbits, stepping on toasted leaves
and looking up to find canopy, to find ceiling,

to find sky.

Mumbling verses into the naked wind on how not
to be alone, on how to occupied, married to my mind
and its winding paths and crevices, its little
habits, like the way it tries not to let me slip
because it knows I won’t endure the fall…

…of the leaves to the ground as the seasons
change as eyes widen and shut, pubic hair grows
and spreads like ivy and then turns grey, as the
rabbits start talking in tongues and the leaves start
charging for the symphony in guilt.

Clearcut.

Shave everything like hair: grease it up, rub it down.

Let’s fuck cuz I don’t want to be alone and your dick is better than nothing.
Give me a rash from that stubbled face, smell my panties with a sly smile.
Lick me clean, lick me dirty to the sound of street music:
140 languages weaving families, pounding sidewalks, rustling change in pockets,

civic hatchbacks on their way to the forest.

Where I will stand and spin to lush green hum of solitude,
Where my family will extend in ants and moss, where I will
Forget your cock and what it means to be reachable, where I will
Embrace sun up and sun down as the bookends of my days
and fall harder than I ever have for nature,
mumbling verses under my naked breath on how not
To be attached. Until a clockwork moon strikes wolves to life and
I fall to my knees and howl with all my red might: a speech, on what

It is to be an urban woman.

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.