Love (or lack thereof) Poems

“In a perfect perfect world you could fuck people without ever giving them a piece of your heart. Every glittering kiss and every touch of flesh is another shard of your heart you’ll never see again.” –Neil Gaiman, Bitter Grounds.

The Poetics of Desire...

Of course like all real life love stories the issue isn’t love or lack thereof. It’s about how one behaves in the confines of a relationship that really makes or breaks the couple. Time lays heavy on those with heavier hearts. Slog through each day and search for the light at the end of tunnel that I am told exists. I want to believe that it exists. Don’t fight, don’t scream expletives at the top of my lungs, choke back tears that steam in October air because in the end they are wasted. Don’t say it—I love you—I love you. I said don’t say it. Empty words like empty air explode like firecrackers on Halloween night. The unresponse like rain but colder.

I’m not built like a computer on command. I can’t press exit, there is no delete button, no return to previous screen. If only I could re-wire my hard drive. Become more like him. Then I would still feel it. Then he would still feel it. It’s all about you—it’s all about you. Next time can we make it about me? Press command button relax. It’s there. Search harder. Search deeper. It will all be okay in the morning. But what if it isn’t?

Dear Future Lover

Dear future lover:

Please forgive me
for the mistakes I will make
while trying to get you
to love me.


Bonsai - (Haiku series)

A bonsai, Chloe.
I gave her to my boyfriend.
A housewarming gift.

His house was too cold
for Chloe to survive in
so she lives at mine.

Bonsai should bring luck.
The longer she lived with me
the less that he called.

He left me last month.
My life changed, hers stayed the same.
What luck Chloe has.

It's kind of random but YES!

The week in review: Christy Clark became the new Liberal leader much to my chagrin. However, this piece of depressing political news was offset by my acceptance to grad school not only by UBC but UWO also. The news of my acceptance was followed by fifteen minutes of jumping up and down whilst screaming unintelligible words at the top my lungs which led to a friend on the phone asking how many people were with me in my apartment at the time. It was just me.

Not wanting to get my hopes up I figured I wouldn't get into the Masters of Journalism programs that I had applied to because of the extreme competitive nature of the schools and my lack of experience. But now, faced with two acceptances, I have to decide where I should go to school and yes I am losing sleep over the decision. A friend advised me to follow my heart. Solid advice except I no longer trust my heart. I have spent my life following my heart. My heart has led me to move to Abbotsford and that should have been warning enough. Sparing the gritty details of the last eight years of my life I have spent the last year with my walls and guard up. From one extreme to other. If I am honest with myself though I miss letting go and letting myself feel without fear of consequence. I miss the excitement of not knowing but of falling into my decisions head first without looking back. For the first time in my life I am making this decision based on myself alone without letting extraneous factors affect my head. Or my heart. I am letting go. I am saying goodbye. I will be moving across the country in less than two months, (hello UWO!) and I am utterly terrified of leaving everything and everyone I know behind. I am also more excited and feel more alive than I have in. A. Long. Time.

Some found poetry. For my [scant] following! The first two are from articles in a New Yorker mag (date or month I cannot recall)

Domestics

A Wife.
Absurd person singular
With three kitchens,
shoutin'
he da mythic man
low class geechy concedes
progressive bravado.
Sizzle in daft potency and
penetration.

Wife
Eloquent, iconic,
white society stick figure.
Flinging hodgepodge
racism.
No understanding except of
notional, prefab kitchen.

The Wife.
Theatrically satisfying.
A placebo.
An ass.


Relationships

Honour.
Sex.
Use me in church
while maids co-habit with men.

God danced dizzying
and said
take your time single sister.

Don't love half heartedly
and lose me baby.

Champagne?

Hell no.

On a broken down bus in Clinton, BC

Use spring as your alibi
don't fall prey
to sparkling caribou

leaving gold nuggets
on the gold trail
for self service.

Make your way to the blue barn
in this shady bus.

Become a used bookworm
or, perhaps, sales merchant.
Just don't look at the catalogue first.

Revel in this flea market
that was once an amber emporium.

My Grandpa's Stories

I am blessed with family. It is rare for someone my age (25!) to have both sets of grandparents still around. However, on my last visit to my Grandma and Grandpa, I was unsettled by how diminished my Grandpa looked. Watching some of the fantastic movies that have come out this year (Barney's Version, Another Year) led me to think hard about my mortality, and with that the realization that my grandparents won't be around forever. I have become accustomed to the fact that they are always there, and always have been. Perhaps not in the same shape as when I was a kid, (I still miss Grandma Enns' wareniki) but simply there.

I am not sure why this last visit affected me so much. My Grandparents are old. They have been married almost seventy years, have four children, eighteen grandchildren (not counting wives and husbands) and countless great grandchildren. They have led full, interesting lives; the stuff stories are made of and have been made of. It shouldn't come as a surprise to me that my Grandparents are aging, but it has.

When I got home from brunch I tried to put into words how it felt to see my Grandpa in the state he is now, but the story sounded too much like poetry (or as some may say too much like CanLit). For the past couple of years, in order to stop my poetry writing from stagnating, I have decided to play with form. I cut up the story I attempted to write about my Grandpa, put it into a bag, shook it up and dropped it onto the floor. The lines of the poem became where the pieces fell, with a bit of tweaking of words so it makes sense. Dada poetry. Here it is:

My Disappearing Grandpa

His secret is that he is more than a human being
but the fact is that when I hug him
he feels more like a lesson on anatomy.
(that is the spine...)

And when he tries to speak
urging his mouth to form words
they tell us that my Grandpa's kidneys are failing him.
(the tailbone is located there...)

To me, however, he's just my Grandpa
and I wonder what the failing kidneys would think
if they were in my place.

I watch him. Coaxing the thought in his head to reach his mouth
He can barely lift his skeletal arms
but he still eats three muffins and I wonder how he stays so thin.
(those are the shoulder blades...)

Two pieces of ham and egg soufflé later he hesitates.
I want to tell him that I miss his stories but I'm failing him because
if he were to hug me goodbye, it's connotation would be dying.
And what scares me the most is.
(those are his rib bones...)

My aunt has brought us brunch.

Hello Again Jimi

"All I'm going to do is just go on and do what I feel" - Jimi Hendrix

I have one memory of Jimi Hendrix. I was ten years old and trekking with my family in Nepal. Now that may sound pretty rad already without throwing Jimi Hendrix into the mix but yes folks, believe it or not, it does get better. This particular day we ended up at a lodge called the Jimi Hendrix Hotel. Calling this place a lodge is a bit of a stretch for the received accommodations but this was Nepal and in Nepal anything goes. My sister and I climbed up the rickety stairs and entered our even more rickety room. This particular room consisted of two beds, (once again for lack of a better word), a side table and a pair of the dirtiest, [once upon a time] white pair of pants; the type that soul searching hippies favor purchasing from Thamel (tourist district in Kathmandu that consists of shops, bars and guest houses). These pants weren't just randomly splayed on the floor as a forgotten souvenir by some lazy tourist but were tacked to the wall with a signature on them. The signature belonged to Jimi Hendrix.

At the time I had no idea who Jimi Hendrix was. Surrounding those pants were the scrawled messages of hundreds of fans. I remember reading the messages, questioning what the word "cock" meant or wondering how come "cum" was spelt wrong (even back in the day I was a precocious speller). I remember wishing I could write on my pants without receiving hell from my mother. I remember thinking this is more than just a room.

This was my first experience with feeling connected to someone or something famous. And even though I had no idea who Jimi Hendrix was just being in that room was somehow enough to sense greatness, achievement and, although I didn't realize it at the time, failure and hardship.

I came upon the quote at the beginning of this post eating the world's best nachos with some friends at Foundations. So far removed from my first memory of Jimi Hendrix it brought about a rush of emotion and, alas, a rush of uncertainty. To do what one feels. To go on and just do what I feel. Can I trust what I feel? Could I trust what I felt that day? An innocent ten year old with no idea of a world beyond the haven she had built for herself in a remote part of the world? I have spent my adult life making decisions based on feeling, based on idealistic notions about how my life is supposed to turn out. I have had success but I have also had bitter failure. How do I go on doing what I feel when every time I think I have it figured out, that this is the direction my life is supposed to take, everything changes? I doubt what I feel daily and yet here I am still making choices and failing to be sure of anything that I choose to do and still thinking "what if?"

I wish I could return to the Jimi Hendrix Hotel. Stay in that same room, look at those pants and hope that inspiration hits me (and this time understand the innuendo). Perhaps, however, just being there would be enough. Enough to learn to trust in the twenty five year old me that is not so far removed from the ten year old me after all.

The Begrudging Blogger

After spending three days in Victoria last week watching the first season of Californication I have come to this conclusion: my blog will never be as cool as Hank Moody's. I have come to face the facts, my life is hardly a blogger's dream. A twenty something that is constantly bemoaning the fact that she isn't writing yet isn't really doing something about it? Cliche. A middle aged writer who is constantly bemoaning the fact that he isn't writing yet is living it up with sex, drugs and rock and roll? And lots of it? Hilarious. Poignant. Depressing. Worthy of our attention. Granted the latter may be conditional and the rock and roll part non-existent (as this is no longer the sixties), but there is something to be said for the fact that this television show is a hit.

As viewers we should hate Hank Moody if for no other reason than he hates us. He is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with our society: the drugs, the laziness, the lack of respect for humanity in general and the sex coming from every direction. I am not naive I know that many people would disagree that there is anything wrong with the list (or parts of it) I have just laid down, but there is something to be said for living a life in which these certain pitfalls can be avoided. So why don't we hate him? Why is he so entertaining to watch? Because it is a life that one cannot get away with living? Or, at least, not for very long? Are we just bored? Using television as an escape from the rules and regulations that we impose upon ourselves?

In his first blog post to Hell-A Magazine Moody is raw as hell. He is witty, stimulated, and dirty to the core. It is fantastic. I only wish that I could write in such an I-don't-give-a-fuck-what-you-think-of-me kind of way, and he isn't even a real dude. I continue to drink his antics in and don't even bat an eye when he buys a Porsche, despite the fact that he hasn't written a book in seven years, and doesn't even wince when it is stolen at gunpoint.

I do not watch a lot of television but this is one show that I will continue to follow, at least until internet data usage charges slow me down.

Dear W.H. Auden

Dear W.H. Auden:

This one is for you.

Tonight I re-read In Memory of W.B. Yeats. Over the past few months I have been struggling with the lack of creativity that my current way of living has afforded me. The truth is I am unable to find employment doing something that I love and in order to make a living I am doing something that I hate. As much as I despise cliches the one that is standing out in my head most right now is the tried and true saying "find a job that you love and you'll never work another day in your life". While I wait to hear back from the grad schools I have applied to I am frantically trying to figure out just what the hell I am doing with myself.

Nowadays an undergraduate degree is, for the most part, useless. I read an article a couple of months back that compares the undergraduate degree of today with the high school degree of the past. Nobody told me that studying the subject that I am most passionate about would lead to a severe struggle to find employment in that field. Granted I was not disillusioned about the whole starving artist mantra but I genuinely did not see myself still working as a server two years after I graduated.

The one undergraduate class that still stands out for me years later is a second year English literature class in which I was shaken from my hungover stupor with the misquote of the famous Auden poem previously mentioned. "For poetry makes nothing happen..." My professor was using "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" in order to refer to Elizabeth Browning and the poem she had written on the plight of children in England ("Cry of the Children") during the industrial revolution. His point was this: the poem didn't change anything. Working conditions remained the same and life? It moved on.

I had never read "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" before this day and I was so struck by that particular discussion that I mulled over it for several days. Years later I still think about that class and the apparent uselessness of my degree. Writing. Poetry. Why do I feel the need to write when I can hardly hold out hope that I will touch even the smallest or most insignificant life with it?

Looking back history is littered with writers who have committed suicide: Hemingway, Plath, Sexton, Woolf...why is this? Talented writers. Writers who's works outlived their short lives and will outlive mine. The classics we call them. Novels that have stood the test of time that their authors could not bear to face. What do we take away from these stories? From the poetry? What change has happened because these books exist? The art of writing is a daunting, sometimes frightening task. Perhaps these writers took their lives because the immensity of what they know and what they are trying to portray is just too much for them and not enough for the critics. For the readers. The fear of inadequacy, the fear of not being heard or of not being understood overwhelms.

"...From ranches of isolation, and the busy griefs,/Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,/ A way of happening, a mouth."

I continue to hold out hope.

One Call. That's All.

Last night I was sitting at the back of the bus quietly chatting with a friend of mine. So engrossed was I in our conversation about the steak and lobster we would be partaking in during dine out Vancouver that I failed to notice a surly old man sit down next to me on the bus. However, I was soon unable to avoid this man and the temper tantrum he threw during the next fifteen minutes all directed at yours truly. My offense was this: I was talking on my cell phone. On the bus. While he proceeded to shout about what a terrible person I was and that I was incredibly rude and disrespectful I attempted to ignore him. It was only when the shouting reached a fervor pitch that I stood up for myself (for the record I am generally a passive aggressive person who avoids confrontation at all costs), and asked him how he thought I was being more of a disturbance than he was. It was at this point that the boxing gloves came off. An empty beer can (whose it was I do not know) happened to be rolling around on the floor and this only fed this crazy curmudgeon's fire: "She's drunk! She's drunk! That's her beer! That is why she is talking on her phone while on the bus! The bus driver should kick her off! Thank goodness my stop is coming up."

Thank goodness indeed.

After about ten minutes the man quieted down but continued to chunter about how he was appalled by my behavior and how much of a bitch he thought I was. Yes he called me a bitch. For talking on my phone.

The man eventually exited the bus and although I felt discomfited by the scene that had occurred it raised my thoughts as to what exactly is proper cell phone etiquette. I couldn't help but recall the commercial in which a wife in sexy lingerie is ignored by her husband or how a man cannot even take a piss without putting down his phone. Is this what I have become in a sense? Unable to put my cell phone down?

At the restaurant that I work at we have a certain regular. Lets call her Veleste. Veleste is the most miserable woman I have ever laid eyes on. Not only have I never seen her smile I have also never seen her display anything that could remotely be called manners. However, one day she was sitting, eating a "brown" scone, and observing the table next to her. Three Asian women were glued to their cell phones while having high tea with no conversation to be heard. What followed went something like this:

Veleste: "What would those girls do if they didn't have their phones?"
Server: "I don't know. Talk to each other?"
Veleste: "Well wouldn't that be a reeeeeal pity..." (Veleste proceeds to roll her eyes).

I am not sure if I was more surprised that Veleste had a made a joke or about the truth of her statement. Through text messaging I have given up real conversation and through my cell phone use I have the potential to alienate those around me. I left my phone at work the other night and couldn't access it for the next fifteen hours. When I finally had it back in my hands I felt like I could breathe again. It's sad really when I think about how my parents didn't even have answering machines when they were my age, and once upon a time the telephone didn't even exist (God forbid). I suppose it is too late for this modern day and age to discontinue a complete reliance on our phones, especially when they can be particularly convenient at times. But one thing I know for sure is I will think twice before chatting on my phone while on the bus. And while there is always text messaging I will wait for the day when my fingers tapping the screen become too much of a disturbance for the stranger next to me...