Harmless Thing

Since it's Halloween, how about a poem about fear?


Harmless Thing

Blonde beautiful&
dumb
so young and
excited

about a peanut,
like the fresh green
part of a maple key, taking
root
in her.
Tiny jellyfish-like embryo
translucent, showing
skinny fragile veins
full of her blood,
living in her inside.
A fingerprint sized
harmless
thing.

I'm
the one who
chokes
with fear, as if
a chord was wrapped around my neck.

Things, Things are Changing

My beautiful friend told me to get posting so that she could procrastinate. I wrote this yesterday after a particularly scary encounter with a spider, and how it made me realize that things were just better in Southern Ontario when we were younger.

This one doesn't really feel finished though... thoughts?

(That means you Becky.)


Things, Things are Changing


in the
summer the grass is a luscious green
the sky is a wet dense heavy grey
and a damp chilled breeze
slices
through milder lighter air
when we
were young
the grass was parched and starchy,
a crispy pale yellow, the sky was always
just
blue
it wouldn’t rain for weeks
and the air was so hot heavy you could wear it like a sweater

in the
fall
the spiders come rushing
back into the house,
armies of eight-legged monsters
crawling abjectly appearing
not to move at all
all eight horrifying legs propelling the large black bodies
Before,
they were pale yellow
so faint and frail
I could imagine them away,
or if they insisted on intruding,
drown them
mercilessly
and swiftly
in the shower

things
things are changing

for the worse

only the winter
remains
cold
with chapped elbows and
faces beaten red and raw by driving snow

A Handful of Staples

Nobody screws over my friends and gets away with it.

...Or at least escapes without me hurling truly, truly scathing poem at their ego.


A Handful of Staples

I hope it hurts like
hell

Like grainy sea salt
rubbed into a thousand splintery
paper cuts
on the tender skin
of your
neck

Like being stepped on
by a
Clydesdale
on an already broken rib
leaving big plumb colour bruises
on your white bones

Like being submerged
in lemon juice
the pale yellow
acid
burning at your eyes
eating away at the soft
membranes
of your nose, your lips

because
it really should.

The powerful knowledge
that you’ve been an
undeniable
unoriginal
idiot
should feel like you’ve swallowed
a handful of
staples.

Firecrackers

This is another poem that had just been sitting around in my head. A few years ago my family went to Meaford for Canada at my cousins' cottage. For the firecrackers we climbed way out on the pier and sat on the rocks and watched the firecrackers over the water. As we did I wrote the poem in my mind and unravelled it when we got back to Guelph.


Firecrackers

bloom in bright blossoms

shot against the sky
in glimmering specks
catching in the breeze,

to rain down
in silver sparkles
falling on a stage, and the heads of
technicoloured dancers

then wilting
into wispy ghosts…
ash peonies slipping apart in the wind…
smoky petals dissolving into the sky.

Cape Breton Island

I'm taking a 20th/21st century Canadian lit class this term with one of my favourite profs--this is the third time I'll have taken one of her classes. The reason I love her lectures is that they kick your ass ...hard. She's so smart -- which I know seems ridiculous to say, she's a prof, she has a PhD and all that -- but she's really smart. We've been discussing postmodern Canadian writing, and the quest of some Canadian poets to write "authentically" Canadian in spite of a permeating and prevalent American culture. And the reason this course is difficult is because, really, what does a Canadian writer write like? When you're on the inside it's hard to look outwards and answer that decisively.

I haven't been to Cape Breton Island yet, but I hear it's beautiful.


Cape Breton Island

You grab the neck of his faded t-shirt
and pull him in real close
to put your fist through
his face
feel cartilage shatter beneath your knuckles
now slippery with his hot blood that
streams from his destroyed nose
drops of blood that fall like
big flat shiny stones
as if Cape Breton Island was tipped
horizontal
a shower of rocks thundering down
from shattered skin and bone
pouring down his faded t-shirt
a blossoming red stain, it marks him, like a flag
you’re victorious, anonymous, wearing a clean t-shirt
with nothing but grubby knuckles
and the knowledge that you’ve the power to
flip Cape Breton Island

Ever Present Ache

We miss Becks while she's in Syd.

I feel like I speak for all of us when I say:

Ever Present Ache

I miss your wavy blonde hair
and I miss your long brown eyelashes
I miss your slender
piano playing fingers

I miss your lumpy snuggly duvet
and drinking wine standing around the counter in your kitchen

I miss blurry evenings
drinking and dancing
that squinty-eyed pout
we put on

I miss tall soy lattes and patterned pashminas in the library
whispering in the quiet sections unsuccessfully
two heads bent over one essay

I miss the wholeness of my self

you are an ever present ache
when you’re so
far
far away

Eden-Green

I wrote this poem in first year, when I was taking a second year creative writing class. I would send my poems to my friend Goob so that he would help me name them. Usually he would give me at least one word that would spark my interest, and I'd tweak this rest -- hence "eden" green. Seemed like an excellent and loaded adjective.

I'm sure being able to name your own poems seems like a simple and obvious thing to be able to do as a writer, but I think you have to grow up a lot, and gain insight into who you are and what you actually want to say, before you can do it. I name (most of) my own poems now.


Eden-Green

The powdery brown path
carves apart
the thick lush trees

and the tree tops are ragged paintbrushes
stroking
deftly painting everything Eden-green.

We can’t see through the canopy
except on this dirt track
which has punched a snaking cut
in the trees, leaving a
scar of sky gleaming through

as though someone had lazily, erratically
dragged a knife
against this canopy, opening it up.

We spend out entire time looking up at this wound,
struggling for
a bearing between bars of branches.

The birds view the forest
as a soft green smudge—
with a pale brown ribbon
splitting all that green velvet.