dirty mind

princes and parties
it never ever stops
fuzz on my socks
gala invitations
crisis interventions
wondering if my meagre life savings will be worth anything when they mature next week
leftover kraft dinner wasn't as bad as i feared

if that's the way it is, then that's the way it is

internet poll

can I love you be a platonic expression?

blink for yes
sigh for no

garlic breath

awake and calm and able to focus. i could get used to this no anxiety thing, though i'll admit that reading heavy philosophy makes me a little unbalanced.

i'll go to bed, but i won't sleep. perhaps i'll just close my eyes and listen to some music...

christmas in september

(Some days I can't tell a banana from a diamond.)

When I was five, my (probably drunk) dad threw all my presents out into the snow in the backyard after I asked innocently if that was it, if there were any more. He obviously thought I was being a greedy little bug, but in my gut I know it was an honest question - Is the party/show over? Can I go play now? Thus my existential crisis was borne - a deep rooting of my sense that the world so often just doesn't make sense.

When I was eight, I wrote my first poem. It went something like this:

Christmas has sun, and lots of fun.
Christmas has cheer, and maybe a beer.
Christmas has snow, as everyone knows.
(and so on...)

Okay, perhaps the beverage bit wasn't it - but it feels like it was...alcoholic dad, and besides, what else rhymes with cheer? Queer? Deer? Hmmm, maybe that was it.

Anyhow, my dad was so proud of me he couldn't stop reading it to everyone, which may be why I still have it in my head. He took it to work with him and kept it on his desk for years (along with the one about Terry Fox, a "courageous man, who ran and ran and ran and ran" - we all went out to stand by the now burnt-down McDonalds to cheer him on as he passed through our town).

There's no doubt in my mind that the memory of the rare smile on my dad's face is the reason I still write. That much about my world has never failed to make sense.


We are who we are long before we have any real choice in the matter.

quiet (again?)

he said
"keep walking in light"

how can the best piece of advice i ever got be tied to so much danger?

the towel with the monkeys is still in my closet.
i will probably never have the heart to throw it out.

is this fog?
or distraction?
his box...so his rules?

impossible
us

damn the interwebnet for making it so easy to go nowhere.

three women / keep out

one plus one plus 13 times four plus 50 minus one = my life has been all about the odds these days

i stood outside the fortune teller's tonight
waiting for the bus
ocean smells and
neon candles,
and me

bound and beautiful
thinking i should have walked
caught enough to know that sometimes it's fine to stay and wait

i wrote this all before you came
before it all changed

take it away, i never had it anyway


a tribute,
a reminder,
on this day of all days.
a warning about regret

"And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth."

- Raymond Carver, "Last Fragment," *All of Us: The Collected Poems*

work/rhyme

strange,
how I left the place in such a shambles
true, though
it was crumbling in on itself
what I don't know
is if it was my doing,
or simply just my observation

i should check in, and see who's still around...
find the keeper a pasture to tend, now that I know who he is
leave the others to sleep, until it's their time
maybe take a walk,
and see if the river leads anywhere yet...
see if it's safe to come down.

breathe

i am the goddess of pasta, and i have the ass to prove it.

you know when you’re craving a certain food and then you make it and it’s perfect because it’s exactly what you wanted?

shape of an iceberg

I’d write you my own version of it but then he’d think I was stealing from him and well, that’s not my style…

waiting
staring
frozen
a thousand shades of blue
form of…water
into the sea, you and me, yeah?
maybe there’s another way to be
point and I will follow

groundhog day

to each his own but yuck, yuck and more yuck

though it is good to be reminded that my problems are relatively small, and that maybe what i think i want is far more trouble than i want. all kinds of both.

so, did you see that? the ken doll was talking to me of messages from angels, and then that and now this...yesterday refusing to exist as itself. two identical yesterdays, just like in the movies. is that the sign? are we doomed to repeat ourselves? it's so much easier when things come with instructions.

she tells me he plays bass now for the goofs. weird.

hands in my pockets
standing on the moon
tragic hero or fool?
too bad i can't remember

name that tune

there'll be no blog tonight
cuz i'm jaded...

quétaine is french for ikea

when you iron the curtains, iron the curtains.

there is no spoon.

got no room for bitter

i looked up
and there she was
the face of an old woman
one i know so well...knew so well...
gone, impossible,
but there was her mouth,
there were her eyes...
she kept staring,
at me
through me
to me
do we call those angels?

sometimes we know before it happens
caution not to change the world
foreknowledge, a new word

sunglasses and headphones shut out the world

squirrels playing in the graveyard

no more time for games
no more patience for him keeping his eyes closed and calling it blind
no more wolf cries

feels like the moon is full tonight but I can't tell for sure without my glasses
enter you
not the dragon (though he rises again soon, not sure if I will stand or hide)
enter you
and we sleep

screws

sometimes I’m a spaz, and I’m okay with that
excited and worried and really hungry for something (what?)

flowers

earlier today I could not stop thinking about how far we have not come
and about how much of nothing I have
(unless you count the plenty of debt and the imaginary boyfriend and the tummy ache and the pretty flowered pillowcases that I picked up on sale a while back and the pirate song that was reminding me of a time when I used to be alive)

but then you came back
(well, all but one)
and now I’m thinking that maybe my nothing
is not such a bad haul after all

the cosmic yes

but of course the question is, which one?

and the other question is, why are people buzzing my annoying front door thing at 3:33 am?

bubbles

summer made an unexpected return today,
her last gasp, a dying breath

my body struggles to find its bearings as the world keeps shifting around me...
and yet somehow,
i always find myself
back,
and here

one day maybe
i (or we) will discover forward.

pause for station identification

but first, I forgot to say yesterday that I wish I was there right now.

and so:

From Wajdi Mouawad, Governor General Award-winning Canadian playwright; Knight of the Ordre National des Arts et des Lettres, France; Artistic Director of French Theatre, The National Arts Centre of Canada...an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Monsieur le premier ministre,

We are neighbours. We work across the street from one another. You are Prime Minister of the Parliament of Canada and I, across the way, am a writer, theatre director and Artistic Director of the French Theatre at the National Arts Centre (NAC). So, like you, I am an employee of the state, working for the Federal Government; in other words, we are colleagues.

Let me take advantage of this unique position, as one functionary to another, to chat with you about the elimination of some federal grants in the field of culture, something that your government recently undertook. Indeed, having followed this matter closely, I have arrived at a few conclusions that I would like to publicly share with you since, as I’m sure you will agree, this debate has become one of public interest.

The Symbolism

Firstly, it seems that you might benefit by surrounding yourself with counsellors who will be attentive to the symbolic aspects of your Government’s actions. I am sure you know this but there is no harm in reminding ourselves that every public action denotes not only what it is but what it symbolises.

For example, a Prime Minister who chooses not attend the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, claiming his schedule does not permit it, in no way reduces the symbolism which says that his absence might signify something else. This might signify that he wishes to denote that Canada supports the claims of Tibet. Or it might serve as a sign of protest over the way in which Beijing deals with human rights. If the Prime Minister insists that his absence is really just a matter of timing, whether he likes it or not, this will take on symbolic meaning that commits the entire country. The symbolism of a public gesture will always outweigh the technical explanations.

Declaration of war

Last week, your government reaffirmed its manner of governing unilaterally, this time on a domestic issue, in bringing about reductions in granting programs destined for the cultural sector. A mere matter of budgeting, you say, but one which sends shock waves throughout the cultural milieu –rightly or wrongly, as we shall see- for being seen as an expression of your contempt for that sector. The confusion with which your Ministers tried to justify those reductions and their refusal to make public the reports on the eliminated programs, only served to confirm the symbolic significance of that contempt. You have just declared war on the artists.

Now, as one functionary to another, this is the second thing that I wanted to tell you: no government, in showing contempt for artists, has ever been able to survive. Not one. One can, of course, ignore them, corrupt them, seduce them, buy them, censor them, kill them, send them to camps, spy on them, but hold them in contempt, no. That is akin to rupturing the strange pact, made millennia ago, between art and politics.

Contempt

Art and politics both hate and envy one another; since time immemorial, they detest each other and they are mutually attracted, and it’s through this dynamic that many a political idea has been born; it is in this dynamic that sometimes, great works of art see the light of day. Your cultural politics, it must be said, provoke only a profound consternation. Neither hate nor detestation, not envy nor attraction, nothing but numbness before the oppressive vacuum that drives your policies.

This vacuum which lies between you and the artists of Canada, from a symbolic point of view, signifies that your government, for however long it lasts, will not witness either the birth of a political idea or a masterwork, so firm is your apparent belief in the unworthiness of that for which you show contempt. Contempt is a subterranean sentiment, being a mix of unassimilated jealousy and fear towards that which we despise. Such governments have existed, but not lasted because even the most detestable of governments cannot endure if it hasn’t the courage to affirm what it actually is.

Why is this?

What are the reasons behind these reductions, which are cut from the same cloth as those made last year on the majority of Canadian embassies, who saw their cultural programming reduced, if not eliminated? The economies that you have made are ridiculously small and the votes you might win with them have already been won. For what reason, then, are you so bent on hurting the artists by denying them some of their tools? What are you seeking to extinguish and to gain?

Your silence and your actions make one fear the worst for, in the end, we are quite struck by the belief that this contempt, made eloquent by your budget cuts, is very real and that you feel nothing but disgust for these people, these artists, who spend their time by wasting it and in spending the good taxpayers money, he who, rather than doing uplifting work, can only toil.

And yet, I still cannot fathom your reasoning. Plenty of politicians, for the past fifty years, have done all they could to depoliticise art, to strip it of its symbolic import. They try the impossible, to untie that knot which binds art to politics. And they almost succeed! Whereas you, in the space of one week, have undone this work of chloroforming, by awakening the cultural milieu, Francophone and Anglophone, and from coast to coast. Even if politically speaking they are marginal and negligible, one must never underestimate intellectuals, never underestimate artists; don’t underestimate their ability to do you harm.

A grain of sand is all-powerful

I believe, my dear colleague, that you yourself have just planted the grain of sand that could derail the entire machine of your electoral campaign. Culture is, in fact, nothing but a grain of sand, but therein lays its power, in its silent front. It operates in the dark. That is its legitimate strength.

It is full of people who are incomprehensible but very adept with words. They have voices. They know how to write, to paint, to dance, to sculpt, to sing, and they won’t let up on you. Democratically speaking, they seek to annihilate your policies. They will not give up. How could they?

You must understand them: they have not had a clear and common purpose for a very long time, for such a long time that they have no common cause to defend. In one week, by not controlling the symbolic importance of your actions, you have just given them passion, anger, rage.

In the dark

The resistance that will begin today, and to which my letter is added, is but a first manifestation of a movement that you yourself have set in motion: an incalculable number of texts, speeches, acts, assemblies, marches, will now be making themselves heard. They will not be exhausted.

Some of these will, perhaps, following my letter, be weakened but within each word, there will be a spark of rage, relit, and it is precisely the addition of these tiny instances of fire that will shape the grain of sand that you will never be able to shake. This will not settle down, the pressure will not be diminished.

Monsieur le premier ministre, we are neighbours. We work across the street from one another. There is nothing but the Cenotaph between our offices, and this is as it should be because politics and art have always mirrored one another, each on its own shore, each seeing itself in the other, separated by that river where life and death are weighed at every moment.

We have many things in common, but an artist, contrary to a politician, has nothing to lose, because he or she does not make laws; and if it is prime ministers who change the world, it’s the artist who will show this to the world. So do not attempt, through your policies, to blind us, Monsieur le premier ministre; do not ignore that reflection on the opposite shore, do not plunge us further into the dark. Do not diminish us.

Wajdi Mouawad

1-800-PEP-TALK

there are gypsies in my mountains.

his anti-perfect makes me smile.

there are holes in the poetry as i spread myself thin

but it's okay because my anti-perfect makes him smile too.

today he brought me a sock monkey

it doesn't make up for the pain of my third decade on this planet,
nor does it address the ongoing cleanup in aisle two...
but it's a start.

mornings suck and then it all ends in a blinding flash of light.
somewhere in between, there's us

popcorn

I lost today
distracted
couldn't wake up now I can't fall asleep
so behind yet way ahead of myself
all I know for sure is that I have to be out hunting legal sized paper at 8 am.

fruit flies are the spawn of the devil

How is it possible I have never seen this perfect painting until this week?


(I know that grammar's wrong, but I can't be bothered to puzzle it out right now).

got me a new pillow

I keep getting caught in the rain, always just minutes from home.

What's up with that?

sleepyhead

friend,
and friend,
and friend,
and stranger...

i wish i knew what to do with you.

popsicle sticks

i wish he would finish the story already
(, already?)

me and my little pal are gonna go take a nap down by the river

clarification

NOT a banana,
rather,
a Japanese donut.

My eyes are clear.
My monitor is blurry and faded.

It's a salty salty world,
where hawks eat pigeons at the side of the highway
too far to touch
not far enough to miss.

Dreams and lines
It bends, he said.
I like that.

protein / deficient

My life would be so much simpler if I would just learn to order from the menu.

Sometimes I wish Catholic school hadn't taught me to expect miracles.
Sometimes I wish life hadn't taught me to believe in them.
Faith turns to atrophy if you blink.
Quiet patience, high threshold.
Wait in the in-between places,
listen,
and wait.

If you're lucky, there's a pretty lady with a banana trying to find her way back to you. Those are the good days.