White Paint

He paints white paint on white canvases
Hangs them on white walls
of large white galleries
Where tall men and women, who say "Tut tut"
Admire the "boldness", the "brashness", the "vision", the "symbolism"
Without seeing
how each painting is a prism
radiating quietly on the walls
nor how the bottom edge of every canvas
is painted with the colours of childhood

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The Shape Of Numbers

2--The shape your hand makes tracing my curves.
5--The potbelly in your mirror.
8--The 6-pack I see.
1--Fasting the pounds of your troubled childhood away.
3--My fantasy of carrying your child.

7--The hook you hung my mistakes upon.
.4--My hands in prayer to understand.

The string of numbers right of decimal--your fractioned alternate reality where I have wronged you.

The numbers left of decimal--the wholeness I wish we'd had.

.(the decimal)--All that's left between us.

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Cloudy

It was one of those moments of beauty that made the world skid to a stop and take notice


It was hour 52 and ½ of a 72-hour bus ride from Vancouver to Austin
I was boredom with a splash of delirium, on the rocks, since late-afternoon Day 1...
2...

Day 3. I never got his name
But he was the most beautiful toddler I’d ever met
Big brown eyes like chocolate sun shower raindrops
Tight curly hair like that fuzzy shag carpeting you rolled around with your best friend when you were 8, laughing about how funny his snowman was
Big apple cheeks, those ones with the smooth skin you can’t help but touch and marvel at the untaintedness before life etches its mark

When he laughed, his cheeks ballooned as big as the giant apple, the one outside of Port Hope on Highway 401 that sells apple pies so melt in your mouth you just can’t do grocery store pies anymore
I made him laugh
When he laughed, he laughed with his whole cartoonish face and bouncing big baby belly
When he laughed, my heart melted like chocolate fondue and all my folded and tucked away neatly motherly instincts came out to play and get messy
So I kept making him laugh
It was beautiful.

And then,
then,
his dad’s big booming voice: “Shh. Shut up kid.”

It suddenly made sense why he didn’t know how to play paddy-cake

The little boy’s eyes fogged over with a nimbus cloud covering
Calling for a rain shower that probably wouldn’t come for 10 or 20 years sitting with a therapist at $200 an hour
or a special lover who just can’t take it anymore and verbally attacks him in bed one night for being so damn cold-hearted


The dad hands him a Nintendo
and the boy trades his future of
playing make-believe on the playground with friends and dogs and little creatures they find,
inventing new whatchamacallits out of cardboard boxes and popsicle sticks,
and having long talks with his dad about how sometimes, he just doesn’t feel good enough, and “That’s ok, son.”

trades this in for weekends of pixilated warfare alone in his bedroom

BANG – the day he picks his first fight at school
BANG – the day in university he determines that solitude is more trust-worthy than people
BANG – the day he stops trying to quit smoking
BANG – the day he tells his daughter to shut up

Hour 53
The boy is looking back at me wistfully
He needs to learn Paddy cake

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He Introduces Me Like I'm A Work of Art

He introduces me like I'm a work of art

Pronouncing my name delicately
Looking up at me proudly and lovingly as though I'm hanging on his wall
Like he can't *believe* I'm on *his* wall, eager to show his new painting to his friends

In that instant, eagerness is replaced by reverence
"Here she is.
"This is her."

A few seconds of silence to take me in
They did not know I even existed before this moment
This introduction
But the way he speaks my name upon his breath
The way it hangs in the air between them
The way his eyes soften and his hands motion
They know he must be showing them something Beautiful

Their eyes grow wider with understanding
Before narrowing into critical
A new painting, hmm?
Are my paint strokes right?
How is my flow and movement?
My composition?
Does my colour scheme match with his décor?

---

You introduce me like I'm a work of art
You catch me off-guard
Me? Who's been rejected by my fair share of men?
Me? Who was called ugly all through Junior and High school and was always the class nerd?
Me? Who was always the slowest? The only one to never finish Minute Math tests or those damn Participaction Weeks?

I feel I should turn to him and tell his friends that the men who came before him sometimes called me picky and self-centred.
I feel I should remind him that I don't eat meat and this will probably get to him after a while.
I should let him know of the trail of broken hearts I have left in my wake, and that if we continue to see each other, his *will* be next.

But he's looking at me with those loving eyes and biting his lip.
His friends are looking at me expectantly and facing me head-on.

I should say something.
I should say,
"Hi there.
Good to meet you.
I'm just a girl. A girl who would rather buy more underwear than have to do laundry. A girl who goes through long writing draughts that drive her crazy. A girl who can't bake, but tried once when she was 14 because god-dammit I wanted to have a birthday cake and no one was going to make or buy me one.
(It was dry and flat and tasteless.)

A girl who, really, is the furthest thing from art that you could possibly imagine. My lines are all off. My strokes are crooked."

When we're alone, you tell me how beautiful I am.
My contours and shape.
My composition.
My colours.
My flow and movement.
You compare me to the great classics.

You compare me to great Thinkers.
My lines.
My flow.
My compositions.
"Ok," I say.

In one of those heady moments when my feet aren't touching the ground.

Hang me in your gallery
For all the world to see.

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Morbid Voyeuristic Curiousity

I gazed into the one who gazed into the ball that gazed into my life
And I said,
Ya
But will I be happy

You tell me what will happen in 2 hours 2 weeks 2 years
But all I really want to know is
When we reach Eventually
When we skip to the last page and steal that guilty pleasure last line peek
All I want to know is
Am I Happy?
Cuz if I'm not...
What the hell am I holding on for?

It's taken me years to struggle through shit
And it will take me years more
And I've watched the chapters of my life go by

I mean really

To the day
I can tell you when each ended and the next began
And with the passing of each page I hoped that
Someday
The hero of my story would conquer the daemons and find.... something

So what are you telling me?
I'll find an argument next week?
Ok
I'll find love next year
Fine

But will I find happiness
True happiness
The kind that radiates from inside myself
The kind that's free from artificial flavours
Cuz so far
My light is covered in shadows
That drown
Bring me down
To a big
trembling
heap

And the reason I keep holding on
Is a morbid voyeuristic curiousity
Morbid like plucking the wings off a fly
Morbid like sunlight, a lense, and an ant
Morbid like sitting back and watching the strands of my life tie and untie themselves
tie
...untie...
tie
...untie...

And all I really want to know is...
All my self-growth shit
All my "learning experiences" that make me Stronger
All the energy I'm pouring into getting somewhere and finding something and overcoming stuff
All I really want to know is……………..

Will the hero win?

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Job Hunting

Job hunting
The autocratic bureaucratic way of systematically selling your soul.

What are your interests?
Heh.. you tell me.
What are your goals?
Hah, what do you want them to be?
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?.........
........... Still hoaring myself to your company in order to barely assuage my no money for living fears

Highest bidder!
What bidder?
I'm not bitter.

The bitter pitter patter of the batter up to plate.
Time's up, you're done, you were late....
....To the interview.
Car stalled, bus not there
Trudged through sleet and hale in your prim and proper "hire me" clothes?
.....For this?

Sign slap
Hire me!
Fuck that
Kick me!

Kick me down when I'm down, all I want is a job
You see
I need to live
I need I need I need to live
Food? Heat? Water? When did they get price tags?
What happened to the days of self-sufficiency?
No relying on big men
In big suits
Behind big desks
In big corporations to allow us
The privilege
Of surviving

Hunting
Farming
Fires
Rivers
Now we wait on rationed delivers
Locked away in cages..... called

Apartments
Homes
Semi-homes
Town-houses
Condos

Away from farms and rivers and country livers
Where we must be spoon-fed our daily doses

And Money Is The Spoon

What are your interests?
You tell me.
What are your goals?
What do you want them to be?
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Still slaving away to pour money into a system of symbiotic co-dependency, the bizzaro world where even if the feeder is the fed and the fed is the feeder, we're still praying, praying that they won't pull the plug
Keep me in your fucked up cycle!

Job hunting
The autocratic bureaucratic way of systematically selling my soul.

Any buyers?

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