i keep pulling at this string
that is a stitch holding together
two otherwise gaping sides of
my flesh in my mouth,
the raw wound between.
with my tongue, i pull at it
and touch it
tapper sur les nerfs,
en francais.
everyday, in my heart
tapper sur les nerfs.

dream

in dreams i can break free
and you can hurt me
by writing a sign that
says:
Go away.

my identity is so much a me
that I am floored
you have the same name.

a sad eyed lobster in the tank
is waving its banded claws at me,
flagging my attention.
Save me, he says, save me.
I turn away. I am so sick.
All these packages of flesh and bone,
as I am a package of flesh and bone.
I walked along the streets in the snow
which is now up to my ankles,
and black fish are swimming in my blood.
How will I make it through the last half
of my life, I am afraid.
I am afraid to be alone now.
I am afraid of my future.
I am going to live to the end of my days
and will have done nothing to last
beyond myself.
They say that a teacher can never know
just how long
he matters.
But I do not worry about my posterity
as a teacher.
I worry about my life as a strand of DNA.
Am I to be the last of the great line that made me?

what is it with boys?
boys who like girls.
this is the boys i know.
rachel, rachel, rachel.
and i am ho hum staring
into the galactic space,
who are you?
they go
rachel rachel rachel.
and i am ho hum
what was your name?
did we talk about that...
oh now i remember.
yes i remember now.
and then they swim in
my blood like a virus
and i wake up one
day sweating and shaking
with some kind of
desire for the
boy who poked and prodded
me to some kind of
attention.
Yes, what is it with boys?
the day i notice them
is the day they yank my
hair and push me away,
push me down,
push me to the dirt.
and then i follow them
arms outstretched
begging and crying
for their attention
now that i don't have it.

Come on baby
Finish what you started
says the song
and me too.
Come on baby.
Come on and finish me.

sludge

feelings are like nuclear waste.
there was a reaction that created them
and they glowed
colors unseen, unknown, eye candy.
But then the decay begins.
Bit by bit, the glow fades as the
feelings turn into a
grey, lifeless, dangerous
mass.
Causing irreperable damage
at some cellular level in my brain
circuitry.
When I think of you, I think joy, then pain.
When I think of you, I think joy, then pain.
When I think of you.
Nuclear waste does not go away by will.
It goes away through time,
as it decays into something else,
or dissipates into nothingness.
And so with you, and so with my feelings.

I thought I liked gertrude stein
her poem was so creative
so clever
and then it went on
too long.

i tried so hard
so hard i tried
what was it with you?
did i do something?
did i steal your thunder
break your heart
kick your knees out from under you
douse your fire
ash in your drink
kiss your best friend
lie to your face
piss on your lawn?
Whatever did I do to you
short of be nice
and nicer
nicer
and
nicer
and
nicer
and
nicer
until I had softened completely
and I understood that
this punch to the face
was you punching you
and I could be even nicer
by standing in your shoes
and taking the blow.

cheap like sebastian

song is in my head again and again
don't know what you mean in these words
but i'm pretty sure that you're singing
a song i understood really well
a few months ago.
is it the melody or the beat or the bass?
i don't know, but it pins me, pins my mood.
so here's what i think you mean.
i'm going to tell you what you mean.
nothing you can do about that.

I'm starting to see

I am starting to see the truth
like a tiny flame in a dim room,
and its making everything slightly yellow and brown.
Better than black and grey.
I'm seeing what I didn't see, sharp corners and
all the tacks on the floor I've been stepping on
and screaming.
You aren't the person I want you to be.
I painted you so beautifully in my mind,
and gave you a medal of honor,
a badge on your chest that
could reflect my own eyes back in copper.
I've got copper eyes
If I think back hard, I sat alone a lot
and waited.
Maybe it was only good the first time
and the second.
Only logarithmycally did three become
nine.

everyone is wrong

i can not believe that you bucked the trend
and did not call me as everyone said you would.
everyone said you would be back.
i think i put my faith in that,
because it let me go forward into my future,
and was some kind of secret security,
that no matter what future i had,
i would get a chance to revisit what was left undone.
or, if not undone, what was left me bleeding.
haunted by what we never finished,
i guess i did those things alone
and you were a dull blip on the radar,
not so important anymore.
until
you
decided
to slam shut
one more door.

infected

i've got something worse than swine flu,
seems I can't get rid of you.
I'm infected with something in my heart,
haven't forgotten your hands
in my hair, on my back.
I'd rather be sick and done with it a week
later,
puke my guts out in a bucket on the floor,
and smell and sweat and stew in my own
miseries for a week of hot and cold sweats,
feeling lonely.
It'd be over after a week, maybe two,
and I'd rise from bed a little bit frail, pale, frazzled.
It's so much better to be really sick
than to have this disease.
I need some kind of cure to get you off
my mind.
Do they have a shot for that kind of thing?

teacher teach me

teach me teacher teach me anything.
i can't teach you
what you will need to know
i don't know what you will need
or what you will know.
the world will not be the same
now, ever again
the world is so tilted,
so introverted
that i can't listen to the sounds
of birds
can't listen to the sounds
of the creatures beneath the ground.
those were the old ways of seeing
and no one cares for that
these days.

Shams,
A beast in me arose and spit fire
and has taken hold of me like a
demon
a demon, Shams, a demon.
It might be the medication that
makes my heart race,
as I lazily watch a halluciation
in my fever make circles
spirit across the white walls.
But, the appeal of a demon is
so much greater than to
cast this mundane, sniffling,
aching, misery
into something so abstract
as a
virus.

schadenfreude

i delighted at that news
delighted that i knew
the news would come
eventually.
and delighted that you
are now hurting
and that is so not like me.
i guess you got me real good
real, real good.

awe

i feel awe
that you
are not
my friend

oh to be so less alone

oh to be so less alone
tis so tedious sometimes
when busy with others
I crave you so,
but when busy with none,
je le detest.

sometimes I come back to you,
and I twirl a strand of hair around my finger,
and think,
why?

sometimes
the best
part of
the day
is
when I
put my
feet up
sometimes

french, t'es si difficile
si une mistress sans
le bon sense de rester
avec moi
dans ma tete.
j'oublie tout, tout, tout
les mots anglais,
les mots francias,
tout dans le noir
une espace qui grandir

there is is

there is is
a place where
I go that is is
a place where
I go that is is
a place where
I go
and I write in these
circles and
I wonder sometimes
that maybe sometimes
that maybe
you love me.

for all the love I never had

for all the love I never had
and all the love I lost,
I would like to get it back
before this life is tossed.

kiss kiss

motzart

Would there be a motzart if
austria had antidepressants,
and should I wipe my memory
if I had the chance
not of the memories, but of the
emotional component.
Why when depressed do I draw
so much better, and why when
depressed does my mind
ruminate over and over on details
that I write and why when
not depressed do I just
function and not care
about drawing or writing?
Or do I?
How much is my own myth making,
my own sense of my own
Motzart?

the blind guy is reading a book,
and sometimes he turns his face towards me,
as if he could see me.
Maybe he can.

He says that to be born again,
you must die first.
How long until I am able to die,
or rather kill,
these feelings that still cling to me,
like hard, sharp barnacles?
I can not pry them from me
or torch them or freeze them.
they stay attached, simple and
eternal, shells that need not
a living being to stay on my rocks.
All the same, I forget they are there
or maybe they are not there,
and for a time, they can not cut my
feet or my hands.
It is so much easier for so many others.
They just find someone else,
and within months have moved on.
Easy swimmers who float with the tide,
from one wave to the next,
one beach to the next.
Today, the barnacles were back,
as I fantasized a scenario of ten years ahead
in which he returns, and I said,
I have two kids now. I am married.
But we had an affair anyway.

100

today we are 100 shams
100 poems
some good, some bad
how does it feel?
we were depressed,
we got better.
we loved, we lost.
we have not loved since,
though perhaps we pine a bit
we are still seeking, shams,
still hoping,
still looking,
still trying to make sense of the world.
I'm glad I have you, Shams, so glad.

heat

it takes so much to hold
my shoulder in this
crunched place.
And when I finally move it,
heat.
The heat.
I wear this emotion on my body.
And I break this emotion by
opening my body.

I loved the artist,
not the man,
and I just can't seem to stop
loving the artist
and ignoring the man.

in my head is a constant scream sometimes
that is so loud and so negative
I want to stick a plunger in one ear,
and push it down or pull it out.
Life is not fair, life is not fair, life is not fair.

comfort

I take so much comfort
from the fact
that I know
you always come back
to the same place.
Even if we don't have
that kind of relationship.

solitude

how can i explain this,
to you.
This is what
I'm thinking,
thinking
about the long lashed boy
and his chasm of need
so deep that I still haven't
heard the coin I dropped in.
He's alright, you know.
He's alright.
So what if he gets mad
when I take the local
and he's on the express.
Not my problem.
Or is it?
I don't really care,
and that's where I
have to answer to my conscience.
Remedy this, it says.

But I still dream of him
and I tell myself,
even in those dreams,
you're not allowed here
anymore,
we don't have that kind
of relationship
anymore.
I guess those energies
go somewhere though.

I am so glad I have my divinity.
We are so small, our concerns
so small, so not truly of ourselves,
manifestations of that divinity,
acting out divine things
through energy concentrations.
To me it makes perfect sense.

We sat politely, talking as people
do on first dates,
as this has been one in a string
of about ten or twenty.
I'm so weary and bored of the task
of finding love.
If only it would find me first, and
put to rest the labor.
Feeling nothing on date number one,
and not excited,
enough to go on date number two
but I must.
It takes me many weeks to feel a pull.
I like artists best.
Sitting and waiting, oh did I feel
a pull for
The man with the giant beard
and the book
at the next table and I wanted to
say to him,
good sir, let us leave together and
find stars
and fill our pockets with stars and
dine at night
and sing songs to the wind and the
wolves and the
crickets.
But my first date came and the good
sir he left.
I kept his smile in my pocket all
night, and
pulled it out in my dreams.

twitter poem of the day

there's little I wouldn't catch or keep, penning my heart up like a sheep
wandering to greener fields lest there is a greater yield

free at last, free at last

your last refuge in my life is in my dreams.
only there are you a physical presence,
who cradles me, and then disappears.
We start in a tent, in a park,
or we start on a train,
and all is bliss, all is love.
Then you leave or disappear while
I am occupied with something else.
I look for you until I wake, look
for clues to understand.
The story has told itself in anagrams
and symbols,
myth and picture.
So I lived my life for two months,
studying the same facts
with a ferocious obsessiveness
that bordered on madness.
Or was madness.
No pressure of my mind would
loosen my tight grasp.
I suffered.
Oh how I suffered.
But now, my waking life is mine
again,
and I am not sure how I
managed to fit so much of you
into my day, into my very breath.

You are gone at last, I am free at last.

More than anything,
I would like us
to watch the stars.

a serious love affair

he's looking at me with these big doe eyes,
batting his lashes.
I'm thinking, he's like a girl.
He's in love with me.
Lately, seems like everyone
is in love with me.
Except, of course.
As I sit, book in hand,
I try to look him in the eye,
give him the kind of
treatment I would like.
He's not so bad.
He's just not.
And I'm not sure if I
weren't so haunted
I would like him.
There's got to be some kind
of route to bring us
back, I'm thinking.
No matter how many variations,
we all get to the same outcome.

my love for you

my love for you
is big and grand,
and ocean wide.
I can drown all your
sorrows in my sea,
and cradle you
when you cry
tears that don't fall.
Water can't get wet.
You can walk in from
the shore, toes, shins, knees,
until at last you are past
the depth where you can
stand.
My love is bigger than you,
silly man, silly silly man.
Float with your arms stretched
wide, vulnerable to
sun, to wind, to birds.
I will never drop you.

the universe

is listening to my

twitter poem of the day

alone in the car, silently screaming,
troubled by troubles without any meaning

Please save me.
Please be around
for the rest of my life.
Let tomorrow
be the start.

twitter poem of the day

dreaming while napping, sometimes elapsing time goes much faster when I sleep on the couch, dazed from my dreams, frustrated and aroused.

oh heart

stupid obsessive bone gnawing heart,
if not one boy then another.
So it seems to be,
each one replacing the next.
I guess it is worse when there is nothing,
just empty beating, empty waiting.
At least the energies go somewhere.
But for this one, no good will come
of this one.
He's poison in the open sore.
Let it go, stupid heart,
stop being such a dog
with an oversize bone
with no marrow in it.
I don't know why its so hard
to let go of things that are
not good for me,
serve no purpose,
and hurt moment after moment.
It could not be more clear.
I might feel the tightness in my jaw
starting to slacken,
because I hear the voice of another,
calling me out.

twitter poem of the day

Forget all love, I'd rather play;
dance and draw and laugh all day;
explore the world ashore asea,
I wish a companion to discover me.

it would be an honor
to kiss
the tips
of your fingers.

who said

I didn't care, they think.
or they didn't know.
She fingered a strand of
plastic beads and stretched
them out from her neck
and looked at them.
Why not do it yourself?
she said.
They all say that.
As if it were like
trying to decide whether
to eat Chinese or Thai
or to ride a bike or walk.

been days

been days,
I been here,
been weeks,
but not months.
Doctor's trying to dose me
up and I don't 'preciate
that.
Like he should understand,
that maybe I need more time,
or just a threat of
more dosing.
Well, he doubled up anyway,
but he's a pill pusher,
no time to sit and talk
and ob-ser-vate.
Gotta pull myself up
and out of this place,
squeezing myself out
of the hole.
I'm half out, you know, but
I'm stuck at the waist.
Pushing myself up with my hands
and I'd kick with my legs,
only hole's all filled with dirt now.
Not much of a hole anymore.
Maybe the bottom will drop
out again, but I doubt it.
Took me a long holiday from
responsibilities.
Took me a long holiday from
people.
That's the privilege of
being a little sick sometimes.
You get a respite,
though it doesn't quite feel like
that.
In fact, just getting out of bed
feels like a chore.
Not screaming is the real chore.
All I want to do is scream so loud
those days and
scream and scream and scream
until my voice breaks,
until I pass out.
That's pain, alright, that mental
anguish.
But he's so gone and I think
I started to accept that
over is over is over.
So those days in the hole
are gone now
and I'm mobile in person,
mentally partaway there.

Everyone has
to leave that
darkness sometime.

twitter poem of the day

I ran until I found the place, touched the stars, touched my face,
Vapor trails of blood and air, I wove daisies in your hair.

ran

I ran until I found him
or what was him
at some other point
before he exploded
into vapor and blood.
I kissed my hand,
and touched the place
he had been,
and somewhere,
sometime,
our lips met.

twitter poem of the day

Saved by wind, saved by boats, I need to learn to stay afloat.
Hold my breath and pass this by, swim until I learn to fly.

fly

SHams, I ain't gots no poems today, shams, but
I has got me an ache that itches and throbs.
I'll tell you about the coincidence, or
better put co -in -side-ance, or maybe
co-ink-a-dance.
But for a moment, there was a hope,
that was dashed with
the quiet
echoing of my feet,
in the hall.
are echoes quiet?
are empty halls?
I swear I wasn't hearing things.
But then again, there are
these parallel worlds.

arms up

I throw up
my arms,
throw up and grab
for the rope
that will pull me
out of this mess.
I can't seem to get
out of my own head,
can't seem to get
out of this cycle
of thoughts that
is pulling me
to its centre vortex,
without ceasing.
I'm going down the
drain to the pipes,
but I'm too big
I get stuck,
but I spin in place.
If only I knew how to
end you.
This might be what
grief looks like.
And maybe it is good
to experience death
many times before
death so it isn't
such a shock when it comes.

dear pillow (a twitter poem)

Dear pillow,

You are so sexy in the afternoon.
Let's nap, eat cookies in bed, and make out again soon.

Love,
Rachel

(it rhymes. it qualifies)

don't kill the buddha

don't kill the buddha
on the road.
its a trap.
have him for tea,
sing him a song,
ask him to join you,
he'll come along.
give him some beers,
dance hand in hand,
whisper to each other,
and have some McDonalds.
stand on your hands,
poster the city,
draw your feet,
and go rollerblading.
bike if you must,
or take the train,
ride in a car,
a tractor a plane.
read some books,
paint on your body,
listen to birds,
listen to birds.
hug a tree
kiss a worm,
and catch something
alive and let it go.
like a fish in the sea
swim to the other side,
get him a guest pass,
and climb.
i couldn't be bother to
write so many rhymes,
of what I could do with
the buddha should
I meet him on the road.
But I'll tell you this,
I wouldn't kill him,
even if he killed me first.

Ghosts in the machine, lost in Lachine,
driving past places of Nord Montreal,
can y'all find me along the canal?

***********************************

Went searching you see for the ghosts in the machine
and found none but heard them banging on
the pipes and wires, knew they'd been there
before and everywhere.
I swung round with my torch and
saw bats hanging in places that hadn't been
touched and I am worried that maybe
just maybe
I need to burn the place down
before I go back again.

second poem o the day

would try anew to paint my heart,
things that end or never start,
replace the promise of my stars,
unlucky in love, good at cards.

thank you for my eyes, I say,
thank you for my eyes, I'm not the man
I used to be. (M.S.)

If not for art and writing,
would I be silent in the universe?
Passing down concrete halls and
the chatter of thousands who
muttered their messages
in places I might have
heard some of them,
but with so many of them
talking,
I need to drown it out with
total oceans of silence,
a wall of silence,
or maybe just the birds.
But if I leave something of me
behind, or something of mine,
am I still there?
Today I thought if I snatch a
baby I will become a mother
and I can raise that child
to stand on two feet and
stretch with both hands up
and pull the rope
and climb higher than I
ever have been and see
more than I ever will see.
When my time comes, and
I have met my love,
I will never take him for granted,
not one day, not one moment,
not once,
because I waited so long
for this and waited so long
and waited so
and waited
and.

I saw a ghost in the wall
captured in the brick and the
paint and his name
written in graffiti scrawl.
I hadn't seen him in a long time,
and most of the ghosts
have become whispers
as people forget them.
It was a hall of ghosts
on the back wall by an
alley, pointing the way
for me to dream or dare.

It reminds me of when I liked
the scientist who lived in my dorm,
and he knew about Plato too.
He was a tall guy, rough around
the edges, not thin, but manly.
His roommates thought he was weird,
but I thought he was beautiful.
I could smell him from across a room,
and I wanted to touch him.
Constantly.
We wrestled on the couches
in the common room and he
smeared frosting over my face once
and we laughed and just once
we kissed.
just once.
late at night.
the girl down the hall who hated
all the other girls.
They drank vodka one night
while I stayed behind to study biology
and he fell for her, her exotic ways,
her esotericism,
things I never could be.
I sat on the steps one night,
and listened to them talking in the
common room.
My heart broke so hard,
I didn't have the energy to leave.

to live dangerously,
like me,
you must,
eat fruit without washing the peel,
try new things especially technological ones,
think you are sexy at any size,
flirt online first,
walk your dog in pyjamas,
leave notes on cars,
write poems,
fall in love often,
and love with all your heart.
If you can't handle the heat,
get out of the kitchen.

If you knew how much I think of you still,
you would be unhappy,
maybe even disturbed.
But I suppose that is what we ask of
everyone we have left behind.
Don't think of me, forget me, let me go,
get on with your life.
I am sure you would shut me out
of the access points if you were aware,
that I spent time with your internet
presence.
If only it were so easy to let go!
The facts of the situation were quite clear
and there they were, spread out like
a fan of cards on the table.
Gin.
Rummy.
But there was something in the player that
I never understood, something that
let you win the game, and play me
like that.
I never let myself form an opinion of you,
because I knew it was not easy to
get inside.
But I never got inside.
You slamemd every door shut that I opened,
pushed me to the ground like a defiant child,
with unexpected roughness.
Stunned, then gaining my composure,
I unfolded the paper in my hands
and read the same facts again and again.
Memorized them. Studied them. Tried to make
sense of them. Weighed and measured.
The facts are clear, but the mystery remains,
and so alone on the beach, autumnal tide
coming, I still
search for the shells and detrius of
the wreck.
Things wash ashore, and I hold them in my
hands and wonder,
who was inside?

would it be so bad
to be a suicide girl?
not someone who
commits suicide, of course,
but someone cute and sexy
with dyed hair and
tattoos on my body.
I can't commit to those
things, save
for being sexy and cute,
which I am even
if I am not naked
on a webpage.

Poems I could write

I thought, Shams, that we should dedicate the month of August
to things august,
the gods in heaven,
the gods in my heart,
the God of my religion,
the God in our souls.
I had such a great idea for a poem, Shams,
and I lost it on the canal.
It drifted away,
with duck feet.

out out damned spot

how long until you no longer visist my screaming mind,
until I stop paying homage at your shrine,
thinking, you would have liked this, you
should have been here, we should have
been.
there's no one else now, but I can't wait
until I've erased your presence from my
house.

to the duck

i saw you in standing
on a piece of wood
and you had the
biggest clumsiest feet
I'd ever seen.
let's be lovers, you and I.

dating be damned

been on a lot of dates, Shams,
don't even know how to put it into a poem
because every date is a poem,
every person a soul
of the same soul,
looking to find its way back
to itself.
But in the meantime,
we're all wanting some heart stirring connection,
and hoping to find it in one another.
I'm not sure how you get from
that first meeting to love,
or if it awakens upon first meeting
or never comes.
I've never been so good at this.
And I hate drinking.

cold

worst relationship I ever had.
probably not ever,
but certainly in recent memory.
he went cold.
it wasn't me.
it was you.
i knew you were a train wreck
and I should have jumped.

Up!

I couldn't believe it,
but the day came
and I felt like
I wanted to
be in the world
again.
I only hope it lasts
more than a few hours.
If it doesn't,
I know it will come back
anyway.

synchronicities

I saw you walking here, he tells me,
a stocky guy, maybe four months ago.
Bearded? Tall? I say, but I know who he means.
I laugh when he nods.
Day one of an adventure that
ended too soon and broke me.
He mentions a girl he knows
from my neighborhood,
in too many details,
too many times,
and I know we braided
parallel strands of our lives,
only to meet at last in
this Asian restaurant,
eating the best Pad Thai I have
ever eaten.
I'll show you something, I tell him,
with a shrimp in the chopsticks.
I want to show him the path
I tread without saying the
words, but I am still
constructing and repacking
the experience in my head,
finding a story I can live with.
The meaninglessness of my
shattered glass heart
is not fit for consumption.
I take him to my urban forest of tags
and pictures and
He asks me if I am ever afraid to be
in this desolate place.

Parallel Lives

Still in the hole, I suppose,
But closer to the top,
and I'm sweating my way to the finish here.
That may just be the summer.

new math

Sum of my equation,
I got to you through a
series of intersecting parallel lines
and used a shaky hand and
a straight edge to draw
what was in my imagination
out on lined looseleaf.
I want to divide and multiply
by a factor of two,
subtract all the things that
shouldn't be there.
The unknowns are killing me.
Let's not make it so complicated,
because the universal rules are
simple.
I'll be a piece of your pi,
if you'll be a piece of mine,
and when you add us together,
we'll see everything in the cosmos,
perfect assymetrical beauty,
radiating from the dust of stars,
ever and ever.

thank you for my eyes

big eyes, I've got big eyes
and they take in all the colors
of the walls.
the city kisses me a thousand times
with rain that soaks
through my jacket,
through my shorts,
through my heart.
Please get out of my heart already.

hunt

I take small scraps of identities you wore,
and finger them in my pocket,
while I sit at a table, facing a man
who is telling me his life story.
I make conversation from these
cheat sheets, speaking as though
the things I learned from you
were things I knew years ago.
I am profiling my partners
against your standard,
looking for a duplicate in all
respects but the one that matters:
you didn't like me enough.

But don't worry.
This man or the next
or the one after that,
will replace you.
Until I find the one who
has a profile sheet
that I match
to the letter.

mirror

I'm so pretty, I know,
and not very exotic,
but pretty with red hair,
turning white at the temples,
and that's pretty too.
I have big, round eyes,
a thousand expressions
cross my face,
and I've gotten used to
my smile's effects,
on me, on others.
I'm smart and I'm kind,
pure of heart, because
all things are pure
to the pure of heart.
I see the good in everyone.
I have ambitions, positivity,
gentleness, determination,
and I forgive all their
faults, all their imperfections,
and edges.
I love my emotional richness,
and my gifts, my talents,
and my thirst for
doing new things imperfectly.
I am so perfect, just as I am,
exactly as I am.
I am a thousand past lives,
blurred by a finger through wet paint,
smearing all the details.
When they leave, they say
you are pretty, you are awesome,
you are smart, you are kind,
and someone will be lucky
to have you.
Someone.

Anyone?

Tide Turning

Goethe and I, we met through a misquotation,
and when I looked,
I found the wrong man.
But what I found in Goethe,
lasted longer.
On days like today,
or yesterday,
or the day before that,
I put stock in
my boldness
and invite Providence to move
the gates that block
my way.
Marcus told me I only
need throw my hat
over the wall.
Shams, what do you think?
Can I afford to toss this
thing and see where I
end up?

cedar waxwings

jealousy, old friend, we rarely have tea
anymore.
you were a lousy companion in my youth,
cause of a thousand missteps,
each pace until I left you on the road.
When I sleep, though, the herd of turtles
carry me on their backs,
and you transformed them into a flock of
cedar waxwings,
that my lover and his new lover saw
at the point of the island.
She wrote to him in a message
about the cedar waxwings.
How beautiful it was to see them together.
And the next day I realized it was all
you, old friend,
old trickster,
whispering your poison in my ears,
throwing corpses into the well.

cold

these things i wanted to say
bouncing around in my head
beautiful words that were seeping out
in the cracks of my eyes
as tears on my cheeks.
But then,
when it came time,
and I saw you in front of me,
and I opened up,
from my heart and
out came the sounds,
You put your hand across my face
over my mouth.
You were stronger,
you were bigger,
and you were cold.
The residence of my former lover,
was now occupied by you,
and you'd trimmed his hair
and I didn't like it.
The words I had stayed caged inside,
fluttering around and banging
hard against the walls of my mind,
furious at their captivity,
furious with their captor.
My words belonged to another man,
who died when plantmania did,
and I am glad you never got to hear them.

normal life

feels so good to be in my skin,
to have comets in my solar plexus
and stars in my spine.
feels better than a rock concert,
or a trip to the moon.
I am all of you.

steer the ship or else she sinks

This ship is crashing every day
and I can't seem to steer her right
just yet.

make peace

And indeed, I closed my eyes,
and even while with someone else,
I was with someone else.

why you should never try to figure out what your ex is doing

Best to let an ex be an ex, with a question mark
left at the end of his story,
and write down that he has gone on to live
an ordinary life and do ordinary things.
Tell yourself he is up to the same things,
night after night,
day after day,
just playing video games or drinking,
and forget the fact that he's in love
and he loves what he does
and was another version of your better self,
taken from you without your consent.
How did you manage to think alike, yet come
to such different conclusions?
Best to forget him and get on with your days,
and fill them with cannoli cream,
and sprinkles, and chocolate chips,
because if you figure out he is happy,
and that you didn't matter,
and that he is in love,
and you aren't,
and that he didn't care about you,
and you cared about him,
and that he became everything you hoped to be with him,
while you remained mired, angry, frustrated...
I can assure you it isn't going to be a good day.
So don't even bother to look any which way but forward.

The Patron Saint of You Are Loved More Than You Know

you are loved
much more than you know.
much more deeply
more widely
more evervescently
if i could kiss your
fingertips with
the grace of a butterfly
even those would
penetrate through you
and live on your body
like a shadow
following you and putting
down a carpet of stars
for you to walk on

Wait

I am waiting for your letter,
just so I can run my finger
over the stamp that you placed
carelessly and smell your
words up close, words you
wrote, words you never said.
In my mind you have become
something you never were,
and I am afraid you are a better
man to my mind that you ever were.
It's funny, Shams, what has happened.
You're laughing at me and my
dramatic way of taking a hit
on the side of the head,
or a quick knife in my ribs.
Shams, stop it, stop it, stop it.
You're right that I need to stop
this moping about over a boy,
and hiding like I will never get over him.
Oh, Shams, I just want him to
send me that letter and love me again.
He was illiterate in love anyway,
what could his stupid letter have
possibly said to capture my heart.
I should have run like hell when he
first made his case, instead
of finding all kinds of justifications
and using my mildness, my gentleness,
to force myself to make his excuses
for a half lived life.
I did it so well, I believed them myself.
I convinced myself that he
could be something he was not,
the right man for me.

if you can feel it, you can heal it

He wrote messages to me on the walls
of the buildings, and if I climbed the
fire escape of the tenement I knew
the kids in the too small blue shirts
would be playing on the fire escape
by hanging off the sides as if they
never fell.
I walked onto the roof and crouched
down next to the words he had left
for me there, and pressed my cheek to
the wall where his hands had been,
and tried to press his ghosts into me,
as if it were a substitute for the real thing.
The message was a map to the heart
of the jungle, and somewhere there,
I would find exactly what I was looking for.
I was either going to fight or let it go.
A sparrow landed with a sprig of olive in its mouth,
from the far off island of the blessed,
and I knew the clouds were never able to
alter the sky, only obscure it,
temporarily.

Ripping the Cosmos

I'm tearing strips out of the sky,
Ripping down stars and comets,
In great ribbons.
I'm trying to get to find
someone out there,
anyone out there,
who can hear me.
With both hands I grab on
and yank at the fabric
of the cosmos.
I stand up to my knees in peelings,
because this seems to go on,
unendingly, like the universe.

seeker

I keep asking the same questions.
I keep getting the same answers.
I KNOW ALREADY.
I KNOW.
I don't need to ask anymore.
You're not coming back.
It's been a week, and not a word.
I KNOW ALREADY.
I KNOW.
How did I find out?
We were so different to each other,
but not so different from each other.
I asked myself what I would do.
I wouldn't even turn around to glance.
I would be setting my watch for the next time zone,
skipping my way from here to there,
singing aloud and swinging my arms.
One week, it's been. One long week.
I am seizing my weeks.
Tomorrow I will drag myself back on
my feet and out of this hoodie.
I will make myself go through normal life.
After awhile, my life without you
will be normal life.
Though it may take me longer
since I'm dragging my heels.

climb

I start in the hole every day,
with a ladder, a ration of food,
and the day ahead.
It starts like a riddle,
with a shadow of a man,
and a broken lightbulb
only its my heart instead.
What happened?
Puzzles aren't my thing.
If I ask the right questions,
I'll get to the solution.
But my questions are off
track and I don't know
the ones to ask.
And when I climb up the
ladder, even on the top rung,
I still can't reach the surface.
The more I struggle,
the deeper the hole gets,
such is my perception.
The less I struggle,
the deeper the hole gets.
As long as I hope, I am trapped.
Equanimity now, Shams, equanimity.
Because
hope
is harder than diamonds,
more eternal than
space.
It can not be destroyed, only
changed like energy.
One form into the next.
I need to hope for something
else.
But, every day, the hole fills
itself, and the race is on,
and I'll be on the surface
before I know it,
but I can't get there soon enough.

not a poem, but a profile thing that is poetic

I've got a nine hour drive ahead of me and the radio's saying thunder showers all day, the whole ride down. The New York state throughway is flying by me on either side, not that I drive fast, and my attention floats between the cars ahead, the cars behind, and the little yellow and purple flowers bobbing their heads as the rain hammers them. The grey sky brings out the technicolor richness. The clouds are moving in herds across the horizon. I haven't skipped through the songs on the CD player, just let album bleed into album. I shouldn't be so broken hearted over this, but I know it will take me a few weeks to shake off the grief. I feel as though someone just swatted a fledgling who fell from the nest, killing it before it even had the chance to sing. I'm such a dreamer to think I could have saved this bird when it had such a faint heartbeat and its first feathers started falling out in my hands.

silly shally

I know I am a silly girl wanting silly things
when I want you to
come back.
But, if I could have things my way,
you would come back,
and beg.
And I could say,
I need to think about it,
but in reality
I thought about it
and I would say yes.
Then you would be back,
and we would be able
to go on a picnic
or go camping
or do all the things I
thought we might do together.
I'd even play games.
I wanted you to ask me.
I was waiting for you to ask me.
I think I would like that.
I was waiting then, like I'm waiting now.
You never asked then, so why
would you now?
I've asked everyone,
but everyone is pretty
sure that there's nothing
to be done about the
matter.

As soon as I stopped adding water
to your powder,
I was no longer able to reconstitute you.
You were the memory of a flavor or
of a smell, and I could not bring
you to my mind any longer,
as a sensation in words is just an
intellectual exercise.
My sadness these days is not over you.
You did not even exist in my life.
I will bleach you from my memories,
and you will fade, nameless, faceless.
No, my sadness is for the things I have wanted,
for the happiness that came out for me,
and my delight and my hopes,
that floated me through the day,
like a thousand balloons tied to my bed.
I soared up and up,
in full command of the world below,
and nothing bad could touch me.
I was mighty mighty up on high.
I was in my best element, the air, the wind,
and I felt secure and safe and free.
That same happiness is still in me,
but it seems to be locked away,
and its absence makes the
days seem so dreary and long.
So don't worry about my tears, Shams.
Frustration always makes me cry.
I just need to find where I put that box,
when he startled me and I dropped it.

The Death of Plantmania

I saw it coming like the 6 a.m. from Halifax across the flat plains of
Southern New Brunswick, steam and the steady rumble filling the bay.
Lying in my bed, under three blankets, and hood pulled up,
pillows around me, dog at my feet, books crashing down on either
side and pens and paper.
I didn't know what time it would arrive.
And I was too happy to care, even though
I was a destination station.
It crashed through the wall, and squealed to a stop,
Inches from me, and I was pinned in place, lights in my eyes,
As the facts were laid out.
The facts.
Just the facts, ma'am.
Tell me again, I said, because I was too stunned to hear them once.
Wasn't the train I expected.
This one was driven by a ghost,
and I can't fight the supernatural.
I am flesh and blood, my feet touch the ground,
and stars leak out of my spine when I walk.
My angel wings only come out on special occasions,
but I am always capable of extraordinary grace.
My love was onboard, demonically changed,
a ghost himself.
I tried to remember him as he was before,
Was he always just a shell with no shadow?
No, no, in my memory, he was a cryogenically
frozen plant that stopped growing,
when it was put into the vault.
For the time he was in my care, I warmed him in
my two hands and tried to thaw years of ice,
never took a pick in hand,
but drew on the heat of my heart,
the faith I had in my ability to bring the dead back
with patience, with love, with the ever renewing source
that is my essential self, that is all our essential selves,
if one can tap into it.
I am a gardener, after all, and bring plants back every spring
from their winter deaths
with deft gentle fingers and an alchemists' knowledge.
WIth time, I would have succeeded and he would blossom
flowers he never knew were there,
perhaps by late summer, or next year.
I would wait, holding him in my two good hands,
caressing every leaf to unfurl, drawing water up through
the roots until the branches were stronger and taller than my touch,
and his leaves and tendrils would fill the house through the
chimney and grow out across the bay,
bigger and more beautiful,
than any plant ever known before.
We create the future, just by imagining it.
So I imagined for him a best life in which he could
be anything he wanted.
No, I imagined a life in which he was better than he dared dream,
cosmic dreams that could ride the ripples of galaxies.
I just had to break this thaw, coax the life back in,
and I heard his first grasping breaths, shallow but unmistakable.
I could imagine him alive again, good bones,
strong heart, free to stay, free to go.
One more wheeze, and then he was silent,
a motionless corpse again.
Healing takes many suns, many moons, many tides.
I took it slower. I had gone too quickly, tried too hard.
I started again more softly.
The train got him first, called him with a piper's song,
and he danced a Bacchic reel,
infused with its supernatural energy,
transformed before my eyes.
He rode atop the car with his legs on either side.
He smiled at me, a bloody, toothless mouth,
fingers thin to the bones, leper's flesh
green and red and stinking, his organs in
canopic jars beside him.
He laughed in riotous madness, hypnotic and haunted.
I waved at my work's failure, smiled warmly,
wished him safe travels, and a happy life,
wished him the fulfillment of his desires,
and sent him the love of my heart.
But even I knew where that train
was headed. He would be killed again.
Ghostly skin on a mortal man does not grant him undying.
All bread eating men ultimately descend to Hades.
Even Zeus was powerless
to the Fates' decree for his son Sarpedon.
As the train pulled away,
only then did the tears come.
I cried for my lost efforts, cried for him, cried for me,
oh how I cried for me and cry still now.
I cried enough tears that to turn his ashes to mud,
and even when he dies,
my tears will water the earth so he will be reborn as
something else.
In his new life will he remember?
I took good care of you, baby. I took the best care.

New Endings

Schrodinger's Cat, that's what I am in this box,
Both alive and dead at the same time.
But even with the box open,
I'm still both.
I want to and I don't.

poem of Lucy the Dog

Throw that Kong, buddy,
and I'm going to find it,
bring it back,
drop it,
roll on it,
push my teeth into it,
and show it to all the other dogs.
That big stupid lab
is going to bound over
with his rolls of skin,
and try to take it from me,
but I'm not letting go,
not for that doofus,
with his stupid name,
and his stupider owner,
and her high pitched ear splitting
voice, as she's telling
everyone about her wax job.
Maybe I'll let him have it,
just for a moment,
because he has to live with her,
and hear her talk about her
wax job at least five or six
times a day for the next week
or so.
Here, take it,
or maybe you got it fair and square,
you big dumb lab
big dumb doofus.
No, wait, changed my mind,
because you're getting that
Iams breath all over my Kong
and the doberman, that bitch,
will take it from you.

Akira

Every dog has its day,
so I am told,
but I am more certain that
every dog has a day of death
and we all die too young.
Don't be afraid, old girl,
you can wait for her on the
other side, so that when her time comes,
her best friend is
waiting.

July Project

So, I've decided to give myself a new poetry project for July. I managed to keep Sham's Muse going for the month, so time to spread my wings. July's project is to write poems that come from other people's heads... In other words, I'm going to write poems as if I were someone else.

end of the month

end of the month,
time to check my pulse,
check my bank accounts,
sort and organize,
put it all in some kind of better
order.
take stock of things and
clear the clutter.
time to move forward,
get rid of what isn't coming to the next month,
keep what is defining.
time to change the poetry project,
time to change the situation,
time to get out,
before it pulls me down,
time to diagnose,
and listen to what the good doctor says.
it isn't there, baby.
it isn't there.
you want to spend six months or a year
running in a gerbil wheel,
be my guest.
your legs will get strong,
for when you turn your head,
and realize there is a desert out there
and your legs are going to carry
you from one end to the oasis.

0.68 seconds

He asked me if I were free that afternoon,
or any afternoon,
and then added mornings and evenings,
even midnights or sunrises.
My pick.
At one time, I waited for his offer
with the casual indifference
of a cat watching a mouse
catch his breath behind a heavy piece of furniture.
Eventually he's coming out,
it requires a certain amount of attention,
but not so much that he feels he's too closely guarded
to move again.
Lick my paws, wipe my whiskers, but
never turn off the radar in my ears,
every hair pointed.

He tapped me again. He was on the move.
I hedged between two heartbeats.

A heartbeat.
What damage could be done?
Who would ever know?
I've got my pride.
Another heartbeat.
But I also have someone,
even though he doesn't love me, true,
but he might. One day.
If I don't do stupid things
like entertain old friends
in inappropriate tete a deux.
Another heartbeat.
Didn't I want this once?
Don't I want to be a Helen?
Didn't we have fun, you and I?
Aren't all things pure to the pure of heart?
Another heartbeat.
Another.
Another.
Point six eight seconds, sir.
Another.
Another.
Another heartbeat.

Sense came back.
I played my card.
I'll think about it,
(meaning, no).

I'm coming over, he said. Half an hour.

No, no, no, I said. Don't.
I love him.

My love, a shield.
I was safe. The tide ebbed and I tread(ed)
calmer waters with
The phone returned to its holder.
He was gone. Who was the cat now?
Recovering but rattled,
my heartbeats faster and shaky,
breathing in gulps of air.

(Of course that day,
I wouldn't hear from you,
because I am what I am to you,
no matter what you are to me.
I wanted to tell you but
how could I tell you that it
took an android's eternity
to know my own feeling
for you was much
greater than)

on mouse feet,
love came,
and bit my ankle.

Melange

I have no problem with confusing love and sex,
as I've been told that they can be the same thing
for some people,
just not for me.
Let's mix it up, you and I,
a little love, a little sex, and make it
something extraordinary,
the kind of thing everyone envies.

untitled

he left behind
an empty bottle of
dr. pepper
and a copy of the Montreal Mirror
open to the page with
ads for transsexuals, massage parlors,
and sasha's sex advice column
for a woman seeking
breast implants.
i fell asleep on the pillow
where he didn't nap
on my couch and woke up
at 2 a.m.
thinking that it would be
nicer if he left himself

3 Witches

There are three witches in the back of my head
Brewing trouble, making trouble, always trouble.
They whisper there, you don't matter to him,
why be such a dumb loyal dog?
He'll eat you alive, and leave no bones for
the collector, they say, and you will have
to be reborn again in our pot, given now
a criminal's heart, a murdresses' spleen,
and you will be a monster of our making.
Then they dance around, their arms wild and high,
laughing and blowing fire out their eyes.
Poor me, poor me under their spell,
uncertain and afraid, curled in a ball,
no defense against their torments,
Save for my righteous conscience,
that would rather I suffer indignity
than do indignity to another.
I've always loved you Socrates,
my unkempt brother through generations.
It does not help that you do not give me your words,
the vaccine against witches' poison and
defenses against their dark arts.
It does not help that you might,
for all I divine, feel nothing for all I feel something.
It does not help that you purr in my ear,
on torpid afternoons, too hot to move,
but leave me in the clutches of witches,
when you go like a lover back to.

authorial pause

Hey there poqueteers,
Anyway, I've slacked off on sham's muse for some reason or other. Poetry projects can be really tough to sustain because I am not much of a poet and I'm embarrassed how bad of a writer I can be. It is very discouraging to read drivel and think to myself that I'm just being self-absorbed. On the other hand, everything comes with practice. Writing is a practice. So, each poem is a practice, and also kind of an exercise in my writer's mind. If I don't exercise my writing skills daily, well, I feel it. So, I have to write every day, whether here in Sham's Muse or in my own fictional world. I realize the public nature of this blog means that my "practice" is visible to the world at large. So, I want to apologize to anyone who happens upon this blog and thinks that I would be better off storing this stuff privately. Trust me, I write far more than I scribble down here -- I just put little poems that come off the top of my head and seeds of poems I scratch out on scraps of paper here. The more serious work (not poetry, but fiction and such) is safely stored on my hard drive.

In case you are wondering what the poetry project as of late is, I am trying to write poems that do not really end or that end with a discordancy. If you'd like to try it out, please join me. Misery and amateurishness love company :)

old diary

i travelled so many places alone,
putting one foot in front of the other,
on the road, thinking i would come to know
something more about myself
or the universe or why
I held onto you for so long.
carrying a book you bought me
that i read and re-read,
like it was the kabbalah
and the codes would spell out
the right thing to do for us.
i read and re-read
your letter written in my diary,
diving our future together,
like the Delphic oracle that no one
understood until a mighty empire fell,
King Croesus of Lydia.
now i have a house and a couch,
a dog and a wok,
that i bought with money i saved,
a paycheck at a time.
in my diary,
at one time,
i wanted to say
i did this without you.
i never needed you,
and you could be an ant.
but i dream different dreams,
and i wouldn't throw myself
over for anyone anymore,
not like i did for you.
and i say now
i did this myself,
i need me,
and i love myself.
i wrote a diary once,
when i was someone else,
walking on the road,
and i forgot everything,
until.

For Want of a Good Man

I'm 8 feet up on this ladder,
but I've got good balance
and I don't look down long enough
to feel afraid.
My drill and two bits, a hammer and a bunch of screws
rest on the perch as I manouevre myself
to attach the curtain rod brackets.
Screws in my mouth, in my pocket,
the screwdriver in my sweaty hand,
leaving dirty palm prints on the white walls.
The rod is up, and only I see that the last
bracket is crooked, and
that I couldn't get all the anchors in.
My curtains hang, not really one I like;
I didn't make them myself.
It looks okay. It will do in a pinch.
It blocks the light,
and more appropriately,
blocks my neighbors' gaze.
The free show is over, my friends.
Nothing to see here anyway.
I do so many things myself,
so many things that want for a good man
who can do them better.
But I would gladly continue to do these things,
if the good man
who is mine
can't.

the Gulf of Mexico

I thought for a moment that I would not keep my secrets,
and spill everything out like the broken levees of New Orleans,
and let you help me pile back the sandbags,
one at a time, a single team with a common goal.

But for all that, I need secrets to begin with.

****** (some alternative verses started considered)
I thought for a moment that I would let you in,
and seriously consider your input on the decision,
because ultimately, we're both effected,
and I can compromise sometimes. Just sometimes.

I thought for a moment that I would ask you what to do,
and you could tell me and I would listen,

I have no poems today, Shams,
None at all,
I'm kind of upended and

Good Cup Of Tea

My favorite mug from Ralph Lauren Home has the stripes but not the stars,
an Outlet find from Long Island's Eastern distant otherworld.
The coaster from the box bookstore's attempt to capitalize on everyday luxuries,
soy candles, storage boxes, and Montessori toys.
Not bought on sale, but a considered rarity in my life,
a purchase of delight in aesthetics, in self-love, a practice of giving to myself.
The steam still rises up in periodic puffs, an ant's foggy day,
Maybe a little too much sugar, a little too much milk,
cane sugar crystalized from the plant, organic milk,
which I must hunt to find in health food stores that stay shy of walking distance.
The tea is top shelf, overpriced and imported,
a tea I'd never buy for myself, but given to me as a gift by someone
whose name I forgot and whose existence I forgot,
given when he wanted to flash me his tail.
I forgot about this tea, stuffed behind extra boxes of Nature's Path cereals,
shuffled behind stocked cans of organic tomato sauce and net free tuna.
I never threw the tea tin away, even as I moved,
and so the gesture stayed.

Shams II

Just when I think I have it in hand,
I want to step out in front of a bus.
Will the distance between me and happiness
be a graph that never reaches zero?
The denominator of the fraction growing larger and larger,
so that I can not touch it even though we are a breath apart?
The closer I come, the further away I get?
The destination is the same for all of us.
We all die in the end, Shams.
There is nothing to worry about
succeed, fail, help, harm.
We all die. We all die in the end.
I inhaled a rose,
before it shed its petals,
and I thought to myself,
I care far too much about what the end will be,
I need to know how it will end, lest I worry about the end the whole journey.
The journey is the joyful part, the journey is why we
pick our destination.
We want the journey.
This is a lame poem, Shams. I might have outdone myself this time.

Street Cred

She is wearing false moth wing eyelashes,
and a headband with horns,
because she is in the band that plays at midnight.
And he is plainer than day, so to speak,
but has nice blue eyes and doesn't smoke.
She kisses him with her eyes and he complains
he feels creeped out.
They're on crooked, he says, and she agrees.
What can she do now.
So it is with them, before and after,
the secrets of happy couples.
They hold hands, fingers touching at the tips,
and she rocks back on her heels,
balancing like that, looking at each other
as their fingertips press and pull in opposite directions.
Balancing like that, with the kind of love I envy,
with the kind of love I admire.

The Day the Universe Changed (written on a paper scrap)

I was wrong.
Inside is not a crystal forest,
But a solar system,
a universe,
expanding, unending.
My interior not closed
like an unopened geode,
But filling the interstitial spaces,
and so big beyond my comprehension.
Somehow I evolved,
from simple to more complex,
but still beautiful,
more beautiful now,
and the subtle vibrations,
are in every atom,
in every cell,
and I might be someone else
by the end of the day.

Thief

I would like to kick this house of cards over.
I built it so carefully, so slowly.
As I contemplated the best place to plant my foot,
A theif came,
and stole all the diamonds.
Didn't expect that one, did you?

For Alexandra

Alexandra, you stooped to kiss his ass,
And took a hoof to your face.
Your face will recover,
but he will always be an ass.

oh shams

Shams, Shams, Oh Shams,
I hang my head in shame, dear dearest Shams.
What is it with me, with my stupid stupid heart?
It goes all over the place, like a stray dog,
looking for a cut of meat that it can sink into,
with its fangs and claws, tearing off strips
and licking its chops with glutton's delight.
Why can't it just sit and be still, like the mystics,
and meditate on the nature of God,
or whirl in place in its own ecstatic dance,
white tent-like robes and ruby crusted sleeves?
Shams, Oh Shams, Shams,
My muse, my poet, my inspiration,
I would like to gouge it from me and all
the trouble it brings, bubbling and pulsing,
clutching and conniving, all those pains.
So much better I would be if it were caged,
if it weren't allowed to pounce on my chest,
and look me in the eye.
Dear dearest Shams, I am made of the
dust of time immemorial as are you,
as are we all,
so why can't I have that perspective instead?

Pain

The spike in my shoulder is an old injury
a blocked channel, I am sure,
even though I believe in Western medicine,
and take Ibuprofen to mask flare ups.
But there is a deeper wisdom of the body,
a knowing of injustices,
a containing of toxic spills,
a place where the not forgetting, but the learning to live without,
must be contained.
Radioactive decay in my shoulder, as particle by particle,
the pain breaks down over a lifetime and a half
unless I find remediation for my own superfund site to speed
the healing.
The clean up is simple: the drunken forgetfulness of infatuation
anesthetizes me, while the good doctor does his work.
He wrings my liver of its mistrust, my kidneys of their rage.
He incises the cancers of sorrow and suffering with deft hand,
with a love that does not end no matter my pessimisms.

Dyads

He works two jobs,
Has two girlfriends,
One English, one French.
I ask him if they know each other,
and he ignores the question.

I Don't Believe in Atheists

Transcendence means nothing to you,
and miracles can be explained by
sound principles, calculated in logic and reason
and the math to back it up.
Religion is an opiate, and
we don't need God to be good.
The meaning of life?
It comes down to a formula.
Probabilities, perhaps.
Life after death?
Consolation.

(bleh, this poem is so bleh. I had an idea, but I lost it...)

Bitch's Mind

I breathe you in my mind, your spectrum of scent,
Nosing along the grass, among earthworms and
leaves returning to humus.
Pushing in close to the junction of the fence and ground,
Tasting the minerals as I inhale you, a light on my tongue,
and I scratch the dirt with a paw, pushing away
everything that is not your flesh.
You were here, but gone.
And I breathe you in my mind again, temporarily
calling up the touch of your lips to the pads of my fingers,
spiraling along in a slug trail up the stems and through the thorns.
I don't need to see what I can smell.
Hermes gave me a bitch's mind, cunning and yearning,
And the gods rained gifts upon my head,
Aphrodite charm. Athena dextrous hands.
Lovely in body, lovely in voice,
At Zeus' request,
a curse for fire's theft.

(end with translation of Hesiod's W&D -- a few lines???)

Divinity 1

The crystals inside are the salt of the earth, the salt of the sea.
My Eden, guarded by two angels, impassable guardians,
targeting their sharp points as they follow the curious onlooker's gaze
as he peers inside the wall. Statues not, not marble, but of aether.
Aether angels keeping watch, never sleeping, never ceasing.
Generation happens here, all generation happens here.
Protected by its visible invisibility, my little Eden, a dimension so small
you can hold it in your hand, so large it renders you irrelevant.
Could a wolf sniff it in the wind? Its old age of the time before man,
the time before he took sand in his fingers and let it run through them,
piling it up, planting a seed, planting for the next season.
Older than that, older than anything, made of the
first universal stirrings, the first universal dust.
The first universal unsleeping, unburdening, awakening stirrings.
The crystals inside I carry, you carry.

Sham's Muse

I created Sham's Muse back when I had aspirations to write a poem a day. After posting these two ransom notes, I think I have aspirations again. They're a kind of poetry, I think. Poetry is not exactly my best medium, but I've been reading some Hesiod and my mind is super saturated. I need to drain off some of this mental fluid or I may drown myself.

Cement Shoes 2.0