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.