post bliss

is there not a single moment of joy not cut by the bitterness
a sour milk taste of fear that lingers as an aftertaste
you were here, then gone,
giddy to come, giddy to go,
and I was some inbetween place, some stopping point
along your life,
the happiest year of your life.
it will be a year soon. two months from now.
a year
did i change so much?
I've never eaten so much bacon, drank so much beer.
But I've felt this alone, many times.
I've felt this abandonned.
Why did I not learn in all those years to stand
on my own two feet.
Or maybe I did
and my natural state is just
despondent and self-pitying,
sad and longing.
I can't remember a 24 hour stretch in the
365 days in which I was happy nonstop.
But there are those that are sad.
It must be some kind of gravitational pull that draws me
in.

don't let go of your idealism, shams
because otherwise,
it's all downhill from here.

the last autumn roses are so red
they are brown
petals dry at the ends,
waiting for winter to claim them,
or a merciful soul to cut them
and let them fall in place.
so i worry, so i worry.
everything has its season.
everything.
the best plants have deep roots
that are trained by necessity to
siphon the smallest drops
from the soil.
drought, after drought, and
they do not die but
become stronger.
not this, not us,
not eden.

disordered mind

my mind is a mess, shams, and I know
that sometimes one needs to
not be in one's mind.
I blame many things, many things,
this rage welling, this spleen expanding,
this bile, this angry saliva.
everyone fails me again,
always again.
friends are too busy with their own
little children, their own little
preoccupations.
friends are too addicted to
their own addictions.
and friends just forget me.
either that, or they avoid me.
paranoia being a symptom of the
delusions, an inability to
just see a sting as a passing irritation,
and instead having a full blown
allergic meltdown.
i hate everyone.
my cat is perfect.

I am as my servant

I will be to you, so you will be to me
milder, kinder, gentler.
In my power, so your power,
and if I am rushed
and if I am without,
then that is how I am.
But let me be better than I am.
Let me be this.

***
note from the author -- I was very inspired by a line I heard today. I think it is from the Koran or possibly from the collected sayings of Mohammad. It said "I am as my servant thinks I am." It is meant to apply to Allah. If you think Allah good and kind, so he will be with you. If you think him vengeful, so he will be with you.

However, I understood more in the realm of human interaction, that the opinion of the "lowest" person one deals with, one's servant, is the true revelation of one's character. If others think me unkind, then I am unkind. I am not entirely sure if I believe that, in the Platonic sense that one must be measured against universals, not public opinion. However, in terms of encouraging people to be good to one another...

No doubt, this idea will continue for several days. I was interrupted while writing this poem.

cat

creature and friend,
when you jump like that,
my heart halts and hangs
in the air as your acrobatic
endeavors send you
twisting but not quite to your feet
and you sit up and lick a paw,
as if you meant to fall.
graceless, cat, you are so
graceless, but clever with words
and good at trouble.

good to know i did not die
yesterday
good to know i'm here
because there's sun
and i wonder what
infection is in my head
that leaks through every
step I take as I
run slowly, slowly
past Christmas decor.
Accursed time moves too fast.

parking

no tickets at least
but i wonder
if I leave you to long
it will cost me
dear

Shams, someone stole your name.
I heard it in the plasma,
not whispered but spoken
so casually just as if there were
no shame at all in this
interconnectedness.
Shocked again at how we braid,
perhaps born of the same star
cluster.
That must be it.
Does he even know just how
long you have been with me,
Shams?
I am haunted by people,
but not interested in drama.
Sometimes I think I am carrying
the seeds of a child in me,
and he says to me,
don't be afraid, choose whatever
gives more life, not less.

twitter poem o' the day

every morning i would miss your hands and socks and when you kiss
my eyes closed and lost in sleep, open to find time's merciless creep.

you wonder how the hell you got here

fucked the dog
so they say out east
can't seem to get myself
to sit still for even five
what the hell is wrong

twitter poem of the day

plagued by the itch, it's not a crime to wonder if I waste my time,
more to do of no import, a talent drained and torn for sport.

I'm With the Band

My mother told me marry a businessman
Marry someone who wears a suit to work
and will buy you a two thousand dollar watch
for your third anniversary and doesn't buy
his plates at Ikea.
But I'm with the band, still, apparently,
Still a kind of cool that I never realize I possess.
I sit cat poised in short skirts
and long boots near the merch table
because the heels are killing me
watching the birds fly by.
Not young, but almost four lives in,
not as young as these kids,
whose faces are without
real fatigue and who are okay with
Ramen noodle breakfast, lunch, dinner
for a plane ticket to
South America where they will
royal for a semester.
I watch the goldfish, thinking of that other
life when I was always with the band,
and kept like a pet, sleeping on floors
and curled up on bar benches,
my ears ringing for days.
(It wrecks your hearing, but the world is
mercifully more quiet and peaceful
ever after).
Girls in tight jeans, tight boots, black
tank top uniforms, each tattooed on the shoulder,
hair asymmetrical, flocked by
boys who talk too much and laugh.
We are not like that, the girl with the band,
otherly and furtherly,
because same is no muse.
To be ten years ago. But I drift to the
future even in this moment,
ten years ahead. I am not anchored
in the present as I once believed.
Drunk men never cease to amaze me.
"Are you with the band?" he asks,
"And what do you do?"
I hug him because
I never have to lie.

i am smaller than i remembered
and i am shrinking
fast
sometimes I need your
shoulders to see
over obstacles
over and out
across the plain
looking for enemies
circling us
Injun tribes
dirty Injuns on
dirty grey horses
the cat knocks over a glass
and I am too frail
too small
to get out of this
please
the phone is out of reach
and I can fit in my own pocket
I can ride on a cricket

11:11

time for wishes,
i wish for you.
i wish for you to say
it again:
i love you.
no wait, i am in love with you.
there's a difference,
right? Shams, right?
i can never remember
what you say to me
never
remember.
damned memory
i'm so old.
at least i heard it
before it was too late.

why am i so old?
knees what say you?
and back?
allergies dripping out of
my nose out of my eyes
onto my shirt because
i didn't think to take a tissue.
there's all this pain in me
from years of waiting
or just bearing up
with a kind of Canadian pleasntry
and my head some
kind of crowded closet
cluttered with
no particular idea
no coherency in there.
does one get a day off for
feeling old in the bones
old in the heart
old in my feet?

rise, new york, rise
they say the aliens are coming today
according to norad.
Norad? what's that I ask.
I don't know.
But this I do
A cat, a dog, a quiet kind of life
here, a quiet kind of
existence, and the taps don't drip
and the shower has pressure.
These are little things I care for.
My life has become better than
I imagined
and in my film, it is ten years
later and we are still kissing
as if those intervening years
were too boringly perfect.
I'll take that now until
the sea calls me again,
like Odysseus away from Ithaka.

Technophilia

Thinking you'd write,
or say something,
smile, wink, nod, poke,
whatever it is you do,
I opened up my gmail
and hoped you would
appear and say anything.
Your name lit up.
I waited.
Then it went dim.
I waited.
I waited.
Sometimes I write our
names together in
the bar of the search engine.
It just looks good to see
them together,
because,
we are not.

my apologies

Dear readers of Shams' Muse,

It's been awhile. I know. There's no excuse for leaving off my poetry project. I am sad to have abandoned it, especially since I took a look at it and was surprised how much I liked some of my own poems. Granted, there's a lot of junk in there, poems that say nothing or are so self indulgent I want to hide them under a rock. But, all the same, I think it might be a good idea to revitalize this as a creative outlet.

Rachel

I can eat everything
and with what little sun
is left
give me those years.

Please do not let me melt
in the sun before I
have some water.

it was hot and i said
i would melt in the
weather like this
and I drank water.
the space there is
filled with a sound of
you saying this
to me.
the space between us is
still all me,
because you are still me.

am I too fast, or you too slow?
I wait for you all the time,
watching the plants grow,
watching the city as I run,
watching the water boil to cook mixed vegetables.
Have you
thought about me
in these minutes
between the last time
and the next?
Is there enough space for you to put your feet on one,
your hands on the other,
and push them apart and
stretch your presence into thoughts of me.
Seems like I'm always waiting
for you to appear,
for your name to appear beyond my imagination,
to flash on the screen and for you to say
Hello
and say, I've been thinking about you.
Those words would water
the desert
and make it bloom with white flowers.

make no mistake
so much.
just think those words,
think those words for me.

i will burst.

Poems about Montrealers

On a bench,
he lies prone,
a mound of flesh oozing
out between the crack of
his shirt, the crack of his pants.
her arm is a tattoo
colorful like a nuclear sunset,
she spits at some point
past his feet and
says,
"That's disgusting."

Sometimes I look down and think
just how much
I love a daisy.

a kind of tiredness
becomes a part
of me
past a certain age.

Pleasant Sunday Thoughts

I am wearing your sweatshirt,
spring is unforgiving after
the bars close and I lounged on your
bed, leafing through one of your
books by a popular Japanese author.

You twitch in your sleep, first a hand,
then a foot. Can a foot twitch?
Malfunctions in your brain.
I can not recall.
I am afraid to look it up on google
afraid you are destined.

not even if you fill the pockets of
this sweatshirt with stones and
sink to the bottom of the river.
I will hold your hand underwater.

In the next you can be my child, my parent,
my friend, my mentor, my neighbor.
But you first, you can decide.

Happiness is a Practice (II)

happiness is a practice and I am
not doing so well these days my
mind is not so well these days
my heart is not so well these days,
i can't claw my way out of this,
can't stop kicking you can't stop
from this fear this neverending fear
that acid bathes my interior life.
I would like someone so gentle,
so considerate, so mild
and then I think maybe then,
maybe then, maybe at that point
I will stop with this
practice of fear.
my stomach hurts from not eating.
it's been what... 12 hours?
please.
you only need to breathe so i know you are there.

Happiness is a practice and I have neglected
you and find myself drifting through these
spaces with my hands knotted together,
tightening and loosening,
drifting and plummeting.
You hold from me all your secrets, all your
words, hiding them in stones and
signs that I can not decipher
even if I were literate.
What do you want from me?
I can not find you in my mind,
cannot hold you to me in my breath,
and so I feel so very alone together.
Take me now, take my hands
and lay yourself down in the mud
before me and let me cross on
your back to a higher heaven.

Let me not melt like this
and find myself no longer
me but you,
as though returning to my
very origins,
carved off from your rib.
I would halt this process
and yank on
a cord to let myself be me.
But there are such
strong forces in natures,
so much greater
than those that I master.
I am nothing
in this wind.

it just so happens that
bad mood and anxiety
are contagious.

seule tout seule
et je m'inquiette, je contemplate
until I am sick.

i could thank you for bringing me here,
even if you hate me.
I think of you sometimes
and wonder where you are,
and why we don't talk.
I think of you often
and wonder where you are,
and why we don't talk.
My life is a garden and
I am in love
and it is because of you,
in spite of you.
you only ever existed in my mind.

The Idols of Our Fathers

Jacob said to me, "Rid yourselves of the alien gods,"
and we cried and we wept for them.

you picked up

where he left off
in so many ways a double.

Hamor

Genesis 34.1-31

What violence to you, Shechem, in your own bed,
slaughtered and tricked, the blood still running
fresh between your legs.
A bride price indeed, worth a nation of men,
was she not, the dark eyed Dinah,
who you fell upon in the fields beside a well.
Corpses lay across one another entwined,
contorted and screaming, the blood still running
fresh between their legs, still running
even after death in
growing pools that the rain beat back to
the dust.
My shame, to my shame a genocide
for a woman raped, a woman seized by
harpy fingers, jewels thick on the knuckles
that bit into her skin and welted red as she
wept home in ripped dress, blood running down her
leg, scratched by brambles, by thorns,
dirtied and stinking from violation.
Though Jacob shook, heads bowed,
the old yield to the young, as this is no country
for old men. Jacob slept and dreamed
of his new cattle, his new people
and the land shared between them.
While he slept, swords in hand,
Jacob's sons took your life as a bride price,
and took your sheep, took your wives,
took your children.
Dinah wrapped in bridal gold, led from
the bridal chamber
stepped on the violets that grew.

Bible Poetry Project -- Jacob and Rachel

Genesis 29.9-20

"And when Jacob saw Rachel, daughter of his uncle Laban, and the flock of his uncle Laban, Jacob went up and rolled the stone off the mouth of the well, and watered the flock of his uncle Laban. Then Jacob kissed Rachel and broke into tears... So Jacob served seven years for Rachel and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her."

Tending sheep is not such hard work,
lead them to graze and keep watch
against wolves and birds of prey,
birth them, and shear them.
The only troubles are neighbors.
Sometimes they steel your sheep,
sometimes you theirs.
That is the way of things in the land of Haran.
Day in day out, arguing over sheep,
voices rising over tinkling bells and
the songs of birds
that bathe in the dust beside the well.
Singing songs of my family,
cresting the hills with the flocks,
with a dog.
So my days go.
Rachel, she comes to me with
cheese and bread.
Rachel, she comes to me,
we lie in the fields and look up
into the heavens,
and seven years are seven days,
seven days are seven minutes,
seven minutes are seven seconds.
There is no time where there is Rachel.

Favorite Places in montreal # 1 Overpass St. Henri

Favorite Places in Montreal #1
Castro VC is incessant in this city
receding into the brick from the shouts of schoolyard children,
surfacing on the cement of an overpass, only to porpoise beneath
a poster for Jean Le Loup’s two night stand at Club Soda.
The tags of the city are Sirens
I walk past them huddled in doorways,
seizing the long strands of my hair,
ivying their arrows around my ankles.
He took me to the secret place beneath the highway,
mattresses pushed against the pillars and piles of rags,
empty cans of spray paint and names upon names.
Generations of names.
I learned the tags like I learned the constellations,
So the stars would not be a disorganized scatter across the sky.
Each one now a story, a myth.
I came back and sat on the cement blocks,
sat and waited,
sat and sat.
This desolate patch grew flowers,
lived but a few days
and I was the only one to see the blooms.


(This is in response to a HomeRun challenge to write a poem about one's favorite place in Montreal. I am going to try a few out.)

Bible Poetry Project

"Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, so that the land could not support them staying together; for their possessions were so great that they could not remain together. And there was quarreling between the herdsmen of Abram's cattle and those of Lot's cattle. -- The Canaanites and Perizzites were then dwelling in the land. -- Abram said to Lot, 'Let there be no strife between you and me, between my herdsmen and yours, for we are kinsmen. Is not the whole land before you? Let us separate: if you go north, I will go south; and if you go south, I will go north'" Genesis 13.5-9

Brotherly love, a guise for brotherly hate,
No love lost between,
No generosity of two, of duos, in this
hateful, hot land, between tents.
The wiser brother struck first,
an act of deceptive acquiescence,
with gold bracelets tattooed to his wrist
and arms, his stomach thrust before
him, grown fat and round with
meals of wine and meals of meats,
his shepherd's cloak of finer weave
than any herd attendant would touch.
Let us part and be parted, he offered,
and you may choose, for we are
preoccupied with petty quarrels
and this area grows only rocks.
Delighted to rule, delighted to decide,
Lot believed his brother relinquished
the kingdom of choice,
and gave too much.
To choose well would yield rivers of
milk, and fields of peaches
bursting with amber juice.
To choose otherwise would
pick the cattle to their ribs,
and the breasts' of his wives would
shrivel to lentils,
and only bile would fill the mouths
of the neonates.
Only Abram knew that his brother
had no choice,
that luck alone decided these matters,
not industry, not contemplation.
To Abram went the wreath of Fortune
Lot would lose his wife, his cattle,
his daughters, his words,
and lie by the Jordan.
What if he had gone south instead?

twitter poem of the day

not so good, not so bad,
days like this I should be glad
even if no named affection,
I am certain of this direction.

Genesis 18

Genesis 21.7 "Who would have said to Abraham, That Sarah would suckle chldren! Yet i have borne a son in his old age."

Sarah laughed, as she sometimes did,
at such a silly proposition.
Far less that she should have a son
than that her husband,
now shriveled and old,
should be able to rise
to this occasion,
even less he should make an emission
that could hit an internal star.
No, now his bones that poked through
in places in jagged ridges
dry and brown with sun.
His flesh hung from his shoulders,
pulled down to the ground
in paper thin rolls that pooled
in the belly and over his hips
All hung down, lower than in
youth, lower than in his prime,
low as though crying out to
return to the dust from whence it came.
Sarah could only laugh
that this shuffle footed man with
Arabic black eyes and white
brows that met his white beard,
that stood on the roadway,
cane in hand, forgetting
he had taken three steps before
and three more to go,
would feel the sap of spring
and rise like the buds,
bursting open
one last time.

april poetry project

The April poetry project is taking a religious bent. I want to read the Tanakh (aka, the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible) and write a poem a day inspired by this work of poetry-law-history. It is pretty fascinating stuff and I am rather surprised by what is in there sometimes. Take the brief story of Babel that I read yesterday. I'd always thought the story was about hubris, but when I read it this time, I was rather surprised by the fact that God was just afraid. Weird. People were harmonized, in cooperation, and he was worried about what they could accomplish. There's a Smith's song that goes, "If you think peace is a common goal, that goes to show how little you know."
Anyway, always a good read, and I think a series of mediocre poems are a very fine way to process the text.

babel

What a raw deal for those men in Babel.
To have aimed for the stars
and as one built a brick tower
so high, it frightened the Lord.
The Lord confounded their speech.
He scattered them.
The tower was unbuilt on the land,
a blight, an eyesore, massive and
semi soft, impotent to its majesty.
All who passed it said,
"Men who aim too high fail,"
which is not the truth.
Men did not fail, but there were other forces
at work, the same forces
that have brought down many a man
and reduced him to a mere shadow\
of his former self.
This is the doing of the Lord, who
knew that harmony would make people
slack and lazy.
I can not believe he did not like peace.

spring's here and my heart is nervous
at all these flowers pushing their
way up into the world through
winter's last hurrah.

its raining march rains
in cold wet drops
and i can dance
on the grass
and the buds on the bushes
are begging to open.

crisis

so much for love poems, Shams, seems I've got a crisis on my hands,
my lover, he doesn't love me anymore.
if that's not a crisis, I don't know what is?
like a tiny little berry in my goddess hands,
unintentionally,
i think i know what the end looks like
because i've seen it so many times.
It looks like this.
and I just refuse to open my eyes and see it.
wasn't i just saying how boring my life had become only
yesterday?

spring is

spring is
replete with people who return
from distant places of my past.
Some, I am so happy to see.

i dared think that i am
and closed my eyes
waiting for a blow
that never came.
i opened one eye,
then the other,
and you were still
there,
smiling at me
and smiling.

if i could make love to your ego

he said to me many years ago,
I'd be narcissus
I dreamed I said if I could
make love to your ego.

March Project: Love Poetry

This month, I've decided to try and write a love poem a day. So often, I write about tragic love, painful love, love gone horribly wrong. But, some of the best poetry is about love gone right and the meeting of minds, etc. I figure for March, with a bit of inspiration, some love poems are in order.

dearest, my dearest,
I only write anti-love poems,
but for you, I will make
an exception.

I mostly fear you will read
this and say
it did not measure up
to what you were
expecting,
and that I was not
the writer you hoped
I would be,
and for this,
you reject me.

the greater the
cracks in my
cement open up
to swallow the birds
from the sky.
There is no end to
this and so
no end to my
loss if you
decide
(for i will never decide).
I hope that
you love me more
even if the words never
touch the air in
a puff of winter breath,
and your hand never
finds mine,
mitten in mitten.

mornings

i am still dreaming
and my brain is
oozing out of my skull
at a point between my
eyes, and onto
the desk.
he left this behind
and all I can do is hold it
while I sleep
and breathe in
the scent of detergent
not my own.
can a sentiment last
a lifetime? i can
only whisper these
things to what scrap
i hold in my arms.
why have
i been so beaten down
that i am afraid
to stand taller than the pines?

Shams, there is in me a terrible badness,
a demon,
clawing its way through my skin,
and I have to fight or it will own me
for a time
and I will do terrible things,
things that will hurt people I love
because I can.
This demon cares nothing for you,
cares nothing for me,
cares for nothing,
but to rage and destroy
carefully built houses, kicking down
the beams,
setting fire to the timbers
and dancing in the smoldering remains
with his violin as he dances
and I cry.
My demon feeds on my fears and grows
strong when they increase,
making great feasts and smacking
the very bones with his lips
as fat and blood drips off them
onto his pot belly.
If I could starve him from the source,
choke him with my own hands
and hold him down with a will
and a certainty until he stops moving,
perhaps then he will give me some rest.

this is it

i climbed up some mountain
you see, and i'd been struggling
for a long time on this one
as mountains can be like that.
i'd been struggling across the sea
and then I found I was suddenly there
with almost no effort (surely there
was effort, but I'd forgotten how
many boulders I'd tripped over).
And when I was there, I thought
the view would be better somehow
or no, that somehow I would be
changed, that I would be something
more than the sum of my parts,
a person who'd climbed.
I felt sort of ordinary, as though
what I really wanted was just to
be like everyone else and I wasn't
really sure why I wanted that so
badly. It wasn't anything to be ordinary
short of boring and I was boring and
I am probably going under again.

the test of patience
even if I
hold you in trust
hold me in trust
a million times I
want to say
to the stars at night
where are you?

medea killed her children
to break your heart.
i still don't know why
people identify with her.

i dreamed the dream
of the house, Shams,
the inside of my house,
which is in fact an apartment.
the interior had grown
dilapidated and was
falling apart from a fungus
that climbed up the walls
black and fierce,
pushing the drywall from
the inside out,
pieces of plaster falling
like large snowflakes.

love story

I am writing a love story
about myself, Shams,
and I am the protagonist,
or one of them.
Only we don't say that kind of thing,
can't call it a love story, because
he's too cool for all that, too cool for me,
too cool to tell me that he has me in
his eternity
just in case
he needs to break in case of
emergency.
Boys are careful like that.
In my storym
he is carving my name
into his blood,
rearranging his DNA, the plasma,
so that it buzzes in my presence,
sends chemicals in a flood
at just the simple thought of me.
And he can't stop that,
can't stop this urgency for me,
this scent in all things that is me-ness.
Love is such a forceful demoness,
and she has him pinned even if he
struggles against it.
My story is more about a
silly man.
In front of my eyes,
he puffs himself up and struts,
so that my heart beats,
not because I think he is great
but because he frightens me,
with this threat of this
callous indifference towards
a hundred different faces and people,
a small bead of 108.
Lies, love's first lies are understatements,
lies to oneself, lies to one's lover,
lies that one is infected,
a victim,
and yes, a simple word of mine
will soothe his sweaty brow,
send tension dissolving out
through his fingers, out through
his feet, out when he hears me
say what I know he carries
in him.
This is the story I'm writing Shams.
Watch me.
Watch me breathe it.

(starts good, finishes weak -- rethink this one. it's not so so bad)

lost opus card

damn you,
damn you,
damn you.
Again, I prove again
that I am an incompetent
idiot, incapable of taking
care of myself in any
meaningful way wahtsoever.
I've lost my metro
pass yet again,
or for the first time
really.
But I've lost things more
valuable than this,
and every single time,
I am ashamed.

one day a love poem

one day, shams, I can write a love poem
a happy poem, a poem that i know is
merited by the one it describes
because he loves me so much more
than I love him.
Isn't that the way of things for women?
nothing works until a man is consumed
with desire, consumed with the sickness
that life is meaningless without?
He wakes up and holds me in his mind,
a virus of the blood that has changed
the very plasma of his cells.
There is no day without me.
The other dimensions are so small,
I could hold them in the palm of my hand,
and yet my eyes don't see them in
front of me here, right at the end of
my breath.

love's arrows are such barbs in my hind
and i'm scratching at the welts they give me
tearing at bolts of flesh to get some
poison and i'll suck down on this
raw, red wound gaping and winking at me,
on my arms.
I hate this disaster. I hate it, I hate it.
And the disaster is that you will not go.
You will not.

the degree
of anxiety
is high.

oh so very disappointed

you know how these things go, Shams.
Easy come, easy go.
So it always is for me.
But if the story is over with one,
so it will begin with another.
From where I sit,
it seems so dreadful to have
nothing to sing about.
Though I wonder, Shams, if
I am just lying to myself.

i am watching this paper
on the ground out the window
as it creeps along a crack
in the wind, listening to someone
talk to me and i'm not even here
and he's trying to impress me
or reach me, but i'm in no mood
for this kind of thing anymore
i'm tired today
i'm tired with all you people.
leave me alone already.
i crave the silence of my own
house, and not talking, not
listening.

where are you, Shams?
My head is full of songs.

in my languid moments,
like now,
now that I am tired and
frustrated,
I would like to lay down
my head in your lap
and look into your eyes.
and you could tell me,
don't worry, i'm here.
You can brush my hair back with
your hand and say
don't worry, i'm here.

Menelaos

Agamemnon, full of heart, is always confused by
Menelaos, his sword bearing brother
with full beard and big laugh,
drinking from a horn,
and drinking with the men,
playing cards and telling stories
until all hours of the night.
If Menelaos were not his brother,
he could understand why Helen
left with a younger man,
a knockout like her married to
an uncomplicated man like
Menelaos.
It never could work.
Helen might have liked Menelaos
rugged good looks and his
rustic ease.
He never cheated or lied,
but quite probably never
felt so strongly that he needed to.
Though agamemnon...
Agamemnon had more pain in
his days, and didn't

(this is a good one, again, a start of one. I will work on it)

my hands
are so
cold

is it so terrible that I fall in love
so easily, and am seduced
by the smallest thing?
I am no challenge for a wizard
to catch.
Ah, but to keep me, that is hard.
What binds they think hold me
drop from my hands
like those of Dionysus and
I walk out the door,
naked and radiant,
a smile on my face.
My only love is for you and your divinity.
None else shall keep me.

dumped

i heard a story today about a woman
who had never dumped anyone in her life.
She had always received and never gave,
a vessel for the unfulfilled dreams of others,
this pitcher that can't be tipped over.
I think these things collect inside you
and they flow out, like honey nectar
down through your limbs and make them slack
and placid, worn and eroded.
I also heard a story today about a woman
who had always dumped others.
She had shot arrows and jumped hurdles,
watched tears and did not move, did not stir,
but steeled herself against onslaughts of
desperation and pain, turning cold,
freezing everything so nothing could get in,
shutting the doors, one at a time, and bolting
them down.
For every dumper, there is a dumpee.
At one point joined and one.

Shams, dearest, I think I did it again,
spent time imagining this future,
this fantastic future in which I could
be more than myself, and reality
aligned precisely to a vision I had
of how things should be.
And I was so delighted that there was
someone whose physical self could
be occupy that space.
I had a voice, a body, a face, a name.
Then imaginings must be laid aside
and reality is what reality is.
And reality seems so difficult.

seize the day

for too long, Shams, I was swimming with under toe
pulling me down, my lungs bursting with saltwater,
get me out of this little tank, struggling and fighting,
knowing I had one hand on the life preserver,
the other on the tank's edge.
Kicking and beating and fighting so hard,
when it was as simple as breathing,
as simple as breathing,
as simple as
breathing.
He came and
offered me a plush towel,
a pair of wooden bath slippers,
and even if that was all he ever did for me,
I am so grateful,
on my knees.

waiting for a phone call

its funny the way we women are so at the mercy of these things
and so much life gets lived in the space between those
anticipated phone calls.
Then again, the vigil in my life only lasts so long
before I don't care any longer about you
and your phone call.
At least I get the house clean, the plants watered,
the dog walked, the novel written, the run in,
the yoga practiced, the lecture prepped, the
book read, the friends visited, the good cheer
spread, the shopping done, and all of those
things that sometimes seem as though they
are done simply to fill the space
between those phone calls.
Oh its just you. You were not who I was thinking of anymore.


****
note to self -- this is a good one in the making, revisit in the future.

change

the more i change, Shams,
the more really the names just
change and I am not really
changing anymore.
It's all that special relativity shit.
Shams, friend, Shams, we have
got to get our life together
and stop this shilly shallying
around, this indefinitive messing.
Some dull dreary parade of
emails and phonecalls and
waiting around for something.
I'm so sick of people who
don't take me seriously.
I'm so sick of people who
don't take things seriously.
I'm so sick of people who
don't take themselves seriously.
If we don't matter, what does,
Shams, can't you tell me?
It's Friday night and I have
everything and nothing to do.

teacher

maybe being a teacher is not what i should have been
but nothing is so good for my ego
as meriting the respect
of the next generation
because I give to them
and they give back.

leaky roof in my cavernous house
the cavernous house in my dreams
can't stop this trickle... nay... flood.
I get so overwhelmed by you.

struggle

on one hand, I want to be the girl who goes with the flow
who takes what hand she is dealt and just goes along
for the ride, ride her til she bucks ya, all smiles and
sunshine and if it rains tomorrow, don't fret.
on the other hand, I want to be the girl who makes a
difinitive statement about myself, carving and extracting,
constructing myself like a bower bird builds its nest,
eschewing what is wrong with deliberate incision.
Both are gardens of beauty and surprise,
and I am ever torn because I can't have both,
can't be both.

working itself out,
this thing, this life of mine,
and resist or fight,
flow or fly,
it's working itself out.

Donut

8:30 in Lionel Groulx metro and thank
you dear God the Dunkin Donuts is
always fresh, always open.
I haven't eaten in hours, and I don't
usually eat donuts and the woman
slides the door for me, do it yourself.
Oh, I do it myself. I take the chef's
special, brown frosting with a white
rosette, stuffed with cream in its
yellow food dye pastry, but still hot.
This is going to make a good mess.
I eat that donut up the escalators,
up the stairs, out to the street.
I eat the donut, and think,
if this were a movie,
now,
I would be having an epiphany.

I am living under the influence
and I think I'm about to get
pulled over again.
There's only so long I can
get by before someone
calls the authorities about my
reckless emotional living.

dream

i dreamed of you
i dreamed you drew picture
and then in real life
i was so close to you
i could
and i wanted to send you
some kind of message
of that

dog

I fear your death more each day
as you get older and older.
You wheeze. Did you wheeze before?
I want to think you've been snoring
like this forever, curled at my feet,
but I seem to recall you were not
so tired, my friend, not so
malfunctioning.
If you die, die in my arms, die
while I am home, die so that
I know I was there for your transition,
and could walk you to the other side
as far as I could go.
You'll meet me there again, one day.
When it is my turn to walk,
you will wait for me I think,
just as you wait for me every day
to come home.

i am too much like too many
people who are cold blooded,
and I like being cold blooded.
I'd sometimes give anything to
be calculating like that,
methodical like that,
and not care at all about such stupid
things

it wasn't a lack of feeling,
and so you left me reeling.
sometimes I still think of you
and sometimes.