the grass is a yard
now, again
the fortuneless
lengths of vine arms reaching
out from the dirt have
been chopped
the borders of gardens the boys
built last summer are strong
he came there with me and with
her and she stared at the sky
they both closed their eyes
to the stars as they
kissed. i looked away,
raked the leaves with the
soles of my shoes,
built a garden with nothing
but grass
somehow im going fucking camping next weekend.
i don’t have any money, as per usual. i can’t afford to buy a bottle of water to drink in the car a week from now. i keep justifying it by saying that i pay all my bills and i have my own apartment and i’m never truly starving, but then i buy another pack of cigarettes and all the justification turns into guilt. but on the other hand, i don’t need a bottle of water. i don’t need anything at all. so fucking whatever, right.
last summer was easy. i was even poorer than i am now, but it was still easy. i didn’t have to feel bad about not having food in my fridge. i didn’t bring my own food or camping supplies or tent when i went camping, i just brought myself and there was no pressure. there was no pressure the whole summer, really. there was just me and justin and leah’s back porch and ordering beer in the afternoon and playing board games in the living room and sleeping alone on the picnic table in my backyard under the stars. getting locked out of my apartment and having nowhere to go and not caring. getting trapped in storms and walking the canal alone for hours. i’d go to hamilton for the cheap lunches, cigarettes, beers, car rides, pizzas, late nights with my friends.
i don’t own anything.
this isn’t as easy, but it’s definitely better.
Filed under monologue
my apartment is generally stifling and on the main floor of a house somewhere downtown. i think about how one day its walls will be a memory and how descriptions of them will speckle stories about strangers from my past, casual friends who evaporate into memories. i think about how comfortable it is, even in its heat, and how it is when i’m alone in it, and i fear not always living here. i think about how the fridge is home only to rotating brands of beer and empty pizza boxes, bottles of gin. about things i have not let go of and the things i never even brought. i think of the pain it would bring about, for everyone involved, to move the fish again.
there are very few bugs in this house but the sink doesn’t properly drain, there are pros and there are cons but if things truly bothered me i’m sure i would fix them. not just the drain. i’m handier than i let on. i am a lot of things i never let on.
we watch the daylight come and go and we meander from the workday morning to the sunday afternoon to the drunken midnight stumble somehow seamlessly. i smoke and do essentially nothing else, i cross off days on the calendar or study patterns on the ceiling but i am never bored. i write and hide the evidence, i apply for my passport, i read and toast bagels and eat them slowly with fresh fruit and wait for the coffee maker when i am alone.
it’s summer.
i never do anything productive when it’s summer and i don’t care to.
Filed under monologue
it’s storming out and he’s sick in my bed, sleeping, so close i could touch him. and i could, i might, i will when i’m done. every now & then lightning flashes and it fills my apartment. it doesn’t disturb us. i can write by the light of the aquarium.
all of a sudden sensitivity, to the sounds of some other body, alert to each subtle change between breaths, each lift of a chest. neighbours come home & concern me. i fear sound from their steps in the hall. if i had nothing to worry about it would keep me up all night. i drink coffee too late. i also take breaths.
actually, the room is dark and empty. just me and two goldfish. it isn’t storming or even raining. there is nothing close enough to touch, and i might be sleeping.
an afternoon with you
is a maniac with a hammer
i don’t understand television or
cooking macaroni
so we don’t
and you don’t believe
the better parts of my dead
skin land in your hands
because there is
no place else.
but every place that there is
we have been to,
tearing the celings with
fingers and nails, chipping
the bricks and forcing our arms
through the beams
Filed under monologue
his sprawling awning
hangs, wrong
degrees on broken
arms or knees left without
skin, metal shifted
with the rain, the screen
can’t close since summer
it stands open to the porch
Filed under poem tree
