I'm lonely even in a crowd. I break rules, even my own. I'm misunderstood. I mourn time wasted. I am a poor clone of a better self. I want things I can't have. I am honest because it hurts. I don't mind pain, sometimes it's the only thing telling me I'm alive. I walk around daydreaming. I'm flawed. I've broken hearts. I've had my heart broken. I've never loved someone the way I'm capable of. I'm selfish and giving at the same time. I'm intensely sexual. I'm an idealist. I love people but I don't show it easily. I see the good in everyone. Music is the soundtrack in the movie of my life. At some point I was reborn, but since that point, it's been like a book you read in reverse, so you understand less as the pages turn. I love animals and children and anything helpless. I cry more than I will admit to you. I've underachieved with my life. I love to read. I love to feel but hate what I feel. The smells of spinach and cherry soap at the car wash remind me of my childhood. If I was a Mortal Kombat character, my animality would be a bunny. Something is eating away at me... I tend to neglect my friends sometimes. I've been found guilty in a court of my own making. I want to start all over. I want to die for something I believe in rather than just die. I can make everyone laugh while I'm crying inside. Right now someone's hurting and I want to help them. I fear rejection. I fear intimacy even as I crave it. One day I will escape this prison I've built. I like sad songs. I hate hoping. I ramble a lot...
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i dream it's spring, and that i die drunk and happy
the realm of all possibilitiesletter to my future lover
in case of plane crash, eat me firstwhen and how to die
the deception dictionary
the new anger
we can share in every moment as it breaksthe transparent wombethel the aardvark goes quantity surveillingthe modern day jedithe man with three violinsthe cruel tutelage of amber
UNTITLED
You would like to be found by a god,
and blessed I suppose as a matter of
consequence or chance. And live for
something somewhere with trees maybe.
And intrigue each other like some
eastern religion in a poisoned world.
But you live in a unit
with children or something young
and they're proportionate to your dreams
and that's very modular of you isn't it?
And the wands of fairies only wave like daggers
and that'll teach you for wearing
glass slippers
around here.
And you watch the world through Saran-Wrap
like a couple of sandwiches forgotten
in some Woolworth's cafeteria
and the only god you've ever found
is the one that paints X's on eyes.
~ Hugh Walsh
THE CIRCUS
and somehow they
dance in their aquamarine
sequins, the acrobats
seeming that in their
slow and grotesque arabesque
there is great pain
in the turning
the hands clutching
and the loins touching
for macabre contact finally
and the music is all
absurd for them
turning, I
see myself floundering
double in your eyes, in
the brights of them;
two of me are repeated
in aquamarine mirrors and
know the grotesque
plural you
is mirrored in mine also
in all, pain, in all
the slow acrobatic dance
behind our eyes
in the skull's circus
forgive me then
that even this
- your pain -
is a poem
DARK PINES UNDER WATER
This land like a mirror turns you inward
And you become a forest in furtive lake;
The dark pines of your mind reach downward,
You dream in the green of your time,
Your memory is a row of sinking pines.
Explorer, you tell yourself this is not what you came for
Although it is good here, and green;
You had meant to move with a kind of largeness,
You had planned a heavy grace, an anguished dream.
But the dark pines of your mind dip deeper
And you are sinking, sinking, sleeper
In an elementary world;
There is something down there and you want it told
~ Gwen MacEwen
THE CONVERT
Just when my faith is strongest
and I embrace Emptiness
with the fervor of a pill-popping
fanatic of Bay Street;
just when I know
beyond any shadow of confusion
ailing or demented people
are praying to a Chimera
and lighting futile candles for him
in hoary churches and cathedrals,
just then he turns his head
to smile goodness and peace at me
with your full perfect lips
and at that instant
I fall down on my knees
an awestruck convert,
my eyes two candles glimmering
in the dark
FOR MUSIA'S GRANDCHILDREN
I write this poem
for your grandchildren
for they will know of your loveliness
only from hearsay,
from yellowing photographs
spread on table and sofa
for a laugh.
When arrogant
with the lovely grace you gave their flesh
they regard your dear frail body pityingly,
your time-dishonored cheeks
pallid and sunken
and those hands
that I have kissed a thousand times
mottled by age
and stroking a grey ringlet into place,
I want them suddenly
to see you as I saw you
- beautiful as the first bird at dawn.
Dearest love, tell them
that I, a crazed poet all his days
who made woman
his ceaseless study and delight,
begged but one boon
in this world of mournful beasts
that are almost human:
to live praising your marvelous eyes
mischief could make glisten
like winter pools at night
or appetite put a fine finish on.
~ Irving Layton