Open Letter

I've got tickets to a show that only I will go to.

It's to see the sunset on the hill out east.

And to see the stars in abundance outside of city lights.

Who wants to go?

Safety?

She called me in the darkness with a whisper. I could not see who, did not know where from, and knew not why.

So I didn't go.

Time.

Of tasks solitary, three quarters full.

And those with two, perhaps it is best quite near the beginning.

With a group, give me the time just before the start of the end.

Zein

After that, I couldn't look at the sunset for the longest time. Since it was winter, I'd walk home from work as the day was ending and every time I'd wish for an overcast day, or better yet, for rain. Instead of taking the shortcut across the water front, I'd hunch over and sulk through bitter alleyways littered with Starbucks and McDonalds bags and coffee cups.

These days I became more and more lost, walking circles that lead to Winnipeg heroin and lake side LSD. I let them take me away to dreams in damp clouds and sun dogs, of diamond dust and blanketing night skies.

-Frank Blanc


I like the cold because it hits me like a good punch. The rain itches as each bullet fails to break the skin. Sunshine picks at the skin hoping to peel some away. And heat is a suffocating quilt that can't be thrown off.

I don't understand credentials. I want to read John Varley. There is a list of people who won't be missed. Some buildings would float away if their sails were even bigger.

In two weeks, trees will fall. They will be replaced by quiet misunderstandings.

There is no yes or no or maybe, only I love you as I love everything else. How is that special?

(the) Metroids

I tell myself I care. I tell myself I don't.

Try to get passionate, about music, photography, writing. Composition, certainty, predictions.

I listen to the songs that remind me of my past.

There are people I will never see again. There are people I will never get to see. There are those I tell I miss under immovable fact, that perhaps I left my heart and soul in their sofa cushions, and they tell me over and over that it's not there.

I try to keep them on the line for just a bit longer, but there is someone at the door and perhaps it's the postman or perhaps it's the friend I never am and never seem to be, the friend who's actually there.

My hand reaches out to those who aren't. I grasp at flinching hands.

We look eye to eye by staring at camera lenses.

I deal with fact, I'm no where. I deal with emotion, no where again. Isolation in mind, body, and spirit. The stale air cradles and rocks me to sleep.

Justification.

Do you feel your life descending into the mediocrity of adulthood like it's that new car smell that slowly, almost unnoticeably, goes away? One day you're driving along and all of a sudden you realize that the carpet has mud on it, there's a fry on the passenger seat, it's already time for its first oil change, and it smells just like your old one. And you can't buy another decade in your teens either, not with all the money in the world. Sure, there's the new phenomenon of a middle-class mid-life crisis, but what does that get you? It doesn't get you your first kiss in the rain or dimly lit and smokey basements. You don't suddenly find yourself taking shortcuts through the park on your bike to get to that Harvey's you and your friends haunt. Nah, it's that new car you couldn't even drive for more than half your life back then, and now you feel edgy because it's a standard. But it's not the same, because the transmission works and anyone knows how to close the door on the first try.

We were carefree, we loved life, we had the future. Now it's a mortgage, a car loan, and a looming economic crisis. Well I have news for you, that property's going to be worth pennies, that cars going to break down before it's paid off, and you'll be thankful for pay-cuts because at least it means you still have that job.

I indulge my senses, a beer and cigarette in the rain, watching the planes arrive. While partaking in my own private hedonism, it makes it harder than ever to say I don't give a fuck. Yet here I am doing nothing, just letting my actions speak for me.

This isn't a battle cry shouting out, "Remember who you were! Try to recapture that!" or, "Realise who you are! Live it!" No, it's a cry of despair at the inevitability of another lonely night and years more to come.

Sara

We stood in supermarket's carpark, dimly lit with mercury. He had a twinkle in his eye as I asked what we were doing.
"Bowling."
He grinned, unshaven and darkened from the day we'd spent at the beach.
"I've always wanted to do this, but I was never sure who to share it with. And it's not an adventure if one of us has already done it."
I looked up at the stars. The stores are all closed, darkened aside from the cooler lights inside. I suppose the frozen foods get lonely at night.
On the other side between some painted lines, he'd set up cheap ikea glasses, each filled with marbles, candy-coloured water, and christmas lights dangling in and around and about them. I could imagine, with that outlet he'd found, rock shows and tailgating, under the watchful eye of neon sponsors.
In a splash of colours, he sent the glasses reeling with a cantaloupe. I lit a cigarette as he set it up, so I could knock it all down again.

And I watched this set-up, this regaining of confidence and self-worth, because it was interesting to watch it in another order.

I gripped the melon, wound up, and knocked it all down again.

Sock Puppeteers

They couldn't ask why, because I'm all grown up now. They didn't say no, throw accusations of insanity, or demand more involvement, because I'm all grown up now.

The premise was to see what others don't usually try to. People speed past so many things in their lives, like they're stepping in an elevator and magically appearing on only the floor they want to be. It's willing ignorance of what all the other stories hold, a calculated indifference.

Off the shoulder, the snakes rustled in the underbrush and litter, undisturbed by the rattling of cars. Roadkill in various states of decay, marsupial bones and lizard skins, discarded and eyeless. Sugar gliders quiet and small, fly in astronomical twilight.

I biked at night, with socks as gloves. We don't look at stars for science or faith, but for wonderment and vanity. This is my universe, those are stars in my galaxy, and dear God we're beautiful.

The moonlit dam and midnight train, were the only lights and noise over the kilometers I traveled. I couldn't think through any of it, under the delirium I traveled. During the train ride back through half-formed dreams and ghosts floating and alighting, my thoughts curled up with the idea that perhaps they all understood why, while only held back by the belief that their time's worth more than it is.

Josephine.

I'm being driven insane by the people who aren't in my life. Those lonely headlights that deaden my peace as they teasingly speed towards me and then away. I kept a mental diary of the people who could've, but didn't: The busker in stripes, a haloed waitress, that note taker.

This question was posed to me: Why go to different bars when they all serve alcohol?

She kept not being there, while I kept asking. I think I asked too much of her, to ask for emotional support. Social normatives don't need that.

In the end, no one needs anything, and really, that's all I can ask for.

Loops.

The confidence found in a mohawk, beer, tobacco, and stolen sunglasses.

Smoking to the filter, littering, public scowls. Impressing no one, perhaps.

She might as well live on the moon, I had said. Yes. I will laugh when she does.

oh.brother

In a moment of weakness I serenaded the moon. They let me continue, impassioned and off-key, until the dogs and cats joined in. Windows unlatched to find nothing but the rustle of leaves. In my bush I stared up at Andy Warhol's mug, the one which he drank from.

Disheartened and disillusioned, I let the ground take me down to an empty ocean and uncertainty. The sand between my feet, at the beach alone.

Cross-eyed? No.

I let the ocean beat more regularly than me as my tongue silently motioned words. To the lip-reading shipmen and mermaids, I professed my love to the heavens and above. Queryless I carried my feet some feet and feet forwards.

As the sea touched my lips and my hair began to float, I let the stars judge me like no one else ever had.

House Party

I just wanted to sleep in someone else's bed and pretend that I knew them well enough to deserve it.

In the morning I woke up next to my unfolded clean clothes, in the sleeping bag that's come to represent my transience, my hang over a reminder of my desperation.

Drinks

2 pots of coffee. 3 kettles of tea. 4 bottles of beer. 5 glasses of wine.

1 pipe. 2 rolled. 3 cigars. 4 cigarettes.

Drowned in the sounds of the city.

The stars, if the stars were metal.

Self-described ladders.

Crawl under the darkness and find warmth.

Disappear between the lines.

Miles

I was at the park in the morning, between classes. It was nice out, soft pillowy clouds in the blue skies I love. There were a lot of free benches, I decided for a clean one, partially in the sun, on the footpath, right across from another. It was near the pond, but not near enough so that the birds would bug me.

Before, I had just been near the central bus station, near chinatown. One of my courses required a 35mm SLR so the (digital) camera clerk decided my best bet was the pawn shops, or money lent stores, as they're called here. My journey was unfruitful, aside from a stop at McDonalds. At one of the places, not yet opened, I looked in the window wondering if it was worth it to wait until it opened. There was a sketchy guy hanging right at the door looking quite on edge. I peered around him to see that the store opened at 9:30am. He looked at me, asked if I have ID. "No?" "Hey, want to buy this?" he asksed as he flashes a gold necklace. "Nah." "Hey, what time is it?" "9:30, should be opened." "You want to looking to sell?" Oh, no, just searching for something. "Want me to bash your head in?" "Oh, uhh, haha, no no, that's okay." "Ha, he knows I'm just joking." There's another man there waiting too, I had assumed they didn't know each other, but they must to talk to each other. I decided that was my cue to go, I smiled and laughed at his chatter that fades in the distance I made.

My book had to be returned tomorrow. I needed to get a few chapters in. It's called Closer, about a boy named George. You don't want to know more than that. So I read.

At a certain point, I couldn't take it anymore. I needed to think about what had just happened in the book. Looking up there was a man, in a suit, on a bench that had been second choice to sit at. He looked older than he probably is, late thirties perhaps. He wasn't looking at much, perhaps the reeds, the city, the cars going past in the distance. It's rare to see suits pondering life like he seemed to be, thinking about his troubles, clearing his mind, not sipping any lattes or carrying a brief case.

Mentally, I shrugged. These early morning classes are lovely, but after I am always tired. Leaning my bag against me, keeping my page, folding my arms, I nodded to the left a bit and fell into a half-sleep. Images danced before my eyes, semi-formed dreams, instantly forgettable.

I awoke with a start. Someone was sitting on the bench on the other side of me. He looked homeless or close to being so, with a scruffy face and dirty clothes. He gave a subtle, curious look. If it wasn't still before noon, I might have felt threatened. I went back to my nap, hoping to remember this time what the dancing lights in my mind were trying to show me.

Okay, I thought, can't stay here forever. I read a few more pages, to get to an easier number to remember (90). The man said something and I glanced up. He wasn't looking at me, so perhaps he was mumbling to himself. Homeless people do that. The suit is still there, on his bench. I look at my watch, it's been over half an hour. He's over the shoulder of the homeless guy and I start to feel awkward watching the suit. Luckily, though, the suit stood up lazily, and strolled his way along the path to the small foot bridge, walking along the pond. At a point he went out of view, taking longer than I thought he should. Maybe he stopped to look at something, but I couldn't say.

With the homeless man still there, I felt I had exhausted my time there, a change of scenery would be nice, somewhere closer to my class. I stood up to leave and the man said to me rather loud and brusquely, "Oi mate, what time is it?"

Let me first say, I have this thing when people ask me for the time. I've been wearing an analog watch for many years. And this is a surefire way to be asked for the time, and it seems, especially in foreign places. I've been asked in New York City, Germany, and Singapore. However, whenever I'm asked, I'm always caught off guard when I'm asked about something I forget about until I look at it. So it always takes me awhile to register what they're asking for, and another few seconds to read the time. It's an odd exchange, and I wonder if they think I'm aloof, strange, or slow.

So it takes me awhile to answer. 11:40am. I didn't have class for another 2 hours, but I'll find something. I always do.

Of Love

The way the new world sees us isn't any different than before. We spend too much time on things they don't understand. Our superstitions are tiring and repetitious. Who devotes their precious time to unreciprocated ceremonies? They gain no satisfaction from the moves that fill our souls.

But still, these old bones forget. The restlessness we had during our youth, the rejection of our own parents ideals. Change is subtle, but change is there. With inner peace I find joy where I had not before, while other things become less daunting.

The vigor of past days marked by lust, love, boundless energy to navigate this bureaucratic world. Now? My curiosity though still insatiable, finds tranquility from my own, slow, efficient movements. I feel the little balance in my heart tipping slower, nearing rest. The love I so found before, in women, music, camaraderie, all in their entirety, seem so miniscule now in what will soon match my own love to give.

The world is ready to take me back, finally. The love I seek to give, that so much I have, is ready to be consumed by the blades of grass that whisper their own soliloquies, the soft, moist dirt in a decomposing log, rain unmatched in exuberance, the millennial ritual of deciduous trees shedding their green to only grow it again, and the near infiniteness of the rise and fall of mountains, the destruction of seas, and the life that started so small to only end that way again.

And me, I am ready, too. I have been waiting my whole life for this, but it is only now that I am ready. So please, take me back to the world I've always patiently loved, who is now ready to love me back.

Nido

She had only one eye, but it was enough to see all the trouble I'd be.

Clues.

A star imploding.

As dull as the cat's meow.

Sir, a dagger into my heart, a catastrophe into my hub of desire.

Understand a wakeful slumber.

Cowering, fearful, regrettable.

Give me a lesson and I shall learn.

Cortés' New World.

Sheathed, beguiled, misunderstood, unbegotten.

Back

Benches watch, white oak crimes.
Number count, trois deux un.
J'avais l'amour, toujours j'ai un cœur.

Sur le pré je ne rêve rien.
Mais, nous sommes près.

Les lits vides pour qui est loin.
Ma chaleur, pour toi.

Je donnerais tous les chose, si tu veux.
Viens-ici.

En beauté.

George

Tan lines and unheralded screams.
Sticks and stones in to pizza dough.
Cold shoulders and colder hearts.
Sanity unstable, unattainable end table.
Sandy socks and dusty shirt.
Gilded eye sockets.

When the wind blows through my empty chest and freezes the bones around, when the west is lost and the world goes under, the trees uprooted, its unburied parts burning and the rain stops coming around. We will all be brought before the judgement and a mirror will be placed in front to see our face. There will be no magic or trickery of light, just the purity of white and the frailness of a naked human body left to squirm under a self-administered autopsy.

Invisible Litter

In a city called home rusty metal rattles, where street lights bleed into the sky. Sit and sleep in musty flannel, let the world pass by. Uncalled for communion, may peace be with us all. Folded up in concrete chairs underneath wooden creaking arms. Hair raised, back of neck, little choirs sing the praise of each minute that passes. Coaxed through blood, red life preservers looking like candy store drugs. We have issues of non-communication, mute but never deaf, dumb, or blind. Hands, holding little paper cranes, incomparable with metal giraffes in industrial zoos. Placated thoughts, trembling, little excuses left to rot.

You ask me why we break these shelves,
You ask me why we don't go to battle ourselves
Well why can't I rise above the rest and come tell the stories of the best

They knew how to fight and how to lead
Their eyes knew no fright as their might conquered all.

Where the greatest have gone to die.

Young, charming, and full of romance.

colourful embrace

The death of a thousand lawyers
cried out into a sea of perpetrators.
Little raptors sang little songs
About how the little west was won.

Shall we dance a dance of dances
to declare the last of the dupes?
We can run past tiny poets
Let them drink their soup.

I hear the weather's nice
inside and out
Can you tell by the weatherman's face(s)
his doubts?

Our long hair,
longer longer still
Cut and pomade up,
put in rectangular pots on the window sill.

Punctured by punctuation.
Pirates and solicitors.
Quiet cosmic radiation.
Stranded in dead wind.

Echoless

A chameleon in retrospect, a silver ocean, little images of the world around. A careful knot tied in place to hold a burden too heavy. The sky is the limit for those who fly, while mortals love the ground.

Do you talk about digital film, little grooves etched on donuts? Are you a Luddite who enjoys the taste of chemicals under infrared lights? Clothepins and fishing line, stills in each and every.

Not all imaginary friends are fleeting, nor are all memorable. Rare are few who aren't glassy and transparent, with depth and creativity. Talents and loves, heartbeats and lungs.

Your reflection blinks. A mirror shattered. Inside a little box, I put my questions unanswered.

Flight Changes

I got into Chicago at 3am, red-eyed and weary. From the airplane to the airport, the stifling air got worse as the August heat of the midwest swept over everyone. In my delirium, I took a taxi to the nearest museum and absorbed the energy of the ancient artefacts. I must have been drunk off the courage of even leaving my routine at home. Eat, sleep, work, acceptance. It's not that I drown in my work, it's that I drown it. My free time is endless and all I've used it on is watching the seasons change as they always had before me and always will after. And now, I have two weeks to find myself, a character I somehow have come to believe got lost in the windy city, where all the train tracks come through. For those who want to go somewhere, they go to where they can leave for anywhere. It's just that some never end up leaving, and it's one such of these individuals that I hope to find.

Two weeks.

C***n where the K stands for Quality

Let's get fucked and drown the world out.
Dream big and stand tall,
Hopes on our eyelids, change in our couch.
Perpetual free-fall.

Carefully doubt smiling optimism
Bend backwards, crawl
Second guess your failing vision
Cigarette commuter stall.

Quietly query the wisdom of the newspaper blog
Indie sources, only slows us, passing out on lawns.

Desperate solitude carefully brings:
thirty minute laws
Verbs such as tivoing
And rohypnol.