Thunderstorm

It's raining So Hard;

the cat's gone running for someplace quiet,
too skinny, with all his hairs vertical and individual;
the thunder snaps across the sky,

the sound of things breaking,
great, heavy things that I thought were strong,
walls and ceilings, sky-scraping sequoias and bone-deep bridges,
chains ripped open at the weak points I didn't know they had,
locked doors torn from their hinges.

Each blast powers a shock up my legs
through the feet I had planted so firmly,
and I leave my mouth open so I don't bite my tongue.

Cascades pour through my open windows
--the carpet squelches under my toes--
but I won't close them.

I'll never close another window.

And someday I will maybe even
go outside.

Tanka

Black ink, white paper
begging me for my words:
but I have nothing,
overcome by the beauty
of black ink on white paper.

Entering the City

The sun is muted,
smudged over by the gray clouds;
houses huddle close:
piece of dreams of success.
All of these people
have their own destinations;
I do not know them
and am free of their knowing.
This is the city
I have taken to be mine.
Everything in it
is beautiful and unknown
and breathable through each eye.

Dashboard

why

why
why is One Direction

theyre everywhere
being all young and hip and beautiful
and young

and like how old are you because im pretty sure
youre like twelve and what. even. is up because
this is probably the first time ive seen a boy and been like
u rnt attractive u r a child

all over my Tumblr dashboard
and im like I cant
i cant even
i literally cannot even

i cannoT EVEN

Missing

I was surprised

when my mother told me that my father missed me.

She must have been mistaken--

my mother doesn't lie

to anybody except herself.

Morning

My eyes hang heavy.
I think once of Mishima,
and I press my tongue
against the roof of my mouth.
I can't stop yawning,
but the world I have to live in
is a morning world,
running away from the night,
dragging me to wakefulness.

You Think It Is But It Isn't

It isn't that hard.
You think it is, but it isn't.
The unscalable wall
is a hologram;
you can step right through.
It's only until the first time you touch
that it appears solid
(solid to keep you from freedom,
solid to protect you from yourself).

Space

The closest you can come to me
is just as close as I can come,
as close as tiny particles
can come to other particles,
as close as anything can be
to anything, which is to say:
infinitesimally close
but never close enough to touch.

Smile

There's this boy who works at Wendy's down the street,
and he's really something else.
I can't tell how old he is
because he's like seven feet tall
and incredibly skinny
and he has the face of an unusually naive 15-year-old.
He's the most polite person I've ever interacted with,
and it doesn't even make me feel flustered
that he calls me "ma'am".
It sounds respectful but at the same time
like we could be friends.
He always has a smile in his voice
--on his face, too, but his voice permeates farther into me--
that makes me think, wow, am I
supposed to be happy, too? Because I
think I might just be happy now,
like it's an instantaneously communicable
contagion.
He's the best part about lunch,
and I think maybe even if I didn't like the chili,
I would go to Wendy's anyway.
I wanna smile at him because
somebody should smile at him, because
everybody should smile at him, because
he's beautiful.

Reading Cities' Names

Reading cities' names,
I just got punched in the gut.
All of these people,
all of these streets and houses:
I don't know any of them.

Sonnet LXXXIV: Esteem

It's for the thousandth sword I wait,
every breath anticipation;
it's for that glance of scornful hate,
changing to appreciation,
for my violent collision
with the man possessed by vision,
for him to find me, blind and lame,
and give to me a new-made name.
All the weaknesses he wrestles
I wait to bolster with my sword,
like water waiting to be poured
into smaller, finer vessels.
For words, for laws to sleep beneath--
I'm waiting for a single sheath.

Messages

Isn't it strange
that what happened to me
is exactly like what happened to you?

You warned me,
and I came here anyway,
reckless, because I did not value my life,
just as you did not value your life--

I could see your shame in your forehead,
your uncertainty in your hands,
and I won't be like you,

but I like you.

I didn't know how easy it is to lose a person.
I've never had the opportunity before

but I am so delighted to learn even this,

and that's what I wanted to tell you.
Read it, please,
in the fingerprints I left on your face.

Justice

Anteros answered my prayer,
and the curse is a deep one:
we share it like a huge piece
of hideous, too-rich cake,
eating from it long after
it begins to sicken us--
this, the last thing we will share.

São Paulo Doll

When I was six, my favorite stuffed anim
al was named after a cartoon character, 
but I lied and told everyone he had a di
fferent name.
              I used to think that the c
anned recording of rain sounds that puts
 me to sleep was ugly because it is muff
led and repetitive and doesn't quite sou
nd like real rain. I used to think that 
the little doll I bought in São Paulo sh
ouldn't be displayed because it was made
 for tourists. I used to be ashamed of m
y taste in music and movies and games, a
s though the fact that these things are 
cheap, simple, and mass-produced makes t
hem worthless.

But now I know that these things are wonderful,
worth just exactly as much
as the weight of my love for them.
If I like to look at something,
it's beautiful.
If I want it,
it's valuable.
What's most real
is the thing I'm holding in my hand.

I can care for anything that pleases me
for any reason that seems acceptable
in my own eyes.

I wanted to write a poem

I wanted to write a poem
that would be uplifting and encourage people,
show you that I really am happy sometimes--
increasingly often, actually.
I think maybe I even have real hope
some days,
and I wanted to tell you.

But then my sister texted to tell me about her new baby
and I realized my husband wants to go dancing
--which I don't really like--
and my iPod started playing this song that reminds me of something sad
and when I got home the house was messy
and all my pants are too small.
I guess it's sad that that's all it takes to conquer me

but fuck it,
I don't have to fight unless I want to
There's nothing I have to do
that I actually have to do.
So I will lie with my face in the carpet
and later, I will feel better.

Tanka

Now I realize
I couldn't say I love you
because I didn't.
Now that I know what love is,
I have the freedom to lie.

Baking

Sometimes I make apple pie,
but there's no one to eat it.
It sits there on my table
until it begins to mold,
and then I throw it away:
a waste of ingredients,
not to mention of my time.

Three Kinds of Cheese

This piece of found poetry was created from an essay by Ellen Etchingham.

There is a fundamental sameness

the apparent makings of good advertising

It’s big, it’s loud, and it’s on

the shiniest available object

one glob of formless, pointless bluster

just One Great Meta-Product

the One God of the Israelites

the One Ring to Rule them All

Likewise, every player I’ve ever seen

one Hockey Player

blondish and muscleyish

vague, unfocused expression

he’s not entirely sure where he is

low monosyllables

dragging ummmmmm

a laugh that isn’t really a laugh

He always says the same things

What’s your favorite pre-game meal?

Chicken and pasta

It’s always just “chicken and pasta”

Never penne alla arrabiata with sliced herb-marinated chicken breast

or roast chicken legs on a bed of spinach linguine

or even Kraft Dinner and buffalo wings

just “chicken and pasta”

dude just boiled a pound of spaghetti and slapped a slab
of boneless skinless on it

called that dinner.

last Saturday

I saw something on a Jumbotron

a challenge:

guess how many types of cheese a Toronto Marlies player can name.

The fan suggested five.

Then cut to Hockey Player naming cheeses.

He said one quickly, I couldn’t hear which,

Cheddar and Swiss,

and then just stopped.

At three.

Three kinds of cheese.

Everyone can name more than three kinds of cheese

most people have more than three kinds of cheese
in their house right now.

This continent has six fundamental kinds of cheese:

cheese on pizza

cheese in plastic wrap

cheese with ham

cheese on tacos

cheese on pasta

cheese on bagels

not fancy, high-falootin’ cheeses

aged in the dank bottoms of Swiss caves

You don’t have to be uppity to have the basic six-cheese-consciousness

Yet here is an adult human being

who made nigh on a million dollars last year

and lives most of his life
in the largest, uppitiest, cheese-filled-est city in Canada

and his awareness of the food ends

with Cheddar.

“Three kinds of cheese”

the best possible shorthand

for the professional hockey lifestyle:

really, really boring.

Boring for a reason.

For us, things like “dinner” are pleasurable occasions

fulfill our animal need for sustenance

explore a variety of social and sensory experiences

For hockey players

“dinner” is not about silly things like “pleasure” or “food”

It’s pumping fuel for hockey through your mouth hole
as efficiently as humanly possible.

Why doesn’t Hockey Player eat cheese?

Because cheese is food,

not hockey fuel.

Hockey itself is unbelievably intense and dramatic

the off-hours lifestyle is dull, rote, and repetitive

His game day routine

it’s not that different from the average day

of a heavily medicated, institutionalized psychiatric patient.

Think about the houses

so-and-so invites the cameras into his palatial estate to show it off

sometimes you get guy with a ritzy condo downtown

sometimes you get family dude with a mass of children
who all seem to be the exact same age

playing on stained beige carpeting

mostly you get blondish muscleyish dude

guiding you through an enormous building

that he appears never to have been in before

a really nice enormous building

clearly there have been decorators

a tour of a model home from an extremely disinterested trainee realtor

enthusiastic host desperately trying to get Hockey Player

to express some enthusiasm

Sometimes they get it,

usually for the room with the video games in it.

That’s what hockey players do in their houses

They sleep and play video games and eat chicken and pasta

then they get on an airplane and go to a hotel

they sleep and watch CSI and eat chicken and pasta

then they get on another airplane and go to another hotel

they sleep and watch CSI Miami and eat chicken and pasta

then they go home

do the whole thing over again

a desperate attempt to keep up these dull routines

in an endless succession of generic non-places

in airports and on airplanes

in hotels and hotel restaurants

in the private hotel that is, technically, his house

The routine is necessary

absolutely peak physical efficiency

always

consistent inputs

regular, predictable, optimal fueling

regular, predictable, optimal sleep

regular, predictable, optimal exercise

constant travel

injuries great and small

illness, exhaustion, stress, anxiety

it takes every ounce of boringness a man can muster

to preserve physical and mental stability

waiting and preparation

rest and recovery

more waiting.

Some players

do interesting things

photography

wearing clothes

a band

a really cool dog

Paul Bissonnette

But how much evidence do you ever see that hockey players

live anything even remotely resembling a superstar lifestyle?

Millionaire or no, celebrity or no,

there’s only so drunk a human being can get

It ain’t any better for Mike Richards

than it is for you

We assume hockey player lives are amazing

because we assume that they get to stick their penises into lots of people.

But there is only a tiny fraction of one’s life

that can be spent with your penis inside other people,

given that one has to wear clothes

and play hockey.

Maybe, once upon a time,

it was possible to play hockey and live like a rock star

Most of that is gone now,

gone with intermission cigarettes and huge steak dinners

gone with the WHA and the bench-clearing brawl

An ever more disciplined game

demands ever more disciplined players

I don’t doubt that there’s drugs and debauchery

somewhere beneath the bland surfaces.

I do doubt that it is so much or so exciting as we imagine

It has to happen in the interstices of the season,

those few precious days when there’s no routine to hold,

no coach commanding a dry island

or checking your key card

The rest of the days pass in repetition,

each much the same as the others,

on airplanes and in hotel rooms,

eating chicken and pasta

and only three kinds of cheese.

Sonnet LXXXIII: Eternal Life

If I think of Heaven ever,

I almost weep in my despair

at the thought of ends that never

are reached, horizons everywhere.

For all that I achieve will be

rivers filling up the oceans,

tail-devouring snakes my motions,

all journeys Möbius for me.

They make no sense, the things they say,

for how can Heaven be the way

they describe? Both peace and pleasure,

happiness combined with leisure—

you can’t have both, they’re opposite;

it’s peace I want, to rest, to quit.

Coloring Book

What if I lived forever,
and nothing changed?

It isn't at all difficult to imagine an eternity of days
waking up to the same mess
in a succession of apartments,
apartments that are all the same:
the same teetering pile of pans in the cupboard,
the same hair in the bathroom sink,
the garbage that the cats have knocked over,
the way they knock it over every day.
And if I clean it, it only gets messy again--
my husband's clothes on the floor, the dresser drawers pulled halfway out--
as fast as I clean, it becomes unclean:
the apartment,
my ability to think,
my muscles and my bones.

I can imagine an eternity of days
waking up in the same body,
the one that I'm trapped in,
the one that's not even part of me so much as it is
the thing I can't get out of.
And every motion I tell it to make
is slightly off--
singing to myself, writing a letter, half-heartedly jogging:
it all falls just short of acceptable.
The scope of my ambition is like a coloring book,
and I can't quite keep inside the lines.

Every month we make the same mistakes.
It's almost like time has stopped, except
that with every moment,
I can see my chance to escape getting smaller
and smaller.
I have know idea where all our money goes--
late fees, probably.
I'm not even flustered anymore
when our credit cards are declined,
or when once again, the landlord
threatens to take us to court.

I try my best to do a good job pretending
that I think things can get better,
that I believe that if we work hard and are responsible,
we can fix it.
But even I know that's bullshit--
we're not going to change,
and so nothing is going to change for us.
Sometimes I wish I could just accept it.
This is how life is going to be.
We should thank God
that we're eventually going to die.

But at the same time, I just can't help it.
I can't help wanting to be better.
And I know I could take that desire and use it to power some kind of action,
but I don't think any action would be strong enough
to overcome the laundry,
and the bills,
and eternity.