après moi, le deluge

I am disgusted by the world. They say you cannot judge God by the actions of His humans, but His humans are all that I see. So let me judge humans. If we have been sent here to love, to be the tangible manifestation of his Message, we have failed.

I often lose faith in humanity. My soul looks at the souls of others and attempts not to vomit. Hate, lies, deceit are rampant. A treasurer steals from an NPO. A man stabs a dog. A bride is murdered the day before her wedding. Ted Bundy.
Smiles hide treachery but actions cannot.

Morality is dead. To care is to practice futility.

/theotherdemifacet/

I
Make houses shrink
And trees diminish
By going far; my look's leash
Dangles the puppet-people
Who, unaware how they dwindle,
Laugh, kiss, get drunk,
Nor guess that if I choose to blink
They die.

-soliloquy of the solipsist; sylvia plath

waiting for the splash

Last night
after you hung up
I wrote you a poem
hoping it might
change your heart.

This morning
I tell myself:
Get serious, man.
Someone once compared
writing a poem
and hoping it will
change the world
to dropping rose petals
down a deep well

waiting for the splash.

Thank You God for this Most Amazing

i thank You God for this most amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

-e.e. cummings

Fascinating.

The world is so polarized: whydoyouhategod.com.

I was on the bus today wondering if the world was anything more than opinion.

proof

I find that the best writers are those that nobody knows about - the closet writers who you only come across in the briefest of instants and you rarely, if ever, see their work again. You constantly crave these gems that they put forth because they are so filled with emotion and have a certain smoothness about their writing (think of what Bailey's would taste like if you could read it) that you are never fully satiated.

Mag hardly writes anything, but her works always appeals to me in this manner. She wrote me a card a while ago on our anniversary, just before I was supposed to leave for Halifax. It's simple in its artistic flair, but the thing that's impressive is that she knows exactly how to aim her verbal arrows so that they strike at the core of my emotions, memories, that instant I thought was ephemeral and gone. I've always been amazed by her ability to wade through the superficial and find the exact core of anything and everything, and her writing encompasses this rare talent - her points are succinct, direct, and striking.

Dear Honey,

I can't believe its been 6 years already! And I also can't believe that you're leaving so soon. Who's going to pull my hair? Who's going to give me hugs even when I don't want them? Who's going to watch me play volleyball or play with my puppies? I'm going to miss you so much! Anyway, today is about celebrating the last couple of weeks we have together. I will try to make you as happy as I can, and I will try not to complain so much or be annoying. I know we can get through our 2 1/2 years apart because we've lived through 6 awesome years together. I won't be there in Halifax to nag you but just remember this: Be yourself because you're the coolest person that I know. As my mom would say, eat breakfast every day and meat for dinner.

I'm so lucky to be sharing
another year with you,
my yesterday, my today,
my tomorrow.

I love you with all my heart

Mag.

Adam

today
i looked out the window:
the expanse of the

empty

field filling my field of view.
there, among the corn rows
waving hello in the wind to nobody in particular,
adam took his life last winter.

i woke up that christmas day in my christmas pajamas
slipped on my christmas slippers, put on my
christmas grin. i went to the window to look at the snow,
traced a snowflake from its origin high up in the sky
to its insertion
on adam's immobile head.

he sat there facing my window, looking me in the eye
as if saying "this is your fault juliet".
his hands were open, honest.
his wrists were open.
the field was open, tainted with crimson all around
artistic malificence.

stunned and wanting to scream,
i stood there wide open.

oh adam, First man,
i am not your Eve.
i am Juliet,
i belong to Romeo.

yesterday, when you came to the barn
said, "sweetest juliet", knelt to one knee
opened the box
and told me to run away with you
the apple rose in my throat, choking.
adam
do you not understand?
i am a betrothed woman
given to the baron of our land
i thought about family - daddy,
jackson, millie - where would they go?

"what's more important
family or love?"

i turned away and ran as fast as i could
but the real answer was
"they are the same."

and so adam
you sit there in the snow
contemplative meditation
i run down the stairs in my christmas pajamas
my christmas slippers
into the field, feet cold and wet
crunching as i reach you
hold you
cry scream yell
unfair no no no no no

later, when i put a knife in myself
i feel nothing.
i could never cut myself as deep as you've cut me.

uhhhh

Not sure what to write about when I'm down. I'd love to regale you with tales of wonder and splendor, but it's been despair and exhaustion as of late.

Huh, let's do a poem I like - make things easy.

Little Johnny's Confession - Brian Patten

This morning
being rather young and foolish
I borrowed a machinegun my father
had left hidden since the war, went out,
and eliminated a number of small enemies.
Since then I have not returned home.

This morning
swarms of police with trackerdogs
wander about the city
with my description printed
on their minds, asking:
"Have you seen him,
He is seven years old,
likes Pluto, Mighty Mouse
and Biffo the Bear,
have you seen him anywhere?"

This morning
sitting alone in a strange playground,
muttering Youve blundered Youve blundered
over and over to myself
I work out my next move
but cannot move;
the trackerdogs will sniff me out,
they have my lollypops.

daddy

For some reason, I've always loved this poem. Sylvia Plath is always talked about like she's the patron saint of emos and generally gets a pretty bad rep, which is probably all the more reason why I like her. I tend to associate with the underdog (is it because I myself feel that way too?) so her story suits me just fine. Her poetry is fantastic, full of iambs and funny little internal rhymes just moseying along very nicely. Her point is always dark, but the way she writes and the words she uses are very much alive. Contrast is important, and the juxtaposition of melancholy and motivated language makes for an interesting auditory aesthetic, even if you do not agree on content. Without further ado, Sylvia Plath's Daddy, read by the poet herself:



You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

hehe

Bad poetry:
Oh noetry!

bonzai!

Illegal crab apples mutter silently
claiming, "My turtles run fast"
in silent dentiloquy.
We part ways, keep our distance,
lower our banana rifles and blueberry six shooters.
Some of us yell
"bonzai!"
while the others hang their head in humiliation.
Here rests our bedraggled soles.

In Nantucket, a sack of potatoes once cursed His Majesty.
The Gestapo peeled him and
diced him and
fried him and
now he is a tater tot;
a deliciously tragic ending.

Waste not words. What seems like palaver is actually finesse.

dripsody

On a cold Thursday evening here I sit
in this tub
across from you.

The window is open.
Cold air blows through and tousles my hair.
The water is cold and with the wind I achieve
goose flesh.

I feel sorry for myself
the way a Sylvia Plath character does
much in the same way a small child
who's dropped his ice cream cone stares disbelievingly
at his poor fortune.

I would cry tears but the tears have already been shed.
The tears have filled this tub with cold water that grows
icier
every moment. Every so often the tap leaks, bleeding a tiny
bubble that
goes
...
..
.
plop!

A inanimate tear shed. You cry for me too.
If we are not related by consanguinity
we are at least related by this moment
this morose, Gothic instant of time.

I sigh, exhale a cold breath that turns to steam
in the winter air. I pick up the sliver of soap
on the edge of the tub with my fingernails and lather my arms.
Bubbles float the surface of my skin and I feel
cleansed
if at least physically, hygienically.
I take this soap that floats in the tub -
driftwood -
and sharpen one of the ends to a point
then put it back on the ledge.

It is only so easy to have
a shiv to cut the grease.
What I need is
a knife to clean a life.

***



Hugh Le Caine was one of the pioneers at the forefront of creating music using post-war technologies, a.k.a. electronic music. Canadians are very well known in this movement, which has been translated commercially to DJs who play and mash tunes off their Macbooks to artists using synths and looping devices to create music. This piece was recorded from a since drop of water in the sink that was bothering Le Caine at night. As most artists understand, it is always at the most surprising and inopportune moment that inspiration flashes and so he seized the moment, grabbed a recording device and made that water drop digital. He used the computer to speed it up and slow it down, time the drops, basically do what any artist does to render his works to life. The result is this interesting moment in time, an auditory piece of history.

cross words

in an effort to make sense of the Times
i have tried to finish the Times
imbuing each open space with words like:
Rich (59 across)
Diamonds (22 across)
Gold (55 down)
i am but lying to myself, for the clues are actually:
"Slave girl of opera" (59 across); Aida
"Relied" (22 across); Depended
"More than like" (55 down); Love

it's ironic though
Aida died for love, which i suppose is more than money
Someone depending on you requires money, so that's not ironic
just fact
and Love is certainly more than like.

While my answers may not be correct
They certainly are not incorrect
But the real irony is that love hardly ever triumphs riches.
(it may be timeless
but what is timeless in a society that knows no history?)
An interesting conclusion i reach;
Thanks to the Times.

i turn my head to the end of the page:
Maybe it is safer to do the Sudoku.

***



"See Heaven's gates are open wide
where tears never streaming,
where only bliss and joy reside
and never-fading love!"

(Wish I could say a name with that much intensity. ~1:45, when he finds her in the tomb, makes me shiver every time.)

10

People have favorite things that happen to them, like being bumped up to first class on airplane trips or when the clerk accidentally gives you change for a $20 when you only gave him a $10. One of my favorite things is when I run into someone who shares the same taste in poetry. Steph mentioned she enjoyed cummings from her dabbles with him in English class, and Henry from Time Traveller's likes Marvell, but unfortunately that's as far as our poetic similarities go. I long to find a friend to praise Dickinson, Marvell and Pound with (and bonus if they know Ralph Fletcher too) but everyone has their own tastes; "different strokes for different folks" as Jia would say.

So then on to cummings. Pay attention to the highlighted line, it's marvelous.

***

10

maggie + milly + molly + may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea.

"libary libary"

They say, "Stop being a bitch," as if one's level of bitchtasticness is defined as a scalar entity. It lies on the scale, where my bitch units are exceedingly high. I am apparently accelerating towards a bitch level akin to that of Leighton Meester in Gossip Girl, so that the derivative of this function explodes towards a positive infinity.

Even so, I apologize for continuing, for my emotional excesses spill out this virtual page like the geyser of blood from a dissected aorta from a patient with extremely high blood pressure. And so, if you will, sever my thoughts from my body so that you may examine them on their own without referring to the corporeal I.



"Libary libary." This prose reminds me of that scene in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind where Jim Carrey tells Kate Winslet he hates that she says, "libary." Pent up hatred curdles like ascites, then boils to the surface like how a flutter board held underwater will shoot up for air. It cannot breathe yet it yearns to be held above two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen; the density of foam requires it be on top just like emotions float above reason.



So then if I cannot acquiesce to these demands that hold me hostage, I must find an escape. It's much too easy to drop into depression, alcohol, bipolarity, emo-ness, violence; we look upon these facets of the human condition with disdain. "Snap out of it!" we say, because we do not value weakness. "What kind of man are you?"



Escape means puppies.



Escape means soft things.



Escape means video games.



It means everything except for facing the truth, because the truth is too ugly and rarely wants to come out and play. The truth appears like one of those old Westerns shootouts: The town locks its doors and windows but peers out from behind them to watch Everett Hitch and Randall Bragg shoot each other down. It only knows that one man wins while one man dies.



Well ain't that the truth.

So go on, do your worst. Go ahead: "Libary libary" "inanimate fucking object" "don't go all 818 on me". Sticks and stone may break my bones but words will always shield me.

X

Those who know me know that I love The Time Traveller's Wife with all my heart. I'm going on my tenth full reading right now from front to back, specifically to refresh myself before seeing the movie which will be coming out on August 14th, featuring Rachel McAdams of Notebook fame and Eric Bana. I've seen the trailer, and I'm not going to lie, it's possibly going to be one of those movie adaptations of the book that you just wish they never made. Look, I hate those people that are always like, "You should read the book it's always better" because that's not true, sometimes the movie is better than the book, but in this case they would have to do something truly Jesus + Goku + Obama + Schwarzenegger + Rocky Balboa miraculous to save this one. I'm really going to hate it when people who have just seen the movie read the book and then it becomes a huge overrated hype when the book came out long ago and deserved your respect when it first came out.



Rant over.

Everytime I read The Time Traveller's Wife, I always notice something different which makes the book profoundly amazing. For example, I just realized how much Henry likes Helen but he never ever gets with her because he stays with Claire. Anyways, I also notice every single time I read the book that I don't understand the German poet Rilke. At all. The Hundreds discussed a tee that hosted a Rilke tribute and The Time Traveller's Wife features Rilke about a half of a dozen times throughout, so at least pop culturally his influence seems to be rather large. Maybe I'm just not as much of an intellect that is required to understand Rilke, or maybe I'm just not aesthetically sensitive enough to acquire this taste, but I have consistently had my difficulties and I wonder if that will ever pass.



I must admit, however, that I recently found myself relating to one of his lines. At one point, Claire and Henry are discussing religion and science. Henry talks about St. Thomas Aquinas, who believed in both Aristotle and angels, and tried to move towards synthesizing order and reason and God, much like I am trying to do so. I have always said I don't believe the two are mutually exclusive, but it's very difficult to find rational evidence beyond faith and conjecture that the two worlds intertwine. Realists want cold, hard evidence that is scientifically based, and aren't willing to believe that the scientific method is just that - a method - and that many things can fall outside the bounds as simple confounds of being unable to be measured by the scientific method. Anything beyond that is just blind faith and deemed to be ignorance, and it really doesn't help that some people truly ARE ignorant about believing in God and haven't really thought it over, which gives people that have mulled it over a bad name. I really do think God is a confound, and a beautiful one. Speculation, perhaps, but hey I'm entitled to an opinion.

Which leads me to Rilke:

Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich.
Every angel is terrifying.

Maybe only Rilke would think to make the central star of Touched By An Angel and Angels in the Outfield terrifying, as if with one word he could spin an entire stereotype of what an angel should be 180 degrees. What a powerful line, that an angel in all its glory and majesty can be such a powerful symbol for turning our world of apathy and Bill 44s on its ear.

stone airplane

I made an airplane out of stone…
I always did like staying home.

Stone Airplane - Shel Silverstein

one night stand

I've always wanted to write a piece like this:



One Night Stand

Tonight, love, you are my one night stand.

You are warm, pleasing –
supple yet soft to the touch.
I tremble before your riches,
inhale the sweet fragrance of your aroma,
then run a single finger along you.

I trace you like I am reading Braille
gentle curving lines
then Stop.
I have reached my destination.
Here, you are moist, wet.
I hesitate.

Pause.

Apply my tongue to your sweet sucrose.
I lick. You melt at my touch, crumble at my delicate passion
into flavours of honey, nectar; delicious and rare.
My lips investigate you, this mound of sugar,
this sensuous explorer exclaiming that
your Splenda is indeed splendid!
I almost cry you are so good!
I work ferociously to moans of pleasure,
bask in the bliss of this moment for
after tonight - it is true - you are gone.
So I say: While we are here, together,
How sweet it is to enjoy this vanilla cupcake.

sapphire eyes

I write a lot of poetry, but I'm not very good at it. While prose is definitely my forte, I still think it's important for any writer to step outside the boundaries of their comfort zone and attempt to conquer other mediums.

I wrote this piece in high school in Hamilton's classroom when I should have been listening to her drone in monotone about Macbeth. I suppose that the time is ripe for the unveiling of this old work, in commemoration of new graduates such as Ellis and myself, and for the flood of high school graduates like Christina looking to step into a new era of unknown.

So:

Sapphire Eyes

Standing on the steps,
Looking down at the expanse of blue:
Bluer than the swirling sky,
Azure like the Caribbean sea,
As the twinkling sapphire eyes say more than their smiles.

There's electricity in the air:
Sparks of happiness that float across the skin like
Touches of invisible Braille, ghost-writing an invisible message
Only those who know understand.

Blue tassels with blue ribbons,
On blue robes with radiant faces,
Bliss as bright as lucid orbs of heaven,
The moment ephemeral, the memories forever.

And as they step across the marble stage,
A turn, looking down at the expanse of blue,
Flip tassel from side to side and step:

Down into the swirling sky.
Down into the Caribbean sea.
As the twinkling sapphire eyes say everything.

love

Owl Pellets
Ralph Fletcher

A month ago
in biology lab
you sat close to me
knee touching mine
your sweet smell
almost drowning out
the formaldehyde stink
which crinkled up
your nose
while I dissected
our fetal pig.

Now I take apart
this owl pellet
small bag that holds
skin and hair and bones
little skeletons
what the owl ate
but couldn't digest
and coughed back up.

You sit with Jon Fox
ignore me completely
laugh at his dumb jokes
let your head fall onto
his bony shoulder
while I attempt
to piece together
with trembling hands
the tiny bones
of a baby snake.

Certain things
are just about
impossible
to swallow.

***

Ah, love unrequited. The most beautiful love.

knowing

and we turn you out;
out of our ear, we drop goebbels propaganda and inhale chomsky like reverse music:
"the medium is the message".
we sneeze out DFP and sarin and soman
regurgitate cyanide
and use leeches for potassium chloride:
Defense is our weapon against yours.
we rise from gas chambers,
emerge unscathed from witch burnings,
and gently return bullets to the rifles of your firing squad.

with concepts like these, we need no distinction
no money-hoarding jew, no railroad-building chink,
no chicken-eating negro, no apron-clad bitch.

we hover above the line that demarcates mongrel from angel.
awareness is our halo.

l'a(r)mour

I intend to post later today, but I envision that I have a ridiculously busy day ahead of me. We've all got midterms looming on the horizon and I am but one of the many in this crowd, so I'm having to rely on some quick mental work to find material to throw up on my palette.

In case I don't post later, I'd like to leave you with some poetry that I found particularly unsettling and at the same time extremely fitting. In high school, we have these diluted concepts of love, especially because we see our male counterparts as the suave James Bond, the daring Indiana Jones, the solid General Maximum Decimus Merridius; a league of idealized Malboro Men in their swaggering ways. While the role of the male in society should be an idealized one (we will speak of traditional roles and my sociological education another day), we often forget that love comes in so many forms other than the "sweep you off your feet, carry you off into the sunset" type. I hadn't met Mag when I first read this poem, so I couldn't really understand what this kind of love meant at the time, but it helped start me thinking outside the orthodox approach to what is beautiful. This was my first approach to understanding how I can still be in love when I accidentally come across her shaving her legs in the bathroom, or when she's fallen asleep at some odd angle and is drooling on her pillow, or how she thinks she looks gross when she's in scrubs after work when I think she looks the most attractive at that moment.

So, I give you John Frederick Nims - Love Poem:

My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,
At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,
Whose palms are bulls in china, burs in linen,
And have no cunning with any soft thing.

Except all ill-at-ease fidgeting people:
The refugee uncertain at the door
You make at home; deftly you steady
The drunk clambering on his undulant floor.

Unpredictable dear, the taxi drivers' terror,
Shrinking from far headlights pale as a dime
Yet leaping before red apoplectic streetcars --
Misfit in any space. And never on time.

A wrench in clocks and the solar system. Only
With words and people and love you move at ease.
In traffic of wit expertly manoeuvre
And keep us, all devotion, at your knees.

Forgetting your coffee spreading on our flannel,
Your lipstick grinning on our coat,
So gayly in love's unbreakable heaven
Our souls on glory of spilt bourbon float.

Be with me, darling, early and late. Smash glasses --
I will study wry music for your sake.
For should your hands drop white and empty
All the toys of the world would break.

(Be with me, darling, early and late. Yes, and so it shall be.)