Tonight I watched a woman die on the internet.
Surrounded by cameras and pudding,
her upper lip curled under her teeth
like it wouldn’t let her spirit take the bones.
Her face sunk into her gaping mouth
and with the snap of her tongue
she made her sine wave finale
and bid us all adieu.
I did not subscribe to her channel.
I find the future to be a not so pleasant place sometimes.
You said my hands were like liquid gold
which is why I never rub my eyes
even though I think it would be
amazing to see the world as perpetual sunrise
I think it would be rather difficult to blink.
These golden hands fill crevices
like the space between embrace;
inching closer to coagulation,
wandering and whisping to a wanton oneness…
that only liquids know how to fake.
I force myself up to the wrist where I don’t belong,
my mark is left on everything that I touch,
my shimmer won’t dull under water or sun,
so take my hand in yours, princess,
be the container of my flow, princess,
but bring a towel for fun.
Men are all like this.
I passed by you every morning on my way to work
I never gave a thought, nor a look beyond
what I’d normally give a stranger.
But you were more than a stranger; you were stranger than stranger,
you were just strange. You and your ripped jeans, shaddy jacket
broken boots and skinny ass dog.
You’d sit there smiling.
What the fuck do you have to smile about?
You’ve got nothing, no home, no family, no friends,
no ability to better yourself, and your dog’s gonna die and you’ll be alone
and I couldn’t figure out why.
So I sat one day and I bought you some fries at my lunch and offered half my Coke
and I asked you, I said “man, please, I need to know
how it is that you get by day to day without me ever seeing
a frown on your face, dispair in your eyes, as you sit on the street corner
watching people in their work outfits, suits, dresses, skirts, shoes that cost more
than you earn in a month. How do you watch them walk by with a smile on your face
as you sit and beg, you outstretch your arm, cup in hand,
being chided, chastised. How do you sit there every morning
and have hope, sit in the cold, in a Canadian winter,
with a half a fucking jacket, your poor dog freezing beside you,
no food, no water? How do you keep yourself positive?
How is it that my coworkers and friends, my family and myself,
we all get down, we all show our other side, we all have an other side?
We all live our days working and making money,
you sit here in ratty clothes begging for help
with nothing to show for it but a chipped cup, yellowed teeth,
glassed over eyes, a nappy beard, and a lifeless life.
What is it that you have to offer, what is it that you can teach me,
that you can offer as advice, that I can use to keep positive on those cold nights,
those times when I miss my friends and family, when I feel alone and empty,
when my life feels pointless? What is it that you know that I don’t?
What has the road taught you? What do I need to learn?”
And you looked me square in the eyes and said, “heroine and prostitutes” and got up and walked away.
You died the week after, stabbed under a bridge by the water. You made the papers.
You got famous that day. The city knew who you were, Facebook groups cropped up in your honor.
A homeless man leaves only a cup and a dog.
Your sun-coloured eyes and diamond skin
did the impossible and burned beauty into charcoal and roasted steel into hope,
and your sing-song voice kept the fields growing thousands of poppy seed muffins in heart-shaped flower pots even when the wind was howling “don’t you dare” forget-me-nots.
Your kitten paws and cinnamon hair, that jewel encrusted, teardrop smile with the unanswerable corners on either end pointing to heaven.
My little lovely darling, if only gemstones knew how to swim.
Even a pond knows the colour of the sky, burned on its skin every morning and worn like a fresh coat of catfished lies.
Take the bandages off and wear the floaties because there are jeweled planets floating in a pond just above my skin, beautiful.
So let me wear you in that special little pocket I sewed in every single shirt that I’ve ever owned because it’s sartorially improper to fill it with things that I’ve never known.
Be the boutonnière that sees me down the aisle and whithers in my hands, and with your memory make me a better man.
It bit back one day.
One man breaking another at the knees,
concrete shins shattered,
patella split like pistachio shell.
The public canings had to stop
and so it bit back one day.
It bit with the ferocity of fourteen years chained to a wall,
first glimpse of its star,
first scramblings up a dirt road.
It bit with the might of a nation under siege,
rocket teeth on apartment nailbeds,
tearing the crossroads up at the white lines.
It bit like capscaicin under the lids,
bhut jolokia shavings stapled to the cornea
and plastered over with Glad cling seal.
If bit back like the man in Unit 731
strapped beside his vivisected brother,
leather over his wrists and ankles.
It bit like it knew
nothing more
than to bite.
It bit through leather straps
and gold chains.
It bit through jade amulets
and distance.
Through age and a forgotten life,
it bit through skin and bone,
it bit through vein,
it bit through a mother’s child.
It bit with eyes shut
and breath held.
It clenched for a moment
and then it bit harder.
It shook and tore,
it bit of spite,
of revenge,
of memory,
of instinct,
of indulgence,
of forgetfulness,
of nature.
It bit for the others,
it bit for itself,
it bit for you,
and then it bit for me.
It bit, then ran, then built up an army,
and then it hashed.
One man breaking another at the knuckle,
pane glass shattered,
nowhere to run.
Bitten by fourteen years
then chained to a wall,
lights turned out,
and forgotten amongst the nutria skins,
It bit because it had to.
Lost in Hyperbolic Space
The girl I lost to cocaine
knew of hyperbolic space
first hand,
saw the world in graphite,
and had calculator eyes.
She wore her quadrennial pendant
on a red, white, and blue ribbon
around her neck, between her bust,
just so I would see it when we spoke.
There was something better about her.
She was the proverbial Killing vector,
curving space as she went along
meandering,
philandering,
she was the ecumenical whore
who knew how to compute cohomology groups
and inserted them into her cervix.
I tried desperately to get answers out of her
but they were buried under layers of abstraction,
splitting cells in her uterus,
and so I took to reading books instead.
She taught me QED, QCD, and QFT
but when it came to the big and quick
she only knew how to kill a buzz.
So the girl I lost to cocaine
became as far removed from reality
as that conjecture by Hodge
on algebraic varieties;
shapes that have no shape
not unlike she and I in bed.
She rippled like time
and shook like foam.
She took hits of smack
off the spine of my textbooks
then ate the contents of the pages,
and when she sank to that singularity
in her mind
she dreamt up such magnificent things,
such beautiful poetry,
mathematics of the purest variety,
mathematics so symmetric
that it couldn’t have been complete.
And so that girl I lost to cocaine
was the brightest thing in the night sky.
We wrote papers together
and ate poems about pi,
we flew in airplanes every second thursday
together
and computed de Rham complexes
in an imaginary anti-de Sitter space
while licking the lead off our fingertips.
She snorted everything,
my jokes,
my stories,
her powder,
her life,
and differential forms.
She is no longer complete.
That girl I lost to cocaine
is now buried
under piles of abstraction herself
and I’m learning
as quick as I’m able
so I can dig her out
and crucify her
on a binary operator.
Dig Deeper
There is still good in this world.
Buried under decades of rock
stuck
between mud and bone.
Held down by the weight of men,
dug out again
by their patience.
There is still good in this world
but it is not easily attained.
It is not on the menu
and you cannot buy it
online
in a store
or have it delivered
by hand
on a whim.
Some good was vaporized
in the 40s,
its shadow projected in carbon
along stone walls.
Some good was eaten by the machine
and by fat cats
with pen claws
and gold teeth
wearing Brioni and Kiton.
Some good was swallowed whole
by the Earth,
tectonically demanded
as a sacrifice
so poems could be written.
Some good was stored
in the back pockets
of forgotten children
lost in the Amazon
climbing trees,
not knowing whether to climb or cry,
fall or jump,
fly or fail.
Most good
was vaccuum sealed
and put in cryogenic freezers
to be thawed out with Disney
in one hundred years.
Cameras:
all-seeing.
Good is spoiled in most parts of the world.
Buried under the ocean floors,
recycled into islands
and bottom dwellers,
eaten by the giants that roam there
with their claws wagging behind
turning up dust
and mud
and bone.
There is still good in this world
but we
are not
it.
We search in the wrong places,
hold the wrong hands,
and you,
you know this.
You want to believe
this technological falacy,
this ecumenical calling
of cloud dwelling
pure,
unadultered
goodness
but it is foresaken
by men.
There is still good in this world
but it is not in the sky
or beyond
but instead lies buried
between mud and bone.
There is still good in this world
so dig deeper.
It’s down there,
waiting.
Then and Now
Dead beside him,
the murderer under the rubble
lay quiet and still,
buried under concrete and mud.
Dead beside him,
the legacy of a child soldier
would be carved into the corpse
of a man who couldn’t be tried.
Beside him,
the dead man who threw the grenade
would have his crime transferred
post-humus to a fifteen year old boy.
He would be dragged from the rubble,
legs tattered, blinded by shrapnel,
a bag over his head, ears covered,
dragged to a paradise-prison.
And for eight years
he would be forgotten and dismissed –
the murderer under the rubble
was the blind boy, not the dead man.
The murderer under the rubble
lay cast aside by his government,
labeled ‘terrorist’ by a nation
hungry for blood and its own brand of justice.
He would be blindfolded
have LEDs shone into his remaining eye,
threatened with dogs, suffocated in water,
and hung by his wrists.
For he, the murderous child under the rubble
would be painted with the brush
of the simple-minded,
Hell-bent on avenging the unprovable claim.
Disowned by his country of birth,
forgotten by his breathren,
lost in the media to Britney Spears,
he cried to go home.
Now eight years later
the farcical trial ends on a note:
guilty. He pled guilty.
You would too.
A loaded courtroom in a foreign country
hungry for vengeance and its false justice,
documents have been tampered,
hearsay trumped reality.
Omar Khadr will spend eight more years in prison,
lost in a non-functioning legal system
of military personnel, leaning on his shoulders,
shouting in his ears.
Omar Khadr may survive
but the murderer under the rubble,
the one whose name we never knew,
will have his ticket to Hell revoked.
The blame game of American politics
has chosen a new passenger for that trip,
and to their own end,
have managed to get the boy to board the plane.
Congratulations you hateful demons,
the first child soldier in half a century
has been tried and convicted.
You should be ashamed, Republica.
Fourteen hours later I woke up. It took time but
fourteen hours later I woke up. It took time but
I started to remember what happened.
I started to remember. What happened?
But I took time. I woke up to remember what happened
fourteen hours later. It started
while I was pumping gas. A boy was hit by a motorcycle
while I was pumping gas. A boy was hit by a motorcycle
and I saw him die on the side of the road. She was screaming “don’t, please, help,” and she
and I saw him die on the side of the road. She was screaming “don’t, please, help,” and she
hit him while I, on the side of the road, was screaming, “don’t die, boy! Please,”
and “help”. I was pumping gas and she saw a motorcycle. She was by a
group of people gathered around like hope, her friends. She cried. They were too. Late in the evening, a
group of people gathered around like hope. Her friends. She cried. They were too late. In the evening, a
nugget of fear grew to a mountain. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save him,” I wanted to say. That
nugget of fear grew to a mountain. I’m sorry. I couldn’t save him. I wanted to say that
around him grew a hope; a group of people gathered, nugget-like fear, mountain of friends.
They were too late. I’m sorry she cried, I couldn’t save that. I wanted to say, in the evening, to her
group of friends that they couldn’t save the boy it hit. She
gathered her nugget of fear a while like I was, a mountain of late hope, and cried by him.
Please don’t die. She was screaming. I was too. I’m sorry I saw.
The gas pumping on a side road grew in to the evening. People were around him, around a motorcycle.
She wanted help, to say what happened, but I, I took time to remember.
I woke up fourteen hours later and started.
Daddy Was A Street Corner 