209

open your arms and show me my home,
because i had the saddest saddest dream last night,
and woke up to disappointing air.
your voice is honeyed and silver and frozen like a january sea,
and my fingertips burn like feathers on fire, attached to a small traveling bird,
flying north instead of south to catch a cold.
open your arms and show me the north,
i will sigh high into them
i will sigh whenever, wherever i want.

208

today i saw you scanning groceries at the check out,
and your arms were like trees i wanted to climb, barefoot, in the dark before the dawn.
i saw and thought you were probably scarred on your bones, or you scarred me to make my breathing so weak.
and then you turned around and looked at me, with a smile and voice that broke me to a billion pieces i would have liked you to pick up and try to reassemble into a shape, whatever you want, as long as you like it and i am it and you want me.

207

today is a young girl, shining,
wearing her virginity like a crown.

i am sad for her.

206

footsteps made of mud smear as you crawled away
and i watched you disappear, as if you were escaping from me.
today my hands are shaking from being so fatigued all the time,
let me leave myself alone for a while, catch a train, wind in my hair to somewhere far,
because if you threw me into the world now,
i would sink like an anchor, and drown like a child.

205

angels,
i have never seen one, but by the end of tonight i will,
and it will be in my bed, asleep like a corpse in its shell,
sunshine on its wings, lemon-coloured warm spilling over a hill.

when it dreams, its body does not rise and sink,
and when it stands, it stares and does not blink,
and outside they will shove and mock and laugh at it,
at its face that buries deep into the earth, body split.

the skin around my aging skin will only get darker,
searching the earth for its sweet mother.

203

how can i think of anything again?
i'm too in love with a city,
its warm air to wrap around me, so tight that i cannot sleep,
and then wander its streets under orange streetlamps early in the morning,
watching flowers open.

how can i hear anything again?
i'm too in love with a song,
its rhythm and melody stringing through my ears,
lifting my soul but dropping my body so that i may sleep
and then wake up to it whispering.

how can i dream of anyone again?
i'm too in love with someone who does not exist,
and he is as pretty as a the sun in the sky,
tells me stories of what it feels like to be alive and living, in the city i love,
humming that one song, strumming it in his fingers to make me shake and make me well.

202

the sky weeped and yelled out profanities in hard white rocks
that hit umbrellas, pedestrians on the sidewalk
and my window too. it was a drum beat and matched my anxious heart.

but the rain that came along with it was soft and gentle,
and i pushed my arm outside my window, so desperately trying to feel it.
and then it came, each drop was like a tiny gift in my palm, reminding me of that rainy evening in seattle,
across the street from that tiny cafe with empty chairs, near the harbour
i saw you for the first time then behind two deep blue eyes that sat so pretty,
and that's where i had left my fingerprints and blinks for you to find.

then today i missed you and woke up suddenly, this rain praying to death.
i want to say goodbye to lonesome, hello to the air, no sun, no moon,
sing a bird song for the tiny balloons that grab on my wrists and lift me up up up
into the sky and let go suddenly, so i can dive into the deep blue sea.

201

before the sun rose, i heard you count to ten in your head,
like retracing footsteps, or memory, digging it out from a grave.

this one time you traced my fingers on your body,
and it was so soft like ripples in water,
and i could have sworn i heard these girls laughing outside, at me, and at my scratchy skin.

yeah, i have terrible eyesight,
and i can't see between wrong and right,
but i know for a fact that yesterday was right and today was wrong.

200

you said lift your arms up and then your shirt,
so i did,
in japan, that wind shares its pretty with me so eagerly.
as eager as the first time your fingertips touched my burning skin,
and i drank you up through my pores, a bird, a drop of ocean.

now i can see (but who can't? i'm laughing)
you left me at the train station in osaka, buried in strange people who are now stranger strangers.
you left me at the train station long, long ago
folded in a brown paper bag, leftover lunch, little me in the summer, and summer was last year.

just tell me i am not so charming anymore, you beautiful tyrant, you eyebrighted knight.
the forecast on the news, isn't it going to be a cold winter this july?
you left me in osaka at a train station in the summer, which seems not so long ago but we both know it is,
because summer was last year.

and no, i don't mean to destroy everything.

199: a good poem.

"now leave me alone.
now learn to do without me.

i'm going to close my eyes.

and i want five things only,
five favourite roots.

one is endless love.

the second is to see autumn.
i cannot be if the leaves
don't fly and fall to earth.

the third is solemn winter,
the rain i loved, the caress
of fire on the wild coldness.

in fourth place, summer,
round as a watermelon.

the fifth thing is your eyes.
i don't want to sleep without your eyes.
i don't want to be if you're not looking at me:
i'd give up spring
for you to keep on looking at me." - p.n

198: a dream i had last night

the flood ran through three houses down my street,
and four on the next one, metres west from where i am standing now.
this was yesterday, and it has calmed already, the water,
what used to be angry oceans - they are now like skinny springtime streams.

what brought the water and what brought the storm?
it came so suddenly like it knew too many people were born on that day,
crashing these parties and these walls, and i remember yelling, begging you to tell us what you wished for.
you warned me to be patient, i know, and that must have been my fatal mistake.
i also know these words cannot mask what i feel now. i can no longer tell between remorse and regret.
but i can pretend anyway, neighbour,
because i would have loved to see you turn forty eight.

197

i know i now speak no real words; molten lava pours out between my jaws,
onto paper, burning these books you used to read to me to keep me interested
on those long nights, the same ones when i could not sleep,
and watched myself tug at my stretchy ruined skin like a diseased, starving infant.

and there were so many bugs around summer time, not sure if you remember this,
they were crawling in and out, one ear through the other on your pretty head.
it was you who knew me best, and knew that i hated the sound of those critters, hated the feeling of their legs digging into the pores of my flesh,
so you took a razor and cut me open so they could crawl all over my insides.

and then once or twice i told you i wished the sky was red,
to match these red hands i have from choking my sister.
weeks later, maybe months after her funeral it got cold very suddenly and we shook and shivered and shook under a blanket which turned out to be the softest snow i'd ever tasted,
even until today.

too many ghost live on this mountain, hey? - they constantly whisper something that is not my name.
when i told you that one of them was tugging at my leg one september, you laughed, very very sharply,
kissed it away like a wish, as you murmured those sentences from books (same ones i burned later), until the moon rose and sun fell into my eyes,
as deep as lakes,
as far from you as tunnels into the centre of the earth.

196

when i die, i want to be absorbed by plants and eaten by animals,
because that way, i'll still physically live
not in my current body but alive in many beautiful things at once.

195

can i kiss your nervous bones?
i know you both feel sea sick like death.
one summer to the next summer, you've always been safe, under swimming stars.
you can destory volcanoes,
but isn't it sad how you can love each other?

194

my name is gloria,
and i slurp on skulls of the dead,
because in people i see beauty and love: it makes me sick, the dead,
they have no melodies, they only go out when it's warm at night,
living evil,
i can't take it
i can't hold so so still like them.

193

i've done a good deal of missing lately.

i miss so many people,
people i would have never admitted i miss,
but where has the sound of their breaths gone?
underneath books that have become dusty and pages crusty? and?
i miss my tall boys and my busty girls, my twee girls and my free girls,
running on beaches, pouring cups of herbal tea on raw feet, puff stung by bees,

and i miss the summer time, accidental rainbows under sprinklers,
dogs running wild chasing cats never scared to bite their tongue.
i miss that sunshine and rainshine and that pretty design
underneath familiar eyelids like bloodveins and riverveins and grindgrind grinding that sweet candy between my teeth.
and do you know that smell? do you know what i'm talking about?
that smell of the calm sitting water next to home, drifting through open cracks on my walls and through the window,
helping bugs find their way to the light
in my stomach
because in the summer time i swallow suns.

192

bodies are like sand, aren't they?
they live to be drenched in all the oceans in the world,
head to toe, arctic and southern,
fingers and arms and fingers, pacific and atlantic, then back to pacific,
and legs in the coldest parts of the indian ocean.
our hearts beat like drums in the waves that come crashing onto us,
each and every one, glittering like rain drops under a street lamp, all linking arms on our big empty earth.

we're smiling, glowing, underneath stars that drift along shores,
where men on boats cry, staring at a pictures of their wives, standing bare feet in the sand.

191

i wish i were in seattle right now, sitting on a bench by the docks,
no home to go to.
listening to fleet foxes, watching the sunset,
smelling that fishy ocean breeze, i don't even care.
i'll sleep on the bench if i have to, rubbing my hands together occasionally for warmth, comfort, and human contact.
even if i were to freeze to death in my sleep, i would die happy,
because i miss that city more than i will ever miss anyone.

190

tonight boys become men,
and i will watch them grow, thirteen year olds getting hit in the face the first time,
tasting that satisfying scent of sweat on each others bodies.

yeah, i know exactly what that feels like.

and by the end of the night, they will walk away,
hands shoved deep into their pockets, heads hanging, staring at their shoes.
they won't say a word to each other but they'll murmuring to themselves,
"no pain, no gain"

189

lend me your hand, get me through these nasty days.
i didn't mean that, please let me rephrase:

i'm finally ready
to admit that
even i
get
sad
s o m e t i m e s.

188

give me something to live for.

187

we are now strangers,
but your voice is in my head and it scares me.
just let me breathe, please, let me rest,
you're like a rock in my stomach, waiting to digest.

186

how can you fall asleep
in this sea of noise, baby?
with your window open, cars passing by,
i heard them through my walls, through my blank computer screen.
your heart beating too fast too, like a buzzing hummingbird, and i also remember this from putting my head on your chest too many days ago.
this world is beautiful, and in dreams you can't feel anything except happy,
head wandering, you won't feel nauseous, but hold in your stomach anyway because you will wake up feeling cold like i do.
every night, when you are sleeping, i'll still be awake for many hours,
playing my guitar, a melody about an young boy, a war, a cliff, waves,
"oh you, oh you, oh you."

185: a dream

i dreamt that time passed by and within a normal hour, it had already been one thousand weeks.
we backed up, staring stupidly at the sky, backed up confused.
then i almost tripped on a small rock, missed it just in time,
lifting our feet high, heavily dripping with mud.

and from the sky it rained thousands of paper strips,
a ripped up list of our memories from those one thousand weeks, laughing as they fell.
so we hurriedly gathered them, holding hands, falling and slipping in the mud and crying dirt away from our faces and screamingscreamingscreaming,
louder than any ocean.

within minutes we had a bag full of paper,
and then the sky was still low as if it was falling towards us, but now a calm colour like concrete.
we leaned against opposite sides of a tree, panting, grabbing handfuls of paper and chewing it,
not because we were hungry,
and not because we longed for each other at that specific moment,
but out of desperation, doing all we can to fill up our empty human shells.

184

take a picture,
throw it over a polaroid frame,
and stick it on walls all over the city.

from the moment i open my eyes, i see in cross processed photographs.

183

trees move toward water,
like my lips drift toward your skin when you are telling your stories.
oh, the words slip so smoothly. they smile upon me and wash over me early in the morning,
and i imagine i am on a bumpy road with my bike, avoiding thunder, destroying wind.
it's true i miss the jingle of your jeans, change in your pockets,
my hands in your pockets.
i will make you sing in your dreams,
my violin fingers spreading your mouth, pulling your teeth,
serenading our good, good life.

182

a hundred clinched fists to the sky, up north
under a starry roof, to a rocking guitar riff, a messy bass solo
and a drunken drummer banging away while his head hangs low.
of course, the police are waiting outside, ready to come in through the front door,
and of course we all know that door around the back.
and while we kick our feet and swing our fists until 2am, the world is beautiful and it belongs to us,
and we are chanting,
"we are so young and we have no dreams,
we are so young and we have no dreams."

181

sixteen degrees,
paul baribeau scratching his voice in my ears, walking up an unfamiliar part of bay street
by myself, hands shoved into these pockets.
today the air smelled different, and i pretended it was cold.

i was in another city for a little while.

and my hands, they got sweaty quickly from making choking fists, like preparing for a fight, just like in seattle.
curving my back, chin to the air, singing anthems, these buildings were too tall,
as if my glasses were off, they became calmly photographic, these buildings,
gently gently gently lowering themselves on top of me.
and then i became blue and purple and red with the sun and clouds.

the street was strange, filled with strangers,
and as i paused at a street light. a bird flew next to me, i brushed my hair from my eyes.
i realized that i have no family, and i have no future, and i have been alone for a long time.
and so i imagined i was on the edge of a cliff, sitting on a thin tree branch, looking over a black wild sea,
singing a soft song, muted by the waves.

180

i say, isn't it sad when people pass away?
why do you hide it, when you are not well,
why do you hide the feeling of life creeping away from you?
your young, swollen bodies, falling like autumn leaves. i don't want to see it.
and i don't want to see death pressing against your bodies like keys of a piano,
a, b, c, d, e, f, g and all those in between.

in the end, we all die of course, but the difference is i get to see those beautiful haunting lines form in the corners of my eyes, and on my forehead,
and i get to watch my hair turn silver, grey, white
and you were not well.

but i say you are alive, even in the faintest memories of us,
and you are alive when the snow melts into rain into my hair, in a midnight whisper from my lover,

when the fireworks go off this year, i'll be smiling for the both of you.

179: about a girl i would never get to know

she was sitting two feet away from me,
her bleached hair and beach eyes,
pouring glances on me like sand from a river bank.
i remember her now, and back then it was july, i think,
on a bumpy ride, beat up bus, on my way home in seattle, two 14 year olds making out in the corner of my eye.

and that day was very hot and i was in a bad mood,
i remember wanting to cry so so so desperately but not being able to,
choking down spit and a cold paper cup, half empty with coffee i waited too long to finish.
on my headphones i was listening to a song i knew all the words to,
i'd move my lips and nod my head and pretend i was in a movie,
and she probably knew too, the lyrics i mean, because the song was turned up too loud,
and i was stubborn and hated the noise of the evening,
and she kept glancing at me with those eyes, beach eyes,
lids i wanted to kiss.

and today i remembered her because i thought i saw her on the street.
i wonder what would have happened if i talked to her, took my headphones off, smiled crooked and afraid.
she probably didn't think she was pretty (and probably still doesn't)
but i did.

and what would have happened if i cried that day?
too hot, on the bus, air conditioner turned off but windows stayed closed.
i would have pretended to yawn, or rub my eyes,
smear watery tears on my legs like a prick pierced my palm, and hope she was not watching me.

178

i want every body in coffins,
i want a bomb to explode them, split them in half. i want a giant thorn to cut the world.
i want to feel your insides.

can't you see past my flesh and bones?
underneath there is so much free flowing blood and language,
language that flows up, against the streams.
well, maybe i am a maniac,
but at least i can stand tall as buildings,
and still feel like i belong,
i can look down on all your bodies in coffins,
and still sleep so soundly at night.

177

love sings like cocorosie songs that play on repeat on my computer,
when i'm sleeping, secretly slipping into my ears,
haunting voices make me see beauty, even when my brain is at rest.
yes, i'm sure this is what it sounds like, love,
because i feel the same way now, lying on my bed, suffocating myself under the blankets
than when i have my face buried into your limp sleeping body next to me.

176

i want to take your clothes and hang them in my closet
and pretend that you live here
and imagine that you are simply in the shower, or in another room, working on an essay
or a brand new song.

i'll want to ask you what you are writing about,
if you are having an argument with yourself
or is it with someone else?

i'll want to ask you if it's a love song
or are you angry at something,
but i know not to disturb you, in the next room over,
building up the calluses on your gentle finger tips.