skonen_blades

I have a collection of scissors on the inside of my jacket but I am not a poet.

If anything, I’m a zebra unable to see anything except black and white. A pair of sunglasses with fake teeth all hiding under a hat. I’m a lazy cat’s shadow. If I was a person, I’d be a fake backstage pass sold to a naïve teenager on craigslist, revealed only at the end of the concert for the worthless piece of paper I am when that teenager was turned back by bouncers.

I get lap dances from indifferent alligators in sewer-pipe bars while domesticated llamas spit in my drink. I am tractor-tire indifference dressed in sheep’s clothing. If I was an evening gown, I’d be on a hanger in the dark while the body I was bought for watched the Oscars in pajamas.

Each eraser I eat does nothing. All the paint thinner I drink only makes graffiti appear in my throat. My words splash out of mouth and stain brand new clothes. My embarrassing mouth is a mating call for amnesiac windmills and homeless office supplies. I have a dream catcher in the shape of a shame spiral. My business card says Kindergarten Boogeyman Dentist.

I want your wrists to teach me about baptism. Give me your thumbtack promise. Throw a waterfall into me and freeze this heart into beating. Show a villain the value of a day job and be a season with warm clouds and no deadlines. Let my lawnmower rust a while as this half-life becomes small enough to manage. My aim isn’t very good anymore but I’m still throwing lit matches at empty gasoline cans because a bunch of them used to be full.

I shot for the moon and landed on Mars. And lucky me.




tags

Hey there. So my poem "Wish" was set to music by one Sean Veley not too long ago. I got video of it. It involves a french horn, a violin, a viola, a cello and a singer. I think it turned out rather well. See what you think.

tags

Nervousness cascades through me, little trickling slivers of ice through my body.

My focus can’t be held for very long. It’s a lot like fear but on the thrilling side rather than the terrified side. I feel like I’m in the roller coaster and I’m being pulled to the top of the first rise. I will most likely escape the coming hour unscathed but the fact that I have made the choice is making the animal in me want to chew at my ankle joint to escape the trap.

I breathe deep, once, to quell this feeling.

I’ve committed.

Every button that I fasten on my uniform is another pebble in the well of my growing resolve. My back is getting straighter. All expression is leaving my face. I feel like I am running down a mental checklist of my personality and turning off all of the switches that make me social and connected to humanity.

I am becoming practice. I am becoming a collection of well-rehearsed moves in a state of mental here/not here. I am the no-mind of imperative, directions, and training.

There’s a note in my head. It’s a taut string vibrating in a high whine. It won’t go away until this is over. I focus on it and let myself unite with it. I visualize my mind as a frequency buried in this meat construct and erase all other feelings of doubt or fear.

I let my heart rate and adrenalin levels become input and nothing more.

I can hear the crowd outside, muted through the metal, rising in a single sound. It’s a powerful emotion that floods through me when I hear that sound. It provides the lacquer and the polish to the rest of my inner preparations. I am theirs.

I belong to the crowd now. To fail or succeed is immaterial. I need only be flawless execution. The rest of it is up to the powers above me.

The door opens. Sound and light hits me with the force of a blast wave. It sounds like a riot in progress.

I pull down my face shield and step forward, out into the light.


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I woke up today in my great new place.
The hiss of wet radials on wet pavement was outside my window. There's a Fitness World across from my building that has a bank of treadmills facing me. I stood up in my underwear and looked out the window for a second before the smiles on the girls from across the street told me that they could see me too. I thought of the night before. I drank too much.
It was noon.
I got the call to go join friends up at an Academie Duello demonstration up at St. George school. That was fun. We didn't make it up there to a few minutes before the close. I cabbed it over to Sam's, Jhayne joined us there and we went up to the bus stop. We bought MASSIVE cinnamon buns and shivered our way up to 29th, cresting on the sugar from the extra icing that we ordered.
The lovely Imogyne was there among others, dueling and fencing away at a school for Kids with Kash. They received a sign up and perked a lot of interest.
Much interest was also shown to our motley group as we bussed it back down to a restaurant for nourishment. We've got eight eclectic people and most of them are carrying swords. Not in their hands ready to fight but just casually slung over shoulders and in carrying cases like polo mallets or pool cues except they're obviously rapiers and sabres. We got a lot of looks.
Some flesh was consumed at Cactus Club on Broadway and Granville after that.
Exhausted by a long day of sword fighting for the kidlets, the fighters buckled their swashes and sought naps and the rest of their days. Jhayne, Sam and I bussed it downtown.
On the way, I got a call from my friend Greg to remind me that it was in fact free comic book day. We hopped off the bus and went down to elfsar comics in yaletown to bask. There was some after hours roleplaying going on and they're having a great sale right now where you buy two things and you get a third thing of equal or lesser value free. You get to pick. Store wide. Tomorrow's the last day. Seriously. You want some comics, shirts, figures, or what have you, tomorrow's the day. Check it out. Elfsar comics, Yaletown. 1007 Hamilton street. Tell them Duncan sent you.
We did not buy anything.
We went back to my place and I played a bit of the extras on the Princess Bride disc I received from the lovely Jhayne as a housewarming gift. That was cool. After realizing that it was nine and the concert we were supposed to go to started at 8, we left.
Now.
There was a shooting at Richard's on Richard's last Thursday. It's been closed ever since. I was supposed to go see Coldcut there on Friday but the show was cancelled and moved to Sunday at the Plaza club on Granville. So Jhayne, Sam and I are a little miffed to find the sign taped to the door of Richards that the show we're supposed to see (TV on the Radio) has been moved to the Plaza as well and will start an hour earlier since it needs to end by 10:30 when the Plaza will turn back into a regular club.
That's all good and everything and it's awesome that this band will still get to play but now instead of being an hour late, we're suddenly two hours late.
Shiznit.
So we scurry up to the Plaza.
TV on the Radio is already playing and I'll be damned if they aren't incredible. The sound was a little muddy and it was a strange venue to see them in as I've been going to Richards on Richards so much lately but it was a good show. I've seen TV on the Radio before when they opened for Franz Ferdinand back in October at the Orpheum. Now, TV on the Radio has a whole different vibe to them than Franz Ferdinand and a lot of people at the show, me included, were like, uh, so who are these guys? Not too great.
But tonight, it was all about them and the people were there to see them. And they gave it up. What a show. Yikes. Really good energy. I loved it.
I went over to a friend's place after that, we talked about our lives, and now I'm home.
It's been just one more full day. I love this trend.
I'm worried about tomorrow night, though, because I'm supposed to go see a band called Frog Eyes at Richards. If it's still closed and Coldcut's bumped show from Friday is playing at the Plaza, then where is Frog Eyes going to play? We'll see.

You're beautiful. I think you rock. Thank you for reading this. You have so much power.

I will trade you hours of my life in eight hour chunks for money that I can use for goods and services.
I will trade you this afternoon looking into your eyes for a sailboat.
I will trade this bag of emeralds for another week of feeling exactly like this.
I don't mind the music of today because I know that in about fifteen years, people who are 34 will listen to these songs and it will remind them of their adolescence and the emotional connection it will bring to them will be intense.
You were the prettiest girl in school. I called you on your sixteeth birthday, two months after my own. No one had remembered it was your birthday, including your parents. I had taken a deep breath and jumped off the cliff and dialed your number to ask you out. I didn't know it was your birthday either but I pretended that was the reason I had called. You were ecstatic and touched that someone had remembered. I asked if you wanted to go to a concert that very night. You said yes.
Your parents drove us up to the concert. We didn't have driver's licenses. It was at the Ridge Movie Theater. They had removed the movie screen and filled the stage with candles. It was the Cowboy Junkies just as they were getting big with their album The Trinity Sessions and Margot Timmins' voice rose and fell smoothly and caressing.
We went for a cigarette at intermission. Remember smoking as a teenager? Being so cool.
We caught the bus back. You were a little silly and giggly. I dropped you off at your doorstep. We didn't kiss but you smiled like I had never seen you smile in school. Joyous.
We've bumped into each other over the years now and again, separate circles of other people's lovers and acquaintances stringing us into meeting.
In fact, we just had brunch today and it was great. Almost twenty years later. Not really even catching up on the six years it's been since we saw each other last. Just hanging out and wandering with our feet as aimlessly as our conversation. No impatience. Just drinking in each other's sweet, sweet, subtext and power.
You're still the prettiest girl in school. I will always be taking you to that concert.
I will always be taking you to that concert.
I look forward to moving at the end of the month. I will have a new view and a place that feels like *my* apartment. Not some bullshit default high ceilinged transient impersonal yaletown loft where hookers and dealers haunt the entrance. The new place will be a place to come home to, not just a place to sleep between shifts. And even though it's three times the size, it's a hundred dollars cheaper.

You're all loved. You have to believe that.