divorce poems and other stories

divorce poems xxx OR dreaming

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 03:03:27 -0500

i wake from a dream
about your body
hotter than lit matches,
you, deeper than the ocean,
and under me

i don’t want to think about that
little black dress
and the room is cold

so i go to the wall
adjust the thermostat

and i think about
clean white snow

i stared hard at the stack of motley crue cassettes behind the counter as we listened to neil young,...

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 05:08:04 -0400

i stared hard at the stack of motley crue cassettes behind the counter as we listened to neil young, live in winnipeg - and i live there now, oh, i live here - recorded three days ago, and my eyes welled up with tears for my dead and dying friends.

campfire sing-alongs

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 23:56:10 -0400

‘i have got to get out of here.’

i’m staring at a campfire, out in this thicket in the middle of some obscure suburb-of-a-suburb. the half-built cottage, cabin, whatever it is - now it’s empty. in the morning, the only mark of our being here will be the words “BAT COUNTRY”, and the bats that we stenciled on the walls. we can’t bear the thought of a single place erasing us. not us, not we few drug-addicted star-crossed fighters.

someone laughs and it sounds distant. someone brought a laptop to the party - how asinine, i think, until i remember that it’s what played the shit music we danced to all night. fifty people had shown up to this little clearing, fifty or so. i remember it like fifty, anyway - maybe it was less, but i’m the narrator so shut up and follow along.

in the little abandoned cabin, the music had been pendulum, aphex twin, and other rave music i didn’t know too well. but now there’s less people here, maybe twelve or fourteen. some even number so we can all be anti-couples. music that’s markedly less shitty comes from the laptop, and i raise my eyes up from the fire when i hear familiar piano notes.

all of a sudden, half of us are glaring at each other over the fire. all of us who have fucked each other and fucked each other over, too. and when the words start up, we sing along. we pray the lyrics out over the flames, to the gods of hate and friendship and love.

this is us loving each other. this is the burden we’ll carry- they will be weights in my heart for the rest of my life, and i’ll never be able to change that. i hope that it was worth it, for the few months of happiness we had. around the fire, my ex-fiancee, her boyfriend. my best friend who i fucked to make someone else stop loving me, that someone else. an ex-best-friend who toyed with the emotions of another friend. so many friends. so much love gone sour.

i hope that our few remaining friends
give up on trying to save us
i hope we come up with a failsafe plot
to piss off the dumb few that forgave us
i hope the fences we mended
fall down beneath their own weight
and i hope we hang on past the last exit
i hope it’s already too late
and i hope the junkyard a few blocks from here
someday burns down
and i hope the rising black smoke carries me far away
and i never come back to this town

and that boy, he will overdose - a few times, but he won’t die, not yet. another one, he will empty inside. that girl will lose herself completely and ruin all her veins. him, his teeth turn to dust. she will live in my mother’s basement and every time she gets stronger, that guy will hold her back.

and me, me.

i’ll just flee. i’ll fly away somewhere else. the consequences will not catch up to me, not so long as i can run faster than the light can.

on my way home from work, i watched the fireworks from the bus. they lit the whole sky red and i...

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 04:14:53 -0400

on my way home from work, i watched the fireworks from the bus. they lit the whole sky red and i wanted to be a part of that. instead, i made food for strangers, plastered on a smile like bandaids. i cut my right index finger a few days ago. it’s cut from the tip of it to the edge of the nail i’d cut too short a few days before that.

there are ambulances everywhere, on the bus ride. they look a little like fireworks.

my horoscope says this:

Even if you want to be helpful today, you could easily misread someone’s intentions. You might have strong suspicions that others aren’t being very supportive of your efforts and it may even seem that they are working against you. But you could also be afraid of being abandoned. Managing your own emotional insecurities now is more crucial than worrying about anyone else.

who here thinks i am not lonely? i want a shoulder to press my face into. i want someone who knows the bands i know, i want someone to understand “i have dreams that bring me sadness” or my excitement over a local group called Alpha Couple. i want to slide under familiar sheets, my sheets, i want my own bed.

not my own bed back home, i just want a bed of my own. i am constantly on the couch, this brown beast we found in the alleyway. i am so much myself in this city. how did that happen?

i feel like i’m a caricature again, like always. what’s a little loneliness in the face of my own place? i try to convince myself to make some food. i fail, of course.

a cat’s taken up most of my ‘bed’ - the couch - and these animals, the two pets, they’re not mine. i think about how much is left in my bank account. i want to buy a nice dress. i want to impress the cute waiter at a local diner. i want him to want me, etc, etc.

same old story, same old girl, just a new city. whatever. a little more wine, a couple more smokes and it will all look the same.

it’s the same old story, after all.

she curls up in the windowsill lets her foot dangle out and she imagines falling

Tue, 18 May 2010 03:34:21 -0400

she curls up in the windowsill
lets her foot dangle out
and she imagines falling

it’s like lifting skinny hips i can taste yr bones yr bony breathing, ocean song, the siren...

Mon, 10 May 2010 13:53:49 -0400

it’s like lifting skinny hips
i can taste yr bones
yr bony
breathing,
ocean song,

the siren song,
the siren song,

the lonely ocean
filled with siren songs

harvesting

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:55:42 -0400

1. i smear my war paint on
like i can fight the
wars back home

2. friendships, fires
open hearts
unzipped tents

3. we howl at the moon, this
cleansing blue light, oh
the stars

4. i have no voice anymore and i used up all my words
on skin,
on feeling,
feeling

5. i wash my face but
i will keep fighting
the good fight

(via killmetheking) the day the blinds shook, the day the rains...

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 02:59:00 -0500

(via killmetheking)

the day the blinds shook, the day the rains came, and you were sitting in the kitchen staring out the window. i told you to close it, the rain slanting inside propelled by what seemed like gale force winds. you said no, you wanted to watch.

we never understood storms.

i took your hand, one day, and dragged you out into what seemed like a low-class hurricane. my hands found your hips, and you were terrified of being out there, shivering and cold, and i kissed you and i laughed. you wanted to watch and i wanted to be in the midst of everything.

we never understood each other and i’m beginning to be okay with that.

structurally sound OR giving yourself a black eye

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 02:17:01 -0500

i live inside a
safety glass house
i built into a
geodesic dome

i could stand in here and
throw these rocks all day

penn station deconstruction states

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 13:29:46 -0500

i stood at 8th and
my thirty-third
chance

i thought i’d puke
all my sins
onto the pavement

but maybe that was the cigarettes,
half a pack right there
waiting on yr late train

but you came up,
you came out
looking like an angel

and me, my halo
was smoke and
it dissipated

as soon as i made my move

laughter OR divorce poems viii

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:09:14 -0500

it used to be
some great relief, the way
you opened your mouth
to laugh

now you open your mouth -
it’s all going downhill

untitled

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:26:18 -0500

i dream a
tangerine skyline,
bright and whole-
some dreams
are better than others

internal monologue OR divorce poems vii

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:35:29 -0500

it’s cold out; the wind cuts right through my coat, and i’ve left my scarf at home, intentionally. i want to get sick. i need an excuse not to go out.

that being said, it’s true you took half our friends with you in the divorce. don’t even try to deny it, you did, and now i don’t go out half as much as i used to, which is good because i’m miserable anyway.

i went to our favourite bar - my favourite bar, i’d been going there millenia before we met, i took you there since you’d never been in - two nights ago. you were there, and you were with someone. it’s barely been two months! what right do you have to be with someone?

and then you were with him in the record store, the one on bloor street, by the subway station where we met. i’m not stalking you, you’re just in all my favourite places. i saw you holding up a john cale album. “this,” you said, “is great.”

fucking deceiver! it took you months to like that album. i made you listen to it with me every time you were drunk enough to agree to the act, and i think you only ever said you liked it in public. gaining ground with my friends. or rather, people who used to be my friends before you left.

and you don’t even listen to vinyl. get out of the section, please.

listen, since we’re dividing everything now - you get this party, i get that get-together; i get the apartment, you get the cat - can i get that bar? i’m not asking for much. you didn’t even want the apartment anyway. you can have kensington park, but i want the bar. and the vinyl section at sonic boom.

i slide through the familiar doors, up the staircase, to my place. it’s hard to call it “my” place. bitch. (sorry.)

the ashtrays are overflowing. built to spill is still playing on the stereo. i only went out for more cigarettes, and because it was raining. i take off my coat, drop it on the floor by the door, and go look at the bottles of wine i’ve been collecting.

seems like i’m out of alcohol. i guess i’ll have to go out again.

(frankih.)

singles OR divorce poems II

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:41:53 -0500

lord, do i miss
the days of the
45

single song sides
complementing
lives running in tandem

fingers like needles,
playing
the grooves
of your musical spine

now,
without backbone
i join the sussurous
shuffling legions
browsing CD racks
with headphones on

while having a cigarette on the balcony

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:38:15 -0400

clouds
swimming in endless blue
my smoke curls to join them

jumping

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:50:28 -0400

blood on yr teeth
like spray paint in the overpass
the graffiti reminds us
of what we lost to the fire of
summer sun
to the tan on my shoulders
and the lines on my face
and the endless seductive highways
where i dreamt i stood
on top of chain link
suicide fences
some strange sad alien
trying to hold hands with the sky

if

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:31:16 -0400

if we lived closer
if i weren’t so scared
if you were more sure
if i didn’t pick at things
if you held on more tightly

we would be good
i would smear your makeup on your pillow
you would be my ocean
i would hold your hand
you would feel prettier because
i would make it so

but we aren’t
and i am
and you aren’t
and i do

we’re not
but you still are flames
and i am dry trees in the mountains in the summer
and we make a forest fire

but oh, baby, if

wool socks OR divorce poems I

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:19:18 -0400

i am your
knee-high
wool socks

i kiss your toes,
cling to your calves,
keep you warm if
your feet are cold

i am your
knee-high
wool socks —

stuffed
in a drawer

‘cause it’s summer.

and you can't use them to pay me to speak

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:03:30 -0400

the rocks they use
to shore up the train tracks
for miles around here
leave bruises
the size of coins, never bigger
some of them are nickels and
others are toonies
but however many i get and however
hard i press them after
i cannot use them to
pay my way out of town

things i have picked up

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 22:10:57 -0400

the four
of hearts
from a red deck
of cards,
and the ace of spades
from a blue one.

a snail shell -
i hope
there are no homeless
gastropods
around here.

two quarters
i won in the casino
in coeur d’alene -
even though i lost
a dollar.

a tiny padlock
with tiny keys -
they do not fit the lock.

a girl scout badge
with one
embroidered
word -
“please”

someone else’s
debit card.
a purple tinsel spider.
some bad habits -
only one or two good ones.

and a vial
i fill with water

and call a cloud.