Ink

Pages of my book
with chapters left bare and barren
paper pure white and thirsty
left unaltered to be filled in later
in the hope that when the time comes
I'll still have ink left,
that I'll still have hands intact,
that my teeth will remain sharp
and retain the ability
to bite.

Libra bites her tongue

Pigs blood mascara
drying around strobe lit irises;
a cashmere taupe,
skin: the colour of a mirror
in an empty white room
lit by a 40 watt bulb
in the center of the ceiling
covered by a layer of flammable cheesecloth.
Thin grey lips curtain across
meticulously carved teeth of flint
which she grinds before spitting methanol out
in a thin stream
which falls to shine on the silty ground
at her feet.
Her skinny palest fingers
are all the same length,
each one 6 inches of flesh
jointed thrice,
ending in long, blood blue nails.
Water striders glide across her body
as if her skin is liquid,
suckling at her lithium nipples,
resting on the marigolds
that bloom out from within her womb.
Further still,
beyond her bones,
a metronome keeps her rhythm perfect,
her balance brutal.
Her lightdark emotions; composed divinely,
an internal eternal stained glass window
of every colour, breath, feeling, sense.
Her pieces of ugliness balanced
by shards of beauty
neither canceling the other out
but rather defining it.
Violent anger and hate
set apart from gentlewarm love without fear,
ennui wrapped boredom with life
streaked across childlike fascination
with each and every atom in existence,
inner eyes separate;
one wet with afterbirth,
the other deepset; spiderwebbed with wrinkles,
brave with wisdom and a million moons.

GUM

There is a crumpled brown paper bag on my pillow.
It used to be full of gummi-candies:
blueberry whales,
cinnamon wheels,
and cherry footprints.
There were 3 strawberry marshmallows
-the kind I was addicted to as a kid.
I remember walking from my parents house
way down Macdonald to Jimmy's market.
Jimmy was a thin, grandfatherly Japanese gentleman
with black hair slicked neatly back behind his ears.
He was quick to grin, his smile wide and white
between softly spotted cheeks.
I don't recall him ever wearing anything that wasn't beige
or olive green.
He never talked down to any of us
who came in to pick out candy,
allowance change jingling in our hands and pockets,
giggling at the cheap dirty books
we could barely see behind the counter.
I must have bought a thousand and three packages of gum there:
the pink 1cent double-bubbles,
wrapped in stupid little waxpaper Pud cartoons
that we'd have contests with
to see who could get the most pieces in their mouth.
The Black Bart gum.
I didn't love the taste, but it made the most wondrous bubbles;
black with a silver shine to them.
The gold nugget gum;
small coloured bits in tiny white drawstring bags,
the sour gumballs, cherry or grape,
in long cellophane packs
or flat round colour-flecked pieces in rectangular packets,
the fruity foot long gumball selection;
a rainbow
of cherry, orange, lemon, lime, blueberry, and grape,
the pieces of cheap gum that rattled around
in plastic containers shaped like teeth,
Chaw, the chewing tobacco shredded gum
in brown plastic cases with an indian on the lid,
the squirt gum with a liquid center,
the dozens of Hubba-Bubba flavors
(chocolate being the worst, in my opinion),
the snappy Big Red cinnamon,
the Doublemint,
he Juicyfruit,
the Trident,
the Chicklets,
the gumballs with funny faces,
the long strips of pink or purple
that lost it's flavor in 3 minutes,
the jawbreakers with the gum in the middle...
My childhood friend
kept a huge wad of all the gum she'd chewed
since her decision to collect it.
It was the size of a softball; perfectly round,
and whenever she finished the piece she as chewing,
she'd pull the chewed gum out long and thin
and wrap it around and around like a ball of yarn.
Then she'd put it back in the big jar she hid it in
and replace it in the back of her closet
in its secret hiding place.
I found it both disgusting and facinating.
Sometimes
I wonder if somewhere she's got it hidden still,
perhaps the size of a medicine ball,
nearly too heavy to lift, and still growing each day.
I saw a program once about a wall of gum
where hundreds and hundreds of people
would come to make their chewy, germy mark.
The city wanted to close it down for hygienic purposes
and they had interviews with a lot of people
who were protesting the destruction
of their precious wall mosaic of gum.

No Particular Sunday

A lazy, crazy Sunday
alternating coffee and pink lemonade,
watching violent/romantic movies
on my roommates bed
next to a happily full bag of new books
I bought at Blacksheep
on the way home from the video store.
This trip also left me with a sliver of glass
in my left heel
which I still haven't managed to dig out.
Later
-after dark had slipped navy suede gloves
over the bright sky,
we 3 ended up at The Underground
to meet a handful of our drunken-on-99cent-beer friends.
The place was small, dark, loud, smoky,
and lit by a huge mirrored disco ball
that sparkled light across the faces
of men in corners,
men drinking from amber filled steins,
men smiling and winking at objects of their desire.
I sat at a small round table smoking long white cigarettes
and sipping surprisingly potent rum & cokes
through a wide red straw,
which were brought to me by a cute waiter
wearing black suspenders
who assured me that I could walk on my drink if I chose
and that they only added a smidgen of coke for colour.
I tipped him well.
We ended up at luv-a-fair, which was horrid.
Packed to wall bursting capacity
with writhing flesh drunkenly rocking to the heavy beats,
jerking crookedly in the light of the strobes;
a meat market for the lonely,
hormonally challenged boozemonsters.
We didn't stay long and left for home in a cab.
1am.
The tv light through my window said
that there was a man in my bed,
which I was glad for until 1 hour later
when he stopped halfway through potentially explosive sex,
climbed off me like I was some rug he'd accidentally fallen asleep on,
and continued watching the movie we'd started.
I lay there for minutes
before pulling on my army pants and a t-shirt,
wrapping myself in my long velvet robe,
and storming out of the room,
through the apartment,
and out the door, slamming it loudly.
Barefoot and shaky
I walked up to the stone wall at 4th and Balsam
where I sat at the bus stop
until I realized I hadn't brought my lighter with me.
I swore with my blood beat and stood up,
walking to the nearest all night store,
buying 10 gummiberries in assorted shades of red
and asking for a pack of matches.
On the way back to my bench
I plucked a bunch of balloons from a window display.
They were ugly - 3 light pastel pink and 4 baby blue.
The ribbon tying them all together
left a grumpy red line across my hand
from where I snapped it loose.
Back at my bench,
I tied the balloons to the bus stop sign
and sat down again,
-this time with a much needed cigarette-
and stared at the star flecked sky,
listening to the sounds of the balloons
bumping into each other.
A cab stopped and offered me a free ride.
I thanked him and declined,
watching him pull away from the curb
and feeling very alone.
Suddenly I felt a furriness at my bare ankle
and looked down to see a beautiful Siamese cat
coiling around my legs and beaming up at me.
He jumped up onto the bench with me
and nuzzled my neck.
I scratched his ears and chin,
checking his collar for a name.
A tiny silver heart around his neck said 'Eli'.
Eli the angelcat.
We sat together for about 20 minutes,
by which time I had totally calmed down
and was ready to go home.
He was still in bed watching the end of the movie,
but when I crawled under the quilt
he carefully rubbed each of my chilled feet
until I fell asleep.
I woke later with his arms around me
and his nose pressed into my neck.