here’s the thing about me
i don’t own any sweaters
i know, it’s weird
and i live in sweater weather
i know, it’s weird
my nose runs, and
my friends ask, “aren’t you cold?”
Archive for 2013
life as a house in this neighbourhood
how good fathers tell time
while rushing to work my phone died
(i’d forgotten to charge it last night)
so i asked the man next to me what time it was
before i realized his condition
before i said, “oh,”
nevermind
he says he knows, “it’s eight”
judging by the orchestra of cars, i can tell
that if i put my hands out they will not travel far
he points to his cheek, says his sun just kissed him
there, “it’s eight”
points to his chest, says his daughter hugged him
“but her hands were cold, i hugged my jacket”
he says she dances every morning, and he gets up early to watch
but the brass section was especially good today
so he found himself here
hear
“eight,” he says
the grasping of handles will be too firm
too quick, too mindless
for a little while longer
says he likes eleven most
“that crowd knows how to dance!”
you can tell by the goosebumps
on the buses’ curves that the eleven crowd knows
how to dance, says they’re calm
and they take they’re time
when reading braille
“we all need a badnight’s rest
a good morning”
i ask him if i’m a good dancer
he laughs
and laughs, and laughs, and gets up
as the bus slows down
says “sorry kid,” as he wipes a tear
and stifles a laugh
your arms still flail here
get a little more practice in
i ask him, how will i know when i’m good
he says you don’t, you just wake up one day
with a wedding ring on, and a couple of kids
and this orchestra that follows you around
the brass section is especially good today
My Favorite Word, And Why
Selah (Hebrew: סֶלָה)
Selah comes from the Hebrew Bible; it succeeded psalms (in most cases verses), and as a concept is very difficult to translate (mainly because its etymology is unknown):
- Selah might come from the Hebrew word calah which means ‘to hang,’ and by implication to measure (weigh). Seeing as how in Biblical history valuables were weighed (measured) by hanging or suspending them on a type of balance to determine their value, this implies the possible meaning is as an instruction to measure carefully and reflect upon the preceding statements.
- Greeks treated selah as to mean something similar to the Greek term diapsalma (διάψαλμα: interlude – “apart from psalm”), which signified a change in rhythm or melody at the places marked by the term, or a change in thought and theme.
- Others say that it means Continue Reading →
barefooting
they speak of how my feet will bleed, sharp rocks and junkie needles, blackened hardened soles. they sermonize on, the pain of thorns and nails. (i find this ironic.) exuberantly rant, about the comfort and wide selection of shoes.
i rebut. speak of how i didn’t even listen when they warned me of night-found lego-pains; of how i plucked them out, scrunch-faced and teary-eyed, and built things with them. (‘no batteries required’ still assembles a smile.) speak of how i spent an entire month placing weight on the balls of my feet because i thought it was wolf versus bear, and of how i know better now. and of how i used to run barefoot on scorching road, making a game of seeing how fast i could get from shaded doorstep to shaded doorstep. it’s very hard to stand still under those conditions.
and let me tell you, my grandfather is a strong man, i watched him bear feet uphill bloodied, fingernails loose. and after, as a gimmick, he’d pull them back; it was disgusting! but he just laughed.
she’s just a picture, and the reason feels so small
she, she’s just a picture
and the reason is so small
she and i, we could’ve built home
but she’s just a picture, and
four walls don’t make home
how i dream they could
how i day-dream and night-scream
for Mercy’s Song, to come tip my prideful chest
so that i can finally get on my knees, and beg
for mercy, in song
because though she’s just a picture
and her dimensions so small
she’s big! she only responds to song
how i loved that
how she loved song, and
smiled tall, and danced
corners away yet felt like home
how we curved and felt like song
she and i, we could’ve built home
how i walked away for what feels so small
what land animals write when they try to foreget the sea
if you so needed it, i’d write you a love poem
that’d make the infatuation for shorelines look like nothing
but you don’t, and i shouldn’t
write four sure lines when i’m so ambivalent
vitamin C
her daddy got a big, bad, cane
her mommy, says she’s, the family’s trash
a family blows, i stay at the corner
she is living in and out of tune
hey you!
you’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing,
you’re vitamin C!
hey you!
you’re boozing, you’re roofing, you’re shooting, you’re bruising
your legs! you fell!
and at christmas abiding by her testimony
or he’s upsetting her bed instead
a family blows, i stay at the corner
she is living in and out of tune
hey you!
you’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing
your blood and teeth!
hey you!
you’re using, you’re fooling, you’re looting, you’re eluding
yourself! so well!
How To Keep Your Spirit Alive
Dance; just because. Because you can.
I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his “divine service.” // Friedrich Nietzsche
I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance. // Zarathustra (character in Friedrich Nietzsche‘s Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
As George Allen Morgan wrote in What Nietzsche Means, when Nietzsche talked about dancing, he talked about having ‘lightness in what is most difficult’.
to my past loves
i want to regret leaving you
like childhood
like rwanda, like kenya
like texas, like georgia
like new york
like a lifetime spent in toronto
dancing