if separation is death than who have i been resurrected as? there i was, living for a time on the verge of drowning in the dark until i stopped the struggle and sank to the depths only to wake on sunnier shores now recreated and newly yours…
as something new as something bright as something true as something light
did i rise like a plague as the walking dead to terrorize these lovely lives or did you call me forth like Lazarus lost in the grave falling confused into your embrace a man you very well might save simply with the truth of that smile unfolding like golden sunrise on your face
i was a pretty young man tall and slim, blue-eyed like mum with dark brown longish hair and naive tattooed upon my face who the older men would find as pigs snuffling out hidden truffles safely buried in a dark, french forest;
they came one after the other like the fat man from Gatineau who would spend his time relaxing in the university hot tub eyes next to the naked showers; he would cajole and encourage “come with me at the end of the day we’ll have dinner together and you can see my cottage in the hills” and i, not wanting to offend i would simply respond with “no thank you i have class to go to” and slowly wander wet and away.
there was the old man in the limousine who pulled next to me late at night as i was walking from somewhere to another somewhere still off and away. “how about i give you a ride home?” and he would beg and beg and beg stalking slowly for blocks in the dark and again the answer was a quiet “no i’m good but thanks for the offer” trying to get smaller and fall into shadow.
or once when i was stuck in Toronto, i had missed my connecting train and was wandering lonely with suitcase through Christmas Eve streets past midnight; and finally under the Royal York sitting in a closed cafe with two others a silent, sleeping middle-aged stranger and an elegant, wealthy old man who was prowling the tunnels like a snake in the tall grasses. “you should come to my room upstairs, i have food and wine and we can talk and pass the time…come with me, come with me and i will give you money and a car to take you home we could be the best of friends my small maus…” but weary of it all i simply said no thanks and wandered to a private corner to hide in fitfull rest full of dreams that saw me beating him to death, as a proxy for every blood-soaked wolf, pounding my ever-present pain into his brain.
i was a pretty young man with a thin film of agency learned from having been a beautiful boy whom the men would find and take into the darker evenings with their pick-axe hands where they would mine innocence until i was empty and hollow, a haunted house abandoned of the dream that created it
i was a beautiful boy unwrapped and consumed then thrown cold to the street left crumpled without the promise of what once was new of what once was fresh that lured them from their corners
i was a beautiful boy who learned too late that ‘NO’ was a wielded word of power thrown like a life-preserver to chaos that i could hold onto until i drifted to safer shores…
instagram lies to me and tells me at the click of a button i can ‘create’
ah if only it were that easy and if it were what terrors would we unleash given the terrors we have unleashed
let us be content as we seek to pleasantly present a plate of delicacies served fresh; a face after 600 attempts at just the right angle; or the horror of my loved one’s death beneath the bombed out rubble of another crumbling facade.
no need to make anew when we could teach great Shiva a dark and tortured thing or two
i fall into memory, the courtroom sketch artist that lives in my head, like a hot man into a cool lake seeking solace from today, seeking comfort in fiction, forgetting that their was a time when these waters were swamp a pool of pestilence
but for now truth is lost to history and i enjoy immersing myself in the fairytales of the past
wake up with the day stumble to the bathroom getting ready for another wash and brush and dress in a haze of work and weekend of sleep and evening dinners, lunches, breakfasts movies, shows, music lves and deaths and the inbetweens passing the time for all time and this is life in summary, but do we dare to live between the lines like lovers in sunflowers? do we dare to live between the breaths that mark our hours?
there are brighter places hidden behind the day-in-day-out; sweet, nearly graspable spaces just beyond the windows we boarded up to hide ourselves from all that could be in favour of that which was safe in that which is.
some people want to read poems that tell them how strong they are that sing to them about their beauty and world of wealth hidden beneath their skin
how boring
this poem isn’t for them this poem’s for you this poem’s for me this poem’s the disonance that brings interesting into a harmony you’ve heard before to remind you that your broken is more interesting than their dreams
maybe you’re the sun that i fly too close to but it’s all ok really, i love the heat and the feel of wax running down my back as i embrace the thrill of plunging into a sea the colour of my eyes when you look straight in while i sink into the depths the colour of your eyes when i look straight in
Harnessing Chaos 