Ave Innocence

I wonder about you sometimes
How you've made it into old age with the innocence of a baby kitten
Of how naive of the world you are
How the lines used by countless to show affection are simply compliments to you

I watch as negative emotions roll over your face and leave just as quickly
And yet happiness lingers on and forever

I am so jealous of the bubble you've drawn around yourself
I want to live in it with you

Last ferry to mainland

Commutes on ferries aren't quite like any other experience you'll ever experience
A bunch of strangers trapped in a giant patio
Waiting 15 minutes to reconnect with the rest of society
You would think it could all spontaneously burst into a giant roaring discotheque
And yet people sit silently
All with heads bowed and buried in books
Or staring at phones
As if we were all at a party and we all had just found out about some horrible disaster
Maybe it'd be a little more lively if that did actually happen
And then the boat chimes near the shore
And we all go back to our own lives

Christmas day

Growing up, I had a stuffed bear that I would sleep with at night. He was a bear I had since I was a baby, one of my first Christmas gifts. It was a little odd because we didn't really celebrate Christmas, or were even Christian, but we always did the whole gift thing nonetheless. Like religious vultures, picking and choosing at the things we like and don't like. At the time he was so big he was probably twice the size of me. I would sleep with him, each night it would shrink in size and I wouldn't understand why. But I didn't really care. I would tell it all my most deepest secrets, and he would tell me it was all okay. That he was the only friend I would ever need. It was something I needed to survive back then, because I didn't have any friends. And thankfully I was too young to be embarrassed that my only and dearest friend was a stuffed animal. I remember I felt all my other problems back then were so big. That someone had to save me from the loud and angry voices floating in my house. From the crashing of things in anger at all hours of the day and night. I would tell him about what new wreckage I had found the day before, artifacts of fury fueled by alcohol and nothing.

I sometimes think how simple and complicated those kid problems were. I sometimes think about how much more lonely I feel now, looking back at it all with the wisdom of time. That the innocence of youth can be the strongest armour of all.

Judgement from on high

I woke up between a man who was an idiot
And a man who was reckless
They were both screaming at me
And blaming me for all that was wrong in their life
I thought that that was pretty accurate

No language specified

It stopped me dead in my tracks
And I stared out a window at the trees
As I let it wash over me
The feeling that I had heard that voice before
A song where each and every note
Resonated deep within me
And the song of my heart
Was playing on the speakers
In that hallway in that mall
And I thought
This is it
This is when I'll meet her
This song must mean it
This song I've heard so often in my dreams is now out there
And I turn
And I see her

Where's Waldo

Sometimes I lose sight of you
You were just there a minute ago
And for half a second my mind blanks completely
And I can't even remember what I was trying to look for
Or even who you are
And in that small window of time
Where I still don't even know who you are
And I catch sight of you again
And before my brain can catch up
And before I can stop myself
I fall in love with you all over again
Before I get a chance to remember that I did anyway all along

Doing laundry and nothing

I enjoy spending Sundays folding laundry
Just reliving past Sundays with each small burst of fresh laundry smell
Where all I do is think about how the week will be
How my life will be
And the act of cleaning almost seems to clean my thoughts too
And all I have is hopefulness for the future
And I imagine we're all in a gigantic house together
Laughing and smiling and eating and drinking
All together
And the house echoes constantly from childrens feet underfoot
And I can see my future branching off like little wisps of lightning all into the future
All branching off from this right here
With a stupid grin on my faceJust folding laundry and doing nothing

It's about being flexible with your art

I don't know how to be creative and happy

Those spaces don't exist in the same planes in my mind

I wish they did

I wish I could write beautiful poems about uplifting moments

About redemption and glory

But it just seems so much easier to wallow in self pity

To write the verbal equivalent of punching myself in the gut

And just relishing in that desperate feeling

I feel tempted to just smash my head on the keyboard

Just over and over

Until the keyboard is sticky with a little bit of blood

And on the screen, still half illuminated and half shards of glass

Is the word 'FUCK' over and over

And I could sell it in MoMA for a million dollars

I'd stand beside it on display behind bulletproof plexiglass

Beside the display of the painting of just white paint on white canvas

And the suprematist exhibit on the fourth floor

And say, see, art!

I'm having a moment

I can feel the heat of the sun bursting in between and through the leaves
The wind picks at my jacket
As if to say
"Come on! Fly with us!"
And the grass is crisp and dry
Tickling the arches under my bare feet
And all I can see is trees and sky around me
And calm
And nothing
And I scream out
Pulsing my absolute abandon of joy back into the world
And I jump out into the air
And I close my eye
And hope and pray that I will freeze here
In this place and in this time
But all I have is the tug on my heart I feel
Every time someone says the word "Freedom"
And all I can think of is that quiet thicket
When there was nothing but life and happiness to the world
And the anger hid from us because we burned it with our shine
And the sadness slipped away into the dark shadows behind the trees
And there was just joy

Stand inside this moment

There are times I push away those that love me
When they reach out, I ignore them
And I used to think it was because I was introverted
I realize now it's because I'm selfish
That I would rather brood in the mood I am in right now
Stay in this moment
Than to let someone in
And let them shatter this bubble I've created

Intense

You can feel it again
It's a familiar feeling
Everything else dulls a little
Background noise seems to wash away
Until all you can hear is your own beating heart
Can feel the little bubbles in your blood form
Like a soda being opened for the first time
A hiss and a rush
Goosebumps race each other back and forth on your arm
Up the back of your neck
And escapes a wordless sound out your mouth
Your brain shuts off
Your body knows what to do

Drink make belief tea and play pretend

There's no such thing as normal, as socially well adjusted.
Not in the classical sense.
There's instead a societal average, almost an equilibrium that we've all reached
A common language of etiquette and decency we've all understood to be necessary for societies as large as ours to survive
And yet deep inside each of us, there is a yearning to break away
To want to truly express your primal needs, as simple or outrageous as they may be
But we keep them all boarded up with nice intricate cast iron shutters over our souls.

And then we make pretend the beast that emerges when we're drunk, that THAT'S not who we really are.

Sunday afternoon driving

The best kinds of drives are the kind with no real destination
Where I have no where to be
And no where to go
The kind of drive where the clouds hang low on the sky
Ready to plunge the world into fog
And the trees crowd in close on either side
And it feels like the whole world is nothing but a single direction
Black to both sides
Gray up and down
And forward is just pure white
I pretend you're standing there at the end of it all
Waving at me
In no particular rush for me to get there
And I'm in no rush to get there
Because we both know
I'll get there eventually




Just a time and place I am trying to recapture

I watch you from afar

I read the words on the page
And I imagine it's my pen putting them onto paper
I can even imagine where I was when I wrote them
Who I was thinking of
And I wonder how different we must be after all
Because the words I see on this page
Are all the words I wish would come together in my own head
And not in yours

Reusing Canvas

I wrote on this piece of paper about nine times
The page is now dark grey from all the eraser marks
(I use pencil because I always make mistakes)
I tried to write every happy thought I could muster
And I came up with four lines
Two of them were depressing
And one was just a food I happen to like
I erased that and tried again
I wrote a tagline from a movie I realized I didn't really like
I tried seven more times and just wrote "I am a happy person and I love myself because..." and couldn't finish the sentence
Now I'm just staring at this piece of paper
Dark grey from all the eraser marks
And thinking, this is as happy as it gets for me

A staged reality

They say a picture is worth a thousand words
What they don't tell you is that they aren't describing things in the world
It's a thousand words describing yourself

Every direction leads back here, Eventually

You only meet a few different kinds of people in your life
They come in different sizes, shapes, colours, and ages
But they're essentially mostly the same
Kind of like assorted cheese
You'll find yourself seeing old friends and enemies in new faces
Reliving past victories and defeats in battles you're fighting all over again
And it will all never change
And you'll still fall in love with the same wrong people
And you'll still hate that person for all the wrong reasons
And you'll still find yourself hanging out in the same stupid bar
Telling the same stupid poems
Hoping that same stupid girl will show up again
And maybe this time she'll realize how deep you really are
And maybe this time it will be different
And maybe this time it will work out
But it won't
Until you realize the thing that makes them all the same
Each and every time, in each and every way
Is you