(in the dream it is late March)
there's a light rain in Montréal & the sky
is a gorgeous, early-morning variety of slate grey. imagine the lid
of an old metal garbage-can.
everything is dismal, perfect. and quiet; even the people leaving the bars are silent.
dismally, perfectly, silent.

ghosts of old cats—belonging maybe to ghosts of old ladies who lived, say, just off St. Lau, back
in the eighties—ramble downhill, in the direction of rue St. Catherine (Saint Cat! O patron of felinity!) ,
between the legs of those spilling out from the trendy & ****** clubs.
some of the ghosts wander out into the street, flash thru car tires that would've (& have) (at one time)
smashed them to pulpy carpet on the asphalt.
(who goes to pick them up then? when the tires have had their way with them over & over?
when they are just hair & porridge by a sewage grate?)

after a greasy smoked-meat-on-rye or a nightcap at somebody's place, just off the drag,
i'm in a sodden, but warm overcoat, hands curled in the bottoms of it's pockets; mis-shapen mass
of hair plastered to my scalp; walking en bas de la montagne just past the McGill Medical Centre.
—this late, the busses back downtown are never on time.
(driver's probably having a few smokes before he starts that long tour down. full up of drunk kids,
taking one another back to their dorms, etc.)
(and what does he have, to look forward to at shift's end?
        i. a cranky wife—past her prime?
        ii. a buncha dogs—yapping for attention?
        iii. some ******* kid—who's disrespectful & won't shut up or turn his stupid ******* punk-rock down?

—it's enough to make me patiently wait.  i'll wait forever, as long as that isn't me.)

...'spose I'LL have a cigarette too. waiting
in the bus shelter on Ave. Des Pins looking down over the
football fields of the McGill Athletics Dept.
still lit up. no sun yet but
now at 4 AM a dull inch or two of lightened grey out there on the horizon.. dawn will come,

though i'd rather not face the day. all the mornings are so hard after nights like this.
bound to be hungover &
spend the day hiccuping in bed texting some girl; maybe get up
in the late afternoon t'fix coffee, toast & eggs.
sit on the balcony,
make my little guitar sigh,
and try to feel normal until i [have to] puke.

"—and who was that girl i spoke to for so long at St. Sulpice last night? how many gin-tonics did she let me buy myself, nattering on?.. probably too drunk to even get her number."
"—maybe Sean or Dylan will know if she came thru with anyone we knew.."

the bus is finally here. twenty-and-three minutes late. the back of it probably smells of
stale smoke, dim sun, and sweaty, rain-soaked cloth, absorbed from jackets into the seats—the eau du jour.
it's always a bump 'n **** ride down the hill; bound to,
with the other handful of dumb & silent riders, drunkenly sway,
(or is it a natural compensation of the body, to groove along with the curves and stops?)
back & forth like carcasses of half-dozen slaughtered pigs
swinging on their hooks in back of a meat wagon..
(i'll end up getting on, but only for three blocks. i'll ******* walk the rest of the way home,
after that comparison. to hell with the rain.)

SIX MINUTES LATER:
(Avenue Des Pins still—4 blocks closer to downtown)

directly in line now with McGill campus via McTavish; this way i can
cruise down thru the silence of the main drag having a couple smokes drinking beer
(copped a 40 at a Dep before i left St. Lau—frosty under my arm enshrouded by brown paper.)
& be left to my own thoughts for fifteen minutes 'til i get to Sherbrooke
—i adore that fifteen-minute stretch down thru the jumble of
student associations, clubs, faculty offices, administration buildings, resources centres & the like;
all contained in the same red bricked, white trimmed victorian monster, multiplied threescore
on either side of the lane; all built in the early nineteen-hundreds, all acquired by the university in one of several expansion initiatives in a decade i won't bother to guess at, it doesn't matter. you don't care..

midway down the hill i stop and go sit on the verandah of one of the buildings,
the graduate studies in math offices —
cccrack that forty.
sit there with the sun JUST barely splitting the seam of the horizon feelin'
like the lyrics from a Sun Kil Moon song. nothing more or less.  
"off to a good start," says i.

there's something to being happy
smiling with all twenty-eight pearly whites
laughing so hard
that our abs begin to burn
hiccuping
and choking
and crying
as we tend to do
looking away every time our eyes meet
and giggling to ourselves
because we know it's not that funny

it's that feeling of euphoria
an abnormal feeling of
buoyant vigor and health
a feeling we cannot control
but we welcome that helplessness
because we know it can't last forever
and no matter who we pray to
or what we say
or what we accomplish
we only have this moment
to feel the way we do

I missed you today.
With a suddenness, a bereft slap across my skin.
When that familiar hair ahead of me on the sidewalk
turned.
And it wasn't you.
I missed you in the hollow of the moment of the stranger who wasn't you.
And with resounding howl
Like a grieving mother
I missed you.
I remember in the sheets we'd tangle,
I smelled them. I smelled summer air and my perfume
I smelled  your soap and your musk in that minute second on the street.
I stopped and I breathed in deep. Inhale, Inhale.
Before you turned and it was not you.
Like a sailor's wife on the shore
I watched as the stranger who wasn't you turned back down the street
Growing smaller and smaller in the distance.
And a thousand piercing stinging blinding pins of light forced themselves.
They stabbed at me and took my breath.
Took your scent and the bed we lay.
On the street, on the street
as you walked away, the stranger.
Paralyzing me with your nearness only to be someone so very much not you.
I missed you and i stood in the street and gravity gave up its pull to laugh at my foolishness
and my eyes filled with tears to celebrate their perfect deception.
and my bones forgot how to hold on for dear life
and I slid to the ground
to the ground
because
I saw you today on the street. The stranger that wasn't you.
I have learned the art of hiccuping you inside.
Memory, hiccup. There you are now tucked away inside.
Kisses on the soft hairs at the nape. Hiccup that away too.
And all of the hiccups came out in a swallow of your name...
A hundred swallows, truth.
They flew wickedly around my head  gleeful in my faux pas.
And ten hungry vultures came to take the remains of my hope.
Pick away greedily at my anticipation.
Satiated on the last of my blind faith and now they are too fat to fly.
And I am too weak to run.
Because I saw you on the street today,
The stranger that wasn't you. My beloved. My adored.
Such a peculiar street.
I will not pass this way again.
sahn
04/09/2014

Happened to me on a street corner
on either a late night or an early morning.
It took a wallet full of cider, a charity of spirits,
a shared packet of ****** and the smell of glue.
Not the cheap stuff, the glue for models,
and they look alright, right? right man?

The night left me outside my head, with my thoughts,
I had a handful of anti-headaches.
We nearly bled out last time we admitted all our mistakes,
my friend, who always ends a night with a head
on my shoulder, snotting up my collar,
hiccuping up frag grenades,
**** and apologies.

Your liquid mercury eyes,
drawn to the sight of a hiccuping heart
half-exposed through a ragged chest,
brought me close and held me there.

Despite that proximity,
in the end not even my own heart
was cold enough to solidify those
mercurial eyes of yours,

and you slid right between my fingers
forever, leaving only a diseased heart

and renewed dispassion.

You went to that place
                         Where her flowers used to grow
Spilling hot, salty tears countless times
                    Left the air always smelling like the sea
Even years later
                       You can still hear her mermaid laughter
                   Echoing through the trees
Grown over with weeds now
                                      Sweet memories resting place
Much like the aching hollows of your heart
                   Anger rushes through the quiet solitude
           Urging your knees to buckle
Digging your hands into rich, wet earth
Sobbing great hiccuping gulps through mournful wails
                        True pain is that of loss
A circle is finally cleared
       Exhaustion floods the moment
Head heavily laid where she rests
                   Clouds hum by above the canopy
Digging into your pocket
Smiling softly now
            Grasping at incubating bleeding heart seeds
A hole here, a hole there
                                   She'll grow again

*For the dead never truly leave us

I spent my night with him tonight
Wrapped up in covers
Wrapped up in dreams
He consoled me of all of my troubles
And reminded me that life is not all as it seems

There was some magic tonight
He made me believe in love again
Like when we first were together
Staying out past 2 a.m.
Hiccuping from laughing so hard

The connection we had returned again
And He inspired me
Instead of you, to keep writing

The way he looked at me,
The way he held My hand,
The way he smiled that smile.

You are not my muse anymore
That's why I wanted to give up writing
Because everywhere I turned, you were waiting for me
In every blank Title (optional)
In any poem I read, I found you.

But the freeing thing I realized tonight
By lying in his arms
Is that poetry is what I make of it
I can read a poem about love
And it doesn't have to make me think of you
Because I have so many other wonderful people in my life
I can write about other things than heartbreak and memories
I can write of hope and happiness

So yes, you were the reason I started writing poetry
But that doesn't mean that you should be the reason I stop.

As the black girl in front of me leans into the window
I wish I had a camera
Her reflection is forming a double exposure
Of her sad eyes
On a background of fleeting metro lights
Next to me some girl gets slapped
And is then restrained by an old man as she claws after her attacker
There are two Japanese tourists
They seem disappointed
Some guy is staring at me
And tries to nod a bit when I look back
There is also this kid with pale white hands
Half asleep and hiccuping into his lap
Looks like he might throw up at any moment
And in the midst of all the arbitrary existence
I'm sat looking at the sad black girls reflection
And a kind of perfection forms

It was snowing too insistently,
snowflakes almost as big as the eye,
over nostrils, over half-open lips,
over the white lace shawl from my grandmother,
exactly when I was not supposed to wear it.
I had the profile of a porcelain statue
like a Russian girl proud of her kokoshnik.

After a while I started to breathe hardly,
choking first while crying, then while sighing
and finally while hiccuping.
Maybe because of cold and bewilderment,
or because of the strange story about mulled wine with cinnamon.
How could he possibly hide in my blood then
when I had grown up with bitter cherries and wild sorrel leaves,
when I had sipped  the milk foam my whole childhood
without crying on the blanket made of rough sheep wool?

How could that man travel between my heart’s mill stones
without being ground down completely?
Now only tears are sticking over nostrils, over half-open eyelids
like a glue from a sour cherry bark wound.
Not a single barrier, not a single one way sign,
not a single red traffic light
or at least a church with holy relics.

I dislike my body, much
like how a mother disapproves
of her son's girlfriend.

I'm half-naked in a bed
that isn't mine -- but I'm
used to being adopted by
beds; fostered by
temporary situations.

The sun passed, long ago,
and I know that tomorrow
might vanish, emulating
melting moments aboard
brittle rib cages, slack jaws.

Nothing days like the
yesterday and the one
before that; fragments
not meant to be placed
back together, only to
be cut on, leaving wounds
to be wished upon.

I know, one day, I'll be
as tattered as this flag
I call my master. I will
die, for the thousandth
time, as I talk to an idea
about how I was in love;
how she believed in me;
how my brother was a
man I wish I could have
back; how my littlest
brother was always in
trouble and how I didn't
help enough. I was a
writer, I'll say; I was a
son, I'll whisper that
they were imperfect but
their wish, that's what I was;
their hope, that's what I was.
I was their's.  

I'll be sunken into a seat,
staring out a window,
during a night like this.
Hiccuping thoughts
that should be tossed.

An empty room seared into memory
It once held your breathless form
I listened to that heart go silent
Crying wet, hiccuping tears onto your heated skin
I cleaned you up, kept you warm
Tried desperately hard to shut your eyes
Knowing that you would never smile with them again
I cannot say for sure if you heard us
Your father breaking down through the speaker
Mitchell, your best friend, sobbing through the phone
I held each call gently, wishing not to cause you more pain
My voice softly singing the song we danced to at our wedding
The stark, violent feeling of your loss
When you were finally free'd from your mortal prison
For you that word took on a whole new meaning
I have never been so proud as the day when you made me yours
But watching you, fighting along your side
To not give up
Even to your last ghost of thought
I was even more so
Left with an aching dark moon
A dead sun
No light to reflect off of my screaming face
I grieve in darkness
Where I can still feel the weight of your  hand in mine

You and I are revolutionaries
Right up to the ruckus we cause daily
Switchblade tongues
And coal black lungs
And bittersweet intentions.


We are the voice of a generation
We the Degenerates
We the Proletariats
We the Lost and Found among the wreckage of the millennial metropolis.


Living in our forever 21 society
Governed by no laws and lack of sobriety
We the reckless
We the ruthless
We the key board warriors

Pixels and manic pixie dream girl *******
**** boys, man buns, Jordan's not brogues
We the soulless love makers
We the relentless heartbreakers
We the snapchat sexters, molesters
We the grotesque.

You and I know no boundaries
Lines crossed and used as skipping ropes
As ***** jokes, cut throat and savage
We the endless trouble makers

We who know the end is nigh  
Hiccuping our ways through orchestrated lies
Screaming and bellowing our silent pleas to this world of terror alight
Setting fire to ourselves daily
We the terrified
We the unjustifiable
We the hopeful sad


We the gods of everything and nothing
We the repercussion of double standards
140 characters in every psalm
We the unforgiving
We the unholy
We the non believers
We the incomprehensible in the face of sin


You and I are not recognised by x or Y
We identify in binary with the wind and the stars
Honest realisation that our little lives are insignificant to the monologue of the universe
Lighthearted libertines light years ahead and behind

We the star struck
We the scientists and academics
We the prophets
The artisans
The beauty queens
The mystics and cynics

And I am the voice of a generation you rendered speechless

all the preparing
for the big show
the making things perfect
the displaying of stuff just so
there's the
mixing
blending
shaking
seasoning
pouring
cooking
boiling
bakin­g
frosting
whipping
cutting
trimming
spooning
followed by the
devouring
wolfing
scarfing
cramming
munching
chomping
noshing
g­uzzling
slurping
swallowing
and ending with
burping
hiccuping
passing gas
and passing out

happy thanksgiving

Bite a strawberry in June and try to tell me you can't taste color.
A quiet lapping sea sloshes pink foam over crunchy sand seeds.
Stare at watercolors--make eye contact and listen to the breeze.
Maybe rustling trees are symphonies in green. Kiss me,
watch my heartbeat pulse and quiver, bubble through my mouth;
racing, hiccuping out heat from my throat’s abyss.
Smell my hair, breathe the sugary bonfire billowing from every pore,
pine needle goosebumps that rise and fall in Redwood symmetry.
I'll visit your grave, dragging a Santa sack of rotting flowers in my brain,
and (pretend I don’t) feel and hear and smell and see everything
and nothing all at once.

See the hiccuping of the boy,
I think he's angry at the joy.

He finds it hard to see the plant,
Overshadowed by the big ant.

Who is that dreaming near the cheese?
I think she'd like to eat the disease.

She is but a deep child,
Admired as she sits upon a wilde.

Her fascintating car is just a fish,
It needs no gas, it runs on dish.

She's not alone she brings an administration,
a pet buddy, and lots of information.

The buddy likes to chase a heartbreak,
Especially one that's in the cake.

The boy shudders at the creamy eye
He want to leave but she wants the lie.

this precious rickshaw
hiccups

it jolts at slightest expressions
of the roads' flat faces
hick!
and my stomach wobbles up
like an astronaut made of jelly
bounces against the diaphragm
disturbing the cuddly lungs and
the lattice pancreas wince
hick!
the sour liver curses and
noodle intestines startle and then
grumble
and the swish slosh slosh
of my kerosine blood
is light and jumpy
in the ancient pipelines of flesh

my hands unlearn
unlearn
they are chubby preteens
then hesitating littles
now my handwriting
is an infant walking
hick!
crawling
hick!
this wash-machine ride
with an inferno of April breaths
hick –– hick –– hick!
my little dog-heart
shakes
its fur all ruffled and spiky

How old were you
when it turned out
that we only grow to die
and how long did it take
for that to terrify you,
and how long did it take
for growing at all to
make you sick,
how long did you live
before you were ready to die?
Some people never live at all
before they’re swept away and
some people try so hard to escape
and keep on failing.
Living is so awful, so
mind-numbingly painful and yet
- and yet and yet and yet -
somehow its so beautiful too.
Somehow we live only to die
and somehow we survive that short,
confused, horrified, hiccuping existence,
and make it worth it. How does
love work that it takes something
so tortured and impossible
and turns it into something
almost beautiful?
how does that work at all

i cannot seem to find any air
when i am with you .
                                    .
                         ­             .

so
i try to make myself anew,
and then
push myself out into a world where i find that
then
i cannot breathe,

and so when you hit me,
instead of laughing,
i just choke ,

and instead, when i feel water
in my lungs,
i heave
instead of hiccuping,
and finally understand why
i am not the favorite child.
.

I worry I will never be okay enough to survive.
each step in this life leads me into more trauma
and I am collapsing inside the hands of tragedy.

here I am hiccuping between breaths
and hoping for a hint of harmony-
but my diaphragm won't let me feel it.

everything hurts today
and I am choking on promises
I never got the chance to make.

my therapist tells me it's okay to grieve
the things you never got a chance to have.

well then I will spend most of my life
forgiving everyone for what they never gave me.

I will sit wrapped inside this idea of a happy family
or this idea of monotony and normalcy
or this idea of a friend who doesn't try to take advantage of me
or abuse me, I am exhausted thinking about where I have been.

when will my limbs be enough to pull me up-
when will I be strong enough?

everyone is so quick to let me down
but how can they carry me with this spine
full of trauma, this darkness that weighs on me?

I have been my own backbone for 23 years,
so why can't I do it anymore?

What does stability look like?
Does it have a face that resembles mine?
Will I ever get a chance to know her?
Or is survival the only face I recognize anymore?

When will it turn survivor?

I wrote you notes in high school
and we talked about our future.

I always thought my depression would **** me first-
but at least I know now how badly it would've hurt you.

A car wreck broke my chest
and I'm left here picking up the pieces.

Somehow a death has kept me from leaving.

Old memories and dizzy songs from her childhood dance across the roof of her brain eyelashes dripping tears and hiccuping painful sobs. Hiding in the school bathroom not from bullies but her own fears. Blinking at the reflective yellow tiles she pushes away the yellow bathroom.

Water drips into the rusty ***** porcelain and the mirrors fog from humidity. Gasping for air and resemblance looking down to see that his hands aren’t there.

Fingers trembling and stepping out of the stall, one among over the sink washing the tears from her face and praying for a vacation, vacation from hell, mania, and psychosis infested cranial cavity and fog swirling swarming her.

Worrying about her fate again that a small breeze of nostalgia fluttered in her heart. Thinking a moment past she had someone in her room that she loved. A person of flesh to talk and hug.

She is lonely now. She could not be more different and she has lost the memory-self that come to the state of reality where she is in the high room alone.

Laughing only a little bit
is no good.
You should laugh until
you are hiccuping, until
there are tears coming
out of your eyes.
You must laugh
at the world,
at your fears,
at Goldie Hawn’s line
on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in.
You must laugh your way
out of your room,
down the stairs,
out the door.
And when you are done laughing,
you must lie on the cool grass
and tilt your head at the sky
and open your arms
to hug the
whole wide world.

Parable of Torvisco: “branched among the thickets of ignorance, their foliated stems speak of the white blood that has fallen from the souls that resiliently endured the solitude of their limbs and who enjoyed their ruddy bark and the pubescence of the Daphnes that gawked at over them turned into Laurel, she being a spatulate flower of Vernarth, like Apollo elliptically adoring her with the underside, and something fuzzy hiccuping over the teachings of someone who is not loved. Being the Daphniform Torvisco, of appressed retractable sepals that are pronounced on the laurels in Dafnomancia of the pubescent Torvisco on the first ******* of Daphne, leaving the ovoid crusts near the foliate stolon of the grayish spurs on the fins of the Pelecaniformes Petrobusjos, leaving the Malloga the lice. of their plumage that they are eaten by laurels, as a carminative antispasmodic digestive degassing, in the flora of the intestinal Torvisco engulfed by their pride and eagerness of nobility.

Parable of Sacred Bud: “first the animals and the buds that emanated from the inflorescences were venerated, as gods of the occult sprouting from the long-lived saps being miscellaneous family taxonomies that were consecrated to gods trapped by the mists of their foliage, over the colonies of other species with outbreaks of bud expiration in the distant buds of the leaves, towards non-renewable woody plants, for critical tempering to germinate on the dogma of woody herbaceous plants, as sacred shoots of ferns without their cell walls. Here is the tree of evil and good, sprouting one of each but as hyper-sprouting, which deceived the eyes of those who wanted to cut it because of the human snooping in bloom, on the shores of Medea's hands, growing on the shore of a headless river deity, who was not yet poisoned by an Olympian gesture, agreeing to have long fragrant and rosy hair on the pubescent teenagers who dared to call themselves Medea "

(Prócoro redoubling his sinister imagination of the Rosé of the Witches and grotesques, he was still ecstatic at the expectation of the extensions of the Rosary of the Evangelista San Juan simulated in the crowned Torvisco, for purposes of the genetics of the world in the hands of pubescent bodies that were embodied in the bodies and their stolons, like retrograde shoots going towards the spheres of the pelecaniform Petrobus and its little lice that resided in it as vital alarms. Structuring thus, the grazing that ran from its wings with vigorous fine pediculosis, which was abstracted from the scalps Medea decked out in megalomania in the sprouts of the Enchanted Torvisco)

It hurts on the inside
Hiccuping crying
Screaming inside and wanting to outside
Saying things we didn't mean
But you never said sorry
Only me
It hurts like a stab wound left to rot
The scar will stay of what you said
Tears have gone dry
So have my emotions
Left drained and withered
I have nothing to say
Just a hurt on the inside.
An endless pain
That you are not sorry for
Cause you meant everything