191. Marius à Javert

hours & minutes

après minuit,

your call

dings

several times in my

barely lit

apartment

smiling in spite of myself –

I check and answer

other messages,

stalling before I answer yours

yet –

out of fear, and

excitement

the purple & white

square

glows sunset amidst

notifications

I check the little litany of

messages

once,

twice,

thrice -

still in

queenly

defiance

your photos

illuminate my screen

once more –

I imagine us together

by that twilit

lake, your

dark eyes smiling

into

mine

the first

touch of your

tender yet

strong

hand

hours –

minutes –

past midnight

I am ablaze and

afire with

pangs of new love?

infatuation?

or is it precisely

the mystery

that keeps us –

me –

enthralled?

is it simply

friendship you want?

my own crazed

heart spinning

imaginations and

prophetic

fantasies?

I think of at the love

my partner

and I

share

finally, a

deep and

trusting bond

safe and perhaps

not so

intoxicating

isn’t all love

a thrill at first?

perhaps I only seek

these virtual

sparks

which will always

dissipate

I muse on

love and

faith

in the darkness,

on options

and time seems

such a feeble

foe

to

intensity

buzz

buzz

goes my

phone in the

dark

beckoning,

taunting

innocent

conversation,

I tell

myself

April 24, 2020

Montréal, QC

185. My Shoulder

As we laugh
and joke of stupid
things -
your tousled hair leans on my
shoulder.

I was recovering from the
awkward lack of
conversation
earlier in the
bar

so I am taken
by
surprise

I graze your arm,
hesitantly.

Your breath
smells of
cider

(I know
later on
it's also
halitosis)

You are a
puppy

I had no choice
but to sit, stunned,
silent

night continues swishing
past the
muggy
car windows

Aug 6, 2017
Halifax, NS

181. Torontonian Months

Sushi without
fish and
water without
ice!

Lessons back-to-
back and lessons just
alone;

Sweat and smiles and
suitcases and
backpacks -

birthdays and
cards and
Australia and
San
Francisco -

restaurants and
catching
up:

new friends and
old ones -
new buildings and
old -

smoke and homeless and
pizza and
LV:
these are the sights and sounds and
smells!

178. Torontonian for a Year

 

I am
full
of
goodbyes –

you
are full of
                 none!

I
  take

one
photograph for
posterity

in the room where
I would lay
wrapped with
you, early
mornlight
shadowing our
blind-checked
hearts

This –
room:
where once I played you
simple
Satie
while it rained outside,
and you were designing;

home of so many tears and
smiles and
ecstasies
and pains –

today I walk past
the apartment:
you are no longer
here, but here I
am,

waiting,
thinking,
remembering.

Strangers walk
by;
the time is long
past-

and yet the phantoms of a
desk, a bed, a bookshelf
                                       linger...

do buildings
                     stir
hearts?

Where was
yours?

174. A Shared Mile

The hills describe in pink,
of yawning suns descending:
it is an ode to love:
it is their adoration.

Our hands are interlaced;
our hearts are wrapped in silence;
it is the twilit dusk,
it is her mauve entreaty.

Paired in sylvan joy,
road the winding way
smiling to infinity
past the rose-gilt, silent trees;

My bliss swelled past our smiles
beyond the gold-drunk forests:
a love, that shared with them,
now separate, still remembers.

172. Meninas

Las Meninas, Diego Velázquez (1656)

Museo del Prado, Madrid

Slanted
sits the
artwork: physical
body hidden
in a
temperature-controlled
vault-laboratory
hybrid thing;
exhumed to the present day,
mounted and dissected,
eyes observing,
dissecting;
essays
hum;
editors scramble furiously on the
Wikipedia
page...

Backing away,
curtain falls
as the
chamberlain
clears the exit

Two girls awkwardly caught
half-sentence in
curtsies, well
one –
the other still
unawares,
el búcaro outstretched
from her imploring
arms, fingers of
one curled in
mid-
persuasion

Despite her mourning
garb
the
guardian chatters
animatedly with the
guard, name
lost to
exclusive seats of
history

mumbling,
bumbling,
buzzing mutely:
as Two imported dwarves
form spectacle, one
obviously teasing the
peeved dog,
the other remarkably
solemn,
questioning.

Nineteen years and one
wife
separate the uncle from his
niece,
her arm tucked
protectively around
his?

The artist
rests: self-
portrait,
photograph?
Paint drops speckle his
boots in
real
time

Time ticks:
ribbons like
captive
wildflower
flare on the
alabaster plains;
ethereal, the
five-year-old
serenely gazes into
eternity

Bent knees
hover expectantly,
silk rustling, mute

Centrepiece, she
stands:
the business
frozen, betraying the
Purpose;
yet faces glisten,
inquiring,
else incoherent
of the
Moment:

The high
green-brown
panels silently
concur,
stolid,
enigmatic,
slumbering with the
weight of
centuries

Emptied,
its physical forbearer since perished,
imagination and
interpretation can only resurrect

Quiet,
the
noon
buzzes…

168. Cattle through the Peepholes

circles:
blinking eyes
beyond,
eyelashes long and
golden, dusty;
flies
interspersed

still yet
moving,
inches become
miles,
through alchemy
to kilo-
metres

skin beneath
metal,
air beneath
exhaust fumes:
and in the driver’s seat
the unthinking
be-jeaned,
be-plaid-shirted
blue collar
robot

driving,
surviving,

one eye:

glassy,
still, and
searching

163. Source of Spiders

Truffle
tumbleweeds
millimeter-long
tiptoeing
‘long the
windowsill

estrellitas

sentient:
little cilia
pulsate
on the
PVC

Twirling countersubjects
twining and
intertwining,
curling
‘round the
windowsill

159. XP

A child with Xeroderma pigmentosum.

Photography By: Sarah Leen

Image Source: National Geographic

So.
much.
Sun.

beekeeper
alien

Black mesh:
mask
hijab

Swirling laughs,
sliding up and
down

Regarding
all alone,
shoes upon the
gravely
lack of
ground;

GO
Mom
says –

bare arms and
open smiles,
twirling pigtails;

Red:
burning,
metal igniting in the
toxic
leaden
rays

Sparkling in the noontime heat:
rectangle,
mass-produced,
delectable –

another
leaps to the
sand;
pounces, pummels:
siren sounds;
a group occludes,
greens and
blues and
reds too –

141. Glossolalia

Butterflies,
coy smiles:
I like to think
I am still naïve enough,
not yet jaded;

that I still believe
there is
love and beauty
in the world:

it is horrendous
thinking this is
all there is –

one needs a little
fantasy,
a diversion once
in a while

something to bring us
out of our
sullen moods,

to take us out of our
fatalistic musings,
and remind us

We are young,
there are moments ahead
and years behind us
already.

Let us laugh and
giggle,
foolish today,
not knowing if they
will ring again
tomorrow,
not knowing if we are
being altogether too
insincere;
for in this life,
we survive,
we enjoy.

131. Bite-Size

A moment of indulgence;
for I have spilled my soda,
and you are searching for
napkins:

right pocket, left
pocket, jacket –
meanwhile, I have
tissues, tucked precisely
in my own
backpack

watching you struggle is
adorable, perplexing, as if
slight suffering
justifies
affection

What does it mean
to not expect,
and be surprised?
To not desire,
but to exist in
simple
moments?

In such a fleeting
moment
of unadulterated
complicity –
is this what
friends do,
kindness in discrete,
foldable portions,
unexpected bliss
never beyond
these
confined
means?
Must we demand
more?

122. Vestibule

A moment is
nothing;
a glance is
everything!

Smiling, we
recognize each
other;

to think that you
love my company as I
love yours, that
the stranger I once
observed discreetly
across the room
is somehow here
with
me

is a strange miracle I
do not understand!

you seem to
digest my tedious words
ravenously as I do
yours

as if each one
would be the last
we ever
say!

121. Śliczny chłopiec

In the flurry, we
went our
separate ways
yet I return to you,
ablaze from a recent
victory

Conveniently,
the spot beside you is
free

Slipping next to you I
observe the last rounds
and you likely know such
tedium
is not my
aim

When they have cleared,
we take up cards:
I struggle;
you are a stronger
player than
I

Not a victory,
it was a ruse

Pulling the cards away
from my puzzled,
earnest fingers,
I see, I hope it is
I,
my words you
desire

Such tedium is
not your aim
either;
I hope
it may be the same
as mine.

Separate ways:
as we part
you seem anxious,
confused,
timid;
I never know
what you are thinking –
eyes are not so helpful
after
all

I am descending the
stairwell
myself,
alone;
I am passing a
display of books
biographies, calendars, and
things –

I greet the night
sharp breeze reminding me
how early and how
late it
is

It was November
when I wondered if I
had become a
wonderful thing to
you;
walking along the
dry cobblestones
I am smiling:
maybe it is best if we
do not know

Such simplicity, such
novelty
is one such
irreplaceable victory
I will remember,
often and
forever

120. Bell A23C

As all good actors,
I act so well I forget
the role:

All of a sudden, I
abandon self and
reclaim you.

Only after the
trance I look,
disgusted at myself.

Copy of a copy,
designed artificiality:

false grain repeating on
false planks of wood;
modems glowing in their
green domains,

chanting mutely in the winter breeze

We are all the same
only I am clever enough to
copy, copy
for I am too afraid to
disrupt this elaborate,
sickening
suffocation

for I
must

118. Indictment

I do not understand my
gift;
judgement makes all
relative,
relevant.

All seems
bland and
weary.
Child’s enchantments
revealed as
empty.

I am happy though I am
sad
Smiling though I’m
crying;
Callous, wry, and witty
when all I feel is
hurt.

So many disappointments,
so I have learned the game:
I can play too:
let us both
say empty things

only you mean them,
and I invent them.
Quicker the lies are said
that I may retire,
observing how alone I am,
remarking the silent absurdity
of my worthless life
somehow so exalted by my
ego that

it must awake again
each day,
to produce, create;
to hope
and regret.

113. Carious

Long forgotten,
delirious memories haunt,
reclaiming us in
the exhilarated clutches of
terror;

things we would have said left
hanging in the jaws
of bloodied twilight.

Swallowed into jet black
night,
trapped in sparkling darkness
my voice collapses
into a mute,
crackling
whisper.

Discarded remnants,
fossils of another time
reincarnate:
all-consuming,
dangerous.

110. Wild Child

Photo by: Chris Langton

http://www.earthbook2012.org/author/999

Hairs stand golden,
glistening bristles on your face and
neck;
there is a certain danger,
exotic recklessness
drawing me to you.
I am afraid of you, and
enamoured of you;
I am your predator,
I am your victim.

Wild child;
cannot be tamed, must be put far away.
Lions in their cages
do not bite;
tigers in captivity do not
wound;

Wild child,
I love you.
But it is a far more
lethal beast
unleashed in me,
all-consuming, powerful,
which would ruin me.

Stay away, oh
wild child,
you are a foreign beast;
I must keep you to those who
know you well,
while I regard at a distance,
hesitant, curiously.

109. Radieux, étranger

2 galaxies collide,
silent in the airless
universe:
what are the chances;
what is the
probability!

Quantification cannot classify,
instruments cannot perceive;
exhilaration of the unknown
exalts the most uncharted
mysteries.

As we part, there are
stars in the sky, in
the streetlamps.
Moving on our separate paths,
destined for our solitary
niches,
it is so beautiful
we can meet in such
covert darkness, ephemeral,
out of the millions of the collisions
that could have been,
and never will be
again!

108. Crickets in the Phone

I miss you,
how I miss you.

Even when there is
dead air
I can somehow hear,
echoing in the
silence:

scratches, noises,
murmuring
bouncing within the
landline.

I can almost picture you
standing at the other end,
not knowing what to say…

I could sit for hours,
pretending to have a
mute conversation
with nothing but
trapped electrons.
But I hang up;
whether it be telemarketers
or my mother
I will not pick up again
for you.

106. Insensatez

So soon forgotten,
nylon strings drift out the other
ear,
scarce registered
by one.

Bathed in the exotic, balmy
air,
sun-soaked and
carefree:
indeed these are sweet nothings,
measured not in single drops of
liquor caressing your
throat, rather
a forgettable nectar,
enigmatic, ephemeral.

It’s Portuguese to you,
it’s all the same lithesome
beauty that is so
foreign, so
unintelligible.

It is what tourists
accept, yet do
not seek,
experience but do not
remember.

I could not expect more:
sitting like Turandot
enshrouded by cross-hatched
palm-leaf shadows.
As one breeze carries my
voice, futile, one shadow
to the next, I am
the only constant,
alone in my
impossible artistry.



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