these mascara stains all over my fingers

are from tears dried for somebody else

these thin cigarettes make me feel like a lady

so I’m putting your memory away on a shelf

this might not make any sense, but

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They fired a canon at the sun

One canon and one and one and one

And as the cracking boom struck deep

 the air my heart rocked my body to my feet

We all stood still stared at the sun as one

The cannon fired clear beat from our brains the damage that was done

As the crack rings ground quakes earth shakes loud

Smoke ring wobbles to the clouds.

In that mammoth moment of BOOM

We forget what we’re here to remember

On this 11^th hour of November

Forget that they thought they knew doom

Soon the world will come together again

Soon doom,

Soon internet occupied walls coming down time flies contaminate brains drained late trains crash markets burn up down it’s our turn now to make something happen, something to

remember

Next November.

We were standing in the dark and shoving and throwing grass as the train rushed by and we got bored of waiting to cross the tracks; we stood by the water, probably thirty feet above it and watched the reflections on the river murmur quietly. Suddenly the train stopped for no reason that we knew of and after a moment of conference we ran to it and we jumped and we were on a freight train and across it and on the tracks exhilerated by the brief connection of our feet to that dangerous transport and as the train started to move again we laughed and laughed and laughed.

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For the first time this long baking summer I am using my desk as a desk, instead of just somewhere to keep junk and my alarm clock and my glasses when there are too many mugs on my night table to put them there. I’m writing because I read something beautiful and because I can’t sleep on my broken bed, my matress is on its way to Montreal, and I don’t feel like lying down on the floor just yet. 

I have so many goals this year. I’m going to write for the sake of writing. I am going to go on walks and run to the bagel bakery when I go, and wear a scarf and step on crunchy leaves all the way every weekend to somewhere I have never been before. Now and then I am going to make three pieces of art in one night, and stay up until the dawn turns the city blue and grey. Before it gets too cold I’m going to climb the mountain early and watch the sun come up over the river and the city.

waiting

2.

I begin to wonder as I stare at his hair if these memories I dimly hold are true or if in my brain’s wistful lustful meanderings I have created tales of lives and flats and flowerpots and so far as an entire world outside of and before the present.

In the present he has opened his umbrella, a long and thin one with a slightly crooked vein down one side and a bracket bent askew perhaps with frequent too-hurried unfurlings. The rain is but the faintly pastel coloured childhood memory of a grandmother and the batwing contraption strikes me as unlikely to protect his frame from our consistently moist locale but there he stands with an air of nonchalance and try as I might I cannot convince my feet to tap their way across that force field of estrangement that the waiting dictates.

waiting

1.

I had waited so long that by now I did not know at what point or with what intent if any I had arrived in this desolation. There were others waiting too, folks of all heights, widths, patterns and colour schemes. It was but rarely that any of my fellow loiterers made a move interesting enough to shake my attention out of my head through my eyes and onto my surroundings. I’m certain that to them I lacked equally in any traits remarkable.

There has only been one morning if that must mean the sun came out, and on that already outstanding occasion it rained through the thick rays of sunlight. His presence began during that refreshing shower and since then though the weather has returned to its dismal status quo my thoughts have not once been directed internally.

I don’t know where he came from or how he moved himself from there to here without the advantage of a door, window, keyhole, or other method of easy entrance to a place. He arrived with his back turned. I glimpsed his eyes only briefly as he settled in to wait.

If time exists in this antichrist oasis I’ve killed all of mine staring at the back of him and willing my thoughts to become a fist on a spring so I could use that twisted children’s toy to reach him and with a red boxing-gloved hand grasp his attention with the same strength that since his appearance his mere presence has held mine.

prancing like a pair of punks poisoned to be pleased.