A stranger’s bed

for Sarah

We lay in a stranger’s bed.
Just the two of us, an old
painting hung behind our heads
and listened to the stories, my
awkward hands, limp on the mattress.

I watched the freckles dance on
your face when you laughed. Before bed we
both removed our glasses.

Between sentences we studied the other,
our naked faces learning a new
language. All over again.

On the second night, I was worn
down by work. Your voice trickled
in excitement, turning each page of intimacy.

I tried to stay awake and listen to
your stories. My eyelids rocked open and
shut like an old boat.
I did not make it to the end.

I asked you in the morning about
it. You said I slurred a sentence like
a sailor, and then nothing.

You turned in the current of duvet, and
waited for waves of sleep.

 

PhilosopherPoet

between the two of us

you are like the wind on a
mountain, your voice is supple.
it weaves through my old furniture
in the house.

my heavy pauses frustrate you.
when I plod from point-to-point
you are already riding rapids
in the rain.

I don’t think it will work out
between the two of us. I sit on
my sofa like a comfortable crab
your hands dance towards the
ceiling, parting curtains
hanging paintings

your fingers stroke the pulse of
sunlight, and my
eyes are buried in a book.

 

 

PhilosopherPoet

i think of you

i think of you
on the wet bus
your eyes
open like oysters
etched with emotion

i gave you my t shirt to
wear when we gobbled up
breakfast

virgin rice
hot coffee
and slow voices
decorate my room

– itadakimasu

Canadian nuances – Part 6: Wading through sludge

I spent my New Year’s Eve in an empty house. The warm kiss of sherry coating my lungs, and the gentle sigh of a dog narrating my thoughts. It was lonely, but perfect. Quiet moments give us time to reflect. On everything, really.

I babbled to a few people on Facebook, my thumbs thundering against the glass face of my phone. I checked the time 23:34…shit, time to leave. I threw on my headphones, slung my bottle of sherry back into my bag, began my ascent through the ice and sludge. The succulent anger of Slipknot thundering threw me.

I approach the SkyTrain. Reach for my wallet. Seconds after my hand collides with its porous body, my eyes dart to the sticker adjacent to the turnstiles Free Ride on New Year’s Eve. 8 P.M. until 5 A.M. A smile creeps over me. “Thank you Canada,” I mutter to myself.

I get off at my station. A few of my heavy metal anthems are now slithering across my playlist. I start headbanging and beating drums like invisible ghosts in the air. Somehow this doesn’t seem like enough. I kick up a bit of snow and do an Irish jig in the middle of the street. (It’s like a version of Riverdance you should never watch. Trust me.) A thought came to me this morning as I began etching out the events of last night. I think I’ve fallen in love with this country. Or perhaps it’s fallen in love with me? I don’t care which way you slice it.

During the summer of 2016 I had a romance with a beautiful Japanese girl. I see an interesting parallel between loving a person and loving an environment. There’s the initial awe of something new coupled with anxiety of being able juggle the complexity of it all. Maybe one has an angry parent buzzing in their head saying “You’re in a new country / relationship now. Don’t fuck it up!”

Initially being in Canada felt like wading through sludge. There’s so many details, -isms, directions, slang and faces thrown your way, all that’s left to do is slowly wade through it. The sludge. Now that I’m two and a bit years into being “settled”, there’s less sludge. I can still see parts of it, others haven’t found me yet.

Where am I going with all this? Well, you remember the earlier analogy about the lover? A tipping point comes in any relationship. It is when you let your guard down. You express yourself, and run with it. It feels like flying. It tastes like freedom. That was exactly how I felt a few hours ago, churning up snow and dancing like dyslexic spaghetti.

Yeah…I may have looked like a fool, but I’m cool with that. Man must frolic, and so should you!

the girl with the golden bow

for Takae

she drifts like water
through the house
her hands are curious mice
they scurry from cellphone
dip into the soft throat
of her handbag

she sleeps
engaged in the ochre arms of the duvet
she sighs and moans as the slow waves
of memory wash through the events in her eyes
her whispers walk away from her
growing in gravity

she rests in the gentle
arms of my sweatshirt
the blue cotton calms her
caresses the narrow slope of her back

she lies against me – i can feel the
clock in her heart
her smile spills onto my neck
her fingers grow like roots
into the shadows of my chest

last night we spilled out of the taxi, like a
giddy glass of wine painting the pavement
under the eyes of street lights,
we gossiped like goblins, the
pulse of midnight pulling us home
like the slow notes of a song
that says “we can dance forever”

he bought her breakfast today
he juggled cups & coffee beans
and watched the silver arm of the
plunger seep down into the present

4 hours later she sleeps in his bed
he watches her and annotates an image
vibrating in his head
“she is my goddess today.”

this is only the first chapter – he thinks
stories empty out of every breath
he will remember…
the rhythm of her voice
the patterns she sketches
in a fluid finger

he folds her arms around him
like the lips of a newspaper
her heart continues to beat
and drums down into her dreams

 

 

PhilosopherPoet

brown beans

Brown beans crackle and whirr beneath the plastic head of the coffee grinder.
It’s as if they’re lost in the waves of a dance, or the stinging staccato of an argument.

There’s something so seductive about that, y’know.

 

Photo credit: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Coffee-69451486

 

PhilosopherPoet

drifting

two warm bodies pulse
into the black night
two brains
shimmer in between veins
of streetlamps

tonight he straddles
the fuel tank
underneath its engine
gurgles and mutters
like an actor
lost in monologue

they pour onto the freeway
four eyes pump and ignite
with ecstasy
the road stretches
like a careful corpuscle
headlights and cabins of steel
shuttle past them

her arms are woven into him
he feels stronger when he rides – she says
they share a heart
they share the air
crawling through the arteries of their egos
and slowly it will coagulate
into the depths of their minds

when it’s over the purr of a heart
continues through chapters
of slumber
two chests rise and fall to
the rhythm of dreams

By Kalen Bloodstone (Click on the image to go to Kalen’s DeviantArt profile!)

PhilosopherPoet

song

your hair
dapple pressed on the
desk
spills on me

every lover loves the Song
-your tender finger could
be wrong
you remember the words

your clipped lips,
suck puffing out a
grey breath
a nod, a wink

your eyes, like a cat
the mouth fondles the
cigarette
tickled tip

your lamplight lingerie
falls stark awkward
over curled commas

i found the song
your voice tinsel
in the air

forgot the lyrics

A message from my sister…

(NOTE: The following story was told by my half sister, I’ve simply interpreted what she said – via my step mother – the scribe.)

*The Crystal of Love*

By Trinity Ballam-Smith

Chapter 1

One day there was a jungle girl named Ellie. She lived in an island named Hawaii. She was sooo happy there. One day (while trying to find some grapes) she spotted an elephant. She didn’t know that she could speak to animals. But when the elephan tried talking to her…Ellie listened.

They were very confused because they didn’t know they were sisters. They went to the elephant Cloud Princess and she said,

“Do you know that you two are actually sisters?” and she was amazed that the elephant princess had old her story.

She replied, “”Did you know, a long time ago King Rothbart turned me into an elephant because he was so angry. I didn’t let Rothbart go, so he strangled me and he took all my powers away. I only have one power left, and Rothbart doesn’t like me any more. he put me into a dungeon, but luckily I broke through.”

She paused momentarily, and continued.

“Rothbart takes all my powers away, and doesn’t gove me anything. So I moved into the Cloud Kingdom, and I needed to live all by my own.But luckily I had some animals to speak to me.”

Rothbart came every single day to check on the Cloud Princess, but eventually she fought back to get more powers. The world changed and all the trees were dark around her…and there was no pollution in the air. the Cloud Princess and stopped all the pollution.

Ellie (the Cloud Princess) said, “Bye-bye” to the Cloud Elephant, and ran off to find the Crystal of Love. She told them about a wand, and a ring of love, lying in the dark depths of despair. To find the Crystal of Love, Kindness, and Helpfulness you must go there.

“Remember,” she said.

“The Crystal of Love, is the more important than all the kindness in the world!”

I heard you

It is five o’clock, and I can hear your feet. They are crawling through nonsense, hiding behind the flecks of the morning’s eyelash. The coffee crumbles into the cup. The sugar stings my ears. I still feel your breath on the bed; it lies there massaged into my veins. I watch you, through my eyes’ crescent moons.

 

Your hand falls like a flower. The other stirs the table and skates through its memory. The milk-thin steam finds room in your face, your smile vigilant through the film. I watch you float on the nothing, I watch your hair. I want to fondle the piece on your nose (curled like a finger). You want nothing as the membrane light folds and unfolds. It breathes with your breath and flickers in your eyes.

 

You told me a story once of how you lost you loam brain in the shelves and bodies of books. Now I watch you do the same. You’re lost between blank blocks of light and supple time. There’s something about the emotional silence that holds your head up like a lovers fluid hand. You stroke it, slowly, fingering it in grains. Your hanger shoulders tilt and stir up in the chair, making you stand. You swim like a cat on your feet. Your presence pours through the room.

 

In the shower, you left me your shapes and your shades. The breath of a heavy cloud-kiss holds me. Your hands have smudged the tiles, blurring my windscreen thoughts. You voice gallops giddy in a delicate breath, leaving behind a crisp crinkle.

 

The voice touches, tumbles into towel. It rubs your skin, shading in your eyes and floating figure, between the silver-silk smoke. The towel swims over your breasts, around and into the ceramic curve of your back. It stops. You reach for the door, your hands around the cold clean handle then, you sneeze. A dandelion sneeze makes the clean air now clammy with a creative spray.

 

The door opens, and you walk to my bed where I am still lying. The mottled light tickles me face, hugging me like a child. You pull up next to me. Your figure is fresh, the smell sails through me.

 

You look at me. Your gaze pours into me like wine, followed by a recumbent smile and tender fingers. A soft smile ripples through me. I trace my hand to your lap. My fingers fold your legs into me. We lie there rooted in our thick smell and thrumming tenderness.

 

Your leg draped over me, leaves me to linger. All I hear is your threaded whisper and an ebbing breath.

“I could do this again,” you said.