off to the eastern ward.

oh well. there is the truth. I'm not sure if I should be telling the world this, but those who keep secrets, well in the end they come to nip them in the bottom. Let's just say that the story leaves me looking like a real hero if I cared to let you all in on the details on how I was committed, but really there are more important things to get to. In there I met wonderful people, I sang "amazing grace" acapella to a lady and afterwards she wept for a half hour (imagine how confused about what to do one would be when that happens?. It ended in me promising to sing it for her if her mother passed away soon. Which I thought an odd request but I am planning on complying if she gets in touch with me. I also drew a birthday card for a name named Sir Elgin who called me "slim" and was locked up in a containment cell for a whole night. The whole thing was needless to say, traumatizing, but I actually liked the people I met. I liked having conversations with them. Every single one had only interesting things to say, and when i left they all had only wonderful things to say to my father.

I've decided I am going to name my first book, third east. or three east. or i survived three east. I would maybe like to have a chapter of my chapbook named that. I'm going to name my chapbook Welcome to beautiful san ria. I've decided. I really do feel it represents the last summer. i mean it really fits.


well I needed to tell that story in order to get to the important part. When I was in there, a few of my friends came to visit me during the two hours that I had a day, and they would bring me books of poetry and novels and soduku so I had something to do. And last night I read this fantastic poetry book I found which is even edited by John Newlove. It's Dream Craters by Joe Rosenblatt. So I want to share a bit of this with you guys and some sylvia plath. [might as well be ironic and whip out the angsty female poets for the occasion.]

Dream Food

Remember me when I'm invisible
leaft & green inside a dream
where birds are snug in a nest
like a child's boots in a showbox.

I'll be a blue sky for uxorious spiders
weaving their highways in the light
to establish their thoughts in my space
of greening skin, & first-born of nuance.

Daffodils will laugh in the heart
of the dream, all ashimmer with pollen
from my unspoiled acreage of images
where birds hang out their signs: eggs wanted.

Roomer on Huron Street

He stretches out his days in a bathtub
coughing up a pond into a sponge, &
I suppose that squeezy animal is dead
for all the pores have let the body out.

The ghost pays eleven a week for his funeral suite,
radioactive with John's neon hung up daddy:
Iron Jesus smiling at a bouquet of plastic carnations.


Self Portrait

My image shrinks
in the mirror
behind the bar

a fugue is played
discordant voices ring
each one a part of me

all I've tried to be
is tosed down like a chaser.


Sunlight, Green Living Things...(for John Newlove)

There is a matronly sun in my sky
who noursishes the stunted leaves of her order
pronouncing green on their permutations
& igniting evenly the flowers hot in teir effusion.

The sharp light is a female luminosity
whose circumference is a burning cuisine
for the outer worlds, the shapes without centres
&I am a half-dazed nerve clinging on a small green island.

Speechless among the faces, the life lines
on whose surfaces the stems, leaves drink
the drop of my senses, I feel their absorption
into the pigment of listening green creatures.

The air warms up a fulgent insurrection
the plants cry, the roots nervously bleat
the buds grow around me, the desperate voices
sing home, & climb toward the dazzling Mother.



Wuthering Heights

The horizons ring me like faggots,
Tilted and disparate, and always unstable.
Touched by a match, they might warm me,
And their fine lines singe
The air to orange
Before the distances they pin evaporate,
Weighting the pale sky with a soldier color.
But they only dissolve and dissolve
Like a series of promises, as I step forward.

There is no life higher than the grasstops
Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind
Pours by like destiny, bending
Everything in one direction.
I can feel it trying
To funnel my heat away.
If I pay the roots of the heather
Too close attention, they will invite me
To whiten my bones among them.

The sheep know where they are,
Browsing in their dirty wool-clouds,
Gray as the weather.
The black slots of their pupils take me in.
It is like being mailed into space,
A thin, silly message.
They stand about in grandmotherly disguise,
All wig curls and yellow teeth
And hard, warbly baas.

I come to wheel ruts, and water
Limpid as the solitudes
That flee through my fingers.
Hollow doorsteps go from grass to grass;
Lintel and sill have unhinged themselves.
Of people and the air only
Remembers a few odd syllables.
It rehearses them moaningly:
Black stone, black stone.

The sky leans on me, me, the one upright
Among all horizontals.
The grass is beating its head distractedly.
It is too delicate
For a life in such company;
Darkness terrifies it.
Now, in valleys narrow
And black as purses, the house lights
Gleam like small change.


An Appearance

The smile of iceboxes annihilates me.
Such blue currents in the veins of my loved one!
I hear her great heart purr.

From her lips ampersands and percent signs
Exit like kisses.
It is Monday in her mind: morals

Launder and present themselves.
What am I to make of these contradictions?
I wear white cuffs, I bow.

Is this love then, this red material
Issuing from the steele needle that flies so blindingly?
It will make little dresses and coats,

It will cover a dynasty.
How her body opens and shuts --
A Swiss watch, jeweled in the hinges!

O heart, such disorganization!
The stars are flashing like terrible numerals.
ABC, her eyelids say.

someone hit a new low.
called me a junkie,
untrusworthy
and made me cry.

thats enough for me.
thank you, I wish miles well.

and well to him I have only one response. And I am not going to write this to him in an email to make him think that I even want to have a conversation with him ever again in his whole entire lifetime.

these are my last words to you, my dearest friend.

Love Poem for Faye
Joe Rosenblaat

Love is deep as a freshly killed bird
stroked by scimitars, measured by a whisker.
On everybody's doormat
there is a sleeping bird.

We want to forget
but still we feel the warmth. It hops on one leg
or hangs on a branch
with a broken wing.

invasive/evasive



guess a three card monte

must I be in
one of those predetermined
positions?

I am in the grains
of the table upon which
you play.


you rale me with your

metaphoric paradigms
drill sergeant tactics


am I locatable on

your map?

be still –
you are alive in daydreams
in trances
in stirs and foreign dialects

neither of which has left a living trace.

be still-
you are my suicide
my unrestrained
pestilence.

you blew
the love right out of me.

pictures at Andrew and Chris's

bruce [female] and spike [male]








The basement of Chris Bray.











andrew and his fortress.

how many years must a mountain exist before it is washed to the sea.

lalala.

i'm at andrews. in mid movement around the city streets of sarnia. I have to go find my friends somewhere downtown. it seems that I am always in transport lately. always looking to find some time to sleep. time to sit and read a book.

a guy told me that he didn't like my zine today.He said that it wasn't what he thought it should have been. the conversation started with me asking if I could do a piece on these instruments that he had made [see the pictures below] and he ended up saying that the only way that I could was if he could have a preview of this issue and he deemed it okay. is this what I have to deal with? should I allow an artist to push me around in order to get the story? is that not selling myself out? i'm not sure it's worth it at this point. although one of my problems with the last issue was that I couldn't get enough 'good submissions' and is this the only way I can get the types of things I want for my zine? is this what I have to do. hmm. It was only my first issue after all. meh. it's an ethical question.

I am currently reading Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk. I've only gotten through the first few chapters and already chunks of the story are amazing in their writing. He has such a sarcastic morbid style that I think comes across so well in his writing.
here are a couple examples:

"The phone is ringing again already. The thin little coating of crumbs on the veal cutlet is almost impossible for me to get right, and on the phone is a new girl, crying. I ask right away if she'll trust me. I ask if she'll tell me everything.

My goldfish and me, both of us are just here swimming in one place.
The cutlet looks dug out of a cat box.

To calm this girl down, to get her to listen, I tell her the story about my fish. This is fish number six hundred and forty-one in a lifetime of goldfish. My parents bought me the first one to teach me about loving and caring for another living breathing creature of God. Six hundred and forty fish later, the only thing I know is everything you love will die. The first time you meet that someone special, you can count on them one day being dead and in the ground." p. 277

"To stand here and try to fix her life is just a big waste of time. People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown." p.282


Here is the main idea of the story for those interested. This little summary can be found at the end of chapter one on page 284. [if you haven't noticed from my cites yet, the book is numbered backwards.]

"So if you're listening to this, the indestructible black box of Flight 2039, you can go look and see where this plane ended its terminal descent and what's left. You'll know I'm not a pilot after you see the mess and the crater. If you're listening to this, you know that I'm dead.
And I have a few hours to tell my story here.
So I figure there's maybe a chance I'll get this story right.
Testing, testing. One, two, three.
The sky is blue and righteous in ever direction. The sun is total and burning and just right there in front. We're on top of the clouds, and this is a beautiful day forever.
So let's us take it from the top. Let me start at the start.
Flight 2039, Here's what really happened. Take one.
And.
Just for the record, how I feel right now is very terrific.
And.
I've already wasted ten minutes.
And.
Action."

william crossed the road
j-walked
his feet left
footprints of dust
in trails

the cars rushed
in periods of silence
horns would shoot
forth in a glorious
wail and send shivers up
the sidewalk
walkers
sides.

-
last night William had written love songs
sang their melodies through
window panes and let them float
down to the dirty low rent housings
below

waited for a taker.

Rosa was cautious when she heard him.

she lay awake in her bed
half asleep
dreams of couches
in football fields
and twilight interludes
hanging in midair
as an unfinished sentence

collapsed in breathing,
she lay half awake in its
suggestion.

was, lifted off the bed
in reluctance
but undid herself
without admitting to.

-

William, known for his tunnel
vision
his insecurity

raged through the town
like a steed of horses

everywhere he went
a little piece of
everyone
bowed inside themselves

I've recently come up with this test for people I know: I like to present them with a blank piece of paper and see how they respond to it when I give them paint, or crayons or any medium with which to create a piece of art on it. And then I watch. I'll paint along side them no problem, but then I take the picture and I look at it. It's amazing how self concious people become when told to express themselves. I believe I tried this experiment on david puzak first, last summer, but have moved on to test several other people.

The other thing I'm really interested in right now is how people perform high on marijuana. How their memory skills function, as well as their reasoning skills. This is my newest interest and over the last week I have gotten five different people to play the matching game for their memory and soduku to test their rationality skills. The first test, match game, involves laying out all of the cards in a deck on the floor at equal spacing, in a giant square and each person just has to find matching cards. It's a pretty simple game, but I am noticing a marked difference between the person the test subject is playing with, rather then their drug intake. I have noticed that my own memory is a little iffy when Im high as it's harder for me to visualize in my head where the cards that have been flipped over previously, are during my turn. However, I have not noticed that significant of a leap. No one has gotten amazingly smarter when they are drugs. It just seems that those would be good at it normally, are slightly limited by their intake, and thus drop a bit, and the people not so developed in their memory skills, drop about the same, and thus the dichotomy remains the same.

In regards to soduku, well only I and Iain have played it while high. I find that I am much better at it if I am high and in a quiet room, rather than in a noisy room. I find that when I'm not stoned I find the purpose of the game to be ridiculous and I usually feel the need to go do something else. Iain on the other hand does them all the time, and seems to remain the same while both high and not. He just has a ridiculous way of solving the puzzles that is ends with my own, and makes him slower usually because he cant adapt his technique to a more effective one.

Today my friend rob came home. We had out regular chicken noodle soup meeting at tim hortons. soon jocelyne will be leaving. my friend sock graciously offered for me to go to ottawa for my birthday (for all the uninformed, that's on the 26th of april. I swore when I was little that I could never imagine my age being the same as my birthdate, but here I am fast approaching. I at the very least to make it to that year.] I'm still a little on the fence about going because last year my parents and I really didn't get to celebrate my birthday because we found out two days before that my brother had a brain tumour. That's sort of the other reason I'm wary, it's the one year anniversary of that and I sort of feel like I should be kicking around. Amazingly folks, almost one year since and he's still all fucked up. gotta love modern medicine. what they fix causes even more complications.

sock told me the other day if a person is on an antidepressant for six months and they don't find that they have improved, that if they change medicines, they will find more of an improvement. does anyone know if this is true?

ending with a song:

talking shit about a pretty sunset
modest mouse

Oh noose tied myself in, tied myself too tight
Looking kind of anxious in your cross armed stance
Like a bad tempered prom queen at a homecoming dance
And I claim I’m not excited with my life any more
So I blame this town, this job, these friends
The truth is it’s myself
And I’m trying to understand myself
And pinpoint where I am
By the time I get things figured out
I’ve change the whole damn plan
Oh noose tied myself in, tied myself too tight
Talking shit about a pretty sunset
Blanketing opinions that I’ll probably reget soon
I’ve changed my mind so much I cant even trust it
My mind changed me so much I cant even trust myself

pictures continued.

southern sarnia [an infestation of industry.]










construction by rainbow park.












james [window reflections and instruments]

pictures from today.

southern sarnia




houses : studies of different residences [to be continued]

april is the month for ramblings

today was beautiful. I, however, woke up very late, around 2:30pm, and now an hour later, I still have hopes of marketing on the sun. I may take pictures by myself today, it has been quite some time since I went out alone.

I find it odd that all of my friends who are still away at school, are experiencing the end of the year panic- the manic essay writing, the cramming for exams. Then here I am sitting on my couch, wondering what I want to do with my day. I like this freedom. I have never taken a break from the school system before. It's amazing what one thinks about when one gets outside of it. As long as you are not prone to laziness, you get to accomplish a lot of things, and you still have a bit of time to be lazy. And although I am going through a bout of depression, new medications, and a daily intake of weed, I still have time to create things. Time to go out and see people. Although it does allow me too much time to think, and on occasion, I have been known to get in trouble for that.

I smoked a joint today on the corner of my porch where the light sort of squeezes past the urban housing and makes a rectangular pool of warmth. The sky is clear today and I appreciate that so very much. It has been raining and grey a bit too often here for me.

I am planning to make use of this blog over the next few months. I've never kept a journal for this long. It's healthy to get things out, and keep track of days, and frankly it's easier for me to share things over this medium then to people in my life. ha. oh that's so sad.

Anyways, the editing on the poetry for the chapbook is coming along. the second issue of the zine is coming along as well too. And hopefully I will have some pictures edited and put up here in the next few days. hopefully. I have a impossibly long to do list right now.

I wanted to post some poetry that I have found in the last few weeks that seems fitting for the season. fitting for my mood.


posted by rob mclennan
Monday, April 03, 2006
into last spring
(from "sequence")

back; this is just to say

a market farm of plums; this is to repeat
returning

why to go there; nothing new
& nothing changed

I am breakaway, speeds
& warped cosmology

if I was debris; to collide
into a body blonde

explosive, would be

a character of scored flesh; in
the centre human

so much of this feeling has consequence

this is an attempt to break
this is another failure

birds & still more; suddenly

how can you be building me a burn

you are silhouette, outside
& never ending



last tulip
by hannah

Once the world loved a girl,
whose arms extended in Spanish gardens
ripe with sleeping cats and dahlias
the hue of her cheeks after
half a liter of Bukoff

whose polite cold hands
cupped the fat-faced August moon
with the placid touch of mothers
and sluts

who the universe tumbled into
at a time
as tall boys, as meadows, rolling a joint
on the first open windowsill
of spring

whose lips would own anything
they brushed against,
two pale anenomes
with the frantic cling
of a child,
of a fever.

and who, as everything I have loved,
walks alone now, straightfaced
defeated by sobriety
waiting for a night train to reel in
and take her soul from her body
and deliver it to the grim bearded men
selling cheap guitars and spare bones
by the stagnant waters of Lethe.


horn
by nick

In eighty-six years,

i will be driving this road


and this seat to the next of me

will be empty


and my hands will be wires
and your hair


snow


and this car will be silent

silent like the day before you were

silent like the day before

for i will have already remembered

all of the songs there are

to remember


and i will have

white wires

for the hush of days

carefully tied about the wisps of your wrists

even though my hands would have shaken terribly



in eighty-six years,

i will be driving down this road

and this seat to the next of me

will be empty

except for some song i will sing

some one without words

though my voice will be all but wisps

white wires

to cross my arms

like a horn

to lead me homeward



Why do you hate me?
John Newlove
from Apology for Absence: Selected Poems 1962-1992.

So you live of the sea;
and I am the dry acrid land.

You have the sweet fish swimming
and dull mannerly grain grows in me.

Your blood shines in curving darts;
I grow in calculated rows.

So I say I love you,
and you say, Why do you hate me?

I speak in a foreign language.
You don't know what I say.




spring has arrived here in sarnia. it is strange that the earth is coming to life again with new beginnings, and I myself am stuck only in horrible endings. I just have to remember that there are 6.5 billion people in the world exactly like me
and maybe I won't feel so bad.