4 years

it’s been a long time since I wrote to you, sent you love letters, sent you loved letters alpha-beta and spelled it out for you: you rock so much, even when the world does NOT hear you.

You are the most beautiful representation of nature and natural, and the world will never be ready. They look for lies and your truth falls short of their expectation (to be disappointed).

Artificial in its intelligence, neither based nor lofty in goals, the world is not meant for you. You are too big for it, too harmonious in sound and presence, too expansive and evolving.

it is lonely, it is hard, it doesn’t stop and you feel so…very… singular. But, a constellation of distant stars make up heaven, and guide us when the world’s fickle lights eventually go out.

Welcome to 2020!

Anything is possible

The world is not ending

You are precious and life is held dear

The Earth is learning to thrive again

You are setting goals that seem attainable in a world you are finally beginning to understand

The clock is ticking, but so are you, and you are in lockstep with the universe, rhythmically and in season

The path is forged and you see it clearly

You are in community, in anti-isolation

You are taken care of, and the revolution is not individualized

Care has no ethnicity, and true love is anti-racist af

Marry the movement, keep its image in your locket; open it when your road reaches the badlands and has to go through them

The way was already paved for you, your book written, there’s nothing any of them can do to keep you from your goals, because they are yours and everyone’s

Keep going, walk together, we will make it, even if we don’t.

Pegasus

Funny that humans don’t have wings
Funny that when they do fly they must take luggage, baggage, things they feel they need to survive
We fly to get away
We go far and are followed by all the things we need
To survive
But the pegasi
In her nudity and natural state
Takes off
Because she’s meant to

But in our lowliest and best
Nothing grown on us enables us to fly
To run without weight
To get away with that quickness
To be truly that free in an instant

Is that because we are not meant to be fetter-less without the Earth’s consent?
Or that we are not meant to escape without undoing the sacks,
Or unraveling the truth by thread
And dealing with our issues before they drag us down to the ground, and allow our shadows to finally catch up with us?

We cannot utilize our natural wings if we keep trying to fly with baggage.

an awful lot like you

 

I will no longer seek proof that you do not want to be racist

You wear it as a badge

In defiance

In deference

To ward off suggestions that you do not have the right to all you own

That you did not earn it

That you believe you are better

And that there is an other

Other person

Other land

Other world

Other place far away in your imagination that curtails your theft

That feeds these children you steal from in equal portions to what you consume

You manifest the other

Imagine it is as you

And in your mind your racism is justified

Because if they are like you, then they must

Steal

Lie

Rape

Not understand you

Believe you must die so they may live

Will take what was originally yours

Will take your culture and call it theirs and not give you the credit you deserve

Instead, to fight this person who seems an

Awful

Lot like you,

You scan their cultures for things you think authenticate you (and wear them, or perform, like it’s Halloween every day)

You demand forgiveness for things you feel ashamed of – knowing that if you aren’t forgiven, you are forever guilty

You demand their food, their supply of gold and coffee, their spirituality and land it was built upon, and of course the secrets to it

Because if they seem so happy with all those things, as they smile through the pain, you believe you will feel the same

And on it goes in a cycle of consumption that is like a proclamation of your declaration that you no longer care to hide your racism because you feel hurt, left out, alien and unwelcome

If letting thieves into your temple provides you comfort, fight on

Fight with two fingers pointing outward while the eight remain staring you in the face

In defiance

In deference

Of the house you built of stolen parts, by stolen babies, with stolen labour, on stolen land

sometimes ok, always human

I wrote a book!  It’s entitled “sometimes ok, always human” and it is a short collection of my poetry and illustrations.

I have posted my poetry extensively on my writing blog, electropennpad.wordpress.com, and some of the ones I have published there are in this book…but some aren’t!

If you would like to purchase a copy you can go to my Smart Cookie Studio store on Etsy and grab one – only $15CAD!

To The Muse/Musician

 

Thank you for letting the sun shine through your porous layer

Through your prism to dazzle us with kaleidoscope interference

You leave us starry eyed in admiration

Your interpretation of the Most High’s language

Into prose and sonnets and verse and notes that can’t be played on any instrument found on earth other than your heart strings

Thank you

For showing us a world only you can see

For taking us on a trip thru doors we don’t have keys for

For opening the mountain’s eye to see the other mountains in range and the trees in the cool wind bending at its behest

Thank you

For tickling eardrums with honey and audio saccharine to make life’s sad journey one that’s bearable, beautiful, tangible, expectant of more lovely things to come

You make us put our phone down

love past last call

you’re so much fun

and your smile is so easy

melting me like butter

my eggs over easy

love me like you love your liquor

love me like you like the lights

and the music

and late toronto nights

that start at 1am

with a grand entrance of everyone rushing to the bar to get what they can before it closes at last call

at last call

at long last long lasting love does not find itself in the club but

maybe it does

maybe I will

we’ve been here enough times to know it’s more than tipsy

we’re drunk in love with bedtime stories

but when you sober up

am I what you wake up to?

are you who I imagine?  am I blinded by LED’s that shorten my retina and whiskey that implicates my judgement?

yes, to all, and whatever

love past last call, even if we aren’t together

I’m not just a number or a notch but I have one of each and because you have both please remember where I stand

remember the eyelashes that sometimes need reapplying, the car you parked for $20 for 4 hours and the story’s so enticing

we both look good

fit profiles

keep it light

love past last call as long as we remain in the night

and never see that we swim with sharks

both prey to each others narrative

devoured by shallow waves

 

still waters still run deep

and we are all made of rivers

 

 

(original photo cred Amanda Narain)

 

 

 

Appropriate (adj)

https://www.instagram.com/p/BBbPYg3jZym/

I am left (I miss you)

I am left

So fragile

I’m shaking from within

My limb is gone

I can still feel it grabbing for the records or holding onto you

But now I offer half-grasps

I’m incomplete

I’m so raw

And it hurts so much

My limb is gone

A piece has fallen off

To the dust

Blowing through the portal to the other world

I want to chase you there

But then someone else’s limb will fall

Upsetting dust everywhere

Tearing eyes

Producing more half embraces

And incomplete circles

I’m so fragile

I’m shaking from within

You are gone

My right hand

My response

I’m left

To listen only where once it was written

Speak to me

Quell the quaking earth that no one else can feel

The heart muscle that is strained

My right hand

Where I am left

Manifesting supervillains…pow pow

 

We’ve fantasized so much about supervillains in every comic and cartoon world that we’ve begun to make fantastical ones real, while the real ones keep escaping. The actual ones hide behind corporations, corrupt politicos, are tyrants who run things and folks who uphold this behaviour.  Unfortunately companies who *sell* comics or children’s cartoons constantly want to produce art and movies that speak metaphorically – Malcolm X as Magneto and Dr King as Professor X are examples of this metaphoria, and I believe it was (until recently) mainly to “protect” the comic world’s main buyers, white boys and men (but I’m not knocking the story line or the buyers). No one wanted to be literal – and in fantasy fiction of course that’s not the goal.  But I’m beginning to feel that what we write, we are writing into real life.  Behold, the person we created: evil for the sake of evil (he said it himself, he wants to be the “world’s heel”). Did we create him?  If we did it’s looking like he bought into this fantasy as much as we did. We taught him how to act. Did we manifest him?  If so, how can we ever undo that?

This is one reason I have a hard time writing dystopic fiction.  Not that I believe we aren’t headed for apocalyptic awfulness for a while anyway…I just don’t want to manifest more of it through my pen.  What we write we bring to life.  I do believe in the power of “good” or truth to overcome or level things, but I’m really torn, even as many stories and poems that pop into my head don’t end well.  I guess that’s a thought in progress for me.