character study

“I hate the people,” he grunts, for he grunts like a bear when he speaks and walks as if there is a 2 by 4 stacked under each arm pit, he is that large, that unmovable.
“I hate the people that you sort of hate for no reason, or like a dumb one, like they talk funny, or they have a terrible sense of humour, and they always insist on talking to you, and you want to ignore them,”
He coughs and braces his arm as I skid on the ice in my sneakers,
“You want to ignore them,” he continues, assured I have my balance, “But they won’t stop trying to converse with you. And you give them one word answers, like yes, and no, and nothing works.” He notices a police van and spits. “Keep moving.” He’s technically not supposed to be drinking or near the place for another 3 days, but it is a new year, and he’s avoided trouble so far, at least in public. “You want to be a jerk to them,” he tells me, charging ahead in the cold, “But you got no good reason, you know? Except for this feeling,” I swig my shitty mixed drink from a water bottle and nod. He pauses, “This feeling that they’re no good.”

citywide girlfriend

i walked with my arms open
zombie draggin goose step
hugging each block of the neighbourhood close to my chest
with the slide of my slip ons
the clutch of my fingers
the wind pulling my sweater open
collar bones exposed to my lovers
my parnters
oh my friends
oh my brothers
my booze soaked
bliss filled slow dancing cigarette memories
intimate and naked
brown, dirty and slick with sweat
all over the sidewalk and taking me home.

night hawks

I walked home with a staggered step and a hundred things on my mind as the world heaved around me. It was mild and I missed our late night walks for a second, before I worried that meant I might miss you. No one finds me at 11pm anymore, travel mug in hand, scaling our city for all it’s worth and I haven’t slept as soundly as I did then since. I lay awake, toss and turn, too many thoughts in a brain too stubborn to turn off.

So now I make lists of the things I want and the things I need. I fold them on tiny bits of paper and lose them in my pockets. I recite them like a mantra, holding onto them like love or kicks in the teeth. Skating in the winter at night in the park, learning more about trains, working on fledgling and lasting friendships, and finding all the best dumpsters. I want to be better, and more inquisitive, but mostly I want someone to walk with me, late, when the city winds down and forgets to disapprove, distracted by the drunks and the students crowded around pizza corner and pouring out of the palace.

We’ll be at the waterfront, laughing out loud.

and i wonder if she will stay my little run away.

i stayed still for too long and it’s come back to get me, grabbing at my heels in the early mornings, sitting on my chest like a night terror, luring me into a series of bad ideas and poorly planned adventures. my brain clicks and my fingers itch and i am always trying to figure out the nearest highway, my fists sore from clenching, a hundred possible destinations calculated in my head, weighed by financial means and ambitions. i will leave tonight, i will leave tomorrow. i will leave every afternoon this week, a woman with ten sweaters and a cardboard sign, begging desperately for direction.

but my knees creak, and my temples slowly go gray, and all the people i loved and love have either grown up or gone home, and i wonder if i am too old for this.

i walk along the sidewalk, skidding on the ice in my slip ons, walking on the curb like a balance beam, arms bent at the elbows, a child’s walk, and a soft sad face, scarred legs, beat up feet, a long story and a farmer’s tan. and i wonder what will become of me.

we together make a limb.

Midnight slices of cheesecake make my friend Chris wonder what type of life he is leading. He smokes a lot, drinks a lot, sits on the porch with his dog and wonders what it means to go forth and sate said desires. Cheesecake, booze, Coleman stoves, tents, all of these things, big things, tiny things, we collect and wrap around ourselves.

I collect scars. Tattoos, piercings, lovers, bruises, boyfriends, fake husbands, burned cds from house shows and postcards from my brave friends, all to form the pieces of this place I come from, the places I am going, pure and whole like a white china diner coffee cup. This is my life. Used a hundred times and never looked at carefully once.

gah

I went for a walk with a friend and he told me all the things I would hate about the place I want to go and all the things I love about here. The scope of my inbetween indecision sprawling like the ugly suburbs that surround my home town, my port, my place of return. The spot I’ve had my thumb tilted towards a hundred times when I am hitch hiking home.
Home, back here beyond the sprawl.

And sometimes I think I’m an idiot for leaving. Most days I know I’ll come back. And somehow I still want to leave.

O my brothers.

I walked by the commons tonight and saw the buildings bright in the dark and imagined all the places I had been before now, my city unfolded before me, hands flat, promising no tricks up its sleeves except time, and growing up. And I thought about memories and all the ones we have, and how if I could go back in time to my siblings I would ask them about a hundred questions to see if they could figure out the men they would or would not become.

Weakness and greatness, lights in the dark.

open letter.

Freight trains move fast. Like people, and time, and days, and changes. My friend Travis wrote a song… One of the lines is “Days fly by like trees along the rails.” The banjo is picky and mounrful in that song. It picks up and falls back like a heartbeat. Like a train. We love trains, us crazy people. We love travel. We have a love/hate relationship with change. We all think we’re going to stay the same forever, or the same with just subtle differences.
We don’t.
It’s ok.
We just don’t.

These days it is cold, and I wear three sweaters and a thick scarf when I walk from my apartment to work to the bar to my apartment. I kick garbage and leaves out of my way when I am in a bad mood and stomp in puddles when I am in a good one. If I run into someone I know, I get a hug and a high five. My days in and of themselves don’t change much. My life however, is so different, yet not all that surprising. I have a retail job at the mall. I dumpster dive. I champion causes. I sleep outside in the summer because I can. I stay up all night at house shows. I make street art. I want to start skateboarding again because it’s better than biking. It takes me place to place and makes me think of other times when I lived in my parents house and my belly was always full, I never had my own bills and my clothes were newish and cleanish always.

I get hungry sometimes now. Sometimes I’m cold, but I am always happy. It’s weird what we own and learn to own up to. I have a cat who sleeps in my lap every night when I come home and kisses my face when I wake up. I have a string of ex-boyfriends who still talk to me, I have a group just strong enough and just mobile enough that when I leave them, I won’t leave that. That something, that whatever.
I’m restless.
I’m changing. I need to change. I guess it’s just in me, you know? That motion. it sits in my heart, and moves around my chest and pushes and pulls me forward. I’m restless as hell, but I think it’s in the best way possible. Does your new city do that to you? or do you love it there? I hope you love it there for now, but I hope you get restless later. Restlessness is good. It keeps you young and and powerful and just scared enough. Some days are terrifying for me and I sort of love it.

I saw a tall kid the other day, waiting for the bus. There was a shorter girl beside him. He had a skateboard and was making dumb voices at her. She covered her face and laughed. I thought of you and me and being dumb and sixteen. I miss that sometimes.

This all seems very vague in retrospect, so let me just spill my guts.
I am good. I am great. I am hyper and lonely and filled up as hell and waiting for the time to pass. My mother thought I lost my mind for awhile and so did I, but then I realized I am just the happiest I have ever been and half drunk on possibility. She is better with things now. We both are.
We’ve changed.

where the soco is warm in your mouth

and i lean against the door frame, pot belly. not pretty, picking at my skin, my scars. the same old stories and the same old songs, counting off the minutes on my dirty fingers.
(do you dare-)
i do.
and i expect this whole fucking city to challenge me.

we can get most anywhere without going anywhere.

I have this city like a heart attack. It sneaks up on me every day that I catch myself smiling to no one, walking to work, your songs in my ears, wrapped about my throat like warm fingers. The catching feeling laying there, light and pale. Driftwood. Bits of string. Things I find on the ground and left behind in my pockets that I can loop around my wrists. I walk, jangling and clicking with these adornments.

These grins are upon my facial muscles before I can stop them, and half staring absently into the eyes of strangers. My mouth brims and my cheeks burn and there is nothing I can do to give the feeling an end.