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A slate cannot
be wiped clean
if sins are
written with a
chisel.
Sanity, stability, sobriety.
Everything you've never
given to me.
Are you struck with her figure and face?
    How lucky you happened to meet
With none of the gossiping race,
    Who dwell in this horrible street!
They of slanderous hints never tire;
    I love to approve and commend,
And the lady you so much admire,
    Is my very particular friend!

How charming she looks — her dark curls
    Really float with a natural air;
And the beads might be taken for pearls,
    That arc twined in that beautiful hair:
Then what tints her fair features o'erspread -
    That she uses white paint some pretend;
But, believe me, she only wears red
    She's my very particular friend!

Then her voice, how divine it appears
    While carolling: "Rise gentle moon;"
Lord Crotchet lastnight stopped his ears,
    And declared that she sung out of tune;
For my part, I think that her lay
    Might to Malibran's sweetness pretend;
But people won't mind what I say —
    I'm her very particular friend!

Then her writings — her exquisite rhyme
    To posterity surely must reach;
(I wonder she finds so much time
    With four little sisters to teach!)
A critic in Blackwood, indeed.
    Abused the last poem she penned;
The article made my heart bleed —
    She's my very particular friend!

Her brother dispatched with a sword,
    His friend in a duel, last June;
And her cousin eloped from her lord,
    With a handsome and whiskered dragoon:
Her father with duns is beset,
    Yet continues to dash and to spend —
She's too good for so worthless a set —
    She's my very particular friend!

All her chance of a portion is lost,
    And I fear she'll be single for life;
Wise people will count up the cost
    Of a gay and extravagant wife:
But tis odious to marry for pelf,
    (Though the times are not likely to mend,)
She's a fortune besides in herself —
    She's my very particular friend!

That she's somewhat sarcastic and pert,
    It were useless and vain to deny;
She's a little too much of a flirt,
    And a slattern when no one is by:
From her servants she constantly parts,
    Before they have reached the year's end;
But her heart is the kindest of hearts —
    She's my very particular friend!

Oh! never have pencil or pen,
    A creature more exquisite traced;
That her style does not take with the men,
    Proves a sad want of judgment and taste;
And if to the sketch I give now,
    Some flattering touches I lend;
Do for partial affection allow —
    She's my very particular friend!
She feels no confusion
in her glance toward his eyes.
Eyes deep blue
as a mountain lake.
She senses comfort
across her
chest, like the first time
her cheek touched his
bicep when they walked
enmeshed.

Now feels so warm,
soft on the mind
for fear has
fallen to the trail.
Renewal of trust
fills her heart.
Now feels
like the first time
again.
There is the latent hum of some probably-industrial sumthin-or-another in the distance. Sounds like a ferry at dock, or the Townsite mills characteristic hum of eternity as it once acted as the forever-whitenoise of my past life in Powell River.

Sasha has gone to see her friend a floor down. I sit candidly at her desk typing these words on her MacBook Pro.. her dorm is an ambient water of a place, but with every passing night I spend in it, it becomes harder and harder to fall asleep. The bed feels like wood board or padded cement now. Sasha rolls around in her sleep, occasionally choking on her tonsils and gagging a prolonged operatic note of snores. It's not like she can help it.. often, she talks about removing her tonsils as if it's something she can do with a spare moment between classes.

The dorm was easier for me to inhabit when I imagined her living quaintly and quietly without my constant everywhereness.. on her first night alone in bed, she slept like a baby and the overheating, I'm sure, was less to bear in my absence as there wasn't a ******* furnace spurning mammalian blood to every antipode of my body for the sake of staying alive.. just her capillaries attending to the night-shift and leaving no feedback loop between our ***-drenched thermostats. There was a feeling of otherness to it that I could warm my soul with as if I were people-watching at a mall filled with everyone I've ever encountered in the matrix.

She's beautiful. Sasha, I mean. Superstitious despite her attempts to claim otherwise, but of a massive intelligence often unspoken and endowed with a linguistic nature that can speak regardless of words. Highly suspicious of some perceived bond between Anya and I that can't seem to be severed, and playfully dousing suspicions of general infidelity into many of our brink-night conversations.. I can't say I do much to remedy her paranoia as I always kick it back with consistent jokes of having '30 girlfriends' or 'that was what the girl I ****** the other night said as well! Trippy.'

These are obvious jokes. I would never cheat on her and it's a pain to have her imagine I would.

Christ be honest, I can never find the time to write anymore because I keep pretending I'm busy. I keep glassing my eyes apart with coffee and **** and feeling the inner sting to write and write and write until my fingers are bruised and my entire demeanour is nothing more than an existence in pure, floating consciousness of sleet-covered panic attack self-immoliating itself in a Wal-Mart parking lot just to say hiya, Good God, how's the cloud of idolatry today? Fleeting? Empty? Shat? I'm starting to think you have the shorter end of the stick cuz I'm pretty sure I've found the Kingdom of Heaven and it's all a bunch of beautiful panic remedy exacterbated by SSRI psychedelic depersonalization with a life-wish disguised as a death-wish to push the envelope for mails sake, cuz I've got a message for the human race and all it says is 'humanity is not a RACE chill the **** OUT and become the human pace for the sake of nil planet without a plan you aren't a ******* poster-boy you're a poser' all very stone-cold thoughts in a volcano.. all very valid but pointless semantic gestures towards Finnegans Wake and the sequel I'd like to write called Finnegans Nap.

The other day, I stole a book from the university library.

I had a freelance article I had to start and preferably finish that same day, and Sasha had decided to skip psychology for Charles Bukowski so we scouted a quiet space on the windowsill overlooking the perpetual busk of student body.. I plugged my laptop in and sourly gazed at the flakey subjects I had to choose from until I noticed we were right next to a giant section entirely dedicated to the study of the Beat Generation. I picked out the closest book, and dove up on some academic diatribe about the implementation of Timex making watches an affordable commodity during the post-war boom, causing economy to become totalitarian in its accuracy and thus mental hegemony. It worked its way into stating that Jack Kerouac's On the Road was a blatant and concise rebellion against this form of timekeeping in its hedonic, careless flow that was not marked by 6 o'clock or on-the-dot redundancy.. the subject matter being so dense and alluring, I turned to Sasha and said, 'I have to steal this book.'

She chuckled a little, being a chronic kleptomaniac herself, and retorted, 'are you sure you can do that? They have these sensor things that go off when you leave.. they'd catch you probably.' In my mind, I was needing to exorcise myself of Judaeo-Christian morality so as to guarantee a survival and thriving intellectual feed regardless of red-tape or monetary symbolism.. I saw myself adapting to a hedonic habit of robbery for the sake of food and freedom or some such half-witted excuse like that, and took Sasha's warning as a challenge to transcend my typical moral comfort zone.

Glassy-eyed, I asked Google how I'd go about bypassing the security scanners and, lo and behold, within 5 minutes I had my answer and was already digging through the books binding with my house-key to remove the magnetic strip hidden in the spine. After 10 minutes of exhilaration and anxiety at potentially being caught, the strip was out and jammed between two loose wood-boards in the window sill. I told Sasha we should try to leave.

As I neared the scanner, I let go of consequence in remembrance of my mortality, the blank expressions on our faces probably hinting at some form of degenerate nervousness had someone decided to analyze us aaaaaand yet.. we made it through as safe as a bird through an open window then out the other side.
excerpt: "the mystic hat of esquimalt"
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