persephone, you are not the only one who lives with death

This is the moment

You realize,

That no one has told you the truth.

Living with your God of Death

Is warmer,

Closer to the heart of the earth.

The time with your mother

Is filled

With silence.

You cannot tell her

How you spend your time,

How he feeds you pomegranates.

You cannot eat

The fruit she gives you, While looking her in the face.

There is nothing for you but the caves,

Where he peels the flesh

Of the pomegranates

With his lips, Not caring for the juice that sticks

To his fingers,

To his face.

Your mother is cold,

And she has cut your fruit for you.

No hands,

Just utensils.

She never used her hands

To hold you.

No one has told you the truth,

How cold it is

When you are gone.

How the crops stop growing,

And everything

Loses it’s colour.

fortune teller.

the town soothsayer
wears only black,
and says she knows
more than your children
will ever learn.

she is not impressed
when you show her
the weather app
on your phone,
because she has already
seen it coming.

she makes it a habit
to laught and cry
at least once a day.
even at the risk of
watching corny movies.

her only extravagance
is her hair,
which she pays a stylist to cut.
(it was the only thing
about her her mother
ever said was pretty)

she loves music when
it makes her cry,
and she will spend hours
staring at the moon,
just because it is there.

she will tell you what you
want to hear,
but only on her good days.
the fathers and mothers
avoid her, and tell their children
to steer clear.
they think her black clothes
are a bad influence.

if only they knew
she was wearing it for them.
she is the only one
who remembers their past.

wasted on the young.

what are we coming to,
when everyone around you
says "environmentalist"
like it's a bad thing.

because it's too much trouble
to grow what you eat.
we forget we are what we eat.

and so what are you, sticking your nose up
at me, but i can see you are
full of unnatural fats, red dye n. 7,
extracts, additives, chemicals
and bleaches.

your insides never match
your outsides,
but it always ends up the same.
bullshit.

so where are we headed,
that we take this life so serious
we can't enjoy a single moment
whether we're washing off dirt
from our nails or scrubbing away
orange dust from your empty dorito bag.

dirty tears.

i know my questions
are not always welcome,
but you will not feel right,
until you let me in.

at every touch
i feel you turn away.
you have no questions
for me.
my eyes can tell you
what the back of your head
looks like,
i can tell you the feel
of your hand pulling away.

but i cannot let you know
the colour of your eyes,
i have not seen them
long enough.

who stole the truth
from your life?
your tears dried up
too young, too early.

i can tell you that
the crease in your hand
and the scar on your hip,
they are perfect,
but you will close
your eyes and turn away.

who stole your life?
you are only waiting
to be used.

stamp that.

stamp out that light
the one left by your burning ashes
dust on the wheel,
my head is slowly being
screwed in with a corkscrew.

"Ow", to say the least.

not even good old sigur ros
can help you cope at this point.
no faith is lost
where there never was any.

but what can you hold on to,
except your fleeting hope
in tomorrow?
maybe the sun will once again be brighter,
the ocean may not be so deep.

but in the meantime,
stamp out the light
of your fire.
the one that burnt
the forest down.

the ocean may never
be deep enough.

corvids.

take matters of the heart
and put them in your hands,
in the end,
his story will remain the same.

it will not matter
that he did not choose you,
that is his loss; his burden.

how do you put a price
on the thoughts in your head-
put it to paper
and scan the barcode
on the jacket.

he once told you how he used
to talk to crows,
and none of them talked back.

but now he talks to no one
but himself.

Trials and Errors.

"What Odysseus does not know
will not hurt him,"
Penelope thinks,
each time she takes
another warrior man
into her bedroom.

By the time the sun
breaks the horizon,
all her knitting
has unraveled once again,
wrinkled in a corner
of the bed.

The next day, the men
will fight over
who will get
to join her.

Years later, on his return,
Odysseus thinks
Penelope is smiling
because she missed him.

But what a man
don't know
won't hurt him.

first rate tragedies.

there is a light
that looks like fire

-but it does not hold heat-

we call it
the Sun
in canada

ferry fare.

forever seems
like it will
stretch (like your mother's stomach did once)
into a time
longer than it really is

this river is too
wide
to cross without a boat.
the story of
a thousand lives.

never:
1.
not ever; at no time

ending:
1.
a bringing or coming to an end; termination; close

forever just means neverending.

west coast blues.

too much rain
is hard on the soul.

it dries us out,
until our insides shrink
and wither.

the winters are long,
arduous, another word for hard.

the rainwaters are dirty,
they carry heavy thoughts,
heavy weights.
pours down until
your head caves inward.

in on you.

your breath comes
shallow, quick, like
the rain dripping
down the hollow of your cheek.

you repeat it in your head,
"It is never too late"
never thinking
that it is.

thoughts on dying.

the world is slowly,

so slowly,

dying.

dying of life.

if a spider climbed your back,

grazed it's sticky

hands across your skin,

and chose a piece

of flesh,

one it found more juicy;

more tempting.

what would you do?

there is no,

"Oh yes Spiderman, keep going..."
because you do not feel a thing.

the world is slowly

biting you, spreading poison,

but you do not notice.

you are asleep.

you are blind.

the bites are sharp and quick,

not many,

but enough.

it is a slow death.

good evenin'.

these days,
seems like times are changin
slower than normal.
it's different,
i'm still getting used to it.

there was a time,
when i thought
everyone was innocent.
nobody had a thing to hide.

now i know better.

i've learned my lessons,
ones not taught in classrooms.
it happened the hard way.

a truth.

even in the sunlight,
you are blind.

untitled.

if i were a word of hate,
would you notice me more?

it doesn't take much wind
to move the ocean,
but how many waves
does it take to move you?

it wasn't a question of faith.
the water was salty-
full of my tears.
it would hold you up
if you found
you couldn't swim.

if you found you were suddenly
drowning,
who would be there
to pull you out?

if the albatross saw you,
he would keep flying.
there is no redemption
for you here.

the wind would try to help
you out,
but it is not
strong enough for you.
it is invisible, and so,
it is not real.

it would brush your cheek,
tell you to be safe,
but you would not hear it.

you are drowning.

drowned.

i promise.

just keep holding on.

the water will pull you out, yes,
but it will always push you back.

and i will always be
the shoreline.

i will hug you back,
and kiss the salt
from your eyelids.

until there is nothing left,
nothing but your heart.
and i will feed your heart
to the moon,
and the moon will
throw your heart
to the sky,

and you will be the stars.

so just keep holding on.

before the storm.

you once told me
i was like the sea.

that i was rough,
wild, untame-able.
but that only meant
i had a mind of my own,
or so i thought.

and then you told
me what you meant,
that it was the wind
that changed my fates.

it was the wind
who was guiding me,
changing me, moving
my currents.

you told me
i did not follow where
i wanted to go,
that my decisions were never mine.

if i manage to pull myself
out of the water,
i'll be waiting for the wind
to blow you down.

gods of death.

persephone once told me
it was warmer
living with her God of Death,
closer to the heart of the earth.

she told me
it was colder
in our world
that she regretted eating
the fruit her mother gave her.

but it was irresistible,
and so, it tied her down
once more,
until the leaves changed colours.

and then she told me,
her heart was always cold.

but her mother shook
her head, and scooped
more food onto her plate.

trees and me.

sometimes screaming is not
hard enough.
if i was the one to follow you,
take a day
in your foosteps even,
would i still see your mistakes
for what they are?

this is a lonely life,
full of words that don't
mean what they should,
what they do.

but i know what steps
not to take,
to keep my distance,
the way you never did.

because sometimes my screaming
is just not hard enough
for you to hear.

stormwaters.

this was the year
the rain came early
it dragged you out of bed
when you heard it pounding,
maybe it sounded
as if someone
was knocking.

this was the year
the house
got flooded

-no surprise to us,
we had not ignored
the evacuation call.

but you are stubborn,
and you stayed.
you yelled, you held
on to everything
we'd left behind
-most of it.

then the phoneline went down
and we didn't hear from you.
"not much difference,"
mother said.

when we came home
we found you
floating alone
"not much difference,"
i said.

but the rains had not
changed you,
had not even
pierced your skin.

instead you told us
of the great flood of
our ancestors,
stories from our past.

oh you were proud.

but you still could not
see what you
were not holding.

chance of irritability.

the skies are cloudy,
clouded.
like they do not know
where they are meant to go.

i find myself
wondering,
wandering through,
living a half/life.

my heartbeat is slowing down.
it is cloudy. almost clouded.

i have walked and walked,
if only i could find my way
on the back of the wind,
nothing would hold me back.

that is the wish anyway.
but wishes are only for the lonely.

and clouds are not lonely.