Archive for the 'snippets from somewhere' category

Because I miss this side of me too

Oct 05 2011 Published by under snippets from somewhere

For Paul

I keep forgetting to write. But not exactly forgetting. Because my voice my voice my voice keeps getting jammed in all these foreign frequencies. And I don’t remember how to speak outside code. Once upon a time, I knew the translation. Ways to be understood on the fuzziest line. Crisp diction and garbled messages repeating and repeating on remote towers. The distinction between here and there lost in several fractions of a second. We never knew how to compensate for the delay, and sound has never yet turned a corner without help. We were alone in static, in the hiss of a lost line. Clipped click of radio pulse.

10-4, 10-35. Control, out.

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Demanding answers by rote

Jul 18 2011 Published by under intransitive verbiage, snippets from somewhere

So you have to understand. There was this song. No, a series of songs. A whole album stole me. While I drove months down the curves of that road. To, past, from lovers who forget me still. Nights breaking the surface of a melody. Thin skin of ice meeting pavement and breaking where tires tear at frost. Who was she?

The soundtrack bubbles against a crush of bodies. Recorded piano glides between legs and sashays around hips; the silent clip of hard soles against harder concrete outside this microcosm on wires. We are all bound to this route. Lurching to predestined stops. Except when our our minds are overwhelmed with everything we’ve accepted. And we change the sign to flash SORRY, FULL. But not soon enough. Each thought grazes the knees of another, pressed thigh to thigh and arm to arm. Careful never to make eye contact, except in the briefest moments when your eyes make sense to mine.

These memories wander long. Time as convoluted as a cerebral cortex. Months still shiny under all the dust. Polished too smooth from too much tumbling. Does she remember who I turned out to be?

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I say that melting snow has its own smell

Apr 25 2011 Published by under snippets from somewhere, these small moments

The scent of pine trees waking in the ravine between here and there. An echo in this circular push and body crouching against aluminum frame. Coiled mimicry of metal. Finding the flex and strength of muscles in parallel with these angles. We are testing air, dust, asphalt against endurance. Endurance against terrain. Metres and kilometres expanding and crossing time with motored vehicles that misunderstand our intentions. They’ve never felt the release of sinew fresh from hibernation. They pause in perpendicular confusion. For us. The space between joints, a cubby hole for breathless laughter.

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Where my feet land

Oct 26 2010 Published by under snippets from somewhere, these small moments

7:15 a.m. autumn dark sky. Three little degrees above zero. And I’m walking where there’s no sidewalk to catch a bus. The stop faces the Hyundai dealership, all bright and humming with prospective sales. I scour my slowly caffeinating brain to describe the light filling the glass walls of the showroom. This brighter-than-white, artificial-day fluorescence that fills car lots and hospitals. That disrupts circadian rhythms and tilts the world at cockeyed angles. Makes me feel I’ve been up all night. Again.

This intersection is busy. Sodium streetlights almost irrelevant in the steady pulse of traffic. North-south, then east-west. Right angles of the compass. Pushing past and past. And in this whoosh and murmur of traffic, the song of this city pulls at my toes, and each mouthful of morning lingers on my tongue.

The bus is half dim. All lit up at the back where blue-collar boys lurch in and out of sleep to the rhythm of new passengers. I’m the stranger in this seat. They’ve all taken this route before, and the slow exhale of a work-week condenses into chatter. We’re all on our way to a Friday morning, for whatever it means, whatever it’s worth. My hearing sidles into the next conversation and curls with a cozy grin against a stranger’s voice.

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