Yes and...

...How many nights does a man have to work,
Before he calls it a night?

Cake: Working until Friday midnight.
Icing: Losing all your work in a matter of seconds and being told there's no way to get it back.


(AARRRRRGH)

Old Friends

Sat on their park bench
Like bookends.

I met little Calvin today. She is a married woman now. Still the same fierce bundle of energy though. I am happy for all that she is, and how she has changed, and how we stumbled over sentences to keep up with all that we had to catch up on. A year is a long time...

*********
Trrring Trrring.
"Hello, I am unavailable, please leave me a message blahtida."
"Hi Butterfly! It's me, from New York. Dying to know how you're-"
(Loud Australian voice)
"If you want to listen to your message, press 1. If you want to record a new voicemail, press 2."
Shrug.

*********
I must really hate my phone. Last night, I spat on it in my sleep.

Dangling Conversations

(...memories from another phase...)

Paul and Art -

It's a still life water color,
Of a now late afternoon,
As the sun shines through the curtained lae
And shadows wash the room.
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference,
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
The borders of our lives.
And you read your Emily Dickinson,
And I my Robert Frost,
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we've lost.
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm,
Couplets out of rhyme,
In syncopated time
And the dangled conversation
And the superficial sighs,
Are the borders of our lives.

Yes, we speak of things that matter,
With words that must be said,
"Can analysis be worthwhile?"
"Is the theater really dead?"
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow,
I cannot feel your hand,
You're a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation.
And the superficial sighs,
In the borders of our lives.


Conversations undangled

As we sit there
And you drink my coffee
Our life turns into a movie
In eastman colour.

Did you hear the waves last night
Lashing against the shore?
I sure did not as I was more
Or less asleep in your arms.

Now the conversation's undangled,
No more words need to be said -
Let's just go straight to bed
And talk of unimportant things.

Like couplets out of rhyme,
We swam a-round and round,
Until in each other we found
the beauty of free verse.

Freedom at Midnight

Today, I was walking home from work at nine minutes past twelve. Suddenly, I felt this urge - I stopped, pinched out my contact lenses and threw them on the road. Little shiny torturous pieces of blue-tinged plastic.

I walked on, half-blind, but able to see clearly.

A Dream in Q106

She with the brown skin and brown eyes

She looked at me fondly

And spoke in a chocolate voice

----------

if i had a way with words like you do

i would have written those lines about you

----------

My lovely Jibb,

You DO.

A story of

Eyelids stuck to each other
And then of a spring in one step
While the other limps along.

The story of spelling my name
In other peoples' names.
Mary Adam David Harry Ursula Robert I for Identity.

The story of my life
Is no longer nine to five.

(This is for you P: because you loved it, and I love you.)

Freedom in Ties

My loyalties lie with no one but myself. That I absent-mindedly continue to be in my job, in relationships even, is part social pressure, part inertia, and partly the fact that I am having a good time. Permanence is not all that comforting to me - irreversibility is scary (Ack!). Unless of course, it brings along with it more variety than I can ever soak up in seven lifetimes.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

I want to be a free bird. If there's a leash, please make it invisible and do not tell me about it. Do not ask me to be an adult. I'm busy thinking about time travel and bonsai babies and talking rabbits.

How do you give me all this freedom, and more? Maybe it is your unmuddled nature of thought. All I have to offer in return are few laughs, and some poetry.

Under the sheer power
Of an industrial grade shower
At a cafe named Mix
An alcohorlix
Has found her home.

Sigh

I told you! It was so simple - all you had to do, was avoid flying over the Atlantic for those two weeks of your life. Simple, ain't it? And yet now, somehow, we will find ourselves just missing each other. C'est la vie, mon ami. Maybe we can wave to each other from the plane. I will look out for a semi-bald guy.

I really will miss you, Mr. Tambourine man.

Paris, Je Te Tres Aime

Christmas Eve at Montmarte. A violent art gallery. A box of blueberries. A pack of cigarettes.

Et tu, Brute?

The mad one has fallen prey. At long, painful, last.