blue

all the baking and busy and shopping and fierce intense face-down
in cookbooks will not
make this 1982
will not allow me to climb that plane, live on that
wavelength where all the past and present are future are in a line and you know they
are all one, all now, all to come, all in the past.

my poor limited logical brain knows
knows too much
knows too well
knows that I am not 12, that santa is not
poised over mexico
that a magical entry to a new world is not
wrapped in tinsel under my tree
that the six faces that go with this date
this night
are not here

won't be here

today is just a day

a post-solstice step along the way, crawling back toward sunshine.
That too, shall come
This too, shall pass.

Reunited

The lies they told us
  in high school
           the lies that divide

That clothes matter
Interests define
That you and I
Could never see
      eye to eye.

Labels strip identity,
Make you feel separate from me.

But we are music,
You and I

We fly,
Rhythm and beat,
A blended harmony

We are poetry,
You and I

We sigh,
Meter and sound and
   Raw emotion.

Our colours break prismatic
   from this black
     and white
         and grey color bar

Together, we are more than apart.
A whole, complete beating heart.

Rainy Summer

Writing happy poetry is HARD!

It seems the rain won’t stop

This summer

And I won’t see the buttercups

Reach for the sun

I won’t see

Diamonds on the harbour next to the oil rainbows

I won’t see you

Tanned

But the rain sparkles on your hair

And your eyes are all the warmth I need.

Teal Tennis Shoes for a Great Escape

Brittany wasn't sure how she'd gotten here, but she knew that SHE had not put those shoes on. She was wearing a very cute party dress--where had this come from? She'd remember this dress. Black and sequinned with splashes of colour. Very elegant! Whose dress was this?

Anyway, she would NEVER have chosen to put teal tennis shoes on to complete this outfit. So something funny was going on.

Besides that, she was in a small round room with a very high ceiling. Wait... make that no ceiling. A well? Was she in a well? Maybe something similar, but with no water.

Designer cocktail dress. Tennis shoes. Imprisoned. And... her hand suddenly went to the back of her neck... her hair had been cut.

This was starting to add up to one thing: Timothy.

"JESUS CHRIST TIMOTHY. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE NOW?"

Her voice was echoey. She felt alone, but was entirely unfazed to hear a faint "Brittany..?" coming from behind a round wall.

She gritted her teeth.

"Brittany, I think I'm hurt."

"What the hell have you done?"

"I need a glass of water. And one of my pills." So feeble.

"TIMOTHY WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE?!!"

She could feel the heat building up in her midsection. She sighed. Might as well use the rage. "TIMOTHY I HATE YOU!" She cocked her fist and smashed it into the wall... and it bounced back, snapping her shoulder uncomfortably.

Rubber stone walls. Nice touch. Fuck fuck fuck.

"Timothy, tell me what happened."

"Brittany," came the whiny reply, "are you mad?"

She felt a molar crack. Deep breath.

"A little, Timothy. I'm trying not to be. Where are we?"

"I don't know. I don't knoooooowwwww. I was just saying you should dress up more and then you blinked out and I thought I'd help by trimming your mullet..."

"I DON'T HAVE A MULLET."

"Well, not NOW you don't, you've got a very chic cut NOW. But it WAS a mull..."

"THE CHASE, TIMOTHY. CUT TO IT."

"I'm GETTING there," he was whiny again. "So I cut your hair, and you were still out. I was SO BORED."

She remembered now, getting called to the university board to defend her thesis. She'd explained to Timothy that the call could come at any time, but she'd astrally projected without actually telling him when she did. Sigh. Her brother was a mental seven year old. He needed constant supervision.

"So then I thought we should go dancing, and so I conjured you a dress--"

"--which is very nice. Lovely, Timothy."

"--but you know you'd always want to wear uncomfortable shoes and then you never DANNNCE, so I asked Bobo what shoes were comfortable and he said tennis shoes, so I got you some..."

Bobo. The house monkey. Of course.

".. and then there was a flash and then we were here and I bumped my head and I'm THIRSTY and I never got to dance at all. Why did you bring us here?"

Hm. Why did SHE bring them there? She was pretty sure she'd had nothing to do with it. However, telling Timothy that would only make him whinier or panicked, and in either case, he would be no help.

"Timothy are you in a room? A round room?"

"Parts of it are. Round the wrong way. Why didn't you take me with you into your room? I don't LIKE being alone."

"I know, bub. I know. I'm going to try to get us out. Do you want to help?"

"If I CAAANNN."

"Let me use your hand. Yes--" she cut off his interruption,"I know it will hurt, but only for a minute, I promise. Okay."

"I guess so." The answer was definitely pouty. She focussed, rubbed her bare neck again, looked at the tennis shoes and let the anger bubble. Then she closed her eyes and felt Timothy's arm. Slid it on like a glove. Pulled back, and... POP. His hand popped through the wall. Single-sided rubber, as she'd suspected.

Squirrel!

It started with the old "watched pot" saying. Jonah had been driving her nuts for days using the expression, so at supper, she stood inches from the peas, intensely staring until -- just before the bubbles burst the surface of the water, the phone by her head rang sharply.

Gasping, she leapt backwards, narrowly avoiding knocking the pot to the floor and onto her feet. As she turned to grab the phone, the pot boiled.

Damn you, Jonah.

So naturally, she snapped as she answered the phone, "Yes? What?"

And equally naturally, it was Jonah's mother who frostily asked to speak with her son. Karen didn't even bother to try and explain. She just rounded the corner into the living room and dropped the phone into his lap. He was watching a squirrel documentary, so he put his mother on speaker phone. To Jonah, this was sensible.

Rolling her eyes, Karen stepped back into the kitchen to remove the rapidly boiling peas from the heat and take the chicken out of the oven. She could hear Jonah's mother indignantly demanding why he stayed with such a harridan.

Who uses the word harridan?

On the television, the narrator spoke soothingly and indulgently about the bad habits of squirrels.  He called them "peccadilloes."

***
A power outage knocked out the power overnight and so, not only was Karen late waking up, but the coffee pot wasn't on. She lifted the kettle and then slammed it back down again. Might as well make lemonade from the mess: she'd treat herself to take-out coffee on the way to work.

Naturally, the drive-thru was backed up to the street, since everyone else on the block had the same thought. Finally, Karen coasted to the window. As she retrieved her coffee and slid a toonie at the server, she saw a swift movement out of the corner of her eye. She blinked and dropped the toonie beside the car. Cursing, she put the vehicle in park and opened the door to grab it. As she reached up and dropped the money on the counter, her eyes focused on the dark corner of the window above the cash register. She saw the sharp bright eyes of a squirrel looking back.

She blinked again. Closed her door. Shifted out of park and drove away. There were no squirrels in coffee shops, for the love of god.

****

At the office, she spilled the last half of her coffee on the notes she'd just printed for the CEO's speech. Mutter mutter. Mopped it up and hit print again. The photocopier was on the fritz more than it was working, but seemed to be doing okay today, although it was making weird chattering noises.

After dropping the speech on Mr. Panzer's desk, Karen swung by the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Clicked on the kettle. Stared. Nothing. After five minutes, Linda came into the kitchen. Looked at her oddly. Plugged in the kettle and left.

Sighing, Karen trailed back to her office. Stupid bloody pots. Stupid watching. Bloody squirrels. She looked out her window across the parking lot. There was a tidy pile of 4 or 5 pinecones on her car.

****
On the way home, Karen stopped at the mall to pick up eggs and chocolate chips to make cookies. Leaving, she passed a small cardboard box. "FREE KITTYS" was written on the side of it, and two mewling scraps of felinity were inside. She barely glanced down.

At home, she assembled the cookies, then as they were cooling, remembered her good cookie tins were still in the spare bedroom closet. She yelled, "JONAH". No answer. As if from a distant universe, she heard the shrill PSHING PSHING of laser fire. She sighed. Well, when the marshall of the house was in the basement fighting space crimes, a gal had to do stuff for herself. For the greater good.

She pulled herself up the dark stairs and flicked on the spare bedroom light. Only one 20 watt bulb was in the overhead fixture. She remembered swapping it now with her sewing room task lamp bulb. Hmph. Oh well. In the dusky room, she opened the closet, and a small chittering satellite sprang from an inner orbit to glance off her left shoulder and run straight up the canopy on the bed.

Karen, shocked, sat down hard on the floor. "WHAT's GOING ON?" she heard distantly from downstairs. She looked up. The squirrel stared down at her balefully.

***
Back at the mall, the box was still there. She grabbed the ginger cat, and then decided to take the tabby too, for good measure.

The phone was ringing when she came in. She glanced at it. Jonah's mother. In the distance, the ek-ek of interstellar machine guns sounded. She put down a dish of milk, released the wee kittens to roam and explore, and turned on a pot of water. Stood up, pulled the phone cord from the wall and sat back down, bringing a recipe book.

"Wild game," said the book. "You can fry, fricasee, broil, roast or even boil squirrels."

Karen smiled.

Jinxed

Taxi Driver could not be the same film with a female protagonist. A woman scarred by trauma and unable to connect with people won't turn to ammunition. She won't shave her head. She may seek out needy people to rescue, but these will be men who will absorb and deflect her need to be needed. She may experience a few rejections, but often she'll find a man willing to be her object. He will soak up and manipulate her attentions to make himself feel better, eventually discarding her, but not as a ticking time bomb. She will be a husk, an empty vessel. Not enough self left to produce a psychotic break.

I writing this, and the wander to the sink. I have a razorblade in my hand. Last week, I had the word "Sorry" tattooed across my chest. The tattoo artist paused with a short look of concern, but I look haggard, mean, hard. I am not a middle-class woman having a mid-life crisis. He shrugged and carefully applied the tattoo. Sorry.

I use the razorblade to carefully trim away the dark hairs on my upper lin. 

I closely examine my face. Find a few blackheads on my chin, and lose myself in squeezing them, pushing out the dirt and pus, making the pore empty and clean. In five minutes my chin is red, inflamed, with a few spots of blood, but purified. I squint at my eyebrows. A memory pushes forward, Tom's hand on my cheek, his thumb tracing the line between my eyes, smoothing it upwards, like I am a cat. His pussy.

I reach for the tweezers, plucking the stray hairs from between my brows, the hairs growing under my browline, as if ignorant of the fact that this is not their place. Stupid hairs. Squint again at my chin. Whiskers. Those hard hairs, the bristly ones, the hairs that say I'm over forty. Pluck them too.

I open my shirt, check my nipples for stray hairs. Pluck them too. Someone inserts a rogue slide into my mental presentation: Amber's perfect rounded cleavage. I take the razorblade, underline the Sorry.

Trance-like. I idly apply the razor to my hair. I shave a patch around my right ear. It's harder than I imagined. Not much wonder deNiro's mohawk wasn't straight.

I fill the tub with water, hot hot water. Put in a capful of bleach, and a bath bomb one of Tom's cousins had given me two Christmases ago. Remember the overheard kitchen conversation: God, I never know what to get her. I know, right? She's so.... weird. I got bath bombs from Liquidation World. Some for the kid's teachers, some for the lady who does our cleaning, and one for her. What else are you gonna give her? Right?

I put the razorblade in reach, pour a glass of wine. Cheap red, tastes like cardboard and vinegar. Whatever. I slide into the tub. Now? No, not yet. Sip the wine. The wine & hot water are relaxing. Masturbate one last time first. My hand cups my right breast. Imagine a man behind me. Not Tom. Someone with a big dick and a hard need. My eyes close. I knead, pinch the nipple, press my thighs together tightly. I feel the blood pounding in my clit. Soaped, I glide my hand over my belly, down to my thighs, fingers in position, dip between my legs.

I watched Transsiberian last night. Now I imagine sex on a train, in one of those tight bunks. So public. So naughty. I rub around my clit, moaning, feeling everything becoming lubricated. Sip more wine.  Imagine for a moment that it's Amber's cunt. That appeals to my humour. What if Amber left Tom for another woman? Yeah, fuck, feel that bitch? Feels good, doesn't it? I moan more, picture her big round titties floating in the water. The man I imagined into being is still behind me. Likes seeing me fingering Amber. His dick is rubbing against my ass. I feel my orgasm bearing down on me, bursting out like sunlight from the clouds. I ride the waves for nearly 30 seconds. Lay still, panting. Eyes closed. Maybe I can drown.

Open my eyes to see a wee pair of paws on the tub side. A little pink nose and two green eyes. A loud MREOWR. Jinx wants to be part of everything. Or maybe she's just hungry. I  sigh. Look again at the razorblade.

Travis Binkle should have bought a cat. I wonder if I can find the screenwriter's email address and send him this message. I rise from the tub and wipe the blood from my chest. Go find polysporin. Pour another half-glass of wine. And then wait.

Homeward

In the light of the half moon the forest had crisp edges. Everything seemed more real, more three dimensional than it had in the flat light of midday.

Helena drew in a quiet breath, let her toes explore the roots under her feet. The thin pliant leather of her forest boots were designed for this, quiet movement. She crept forward, so smooth and silent that a mouse blinked sleepily at her and didn't even twitch his whiskers when she stepped over him.

The silence was key for at least fifty more yards. In the trees around she could hear the small coos and rustles that signalled the filbains were sleeping yet. If one of these spy system birds awoke and began calling, all would be lost. She'd be back at the school, locked away for five more years, wasting time on religious studies while at home, her family fought and were slaughtered.

No more.

Twenty five more yards. The clearing was ahead, and then the wall, and then freedom where she could run like the wind, reclaim her bow and sword, and fly home.

The clearing was the most dangerous part. Here she could not melt into the shadows, and the ground was seeded with concussive devices. She could be an hour getting past and she must not be seen. Must not make a false move.

Before heading to the clearing, she paused to drink from her canteen, eat a piece of lamb jerky and prepare herself.

The clearing. Over the wall. Home.