Handshaken

There's something so rewarding
about being more than civil
in a situation where you have the right
(God-given, I might say)
to be much less.
And I pride myself on this fact:
that I was,
so much more than civil,
I'm trying to show good sportsmanship.
After all, to you, this is merely a game.
One thing I'll never know
is how strategic you were
because you never,
not for one second,
let down that guard.
Allow me to say, however,
that you were either
extremely clever
or a single thought never traversed
the empty expanse
of that pretty head.
I gambled harder on you
than I ever have on anyone
and I'm done giving out
second chances and get out of jail free cards
like they're pennies,
or worse: dirt.
Because they're not,
they are so much more,
yet that is how you treated them.
I don't care so much
about the state of my heart,
I knowingly laid that on the line.
But the disrespect
and time you wasted
are insurmountable.
So no more of your
high school glory days bullshit
and no more of your fucking complacency.
I'm tired of megalomania,
so no more.
Molly said it best:
I dealt with more bullshit
than you were worth.
So tonight I shook your hand,
and congratulated you,
after I danced to your music,
listened to you play,
watched you put your arm
around the girl in the red coat.
In that handshake,
a goodbye, a knowing wink,
a 'you got me', an 'I'm out',
and maybe one day, in retrospect,
you'll finally understand what it meant,
a little respect.

tonight i will

Tonight I want to rid my heart of you.
Tonight I want to be done.
Tonight I want to burn every page
that has your name upon it,
and purge every hope and dream
I ever needlessly stowed for you.
You have a whole store room
of wishes spent,
of letters written,
and poems,
all to you,
and tonight I will lock the door
and throw away the key.
Throw it into the river,
so that it will be water under the bridge.
Tonight I'm done,
I will bow out with grace,
I will end it with a handshake
and say 'good game',
because you played so hard
that I'm opting out.
In light of everything,
I can no longer justify this gamble.
And all the reason I used to try
boiled down to stupidity,
and so no more.
Tonight I will not be the fool,
tonight cries for catharsis,
tonight my heart begs to moved forward,
and tonight I will.

hoops, loops and oops.

If only 'twas known
the sheer number of hoops
I have jumped through, of late.
The volume of mental loops and judgmental oops
I pulled after vast excavation
of the bare threads of existence
far outweighs any evidence in your favour,
and I can't decide what that means.
Every road seems a dead end,
every hope a pipe dream,
but even dead ends and pipe dreams are disputable,
right?
I've tried to gently tug at layers
of life-long armour
carefully constucted
to build a fortress,
and what a fortress it has become.
Complete, even, with a moat.
You know what (the ever ambiguous) 'they' say,
if you're going to get wet
you might as well go swimming.
So i did (for I am forever trying and testing what 'they' say),
I dove straight in,
tried to reach the depths,
tried to cross to shore,
tried to lower the drawbridge.
I've heard that there is no try,
there is only do or do not.
Oops.
Yet I am not done,
not now, not yet.
I plan to see my pipe dream
to the very end of my pipe,
will accept a dead end
only at the very deadest of ends.
Now I dutifully tell you
that the end is drawing nigh,
in my own bubbling indifference,
from a bubble too often burst.
There is a chance,
a small sliver of a chance cradled
by the moon,
(because sometimes even the moon
can only take so much waning),
so take it.

Enumeration

I'm sorry if I'm crass.
I'm a hint spiteful on days
when nothing matters.
They come too fast and too frequently
for my taste.

Bitter translates to
bitterish translates to
bitterness translates to
bittered.

(I've been brittle,
breaking,
broken,
barely breathing,
beneath it all,
bruised and
bare.
I've been battered
by debris of a life exploded,
a mind imploded,
a being overloaded.
I've begged.
Pleaded.)

Before it all would I have enumerated
the translations of bitter?

The Way I Feel These Days

If I could describe
the way I feel these days,
I'd say it's something like
a long lost friend,
so lost this friend
is almost a stranger,
knocking on my door.
And the deepest core of me,
some might call it a soul,
rejoices,
revels in the good company,
content and reminiscing.
I invite my friend
to the fireplace,
where we watch the flames dance
and remember what it's like
to feel good,
and we feel good.
We drink and talk away
the night, laugh,
make merry and bask
in the ever-warm glow
of this night.
Everything illuminated
by the gentle flickering
of candles
in the fireplace.
I am warm, calm,
life feels softer
than it has in years,
and it's becoming.
I've decided that I'm
far too good at ambiguity,
but this won't be ambiguous;
I'm touched,
peaceful,
at rest.
Happiness is home.

Twenty

I'm okay with being twenty,
because today I woke up
and I decided that I was twenty.
Time didn't decide,
nor did numbers
or years,
I did.
My birthday is really just incidental.

I call this piece: An All Too Serious Joke

In the ever wise words
of Rilo Kiley,
I'm not my perspective.
I want you to know.
But too often my perspective
is all the world sees,
I become controversial,
a mere symbol of a war waged
between ideologies.
A pawn in the fucking game
of life, represented
by my ideas and my actions.
Actions speak louder than words
but you can't understand my actions
without hearing my words.
A perfect catch-22
where without conversation
my actions become meaningless,
or unintelligible:
clay to be molded by any artist
into exactly what they desire.
Fantastic, but that's not me.
Just so you know,
I'm not my perspective.
I'm growing tired of endlessly
justifying myself
to those who miss the point.
I'm sick of running in circles
with people, watching them try
to catch their own tails,
and to what end?
(That's a joke.)
So much for dialectic materialism,
sorry Hegel, Marx and Feuerbach.
The world really is
going to the dogs.
(That's another joke.)
If a synthesis is so unattainable
what about the philosophy
of live and let live,
is that still too impossible?
I know you may believe in god,
but I'm not interested
in your spiritual warfare.
If we're going to argue or talk
let's talk or argue for the sake
of logic and truth,
not for the sake
of saving my soul.
I'm done convincing people
that I'm not a bad person,
that I'm well-intentioned,
mostly because I shouldn't have to.
I won't adhere to "objective" guidelines,
because no such thing exists,
and simply arguing that fact
is enough of a demonstration
in it's favour.
So yes, let's talk,
but only if we'll make progress,
because the world is full
of enough bullshit already.

Politics, politics,
goddamn politics.
What I learned today
is that one must be blameless,
because when the shit starts flying,
it flies, and none are spared,
and all are incriminated.

Dream

Last night
I saw you.
You were just as beautiful
as I remember,
with that laugh, smile,
twist of the wrist.
A mirage from my past
in the quiet hours
of the night,
behind my sleeping eyes
I saw you.
I remember the desperate
feeling of longing
and the way
you couldn't see me
and the way
I couldn't touch you
when I stretched out my hand.
I remember how painful
it was.
Painful to see
the very image
of you,
knowing that it wasn't you.
Painful to hear your words
and resounding laugh,
but not be heard in return.
I wanted,
so badly,
to tell you
how much I still love you,
and that I think of you daily.
And you were there,
right there,
but you weren't there
at all.
Nothing but empty space
my mind fills with thoughts
and memories
and desires.
Nothing but the embodiment
of pain mingled with nostalgia.
Nothing.
My inability to reach you,
to have ever reached you,
still brings me to my knees.
The world suffered a blow
the instant you departed
and the world has yet
to recover.
Mind tricks;
thoughts reverting back
to times you breathed
because I still can't cope
with the fact
that you don't.
Despite all the beliefs
I've watched burn in the furnace
I like to think that perhaps
you sprouted wings
and learned the harp
if only because I know that
that thought would make you
crack a joke.

My Three-Poems-In-An-Hour Saga

These are three poems I wrote in a row on my way home from work. It's weird because it kind of shows you a typical Corissa thought process (not that I think in poems. Ok sometimes I do). Anyway, enjoy:

Days like these
seem so absurd,
when I can see
my reflection
and the bridge,
looking down
at a water drop
that landed
in my shoe.
When everything
in the water
seems infinite
because there is
no beginning
and there is
no end.

They call you,
claim you to be,
the alpha and omega,
and god how sometimes
I wish you existed.
How selfish.
More selfish still
how I wish that
I existed,
infinite as the ripples
and waves in the water,
infinite as the reflection
in my shoe.

Everything really is nothing
when you live a hundred years,
at best.
And god how I wish
it meant so much more.
And god at the very same time,
and in the very same breath,
it all still means
much too much.
Is this what it means
to be human?
The constant conflict
between being far too little
and far too much.

But 'little' and 'much',
what do these words even mean?
In the very act of using words
they seem to lose meaning
just as in the act of living
life itself seems to become
not-worth-living.
Can one speak
without speaking
or live
without living?
Can one dream
without dreaming?

Even if it were possible,
what would it mean?
Who knows?
At the end of the day,
these things
are all
I have.
And after all,
these are just words
of a poem
written one August day
at a bus stop,
and today
it means far too little.

----------

Today, on the bus,
I want to read my poem,
to stand up and recite it all
just to see
how the world might react.

I'm looking at people,
choosing the ones
I think might get it,
or the ones I think
need to hear it.
Is that arrogant?

You I want to read my poem
because you spent
too much time
on your make-up this morning,
and you I want to read my poem
because you are staring at me,
cupping your face with one hand.

You I want to read my poem
because you have a tacky tattoo
of a Chinese character,
and it probably says 'rice'.
You, well I want you to ask
to read my poem,
because I think
we could be friends.

Among the smiles,
quizzical glances,
and curious stares,
I wonder if anyone
will ask me
what I'm writing.
I wonder if I'll
be brave enough to say,
I'm writing about
you.

I wonder if
they'll ask me
why there's a paperclip
in my hair
where a bobby pin
rightfully belongs,
or why there's a scratch
on my arm,
and I wonder if
it even makes any difference.

I suppose what all
my wonderings mean
is that I want my voice
to be heard,
challenging the world
and its trivial complexities.

So I guess I write poetry.

----------

I saw the same man twice today,
and though I only saw his back,
I knew it was him
because of the way he whistled.

I heard him on my way
to the bus stop,
stopped dead in my tracks, thinking,
'that is an impressive whistle',
turned and watched him,
black t-shirt and jeans,
walking from his car to his house.
I smiled at the eccentricity,
paused, and walked on.

On my way back
from the bus stop,
seven cigarettes
and seven hours later,
who should I hear
from a block away
but the very same man,
black t-shirt and jeans,
walking from his car to house,
whistling.

This time he whistled
something of a different tune.
Stopped dead in my tracks again,
I paused.
Rather than smiling
at the eccentricity,
I wanted to know
why he was whistling,
what he was going home to,
what his idea of success was
at the end of the day,
and whether or not he fit
into his own definition.

I wondered,
if I knew the reason,
would it be something
I could appreciate?
Would it be something
that could make me
want to whistle?
I wondered if the reason
would make me scoff,
wondered if I was better off
not knowing,
then finally wondered
why I was wondering
at all.

A Dare

I'm waiting for you to give an inch
just so that I can take a mile.
Call me selfish,
but more than anything
I want you to leap forward
instead of inching.

I don't mean leaping
in the sense
of commitment
or leaping
in the sense
of blind faith.
I'm not talking
about taking a plunge.
I'm talking about
you.

I want to know
that you are real,
that you think,
that you worry,
that you have qualms
with this universe
and all of its shit.
I want you to care.
I want to share your qualms,
I want to fight them too.

I want to know your opinions,
I want to hear your voice
speaking words
that matter to you,
because that's what matters
to me.

I'm not interested in labels
and I'm not interested
in trophies,
I'm interested in you.
I dare you to show me
what that means.

Take me out on a fucking limb
and talk to me
about truth.
Tell me about the moment
that you hurt the most,
or the moment
that you felt most
deeply betrayed,
and then tell me
what you did about it,
because these are the things
that make a person.

Shed your armour,
and get down from that horse.
I don't want a knight,
I want a man,
real and flawed and beautiful.
As much as I love to dream
and talk about dreams
and imagine dragons
and pterodactyls,
all I really want
is reality.
So pray tell,
who are you?

Fucking Hell,

Another dream.
But this time
it was different.
I don't want
you to think
any less of me,
but I'm still
holding on.
You were there
and so was I
and that was how it was,
until you got distracted
and I turned and walked away.
The only difference
is that this time
you followed.
You took my hand.
And I don't want you
to think any less
of me,
but I can't help
but wait
for that moment
which I know
may never come.

And here's the truth
in so many words:
sometimes at night
I toss and turn,
caught up
in a cold sweat
because of a dream
that I just had
or one I know
I'm going to,
and sometimes
I can't breathe.
For the record,
I've never shed
a tear for you
(but for maybe once,
in a dream of its own),
and I don't intend to.
I don't want you
to think any less of me,
but I somehow
just can't forget.

Obviously I'm still writing poetry about you.

I started scribbling poetry in the margins and gaps of One Hundred Years of Solitude.. I can't help if it's mushy or absurdly fiery and shit ok, Marquez has that affect on me, so don't judge:

In my youth,
passionate,
restless,
unrequited love burns
in my heart
as though it has been licked
by the two-pronged tongue
of a dragon.

Searing holes
unlike arteries
until my heart is nothing more
than rotten fruit,
worm-eaten
and useless
(from the inside out).
A bad apple,
you might say.

Locked up for a rainy day
that is destined never to come,
my heart awaits relief
the stubborn clouds
are unwilling to provide.
Looking to the sky,
the heavens are no help.
Instead I dress myself up
in the image of happiness
and resort to a rain dance
until the sky will comply.

Perhaps this is only youth,
passionate,
restless.

365

Look back at my journal.
I realise that I haven't written
in almost a year.
One entry,
365 days.

And I hate entries about boys,
but this one was.

The only entry
about a boy,
the only boy
I didn't turn down.
The only one
who turned me down.

Not this...again.
A phone call
that makes me think,
I shouldn't be reading this,
and forces me
to put down
Love in the Time of Cholera,
and instead pick up
One Hundred Years of Solitude.




My life sentence?
It could be.

Stupid Question,

but I have to ask it anyway:

Does the aching ever stop?

Relativism Rules.

(Although you may not think so and therein lies the beauty of it)

If there is objective truth, then why can't people agree on anything? Well, because if there is objective truth (and this is what it would be: not value judgments, but the simple state of things), there is no way we can access it. We cannot know it and know that we know it. If we happen to believe correctly, then there is no means of verification. We are a product of our environment. There is culture, there is perspective, there are different moral codes and structures - each with their own pros and cons. But the pros and cons are subjective - and that is why we disagree. We cannot make an objective value judgment. The very natures of the words 'value and 'judgment' are relative.

Objective truth, as the simple state of things, is free of 'value', free of 'judgment' and dependent only upon its own solidity - not our validation.

To point out that I have my own moral code does not defeat my argument. Relativism does not deny a moral code, simply a universal one. You ask me a question, I can give you my answer, but I can give you only mine. I cannot speak with the voice of the world, or the voice of truth with a capital T; I can only speak with the voice of my own personal perspective.

If there were objective truth, if we could all know it, we would at least have a chance at agreement. but as things stand, we do not. There is not only one right and one wrong in every situation. Even if there were, I would not trust the church to be the judge of it. I see no clearer understanding of morality in Christianity than anywhere else - just more legalism.

And that is why I am a relativist.

The Rabbit Hole

Have you ever felt
that you were
tumbling
down
the
rabbit
hole?

Things couldn't possibly get worse,
and then they do
they do
they do
and then they do some more?

You are Alice,
but you aren't in Wonderland.
Definitely not;
but you wish
that you were.
Wonderland
sounds
nice.

The Madhatter is laughing at you,
and the Cheshire Cat is leering.
The Queen of Hearts wants you dead,
and honestly you wouldn't mind complying.

what the world wants

too much.
not enough.
a chance.
a break.

i break my own heart every day,
along with multiple others.
trust me, i don't need any help
on that front.

i don't know if you knew.
i wish you did.
i guess.

then maybe
you'd look at me differently
in the cold harsh light
of reality.
and i'm sorry
if i avoid you.
all i'm really avoiding
is myself.

it's true.
i'm fucked up
left and right,
down and centre.
and maybe up
but i don't really know
which way that even is.

if you catch my drift.

drifting is what i am.
and drifter is who.
bound to the life
of a gypsy.

it's not anyone.
it's me,
and it's not pretty.

today i compared my life
to a flaming pile.
at least it burns,
my best friend told me.

i kind of wish
it would just explode.

The Fifth Promise

Promise number one,
that I'll tell you before it happens.
Promise number two,
that I'll call
and schedule an appointment.
An appointment for emotional health,
if one can schedule such a thing.
Promise number three,
that I'll keep you in the loop.
Not to worry,
you'll be in the know
in regards
to my mental degradation.
My steady deterioration
into nothing,
or a perverted and skewed
everything.
Promise number four,
that we'll run away together
with the clothes on our backs
and the money and cigarettes
in our pockets.

The fifth and final promise;
to myself:
that I'll get out.
Out of this rut.
Out of here.
I will live.
I will travel.
I will see,
experience,
taste
and love.
And then,
dear friends,
I will die.

Darkness on the Face of the Deep: Alternate Universes

I want to sleep.
Maybe in my dreams I'll have the strength to weep.
In the beginning there was chaos.
And there is now.
And there will always be
chaos.
Chance and probability-
did these make you take your life?
Divine injustice, playing with dice?
Is there a happier you in an alternate universe?
A happier us?
Happiness?
If only I had a space shuttle faster than the speed of light.
I would travel throughout the abyss
to gather all that the multiverse has to offer of you,
to bring you back to earth.
You must be out there somewhere.
Laughing, singing, playing.
I wish voices could stretch across aeons.

In theory, every possible you I could imagine should exist.
Somewhere.
Am I grasping at straws?

I Don't Know What To Call This One, But It's For You

The city lights dim
and the wind sweeps through the streets
moving dust under our feet.

A man on the lonely corner
plays the saxophone
and I wish you were here.
These times,
they were made for you,
as my friends would say,
Tailor-Made.
We pull out a pack
and everyone reaches for one
but we all have our favourites
and you were ours.
In this world,
but not of it,
you existed.
You stood,
a proclamation of the beauty
that must somehow lie beyond,
far beyond our understanding
or grasp.
Just a bit too far beyond yours.

You gave us hope of this beauty:
it was so much in you.
And this reality is still so far above me.
I can’t understand.

You touched life in us.
(In me)
You made it worth living.
You brought life itself alive.
If only you could have seen.
The animation of your own life
overflowed,
trickled down into lives
beyond your realisation.
The days rejoiced in you
and you in them.
You lit up the world with the warm glow
of a single smile.
You could make anything funny,
you could make anyone laugh,
and you did.

A life too short,
adoration overdue.
And what now?

I’ve been told that
if nothing else,
life is a grand symphony.
We come,
we play
and we fade.
And if this is so
I want you to know
that you played your part beautifully
like no one else ever could.
And the rhythm of your life
and the legacy you began
will play out in the harmonies
you once gracefully introduced
and the melody with which you helped cure
a dying world.

The sun lights up the coming day,
and I feel myself fight
the prospect of a day without you in it.
We fight
the passage of time
which carries us inevitably
away from you.
I cling desperately to the lingering essence
of a world with you
in the mists of smoke,
to little avail.

Maybe I have it all wrong,
and I hope I do,
and maybe time doesn’t matter
and in the ebb and flow of memories
we’ll find peace,
comfort,
even joy
within the suffering.
Joy in the celebration
of a life lived
so fleetingly,
yet so beautifully,
a miracle to us all,
forever changed.

It’s so inadequate.
None of this,
no words
will,
can,
ever express every thought
and every emotion
you inspired
and stirred
in every one of us,
and what they meant,
and what they mean,
and what they will continue to mean.
All I can come back to
is the beauty that is beyond us,
and the grand role that you played
in helping us to see it.

The city lights are lost in the soft touch of the sun,
and the wind sweeps through the streets,
moving dust under our feet.

The Labour of Thought

My thoughts,
they turn back on themselves.

Yesterday this is what you thought,
they tell me.

And now
we're not so sure.

You were wrong,
you were right for the wrong reasons.

You were right
and you can't change your mind now.

How can one thought
have so many different voices?

_____________________________________

Maybe I owe these feelings to spring.
I hate how fickle humans can be.
Are.

I succumb to my own frivolities,
and then despise myself.
And yet before I succumbed
I despised myself
for not succumbing.

Shut up, shut up, shut up!

Trapped in humanity,
I want to be better,
but I do not will it.

And I do not want to will the want.

On What There Is

(Or What There May Be:
Existence and Other Things)

I'd like to return my ticket.
Not most respectfully, however:
(and prepare yourself,
or don't, on second thought,
I quite enjoy the shock factor)
I'd rather spit on it
or shred it to a million pieces
or burn it
right before your eyes.

It has been months since
I shed a tear over anything,
yet now the tears flow easily
for a man I have never met,
for the pain of his family,
for the pain of a friend.

And this gift you call life
is really a weight on one's shoulders
and a shackle to this earth
and I cannot for the life of me
think of a single one who deserves it.

Maybe this is why I self-destruct:
It is the only way I know how
to throw this gift back in your face.

And to all of you with an agenda:
I will simply deny you.
Keep your agenda to yourself,
I will take no part.
I do not want to be saved.
Pitied.
Pursued.
I cannot even say that
I want to be healed.
I will not be wooed
and I will not be won over,
by those of you with agenda.

I laugh easily about my darkness,
this is a warning to you.
Keep your distance.

I am not who you imagine me to be.

Know this:
you are playing with fire.
And perhaps I pride myself on this fact:
that I am something of a pyromaniac.
This I say to myself
as I take yet another from my pocket
and light the flame.

I've wasted so much time
washing clothes
that will be dirtied in days.
It seems an outright denial
of my humanity,
and the simple state of things.
I'm sick of playing your game.
This plan of yours was either ill-conceived
or conceived with this intention.
Either way, I want none of it.

Perhaps all I desire is truth,
but I don't think that I'm strong enough for it.
(For there is no peace to be had,
no comfort, no satisfaction,
only suffering.)

I'm overcome with a nausea from which there is no relief.
I burn with passionate restlessness.
I'm beginning to doubt that there are valid answers.
I don't know that I believe a kiss will suffice.

again

'Who are you?' said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation.

Alice replied, rather shyly, 'I--I hardly know, sir, just at present--at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.'

'What do you mean by that?' said the Caterpillar sternly. 'Explain yourself!'

'I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir' said Alice, 'because I'm not myself, you see.'

'I don't see,' said the Caterpillar.

'I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly,' Alice replied very politely, 'for I can't understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.'

Why.

Really, this is just getting ridiculous..

What's the opposite of a hopeless dreamer?

Last night
I came home to find you
waiting in your car
for me.
You wanted to make amends
and I wanted you to
and we did.
I laid it all aside
for you,
I hope you know
what that means.
Things were the way
I knew they could be,
and then I woke up.

I guess all I'm saying
is that I'm still hoping,
I suppose.

Get Better (Mates of State)

Forget your politics for a while
Let the color schemes arrive

Come on board, it's a curious site
Absorbing sound that's never been right
Never ahead of, never behind it
Occasionally guarded, just keeps us surrounded
It's luck

Everything's gonna get lighter, even if it never gets better

I propose a less serious boat
Don't mistake it for a party of jokes
You are never ahead of, never behind us
Floating in circles, there's more to remind them of less

Everything's gonna get lighter, even if it never gets better

Forget your politics for a while
Let the color schemes arrive