"You believed you could transcend the body ... You believed you could rise above it, to a serene, non-physical realm. But it's only through ecstasy you can do that, and ecstasy is achieved through the body itself. Without the bone and sinew of wings, no flight. Without that ecstasy, you can only be dragged further down by the body, into its machinery."

- Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood

how's this for irony

I asked a question
hoping to avoid the situation
that came as a result
of asking the question.

window

face says I

swallowed

too much 

whiskey
Saturday

(I did).

the irony being that

the grey pillows on which my eyes sit

hold less regret than 

milder strippings - 

acting on impulse

instead of just

acting. 

ravenous

for words, and skin

(my own, and theirs)

re-viling

lumpy throat

because this song is reminding me

that I have to go and

own something

half finished

and tell them 

how well they've done

and I know their bodies are crowded

but I'm still disappointed

I wanted to cradle my baby

'til she ventured into places

but I couldn't; so it was

I know all this, yet

I'm still disappointed 

(in myself? or in circumstance?)

my ego knows better than that, but

it's fluffy around the edges

and success was in its clarity

now the angst feels unwarranted

and least we sound good

even if quietly

so we go back to red

and hold off the smudgy black

forward back

hints of summer
on Sunday:

I found myself
(again) heading west
remembering various de ja vu with
lovers and would-be lovers
and unloveds, precarious night-drives
and sunshine also,
more than one of them
tinted with smokey hues
anticipating earth-staining my pristine white singlet,
not so chaste
in my haste to get under your skin

I'm glad you pulled me backwards into you

remembering summer and
it's beautiful spontaneity
driving one hour for a stranger
and seeing into the future
with the hard-edged certainty that frequently carries me
into choices that surprise
even my self

(who needs to travel
when you've a backyard-full of tourists)

remembering summer and
that hammocks are not only
for sleepy outdoor New Years' nostalgia
but also belonging
to wide-eyed mid-years in your room
high from not enough eating and too much sex,
the beer grating against my empty, happy stomach
as if Saturday night had simply rolled into Sunday morning
without hiatus

(I could've had
three in as many
but I preferred to spend my energy
on two legs alive
instead of my back)

these weekends there's poems
riddling through me again,
but they rarely get written
because I'm too busy enacting them.

finally, this morning

my eyes feel open

because last night

they barely shut 

revi'ered

She's right, I suppose 
about the five week famine - 
I admit I've found liberties
having my skin all to myself
satiated by possibility
instead of craving what's before me 

so I've three more weeks'
untouching, lest I turn inside out 
from needing
to be turned
outside in 

three more weeks swallowing my own mouthfuls
inhaling my own air
pawing at my own pillows, instead of
devouring some other
I'll feast on carefully arranged bodies
who are writhing with another ecstasy 
and looking ferocious for it 

my only children are my unspoken words
and my favourite lover
the note that they were born from  

Another useless habit:

Thinking I am bad at things I'm actually fine at

and then getting such a shock

when I'm complimented on them. 

I wonder where that appears in all the revelry.