jubulant
self-expressive freak
dance or write the word dance
write the word dance and say it too

or just dance

What happened after the dot-com crash? The dot-com rush? What was it like, you pixilated being, did your diodes divide, did you sell your virginity on e-bay, did you surf the unseen strands of electric love and find e-harmony?

To James Nimmons

I need to say something, because I know you are still out there, humming and walking dusty roads and thinking about girls with horn-rimmed glasses and cat-ear hats. I know that you still think about me, as I think about you, as your body plunges into a sad state of thirty-hood… all the countries you planned to see, the careers you intended to conquer, the spacious consciousness you anticipated on inhabiting—all those far and deep and wide things, all mashed down now, narrow and slitty like your mother’s suspicious eyes. Well! Suddenly we find ourselves spiraling away to the farthest reaches of our respective private universes… and isn’t that what we always loved about each other—that we had “respective private universes” to spiral away to, and we built them well. Ha, kindred spirits is what we were… maybe what we still are. But I don’t know anymore. Doesn’t it suck sour frog butts that I don’t know anymore. But what it is that I wanted to say is that it was you, you, that shone in my darkest darkenesses, dim lightening-bug of a light though you were. You don’t scoff at a light when it’s your only light. Thank you, thank you thank you, for all those moments when you were my only light.

And the succession of dreams came crashing forth like so many forgotten supermarket children—clamoring and shrieking for a creamy lick of love. And the outpouring of grief and joy intermingled sent shocks down spines and through brains, like a mouthful of candies with sour centers, like too many mouthfuls of blue slurpee burning down too many eager throats. And we gave. And we gave. And we gave until all of our glass hearts shattered, shards floating sweetly about us, like halos, like clouds, like sugar and salt.

Late September, as we have it, is always a mindbender of a season, I mean, it’s always pushing in and sideways and trying out cold fingers at old locks. Before we know it, there are wells of anxiety and trembling tearing yearnings pooling at the base of our throats, the place where the warmest soft beat of life pulses. That supple spot. And don’t be forgetting that vulnerability is not a sign of weakness, oh no, it’s a sign of life, of life, of real, live, living life. And when you’re living a life, a North American, first-world kind of late September life, suddenly you are vulnerable in all kinds of ways, no matter what age you are, and vulnerable in the little guilty ways that aren’t actually problems like wars and famines are problems, so you don’t say anything about them. You just walk in the chilling air and breathe the warm fumes of dusty heating systems, and look at Hallowe’en decorations crowding in the windows of the dollar stores, (jostling for space with the omnipresent early Christmas decorations), you eat cold snappy apples and tootsie rolls and cream-of-mushroom soup, and have nightmares about your days at school or work. You think about how your life might have been different, had you walked through different doors or answered differently on a test. Joyous regrets and dubious hopes jostle in our inner windows, steaming them up and drawing pictures in the wet fog, we can’t see out, but suddenly we can see in, and we like it or we don’t, or we do and we don’t. New long yellow pencils, darkening greens of changing foliage, corridors reeking of ammonia and sawdust, cheap gold earrings, stiff brown suede shoes.

Simple

egg salad sandwiches from Tim Hortons
in the red truck I borrowed from my boss

that will be lunch for us today, for me and my boyfriend

our lunch hour is 30 minutes and we drive quickly as we eat--
we have to run home to let the chickens out--
we talk about the things we want and how
money is tight for now, but things will be fine
and where we want to live, to raise kids (one day)

we'll collect the eggs after work

we work at the same place
me in the office typing and faxing
and him in the yard
building things and cutting lumber

nights I waitress for extra cash
in a dingy country-style restaurant with
brown formica tables and cowboy regulars
(I feel like my intelligence is wasted there
and I want to paint and have friends who smoke
black cigarettes and wear fluvogs and
paint angsty paintings, talk about Edie Sedgwick and
modernism postmodernism unmodernism)

but for now everything is simple
in a white-trashy way
trying to build a pretty little future
and liking the sweet earthy taste
of hope

June, the dragonflies
appear-- glib emissaries
of damp and of light