A Broken Crow

that same night, i saw my best, my most delicate words lodged between your excitable back teeth.
you split them like hard candies and fed upon my own small source of velocity.

Disconnected, I am unattached.
An unmade bed
makes me feel like a failure.

maybe you should shut your mouth, your pretty pretty mouth.
then i'll shut mine.
and you'll laugh at my nostalgia
and we'll wonder where the time went
and i'll say i'm not scared
and you'll believe me.

And the ringing in my ears
from playing too loud.
I hear the ocean,
I hear the crowd.


Ava wears purple rubber boots year round
Ava is an atheist-buddist-pacifist-activist-nihilist without resulting in a mass of contradictions.
Ava carries a butterfly knife in her sock and uses it to give herself haircuts.
Ava likes to take photographs of garbage.
Ava has the periodic table tattooed across her back.

sometimes i think you're beautiful when you cry.
(does that make me a sadist?)

sometimes, by the way you kiss me, i think we could have been lovers in another life.

(does that make me dirty? does that make me wrong?)

what was it that you wanted out of this?
what was it that i wanted?
i think we've been massively swindled by this world. this city, with its bleeding sunset behind me.
i gnash my teeth and count hours. minutes. seconds. one-half-breath.
everything reminds me of this life. this mess. this city, with its bleeding sunset behind me.
i start each day by shedding my skin and facing the wind, raw and hurting.
(i imagined today what it would be like to wake up and not think about sickness. to leave you sleeping and to make you pancakes while wearing my sexiest lingerie.)

someday we'll get what we want.
this life.
this city.
the sunset.

this is so weird. that i can spend so much time taking care of you, but when i get sick i have to get as far away from you as possible. i knew this would happen eventually, but i still feel like a fucking leper.

so far, my shift is covered until four. i may have to go back and close.

my apartment is cold and quiet. like dead people live here. and that stain on the ceiling is spreading like ink on paper. (sometimes i come into my own room and don't recognize my own stuff. who the fuck lives here? who owns this shit? these dried corpse remnants of a life?) i tiptoe around like a thief and i hide in all the dark corners. i keep the lights off and i leave everything exactly the way i found it. stealth is so important now. there is no room for sloppiness.

the way the wind comes through the crack in my window frame, it sounds like childrens' voices. and some sort of tortured song. did you smell the winter in the air today? it was there, like damp, icy fingers on the back of your neck. like the promise of perfect silence when everything is encased in ice.

i think i could be everything for you.
if this fucking world would let me.

the time has come for everyone to go and get their flu shots.

normally, i would never harrass anyone about this, but with iain's immune system on the fritz, it's extremely important that ALL of his friends be vaccinated this year.

so go get poked.
right now.
i mean it.



maybe people can go together, make a day of it. needle parties!(that sounds bad.)
(all joking aside, get 'er done.)

in toronto the streets are tunnels of traffic and dust, blasting into my face. on the corner of raglin street, a dog stands vigil on the roof of a small market, shaking his jowels at passerbys. the squirrels are black and shiny and as big as most cats. china town is a well-oiled machine with ominous meat draped in the store front windows and the smell of dried fish lingering in the air. young asian boys torture eric clapton blues from sour guitars in the kensington market and religious recruiters are just another kind of street vendor, out to sell god like a hotdog.

in toronto, i wear big earrings and beaded bracelets. i cuff up my jeans to show my boots and walk like i know where i'm going. i stand up on the subway and stare at everything that rushes by the windows. i peruse "food boutiques" and eat almond croissants for breakfast.

how could i possibly? with this so momumental and that so insufficient? every stupid thing that has ever happened to me has translated into three and a half minutes of open chords and angst-filled lyrics, but not this. not this.

the cancer-suite in a7th minor.
it's fucking ridiculous.
it's impossible and i won't do it.

it's probably the greatest song that i will never write.

the geek will inherit the earth.

so sayeth the lord.