post-graduate employment series – pressurized

prose poem of the past

on washrooms and likeness

Julie’s always wondering why she’s drawn to the one washroom stall (in any given washroom) with the faulty lock. Once in it, awkwardly holding the door shut with one hand, she reflects that occasionally in life you feel like you’re an actor when you’re not even acting.

She feels like a warm-water crab in her mango-kiwi bubble baths. Partly because she is a Cancer (perhaps in more than one way). And can’t bring herself to eat seafood due to feeling too akin to sea creatures. Julie finds it ironic that mental is half of the word ‘sentimental’. And while splashing in her bathtub she thinks about how passing of time makes for the learning of lessons and attempting to move forward (not sideways like she had for some time) in shallow suds.

A program on the Discovery Channel once said: “Crabs don’t congregate; they need their own space and time to keep to themselves. Sure they come across another crab or two at times, but a brief chat is enough, some clacking of claws and they’re off on their way”. Julie sees the crab’s inability to give back massages as a fortunate one. At least for them it’s not a matter of lacking skill, but of lacking the proper implements.

forgotten bits

I’ve stumbled upon some old, rather minimalist poems from my advanced undergrad poetry workshop back in 2005, I believe.  I decided to put a couple of them up (including my post ‘train-ed’) and would like to dedicate them to the late Robert Allen, who was a great writer and friend. I have him to thank for getting me excited about poetry again, which was crucial to striking the fulfilling balance of prose/poetry my work has arrived at 6 years later.

before 10 p.m. 

Ben doesn’t care that a baby died

in the pool

he wants to go for a swim

splash about, splishitty sound

while I hand wash a rug

or look at the montreal skyline

in specks of blurred light and

concrete bordered

from 23 floors up

 

several seconds stretched to a century of rinsing

the funny thing

about being

in the sink

is it’s the only time

one feels

like the dishes

 

robotic 9-5

she was modular

her hair, rubber cable

caused a hush to fall over the office

and the walls to hold their dry breaths

in drowned cubical calm

in doubled daily doses

 

in barely blue,

in moss green,

in slate grey

soft tones

muted textures

you – muffled

like your attire

train-ed

Blue signs with white stick

men and women.

Rained and winded windows, trucks

beyond blurred metal, concrete and cold.

Places in passing.

People dispersing like gases

of green gold and grey.

 

Side streets vacant –

freezing rain golfballs form ice blanket

over nada nil trapped little towns,

flickering past, elapsed fast.

 

She was vague like the

space she travelled through.

On tracks.

Lined with trees.

Scrap metal wood rubbish

dirty debris,

that she somehow saw

as ‘so pretty’.

 

 

Weathered wreckages

had nowhere to go.

Thanks to all the

nowhere-places

they’d already been.

reflective and simultaneously matte

With mere weeks before my departure, a lengthy chapter of life closed, I am relatively powerless against my mind and body making certain associations. Correlations. Nostalgia/nausea. Love/loss. Uncertainty has resulted in an acute inability to focus on the more encouraging End/begin (but I’m working on it). As of late, if I had to use only one word to describe things, me, this post, it would have to be mushy.

 

“I’m in the mood for you. Or running away.”