vacancies

vacancy

says the sign outside my heart,
empty compartments for rent
chambers to be bought and sold
for a few nights,
a few moments of living

until you decide
this landlord doesn’t offer
a space large enough,
tender and comfortable enough

and your moving trucks come by
to drive you to the next vacancy,
leaving a thin layer of you
lining the floor.

allergy

the dandelions sit atop the stove
floating in a chipped mug of cold tap water.
the stems, delicately snipped with
a pair of white cloth-cutting scissors.

she eyes them in the morning, the sun-yellow seed petals and thick stems
awkwardly bent over the edge of the cup.
on her way out to work.

and between putting on her shoes–
the left one is on, but the right one is full only of her toes–
she pauses, stares agape into her kitchen,
hands trembling, slowly edging towards her keys.

the bee crawls choppily
across the dandelions’ surfaces, quietly hopping
from one to another, sucking them dry.

she is allergic to him.
and it infuriates her that such a little being,
striped and flying lazily,
could make her swell up so,
could make her heart palpitate and sputter.

but he does
so she swipes the keys
from the counter, and stumbles out,
her heel still dangling out her shoe
and eyes brimming with a soundless fear

the door slams behind her.
the mug shivers and
comes crashing to the floor,
dandelions and chunks of glass strewn across the marble.

A Simile of Woman

the dots on my face
lead to my heart, if you step around them slowly
and (failing to carry a big stick)
trace your footprints over them, find
yourself lost in mangled jungles of thought
where poetry is alive amongst
the simpler pleasures, the love for the mundane

I am all simple, how could you not know?
Isn’t that what women say?

I am complex like a menagerie of petals
in a bouquet. I am scented like a bag of pebbles,
jagged and smooth like handfuls of desert sand.
I am the regularity of dusty books and
misplaced favourite recipes.

But woman, She is not like this. She is
reading glasses perched on a nose, fighting for
equality, for me. She is a heavy belly
still at an office job, she is a truck driver artist professor lawyer writer doctor engineer nurse CEO architect social-worker part-time mother part-time wife full-time caffeine addict.

All of these things.
And I am none.

they tell me this is the proper way for me to act,
to be woman and free
and feminist. I must pretend to be ruthless
when inside, I am akin
to a feather.

feeding the birds

we are mistaken about beauty, you and I,
it isn’t lovely pale faces or fragile-thin bodies,
not the sweet speech of oft-beguiled lovers, or giving of well-thought love-gifts
this is not beauty, just an unpieced dashed
mosaic of Ego.

we are mistaken when we say the sky at sunset
is beautiful,
when we say the peaks of mountains painted
with strokes of snow are beautiful,
or newly blossomed bird-cherries and pink buds on
varied trees in unsuspecting yards.
These are effervescently towering above us, or
teetering beneath our feet, an extravagant one-off by God.

None of these.

I looked at beauty
this morning, it was regular and simple
under a browning ripped blanket in the park,
a small elderly man with head resting on the ground, eyes
crinkling at the sight of a twittering young bird.
he rose, extended his hand forward, to the bird’s surprise,
and almost made it titter away. but it stayed,
familiar with the coarse folds of his smile.
he uncurled his fingers to reveal the small square rips of bread
he had saved for breakfast,
and one by one, dropped them to the ground.