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I can smell the cigarettes.
I haven't smoked in days
But I can smell the cigarettes
in between your legs.

I can taste the coke cut up,
running down my throat.
I can smell the cigarettes,
even with no smoke.


I can see an image of
a woman lying bare
I can see the ink she's buried
underneath her hair

pubic becomes public when
we let ourselves believe
that smoking isn't bad for you.
that you will never leave.

if I could capture
you
and me
if I could capture
what
you see
if I could capture
the
capturing

I'd capture-keep,
the
long legs/
black hair/
smoke suspended in the air

a cat with whiskers wiser than/
the man who's broken eggs again

the shells that feed the mystery
because WHO THE FUCK COOKS EGGS AT MIDNIGHT
and I swear to god if one more person looks at me seductively
I'll rip apart the
leather jackets
jean vests
studded flannels
studded chests

because life just never seems as good/
as retrospectively.

as looking back on someone else's/
frozen memories.

and the worst-best part of everything
is when it seems so real,
that you could become one of them
if only you could feel.

Let's Just Do Ourselves A Favour and Remain Two Perfect Strangers

Back before I knew your name,

your one true north,

your compass aim,

Back before I heard your voice,

tasted your teeth,

and felt your noise,

Back before I saw your scars,

dug up your grave,

and drank your tar,

Back before the monsoon came,

I knew nothing of the rain.

Why do lions hunt their prey, in the middle of the day?

And why do strangers seem so strange, if all people are the same?

"What makes you get out of bed?"

You once asked me.

And I once said,

"My bed will be there later on, from dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn,

but a day is like a human life,

once it's begun, it starts to die."

Morbid.

Sad.

and So Naive.

Instead of names you gave me these.

You hated who I had become,

though I'd never changed the song I sung.

It's not the sweetest melody,

I'll be the first one to agree,

the tempo's rude,

the words are harsh,

the violin sparks in the dark.

Far away from crib-side yarn,

it fits more in a smoke-filled bar.

It is not a gentle harmony,

but I'll be damned, if it's not me.

And I warned you when we first became

more than strangers being strange,

that lions hunt during the day,

and I was hungry, in a way.

This City

doesn't this city just make you want to break things
doesn't this city just make you fucking hate things
doesn't this city just make you want to run
want to invest
in a knife
or a gun

don't all these people just drive you insane
and don't all these people always ask your name
just to forget
in a sec-ond
why they even came

into this world,
for shame
for shame

and wasn't it just the other fucking day
that you thought to yourself

maybe I can escape

and wasn't it just
the other fucking day
you told yourself

I can break the fuck away

but here you are in the same damn place

and here you are
losing the rodent race.

because money is tight
and morals are loose

and who gives a single fuck,
if their neck's in a noose

I mean, baby, or shithead,
all these little games,
come on baby,
my shithead
we're wasting away

bourbon, 
no-
whiskey
the devil in a drink

he pulls me straight past hades,
to deeper depths I sink

And it's the scars that you can't see
that run the fucking deepest

and who are you to say
I shouldn't fucking drink this

How dare you look at me
and say I shouldn't smoke,

I look at you-
and encourage you to choke.

Pond Scum

I'm sick of hearing, "you can't". It's starting to sound like the mantra of the majority.

"You can't live in a 10 X 10 apartment."
"You can't work two jobs."
"You can't up and move to another country."
"You can't just be a writer."

Why?

"Because, because you can't! It's not that easy."

No, it's not. But I don't want to do these things because they're easy. I want to do them because they're worth it. Because the higher the pressure the more liberty you feel once it's released. Because overcoming the challenge is half the fun. Because proving you wrong is inspiration enough to get out of bed, to run instead of walk, to jump when told to sit. Because in a world where the survival of the fittest has become a mere concept, the only true form of freedom is recklessness.

No, I don't want your advice, no, I don't need to slow down, and no, I didn't ask you what you're doing this weekend, because let me guess; you're going to check out that new gimmick restaurant where they lock up your cell phones because you and your friends are a internet-nymphos that can't restrain yourselves from getting off on hashtags in the middle of dinner.

"But why would you want to leave Canada? You don't realize how lucky you are."

Do you want to know, do you really, really want to know why I hate it here?

Because of people like you.

Because you bore the fucking shit out of me. Because you watch reality TV and shop at Victoria Secret. Because you're in a perpetual state of waiting for the weekend. And when it comes, you tip well, and absolve yourself of a 600 calorie coffee with the singular Hail Mary, "It's Friday!".

And as I watch you sacrifice your body to the gods of the Weekend, smearing the innards of an imported danish over your face like war paint, I can tell who you really are. Because, don't forget, I've seen you on Monday.

I've seen you Monday morning when I'm not important enough to even make eye contact with, when you bitch and moan because your 6 figure salary still makes you get up before nine. And for all of the smiles and gratuity that the weekend brings, that's who you really are.
A fucking Monday.

So instead of sticking around and sniveling about my surroundings, I want to escape. To experience, examine and explore. I've taken enough from Canada, for a long, long time.

I see that you're already comfortable here. You've settled in, calm and complacent. Not looking to leave, to move, to run like a river. No. You are happy being still. You are happy being stagnant.

And maybe it's the fact that I can't sit without shaking my legs, maybe it's because I've moved more times than years I've been alive, but I feel more at home in the crash of the wave than the calm of a lake. And you told me that you're scared of the ocean, but while still water is easier to swim in, it's the one that gets pond scum.


never yours,
LF

HIDDEN | SEARCHING

365 Days of Creativity

one hundred and eighteen

HIDDEN | SEARCHING

There's a poem hidden on my tongue

but I just can't find it,

my mouth is numb.

I've been sipping on winter for way too long,

this city is colder than your bubbler bong;

but I like the way it's one way streets all seem to lead from you to me,

and I like how you take them at full throttle

playing marco polo with the bottom of the bottle-

-As if you don't find it every night;

like the last few drops aren't your lullaby.

And it's an alibi that lulls you out of lucidity,

because your favourite superpower is anonymity.

And you don't mind if I show up when I'm fucking high,

because I'm a god damn child who can't handle life.

I'm the peak of the mountain all covered in white,

I'm the age old dragon,

I'm the youthful sprite

I'm the bowl that you smoke when you come down slowly,

I'm the pipe that you toke when you got no rollies.

I'm your vice, I'm your habit, I'm your bad addiction

I'm your fight, I'm your project, I'm your real life fiction.

I'm the cut on your tongue that you won't let heal,

I'm the poem in your mouth that you cannot feel.

Now I'm the lover of your discontent,

I'm the jar in your cupboard that's labelled 'rent'.

It's the 26th and the jar's still empty,

but we've got a two-six and your pouring hand's heavy.

Using whisky and water as lubrication-

it numbs and smooths through our expectations.

And I don't know when we made the agreement to feed our fucks and starve our feelings,

But my belly feels full like the waxing moon, 

and my chest holds as much as a fractured spoon.

Naked and hungry-

we share your bed

-searching for the words, in each other's heads.

Now and Then

Do you ever wake up and feel like anything is possible?

As if anything you decide to do that day is the right thing. The perfect thing. You can make no wrong choices. You could get hit by a car and it would be the best thing to ever happen to you, because it happened today.

You decide to wander around the city where you've live. Where you've lived for years, but now, today, you see the place as a newcomer. A tourist in your own town. Every building beckons, and what better one to visit first than the bookstore?

Everyday should start with a trip to the bookstore, you think.

The small shop is full of staff recommendations and ratings from the internet. Every cover tempts you. They all seem so fucking interesting. You want to pick them up and eat them whole. Digest them all at once. This reminds you that you'll never have enough time to read everything, but instead of bleak, this prospect seems romantic. It means that every book you do get to read is much sweeter. And it's cool, because you get to join the book's club. The story becomes the common denominator between you and a bunch of strangers who've also read it.

There's a woman working at the book store. She talks to you about Thailand and this yoga retreat she just returned from. It sounds beautiful. She's beautiful. So beautiful in fact, you think she may be the most beautiful person you've ever seen. That's nice.

You leave the book store with nothing, as it's too overwhelming to try and pick a book, and it was enough just to look at them.

On the street you notice everyone seems as perfect as the woman did. Flawless. Whole. With their experiences carried on their shoulders, bursting through their eyes and spun into the palms of their hands. Everyone has a million little moments, memories and ideas all caught up in their hair and tucked into their pockets.

And they bring all of these moments into every interaction they have. Everyone who meets you sees you slightly differently. Because when they speak to you, they don't see you simply as you are in this moment. That's how an infant would see you. No, an adult sees you compared to the last person they spoke to, you become tinged with the taste of someone they know who has your same name. They see you with a hint of hatred because your eyes look like their ex-girlfriend's, or they adore you immediately because you said hello the way their father does. Do you understand? When you meet someone, you're meeting their entire life. All of their experiences bundled up and traveling around on two legs. Every interaction unwittingly influenced by all of their predetermined notions and assumptions.

So. Here, you've realized this overwhelming awesome fact. Which you don't really know how to explain, but when you try you find yourself saying things like; "It's like we can't ever really know anyone, you know?" or "When was the last time you cried?" or "I hope I see her again." but in the end you don't mind if you don't. See her, I mean. You don't mind that you'll never see the woman again.  Like maybe she and you were only supposed to have that moment in the bookstore. Just a flash of personality in each others day. A random face that will show up in a dream two years from now. And when you wake up you'll wonder if she dreamt of you too.

That would be ok. That would be good. Because if nothing else, it's nice to be dreamt about now and then. Yes, you think, that would be enough.

Hereditary Debt

365 Days of Creativity

day one hundred and seventeen

It's funny, they say that scent is the strongest sense tied to memory, but it's the seeing of other people that most reminds me of you. How different you were from everyone else. And -very rarely- I see a similarity. Like today, I met a man that had your mouth, crooked and broken. Gone too hungry too many times to ever leave leftovers on its plate again.

When we kissed I could taste the coffee on his tongue, and knew that he took it like you had, with too much sugar because that was free. A coffee shop favor, sweet charity.

"Dance with me?" He asked.

But I couldn't, because he wouldn't move like you had, and if we did dance, he would stop reminding me of you.

So we talked for a while, and I watched his mouth. It moved like yours. Parting just a bit. Not much to say, and not saying much when it did. I remember, I used to love you like this.

"A soft spoken monster", you called yourself. But you were my Arcadia. The heaven I never thought I could get into.

I still wear your shirt, not sure if I can actually feel you, or am just imagining your skin woven through the fabric.

The tag on it reads;

50% Cotton
30% Polyester
15% Nostalgia
4% Regret
and 1% ....

What is that last one percent? What is the thing that completes the shirt (and by shirt I mean me)?

People always want to touch the pretty things they see, and debt comes hereditarily to me.

Back then, I knew you were yours. Not mine, not theirs, and only fleetingly would I have the chance to take your poverty away.

I scraped off your barnacles while I could. You, so distant, barely noticed when your leeches became mine; your greedy black monkey, now attached to my spine.

I grew heavy with weight, but had a new, impossible, impervious 1%. I had found it in your lips, your mouth, your kiss.

So, the morning you told me, 'I have to go.'
I made too-sweet coffee and said, 'I know.'

And it's funny I guess, in a sort of sad way, that scent is the strongest sense tied to memory. Because try as I might, every. damn. night.
I really, can't think what you smelled like.