February 2010
1 post
Remnants.
There are pieces of her,
here, there
remnants that linger,
that do not let me forget.
Her hairband on the dresser:
I now wear it around my wrist.
Her washcloth hanging
from the towel rack.
Her box of tissues
beside the pillow where she slept,
poorly (my fault),
always facing away from me.
Leftovers in the fridge:
today they are eaten, gone.
Ash dusting the hearth
after indoor...
January 2010
1 post
Christmas Eve.
‘Twas the night before Christmas,
and all through the house,
not a creature was stirring,
not even a mouse.
Little Mouse, as you know,
had gone far away,
to spend time with her family
on this Christmas day.
At home, Dinosaur stared
out the window with love,
and watched as the snow
fell from the sky up above.
He thought of Little Mouse,
surrounded by holiday cheer,
and was...
December 2009
1 post
Ken.
“Love you,” she concedes,
But he hears her silent sigh;
Always second best.
September 2009
1 post
Redolent.
Dreams
fitful, fantastic
woke me from sleep
smiling, laughing
looking across canyons
to find her perfectly-shut eyelids
looking out the window
to find masked creatures of the night.
I tugged at the corner of the duvet
shivering
but enjoying the sweet banana breeze.
August 2009
1 post
Sticky
Fingers sticky from the fresh figs they had bought at the market, he eyed the swing set on the playground with childish glee. She caught his glance and smiled as he raced past the playscape bridge towards the empty swing.
At first, he was hesitant — the chains that supported the seat seemed flimsy, made for a small child and not a 200-pound grown man. With her encouragement, he discarded his...
April 2009
2 posts
Tempest
Is it raining where you are?
Are the drops tiptoeing across the palm of your hand, finding solace in the crevices of your finger joints?
Are the beadlets tickling the tip of your nose, then snaking down the maze of freckles upon your cheek?
Is the dampness filling the cracks of your lips, then gently flooding your mouth to settle on the top of your tongue?
Is the downpour soaking your...
Shades of Blue
This morning was one of those mornings in DC: rainy, windy. The type of morning where you arrive at work soaking wet even if you’re wearing a raincoat and using an umbrella.
I was walking to work under my blue umbrella this morning when I saw a young woman in a blue rainjacket — the same shade of blue as my umbrella — crossing the street. Her light brown hair was soaked under the hood of her...
March 2009
1 post
My Muse Ran Away
I used to write love poetry.
I used to write words that would
sing and dance
tell tales of romance
— all inspired by my muse.
But let me tell you some news.
See, my muse,
my muse ran away with another man.
She met him, as did I,
at the coffee shop.
Me,
covering the pages of my notebook
with lust-filled narratives.
Him,
highlighting the pages of his textbook
filled with...
February 2009
1 post
Plugged
For Valentine’s Day, I’m buying you earplugs.
Not just because everyone needs some respite from my incessant blathering, but also because I snore.
Snoring may not seem like the worst of my vices. After all, I talk too much, I’m extremely overweight, I walk too slowly, I’m horribly indecisive, I cry too easily; the list goes on.
But see, even though you’re far...
December 2008
1 post
Grown Up.
Outside my window, snowflakes tiptoe across gusts of wind before parachuting to the ground.
Fifteen stories below my window, a young boy reaches down to pick up a handful of greyish-white powder off the ground and comes up with a mitten-full of densely-packed snow. He cups his other mitten over the pile in his hand in an attempt to form a vaguely-spherical snowball ready to be thrown at the...
September 2008
1 post
marked
making love
on the beams of the
Eiffel Tower
sixty feet in the air
on a warm September night
not only requires
confidence
fearlessness
an affinity for heights
a fine sense of balance
insanity
but also is
as we later learned
highly illegal
not sure
what gave us away
our awkward bodies
glistening
in the blue and white tower lights
or your skirt
draped
over the side...
August 2008
1 post
Concerto
She plays the grand piano
with a delicate rage, creating a
calm fury
with her soft touches.
The audience:
enraptured by the rapid
movement of her fingers as they
dance
across the keys,
enthralled by the sounds she creates
with her instrument
as it responds to her every
touch,
tickle,
tap.
She makes music.
She makes melodies that move
mountains and hearts
at the same time,...
April 2008
1 post
Missed Connection #4,131
To the girl in the brown jacket and brown boots on the Piccadilly line,
I wish that you had smiled.
To the girl in the brown jacket and brown boots on the Piccadilly line who got on at Heathrow and sat directly across from me even though the entire car was empty,
I wish that you had smiled.
To the girl in the brown jacket and brown boots on the Piccadilly line who got on at Heathrow and...
February 2008
1 post
Table 65
The waitress at Le Pain Quotidien sees me staring into the crevices of the brick wall to my left, lost in thoughts of work, life, and love.
Always love. My mind wanders upon the cozy couples enjoying their tartines and the solitary artists scribbling on their sketchbooks with passion.
The waitress at Le Pain Quotidien sees me staring into the crevices of the brick wall to my left, lost in...
November 2007
2 posts
Lyricism
Dialogue is overrated.
Instead, I want to listen to
the melody of her features,
the harmony of her contours,
the beat of her movements,
while I talk to her in tones
of awe and appreciation.
Why have conversation
when she can tell me stories
of her beauty
in the music of her smile?
Wake Up Call
Her voice
through the door
as she wakes me up for breakfast
is like a serenade
that lifts me
from the depths of my slumber
to a perch above the heavens
where I bask in the sunshine
of her smile
and float upon the clouds
of her ambition.
To me, she is beautiful beyond perception.
Sadly, I never make it down for breakfast.
October 2007
1 post
Ode to the Fat Man
In the morning,
after a night of making love so
tasty
that she now craves
lemons and sour candies
to chase the taste of my sweetness
from her mouth,
she dismisses me,
telling me to come the next night
to resume our clothesless coital fight
upon her pillows in the shimmer of the moonlight
through her window.
During the day, however, I am shunned;
my presence hidden away like her...
September 2007
3 posts
Theater
Improv night:
where you and I both
practice
telling each other lies
— the more outrageous they are,
the more believable they seem —
in order to
create
a barely-plausible scene
where we go from being
simply stage hands
on each other’s bodies
to seasoned actors
in a sizzle reel.
Steam Engine
The slow rumble of the train
overhead
is our lullaby
that rocks us to sleep
as we lay in
suspendedmotion
in our hammock
tied under the elevated tracks.
I kiss you
vigorously
to chase the taste of
dripping axle grease
from our mouths
before
an errant wheel skid
sparks our passions
and our hammock
aflame.
Our embers will tell the story of our fiery romance.
Watercolors
Before you leave,
I ask you to paint me a picture.
To stand in front of your easel
and use your palette
to splash tales of our lives
with your watercolor set.
Before you leave,
I ask you to paint me a picture of you:
so that when the ripples of the reflection clear
I get a glimpse of me too.
But before you leave,
you ask me to write you a story.
And so I submerge myself
into a...
March 2007
1 post
Rubik's Cube Boy
You see,
I’ve got a story to tell,
and unlike that Biggie Smalls song of the same name,
this story doesn’t end so well.
Because this is a story about a boy
and the pain that befell him
when he began to love a girl who didn’t love him back.
You see,
this is a story about a Rubik’s Cube boy
all mismatched and mixed up and hard to understand
(and maybe just a bit square).
A boy weak
like...
January 2007
1 post
Skyward
If she were to be an animal, she tells me, she would be a bird.
And already, I imagine her flying away, achieving great heights while I am left staring at her glory from a distance, dwarfed by the immense sky she has conquered.
I imagine her first as a hummingbird. I imagine her first as a fluttering bird going from flower to flower, relishing the beauty of each petal without realizing her...
December 2006
1 post
401
The woman I used to love lived in Scarborough. Whether or not she loved me is a story for another time. Instead, this is a story about my travel from Kipling to Kennedy — opposite ends of the green subway line that stretched across the city — that I took several times a week, and the love I soon grew to develop for that expanse of concrete known as the 401.
Every time my thoughts wandered upon...
November 2006
2 posts
Hi
All she had said was “hi”
and already I was swept away
into a relationship
of moonlight kisses
and home-cooked dinners
and whispered words of love
over cups of spiced tea in dark cafes
of mid-day disagreements
and dinner-table arguments
and heated words of spite
over cups of bitter coffee in neon-lit malls
All she had said was “hi”
and already I was swept away
into goodbyes.
Customs
(Terminal 3, London Heathrow Airport, November 17 2006)
The horrendous flight from Toronto was but the start of a sleepless and tiresome weekend trip to London. The obviously-inebriated rugby team on the plane managed to keep everyone awake on the red-eye into Heathrow, so the group of passengers filling into the queue at customs was a sorry lot of groggy face and dragging feet. In a rush...
October 2006
1 post
Fall-Back
As of 12:01 am today,
I am only four months and seven days away
from my twenty-fifth birthday.
And that, in turn, is only five years away
from the day that I pray
I can take you away
and with me you will stay
and maybe even possibly you’ll say
I do.
Because we jokingly told ourselves that we would be each others’
fall-back.
That, on the day we turned thirty, too old for romance,...
September 2006
1 post
Leftovers
You can’t finish your meal, so you place a piece of your chicken onto my plate. I’m a fat guy, I understand: I’m supposed to have room for any food people throw at me. You, on the other hand, are small, petite, fragile. So I’m left to pick up the pieces of what you can’t finish and make sure they get properly dealt with.
It’s not only with food. You are small, petite, fragile. Your heart...
May 2006
2 posts
International Understanding
At first, I didn’t understand a word she said. Her command of English was limited to the phrase “only speak German,” while the only thing I knew that was even remotely German-sounding was Haagen-Dasz. I tried complimenting her on her recently-braided hair, tried asking her if she wanted a drink, tried encouraging her to put more sunscreen on her burning skin; she was oblivious to my advances. She,...
Footsies
A few nights of the week, we would fall in to bed, exhausted. She would be exhausted from her intense studying or her incessant theater rehearsals, and my body would be sore from that morning’s football practice and the travails of a long day sitting in front of a computer at work. On those nights, we would forgo cooking in the kitchen and subsist on leftovers or shawarmas and falafels...
April 2006
1 post
Cherries and Butterflies
She ran into the convenience store, beads of water falling from her forehead and her grey tank top clinging to every contour of her torso, soaked from the rain pounding on the pavement outside. She subtly tightened the string on her loose-fitting trackpants as she darted to the back of the shop to grab a bottle of Aquafina before stepping into line behind me. We made casual small-talk about the...
March 2006
2 posts
You Are What You Eat
They say you are what you eat.
If this is in fact true
Then telling by my size you can tell that I must be a whole slew
Of recipes and three-course dinners: all three courses being dessert.
You are what you eat.
If that’s the case, and you are what you chew,
Then maybe who I am is just confused and askew,
With mixups and mash-ups a little like corn-beef hash,
Or bangers and mash,
Or...
Second Cup
To the girl in the bright pink top and the Second Cup apron that served me my hot apple cider before my class at Woodsworth College:
You are beautiful.
Even when you emerged from the back room, cradling the six cartons of milk and cream that you needed to replenish at the fill-station, tripping slightly on the fallen coffee cup sleeves that you realized you had to pick up and acknowledging...
February 2006
1 post
Rally Cry
The sign in her hand read “stop the war.” Or maybe “end the war.” Or maybe “go to war.” I didn’t care so much.
It was the fiery passion in her eyes that drew me toward her cause. Not her voice that was drowned out by the chanting of the crowd. Not her figure that was covered by her parka that shielded her from the biting wind. Just her eyes.
I joined the rally, unaware of the agenda or...
September 2005
1 post
The Spoils of War
Her unkempt hair falls down her back, twisting in long, wavy strands of jet-black curls sharply contrasting against her sky-blue jumpsuit. She takes notes furiously as the old man — his hand shaking involuntarily from age and illness — paces across the front of the room, delivering a lecture full of ideas and questions. Her back leans against the side of the table, her notepad rests on her knees...
August 2005
1 post
Her Name Was Wendy
She was dancing with someone else when I first walked in.
I must admit, I originally paid her no attention — well, maybe a furtive look at her figure as I passed by on the way to the bar — until I realized who she was: by then, it was too late. Women like that don’t wait for you to sweep them off their feet; waiting is a game they don’t know how to play.
I stood by the bar, quickly chasing my...