She often catches me quietly talking to myself as I walk timidly on
the snow in my boots behind her. Its not true. I am really speaking to
her. It's just that there is no prior context, segway or introduction
to what I am saying, and the words never have anything to do with
either us. They are simply thoughts pushed on to another's ear while
walking; as if the movement through the streets under the white rigid
boughs of trees that were before houses makes the uttering [of these
thoughts] easier and the thoughts themselves clearer. Without taint
from context or location. You can say anything while you walk easily
somewhere. But she, almost on que will spin her head halfway towards
me and bark, but somehow kindly: "Are you talking to yourself?". To
which I may reply: "Yes", or "No, I was just talking". And so we move
down the streets this way towards her house and a stiff mattress that
sits on the floor of her childhood and teenage room under a grand
triptych window that looks anticlimactically out into the bricks of the
house next door.

Pigeons coo softly at a ledge somewhere near the window. She swears
she no longer even hears them but I can picture her screaming at them
some night long ago after she has fought with her parents.
We lie on this mattress until one of us awakes and wants to make love
so that we may fall asleep again, hopefully deeper this time. And so
the day moves this way until the lights of the late afternoon show on
the bricks [outside the draped window]. I go downstairs and drink two
beers while she drinks one. We talk our way beautifully through the
beers. The first meaningful conversation of the last twenty hours. I
will pour the last sips of beer from above my tilted head and then
literally squeeze the last drops from the can so that you can hear the
drops hit the pool of the last sips that sit somehow in my gullet.
When I swallow, it tastes like beer should taste. But before I swallow
I let out half a syllable of a giggle that causes the most miniature
of geizures to splash four drops of beer up from my throat onto my
upper lip that I lick off lecherously once I put my head down.

And just before the sun drops behind one building in the downtown and
after the last drops of beer have been licked of my lip I leave for
home and she leaves for cigarettes. And we cross the street to the
edge of the valley, which is the edge of the park, which is the edge
of the hill that slopes down into the valley and eventually into the
river before climbing the wooded area of the other side into Rosedale.
She lights her cigarette and hardly anything is said. Except for a
plea from me to take the broken toboggan that has been jammed into the
garbage and slide down the hill together. It looks functional enough
but she says she's not drunk, and will hurt herself.
Our hours end here. I kiss her half on the lips and half not, finding
the corner that makes the smile. Wishing her a happy New Year, turn
and walk, not for home yet but for the greasy spoon where we ate
breakfast and where my flask slid from my jacket's pocket after I
slung it over the chair next to me. Silver, silently falling to the
cushion next to me. When I get there the owner says he saved me a drop
or two. I thank him for everything again: the time, the steak and
eggs, the flask and the few drops he left me.



He said: "Are you ready for this world?" and then cracked his can
open. He clanged it against the beer he had just finished and said:
"To The Past" then smashed it into the beer she was drinking and said:
"To The Present", then subtlety lifted his can ceremoniously in the
air and said: "To The Future" before breathing in a large gulp. And
when he had poured the last sips into his mouth from above his head
and squeezed the last drops from the same height letting them splash
into his gullet he giggled once causing four drops to shoot shortly up
and land on his upper lip. When he put his head down he licked his
lips clean of the last drops, put his beer can down and said: "I
should leave, you have to get on with your life". And she said
nothing, so he left. And this is how they left each other forever. A
day of happiness followed by no tomorrow.

------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She often catches him quietly talking to himself as he walks timidly
on the snow in his cowboy boots behind her. Its not true. He's really
speaking to her. It's just that there is no prior context, segway or
introduction to what he is saying, and the words never have anything
to do with either of them. They are simply thoughts pushed towards
another's ear while walking. As if the movement through the streets
under the white rigid boughs of trees that were before the houses
makes the uttering easier and the thoughts themselves clearer; without
taint from context or location. You can say anything while you walk
easily somewhere.
But she, almost on que will spin her head halfway towards him and
somehow kindly, bark: "Are you talking to yourself?", to which he may
reply, "Yes", or "No, I was just talking". And so they move down the
streets this way towards her house and a stiff mattress that sits on
the floor of her childhood room under a grand triptych window that
looks [anticlimactically] out into the bricks of the house next door.

Pigeons coo softly at a ledge somewhere near the window. She swears
she no longer even hears them but he can picture her screaming at them
some night long ago after she has fought with her parents.
They lie on this mattress until one of them awakes and wants to make
love so that they may fall asleep again, hopefully deeper this time.
And so the day moves this way until the lights of the late afternoon
show on the bricks.

He goes downstairs and drinks two beers while she drinks one. They
talk their way beautifully through the beers. The first meaningful
conversation of the last twenty hours. He will pour the last sips of
beer from above his tilted head and then literally squeeze the last
drops from the can so that you can hear the drops hit the pool of the
last sips that sit somehow in the gullet. When he swallows, it tastes
like beer should taste. But before he swallows he lets out half a
syllable of a giggle that causes the most miniature of geizures to
splash four drops of beer up from his throat onto his upper lip.

And just before the sun drops behind one building in the downtown and
after the last drops of beer have been licked off his lip he leaves
for home and she leaves for cigarettes. They cross the street to the
edge of the valley, which is the edge of the park, which is the edge
of the hill that slopes down into the valley and eventually into the
river before climbing the wooded area of the other side into Rosedale.
She lights her cigarette and hardly anything is said. Except for a
plea to take the broken toboggan that has been jammed into the garbage
and slide down the hill together. It looks functional enough but she
says she's not drunk, and will hurt herself.

The hours end here. He kisses her half on the lips and half not,
finding the corner that makes the smile. Wishing her a happy New Year,
turns and walks, not for home yet but for the greasy spoon where they
ate breakfast and where his flask slid from his jacket's pocket after
he slung it over the chair next to him. Silver, silently falling to
the cushion next to him. When he gets there the owner says he saved
him a drop or two. He thanks the owner for everything again: the time,
the steak and eggs, the flask and the few drops he left.

cg

Today is one of those days, despite the sunshine and crisp September
air talking about Autumn, when all I want to do is splay this body
(half bent with booze and hangover) across a bed and next to
some-warm-thing.
Just a creeping of fingers and dreams all afternoon. That would be contentment.
Ho so great that would be.
Wandering between dreams and skin.
Muttering poetry into the pillows and off the ceiling.
Proving that people are good.
A place where and when 'tomorrow is a long place' away.

cg

64 Thousand Dollars

I guess it was you and me.
It could have been someone else and you, but now that I am remembering,
It must of been us.
Or someone else somewhere else.

Maybe I was sleeping during the words: "My dreams are killing me".
Maybe that's what you said.
No, the first thing I heard amidst the downpour and crowd was:
"Sixty Four Thousand Dollars!?"

So when did you tell me your dreams were killing you,
Surely before our promise to tear each other in one, leaving the other
for dead, gasping and soaking into the white sheets, and abandoning
each other for our dreams.

But before all this happened, before I wiped the sweat from my
forehead onto your breast plate and well before I went back to sleep
again,

you turned to me,

Eyes a flutter with lashes and lust and said: "kiss me quick, I may forget".

I wondered first: what you had been talking about before and then more
worrying, what you might forget.

Why minutes even earlier you woke me with a tangling of legs and
questions about 64 thousand dollars when you damn well knew
I was dreaming of great rains and baseball.

The static downpour and crowd chanting everything.

It wasn't okay as I licked my lips to lick yours and all I could think was:
"because it was a lot of money back then"
But I was glad not to be talking about 64 thousand dollars anymore and
that you may forget.

"Forget. My dreams are killing me. Because it was a lot of money back then."
None of this was any good for my erection
until you pushed your body on top of mine
shadowing me from the early morning and making a glow of you.

I forgot about all money.

Which was nice because I didn't have any at the time.
Yes, I did.
Stuffed away in old suit pockets,
poured into galoshes and
underneath the floorboards rolled up and pushed into wine bottles.
There was money all over the place,
It was just a matter of weather and wardrobe and wine.

cg

I guess it was you and me.
It could have been someone else and you, but now that I am remembering,
It must of been us.
Or someone else somewhere else.

The Memory is a greedy place.

You rake up all the leaves from your trees into one giant pile and
then, well...
Then you jump in them.

That soft landing Is It.

It's a pool of life fallen.

The dust gets in your eyes and you cry.
People walk by and see your face and smile because... really

It's just a kid and his life:

Crying and Laughing, Singing and Wheezing.

Alone, but with friends coming, running down the block.
Shoelaces lashing ankles, hands grabbing branches and letting the
green confetti fly behind their speed.

And there's always that girl at the front who stops amidst the pack to
tie her shoelaces. It's almost a 52 limb pile up but the co-ordination
is amazing. Bouncing off concrete banks and sliding down honda hoods
they slip by the cautious girl with her hair almost tied up in
her laces

When they arrive there is no echo in their hollars, the skinny
streets hold too much foliage.

But they cry and dive into the leaves.

You're taken under. But without worry you surface and all you see is teeth.
Full grinned smiles, tooth missing smiles, ghosts.
That laughter,
That unchecked chuckling of the world's best and worst jokes,
The static of happiness.
But then you slip away,
your street lights have come on and it's your time to go home.

cg

Abu Dhabi

Fixing two Vodka sodas while the call for prayer beats out through a
loudspeaker nearby. Pulling back the tab of the Canada Dry soda can,
with its Arabic inscription, the singer pushes through the
traffic up into the sandy air and through our eighth story
windows.
Outside the sun is working on setting.
The sun here is not the giant orb in the sky but an
everything-everywhere and it sets the same way; not propping itself on
top of buildings and then shifting to hide behind another before
sneaking behind a small villa to set properly, instead the early light
dims to the late and then just slowly dims. There's no movement but in
the heat and breadth of light. It's as if the sun is the shadow for
all this light, or at least its stalking ghost.

I've heard the call for prayer squawk through mosque shaped alarm
clocks and I've heard it in the oh-so cleverly timed live-feed CNN reports, but
standing beneath these speakers in these streets and watching the
shoes pile up on the steps ownerless two-by-two is unfiltered.
But I don't feel like praying right now. However, what I am walking
with is enough to shake a prayer from a king.
My legs are hollowed from a stupid indulgence of whiskey and are weak
from fucking. They feel like worn cowboy boots, the leather ready to
fold, just deciding which way.
So Prayer...not right now. But I do hear your church bells and they almost
remind me of mine.

cg

All these snowflakes make the room dim.
Big Ones.
Tongue meals for children.
Money for the plow man
and caps for the sculpters.

Confetti for the wind.

The white sky coming to pieces and neatly folding itself on the ground.

"Teacher, are we all different like the snowflakes?"
"Yes, but all bound to melt and slide into the gutters"

It's our glory in the air.

cg

My Hot Nun

I've ruined things with words. I've destroyed whole places and times
with words, and always accidentally. I mean words sent: emails,
letters, phone calls, texts; they do me in. There's always a missing
moment to explain yourself. I am rarely understood. It's awful.

For instance; I once had this beautiful girlfriend, she was away
studying to be a nun, but a healthy nun; the ones who can indulge in
nature's perpetualness. You know, fucking. I wrote her this beautiful
letter, one of my greatest works, except it was full of sarcasm and
irony, funny sarcasm, insightful sarcasm. I know, there is no funny or
insightful sarcasm and you are right.

She read the letter, probably more than once, probably more than
twice. Sure, she got the Hellos; the Goodbyes; the Loves. The lines
that tried to explain my lust for her and her body. A body now in some
castle wrapped in black cloth cloaking its curves.

She understood that I had spent so much time away from her locked in
my brother's basement that I felt like an ivory key aching for her
fingers, her slow moaning songs. She understood the lines where I
pressed some bleeding part of my soul on the page and then traced its
outline with its own gore.

She understood all of that.

She didn't understand the irony, the shitty fucking sarcasm. Fucking
Sarcasm, I hated you before you ruined my life and now I have left
hate behind, traded it in for pure emotion and a white fiery blur I
call #*&^%!! Well, you can't hear the smashing glasses or the
blistering hot pans crashing through the windows to the courtyard
below like miniature UFO's drenched in bacon grease, but that's what I
have in place of hate for sarcasm: a lonely, wicked, violent, hissy
fit.

She didn't get the sarcasm.
She took it like the good parts of the Bible, like truth.

When she returned home as a nun I was waiting outside our apartment
leaned up against a borrowed sports-car. When she returned home as an
angel, with tits pressing through a garb that could never keep them
from inflaming the world, all she did was walk past me and straight up
the stairs to our apartment. A stiff angry stare and then soft feet
brushing the stairs to the second floor. I followed that draped
wagging bum, her ankles peaking their Achilles anger as they tightened
and loosened their way up each step.

She felt holy.

Whether she was or not didn't matter. She felt holy because we had
buried ourselves deep in each other's hearts months ago, for months
and then she had left, to become great, well, great in Death's way
anyway. Now she had returned and all I felt was her, walking up that
skinny staircase. And the feeling was big, unexplainable; maybe holy.

She opened the door with her key. By the time I caught up she was in
the front room holding that letter, the letter I had sent, my work of
art, that stained letter of both wine and blood, that gore bespattered
beautiful piece of unmade confetti.

She struck a match to it: cheap fucking blazing paper.

She let it drop out the window just as it was burning her fingers. A
giant melting snowflake. I felt my toes go numb. She grabbed my foot
locker and with an amazing smoothness thrust it out the window. The
sound of a great crash banged up back to our second story window as
the last pieces of glass tinkled to the ground. I think she`d hit my
brother`s car.

I ran to her when she went for my signed first edition of John Fante's
'1933 Was a Bad Year'. I got there just in time, stepping in front of
the window and grabbing the book, but with one easy gesture she cried:
"You write the worst fucking letters!" and pushed me on to the window
sill and over. Out the window.

The fall was quick.

I lay on the ground not sure if my eyes were open or closed listening
to the crashing of wooden things hitting the sidewalk. I focused or
opened my eyes and watched my clothing flutter and float peacefully to
the ground. I focused on her, past a giant denim snowflake, as she
screamed and told me I could pick the rest of my stuff up when I got
out of the hospital. Stuff like my Grandfather's rifle and my
Grandmother's grandfather clock.

She always loved my grandfather clock.

She felt like it was her personal sentry when I was gone.

cg