Where did they all go?

They, who?

The nice ones, those who cared.

He was sitting right next to you.

No, he just didn't want to lose me, didn't want to forget what I tasted like. He wanted to conquor, to win. But he didn't know what he was fighting for.

He's always there...

But he's never looking, only assuming. And his assumptions have started to make me cringe. I don't recognize the girl that he sees, and I can feel myself hardening.

But he, and then you...

I leave and want to curl up against a figment of my imagination

mj

It didn't make any sense that I was the only one that heard the whole story over the radio. We were riding in a dusty pickup truck, not too fast but fast. The garbage in the load was swirling around like a man made storm.

"What Happened?"

I reiterated the story as simply as possible while flying over one of Ontario's mini hills:

"A woman went into pregnancy, things got complicated, they brought a chopper to take her to hospital: a pilot and a co-pilot. She gave birth in flight, the co-pilot delivered it. Then something went wrong with the chopper. They crashed into the forrest. The two pilots, the mother and the baby died. Everyone.

My brother in shotgun muttered: "Pushed out and pushed right back in"

I giggled: an unfortunate chuck of chuckle.

But he put it so right.

I loved the exactitude of his memorial.

I apologized immediately.

Not to him or anyone in the pick-up.

It was possibly the sadist story I'v'ever heard:

A crash of fatalism.

Pushed out and pushed right back in.

If only he knew what he caused. He didn't.

And maybe he coughed up a chuckle with a clot of blood

And his first thought was WOW.

Most likely his first thought was HOW DO I BREATH!?

and then hopefully, WOW.

There was poise in the pilot.

The mother was breathing in breathes she'd lost screaming.

The co-pilot was in awe: "I've never delivered a baby."

His helmeted head was mis-weighted the same as the baby's.

Everything was gurgling, sputtering, and screaming.

"He we go!" The pilot yelled to the back.

The co-pilot softly: "Are you ready for this little guy?"

cg

I tried telling the truth

And everything came like a confession.

Tried sniffing cocaine

But I still can't describe how it smells:

INVINCIBILITY,

with a floppy Achilles tendon, maybe

After 40hours on the bus

I tried fitting in with the Mountains

And wound up feeling racist.

So I came home,

Small as a gnome,

Grew into a man,

Got Drunk,

Tipped over,

Picked myself up,

Dipped the Barmaid with a wink,

Tipped her with a toonie

Then pushed the street open with the door,

Felt the night like a speeding pick-up

Windows down and wind, engines and noise

"where we going?" I HOLLERED.

To find beautiful women.

"BEAUTIFUL" i whispered.

The ones here to try and keep everything honest.

"BEAUTY" Let's go.

cg

Love is the great enemy of Death:
Sex its sword
Fucking, its forty thousand ninja stars
Companionship, its broad walking shield
and Trust, a perfectly tied blindfold

cg

“You’re the only one who really knew me at all”

As Phil Collins quietly pleads his case, I am so engrossed in this silly list about what to look for in a good piece of fiction that I almost forget about you. But that’s the best part about having you here; I can forget about you for a moment, but then when something triggers the flood of memories, the words you give me and the little things I have spent so long missing, all I have to do look up from my menial lists and catch your eye.

Right now you’re here, splayed across my pink sheets reading Steinbeck. The music changes while I soak you in. This is my contentment, the simplicity of unrehearsed comfort. You start singing along to Carly Simon before you notice I have stopped with my list making. Your smirk pulls me away from my desk and towards you. As I move closer, you mark your page and toss your hero aside. I stop at the edge of the bed; I’m rarely sure how long I will have here, so I can’t be made to rush anything. Plus I’m a little mean and I like to watch you squirm in the game of whose move is it. You give in this time as your left hand entangle itself in my hair and your dominant hand finds its way to my waist. I giggle as you pull me into the sea of pink cotton.  

“And to what do I owe this pleasure?” you enquire as my lips pass down your neck and over your shoulder.

“Phil Collins” I reply without missing a beat.

“Seriously? What decade are we in?” you spout back in that voice you use when you think you’re being clever.

Now sitting up, I am teetering between amusement and irritation. “what does it feel like smartass?”

“Well darlin’ for me it feels like time has stopped and I couldn’t be more content with where I am.“

With that you know you’re being clever and that you have broken through the wall I was quickly constructing.

“Fuck you”


“Please would you”

I smile to acknowledge the victory of your Hail Mary and laugh to myself about just how true Mr. Collins words are. You will be the only one who really knew me.  

mj

             I feel your fingers trace a fluid line from the base of my back to the nape of me neck, where your lips take over and succeed in pulling my attention away from Tim O’Brien’s depiction of the things they carried.

            “Not fair! You know I have to finish this tonight!” I whine as I roll over to face you.

             “And you know that what isn’t fair is that you expect me to allow you to be studious while wearing something like that.”

I look down at the thin aubergine silk pooling in my lap. Boy has a point I never had to think about before. It never mattered what I was wearing while I read my required reading and editing my assignments, but now that you are here I guess it’s hardly fair. And you were so good today: running around the city with me, having dinner with my interrogating father, playing the game so flawlessly. Plus I know you’ll sleep till noon tomorrow giving me ample time to finish O’Brien’s story in the morning. So now it’s my turn to follow by your rules.

              “You’re right! How thoughtless of me. Here I’ll take it off. Will that help you concentrate better?”

              “Darlin’ that will help a lot of things, but I don’t think any of them involve this book I’m ‘reading’”

              “Well what are we to do?” I giggle as my hands slip under your t-shirt and skim across the defined peaks and valleys of your torso. My fingers move along your spin as your eyes twinkle and I smile knowing the choreography that is waiting in the wings. It’s the knowledge of happiness, of sweet comfort and perfect relaxation. There is nothing mundane or tired about what I know is coming next. You will smirk with the excitement of anticipation and brush the hair I didn’t care to notice off of my face. I will see your smirk and raise you a hard kiss, which you will counter with a swift movement of your left hand down my thigh. Every time, that will send a shiver to my toes and force me to pull you closer to me. Now you’ll you laugh as you kiss me like you mean it, and everything else will fade away.

              Soon enough life will come back into focus and our lives will continue. Not right away. Not when I wake up with your hand draped around my waist, or while we are eating breakfast and I am still inebriated with the fact that you don’t have anywhere else you have to be. But eventually, little by little reality will seep back in. You will have to leave here, to go back to the life you lead in another city. I will get back to my assignments and lonely nights spent in silk nightgowns. You will promise to come back, ensure me that this is it, I am the life you want to lead. I will believe you because I am in love with you, but I won’t let myself hold my breath. Maybe you will come back because you love me that much. Enough for me to never get any work done while wearing silk, enough to love me like no other. Maybe. But for now, it’s just breakfast after love elicited by a slip.

mj

That little room. That little old stone room almost pushed through the side of that tiny garden courtyard that did so well to buffet you from noisy Paris. But you were lucky. Your little room with its little courtyard was only gained by a little street only useful to the automobile as way of delivery.

Those were great times. There always seemed to be a contentness in my bones. And there always seemed to be one beer and one cigarette which always felt so horrible to smoke. (I have quit smoking again - since December this time) But there was of course always good company. And always somewhere to go, but happily not for a few hours.

Or that wretchedly good time when I mistook early morning for dusk and you came outside to talk to me and then push me on my way because your mother was visiting. Your mother who your sister, somehow, was so jealous of. Yes'em good times. The most fiery hair I ever saw and somehow a laugh to match it. And hours and hours in bed resting on floated words, hopes and dreams, and blah bu blah blahs. They all make for good space no matter how small.

cg

I hate that we always need reasons to say hello that it never seems enough to just be thinking about someone and so moved to reach out to them.

I've been thinking a lot about paris recently. And in turn you due to you being a part of my paris. I miss it, and I miss you. I miss the way you saw me, or at least the way I thought you saw me, so more I guess the way I saw myself in your eyes. I say that and obviously then have to see the less than sweet moment flash through my mind, and while I am sad that those instances have to be included, I can't say I don't miss them too. They, we, it was all so intrical. I miss that real sense of correct moments. And I do miss you for nothing more than everything it was.

I wrote about you once, about what it might have been like if it could have survived.


Do you ever wish you could ask for things to be returned to you which never belonged to you in the first place? If I could I would ask for your shirt, the one with the bucking bronco. Everything I adore about you threaded through that shirt.

mj

A heart is breaking across the distance
I never expected this final good bye
Why didn’t you stage a stronger resistance
You could have fought for me, tough guy

It started with such beautiful words
You drew big plans, then locked them away
Life set aside for another day
Around you I fabricated new standards

But somewhere between your heart and mine
There was a love I couldn’t understand
It was there for a while then faded like a smile
Darkness fell, leaving us in no man’s land

We were just wasting time
Throwing pain back and forth
Never seeing what is was worth
In our delusion it was a victimless crime

But I can’t stop loving you
Outside you I have no place to go
I move through a new world trying to make do
I never could have stayed through another frost and snow

But I never stop thinking about you
I miss you more than I should
I think we misunderstood
What was really true


Now only the carnage of what could never be remains
In despair I try not to care
I should move on and start a new campaign
But all I can do is wish you were here

mj