this morning he le...

this morning he left the building where people toil and sweat over a variety of social rulers. there are mirrors everywhere, and desks with grid coordinates to record letters using a no.2 pencil. the building is multi-storied and windowless. when people mention scent he suffocates at the thought of the recycled air there. thousands of tulip bulbs are donated every year by the dutch government to commemorate the allied troops that liberated them during the war. most are planted around the government buildings and at the national park across the river. on campus, he can see them sprout for spring, and he cannot recall where the snow has gone. tomorrow morning i'll write another exam in a room where i took a classics course. during which i'll hope for a pleasant afternoon of writing postcards. i'll seek refuge under a statue erected in 1903 or a willow tree near the egyptian embassy. little messages that tell half stories and half nightmares with generic stamps. the tulips will be at my feet wherever i go tomorrow. and winter will be frozen in my pen.

you k...

you know, man, when i was a young man in high schoolyou believe in or not i wanted to play football for the coachand all those older guysthey said he was mean and cruel, but you knowwanted to play football for the coachthey said i was to little too light weight to play line-backerso i say i’m playing right-endwanted to play football for the coach’cause, you know some day, manyou gotta stand up straight unless you’re gonna fallthen you’re gone to dieand the straightest dudei ever knew was standing right for me all the timeso i had to play football for the coachand i wanted to play football for the coachwhen you’re all alone and lonelyin your midnight hourand you find that your soulit’s been up for saleand you begin to think ’boutall the things that you’ve doneand you begin to hatejust ’bout everythingbut remember the princess who lived on the hillwho loved you even though she knew you was wrongand right now she just might come shining throughand the -- glory of love, glory of loveglory of love, just might come throughand all your two-bit friendshave gone and ripped you offthey’re talking behind your back saying, manyou’re never going to be no human beingand you start thinking again’bout all those things that you’ve doneand who it was and what it wasand all the different things you made every different sceneahhh, but remember that the city is a funny placesomething like a circus or a sewerand just remember different people have peculiar tastesand the -- glory of love, the glory of lovethe glory of love, might see you throughyeah, but now, nowglory of love, the glory of lovethe glory of love, might see you throughglory of love, ah, huh, huh, the glory of loveglory of love, glory of loveglory of love, now, glory of love, nowglory of love, now, now, now, glory of loveglory of love, give it to me now, glory of love see you throughoh, my coney island baby, now(i’m a coney island baby, now)i’d like to send this one out for lou and racheland all the kids and p.s. 192coney island babyman, i’d swear, i’d give the whole thing up for youlyrics from lou reed's coney island babyi can hear the thunder outside. i can't see the lightning. it might rain forever they say.

when the weather ...

when the weather changes back and forth as fast as it has been, my sinuses cannot decide when to function. as a result my nose gives up at the most inconvenient times, and i spend the mornings trying helplessly to stop the bleeding. * * * i have this habit of going out in the rain to develop photos while leaving a kettle to boil dry on the stove. walking up the stairs i can smell the damage. walking into my apartment i know my roommate has already passed out in the room beside mine after drowning in a bottle of sub-standard sherry. * * * i tend to avoid silly western superstitions, such as opening an umbrella indoors and the reading of horoscopes. i prefer the lucky numbers i used for childhood team sports, although i rarely make reference to them today. my grandmother came to this country approximately thirty-five years ago, she brought with her five children and superstitions of a foreign continent. from across the ocean i've come to appreciate her ginseng roots and orange peels that are older than she can remember. * * *i've been dropping things everywhere lately. food, names, coins, people. i try to recall whether it was hansel or gretel that left the trail of bread crumbs behind themselves. (i don't even know if i am referring to the proper tale.) i think subconsciously i want to leave this place, but won't let myself go. there are holes in my pockets where the anchors fall. cracks in the sidewalk from where they land.

i am ...

i am living in the wrong city. or i am not living in the right city. there's a difference between the two.growing up i lived in four different homes. in the first; on a wall in my bedroom, my father painted a mural of disney characters riding inside a school bus. he tells me he used to paint scenic winter watercolour in college. the house had a piano that only my sister and i played. those sharps and flats now accumulate dust and age. the strings have not been tuned, nor played in years. my father used to do tai chi on saturday mornings hours before the sun decided to rise. i want to learn tai chi. as for the other three homes. i never lived in them long enough to see grass grow or leaves fall. the nails never popped, the floors failed to creak at night to tell me bedtime stories. so, in many ways, they are insignificant. forgotten. and irrelevant.

city s...

city squares, sharing earphones, fighting over the window seat, baseboards lined by books.i keep my expectations at the lowest possible levels. i do this to avoid disappointment, i do this because my life has become plastered over the walls and other people's lives with it. i've slowly learnt to expect nothing and have become willing to give (almost) everything to the next stranger. the phone doesn't ring, and i am not surprised nor disappointed, because this is of course, expected. at the corner of elgin and sparks street, across from a post office, beneath an irish pub named for a famous père de la confédération, lies the imperial barber. a place where civil servants and beige trench coats sit for the same shave their great-grandfathers received so long ago. he goes there for a haircut. he goes there because the original wainscoting smells of history. he goes there because hair is all he can cut.

when i wa...

when i was fourteen, one night in march, at an arena. my friend and i were equals in the food chain while standing in a room. we knew each other, despite he being nearly a full year older than i was. that previous september, we met the people in that room, and one another, all at the same time. over the years; the paint on the walls slowly peeled away, and the hockey players at the arena aged into higher divisions. later that night people were gathering to leave. the doors needed to be locked, windows closed, lights turned off. a long pause. a light remained, a door unlocked, and the draft from the bathroom knocked paint chips off the walls. a long pause. he went into the bathroom. she had tied her belt from the top of the bathroom stall door frame into a noose. the noose was secured with the brass buckle that came with the belt. my friend and i never really discussed what happened. she disappeared. and several years later we would leave that room behind us. now all that's left behind are miniscule paint chips, burnt lightbulbs, worn hardwood floors and a bent door frame.it's three a.m. i should be sleeping, and this is what surfaces in my mind.

i like subtitl...

i like subtitles and footnotes. i spend my time between classes gazing through a window in my bedroom. i can see the snow fall, rain fall, my reflection. i follow the path of an aeroplane towing a red lettered banner until it disappears behind a building, above the clouds. my head rests on a ledge full of dust. a ledge full of time. when there is no snow, rain, nor reflection of an aeroplane - i fill time with naps, ones that last till the clouds fall to the ground. this is to say, i want to awake in another time zone. i want someone to tell me something brutally honest.

on t...

on the exterior of my bedroom door there are thirty six polaroid photographs of people i don't know, but see everyday. each of their faces tell a familiar story different only in degree, and not in kind. looking at the door in the morning makes me feel uneasy, it is an eyesore. when i am sad, i open a shoe box poorly hidden beneath my bed. remove the half torn pack of belmont milds and i count the twenty dollar bills i've been saving. saving for when the eyesores are out of sight. saving for when existence, is no longer a chore .

we went t...

we went to look at apartments today. one had a balcony that overlooked a dumpster which doubled as a fire escape, another had hallways that reminded you of a steve mcqueen prison movie, and the last, had windows that looked onto brick walls reassembling some sort of internment camp. a tenant told me the government used the building as a fallout shelter for civil servants during the cold war. he proceeded to point to a door leading into the ground in the middle of parking lot. in the past week, time was spent in an office of foreign objects where a man used his softest voice. One floor up, another had an office with windows that might very will see everything. the same man used the word existential while adjusting his lime green cravat. his tie was the same colour i used to shade in damascus. he grinned when i answered his questions, i did not appreciate that. but he did give me a a list of names that may prove to be more useful than the apartment designed to survive a nuclear winter. that, i did appreciate.

the la...

the last time he touched a piano he fell apart halfway through the third line of a waltz. his hands started moving faster, the key signatures were inverted, and he'd stopped counting long ago were among the common public excuses. he lost something in that rest. the first, and perhaps only teacher he ever had gave him a pen. stories have to end sometime.after the audience left; he took himself apart, and curled his disproportionately thin body on the piano bench. this is why he doesn't touch pianos anymore. try to remember the postcards that were lost in the mail. this season is melting away and i've tried desperately to assemble something with the piano pen. it's a symphony, and it's disappearing like a vacuum through my fingers. this has always been a fistful of sand.

afte...

after dinner my father does not push in his chair. this lack of action does nothing to me, besides provide a distraction to the naked trees and snow outside. visiting a house that i spent so little time in reminded me of the great grandmother i barely knew. my only sibling was married this summer. though we live in the same city, we continue to reside on opposite sides of the canal. i've consciously done math in my mind to remember their names. they're fading, and with growing distance they become more like photographs and less like portraits. by three a.m. i cannot count the footsteps they've taken, the tears freeze when they touch air at this time of year. sometime ago i unknowingly became a passenger. and now, i have lost all bearing because constellations in the city cease to exist.

if this all t...

if this all takes a lifetime to understand, then so be it, let it take my life(time). the pilot, like the voice from the sky he is, told the passengers that potential turbulence laid ahead. the plane shook constantly for the remainder of the flight. the words in the book i was reading danced to form new paragraphs and meanings. there wasn't enough room in front of me, the seats had been placed too close together. i could only move side to side. i am suffocating, you just refuse to see it. it was night outside, and at twenty eight thousand feet it felt as if we hadn't moved passed a comma. these are the last attempts; at finding keys under seat cushions, and perhaps the final stopover at a town, now a city that i tried to grow roots in. i only think of the plane taking off, seldom of it landing.

yest...

yesterday, was another day. he sat with four french ladies; all with different hair colours, but the same taste for men. chocolate fondue with copious amount of strawberries were complimented by glasses intended for children's use. their russian friend hid in the small box by an ashtray. he alone caused two to leave early, and the others remained to have his scent evaporate from their throats. french separatism and jurisprudence hang at the edges of their mouths. and at the edge of his, despair. walking by the café he notices two french foreign exchange students. what followed was a whole rest. he can only describe time by the music he once played. they would never find him in his room daydreaming. he dreams because he knows it won't materialize.

the letters we w...

the letters we write and don't send. i've placed them carefully into a cardboard box. they hold strong at the deepest part of the ocean with the anchors of sunken shipwrecks. at these depths the blue body herself does not move an eighth. confusion surfaces occasionally with an old habit. it snowed in my bedroom. it was the type of snowfall where the flakes replace the skyline, and come to rest on shoulders, and faces. snow doesn't find their chests because half their organs are against each other, covering each other, breathing for each another. mother nature cries and the clouds cover a city with a weightless white blanket. all this while they sleep.

a bo...

a book is held closed with an elastic band. these are the feelings that he once understood, and now, cannot: drowning in dry tears while the clouds pour lead, losing to the oceans, and laying in harvested wheat-fields. endless time, blowing through as an apparition. he saw love once (using the term quite carelessly) as a flow, continuance and uninterrupted, maybe like a river that has no run off , secluded almost in existence. and then there's us, two boats on a lake, at dusk and dawn. searching for our rivers.

the collective ...

the collective of former individuals. i can draw your portrait using something i heard a doctor refer to as a cortex. i can imagine your expression and predict your every word in a paragraph that i dictate into a telegraph. those small varying pulses always fail to make if across certain great circle lines. your insides are lost in your outsides. today, people here are willing to accept tomorrow's fate.

we were born on...

we were born on the same day in 1984. we both have sisters, only now i say i had a sister. we went to the same two elementary schools that had more portables than classrooms and a division between those who spoke french and those who did not. your father's heart stopped beating one night. you were never the same way again. we passed glances at the movies once, there was no time for exchanges of anything other then pre-wrapped hellos. i wonder about you occasionally. i wonder if your birthday was any different then mine? if not, it must've been filled with the twenty years of disappointment we grew into, and not out of.sometimes i wish i was born blind.

big wheels made f...

big wheels made for snow roll on sunny dry roads. large ships carry people to manufactured islands and pier industries. the sunlight was hand crafted in local sweatshops. the holidays were payed for with american dollars. aquariums were larger than the colourful homes, a moonlight that glimmered along the sea. the man with the lighter was quick on the draw. a teen slept while the curtains were closed. x-amount of miles by car, and a y-amount by aeroplane. i've missed the snow; probably because there's been nothing else to remember. i watched flakes find rest on winter coats. i moved to avoid a lady who read a book while she walked.

rideau

i have forced myself to give up so much. i swore to myself that it was the path to better things. it's all gone now. it burns into thin air with every cigarette i smoke. i take some back, and push as much of it as i can out. questioning myself now; i am lost in a sea of people. the stars were replaced by city lights, the cigarette smoke with stale air. my flight lands at an airport everyday; and everyday it's the same feeling that creeps up my throat.