4 Poems, if You Call it Poetry

These are four poems I've written in the last week. One was about going to an NHL hockey game, sitting in the rich people's seats and watching a man and his date for the night. One is an attempt at writing erotic love poetry. One is about overhearing a conversation with a trio of people outside a pub. One was written while very bored at work on an incredibly slow day, trying to just relax and even meditate and being unable to due to distractions. Enjoy.

Mike


The Hockey Game
And she was holding his hand.
I’ll never know if it was about love or money,
or just a love of money.
And maybe she had all the money
and had a thing for older men.
We sat behind them, Mel,
watching a horrible hockey team play masterfully
in $180 seats given away as easily as a puck from McCabe.
Toskala was great.
Tlusty was grand.
Antropov was fantastic.
For a period of time,
the second period to be exact,
we were fixated on two people in the rich people’s seats.
You whispered,
“Do you want a trophy wife when you’re older?”
People so rich they only hung around for the middle of the game.
Or maybe a bartender knows they never left.
They took the subway home, after all.
Guess who sat beside them?
Fighting a smile was never so hard.
The Leafs will only polish golf clubs this year,
but someone in front of me, has a trophy.

Chocolate
I do want to feel you. I do want my toes to run up and down your legs. I want to feel your skin under bedsheets after midnight and at the rise of sunlight.

Yet, the reality is, I’m greedy. I want more. I want more like a cocaine addict wants more. But I seek something fulfilling. I want you to playfully pull my sweater and pants up and my hat down over my eyes, blinding me to everything but your world. I long for the one who seeks joy proudly prancing around naked, unashamed of all the blemishes we have and never talk about, only trying to let them heal and never covering them up.

I long for something as sensual, beautiful and erotic as us feeding dark chocolate to one another, naked between the sheets in the pitch black of night.


The Spitter
Two lovers and a third wheel
stepped out for a smoke.
The third wheel is a spitter.
"Stop spitting! That's gross!"
Yells the woman.
Her lover kisses her and says,
"Spitting's not gross, swallowing is gross."
The woman yells,
"I know, but he's just spitting saliva!"
The stranger you're ignoring now knows something about you.

Unable
With eyes closed,
I have no idea what awaits me.
I have no idea if an ear-rattling alarm
will abort my trance.
I know I have yet to reach it.
An annoying external voice
holds my head open,
stopping my mind from entering the surreal.
I want to hear, "fucking right, fucking right, fucking right,"
no more.
A wedge between my ears will not allow me to relax.
I cannot enter a dream state.
My meditation is going nowhere,
pre-empted by the sounds
of "Fucking eh, fucking right, what the fuck's that about?"

Reminiscing

I was just thinking yesterday about how Easter once mattered to me. It wasn't in a religious sense, but Easter always was a day where you'd get excited as a kid because you'd get pounds of chocolate and other junk food. Then it became more of a celebration of new life and the arrival of spring. It was a long weekend and I and other family members would get together and celebrate the end of winter. But the last few years I've worked on at least one of the days and it has been cold. Bitterly cold this year with snowbanks still on the ground. This year I kept forgetting it was once one of my favourite holidays of the year. One where it was time to grab the glove and go play ball with my four day weekend. I can blame it on the weather, I can blame it on work, I can blame it on being too old to care about mounds of chocolate. In the end, it's up to me to make the most of the situation. The finger's pointing at me. But damnit, if only there were no snow. If only I still had my glove that I could go play catch with someone with...

March 8

A blizzard blasts my eyelids.
I stumble through mountainous snowdrifts
and almost leave a print of my face in one.
"Suck it up," one man tells me.
"This is summer in Sudbury."
I'm now warm in the pub
where they hand out
mint-flavoured lifesavers with meals.
Where the days counting to St. Patrick's Day
change from nine to eight two hours early.
Where a lousy pub band plays music.


I know I am sick, morbid and selfish, when I tell you,
dying tonight wouldn't be so bad
if I had to die young.
I'm in the 27s, though I ain't so famous.
Deathclock once said I'd die on a March 8.
There's a blizzard in the window.
I'm alone on the other side.
The man beside me was here for two pints and leaving.
He's on his fifth and close to gone.
Dying on a Saturday when the world is dead.
I love life and seek to find what tomorrow feeds me.
Yet the rush of death is a once in a lifetime experience.

The oscars=dreadful

So I did watch the Academy Awards last night. Early on, I had to ask myself, "what the hell am I watching?"

First of all, I only saw one of the movies nominated for best picture, Juno. Honestly, if this was one of the best movies of the year, it's probably good I didn't see too many this year. Then last night I had to endure performances of those three god awful songs from Enchanted.

There were very few laughs. The only thing I kind of found funny was Jon Stewart's line after The Bourne Ultimatum won one of its awards, "Someone just jumped ahead in the office pool with a complete guess." T

he show wasn't as predictable as many critics have said, however. Marion Cotillard and Tilda Swinton were total surprises. But most speeches were a total bore. Thumbs down. A boring cliche, I know, but fitting.

My next post will have new pieces of writing, I promise. I know it was Friday I promised it would come.

Expensive Chain Coffee Joints

Tonight, rather than going to the local pub to write, I went out to a local coffee joint. Not a local independent one, mind you. A couple of weeks ago, through details I won't get into, I received a gift card for Second Cup. I sat in a Second Cup on Bloor St., the one across from Bloor Cinema, writing and reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Hey, that Pole/Ukrainian sure could write.

Anyway, A chocolate tart, a chilled green tea milkshake or whatever it was and a berry smoothie (I was there for awhile) cost me roughly $14. That's almost three pints in a pub. I'm not complaining. It wasn't my money and I'll probably feel better tomorrow morning than I would've with three pints. Mind you, I'm sure that chocolate tart packed alatta calories and wasn't all that healthy. But this morning I had no time to eat and thought I'll grab a muffin or something at Timmy Ho's on my way to work. I got there and saw I wouldn't have time to stand in a lineup going around the store. I ran across the street to another Second Cup. A (really small) scone and a croissant cost me $5. Five bucks! Now Magazine spent a whole whack of time bitching about how it costs up to $30 to get into the ROM. How about how it costs too much to do anything?

Anyway, I'll post some of what I wrote later. Like Lady MacBeth said, "to bed, to bed, to bed."

Haven't written here in awhile

I haven't written here in awhile.

I went and saw Juno last night. It was alright and kind of funny, though I found it bizarre they managed to make a comedy out of teenage pregnancy. I just don't understand what was so great about this movie to the point where it would be movie of the year and where one would think Ellen Page had an absolutely standout performance. I didn't think any of the performances or the story or the direction stood out with greatness.

Probably the highlight of my week this week was me launching my own poetry series in Toronto called Rich Dog Rhymes and Readings (RDRR). Probably 12-15 people showed up to see Krystle Mullin and Lara Bozabalian. I was happy with the turnout considering the miserably cold weather. This weekend seems to work as follows for poetry in Toronto: Toronto Poetry Slam on Saturday, $100 Slam on Sunday. Live Words on Monday and the Art Bar as well as the Plasticine Series. I figure I'll have to sit out one of these days. I have other things to do besides just poetry. The date for the next RDRR has not been set, but it will be on a Sunday at the Regal Beagle on Bloor St. W.

Four things bothering me tonight

1. The Raptors lost tonight.
2. The Raptors lost by a lot tonight.
3. The Raptors absolutely mailed it in toward the end tonight.
4. When in the shower, no miniature Irish woman pops her head out of the Irish Spring bodywash bottle to check out my manhood.