Some day, when I have made millions of dollars from my poetry (so any day soon now), I'll buy a condo, in a building named "Artyst," or "Kreativ," or "The Original" - something with a suitably bohemian veneer. Then, because everyone needs a hobby, I'll take up property development in my spare time.

i love this song! it bubbles under my nipples, pastes lips to my sternum, sets sparrows zipping in one ear and out the other, melts birdcages and glues feathers to my arms when i hear this song i perform an arbutus striptease peeling back my layers to reveal green skin emerging from heartwood - a dancer, composed of sticky marrow and new breath when i hear this song i fuck myself and spin the orgasmic orbit of empty space - empty space transforms my voicebox into a vacuum absorbing the warbling out of every corner of the universe - this song. not “this song,” but This Song the song that mismatches your socks on awkward sundays, or whatever day you think is full of holes, and teaches your feet unexpected dance steps the song that sucks earlobes, gives armhair a hard-on, seduces dignity and makes the dawn blush - that makes you shape-shifting puzzle-piece, makes you rattle bones until they stick against skin, let it go see if it comes back again this song lures you into gardens, baptises you with original skin, feeds you knowing fruit, licks the sap from your lips with a rough tongue, and when this song licks you it feels like needles fitting a groove like playgrounds where children still hurt themselves like pit bulls on laughing gas: your chin bobs its head. your pinky toe discovers a sense of purpose. your right brain brews thunder your left brain weeps uncontrollably your vital organs flower into an orchard. everywhere inside you, pollinators drink hard cider and buzz a choral version of sexual healing this song is not your sex life. it might make your crotch feel really good. and move around a little. like a concussion this song might remind you that you are skin and bone and blood, blood cum and sweat, sweat salt and passing wind it might spin you a vision of lightning firing clay sparking song out of silence, of a flightless buzzard with trees for hands and amphibious feet, when i hear this song i hear last breath’s first kiss and the mud between my grass stains i hear my heart beat taste my iron smell what i musk feel my primate i see why bonobos would laugh at the question of clothes, then gesture fig-stuffed mouths, lice-plucking fingers, the tickle touch and murmur that binds blood and it reminds me of the way we stood around the side of the house party passing fire mouth to mouth when i heard her voice exclaiming i love figs! they’re like ripe testacles that explode in your mouth! saw her feed a smile to anyone with eyes, and couldn’t get the taste of figs out of my ears I think bonobos how our smiles sat together out on the walkway, soaked through from lost hours of chattering downpour, protesting the bodies huddling on the porch and their offers of jackets and dry skin under shelter grooming, breaking boundaries and erasing time with the slightest touch head scratch belly pinch hand brush a glance shared with a treeful of others or stolen wondering if primates have such beautiful eyes the better to become lost within the way some hours passed squeezing words around the figs stuffed in our cheeks, letting the rain stroke our faces, making fingers in our eyes to run through one another’s fur the way some hours passed, or something happened, as chilled skin tangled with blankets on a hardwood floor, and we fed pieces of fruit back and forth between our tongues and eyes - and all from the slightest touch before there were words, a glance, in the rain, as smiles danced in the mud, figs ripened in our eyes, branches trembled with chatter and bore witness in moments like that i feel we are all composers sight-reading eternity all basslines and beats and scattered verses interweaving we are notes flying off the page flowing one to another sliding and breaking suggesting and surprising fumbling and fucking and i would go so far as to say we are all love songs but not love not LOVE not a candy cane soap opera or a sweet and sour sugar glaze, not a shot of butterscotch, or a toffee pudding after story, nor a cheese-dip yoga pose, a cocoa buffet, a meat strip slather party. no, love like a sweat stain. like a drunk rabbit dodging cats. like a pickpocket handshake, a jalapeno slaughterhouse, a blood-stained high heel. love like a barbed wire massage and nothing but sore muscles, a cook-fire a four-pronged tuning fork bent out of shape a ravishing wildebeest an atomic bomb whispering the only word it knows love the way we didn’t speak for two hours only looked at one another after i handed her a note reading if eyes were lips when ours met there was a furious make-out session love the way my youngest cousin pauses in my arms resting in bass notes as i hum northwest passage and bounce him to the rhythm love the way i made a pact with friends that whosoever of us dies like an idiot the others must piss on his grave love the way my mom used to tell me we’re family - and you LOVE your family love that longs to be a memory and a shoehorn that slides my feet into your shoes or yours into mine out of such love i have taken to building my niece a bookshelf and i’m really excited about this project so i’d like to tell you how i’m building the first shelf out of a memory of nights her grandpa sat on my bed and we read aloud to one another from a book called kevin o’connor and the light brigade a beautiful red hardcover, with skeletons charging on horseback under a navy blue sky on the jacket. there’s already books on this shelf, red fish blue fish, and hop on pop, and a book of paintings, and few words telling the life cycle of salmon the second shelf, i’ll build from pocket-sized poetry books her grandma kept on the bedside table. here there will be sonnets, and haiku that aren’t too revolting, every living thing and whatever stories of myth-time call her attention, she might sit on my knee as i sat on her great-grandpa’s and hear the music of speaking when the words call forth her voice. the third shelf i’ll make from the masking tape holding together my first copy of lord of the rings and here she’ll find her way with a golden compass, riding sandworms with beowulf and odysseus, or she might travel to the moon in the shell of a giant snail and learn the language of trees or she might dive into a pool find herself in another world where all that moves has words. the fourth shelf i’m making from the bindings of old journals, so here she’ll learn about free enterprise and ceremony, bad teenaged poetry and ravensong rising into thin air - everywhere being is dancing on this shelf, the book thief goes trainspotting and finds the kiss of the fur queen where some birds walk for the hell of it and orange is not the only fruit of american gods. by the time she's tall enough to reach this shelf, she’ll be old enough to do as she likes with the books. old enough that when she asks me why the last book on the last shelf is oh the places you’ll go i’ll tell her ‘cause that shit’s fuckin timeless. inside its cover, she might find a note reminding her to see a bookshelf as a garden-bed for stories, to learn the greasy fingerprints, the watermarks, the dog-eared pages, the rips, the tears, the notes in the margins, the musty scent of aging paper, the missing bindings, the broken bindings, the bindings that open to hands like the hearts of old friends, to learn the books made for generations of fingers, explaining that i built a bookshelf out of a memory and a dream that someday i might hand down a red hardcover under a navy blue sky with the words take this book into your hands and know you are holding your grandfather’s

out of such love i have taken to building my niece a bookshelf and i’m really excited about this project so i’d like to tell you how i’m building the first shelf out of a memory of nights her grandpa sat on my bed and we read aloud to one another from a book called kevin o’connor and the light brigade a beautiful red hardcover, with skeletons charging on horseback under a navy blue sky on the jacket. there’s already books on this shelf, red fish blue fish, and hop on pop, and a book of paintings, and few words telling the life cycle of salmon the second shelf, i’ll build from pocket-sized poetry books her grandma kept on the bedside table. here there will be sonnets, and haiku that aren’t too revolting, every living thing and whatever stories of myth-time call her attention, she might sit on my knee as i sat on her great-grandpa’s and hear the music of speaking when the words call forth her voice. the third shelf i’ll make from the masking tape holding together my first copy of lord of the rings and here she’ll find her way with a golden compass, riding sandworms with beowulf and odysseus, or she might travel to the moon in the shell of a giant snail and learn the language of trees or she might dive into a pool find herself in another world where all that moves has words. the fourth shelf i’m making from the bindings of old journals, so here she’ll learn about free enterprise and ceremony, bad teenaged poetry and ravensong rising into thin air - everywhere being is dancing on this shelf, the book thief goes trainspotting and finds the kiss of the fur queen where some birds walk for the hell of it and orange is not the only fruit of american gods. by the time she's tall enough to reach this shelf, she’ll be old enough to do as she likes with the books. old enough that when she asks me why the last book on the last shelf is oh the places you’ll go i’ll tell her ‘cause that shit’s fuckin timeless. inside its cover, she might find a note reminding her to see a bookshelf as a garden-bed for stories, to learn the greasy fingerprints, the watermarks, the dog-eared pages, the rips, the tears, the notes in the margins, the musty scent of aging paper, the missing bindings, the broken bindings, the bindings that open to hands like the hearts of old friends, to learn the books made for generations of fingers, explaining that i built a bookshelf out of a memory and a dream that someday i might hand down a red hardcover under a navy blue sky with the words take this book into your hands and know you are holding your grandfather’s and i do this for my niece as i would were she my own daughter for though i long to be a father i can say if i’ll ever have children of my own though i have friends who say it’s a cruel thing to bring children into this world, given the state of things and i can’t say that they’re wrong. after all, i see this world the grass never as green as billboards advertise under a sky made purple and orange from all our gas-light, while radio activity blankets every silence, as our daily bread soaks in pinstripe and machine grease still i can’t help but long to see a child of my own blood discover this same world with eyes and ears and lips, guts and fingertips, discover humour and sorrow and rage, stench and tension and shattered glass and all this song washing over them so i tell these friends i don’t feel have much say in the matter. i’m just another bastard of chance caught halfway between muscle and memory, a child of paradox and strange turns, an incoherent mumble in a megaphone mouth so i am torn between creating a pulse and being repulsed and even as i long to whirl with another body in the act of long division, i want to say, ‘fuckitall’ and run to the hills where i might breathe, and forget this all exists. and in spite of all the terrible things that might be the motivation, this desire to run is strongest when i hear other people from my generation, speaking so seriously about their interlocking posts on facebook. then, i wish to become an ascetic. i wish to climb a mountain, find a cave, lie on my back day after day, meditate, and ask, God? or Mother? or Universe? is this really your plan? and people will climb my mountain so i will rush my cave to greet them clad only in rags and a ragged beard and they will probably ask me do you have wifi? and i will masturbate furiously into the palm of my hand, raise it on high, and say yes here is my network it is unsecured then, as semen trickles down my wrist, i will rotate my ass towards them spreading my cheeks with my clean hand (lest i get internet in my outlet) and, pointing to my anus, i will tell them you may plug in here if you need to recharge your batteries in this way, i will keep others away from my mountain out of my little hotspot of cold, hard reality but when the tsunami of cancer and heavy metals and electric rapture washes over these hills, when the motherboards suffer a meltdown and the power plants have all withered then they will return to me desperate for my internet and they will call me a public location - i will pop up a warning that reads i am but an extension cord electrifying the navel of fleshliness just a meat popsicle, cooking inside out - do not call me your touchscreen: i have no apps that will aid in your survival, there are none that guarantee mine. and let’s be real: the only way i could survive alone in the wild all this time is if i wrote it into a poem so i might have an excuse to say to my fellow humans your network is the key to your survival, but your network is a resource that these bodies produce. your best chance of surviving comes from the reproduction of lines spoken many times before, being remixed for a new generations of users.

and yeah: that’d be a pretty weird thing to do - but then all my life i’ve been called a weirdo, and after all, like all mammals, like you, i am just a dancing salt-flat that shits mineral deposits and bleeds oceanic, and as if that weren’t weird enough i’m one who loves to hide in dark corners, and yet lives for the spotlight. though among the weirdest of the many weird things about me is probably that i took the time to study the anglo-saxon language, better known as old english, from which study i learned that weird means fate, or destiny more specifically, “death fate,” as in a person’s weird is their fatal destination not just the oddities and boddities of which they are made i saw this clearly one drunk night when my friend asked what is kryptonite to superman? and though i don’t know much, i gamely answered his weakness? his achilles heel? his flaw? but each time he answered nope, nope, we’ve had that already, it’s not that until finally it hit me and whether he agreed or not i asserted it’s his weird! surely kryptonite is fated to be involved in superman’s death, but the fact that he’s an interstellar humanoid who can only be hurt by kryptonite makes him pretty weird. and i know, the idea that we are captive to fate and divine trickery isn’t so popular these days, so i suppose i should explain that my concept of free will is a train running uphill towards a split in the tracks repeating to itself i think i choose! i think i choose! i think i choose! i think i choose! and that i believe life is a death sentence as in, by coming into this world i am going out of this world so in the meantime, i’m just here. and if that seems limiting to your potential i might tell you how wings are a limitation that allow birds to fly, like this body has limitations that allow me to dance the way my blood murmurs that i can’t bypass this medical inheritance from my forefathers yet i take heart from their morbid humour the way my grandma’s storytelling moves my mouth, and teaches my words to be host and kitchen and cook-fire, the way i was raised on poetry so i learned to speak from poetry and can do little else besides and i would still tell you that we are a marvelously complex biological phenomena puddles of dust become microverse but i would say that in spite of this inborn sense of agency things will be as they will be and we are as we are, and what i am, as far as my limited self-awareness allows me to say is a shy exhibitionist with an itchy brain and the words love is alive! and its asshole tastes delicious! tattooed on my smile - just another weirdo preaching a gospel of strangers maybe that’s why i invite missionaries to speak with me, like the young highwayman of christ who ambushed me, while i was puffing in the grass, outside a skytrain station. i bore him no ill will, but i have to say the look on that mormon boy’s face when i was finished with him was priceless. in response to my telling him i couldn’t care less what happens after i die, that i am alive and happy to devote my energy to the struggle of living and living well while i do it, he launched into his bit about the cost of admission to paradise being accepting jesus as my lord and savouring the way those words tasted on his tongue he was shocked when i interrupted him to say i don’t rightly know that i believe death exists. with that, i began walking away while this young missionary like some slack-jawed disciple followed at my heels you mean you don’t believe we die? i reassured him that we die that our bodies cease to exist but for a moment, i was tempted to see if i might convert him to the view that we are an unending cascade of echoes and glances, passing clouds turned mountains and ever-present sky - that when the body is gone, the breath remains. i could have told that boy about my grandpa, how the old man still lives in my voice when i hum solutions to my problems with his plodding barione in my throat, or my knees when they foreshadow the feeling of his cane in my hand or my arms when they long to wrap my family in a great, big bear hug i could have told that boy about a friend and fellow poet, how sometimes i feel his breath slip into my body, pass through my lips faster than they can give it shape, transforming my words into lightning striking quick and articulate or how his words still straighten my spine or how my ribs still grow sore from his punching as i remember how he would tell me you have to be tougher, johnny! and laugh and laugh and laugh or how i continue to hear him speak on the tongues of those his voice lifted - and yes, when his body was gone i still puddled in grief and senseless alcohol and felt like a lost child and yes, when he died many voices loosed a heart-rent howl, many hands forgot how to work, many words transformed into incoherent moans of agony, i kept hearing people say it was a tragedy but i could only think let us die in foolish accidents. this has always been our way. and his echoes still rumble in the ground, cracking voices and bursting dams, and i am shaken with tears and laughter for the body is gone, but the breath remains but i might have told that boy about the wyrd sisters who only make their cuts so all these yarns might be woven into a larger fabric where we will live together again, as two words in a sentence, bonded molecules in exhalation, a subconscious gesture i might have added that the word yarn derives from a root that means guts, intestines those chords on which our body plays when it plugs in and goes electric, so then i might have asked him to listen to the music vibrating on those twisted strings inside him, and explained that we are sound shaped out of silence, nothing more than music of the cosmos, resonating waves washing one over the other, and that every wave breaks, then washes back into the sea giving rise to new swells just as the body goes, the breath remains finally, i might have told that boy that i am happily on my way to whatever weird place i’m going, and that if i have any thought of an after-life, it is a dream that i will become a story, and a compost heap, a glimmer in the eye, and a curling lip, a pool of laughter collecting in the lungs of people who never knew me, and a drop of water in the eyes of those who did, that i will become a signpost reading Love Your Weird! pointing in whichever direction you are traveling, and that i will leave behind me such things as a smell of aged paper, a sound of dirty laughter, a touch of rain and wet hair, a taste of figs, an echo rumbling in the ears of those i leave behind that sounds like a smile, saying This! This! This! because this song is The Song that never ends really, it sounds like nothing at all, and everything all at once.