ROMANS. In the season of gooseflesh and sweaters, every threshold is tested. For sleep, new insulation; for the windows, nearer panes. The campaign was an overlong conquest of lawns. The boulevard became our commons, under threat of picturesque dissensus. Who pickets the impending day, straddles which neighbourly barricade? The pancake batter looked like vomit, yesterday's intentions overturned into the sink. Only what kind of lunatic barfs on the dishes? One experience of poverty is to walk prodigiously, the distance to the laundromat then back, clothes damp to dry them on the fence. Total savings in brain cells and cents, about a day's rent in the afterlife. This fall, one scoundrel will convey this information to market. I would he were aboard a wicker basket, smeared with tears and querying constituents for mercy on behalf of his successors. Sitting fireside, I'd knit him a flag. Who reads which news and isn't turning tricoteuse? Road rage as displaced class hatred. In the suburb I grew up around, the sidewalks etched with swastikas, each plot of new cement was ready-wet for propaganda. Above the fray, the sad-sacks living in glass houses can't use the bathroom at night. They are a lantern to the world, and we are moths to their good fortune. As art elsewhere appreciates, the point of housing has become that everybody wants a home, but knows there simply aren't enough to go around. The sight of supper a scarcely believable taunt. Certain menacing themes date the text. The headless sailors are less naked than a sign. A snarl coiled in the throat, awaiting winter, a wind bitten competition. Earplugs halve the pleasure. Whether angry-hungry or nonplussed, each of them disapproved in their own fashion. A reaction-formation to finish. Is your older sister yet a soldier? Does the memory remain when you repeat? As early in the evening as half-seven, my eyes seized on the direction of the grain; henceforth, as though a current gripped my ankles, I would cross the room in long diagonals, staggering north-east or south-west exclusively. I couldn't reach the bathroom. We spent three days with my feelings and came home. The candidates are two smart phones with different chargers. A generation gap commends early adoption. Eyebrow solo. Punctuation Suite. Plug awkward silence with a comet, more stopgap guffaw. I'm too effete to have a fate, and that too is a kind of theft. The coin collectors have a table in the mall on a revolving basis. That one could vote, if not strategically, then only on the maxim that one render unto Caesar what is his.
SNOWMARE. New Canadians learning to curl. Sprechstimme, loose nerves. Fluorescent light makes the complexion ache. The tick had not yet burrowed to a point of great concern. He never really felt at home there but he stayed seventeen years. That's seventeen summers, sixteen Christmases; two marriages, one job. The facts as often tell us nothing. Who can't sleep for a fear of flying in their own bed? It's not prudent to be cautious. Indoor voices, hisses discipline. The Soul, as is established, loves to play. Chordal accompaniment or Book of Changes? At its backdated basis, our existence is just gas. Sock-footed for the static thrill of winter. Day one, no nemesis as yet. Vest weather, rain a mild nuisance. Window shoppers skim a neon reef by night. Posh fear in lights. The customer's account had been credited twice. 'I can't stand to see someone who's counted as a body on a job. Just don't be there. As long as you're there ...' Entrails, circuitry. You're giving me a complex. We have all the music in the world. Now, on the Sunday of life, we sit and listen. Like any city, our collection sprawls and sputters, its measure is more of the same. Repetition without difference. Fad diet as paradigm. It shouldn't be this hard to find a place to piss outdoors. Then, only shame prevents it. No one lives here anymore, we all serially rent. My other casa is a suitcase. Uninsurable, the sum that is a city will remain. An idée fixe, wrought upon water, balanced on a spine. A gaseous cipher on the river. Sifting wreckage, lick a shifter. Is it me, or does every ranting body on the street sound like a plant? Unpleasant odor of the pundit in the corner. The kind of person who encounters the Koran as Penguin Classic. I didn't stop to wonder what the evening paper meant precisely. On Jane Jacobs Way, 'mixed use' is open bars and closed banks, or the opposite. At the groin of two rivers, a dock. Our sanctioned make-out spot, crowded with salivating cops and strapping composites. I lack the libido to write city poems, like I lack the knack for daily work. As our cab driver empties a bottle of urine at a red light. We are so many woven bags of water. Body politic as bubble wrap; a trod-upon analogy. One issue is the flesh; a viscous grid pending discussion. The blueprint grows vertical blocks, a bargain tropics. His writing is like vegan baking, dry and dense. The desserts, however, have the dignity of daring. Stalling at the till to prolong the flirtation. Pretending to text in a crowd. Don't be disgusting. Is cruelty a customer service? In the city, you soon learn that any landmark you can't see must be behind you. Try to eat shamelessly outdoors, hounded by street photographers. Listen to foreign sirens on the phone. How many ads have featured an American flag billowing in the background? Dog walking on Lafayette, sensual shivers before Bieber billboard. Bowie died. I had a funny feeling. Lit upon the bridge's filigree, a straying fortress, watching mazes improvised beneath. Between “the romantic conception of society as an organism and the baroque conception of the organism as a society” (Chunglin Kwa) there is the city. Inside this maze were many like myself. Then, at its center, there was only one of both of us.
