Squatting in front of the bowl, bile yellow gloves deep in the cold liquid filth of a stranger’s body. Ultimate intimacy becomes ultimate service – no job more pure by definition. But truth is a poor man’s prize and her hands ache to create, to pump, to kill. Anything but clean. To erase someone’s humanity is a mockery to hands born only to glorify our fantastical, mutual destruction.
Many years ago, I learned how to fly. I’d jumped before, but had always fallen back. I can remember lying in bed using my preteen physics and philosophy to argue that silly adage: “What goes up must come down.” When I took my first flight I knew I’d finally won the debate. I reached into the clouds, then higher, and higher. Continue reading
How can he tell her he’s failed another interview? He leaves the manager’s office and fumbles back out into the mall. So much want – bright lights, everything shiny, everyone craving, buying, gorging themselves in the food court. Two cans of Dollar Store chickpeas wait at home, maybe a bedraggled onion and a bit of bread. His stomach aches, but not from hunger. Continue reading
A jewel wedge bursts in her mouth, but only with promise. The pleasure is too slow. There’s too much skin to peel, too many bits of pith to pick at. Sticky fingers and chew, chew… chew. Continue reading
Is this the end of joy? Or the beginning? The fridge is sterile white, empty except for a single terrified tomato. Continue reading
You are risking everything reading this. And with these five words…even more. Because in these few seconds you have spread open the lobes of your brain and welcomed me in. How can I ever honour such a gift of time, of self, when the worlds I write could betray you so easily with a slip of continuity, a forced metaphor, a character left hollow by my impatience for your praise… Continue reading
Look closer… is this a scrap of garbage or a profound revelation about process? Ironically, I found it while taking a shortcut. Words are alive, and I believe we owe them the dignity of an audience before they are ground down and pulled back into the belly of the Earth. Oh Xena Warrior Princess game manual technical writer, what wisdom doth ye have to bestow? Continue reading
We write ourselves into boxes all the time: check which box applies, keep your signature within the lines, what do you “do?”, etc. We wedge ourselves into these tight but cozy places and bend ourselves double to reach their reassuring absolutes. Every box is a story we’ve learned to believe. And there, fully contorted in the dark and stuffy air, we wait. For what? More closet space? Continue reading
Men do not deal well with mortality, especially on Mondays. Virile and meaty, with an impressive masculine girth, Don had always stood his ground as king of the crop. He was the last great hope for the weakened mycelial network that had shot him forth, the magic coupling of hyphae now depleting the nutrients that had brought them together. Continue reading
I discovered the dark glamour of drugs, death, and sex in an Ontario grade 5 classroom. The heroin addicted, HIV positive prostitute was only 7 years older than the little blonde girl white knuckling Reader’s Digest during afternoon reading time. Every sentence was a step deeper into a darkness I knew only through other people’s nightmares. Continue reading
Blank Canvas Living 