Love Letter Open Mic

Just returned home from the Love Letter Open Mic at the Cagibi in Mile End, from such intensely personal, comical, praising, loving, hating words. We laughed, we aww-ed, we grimaced, but in the end, we felt the love. And I thought I'd spread the love, three pieces I shared tonight...

PostModern Longing

I miss you. I want to see your face
book profile. I want to read you
my latest posted item. I want to see where you've been
tagged these past months. I don't want to read the writing on the wall
your wall with all of the flirting suitors. How are you today?
What is your status? You haven't updated me
or your profile picture lately. Where are you?
I miss you. I want to see your face


Halation
You shut the door to the cold outside and shed
your wool layers, peeling back to the core
of the onion. I watch the heat of your body
radiating outwards like the haze of exhaust fumes
from an airplane. I imagine the skin
tones of your flesh beginning to permeate
the threshold of your body. And I see
pigment spreading like the cyclic cloud of cream
in coffee, allowing itself to dance into neutral
colorless territory. The ink of your skin
tone wanders its way towards me like the very
liquid black of my father’s pen sketching
on napkins, following patterns, losing definition.


(In your eyes, I see moonlight)
In your eyes, I see moonlight
on the ocean’s surface.
The moon brings its face to the mirror and
it shatters.

You steal heartbeats, catching
them before they breathe every time
you enter a room and put them away in a cardboard box.
They run around like chickens, clucking
rhythmically, shadows of breaths
that escaped. I soar up for air, every time.

I would rather enter your body
through your mouth, the swollen
prey inside the belly of a snake.

The mirror game, mere child's play of making my hand follow yours, renews
when we two men stare at each other as if our eyes were needles, yet still
seeing everything else we bare.
We move in parallel, my muscles baited
to yours, we echo
one another. My shoulders, wrists... ankles, knees
Your shoulders, wrists.... ankles, knees
they move together, as if string has grown between
our joints, eyes, navels; cardinal points
for the movement of a marionette, but here no hand
rules, instead, in tandem, two bodies.