Poetry

the moral middle of the road

/ andyveilleux / 3 Comments

Everyday is Halloween

as we dress up as sinners

or saints

when the reality

is somewhere in the middle.

 

None of us are as good

or as bad

as we paint ourselves

or people paint us to be.

 

We are all capable of great evil

and magnificient good

but none of us are clean of 

the other.

 

We pretend we are as good as we think

putting on masks and surrounding ourselves

with so many lies,

and half-truths even,

and the kind of friends that tell us how

special and amazing we are

and how we couldn't have been in the wrong.

 

And that's where the best of friends matter

to tell you you're an idiot

and that you made a serious mistake

or five

but you're still alright,

because you can always fight for redemption.

things worth fighting for

/ andyveilleux / 2 Comments

I struck while the iron was hot

but began to notice it only got hotter

and this was the secret of writing.

 

Nothing worth doing or having

is not forged and better by difficulty and

time,

time spent honing the craft or reinforcing

the foundations of anything worth holding onto.

 

There are so few things worth holding onto

and when one finds them they must

grab onto them with both hands and even

wrap their legs around them.

 

Kick

scream

punch

flail

and yell

until your body can move no longer

and there is no more saliva to fly out of your

exhausted mouth.

 

Some thing are worth holding onto

and you better fight like the Devil himself

when time comes to take them away.

Environmentalism of the heart

/ andyveilleux / 3 Comments

One candle was never enough

against armies of indifference and

stupid decisions

that darken the days and nights of our lives.

 

Friends were shuffled in and out of the deck

like too many wasted and bent cards

holes punches through their centre by the house,

they were tossed aside as a chain smokers threw away

cigarette butts

and the sexual addict,

non-cigarette ones.

 

Sustainability,

the great buzz word of our times,

applies to the way we live our lives.

 

We can travel endlessly and keep relocating,

switching the sheets and new beds

but skeletons and memories have a way of

hooking onto your back

to the degree that walking upright is

impossible

and the worst thing isn’t even the memories

of frequently beds and too many unclothed,

it’s the pieces of heart given away so unceremoniously

and sometimes unscrupulously

that never find their way home,

because a piece of heart given never returns to the whole

it either splinters into someone elses’ heart

of crash and breaks on the cold floor.

 

The ones that splinter feel purposeful,

as though we have left and received mementos

and they still leave their mark and create

renewable connections,

but heard is not a renewable resource

and it can’t be recycled.

 

We all mine the pits of our hearts

retrieving heart like ore and smelting it

in the heat of passion and sex,

but it will deplete too unless it is used

to build a permanent home with love.

 

We can only create so many structures

from our hearts before we

Easter Island

our way to extinction.

where is your man tonight

/ andyveilleux / 1 Comment

Your man should be in your lonesome arms

but we all get

lost somewhere along

the way to

something better

that never comes.

And where is your man tonight?

Hopping in and out of beds or

breaking down over the indecision of

leaving or staying,

perhaps he is trying to figure out

the ways to tell you how much he loves you

and maybe you’re in the wrong bed.

I might know where your man is tonight,

my darling,

maybe he was thinking about the perfect gift

or romantic adventure

but never had the push to walk outside of

his depression

to make your dreams come true.

I think I know where your man is,

wrapped inside his own head

thinking that life is filled with characters and not

people

never people

only characters scrolling by on a screen

and nothing is infinite or finite in life

it just is

and that’s love too,

even if we stretch it and break it

nothing is permanent

final

and nothing ends or begins.

I know where your man is tonight,

because he’s right here in that familiar bed

writing

another poem that will

grind hearts to bloody

messes,

and leave your heart weeping for him

with your hand reaching out for him

but he will never see it.

Your man is right there tonight,

but he’s tired

the wick is flickering in his candle

that lit so easily

for you

for so long

but it is dying now,

baby,

and he’s not sorry or living in regret,

even as the wick eats the last oxygen it will

ever

taste,

and he’ll miss the taste of that sweet oxygen you had

trapped between both lips

that he inhaled like a sweet summer’s afternoon spent

on a beach surrounded by friends and love.

Your man was right here

but that’s all a bittersweet memory

and on someone else’s time,

love is now is a collection of

do-you-remember-when’s

and

if-only-we-would-have’s

but that’s the tragic nature of it,

we don’t know what we have until we destroy it

and we don’t respect something until it almost kills us.

I heard a rumour about your man

and it sounds like he passed this way not long ago,

heavy heart and sullen eyes set in a face

featuring a jaw chiselled for victory

and the damage of hundreds of nights of sadness,

they say he’s time-worn but there’s a faint sound coming

from his chest and occasionally

a spark hops out

and dances across his bright blue eyes

rolling around a charming grin that

contradicts the loneliness he carries like a cross.

Your man no longer waits for you,

my dear,

and I’ve heard rumblings he has not been seen

in these parts for at least a few weeks,

and don’t you know they are saying

‘it’s for the best’

so don’t worry about your man,

my dear,

he’s got a head full of steam and certainly

there will be new love and he will love again

and I heard a rumour he isn’t hopping in and out of beds

like he used to,

because he’s a changed man,

my dear,

but he would never begrudge you for doing so

after he forged his manhood loving and losing

the same way

and there were certainly all the skills

– he picked up many skills –

that I am sure you will never forget.

There ain’t much left around here except the

little boys in the body of men,

my love,

but they will play with you in a rough and tumble way

like boys with their action figures

because they’ve been brought up to see you as an

object

a play-thing

to fulfill their desires and seldom yours

but you musn’t blame them,

my love,

they were hollow and filled themselves on

action movies with empty pointless characters

and they reflect it in their essence now

but they can certainly talk about sports or cars

and maybe even a couple of blockbuster movies

maybe they can do shots and drink some liquor

but probably mostly just beer and its

just as well because

they wouldn’t want to let out the repressed or

scary emotions they harbour in their hearts,

stifled and toxic.

I notice you’re looking for a man,

that certainly could not be yours as you have claimed,

but there was a man long ago

and I heard he left something for you,

somewhere here,

under the desk,

if only I could remember his name

– oh, here it is –

it’s more of a souvenir or trinket

and it isnt much to look at,

but he paid me as he saw fit to keep it here

and now my task is finished.

A short letter made its way into her

scarred,  tiny hands and

the thick and weather-beaten fingers fumbled

with the envelope as though it weighed as much

as his heart,

and the writing was nearly illegible,

as his penmanship suffered from being too slow for his thoughts,

it read:

There may be no other side for us, but how many sides does love need? I will not be waiting on the distant shore, as love has devoured us both, it only took longer on you. There is no pain like the present and no failure like the past, but love, love holds the key to the future. It would seem there is none for the nomad save her own loneliness, masked beyond a fierce independence. But maybe there was one. There shall certainly be shadows of one, but the body of his you possessed no longer remains. The sands of time have peeled away his layers and he has a fresh coat of paint now. The engine still hums a familiar tune, but the spark plugs will be unfamiliar to you. Love, love has gaped even the smallest holes and left us in a painful repose. Bruised hearts will mend and sprout wings once more, flying to some distant paradise for lovers that we used to inhabit.

“Where is your man tonight?” the clerk asked.

The something else

/ andyveilleux / Leave a comment

"I didn't sleep two days this week, but slept for 14 hours on two others," I  told my fellow drunks.

"I'm not sure if the insmonia will be gone yet, but I'm hoping tonight I'll be able to sleep."

I walked home in typical winter weather for St. John's, neither too cold or warm, too calm or windy or snowing too hard. Much of the journey was undertaken alone, as my new company had departed at a fork in the road not far from the scene of the good, though strange, times.

I entered the condo and knew I should try my hand at sleeping, but felt uneasy about it and not quite ready. I decided to sift through a night's worth of emails and messages and settle in to play some FIFA 13. The emails and messages were not urgent and soccer dominated my mind for at least an hour.

At sightly after 3 in the morning, I chose to sleep. There is a big difference between intending to sleep, choosing to sleep and acutally sleeping, which I had become all too familiar with. Thankfully, the slight drunk I had was conducive to sleeping and I fell asleep not long after my head hit the pillow.

Suddenly, I was awake again.

Somewhere in the neighbourhood of two hours had passed, and there was nothing happening. The condo was still and silent, but something inside of me felt awful. It wasn't a physical pain or my stomach telling me that I shouldn't have drank, it was the something else.

It's easy to fall back asleep usually, especially when one is sleep-deprived and drunk, but there was no repireve coming from this something else I spoke of.

It sat in my guts. It occasionally pushed its way up to the back of my skull. It sat behind my eyes like a passenger sits shot-gun. There was no escape.

My thoughts turned to the same place they had been turning for months, and I didn't want to be there. I tried to suggest I wouldn't go, that I should turn in early and call it an evening, but the shadow self was not 'aving it. It fought me every inch of the way, to the point where I had to yell in my head. The echoes inside one's head can be so loud, sobering and jarring.

Still, slept never revisited me. I begged for it to haunt me like my memories were, to grab some tender piece of my soul and bring it to the land of dreams. It was hopeless. There was freedom to choose, but sometimes the body did not respond as one requested. There was a constant struggle between one's will and one's body until the day we return to the earth, deathd rive having conquered us.

It was in these nights the death drive was strongest, because sleep was the cousin of death. If I couldn't mingle with sleep, I always spend time with her cousin. There was certainly a desire for her company now, and wasn't sleep just a taste of death anyways?

One stops feeling, mostly, and ceases to exist in reality. Dreams take over, and it sounds like we may dream in death too. There is something comforting and reassuring about sleep, because it feels like a partial return home, a taste of what is to come when we finally kick up our feet and end.

the human jaws of insomnia

/ andyveilleux / 4 Comments

The frigid jaws of insomnia were

sinking their

jagged, crystallized teeth through my

waist and

I could feel them making their way

into the bones of my spine and

through my hips,

crushing bones into chips and

powder.

 

I stood 

paralyzed and unwilling to

shake off this wretched nothing

that haunted my dreams

and waking life,

and unable to even if the

will to was lacking.

 

I wasn't suffering for my art's sake,

that's the oldest lie

and con

in town,

your life was the real show of art

and the madness

suffering

and dysfunction was always

on its

own.

 

How very human.

pain and nothing

/ andyveilleux / 3 Comments

There is a certain limit to the

pain

someone can cause you and then

it is a nothingness.

 

There is no more room for it.

 

At first, it just hurts less,

but eventually,

it is nothing and they are nothing.

 

Life becomes clearer

afterwards.

Nobody

/ andyveilleux / 4 Comments

And today

I am nobody.

 

Nothing stirs by my hand

no one moves at my voice,

my freedom is absolute.

 

One lonely soul sitting

at a too-bright computer screen

poking at keys on a shadowy keyboard

is of little real or imagined consequence,

especially now.

 

I sit in a dark corner of a

room filled with a lot of 

empty

space

and some junk

a laptop

and no personality or soul

reaches back out to me.

 

Nothing else draws breath or

thinks about the bitterness of these defeats

and the biggest failure one could have prescribed.

 

Nothing else.

 

I am nobody.

the future I will not see

/ andyveilleux / 4 Comments

I can see you with

a painted-on smile

and man on your arm

who doesn't know the

first important thing about you.

 

I will not see it happen,

or else,

I will shield my eyes,

for fear of losing respect 

and admiration for the near

and the dear.

 

 

Nothing near stays so

for long after the fact

and that's life:

a constant shuffle of people

getting closer and further

and sometimes itr lasts longer

than others, 

but we're all orbitting somewhere,

satellites with our own gravity

alkways pulling and being pulled.

 

Some gravity is stronger than others

and some are gentle as the spring breeze

while others will collapse your lungs and skull.

 

Some orbits are bad business,

and that is what I never want to see

for you

but a prophet is not required.

 

Gravity rides everything,

and sometimes

we all do too.

faces like back of thumb tacks

/ andyveilleux / 1 Comment

The generic and bland

flood

the streets of even the

biggest

most exciting

cities

culminating in one massive yawn from

everybody that is paying attention.

 

I long for the rare beauty 

of appearance

and character

that seems almost generational,

or at least

once a year

and they do exist.

 

Often single

or being under-appreciated by 

some meathead or other failure as a human being

or instilling true fear in the hearts of boys

with the bodies and age of men

for boys fear

the power of rare beauty

and should stick to the 

thumb tack girls.