Canadian poet

Ordinary people

/ andyveilleux / 1 Comment

We run from ordinary
Like we run should run from safety
Dodging it like a fated bullet
Please God, don’t let Me be
Ordinary
Anything, buy ordinary!

The big Me in all of us struggles
To be something more than one among
A multitude of the faceless,
But that’s all many of us ever are.

We have the same problems
Same sex
same stories
And same lives,
Plus or minus a tale or two,
But its all the same.

But I know everything isn’t the same,
And I just took you on a ride that should have
Got the blood boiling and
Pissed you off,
Because some people are different.

I spend me insomniac nights talking to them
And trying to feel them in my bones
Because even if I never love them fully
They will have meant much to me.

Don’t think that every person is the same,
But don’t be a fool and think all the
Minute differences we have matter either,
Some differences matter and some don’t.

For my part,
There are a few differences I believe matter:
Empathy,
Honesty,
And ambition.

These traits separate at least 95 per cent
Of the people I met from others
And are the foundation of love and happiness.

I’ve been fooled into thinking some
Lovers had these traits,
And some did,
But most did not and were simply
Blowjob artists in the guise of One True Loves,
And they didn’t even get the memo that
One-trick ponies need to master their
One trick.

Life has depth to it,
Real depth,
And these people are shells of human beings,
At best,
And complete forgeries of human beings at worst.

They walk, talk, blow, work and fuck,
But they don’t love or feel like the 5 per cent.

the poet as failure

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My task as a poet is to

write something like the truth

while weaving it with enough fiction

to make myself seem

bigger than life or

maybe that's a lie.

 

Maybe my job is to tell the details

and intricacies of my life in such depth

that it grabs onto your heart and pulls you

into the void the sits my inside

my chest where nothing but despair

and occasionally the feint flame of love

exists.

 

You get to watch the caverns walls

shed water and occasionally a stalactite

gives in to gravity and falls to the floor

like so many poor and forgotten memories,

but nothing much lives in there,

at least not for long.

 

We poets try,

by spewing over pages and computer screens

with the hope that something will catch your eye

and you will come and sit with us at least for awhile

and let us into your heart

and give us the attention we desire,

or maybe we just need to write what we do,

it's pushed forth like a volcano explodes

lava and ash pushed through the atmosphere and

any hole that is available,

much like my memories of some of the ones,

and afterwards we lie dormant,

spent.

 

Mostly,

poetry is an act of failure,

I try to describe the infinite in finite symbols,

these semi-useful words,

in an attempt to record events

and initiate the desired emotions,

and sometimes I succeed,

surely sometimes I succeed,

but I also fail often,

and that's the beast of poetry.

The new old place

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The location never changed
but there was a snap change in
My surroundings and how they felt
A switch went off in my head and
Suddenly this was not the place with
Forbidden memories and ghosts.

The red changed hue and saturation
Suddenly becoming red2
And the bland off-white walls that
Were painted in so many memories
And looked like the bones of all
Our skeletons
Suddenly became off-white2.

Not even the bed felt the same
As suddenly it felt as comfortable
As the catcher’s mitt boys always dream of
Sleeping within.

A temple of demons became home again
Overnight.

It was the lack of you,
Your ghost has shut the hell up
And skeletons no longer banged in the closets
Or on the couch
And suddenly I was the master of this domain again.

You fell out of my head
Or somehow
I fell out if the boyish desires
And a new freedom was found in me.

things worth fighting for

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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

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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.

an unfamiliar absence

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I reached my hand out,

an outline of flesh against off-white walls,

in a familar way in a familiar place.

 

An unfamiliar absence became,

and sat beside me,

strummed the chords of my

lonely, lonely

heart.

 

It wept for me,

as I could not weep for myself

in an empty place with ony my demons

for company.

 

It cried tears onto my shoulders

and I raised my head towards the ceiling,

an expression of understanding

and lament for all the lost days.

There is always the void

/ andyveilleux / 2 Comments

Some voids aren't meant to be filled

and maybe that's the secret in all of this;

the alpha and the omega,

there is always void.

 

Never more so than in this moment,

now,

which only lives in a void that can never be

connected to the past of the future,

it can only bump shoudlers with them.

 

Every moment lives in a cage,

like a soul is caged in a body,

and nobdy ever makes it out of here to

touch

anyone else elses' soul.

Lost in winter

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Nothing grows in this frost

and

everything breaks

without respite or hope

it will heal.

 

The bleeding also stops though,

and while limbs and pieces

fall apart and change

the core remains intact,

even its rotten guts.

 

I don't want to wait this long

and I just want to see us there

but there is nowhere else.