Reasons to think of you

because the rain refuses to stop and because it is warm in my bed, because that picture haunts me every time i pull back the curtain, because it was night and i had nothing to do. because it starts with a letter and has a name, because i eat alone familiar things, because if i did not, i would not be me.  because i understand what happened, and because i don't. because i hate filling this room with words spoken at no one and because i tire of filling acquaintances with polite bypassing, because times used to be good and because memories are still too good. but most of all. because it is you, and i do not know how not to.

Eco-what?!

Ecofeminism.
Yeah, that's right.
I always thought "feminism"
was a bit of a misnomer
and misrepresentation
of what the movement
is supposed to be about.
But with the "eco"...
let me explain.

Firstly:
I agree. Women should have rights.
Rights equal to men.
But let us, for one moment,
not make everything
about how men
are oppressing women,
or how women are oppressing themselves.
"Femin"-ism. Women.
All this Focus on Women.
Women women women.
Hey wait, isn't this movement about
egalitarianism?
Oh, so why don't we call it...
"egalitarianism?"
Nah, that would just
rock the boat and
make too much sense.

Secondly:
Let us stop digging
for the inconsequential
to focus on the consequential.
Don't snap at a man
for opening a door for you.
Don't give the hairy eyeball
to someone for saying "ladies first."
Don't assume that
being a woman
makes you undeniably,
automatically,
tragically,
oppressed.
Because it's more
than just that.
Take it, for once,
to the level of the individual.
Don't say "look at how this WOMAN
was oppressed by this MAN."
Instead, say "look at how THIS woman
was oppressed by THIS man."
Because women are more than
just women.

Thirdly:
ecofeminism:
critiquing how patriarchies
categorize "women" and "nature"
under one "construct" -
can anyone say:
damned oversimplification?
I see the similarities
and I see the poetic allure
of this parallel.
But for fucking cow's sake,
I doubt that many men
think of women
as just another part
of "nature."
Please.
Please spare me.
The thought is so
ludicrous that
laughing is just as painful
as actually believing this shit.

It seems to me
that some ladies need
to stop looking at their boobs
and vaginas and that
some men need to stop
trying to honour these boobs
and vaginas.
We are individuals.
Not boobs.
Not vaginas.
Not just women.
And thus we don't need
grand overarching theories
to "fix" things.
Stop embarrassing
all of us, stop saying
that you're speaking
"for women."
Speak for yourselves.
I have my own bloody voice,
thank you very much.

Blogging

I scattered my thoughts into airspace
because it never runs out, because it
allows for a public privacy that doesn't
require me to attach voice or name.

Some I might own up to and share,
tidbits of logical thought with academic-
career drive; yes, put that out there for all
to see, comment on, smile at and set aside.

I could not bear for the others to be set aside,
or pointed at, or critiqued, or even understood,
considering they took so much passionate abandon
to produce, and so much shame to throw away.

In times when the well-adjusted, calm, composed
and determined me gets to be too much, I just
cast a line of webtext and fish for the debris
so lovingly pitched into a merciless and stinging sea.

Walls

We built walls around us and called it privacy -
but walls are thicker than we give them credit for,
I can sit here and live a world my own
while you can be two metres away in a different one -
Think of our proximity, our distance, both, simultaneously.

If you were losing faith in your room, blanketed in silence,
and I was losing love in mine, letting touch trickle to nothing,
I would never know you, your faith, your loss, your hurt,
and you never mine, my loss, my love, my hurt.

You could have needed me to prop your soul with words,
with a joke, a story, a shared moment of each knowing the other,
and I could have needed you to bandage my heart with hugs,
with a hand, chocolate, and remind each other of human blood, skin, eyes -
meant to embrace more than empty, self or thought.

Ensconced in our walls, however, how are we supposed to hear
when the other breaks? Or see when they fall? Or feel the hurt
of all lost, all packed tight into corners, locked in drawers,
contained behind doors?
Two metres, two worlds, or maybe still only one, and another one,
fearing the day when our walls are taken away.

Book-bound

Spending hours filling silence
with the voices from books;
suddenly back in high school
suddenly back in lonely
and content, on some level,
that the emptiness of a moment
is fed with sweet words
that build casts around fractured spaces
and keep sanity from running off the margin -
the stories read are mine
the characters read are friends
and the read world the mind
leaving here, not because here has nothing left
but rather because there has so much to give.

Dusting off the reading heart,
letting stories pump their way
through eyes, lungs and toe tips
suddenly book-bound;
and like riding a bike
you never forget how.

Guidebooks

Guidebooks to being good
anythings;
they would have
rules and things
listed in order,
in easy-to-learn,
catchy,
seductive prose.

Since when
was it easy
to do anything?
As if words
on a page
could change you
forever -
some say they do
but they fail to mention
that little process
called thought
that happens between
word-reading
and meaning-making,
that little effort
called action
that happens between
meaning-making
and carry-outing.

I know a man
who took his boyfriend out, publicly,
in a homophobic society,
who wrote his own rules
and lived through the stares.
I know a part-Chinese Kiwi
who taught himself Mandarin,
left home, became a teacher
and handed the height of cool
to you without breaking
a single tenet of his faith.
I know a son
who put his life on hold
to care for the sister he loved,
no guidebook involved.
I know someones
who gambled certainty
for a little adventure,
who said 'screw that'
and did their own thing,
and who found the extraordinary
in everyday's ordinary.

In conclusion:
A guidebook to
a happy life
in three easy steps:
1. Learn that it's not easy
2. Ask yourself what 'happy' even means
3. Scrap the idea of getting a guidebook after all
Because
you can write it,
you can read it,
but you sure as hell
need to do a little more
if you're going to live it.

Calgary

Calgary, if only
leaving you was as easy
as taking off clothing;
things like places
seem so inconsequential -
after all, places are
just spaces.
But, rooted in each
memory,
is the feel of you
in the background,
colouring scenes
and warming skin,
sending hair-teasing winds
and humming with talk.

So many firsts.
So many loves.

My first underpaid,
manual labour job.
My first day
at university.
My first drunken
Halloween debacle.
My first under-the-bed
unexpected kiss.
My first best friend
turned boyfriend.
My first, coldest,
camping trip.
My first messy
roommate fallout.
My first long-awaited
bachelor's degree.
My first breakup.
My first career
decision.
My first step into
knowing what I want.

Part of me thinks
moving away
will be easy because
I have never had a home
and never will admit
to wanting one,
but if ever I had a home,
and if ever I dare to say so,
Calgary was the closest thing to it
and I miss so many somethings -
someones -
feeling like I left them
back there.

This one is for you,
Calgary;
and also for me,
for taking a piece of you
with me,
wherever I go.