mckenzington

A soft rapping on the door turns to a frantic knock; a pounding in your head and a vibration in the wood. Now memories are stuffed like ill-fitting clothing into cramped drawers, spilling at the edges, painting a perfect picture of domestic living. A soft breeze in your hair turns to a violent wind, a wind that fractures temples and crumbles ancient cities. You sip water from a fragile, pellucid glass filled with tiny ice cubes and watch the city turn to dust, spotting an arm here or a leg there of the heavy marble statues protruding from the sand. All this is observed in silence, a deep void filling the air like the bottom of a clear lake. And the pillars fall with no witness to the sound since there is none. And you smile because your careful taciturnity proves to be a blessing and finally, mercifully, the knocking stops.

Slow down, slow down Start from the beginning But not the very beginning With silence and a whimper And the pinprick of light That became the ocean in your iris And the salt water in your eyes Slow down, slow down Don't lie anymore When the mountains are crowns We could always sleep In the rubble And when the avalanche comes We'll cross our fingers Behind our backs Slow down, slow down There is so much less Oxygen here And if we can't breathe We could always dance Under five feet of snow And you can take your time To learn the steps.

Summer entices.  The way she glitters with half closed eyes and hazy visions of sunsets over lakes. The frigid, unapologetic splash of water and ever-present sound of feet hitting ground and laughter tinkling in the background like the bell on a cat's collar. She beckons. With her empty, relaxing days waiting to be filled with equal parts merriment and meditation; her promise of late mornings and even later nights edged with soft liquor and the closeness of friends.  Summer entices, yet I can't seem to grasp her hand.  I can spend all day doing nothing, if nothing means reading and listening to the familiar crooning of the Tragically Hip; if nothing means jumping on every shift at the humane society so I have something to do; if nothing means eating snacks just because I'm bored; if nothing means convincing myself that I'm not upset, that I just need a walk, that I'm fine, I'm fine.  It's frustrating because for the rest of the year I'm s

You told me that it was a feeling, unprecedented. That I had to grin and bear it before I touched the grass beneath my feet and it would be electric, not muddy. I think I found that feeling in a gritty video of Matt Good playing Tripoli in his apartment to a bright-eyed audience of 20 people. Maybe I'm just a kid, but I could have cried. The thing is, the young don't understand the young. The old don't understand the young, either - but the truth is that we're all the same; we're all just not what we're chocked up to be. There's an empty throne in the sand and ants have colonized it. If the world is a town, then what is the universe? A city? To me it's all rocks and rubble. It belongs to the ants.  I gently rubbed a cat's belly, purrs seeping from her like warm chocolate. As her tiny paw rested on mind, claws carefully sheathed, I suddenly felt the utter vulnerability of this animal, completely submissive and trusting; the cat, a receiver of