Amanda Leigh.

this poem
it is essentially you
it is made up of
bits and pieces
odds and ends
of thoughts i think
of you
of feelings i feel
about you

and in this poem
i will try to make it clear
that you
that you are
that you seem to be
that you seem to me
an angel

or a flower
luxurious in colour and reaching up to the sun
or a butterfly
vibrant and fluttering by
(so nice to see yet quickly gone)
or even
even a
even one of those
that thing that goes
actually
i do suppose
there is no word
there is only you
and this poem
this poem which is you

see
here are your stardust eyes
here is your diamond smile
here is your lovely hair
and here is your hand in mine
see?
do you see
do you see that
that i
and when you
this is for you
do you see
see that
this poem
i love it
because this poem
it is you

.

boy girl
boy girl boy girl
boy girl boy girl boy girl

pairs of people hand in hand
walking on the sidewalk (which is part of Earth,
which is really a rocket made of stone and sea,
and which was set in motion long ago,
hurled into the farthest unknown depths of space,
just to see where it all would end)

and each tiny curious fearful frail person,
each person with hearts bigger than lives are long,
is actually just lost and adrift,
not drifting but hurtling
(at a billion billion miles a second)
and their lives are sped-up tapes of scenes
of events, hoped for dreaded prayed for treasured
and they leave behind them a trail of
snapshots of
seconds-lasting sights and feelings
(but also littered forgotten dropped and torn clothes
once worn on special days in special places
but now too small or ragged or unpretty to be put on again
and broken shattered sightless things
which once shone bright new and reflected smiles)
these lie in the footprints of the passing people
who all search for the same searched-for thing
but somehow in their searching never find eachother
and when these people walk they go
boy girl boy girl boy girl

Je frissonne comme une feuille en automne.

sluggish sorrow,
and then -
relief!
in the form of the words
"I love you"
words which
so short and simple,
manage to make malheur melt
and evoke endless electric grins
so strong i feel i will be torn in two
and,
those words made more potent still,
because they came from a place of magic,
and peace;
they came from a place which
i feel so lucky ( as if i was a...
vagrant who found a diamond ring-
and rather than sell it, kept it-
wrapped around his finger-
because he knew it was-
the most special thing-
he could ever have )
to have known
those words
came from
your lips.

Suttons of London

Hand-drawn.

I cannot take credit for drawing this, however when something is inscribed on your hand I think it invokes a certain ownership.

Also I took this picture a long time ago, to cheer someone up, and just found it hiding away.

I am feeling better today, due to hearing the magic words.

I have just lent two of my friends a book each. These are both books that were lent to me, by a person who also had the books lent to her. That is to say, the books were lent, then lent again to me, who lent them a third time. They are now terribly far away from their true home. This must mean something, but I'm not sure what.

Je regrette.

Tu me manques.
C'est clair.
Tu ne m'aimes plus, donc;
suis obligé de me taire.

Revenez à moi,
je veux seulement vous.
J'ai besoin de toi,
je suis à genoux.

Bien sûr j'étais con,
mais j'étais aussi mélangé.
Revenez proche, mon
étoile, je te dirais désolé.

Every single song I hear is her.

It's evening. It was sunny today. You're lying on your bedroom floor. The scratchy carpet is making your arms itch. The window is open, and you're staring at the wall, listening to the planes go past. You think about everything. You think about nothing. You try to become completely the same as the wall, existing, but unseeing and unspeaking. You look into your self and contemplate You. You think of all the places you've lived, and all the people you've known, and wonder how you are significant to the world. Then you start to think about how you used to lie on the floor like this much more often. When you were a child, you would come home from elementary school, and lie down and do nothing. You would think, and ideas would grow in your head. You would learn simply by being. And everything was just like it was now. The carpet was the same shade of gray. The breeze through the window tasted just as cold and fresh. You had the same fears and flaws, you made the same mistakes, you daydreamed about the same things. The only difference between now and then is that you're bigger and richer. You're still the same you you've always been. You still feel numbingly alone. You still lie on the floor and try to pretend you'll live forever.

There is no such thing as "again".

spring sunset
gentle evening air: open window
cawing crows steal by
spots of black on blue sky

pulled-cotton clouds
smeared with gold from dying day
the sun screams goodbye as it goes
pastel pink and purple: death throes


I was almost sad to see such a sight and know that I would one day sleep and have it near me no more. Then I pressed my hand against the cold glass and felt the mosquito bite on my wrist itch, and these vivid sensations made me smile, for they reminded me that at least for today I am incredibly, amazingly, so-lucky-to-be, undeniably alive.

I don't really have anything special to say, I'm not feeling nice at all.

I am a giant
I am falling

tilt-tipping to the side
no hand raised to stop it
no sound or shout of shock
only staring eyes and mild surprise:
this is a fall foreseen

I am a giant
I have fallen

lying; one shoulder on the ground
casting colossal shadows across imagined-to-be-there cities and lives
acceptance of present state straining to:
pull my heart from my chest and my eyes from my head
gazing at the dust on this floor
I am amongst the dust
I am the dust.

Make a wish.

You're a human, you are a whore as a common but auxilatory verb. There are also hid the life of the solid. He hardly exists at all.

In many applications we end up dominating the animal.

I actually wrote this for someone who may or may not still love me. (Or maybe she's not answering her phone because she died.)

one day far-off and soon; we will be less young
if by then we still aren't apart
(though by this day we will have become unfightless)
we could take a vacation
drive down the coast (?)
and we could stay in hotels; sleeping in beds that aren't ours
for surely by then we will have a bed that is ours
(can you imagine?)
and we could walk on the beach
at midnight (?)
(can you imagine? a bed that is ours!)
or instead we could take a vacation to somewhere nonspecial
somewhere desolate
(though perhaps that is not a nice sounding word)
just You and I making-believe no-one else exists
walking in a field
picking flowers on a smooth sea of soil, tiny farmhouse in the distance

and maybe on the day when we are old
(a far-away day, when the way we are now is a memory to smile about)
the farmhouse could be ours
and the field too
(do you see where this is going?)
we could (would) wait and watch
and finally, on the Tuesday after we give up hoping
we will see a passing pair
and know that there live others who love like us

I like to go to department stores and pick out the furniture I would buy if we lived together.

Have you ever been listening to a song and realize that it's so totally and completely about you that you just slide off the bed onto the floor in front of the record player, and you lie there until it's time to turn the album over, and as you do this, you do it frantically but carefully, because you want so badly to find out what other feelings you have that someone else understands and you're afraid if you smudge the record you will never find out, and when you do turn it over, all the music is your life, and you cannot think of doing anything but staying like this forever with the rain bouncing off the big bay window and the flowers in their vase on the sill, and when the record finally ends, the distance from where you are to where the bedroom door looks like it stretches so far that you could never walk all that way and you will have to stay inside forever, and when you stand up to slide the album back in its cover you see your face reflected on it, and you think once again how this music is exactly you, and you never want to lose it, and once the record is back on the shelf you want to go to the person who bought it for you and thank them a thousand times, but you can't, because you haven't even been able to find them for a whole week so you just whisper the words "thank-you" and go get dressed because people are coming over soon and you have to try and act normal?

It would be nice of you, if you like my blog, to tell other people about it please.

There are some things I cannot afford, so instead of buying them I visit them at the store and pretend they are mine. It is unfortunate that pretending you are mine is not as easy.

Today I cut the fingernails on my left hand, but not on my right.

Paintbrushes and Poison.

When I look at a flower, I feel as if it's concealing something, as if it's petals hold within them a secret and, were I to part them, I would become something more than Me. Yet, despite dissecting daffodils, tulips, foxgloves and bluebells, I have not found this Secret. But I press on, and intend to keep you informed on occurrences involving the Secret. Tomorrow I am doing roses and lilies.

Sometimes realizations are difficult, scary, painful. (Everyone worth knowing is already dead.)

To sit beneath windows full of blue sky and listen to the murmur of strangers is an infinitely pleasant way for me to spend an afternoon. It is the simplicity of a day which charms me. Quite plainly, all I would like to do is write and wander. I know it is cliche to say I need no possessions to make me smile, however cliches become as such due to their timeless truths. To do nothing but create and be is the greatest life I could hope for. Surely I need to be comfortable, but beyond that I need not own. Too many treasures would weigh me down.

Dualism of Nature.

good friends can be found in
girls

sweet young girls of sixteen or so
whose kisses i need never know
(or may have been acquainted with at one point
in a relationship eventually exhausted)

but back to being big-brotherly
girls are most marvellous to have around
picking flowers, poetry
baking cookies, drinking tea
sharing secrets of shunned sentiments

of course they sound dreadfully dainty
but i assure you they are not so sickly sweet
for young girls are so surely stubborn
and seeming sincere shall proceed to slip slights
from the tips of their tiny tongues
and sighing shapely forms tempt touches...

yes, on second thought i conclude
that most girls are too terribly rude

The Garden Party.

Can you put your hands in your head? Oh, no!

Fistycuffs.

forgive me the quivering nature of my self;
though i know You to be most gentle in Your affections,
my heart is hounded by cowardly afflictions.

or; i am as a beetle before a curious crouching child,
frantic in attempts to dodge playful prods,
which while well-intended and mostly mild;
could crush my (heart's) carapace completely.

Today has a theme.

she may forget
or find another
or grow wear of working wanting waiting

this is why i am found fearful;
i remember very vividly
(though nothing i would sooner forget)
the sting of saying so-long; words i hope
she shall never sigh

and great guilt grows in my gut
at shying away; so she shall soon see
a big bright bouquet, of fondness from me

Venus Guytrap. Or: I am terrified of the one I call Mine.

I would like to live in a world of gauzy white sheets, morning sunlight, and records on a mahogany turntable. But only if you'll be there.




Most tender, terrifying, gentle, dreadful, beautiful, fearsome, soft-spoken darling. Yielding, caressing, destroyer of (my) heart. All I can do is lie wide-eyed in bed, clutch my sheets and listen to (my) heart scream with love and fear. Sweet venomous flower.

An explanation would only ruin things.

Shifting shapes seem sincere. (But bloody well aren't.)

"Cheer up, life's not that bad."
"I'm not sad. I'm just really tired and waiting for my friend. I'm meeting her at one-thirty."
"That's in three hours."
"Yes."
"And are you planning on staying like that 'til then?"
"Possibly."
"Hmm...Oh! Hallo Jane!"
"Hallo! You know I've been meaning to thank you for that relish, I - why is he crouched on the ground like that?"
"He's-"
"Because I realized that to get to the sunniest place in the world I would have to climb a staircase of shadows."

She does does does. I too.

this face means.

Electronic eyes.

I can't decide if she loves me or it's just my hopeful imagination.

Either way I

Remember when you were a child and you played house? Remember how everyone's fun always got ruined by a fight over something stupid? Don't you know

that was just practice for the rest of your life?

People say "My three year old could paint that." But your three year old doesn't want to paint that, he wants to shit his pants and eat boogers.

I have not been posting because I have been painting.

Sometimes I feel like the sidewalk is one of those magic pictures where you have to unfocus your eyes to see something hidden. I could never figure those pictures out though.

I'm not sure if it's me being weird or everyone else being stupid.

Last week a customer at my work didn't think the portrait of the Bluenose on a dime was interesting. I told him to hold the tiny coin close to his eye, and imagine seeing the boat on real water and its sails fill of real wind and how beautiful it must have been. He just took his change and stared.

Three months ago I took a girl who had just moved here from a country far-off and across the sea, for an evening downtown. She was very pretty and I found her quite intriguing. As we were riding the Skytrain, I noticed she was more interested in looking at the seat in front of her than out the window. I asked her if she didn't think Canada was pretty. She said all she could see from here was houses. I nodded, then turned to the window and went back to looking at the mountains on the horizon.

Once a girl asked me what part of her I liked best, and I said her shoulders, the way they make her arms look too perfect to be real, like doll arms. She told me this was a weird answer and she had wanted me to say her eyes, or her smile, or her hair. I told her that lots of people have green eyes, and lots of people have perfect white smiles, and lots of people have wavy brown hair, but no one else I had met had shoulders like hers and that's why I found her so pretty. She said I was being stupid and weird on purpose. Now, whenever a girl asks me why I find her pretty, I tell her it's her eyes, or her smile, or her hair.

"The rabbit has gone!" "Bring her back!" "Bring her back? But what if she is content where she is? Do we have the right to disturb her?"

When I was younger, I could never eat an entire banana. I held it too tightly you see. The portion that I clenched in my hand would become brown and bruised. Unappetizing. I assumed this was the way it had to be always.

But at some point - and I know not whether it happened gradually or all at once - at some point, I found that if I held the banana lightly, applying no force upon its flesh, simply letting it rest between my fingers, it would remain perfect and whole.

I think the world's biggest problem is that most people still think that they have to squeeze tight.