Love Letter to an Old Friend

My skin is not so soft as when you first touched it. It still looks as delicate, translucent ivory betraying a maze of veins, yet my fingers reveal to me rough patches. I think of you so often, you are my friend who never really had the chance to be. Circumstances conspired so that we might cross paths and though we had nothing in common, through recent experiences we found a common ground of sorts.
A deep melancholy defies me tonight. I feel ill and it has dragged on long enough to unseat me. I long to be outdoors in the glorious sunshine, on my bike with the wind all around me. I long to be at work with my platonic lovers, discoursing good from evil.
There was a time when I thought I could be your bottle of tequilla at a party, sitting next to you on a train, a fuel for your well hidden reluctance, but friends are harder to know that way. What firey intenseness we expect, we come to know, we anticipate from tequilla with consistency is inconstant in friends.
Daylight is beginning to fade, casting a shade of yellow on my walls that makes me feel so lonely. So alone. I want a friend I can talk with on the phone but I don't know your current phone number so I am writing instead.
With love,
J

The One That Almost Didn't Make It

it was 6.24 on a thursday night
only it wasn't quite night and I
unlocked my bike to take it upstairs and down
the back alley my eyes met some stares
and it's the day/night before easter
and it's the day/night that I missed
her
the girl who used to have no fear
down the alley three men sat
looking homeless looking dangerous looking unkempt
unclean
three men looking hungry
slinging over my handlebars a bag full of food
just come from dinner with mum and a
bag full of food was mine
leftovers
three hungry men down the alley
what would Jesus do? Well, it is nearly easter it's a
fair question the sun shone down hotly, harshly, it
won't be cold tonight at least but
that doesn't mean shit when
all you need is food.
What happened to the girl who would have walked down
the alley?
The girl who shared her food?
mamma always tole' me to share
but I don't even have any utensils and
it's embarassing and
meagre and
who wants my leftovers? who am I to assume?
and
the bigger what if which was what if they were
more interested
in me?
and one two three
I'm half way up the stairs with my bike and my food
what if
this is the month I fuck it all up?
in spite of the fact that there is always
more
money than I expect what if
this month because I keep forgetting to pay my phone
bill and it gets bigger (I swear I have the cash I
just keep forgetting)
what if
I
fuck it all up and can't
find
can't hint loud enough can't
find the food to feed myself?
My fridge has the essentials - mouldy salad, soy
sauce, ketchup, one lonely bottle of beer (for a
special occasion) and soy milk
peanut butter
said one voice in my head
to the other
can always be eaten with a spoon

and later
when my inner hypocrite came out
in a record shop
I hate fuckin record shops
I couldn't find any Patti Smith
so I guess I'll just have to live
with Ani D playing Carnegie
hall

that's it that's all

Two days ago
two nights to chicks ago
I guided coffee tasting and we
heard about how we could help
chicks in Africa stay home and get an
education
instead of being married
when they're 9 years old

the story was told
by an Ethiopian woman
speaking softly, not wanting to push
and I said quietly fuck the silence
what's that all about
this is a worthwhile thing let's
get the story out

the karma spread like a siren's song around the room
and
then we drummed under the light of the
full moon

but tonight outside in the balmy spring air
the feeling that I had it
wasn't
always

there

that air that hung over us the other night
followed me home from the record shop
sort of

thursday before a long weekend and everyone is out
the party's just beginning
the yobbos are starting to shout

I picked the worst street to walk home on because
I thought in daylight it would be just fine
such a nice night I thought
there'd be lots of folks about
and there were
just not the safe kind

my path took me by a dodgy old hotel pub
with a clientelle I try to snub

drunks on the streets and streetcorners
dirty old men leering from every streetcorner and
I thought
if there are people about
no one will try anything

and I thought well I'll scowl and look mean and
see if
I can scare them all away but
overall under my baggy loose clothing is a
clean girl
a nice girl
a brave girl with a brave(stupid)heart
and what she lacks in brains she
makes up for with
bravado

and I was fine I was two blocks away from the neon
safe haven(hell)of a seven-eleven and
a stumblybum from down the street tripped
over his own feet into
the middle of the road
staggering about
and the closer I came I saw he looked clean just
fucked up a bit and I thought I'd be fine if he
didn't see me but
even when I try not to be I'm
bright and shiny
and he saw me and called out

and didn't take being ignored for an answer, turned
around,
called out and
started to run after me and I looked around and could
see no one
and thought well

I'm fucked

I guess.

If he doesn't like being ignored he won't like no or
fuck off or
leave me alone or
me screaming and acting rugby girl tough
to cover my fear

fuck

I mean really I walk this same fuckin road
after dark all the time why
now in broad daylight when there should be folks about
did the one bloke off his tree
have to start running after me?

What would Jesus do?

He was a step behind me
and calling to me then
beside me briefly in front of me but beside me
falling into step two compadres to any outsider
not too close
surprisingly not threatening but
wanting change and I just took my
hypocritical spare change to the record shop in the
mall
I had no cash on me
and I need to eat too
need to look after me

feeling guilty as sin
I gave him a quizzical face
he asked again.

quietly, I stumbled my words.
picking through the myriad of foreign words
trying to find three that were from the same
language

je ne comprende
no english
je ne comprende

he kept asking but was confused

je ne comprende
no english
no english
no english
cross the street once then twice forward moving to a
nicer street
finally alone

shaken

bilingualism as self defense? or a self perpetuated
hypocritical
offence?

around the corner through the grocery store parking
lot
in front of the ice cream shop
stopped at the seven-eleven before that
got some ben and jerry
only two men in my bed these
days

bumped into chelsea and matt
she really is a fruit fly
never saw it so clear before
then again
apparently
flammer characteristics notwithstanding
I apparently
have no gaydar
matt talking about my coffee seminar
that night we drummed until the stars
hung in the sky
said he'd call about my final
certification
the regulation
that lets me be the store coffee smartarse(village
idiot?)
perpetuating propaganda of goodwill toward coffee
farmers

hypocrite

music with a soul strong enough to make me cry
food in my fridge
freakin' ben and jerry's
vermonty python (sneaking up on me)
who the fuck am I
small and insignificant in the scheme of things
who the fuck am I
to sit here oh so comfortable sure
sure I work my ass off in
every area possible sure I
do what I can but
I can do more and I
know it
where is that fine line between
helping and hindering my health/wellbeing
where I can enjoy
something that means something to me
without feeling guilty

a lingering remembrance of
everything that's
where I've been
the landscape of my home fraught with
opposite emotions
the suburbs make me sick with their wealth yet
yet
the inner city.....

carves out my heart
hollows out my soul
leaves me feeling dark
leaves me feeling
imploded

silenced

Two Little Girls/Culture in Dating/A Sense of Place

The air hung heavy with dust in morning's sun. Rush hour was over yet the streets had plenty of traffic. Grit covered the sidewalks. Most grass was bare of snow and dead and dusty, dry from winter. The sun hung in the colourless sky - not discouloured from smog but miscoloured and hazy from all the dry dirt in the air.
Scarf around my neck still smells of Khaosan Road and a time of my life very much outside of time. A small town on a different river that was running too low for further travel. Up in the morning, layers, this scarf, walk out into the street to a dusty, dry world just waking up. Into a cafe to sit over coffee and breakfast, to write/into this morning's cafe greeted by an Asian boy wearing a Fuck FM tshirt bringing back a wave of memories of mangled random english shirts; into a cafe for takeaway bread and a walk around town in the cool morning. The smell and the haze over the river valley and the lack of hurry brought me back to a time and place where life outside of my culture felt normal again.
Standing in the hall as I walked past, two Asian girls talking, well I guess I should be going, it was nice to see you and I thought of Annie, how she looked into my eyes and tried to break a lifetime of conditioning that girls don't kiss in public and worst of all that Asian girls don't kiss white girls. I panicked and wish I could take back that moment. Why such surprise that an Aisan girl would be interested in a white girl? Wasn't I interested in her? Nothing I'd grown up with explicitly said anything was wrong with that construct of a relationship but there was nothing affirming it etiher. A number of unsaid things manifested in that moment. Sure, you can date girls, bring them home even, the family will understand or deal with it but Asian girls?
But I liked her. She was smart and pretty and athletic and had a fantastic way of being. She looked amazing in yellow. I felt young and inexperienced and out of my element - shy, embarassed - shameful - that I was letting the colours of our skin get in the way of my feelings. I'd never considered it before. Beyond shame at stumbling on skin coulour was a deep fascination with the way she looked - her beautiful hands and long black hair, the way she stared so directly with her deep dark eyes... It is the combination of these things that leave me missing her. Her presence was electrifying and fascinating and I wish I could have stayed focused there, just there, but when she reached for me to kiss me goodnight I felt taboo.
Two little girls from different cultures don't kiss.