I could’ve moved to Salem, Massachusetts, but I found out that Brett is fucking useless. I’m in the John Deere, seshing, running full throttle, they figured I was candy Erik Vilu with an axolotl. My six travels unravel with Tom in the college streetcar, more disoriented than my dad off the Ralston seesaw. I’m the Nickel family, Bowness death with a soda float, I’m a canon lawyer, I’m Will Lloyd, I’m at sushi boat.

harsh light coats the wrinkled flesh, and you're no longer. acquainted with apprehension rippled knuckles fluttering the past becomes my fever dream crumbling rust where my joints used to be I've exhausted an inner self, lost to interpretation I understand only now that we’ll never get to the picturesque dining room conversations, that you will stay an apparition in my mind and I will stay disconnected from the overgrown glass shards in my palms as I continue to reach out among the wreckage.

(from Jeremiah and Ecclesiastes) A tree from the forest is cut down, and worked on with an axe by the hands of an artisan; people deck it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move. Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field, and they cannot speak; they have to be carried, for they cannot walk. Do not be afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, nor is it in them to do good - for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal.

I cut them down (I cut them down) like thickets (thickets green and grey) I laid them down (on the concrete) I saw the river there was no permanence in the merry-go-round of footsteps ultramarine and purple dusk and circles in the ground in the maze, I walked through water grey haze, and with my footsteps in the cave I heard a siren and it was familiar like dull thickets like numb waters like small leaves

such nonchalance what we are forced into find myself looking up every boundary road sign staring me in the face laughter - the only way we move forward how can one live with himself i used to be so responsible now all i see are repercussions for the endless roads i have not walked down for mind; for matter not just one person can change i am alone in this moment an eternity i will eventually seclude to to be awoken from a slumber in the night with flashbacks to existence fresh in mind i will not feel everlasting joy my plane has yet to come

I remember sitting in my grandmother’s living room, on my mother’s side, on the beige couch with the printed designs, watching the Winnie-the-Pooh halloween special on VHS, and down the hall there was a room which seemingly served little purpose, but we played in there sometimes, and there was a shed in the backyard full of rakes and garden tools, and the basement was full of old rooms and old furniture, and we so rarely went down there. And I remember sitting in my grandmother’s dining room, on my father’s side, and there were cushions and lace over everything, and pictures from my cousin’s wedding in silver frames, and we’d sit and watch TV in what used to be my aunt’s bedroom, and there was a shed in the backyard for the big garden at the back of the property, and there was a basement full of dust and old carpets and a disused fireplace, and we almost never went down there, except to get bottles of water from the foot of the stairs. And as a kid I so badly wanted to see these basements. There was a stillness to them, like a dark relic of what had happened to these people around me before my consciousness came into being, and each piece of furniture or old toy or memorabilia was like a vague, bittersweet key into the past, and to these adults, who in my childhood I perceived, perhaps naturally, as paragons of experience - And I know that my grandparents on my father’s side fled Estonia to escape Soviet persecution, and that, having not yet met each other, they took separate covert rowboats to Sweden, and emigrated to Canada, and that they had such a hard time trusting new people after that, and that my dad was more fluent in English than both of them, and that his schools were all on the same long north-south street, and that there’s a valley by that old house in Toronto where he used to spend time as a child, and there’s a little stream. I never met my grandfather, and as my growing older coincided with my grandmother’s decline in English fluency, I never got to know her well. My mom’s father died when I was four, and I remember we were driving past the Joey’s Only when I found out that my grandmother had sold her house in Ranchlands. I walked past the other house in East York last November, and caught a glimpse of the backyard, as we headed towards the playground at the end of the street, and Tom took my picture in the play-structure, facing south. Both of those basements are gone to me now, the bed frames and shelves taken to the landfill or the Goodwill, but it could be said that I have my own now. Perhaps I was right about those bittersweet keys, the old belongings giving me faded clues into the past, and perhaps I was looking in the right place for that experience I’d perceived, and on into the future, into how things have since played out, and my house in Toronto has ribbons on the ceiling, and books strewn around, and posters of my friends’ bands, and little reminders of the people and places that are dear to me, and it is I guess my hope that these things of mine will indicate a perspective, and that I can strike out into new places - the gardens under glass, the yard by the cathedral, the playground by the valley.

hey don't go so slow down the crest meadows of my atrium if I could keep you, you would disintegrate within a decade; redressed morsels hand in hand but never replicating the careful colors of your iris. so instead, I tried to count every hair on your head, and I lost count quite quickly. began plucking all the grey, endlessly, needlessly we stood on the fourth floor noose tied to the only tree in the clearing, trying to tape the dead leaves back to the branches I'm still wondering if you ever catch the sounds between the syllables - the words, the phrases I don't have the strength to say, I hope I find it someday

All of our hearts Are in terrible space And we Rise (painfully), rise (painfully) Down from the glacier and into the soil and we Rise (faithfully), rise (faithfully) Up from the basement and into the world and we Rise (painfully), rise (painfully) Up to the beauty in labouring breath and we Rise (faithfully), rise (faithfully) I am on Queen East, I am standing by the Queen’s Head Tavern, close to the ground and I contemplate O’ Connor drive flying ribbons up above me, and A river runs through it, So childlike, like it’s running away From its parents, and we are two kids Running away, I remember now, and we Rise (painfully), rise (painfully) Down from the glacier and into the soil and we Rise (faithfully), rise (faithfully) Up from the basement and into the world and we Rise (painfully), rise (painfully) Up to the beauty in labouring breath and we Rise (faithfully), rise (faithfully) Rise to the silence, make magic from death What dissonance rings out Clawing at my ears and yet It’s where I find beauty like A palm tree in a gothic church Our bodies are an iron mist Our minds are like a polluted marina But our hearts are with the others By the rivers, in the fields Our hearts are as one The birds are singing in the playground

shit.