Hair burned into beautiful submission
Face acrylically defined and chemically composed
Adornments meticulously chosen
Scent tested and approved
Smile practiced and performed
I am a porcelain doll
Sipping tea, at 6 am in the quiet of a sleepy-city apartment
Porcelain doll dainty wrists
Washing dishes, feeding cats
Folding linens, singing hymnals
Praying for peace and safety
Porcelain doll knitting sweaters
And folding paper cranes
Reading poems, setting tables
Wearing cardigans and pearls
Porcelain doll decorating cupcakes
Lighting scented candles
Watering potted plants and humming childhood lullabies
With my porcelain painted lipstick mouth


But lipstick can be dark
Eyes lined black as city alley ways
There is anger at injustice
The world outside the confines of a pastel doll house
It’s messy
It’s hard
It’s iron and concrete and coal
And I am too
Biking through the brick metropolis
Sunglasses and headphones
And anarchist literature
Evenings spent sprinting through the smog
Heartbeats synchronized to the crude drumming of the city
So hard to impress
I’m on the metro
Eyebrows structured and defined
And adorned with a calculated air of apathy
See me social justice march
Down highways with fervently entitled youths
See me armed against misogyny
Until my peers learn to better conceal it
See me smoking cigarillos
Drinking black coffee
Breathing the tainted air of the city that birthed me
And chanting manifestoes.

But my manifesto can be love
And love can conquer anger and fear
And hatred
Love can reconcile, it can erase timidity
And it can abolish resentment
Let it wash my face and take the need for vengeance from my spirit
Let it replace the thirst for power with thirst for truth.
I burn incense
And wear long skirts
Naked face and braless lazy days
Reading pacifism in the park
I walk far to find pure air to breathe
I sit and deconstruct my dichotomy
Under a wise and ancient tree
I trace myself backwards and forwards
I meditate on the paths I have traveled
I cry for the things I have seen
And for the things I have done
I contemplate transcendence
I drink wine and listen to folk music
On the terrace of my home
I bike barefoot to buy Indian takeout
And eat it in silence on the floor of an empty room

I think only of death
And resurrection
Of betrayal and redemption
Of opposites and compliments
And how to progress in knowing how divergent pieces of myself can learn to harmonize
I think about minimalism and materialism
Sentimentalism
And swords and pens
And how this race I run was rigged from the start
I think about blackberries
And the complexity of their literary and symbolic significance
I think about the number seven as I see it reoccurring in every possible sequence and equation
I think about God,
And TS Eliot
And If I dare disturb the universe
I think about porcelain dolls and ****** activists and ***** hippies
I think about war and peace and politics
About corruption and poverty and imperialism
About western ideals and conspiracy theories
And communism
I think about being radical,
And how both sides of this ideological war are defined by fear
And I think about love, as radical but defined by the absence of fear
The absolution of fear
And how I am fairly certain it is the answer
I think about the inevitability of art and war
how they create each other
how they destroy each other
inspire each other and annihilate each other
and how there is nothing that is innocent.
I think about pain and privilege
And stacked decks of cards
I think about dreams and nightmares
And prophesy.
I think about the darkness within me
Tendencies to lie and manipulate and steal
The darkness that I know could make me very great
But alone in the ashes of the world
I think of the curse of wealth and power
And I try to evaluate my motives
And the driving force of my ambition
But I don’t know.
I think about grace and all the things I don’t understand
And toil and fate and destiny
The shape of these things, their origins and culminations
And what this black box of secrets contains.
I think about so many things,
Until everything I was on the outside is gone.
My body is gone
My painted face and sculpted hair
My varnished nails and pierced ears
All my clothes and appendages and freckles are gone
My blood evaporated
My brain an invisible energy in the wind.
My home and street
And city
Are gone.
And even in such complete concentration
When it is only my essence and nothing else
And I transcend throughout my past and future
When I am spread thin
And stretched into the corners
When I fill the cracks and crevices
And melt into the pores of everything
And my spirit is awaked to a dimensionless reality
Even then,
Scio Nihil

I know nothing. .

Diaspora
From the Greek

When I heard the word I felt it
And I looked it up
In my old red dictionary

I could have used the Internet,
I suppose

But I like to run my forefinger down pages
Of words

I read the definition
And I felt it
Oh

Oh
We are diaspora.

Am I using it correctly?

We are a diaspora.

Diaspora
From the Greek

From the green valley of Ottawa
From Scotland
From Ireland on wooden boats

From the French village thirteen children
From the mines in the North
From Poland and from Germany

From the churches and
From the Blueberry patches
From the Island Manitoulin

From the dark lake Kagawong
From Kinburn and Arnprior
From Markstay and from Sudbury

From Waterloo
From Kitchener, Michener
From the Suburbs

Oh

From the Suburbs
From the red bricks, red currants
And geraniums
From green island cabins

From the desert

Oh

From the desert
From the potholes and pipes
From the salty wind
Cracked Caspian Sea
From the middle of the east of nowhere.

From the mountains

Oh

From the mountains
From the crystal water fountains
From the tram bells
On the cobblestone streets
From the torrents of the Rhein

From the white cross

Oh

From the white cross
On the green hill
From the river Laurence
From the French and from the English
Plains of Abraham

We are diaspora
We are a diaspora

Diaspora
From the Greek

How did it end up here on my tongue?

It is diaspora.
It is a diaspora
Diaspora is a diaspora

And I wonder if it misses its other pieces
The way that I miss mine

Ours

There is no
Roping us back together now

There is no
Home to go back to

There is no
Point of meeting
Of reunion

No
White steeple in our old town

No
Yellow slide in our backyard

No
Old folks on an old farm

No
Walled house on a hill

No
Luzernerring 93

No
Familiar riverwater

There is no
Ancient Greek anymore
Diaspora

Only fragments of fragments
Of roots of stems of words
In different dialects

There is no
Place for you to belong,
Diaspora

You’ve been sliced to pieces
And scattered
Into the wind

But
When people ask you
Where you are from

You say simply
From the Greek

Oh

From the Greek

And
When people ask me
Where I am from

I say simply
From the diaspora.

You left me capsized on the Caspian
The bold-wind black-oil Caspian
Suicide-tower fire-altar Caspian
Cigar-smoke car-exhaust Caspian
Oh Caspian, My Caspian
How could you just let me drown?

Pacific and Atlantic and Mediterranean
Rhein and Seine and Thames  
Huron and Kagawong and Lawrence
I see you quarrel
Over who is greater
Richer older
Better bolder
Who runs cleaner fresher sweeter
Who flows stronger faster deeper
Who gave more of themself to me
Who took more of me for themself
Who has more heart
Who stole my heart
And who will possess it in the end

I don’t know

But capsized in the Caspian
Is how I learned to swim
And to stomach salt water
And to weather storms
To enjoy the taste of raw fish
Calamari caviar crab
And to both love and hate
The forceful winds
That ******* to and fro
While capsized on the Caspian
I found my home
To be not stable, not stagnant
But undertow
An invisible current clenching pulling holding gripping
Dragging tearing teaching ripping
Delivering me to what is next

Oh plastic-bag jelly-fish Caspian
Petroleum-sand mud-volcano Caspian
Sun-blazed low-land Caspian
Capsized, yes
But also baptized
I drowned in the tangles of your dark torrents
And was born again in the summer moon-tide

Sanguine
Choleric
Melancholic
Phlegmatic
Phlegmatic
Melancholic
C­holeric
Sanguine
Blood oranges
And hibiscus tea
White wine
Carcrash memory
Hypertensive
He straps me down on the table
This is for my own good.
Too much blood they say,
Too much red wine too much liquid
Too much
My hand is swollen
My stomach distended
The vein in my forehead is bulging
Too much blood
A needle
A leech
A pen
Blood oranges
White wine
A needle is a leech is a pen
Is what the doctor ordered
He straps me to the desk
This is for my own good
A cure
Too much blood
Too much tea
Too many memories
Too many thoughts
Hypertensive
Sanguine
They say
They hand me the scalpel
And show me the line
Too much
I’ve had too too much red wine
To be doing this
A pen a leech a needle
A bucket of blood
A novel
Sanguine
Melancholic
Choleric
Phlegmatic
This is the cure
This is for my own good
Too much much blood
They hand me the pen
I’ve had too too many
Blood oranges
To be doing this
A scalpel is a pen
Is a leech is a needle
A bucket of blood is a novel
(Bleeding is the cure)
I bleed.

**** me quietly in the current of the Caspian
That calloused-caviar undertow
Petroleum-pierced fragmented bone
You whispered things no child should know
And I was no child then
Trembling hands I emerge from the lion’s den
Wearing memory like white lines on the insides of my wrists
Until I forget they’re there
Blue eyes, blonde hair
Painted mouth and vacant stare
Here is who I have become

So kiss me quietly in the white-capped waves of the Caspian
My lips a promise sealed in black oil and blood
Hear the water tank trickle fill and flood
See the volcanoes burst with sacred mud
And feel my skeptical smile
Spectacle-clad you read my file
It’s been a while since I relived all of this

And I’m deciding if it’s far too late or far too soon
To begin to deconstruct our interactions
The repulsion, the attraction
The actions and reactions
That defined that interim allotment of time
I sit here now retracing your lines
On the rickety map in the back of my mind
Memory, so mute, so blind
And ripping down the track so quickly
Thrown back so sickly-bitterly
Like salt-lime-tequila

My memory has been mutilated
Slaughtered, drained and skinned
Treated, chopped and trimmed
And now I place it on a table in the street
Tell me, can you hear the pattern of its late heartbeat
As you grip a fleshy dripping pound of it in your hand
My memories are no-man’s land

So caress me carefully in the cool-calm caves of the Caspian
Recall the strange sounds of the early days
Sacred grounds, hot-garbage haze
Sandy winds, the bazaar maze
That made me acutely aware of the incomplete
Not even joyful summer heat
Could keep me from floating feet-up in the Georgian river
Memory smile, convulse and shiver

I intended this to be a reconciliation
Call me queen of counterproductive apology
Let’s redefine astrology
To gain some favour from the stars
Russian salad and white box cars
Deep *** holes in Badamdar
Truthfully I’ve never known who you really are
And I probably never will

But cut me kindly in the clouds above the Caspian
This is as close as we can get
Ignorant prejudice my one regret
But I have not forgotten all the good
And I will try to love you like I should
But tell me, is it better to have memories that lie
Or have nothing at all?
Shall I embrace the distortions or the abyss?
**** me carefully or give me a kiss
Tell me, what am I to do with this?
Cut me open or caress me
Call me child or undress me
Your impassive smile does not impress me
Tell me, how am I to process this?

I’ve swam your sea, I’ve coughed your air
I let you stroke and steal my sandy hair
I left without once looking back
No pillar of salt
No pile of ash
No blame or fault
Or debt or cash
But still the walls begin to crack
I feel the stitches start to tear
Murky-memory drags me eastward by my fresh-grown hair
Forcing my eyes, so-cold and ever-blue ever deeper into you,
the dark heart of the Caspian

Fascist fascist
Fascinating
Liberating or degrading
Hangs from single strings
Nothing comes and no one sings
No one laughs and nothing breaks
See the cracks drip down my face

Fascist fascist
Fascinating
Fascinating fascist face
Flash-forward foreshadow
White cold lace
Not as durable as we first thought
But the car is packed
In the parking lot
I light the cigarettes we bought
And now there is no going back
Not back to there
Nor back to that
Not back to night
Nor back to day
Nor back to summers
Far away

Fascist fascist
Fascinating
Forget my fascist family tree
The fascist fascist memory
And moustache moustache damaging
Or fresco firefly reverie
Just tell me that I’m yours
Sign the line
Like you have before
This is where we are right now
Two souls alive
In the empty town
Two souls alive
In the ******* ghost god-empty town.

So, What think you of Whitman?
And what say I of Plath?
I understand all but maybe half
On my greatest finest day
(dearest, how’d we get this way?)
How’d we fall so far from grace?
How’d this canyon split my face?
Maybe it’s the trace trace amounts of fascist.

Fascist fascist
Fascinating
Friday fickle convocating
Tragic talent intubating
All the world smiles, undulating
But in the end
You’re still a fascist.