two nights ago

driving like you're running away
but what did you leave behind?
or could you even say?
is it too much to bear?

streetlights blazing and you don't even see
static from the tires screaming
yes, everything you wanted it to be
but what have you lost?

the flood is over your head now
drowning in your own silence
consuming need pulling you down
now you can't even see the surface


what were you looking for?
did you find it?
would you even know?
do you even care?

this is not mine

Transatlanticism

The Atlantic was born today and I'll tell you how...
The clouds above opened up and let it out.

I was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere
When the water filled every hole.
And thousands upon thousands made an ocean,
Making islands where no island should go.
Oh no.

Those people were overjoyed; they took to their boats.
I thought it less like a lake and more like a moat.
The rhythm of my footsteps crossing flatlands to your door have been silenced forever more.
The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row
It seems farther than ever before
Oh no.

I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer

I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer
I need you so much closer

So come on, come on
So come on, come on
So come on, come on
So come on, come on

Whitby Psychiatric Hospital

“Chair By Window”

Have you ever opened a door and seen someone in the room, alone, gazing off into oblivion, unresponsive and unaware of the universe? Have you ever seen a person so tired or so depressed or so diseased or so deeply lost in thought or even so deeply lost in the absence of thought that they didn’t even twitch when you walked by? We see this all the time in this age, where cell phones gather up all the bits of attention a young teenager has to offer, and they mumble into the phone and no one can pry it off their ear. In this age, when we see someone staring off into space, we are miffed that they are not paying attention to us.

But have you ever opened a door and seen no one in the room, and the room is empty and cold and lifeless, and you can’t bring yourself to walk into the room, lest you desecrate the silence that has nested there? Have you ever seen a chair, empty, a void, waiting for the person who never comes to sit? Have you ever considered the patience that chair would have, watching the paint peeling off the walls, listening to the wind whisper through the broken window, stirring the debris on the floor around it? What would it feel like, to watch the table before you being overturned and smashed and twisted and violated by young, bored brutes? And even so, the chair never moves. It is never touched. It remembers when it was useful, calmly supporting the weight of a young man fighting his own demons, fearing sleep. It remembers when the door was closed that last time, before the window broke. It recalls when its members flexed and relaxed as the furnace rumbled to life now and again.

Now all it knows is cold.
Now all it knows is emptiness.
Now all it knows is loneliness.

And yet, if you look at it, you can still see the young man, sitting there, his eyes glancing furtively here and there. You can still hear the voice of the good doctor, asking gentle questions, soothing him, preparing him for sleep as the sun falls behind the horizon.

When you look at the chair, you understand loneliness. You understand the fingernails dug into your skin were harsh, painful. You understand the fear that you could be thrown across the room by a frightened schizophrenic. You understand what it is to be without those things. You miss the clutching hands. You miss the yelling and the cursing. You miss feeling the tension in the room as a young man recounts his nightmares. What would you give to have it back?

And then the paint peels off the walls and scatters in pieces on the floor. Little flecks of color, a pale blue, flung sprawling across the cold brown tile, children watching the sky. The shattered window lies asunder, it made such a beautiful sound as it fell, shedding splinters and rainbows and singing like wind chimes. The door opened, admitting with a sighing squeak three teenagers with bottles of cheap wine. Now you can read the little knife scratches in the table’s belly.

The room has been destroyed. The walls are a tangled map of Norway’s fjords. The floor desperately calls out for a broom. The table lies surrendered, broken legs in the air, accepting its humiliating posture.

Would you feel guilty, being the only member of your friends left alive after a mass murder? Would you feel guilty, getting by without a scratch, watching all your friends torn and broken as you didn’t even have the will to move, to help? Would you go mad, doomed to stand forever beside those rotting carcasses with no one to confess to but the wind? Even the window curtains reach their vindictive fronds towards the chair, incited by the wind’s mocking voice.

Maybe the chair has asked the door to close, to hide its shame from the rest of the world.

And you take your photograph and you walk away and you are not even aware that the man sitting in the chair was not aware of you. A chair is a chair. A door is a door. A wall will always remain a wall, until it falls and becomes the ground. You leave the door clinging to its hinges and walk away.