NEWS / EVENTS ABOUT PHLIP >>> POEMS & STORIES BOOKS & CDS REVIEWS MODEL BLOG CONTACT To join the email list email Phlip Contents A Dance For Auntie Punk Got Stomped by Designer Boots Brushes and Canvas In The Sun Up And Away And But It's Alright return to the top return to the top return to the top return to the top return to the top return to the top > BACK TO POEMS & STORIES poems & stories Playing in the Asphalt Garden A Dance For Auntie By Phlip Arima rent the box, leave me nude, lay me out with eyes stitched wide. please comply with this request. i am dancing on a boardwalk of rotting wood. the tide is in. a gale force storm watch has been announced. my fingernails need sanding. my jeans a new zipper. my teeth replacement. auntie use to say: rock 'n rollers who we believe o.d.ed are on extended tours managed by aliens from another galaxy. she also held that Elvis is dead. she fell off an eight storey roof after taking too much speed. i am pirouetting around a post where the railing is broken. an imagistic waltz for the gulls to watch. my lover has no feet for me to clumsily step on. the wind creates white caps, bites at my face. let the sulphur burn away before you suck in the flame. let the cigarette dangle at the corner of your mouth, not stick straight out from your face. always inhale as much as you can. i'll know when your faking 'cause the smoke won't blow straight. auntie never taught me how to make rings. Punk Got Stomped by Designer Boots By Phlip Arima the inside edge lit by mirror ball reflection another ice-cube puddle on the floor see me there—iron burns inside my wrists blackening toes bound by silken threads watch me bash my carved up skull against the corner farthest from the door starve the brain, the mind will follow hump-grinding groin and violent movement this is not a tease or precision flirt i'll stretch my claws and follow through tap dance, jive, jitterbug, waltz disco, rock, rap and break computer components and bionic beauty for every new luxury a bomb is built and above the land and beneath the ocean we eat the lies with eyes wide open kid or tripper or voyeuristic pedestrian last last-call is not a finish line each revolution is part of the evolution no single movement holds the solution and wearing plastic shields to shut out the light will not stop the rain leaking down my face. Brushes and Canvas By Phlip Arima the heavy meditative energy of the painter's studio is disturbed by the persistent ticking of the clock almost imperceptibly speeding up, generating a crescendo of rhythm threatening to shriek into a continuous thread of nerve twisting pulses unseparated from one another by a silent space—a silent space where the mind can rest from the race of competing thoughts struggling to dominate the foremost aspects of consciousness, striving to dictate the action beyond the tip of the brush, render the image an expression, a taste of the essence driving the thought to excel, surpass all thought, become something more than chemical impulses leaping the silent spaces between synapses... the mind is abandoning the steady peeling off of layers, the quiet meditative practice, the search for a muzzle capable of gagging thought and the clock still tick, tick, tick, tocks. i, the model in static repose nod off, slide from the context of objects into the subjective menagerie of mind in sleep. active mind recreating images without substance—a surrealistic narrative defying analytical deconstruction, rational comprehension, the grasp that yearns to render it a useful tool for sublimating emotion—mixed messages bleeding forms together to compose a senseless reality fantastically mimicking the scene the painter seeks to reflect with each smooth stroke and violent jab of brushes designed to transform the three dimensional to two dimensions. the dream recurs: she is lying in the road; i am standing; the bike is burning; a wailing like that of a shrieking child slices through the smoke; no sirens arrive. i remember when we met and the heavy august humidity descended to the ground, a fog thick with urban waste. when introduced we were distracted by a pigeon with only one eye awkwardly hopping between us on its left leg. it is always in the dream: still hopping between her and me, defiantly blocking my path, keeping me from saving her, pulling her from the flames. the dream recurs: reminding me that my love is dead; that the pigeon now coos in my helmet; that the silent spaces are the inches of a thread persistently ticking past wanting to be cut. i wonder if the painter can sense my torment, intuitively know the realm my spirit roams, channel the energy i bring to the studio into his soul and onto the canvas where it will transform the study of a figure into a record revealing his skill, my pain, the meditative energy in which we nod. In The Sun By Phlip Arima twenty-one children in the sun playing with their guns. twenty-one children in the sun, i'm the tallest one. listen to the state when it tells me how to stand straight. listen to the t.v. when it tells me how to wash my face. the diet that i eat is sanctioned politically correct. the drugs i abuse i purchase with a doctor's consent. i don't wear leather. i don't wear fur. i don't use products tested on laboratory pets. twenty-one children in the sun standing for the national anthem. twenty-one children in the sun, i'm the best one. salute the desert storm, salute the arms race. salute exploration into outer space. trust starwars implementation will let us rule the peace. i canvas for trees. i canvas for seals. i canvas for the things i'm told are fashionable. twenty-one children in the sun marching to the media drum. twenty-one children in the sun, i'm the tallest one. nothing that i buy endorses pesticides. nothing that i buy destroys the ozone layer. i walk and i bicycle and i won't ride in cars and given the choice i wouldn't move at all. twenty-one children in the sun playing with their guns. twenty-one children in the sun, i'm the best one. Up And Away By Phlip Arima On the Bathrust bus, a fragmented man slouched across from me salt marked snowmobile suit, desperate featherless look looks down the aisle to a stranger's face tells it: "The spaceport has to be between here and Windsor." He looks another place: "Do you know where the spaceships land?" No one speaks. He looks at me. In surplus combat gear black knit hat, dark glasses hiding eyes i twitch acknowledgement. He nods and pleads: "I need to find a spaceship. I need to leave this place is dead. I need to leave my brain, get away, live. Do you know where the spaceships land?" "I don't man," i say, "I don't know." "It's here, somewhere in Ontario. Maybe near Windsor, far from Ottawa." "Where do you want to go?" i ask. "Up to where it's beautiful. Up where it's not crowded. Up where there's joy in life." "Joy is wherever you are," i preach. "Is it in Calgary?" he asks. "If you're in Calgary." i say. "Is it crowded there?" he asks. "I don't know, man Never been." A woman is staring at me, others talk the bus is stuck in traffic angry, honking traffic. "How do you know it's not crowded up there?" i ask. He empties his lungs, looks down at his hands visible shrinks and says: "I don't." There is nothing more for us to say. We sit alone on the tail-end of the morning rush bus and i wish i had the answer to help this man. "Do you know where the spaceships land?" A few minutes more and the bus pulls into the station and people push for the door and i stand, take off my dark glasses, look over at the still seated man and when our eyes connect, i say: "Good luck." "Good luck man," he mumbles, "Good luck." And By Phlip Arima and the hacker cracks the system and the lawyer cracks his lobster and a bullet cracks a cranium and another pipe of crack cracks the addict and we joke about his death as if he is already dead and he laughs right along with us hoping the noise of his guffaws will hide his desperate dog paddle for the shore and there is a sign in the sky and a light on the ridge and a warning on the underside of each wave and some can see and some are blind and some talk loud and some stay mute and some think they care and some know they don't and some will always listen to everything that is said and i touch my last match to the wick of a candle so i can light cigarette after cigarette without having to move. But It's Alright By Phlip Arima With all the naivety of a saint, i easily lift open the grate. i know better than to jump, but i do. and i go down like the cast out angel. i reach out, grab the icy ladder bolted to the rock. stop—smashing my elbows and knees; biting my lip, bruising an eye. but it's alright. 'cause it's dark and there isn't much to see. looking up, the world seems a long long way away—a fuzzy circle of light. so i climb down a bit. and i rest a bit. then i get bored and climb down some more. and after a while of climbing and resting and, climbing and resting, i decide to jump again. and it's just the same—a blast for the moment it lasts, but very easily forgotten. i arrive at a ledge. stop. feel around. follow the wet wall to where it opens on a cavity. and there i meet another. and some others who are hanging there too. they have a fire, some torches, shallow dry ditches in which to close their eyes. they smell bad. and they say to me, tell me, i smell bad. so i say the same to them—become friends, speak of things we were once going to do, and things we think we might have done. i tell a lie. then someone else tells a bigger lie. and someone else tells an even bigger lie. and we all know everything is a lie. but it's alright. 'cause we're together—living the lie. as our aimless shuffling back and forth wears the rock floor of the cave, more join us—join us from the shaft. some, like me, coming from above; some from below. the ones from below look bad and don't say too much. the ones from above get on my nerves—tell the same lies i've already told, laugh when i cringe at the screech of a bat dropping from the ceiling when a torch is lifted too high. but it's alright. 'cause i'm ready to leave. so i go back to the ledge. and, with all the concern of one who has undergone a frontal lobotomy, i jump. and again it's the same—not quite as thrilling, a little longer in duration, more easily forgotten. i'm hurt more when i stop. but i do it again and again and again. sometimes resting in between. until finally, i am at the bottom—don't remember the top. and i wander around—left then right, then left and right again. i pass shafts going down—some large, some small, all frighteningly unattractive. and sometimes i pass another, but that is rare 'cause there are very few of us down here. and we don't speak—we just skulk by one another, ready to fight if we have to, but not really wanting to bother doing much of anything. a few moments ago, i tried opening my eyes wide—wide like i think i once did when birds would fly across the sky and land on green trees, and the wind... the wind... the wind did something to me that i seem to recall felt good. blackening toes bound by silken threads All content © 2008 Phlip Arima