Focus On The Advil Side

Little things like a cup of hot, strong tea, a sweet kiss on the cheek, a touch on the hand; they let me focus on what’s going on around me, all the good that’s around me.

Especially now, when my uterus is using my lower back as a punching bag (those near and dear to me have heard various similar metaphors, along with the utterance “my uterus is a treacherous bitch“) and I’m living Advil to Advil.

I just, I hate acting a stereotype. I love everyone around me, even when I’m angry. It’s just that these distinctly unpregnant pangs emanating from my lower abdomen can get a little aggravating. And if I snark at you, it’s just the moon-lady talking.

That, or you’re being unforgivably irritating.

© Emily Bragg 2013

Many Ways

there are many ways
to speak to me, if you want;
write me a letter?

Falling

I’m looking out the window and it’s raining
And I’m wishing I was out there with you
With life running down our cheeks;
Happiness increasing with each drop tracing across
And under our skin, setting our eyes afire with the knowledge
That I’ll never tire of your touch.

I want to stand on your toes, and step where you step
I want to arrange a time and place for your lips to meet mine
Over coffee, and maybe after they could take a walk.
I want to know you behind your smile.

I want to throw myself across the space between us and hold you,
Like there’s a time limit for the idea of us
But we’re slowing down the clock so that each second
Seems like an hour.

And every hour I spend with you is like
An injection of peace
And every second I spend away from you
Is like a lease, like a debt I can’t repay, like time is a bank vault
Locking each moment of aching loneliness away.

And I know sometimes I get worried,
Worried that I’ve said too much and you’ll start avoiding me
Worried that I’ve drowned your affection in my own;
Too late for resuscitation or a loan of
Breath from my lungs.

But it’s a transient state of disquiet that evaporates
Like the steam on the bathroom mirror in which I traced the words
‘I love you’.
We might end. But I hope to skies of spirits
That it isn’t soon.

Because this ancient emotion feels like a revelation,
And I’m reevaluating my diction into the words that lovers use.

And this sensation confuses me, because I’m not used to
This carved out hole in the side of me
That marks your absence;
I’m not accustomed to finding want in solitude;
But I could exist with you for days and days and find myself missing you
If you left for an hour.

And this overpowering awareness of the space where you could be
Is like trying to ignore an addiction, it’s a contradiction
To all that’s glorious and free.

Over time, I’ve learned cynicism to be the best ism to follow when falling in love,
But my surety is slowly eroding away, the cracks filled by fidelity
And the solemnity of ascending to something higher
And sweeter than anything I would have ever known to dream of
Before you.

I want to thank you
For making me feel like a live wire cut from a telephone pole when you’re around me,
For making each brush of your lips a story,
For making each page of each story full of suspense, without
Common sense or inhibitions,
Without definition of boundaries or conditions
Each intermission filled with reverence
And only the position of hands on the clock can bring us back to reality.

There are times when I wish I could plot each point
Charting a voyage from your thoughts to mine
Running a ruler across a map of cerebral connections
Just to find out what you’re thinking.

But I know that silence can be beautiful,
Because silence with you is often unusual,
Crystalline in its perfection
Every moment a reflection of quieted passion rippling from our bodies,
Breathing in harmony with understanding
Falling in tandem into something deeper than expected.

And I know alone is okay,
But somehow alone is just an echo
Of being with you.

I wrote this ages ago, during the first few months of my now-almost-two-year relationship with my love. Everything was such an incredible revelation, I can still conjure up the intense feelings that I tried so hard to put into words. This is meant to be spoken; whisper it to yourself. If you have this, rejoice. If you don’t, wait; it will come to you.

© Emily Bragg 2013

Apology Epoch

I’ve found myself apologizing to people a lot lately.

I’m not certain if it’s because I’ve been more offensive
Or I’ve just noticed my actions
And the way I can sometimes be both a slap and a distraction
To people.

The attraction of risking others’ emotions is
The Attention, the resultant direction of
Eyes towards my antics, my words.
I’m the first to admit it.

And too often
I don’t look at what I’ve said
Until the later hours, when someone says
“Hey,
That really hit me hard.”

And then I apologize
Because at that point there’s no other words
To make it less stinging, less hard;
Even “I’m sorry” really won’t heal that much
Of the scar.

I say scars, but only ’cause it rhymes;
Maybe there’s been a few times
Where I’ve been so unkind that it cuts so deep
The surrounding tissue puckers and heals awry,
But mostly they’re bumps and bruises,
A few paper cuts.

Don’t think I don’t care, I’m
Scared of what I do when I’m not looking
To the people
I care about.

I know the best solution to my apology condition (my
blatant inattention) would be to
Tone down my actions.
I’ve never really done that.
I don’t know how to backtrack or which
Words lack the stinging smack of
Unintended harassment.

The only solution,
The only viable battle plan is to listen
Instead of speaking
And try to swing it so I don’t seem sullen, don’t attract
Attention with my silence.

Some of my favourite people
Are completely understated.
The ones who say the funniest things
In the quietest voices.

It’s not in my blood to be that way.
But I could quiet what I do,
Save the energy for emergencies and
Say better things.

Draw out this marrow and
Replace it with
Liquid quiet
So I
Have
An endless internal supply.
Quiet
Replicating cells of
Quieter quiet. It grows
Quiet.

I grow
Quiet.

© Emily Bragg 2013

On The Haiku

haikus are simple
fun little bite-sized poems
for all occasions

the finger sandwich
of poetry, not hearty
but rather perfect.

I like haikus ’cause
they are like small word boxes,
ribbons optional.

just sufficient space
for a single sentiment
with just the right words.

© Emily Bragg 2013

On The Agenda

Calendars are clean, full
of possibilities, blank
pages slicing days into finger
food for my weary
mind.

I got a new day planner. I love it. It’s nice.

© Emily Bragg 2013

Radio Famous!

Well, not famous, but my radio virginity has been taken. Co-op Radio Vancouver asked some of the students from the Vision to Voice project to come read their poems on the radio, and I blithely volunteered my Tuesday evening, thinking I’d just be one in a long succession of students reading poems on air. Nerve-wracking enough, I say. But soft! When we arrived, it was unveiled that they had a whole interview session set up for us. Questions, answers, songs, laughter, the whole nine yards. I nearly fled.

Despite my fear of making an utter fool of myself, it went well. The volunteers that run this radio station are without a doubt some of the nicest, most genuine people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting, and I can say confidently that I won’t have the fight-or-flight reaction if there is a radio in the future.

The show is called World Poetry Café – El Mundo de la Poesia, and is a bilingual show (Spanish/English) that explores poetry from various different areas. You can listen to/download the show here, and I would highly recommend checking out future (and past) Co-op Radio shows, because they are truly a stand-up community figure for minority cultures and societies; their “About” page calls it a “voice for the voiceless”. A really unique, golden idea.

All in all, despite muddling through Tuesday on a pithy ration of sleep and offending exactly one friend (that I know of, could be more; heaven knows I’m not at my most tactful on >3 hours of sleep), it’s been a really fantastic day. Oh, and I’d like to

thank you followers,
you commenters and likers
for lifting my day.

© Emily Bragg 2013

A Quick Note On Australia

My keyboard resides in the Northern Hemisphere, where very few things want to eat you. Unless you count grizzly bears, which I don’t. They don’t venture into the suburbs too often. But Australia, now there’s a scary place and a half. I’d skin both my knees to be able to go there, but knowing me they’d send me home within a week covered in tarantula bites. Have I fallen embarrassingly deep into stereotypes yet?

The reason I bring up Australia is that it’s 3:25am where I sit, and I’ve got class in 7 hours. Now, I could have finished this linguistics assignment ages ago if I’d put my mind to it (it’s actually kind of fun, in a twisted phonological puzzly kind of way), but instead I blogged for a bit, and I made myself a sandwich, and I ate the sandwich, and then I made myself some tea and sat down with the best intentions and a tin of mints.

Now all that remains is to type the thing up.

Do Australians enjoy mints as much as I do? I’m workin’ the blanket statements here. Ohhh blankets…bed would be nice. I bet it’s warmer down under as well, though today up on the mountain was incredibly gorgeous. It was just everywhere else that was foggy and cold as all get-out. You could look down and see this blanket of fog rolling out from the mountain base….blankets again, dammit.

I’m looking back over this and I realize I never elaborated on Australia. I figure since y’all are a day ahead of us, oh……and here my 3am logic falls flat. That means it’d be 3am in Australia too, just on a different day. Well. There goes all of my reason.

© Emily Bragg 2013

this cage

stacked accusations
tempered by blind apathy
who hurts now; later

repents with spun words.
quietly justified, he
builds his blind fortress.

girl wings flutter, strain;
he forges two more cage bars.
torn feathers, wild eyes.

silence sometimes stops
but go is waiting, waiting.
then she flies too far.

hurt masked by kindness
swiftly sours to black demands;
damp down clings softly.

let her go, I scream
feathers rustle, two eyes open
“i can mend this cage”

whispered words through bars
this cage will not be mended;
girl wings realigned.

she climbs aerial
cage and sour scent fades on high
and healing begins.

© Emily Bragg 2013

Let Me Hurt You Not Again

I know a girl whose thoughts masquerade as gilded golden trophies, hiding doubt and angry rabble crossing ‘cross her splintered mind. I don’t know her mind at all, and yet I know so much; the rest I fabricate. I don’t know when I hurt her and when I do I can’t retract the words because I don’t know which of them sting, hidden barbs so clear to all the rest.

I love this girl.

And after all these years she remains a clear-cut enigma, my projections falsifying her reality. I forget she has weaknesses, so much do I aspire to what she does, what she says. I don’t understand how someone so incredible can see such warped reflections of themselves, so much so that I, I pose a threat. Lash back, I think. Hurt me like I hurt you. I wouldn’t know what to expect.

Dear, refuse my words. Craft yourself a vessel of barb-proof determinism and push off, sail away. I want your words and mind spread before me, but if I can’t carve a space for myself without cutting too deep when my knife slips sideways, push me out.

I never thought I was the stronger one. You were always the brighter light, I only tagged along. And to hear that all along you saw me as brighter? My mind reels. I don’t understand. I can’t be who I am without you, because you define me. Every shared tryst, every joke, every silent moment we’ve built together is the foundation of who I am. You have given me so much strength, and now I only hope you’ll let me try to give some back.

But if I ever become an enemy, cut me down.

© Emily Bragg 2013

Body’s Rare/Wait All Night

I started writing with nothing in mind, and this took shape. Hopefully gonna record a rough track with my brother playing bass and me on some kind of percussion (egg shaker?). Think old school smooth jazz, and let the lyrics mess with your mind. (Any thoughts on title?)

Body’s rare
Folks are starin’
Don’t seem fair
This girl’s got eyes

Take her home
Take her clothes off
Take her soul
And what’s left inside

‘Cause Hell don’t wait
For angel signs
Words for saints
Ain’t what we hear

No, Hell don’t wait
For angel signs
Words for saints
Ain’t what we hear

Lie awake
Know she’s breathin’
By your side
Oh, by your side

Hear her fade
Slow surrender
By your side
Oh, by your side

Body’s cool
Heat’s a-fadin’
Beats don’t beat
An’ sighs don’t sigh

Walk all night
Sky is breakin’
One more star
Up in the sky

Hell don’t wait
For angel signs
Words for saints
Ain’t what we hear

No, Hell don’t wait
For angel signs
Words for saints
Ain’t what we hear

She’s so cold
Her lips gone blue
But you wait all night
You wait all night

You wait all night
You wait all night

© Emily Bragg 2013

A Quiet Ache

I missed you this morning. It snowed, and I found a quiet ache for you
Wrapping itself around my shoulders.
Not the hot, sharp longing of new lovers,
But a soft want for your arms around my waist
Your face buried in that place where my shoulder
Becomes my neck.
A quiet ache.
I wanted to pull you on like a sweater
Knitted from all the time we’ve weathered together,
Each purled row, each knitted truce;
Uneven, gorgeous stitches creating the strongest cloth I know.
And though we each held a needle,
The wool held some fault
Spun of unintentions and
Faith undone.
Kindle me now, love.
Stuttering romance, tiptoed words,
Relearning the language of intimacy
And solidarity;
See?
Too long, darkness.
This abstinence of honey leaves me parched.

A little something I wrote a month or so ago, but lost it when my hard drive was wiped. This version is based off what I can remember.

© Emily Bragg 2013

It’s a Hermit Life

I used to be the girl who catted about town on the daily, looked for any excuse to get out of the house and bus downtown where the action was. I loved downtown, the hustle and bustle of hipsters and businessmen and chic moms with their please-mum-clad kids all busily walking to the next show, the next appointment. I dressed to fit in, built a closet of vintage and weird clothes to give me some street cred, and walked Granville like I knew what I was doing. I knew Granville Island like the back of my hand, Commercial Drive? Favourite place in the city.

But something happened last semester. I started off same as ever, treating each Friday and Saturday night like a one-way ticket to a good time out on the town. I went to tiny concerts in bars, I went out dancing at the salsa clubs. Halfway through the semester, my family’s little dog, a five-year-old daschund named Zoey, unexpectedly fell victim to a compressed disk in her spine, causing intense pain and paralyzing her from the waist down. Over the course of two days our healthy, chipper little dog was gone. Euthanized. Such a clean, stinging word…it was a bad week. It was a bad month. I still expect frenzied barking every time I put a key in the door lock, can still see her perched on her back legs asking for a lap to sit in. I still miss her. Zoey’s death became an inciting incident that, coupled with stress in my personal relationships, led me into a bout of depression.

I don’t use the term “depression” lightly. I call things depressing, sometimes, as a joke, but if something truly is sad and tragic, I don’t say that. But depression is a tricky one. Most people who say they’re depressed aren’t serious, which desensitizes many to the spiralling darkness that real depressed people experience. I was lucky. I had a strong support network in my friends, my family, and my partner, who all kept me from falling too deep into depression. I didn’t go to a doctor. I wasn’t prescribed drugs. Suicide never once crossed my mind.

It was, however, one of the most terrifying states I have ever experienced. The feeling that your mind is teetering on the brink of a chasm filled with howling darkness and fear-riddled shadows. And that feeling can surface at any time, though mostly when you’re alone, or with someone so close to you that you don’t have to wear a mask of normality around them. Then the tear-floods start, and the howling gets so loud you can’t breathe because nothing makes any kind of sense.

It’s absolutely terrifying, especially when you can’t pinpoint a reason for your madness. Combined with the stress of five university courses and a complete and utter sense of apathy towards the many, many assignments and papers due (not something I’m used to, at all), it was a tough couple of months. I thank my stars every day for having such an incredible partner in love and crime beside me, and putting up with my wild moods and endless tears. We’ll be coming up on two years in a few months, and a gorgeous cobblestone road it’s been. Uneven, at times, but always set on solid ground.

Now, though January has already thrown a handful of blindsiding curveballs my way, I’m in a good place. I might not be on the best of terms with all the people I know and love (regardless of if they know it or not), but I’m happy and grounded with myself. As for going out, however…I’ve turned into a hermit. I don’t want to go out, whether it’s something I know I would enjoy or not. Downtown? Might as well be Prince George as far as I’m concerned. Who wants to go out when you have a slightly-below-par pub less than two blocks away, a stash of liquor and yarn in your closet, Netflix on your TV, and 8tracks in your speakers? Netflix, guys. You can crochet in sweatpants while watching In Her Shoes for the 45th time! I have zero ambition to do cooler things.

This realization that I would rather do sub-par things and relinquish my status as external Vancouver hipster surfaced as I realized that it would be a serious effort to leave my house this evening and go to the farewell show for/at the Waldorf Cabaret, with my favourite gypsy musicians (Maria in the Shower, Geoff Berner, The Tailor, Hannah Epperson and more). Sadly, I won’t be in attendance due to some of the afore-mentioned curveballs and various familial duties, but I can’t pretend my inner hermit stick-in-the-mud self isn’t breathing a deep sigh of relief.

I’m sure I’ll eventually recover my mojo, but until that happens…I have a standing date with my couch.

© Emily Bragg 2013

In Crusade

Walk along a board thick enough
To support you
And pretend it’s not a tightrope.
Pretend the audience hanging from the ends
Are invisible, are there
To support you.
Don’t mince steps;
Walk freely, strong in the face of falling.
When the rope turns gossamer-thin,
Pretend you feel more beneath the splintering air than spite,
And the words floating up, the jeers and catcalls shaking spider-thin assurance
Pretend they are music and cheers.
Look into the eyes of the perched lion
With his trust-soaked eyes,
Who waits across the divide.

Sunset in Zanzibar

I recently participated in Vision to Voice 2013, an event orchestrated by the South Delta Artist’s Guild and the students of South Delta Secondary School. They asked the members of the Delta Arts Youth Council (of which I’m still a member) to do some writing for them; each student is given a painting done by either another student or a member of the Guild, and is asked to write prose or poetry about the piece. I wrote a (last-minute) poem about Janice Jone’s acrylic pallete knife painting Sunset in Zanzibar, a gorgeous piece.

Her mast stands stark against the sky,
Brilliant with dying light.
Canvas wings now folded,
Loosely hanging in the soft glow,
Mirrored in the soft drape of a woman’s shift.

She stands tall, her back to the mast
Molten sunset lighting her eyes afire.
Moulded copper across ebony cheekbones.
A chance taken, the sigh of freedom
Echoed in the creaking hull;

The surf yields an easy cadence,
A hushed refrain against the coming darkness.

Unexpectedly, this piece won an Award of Excellence in Poetry from the Guild, one of four given for poetry. Thank you to Janice and her inspiring painting, and for the Vision to Voice collective for organizing such a wonderful event. As soon as I know where to buy a copy of the published compilation of all the paintings and corresponding pieces of writing, I’ll put it up here.

A Clean Break

My plan for this blog was to have somewhere to put all the artsy things I do that barely see the light of day in everyday situations, and I had a nice little stockpile of artistic fodder for the internet to feast on all ready to be uploaded come January. It’s the second week of January, now, and I have nothing up. Nada. Zip. May I confess why?

Because that’s exactly what I have on my hard drive at the moment.

Days before I was about to push this little blog off its metaphorical home branch into its virgin flight amongst the friendly trees of the wordpress forest, my laptop screen froze. When control-alt-delete failed, I simply shut the computer down manually. This type of innocuous temper tantrum isn’t headlining news for my trusty PC, but it was troubling when manually shutting down the computer elicited no response from the frosty thing. A last resort; I removed the battery, leaving its tired shell bereft of blinking lights.

But alas, when the batter was popped back in, I was faced with a black screen of death. A close cousin of the ubiquitous Blue Screen of Death, the black screen announced that it had no intention of ever speaking to the boot system ever again, and that both the boot system and the hard drive were dead to it. Even a few days in computer therapy with various psychocomputoanalysts did nothing, and they resorted to wiping all the painful memories from its system a la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

And that, dear readers, is why this blog is much more blank than it could have been. Welcome to my little art blog, and my adventures in reconstructing months of writing and photographs.