poet

Meet Vanessa Handford. I don't know her very well so I don't really know what to share with you. She is beautiful and talented and I suppose that is all you really need to know.

I met this intriguing stranger through the lovely KitKat (see April's mini-profile) and I will admit we are more online friends than real world friends since we live on opposite coasts of the country. (Yes, that's right, I am referring to Ontario as "east coast" because I am west coast and that is what we do). I discovered Vanessa's blog a little while ago and I am very fond of it. It isn't a life story, an online picture book or a party diary. It is a collection of her poetry.

I want to share with you one of her favourites and one of mine. Enjoy.

"does this pen work"

im dwelling in my head, this deceitful shell a chamber no one else can enter. full of plenty schemes and brilliant ideas and mass confusion so much that im as unfortunate as an oyster with its shell attached to its skin, unable to escape. and the sun is bright, bright but its failing because there is still too much ice on this ground to keep running safely away from here. but im curious. im curiouser then you would care to believe and and i still want to leave to an unknown destination full of destitute and salvation packed with rude patrons on the side streets of the road of life bitter with resentment toward the fact that we've forgotten the world. Oh! this world. what a carnival full of clowns that juggle insignificant balls of christ and over priced wine and regurgitated education and they keep dropping them into the vicious untamable lions cage. and he wants to get out too, just like me on these icy streets and Oh! how rotten and unkind it all is, how pitiful i am and how abstract my emotions and how sad that some people don't drink to temporarily alleviate the stress that is this mess of conjugated thoughts stuck in the web of our cerebrum. our fucked up cerebrum from being molded and shaped by inconsiderate apes that treat us like lice and pick us off and eat us alive. Oh! so ignorant i am. find me a philosopher. find me a physician. find me nirvana or a silent mind. find me a 66 of good gin for under 20 bucks. find me 20 bucks cus im broke. im broken into by meaningless time and bottomless wisdom from my mind that is still like a mine-field.

"untitled"

its an urge to exfoliate the surface of my thoughts and dust the remnants on paper; to later decipher the lucid dream sequence of events that lead up to my feet touching the ground and inevitably making a sound that i cannot control. and i look at my body and im turning into a cactus. my limbs are shifting and creating a being that isn't me, and i don't seem to care about my torso although my legs begin to irritate me and they make me want to get rid of them, so i begin to snap and trim each needle and sin and i hate the plant that i've become. the aptitude of my body is so soulless that soon i feel i will morph into a kitchen counter or a mirror or a window in which i climb out of to escape the being of nothingness thats been created. now what i dare ask myself? now that i am equal parts water as i am mind, how do i drink to quench my thirst for dryness? ah, i wonder why its all relative and why darwin decided to tell us things egyptians hid beneath the temples of stone that erected over night. and i consider the forests erected over years and i fear i'll never understand them. and this samsara merry-go-round is giving me motion sickness and im wandering into the fog far away from myself and planting my roots with all the other cacti of confusion. you can find me there.

Visit her full site, "nature vs people", here. Be sure to read "pretentious idealists", it was a close second for my personal favourite.

Photos courtesy of Vanessa Handford's facebook.