The Day Before We Bought a Fire Extinguisher

Call the fire brigade  -- and quinck!

A fire in the kitchen sink!

I mean in the refrigerator

Twisted tongue, don’t be a traitor! [Bleck! I meant the garburator]

I meant to say the microwave-r        

This situation’s getting grave-r

‘Cause it’s the thingy that’s aflame

I just cannot recall the name

Tell them it’s the whats-it-called

Engulfed in an enormous ball

Of devilish red and yellow flickers

It will make them get here quicker

And while we wait, go fetch some water

Hurry up, it’s getting hotter!

No! Not water! Not for grease!

It won’t help us in the least!

Before they call our next-of-kin,

Deprive that blaze of oxygen!

Grab some baking soda – stat!

Whaddya mean we’re out of that?

 Wait, is it powder or is it soda

Oh, Lord Jesus Christ Jehovah!

Don’t just stand around and shout!

Well, look at that! The fire’s out.

Saturday Morning Secrets (A Ten-Minute Poem)

Saturday morning secrets
And I am the Queen of the Quiet Realm
Entertaining the Earl of Grey.
A surprise visit from a red-chested hummer -
A player of the courts for our royal selves
My throne a washed-out white couch

Through the window, our fiercely-protected kingdom: newly-broken clouds, sunshine, and a still-sleeping neighbourhood.

Low Grade

I didn't use the word anxious until I was a young adult. I mean, I'd heard it, I knew the definition of it, I'd even spelled it right on a grade six spelling test. But I couldn't ever really distinguish anxiousness from nervousness, so "anxious" never made it into my vernacular.

When I moved to the West Coast, "anxiety" seemed to be a buzzword in my circles. So-and-so suffered from it, What's-her-name was attacked by it in the bathroom one afternoon, and This Guy took pills for it every day. 

Truthfully, I thought it was a farce. I mean, everyone gets nervous sometimes, but what the heck was wrong with these people? They had seemingly normal lives, with mostly-normal stress levels. They were definitely over-exaggerating things. They were suffering from a made up disease (like cooties, or the Coachella virus, or fibromyalgia).  Like cutting, I dismissed it as a "rich white person disease." It is the luxury of the wealthy and well-off to feel anxious about nothing.

I still kind of feel that way. Worrying is a luxury. But it's also become part of my reality. 

I don't have an anxiety disorder. I am not debilitated by it. And other than my daily vitamins, I don't take pills on the regular.

But hoo boy, am I living with some serious low grade anxiety. That uneasiness I've had around a week before my period, my need to organize my work and home space so everything is at least mostly in order, those irrational fears that pop up when The Intern is twenty minutes late, my heart palpitations now that we are surrounded by a veritable sea of moving boxes. . . 

Guess I've arrived. I've caught that imaginary ailment of the affluent. 

Alone Together

I get terribly lonely after two days of being home alone. There is only so much of my own company I can handle at once. There is only some much cleaning to be done in a 700-square-foot flat. There are only so many times one can text one's sister (even if there are three of them to choose from). There are only so many times one can check in on one's ailing grandmother. There are only so many walks one can walk; so many errands to run. There is only so much reading a fictional-illiterate like myself can tolerate; and I have read enough non-fiction in the last few days to fill a set of encyclopedias.

I opened the front door that faces the park and the tennis courts across the street so I can at least hear the conversations of the two shirtless thirty-something-year-old men trying humorously to cling to the last days of summer. It is an overcast 18°; it has been raining for days. I suppose I can't judge them too harshly; I am the one with the front door wide open, heating up the whole neighbourhood. I am the one so desperate for human contact that I will conciliatorily accept overhearing the conversations of others when I cannot acquire a conversation of my own to be a part of.

Sometimes when days like this hit me, when the Intern is off at work and I have done all the things I can think to do (even... gasp...exercising!), I trudge my quiet self to a coffee shop or haberdashery in hopes of finding a friendly stranger to engage with. At the very least, in a coffe shop, all of customers are alone together.

Today I am tethered to the house waiting for deliveries which, I am beginning to believe, will never materialize.

In my family of origin the only kind of solitude I knew was being "alone together." There were just so damn many of us in that house. Everywhere you turned there was a person. And instead of fighting the constant reality of people in my space when I needed a break, I  just grew to enjoy being alone together. The Intern (and these ramblings) will attest, I even grew to expect it.

Now that I am grown and in my very own house, creating what will one day be someone else's family of origin, in this moment, there's just about nothing I wouldn't do for a chance to be alone together.

Button

I cannot find the button
Or where X marks the spot.
I thought that it'd be easy;
Turns out it's rather not.

My mother's admonitions
Run laps inside my head.
Her voice a brazen echo
Of things she's never said;

Of things she may not ever say;
Or even yet believe
That leave me more encumbered
Than I would care conceive

Enfeebled on the precipice,
Precariously perched,
A lifetime of repression
Care of the goddam Church.

Ajar

Such unforeseen malevolence!
The freezer door’s been open since --
I know not when or yet by whom.
(Though I suspect it might be youm)
When I awoke, I found it thus:
All dripping wet and vaporous.

No unsubstantial aperture,
The contents were the temperature
Of rooms in which we often dwell,
A temperature we know too well.

But frozen treats and salmon cakes
Do not to this mild climate take.
And homemade Chinese dumplings will
Make even iron stomachs ill
If consumed after a time
Of residing in so warm a clime.

It is an outright mortal sin
To toss good food into the bin,
But I will not be brought to court
For serving botulism torte.
(There is a law of tortes, you know).
So with great sadness I do throw
(On my attorney’s sage behest)
Away the stores of our chill chest.


Chanelle Tye 2010

Julie Kissed Me (A True Story)

Julie kissed me when we met,
Her lips on mine, or quite akin;
Truth she feigns now to forget.
She, whose claims I put no stock in,
Says I must be nearly mad;
Notes I misremember blissf’ly;
Posits that only a cad
Would believe that Julie kissed me!

(c) Chanelle Tye 2012




Jenny Kiss'd  Me
Leigh Hunt.

Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss'd me!