Sylvie Hill

Tour Guide

I saw parts of London
I will never see again.
I’m not sure if I’m at all
OK with this.

I saw parts of London
I needed to see now.
It was what I had to feel
Is there any other way – how?

“What the fuck is going on here”
you’d say as we window-glanced in Soho.
Explained the Trafalgar monument
History lessons I did not know.

South Bank bombing sites.
And ferryman clay pipes.
Rivers flowing out at night.
Markers on walls from the tide.

Grey skies darkening
With a storm hovering
Atmospheric, pointing upward –
The Eye.

The Tate, and a wrestle
With my arm in mock fight
Laughing, mocking, annoying
And charming evening into night.

Warm Bloomsbury, the smell of bar
Wood, warmth by a radiator
at the window, Marta watched
when you entered.

Asahis poured, conversations flowed
Alcohol blocked my brain
Numbing everything above, and
Below.

We must eat! How about sushi!
“I can take you to a nice place”
he said twice, I heard
but my brain, intoxicating, blurry.

“I could use a smoke!” And so it was:
you floated flawless in the crowd
for a pack of 20s, forget Dalston,
we lit up in the choke cloud.

Dinner: orange pasta and meats
Two bottles of “Le Poesie”
Blacking out starts
That I can’t see the irony.

Was there poetry in him saying
“You’re so bloody annoying”?
Was there a point to him being
So bloody unflattering?

I turned off my brain,
I was already in a fog
Stared at a table of Arabs speaking French
Like in Montreal.

Paid up, walked out.
The Intrepid Fox now.
Drunk, losing sight of all the fun
Of the earlier warmth of brunch.

Of Austrian love travelled 12 hours
To Paris, France just to be with me.
Of California/Brittany G working late hours
Just to have dinner with me.

Of Brick Lane Wednesday
With Adam in Hoxton Square
With Kelly and Mike laughing
Rocking out to the long-haireds.

And Wakefield warmth
Over seared bass and virgin cocktails
And Wakefield weather
Predicting storms, or calm, or gales?

I was so loved and on my moral ground.
I was so confused when he kissed me on the mouth
Only to ignore me to put on a poppy
But helpfully tell me Gower Street runs North to South.

I saw parts of London
I will never see again.
I’m not sure if I’m at all
OK with this.

He knew the shortcut to Russell Square.
He had been living there 20 years.
He knew shortcuts through my own life.
I’ve been living mine 39 years.

I saw parts of a person
I will never see again.
I have to be OK
With this end.

He knew I knew very little of the London of which I wrote.
There was no place we did not go.
There was no place we did not go.

When I returned home
It was empty. It was still.
When I returned home
He was in me; I was filled.

It was hard to shower.
I took care of business on my own.
Having had bodies as close as can be close,
I was now truly in mind and heart – very, and utterly

alone.

For there was no place we did not go.
I went to where we needed to go.
I have nowhere to go.
I have nowhere to go.

I am not at home in my home.
What, notice I did not say ‘who’, will guide now?

I do not know.
I am alone.

© Sylvie Hill 2013

ART: dixon / “Not just her” / 50x50cm /spray paint and enamel on canvas / 2008 //

Red-dress

I think with being in the clear
And knowing I’m not pregnant
I can now look back and say to you
“fucking weird! but no regrets.”

I think with being in the clear
And having started my period
I’ve replaced my downcast worry and reminisces
With “holy crap, that was hilarious!”

The sex was non-eventful it didn’t even matter if
I was there or not —
Now I laugh at the epic failure
Instead of calling you a cunt!

“Love does not make itself felt
in the desire for copulation
(a desire that extends to
an infinite number of women)

but in the desire for shared sleep
(a desire limited to one woman)”
so says Milan Kundera, making me rethink
his pushing me off the bed as ‘fun’!

I still have a green bruise from where
my shin hit the end table
I remember it now as I recall nasty things
of which he said he was capable.

But the unbearable lightness of
Being so fucking stupid as to drink with him
To have been swayed by those chick feelings:
of compassion and of nurturing?

I didn’t even want to hang out
after the two times that we met!
A confrontational sunovabitch
but in the end, this: no regrets.

So thank you for a negative experience
The next guy’s gonna score big!
To recover from this insult,
Just tell your friends you weren’t interested.

I’ll say you’re a complex Tomas in a Kundera
And all the guys Constance meets in D.H. Lawrence
To the Kingsley’s dude who try to de-virgin
The innocent school teacher; take a girl like this!

Guess it’s true what she said:
“All men are beasts”
And to that she added:
“And we love them, anyways.”

To that I say it could very well happen that
I will become a lesbian
(Should pharmaceutical companies continue to support
the morning-after pill solution on account of douche-bag pricks.)

Not really because like Kundera says
A woman likes the weight of a man
It’s that heaviness that brings meaning to our lives
In ways the poets understand.

I think with being in the clear
And knowing I’m not pregnant
I can now look back and say to you
“I would have totally kept your kid.”

Cause you’re not a bad guy.
But I don’t know why
You didn’t pull out
When you could have.

Don’t say it’s cause he’s a rockstar
There have been many came before him
Who didn’t come at all inside
And beforehand, asked about protection.

Stupid girls take shit like this
And turn it into a compliment
Chalk up the reason he didn’t pull out
To “oh he likes me, and was so caught up in it” innit?

Wise at 39, and dumber than the doorknob
that ripped my red dress sleeve as I was packing in the morning
Calm, at ease, I didn’t freak in panic
As he was done his knocking-upping and banging.

His breath was heavy
Was this a sign?
Naa, cause he said the night before
That’s one of his moves, man: he mimes.

Copies the chick in her breathless pants
Well watch me then how I grab your ass
In letting him release like a losing-it pansy
I kind of felt like the man. [not really]

I think with being in the clear
And knowing I’m not pregnant
I can now look back and say to you
“I’m glad it ended like this.”

‘Cause in the end, this: ‘Better pass boldly
into the other world in the flight of some full passion
than dwindle slowly with age’ said James Joyce
in his The Dead infinite wisdom.

Well Good God, muppet,
Ya went out with a bang!
Dwindled flaccid at the sink
When you pulled out at last – went to brush your teeth …
… leaving me.

I still had stardust leaking on my inner crotch-thigh in the wake
And trail of his shooting comet, but see:
In the starlight, and while he was inside,
my beauty remained intact – and natural to me.

I feel badly for girls whose self-esteem
Is abused when a guy uses them for sex
Whether a poet, a madwoman or trying to ignore it
I was not a thing: possessed.

Who was he thinking of?
Girl of the Canada South?
The other girl with whom
He’d recently been mucking about?

I remember one rockstar
I couldn’t even touch
Because I knew he had a girlfriend
And I didn’t want to fuck her up.

But on the tiny sofa
In my head it was just … us.
My deepest sadness comes from telling the world
But I had to – I had to rush it out and off.

I think with being in the clear
And knowing I’m not pregnant
I can now look back and wish to you
Nothing but (double) rainbows and happiness.

After more than 50 guys
Who I laid beside naked
Who offered fingering and petting
And mutual masturbation

After just 6 boyfriends
Who laid inside
Who offered love, understanding
And protection (unlike you, #7)

You’re the only one who …
You’re the …
You are
You.

When people ask me “Do you have kids?”
I’ll remember you pushing me OFF the bed.
Only to take me ON the couch
With the best of the thickest, and violent strength in touch
But with absolutely nothing close to the feeling of Love.

“No,” I’ll speak.
‘Might have done – once,’ I’ll think.
Pat my belly in address.
Maybe I’ll be in that red dress?

If you ever think of me packing,
eating two granola bars in the morning
remember my red dress?
I’ve blocked your email address, and texts.
No redress for this.
This is the end, this.

No redress…

© Sylvie Hill 2013

Same As On The White Horse

What? Am I to continue to riff off a blue lake
Or a Dorian
Gray landscape of Russell Square for a guy who acted
like Russell Brand?
I’m not sure. I should have written more in the moment.
What I captured in the red notebooks
said it all so well; was realistic.
Now I go back to make believe
to fantasy
I need time off to pull together pieces.

These are the hardest things:
Admiring the precision with which you recalled various scenes.
Knowing how you nailed the logic for her, for me, perfectly.
Wondering if you knew, as Muse, this is what needed to be.
Discarding the history, letting another 13 years be?
You will be 57, near death, do we wait for this?
I wait for nothing all the while puckering my lips – inward
Letting no mouth come near where was his last kiss has been.
A tremendously bad lay but letting no man erase this.
Such intimacy laid bare to pain for someone’s vulnerability in this.
In the end, this: I waver not a fucking inch at my worth.
But feel so sad for you.
If I was she in the Canada of the south, I would vomit in my mouth
at how much you run around, like Ms Sidney said, it’s too much.
I kept wanting to tell you: “Stop what you’re doing, you will die.”

No cliché: it’s as if you’re already dead.
“We’re no spring chickens,” you said.
Had I heard that I would have asked: “Is this why you settled?”

I feel bad (again) for being so disappointed in reality,
fantasy was far superior –
I agree when you said “if you met me, you might not like me, I’ve got a sharp tongue.”
I would have excused a few things if you said you were nervous
or a premature ejaculator.
I regret on the blackout registering nothing on your body
I always thought I would look for scars of the armor you grow
to toughen your insides such that they puncture your heart.
I remember feeling a hairy chest. A beautiful manly cologne scent.
Robust buttocks. Tall-standing stature floating, flawless.
A shared toothbrush.
You, shocked, at my hand on your shoulder bringing you water.
And a foot in outline, same one as from the white horse.
But nothing more – and those big hands closing a suitcase.
More so than ever not wanting to prove my worth
I smile so hard knowing what love I’ve been capable of bringing forth.
Not to him – ever – who cares anymore!
Not even as a friend, you’re not my value.
You said of two attached men who strayed
That “men will take the opportunity if presented to them that way.”
Those men are scum, and you’re the same way.

But then I remember a photo of she of the Canada of the South
Pulling your arms around her, made it seem like you don’t touch
My first thought was she’s commanding
The second he’s not touchy-feely
And photos of orange-cat eyes, a crooked mouth – an arial shot
And knew through a camera lens, this guy felt love.
“I love her,” he said and “she loves me.”
Poor bastard living in spite of making a decision about she.

You, shocked, at my hand on your shoulder bringing you water.
And a foot in outline, same one as from the white horse.

© Sylvie Hill 2013

* Horse picture from Sarah Blasko’s “All I Want.”

This Time, What It Was, A Time

This time, last week,
we were having a lot to drink
but none so much that we couldn’t dance or speak to strangers
ask for more toilet paper
from under cubicle walls in a shithole, foxhole bar in London, England.

I think we danced so much, got pissed, we practically pissed our drawers.
It happens when you’re having a blast, that —and too drunk to fuck in early hours.

This time, last week, add one hour —2:43:
she’d get lost in a rickshaw.
He’d be making a phone call to a girlfriend or say he’s “getting money”
and the Indian driver would take her down a side street:
“I’ve got wine! I’ve got wine! Plenty!”
She’d say, “I am waiting for him — he is coming for me.”
The Indian guy snogging she, somehow she loses her keys.

This time, last week, he has seen us safely to the front door.
I think he was worried, saying: “I looked all over for you.”

This time, last week, there’d come a blackout
and a slight remembrance of a shared toothbrush?
Of questions of toiletries and maybe removing her make-up?
Of pants being yanked off?
Of an iPhone gone missing, “What about my photographs?!!”

This time, last week in three or four hours,
he’d take her for old times’ sake
he’d blame her that she was the one who initiates
he’d fall back asleep in time to awake
to see her living that Beth Orton track that Oliver gave 13 years ago like a fucking cliché …

“going down to Central Reservation, last night’s red dress,
I can still smell you on my fingers and taste you on my breath.”

The morning’s red dress was Paris vintage Roma-flowing peasant sleeves she ripped on the bathroom door handle, which surprisingly didn’t make her wince.

The smells and tastes would settle in, and inside, for no time for a shower since a plane was leaving trans-Atlantic.

She’d be standing at Customs amidst strangers with a scent from the hours before, unwashed hair and their DNA mixed 36,000 feet in the air on Air Canada inside her.

Oliver, was that Hoxton Square Circles where I tried so hard to fit in?
Oliver, you should have seen me, I wrote in my journal that I could not stand him!
Oliver, I slipped when he walked in, enigmatic, alluring and a force.
Oliver, he cherished nothing at all, not in the ways you’d support.
Oliver, you would have seen right through him and punched him right where it hurts.

From Hoxton Square circles to Russell Square station, from sexless one-night stands, to a morning fully loaded, he told her never to veer from the main streets but the side streets is where he rescued her. He said always remember your Bloomsbury runs North and South, but it was too late to remember as much.

From Hoxton Square to Russell Square where he walked the park with her belongings, he had made his mark alright, the reality was stark, alright – she had been going and going and going around in circles that night.

Following Hoxton Square, Oliver disappeared wanting more than a friend, he was looking for a lover. Following Russell Square, she disappeared, questioning whether He was ever a friend and pitied his many lovers.

Bombs had gone off in Russell Square Station and lady activists encouraged the suffragettes. She laughed to herself when he said that the movement was intense but none such a great effort as her travelling with her period.

He said, “you can’t get pregnant then, you had it last week” obviously knowing nothing about ovulation. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was a fertile time ripe for imagination that this time, this time, this time, could be whatever I wanted it to be.

A sneaky little brown-eyed beauty with pudgy face for my squeezing and loving.

A tired, 39 year-old brown-eyed gal with a face burning from weeping.

© Sylvie Hill 2013

Photo | Russell Square, London, UK |

Two Salmon

I saw your beloved in Russell Square, and she was weeping.

Their dead weights balance him: suspending one
on either side, he carries down the fish
he must have killed out on the salmon-run
here where the river slows to water-wash
and salt, and a lazy tide, so in the sun
they glitter from a distance, and they flash
like things that could be animals and raw,
each with its whole weight taken on the jaw.

Two salmon, closer up, and not alive
in their suits of miraculous chainmail
fitted like skin; not enough to survive
out in the parched and dazzling, unreal
element of noise and wind; they arrive
with blood-flecks on the white and pewter scales
along their bellies, each one the same size,
these fish with their uncloseable dead eyes.

I nod to him, smile: it’s as if what swings
so heavily from each arm were a new
option, a way of going about things;
for a moment anyhow, the fish are two
lives, and he has his choice of them; he brings
one and the other steadily into
the world with its drizzle of light, its poles
upright between sandbanks and sea. Two souls.

I look and look: eventually, he’s gone;
and maybe all of this was wrong, in fact:
remember how two bodies can have one
soul between them, with that soul intact
through all the very worst that can be done
or said; they swim against a cataract
over and over, light sheathing them from above,
two bodies with one single life to prove.

Know all the worst, and see the worst thing whole:
one life neglected by you or betrayed
somewhere beyond its own help or control,
exposed and shivering and all afraid;
walk in the streets, and see a crying soul
that once this body and another made;
look at it without sympathy or surprise;
look at it with your sore, wide-open eyes.

You, meaning me. Because of my own dread
of open gills, fish-scales, and the lithe shine
over packed muscle when it’s dried and dead,
the salmon and the fisherman combine
remorselessly in my remorseful head
to plead and punish; again and again
they find me, and I find them, when we go
looking and looking. There is nothing to know.

– Peter McDonald (published in the TLS) via Spencer Alley

Read about the sweet & sexy SONIC STYLINGS of Blockhouse Bay in my upcoming feature in Vader Evader, a new-music on-line magazine for electronic music.

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excerpt //

STYLE

When the most boring criticism may be against the simple beats, Blockhouse Bay recovers quickly through Hughes’ artistic arrangements and the magic pulsating from the way he and producer Jollands layer the vocals.

The stunning effect is all over the album, and pronounced from the get-go in the druid-like intro for “Supernatural.”

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CHECK OUT this London-based New Zealander in my exclusive interview with Blockhouse Bay for on-line SOUNDS | VISIONS | WORDS | VOICES culture magazine Four Culture.

ISSUE #9 of Four Culture Magazine // October 29 | Catch my ‘interesting’ feature Interview here with London, UK’s Rhys John Hughes of indie-electro new group Blockhouse Bay.

Music lovers today are inundated with new tunes through the convenience of quick digital access where bands shoot to fame with a solitary single; to hell with the rest of the LP. But London, England’s electro-indie newcomers, Blockhouse Bay, pack its debut album, Duality, with “hit” after hit, deservedly earning a “you gotta hear this!” rating.

They are at once reverent and innovative: the retro-tinged throwback of nostalgic dark pop, New Romantic and 80’s synth takes flight throughout, as the group, looking ever forward, mixes in up-tempo keys-driven dance beats, supercharging the tracks with a futuristic feel. Some may call it “indietronica” – blending indie with electronic, pop and rock. Plays nicely with Madonna and Pet Shop Boys, and if you also like NIN or Everything But The Girl, while fitting audibly next to Sweden’s playlist of Kate Boy and Miike Snow. Still, as its own brand, Blockhouse Bay is brand new. It’s disco-noir intense, not downer. Uplifting: but, never flighty.

~ Sylvie Hill (Four Culture Magazine, ISSUE #9, Oct 29)

MORE ON BLOCKHOUSE BAY: Catch my next review of the band in new-electronic music on-line magazine Vader Evader coming up, mid-November!

I created a non-credit course for the University of Ottawa’s Continuing Education — Personal Enrichment Activities Program, called Epic Journey: How to enjoy reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. SIGN UP NOW for the five-session interactive course, which helps readers grasp Joyce’s masterpiece, Ulysses, starting October 19, 7-9PM (5 Monday evenings, $100).

Follow James Joyce discussions on Facebook and Twitter @JamesJoyce_OTT

Not on Twitter? See Tweets here.

INTRODUCTION to the Personal Enrichment Activities Program at uOttawa

Undressing James Joyce’s ULYSSES: unravelled & simplified through videos:

You can listen to the Bloomdsday June 16 archive of my appearance with Host Austin Comerton on The Gaelic Hour, CHIN RADIO 97.9 FM here. (click on June 16)

Together with Gary McCrank and Austin, we talked about James Joyce, Ulysses & the course I created.

Like great music? Don’t miss my article, THE ADORABLE (R)EVOLUTION OF LOVE SONGS about Pete Fij (Adorable / Polak) & Terry Bickers (House of Love / Levitation) Oct 15 in Four Culture Magazine.

Two Cars’ Worth

Everything’s counted in chunks
of five thousand bucks
I’d spend in a second to want to buy the find.
Six-cylinder muscle car from the lot
and I’d drive till I was stuck, far,
where I’d probably die.

A 70s Monte Carlo, a navy blue soul-searching motto
on wheels and I’d drive all day.
And I’d only hope for miles and miles
to get in between my wish to tell you
everything along the way.

It’s a fine ride, it’s a model for the calling
It’s a fine line, it’s your motto through it all

You said ‘sort it’
All is sorted now
You said ‘sort it.’
All is sorted now.

Sordid and contorted
you used your wit to woo her good
and it’s two cars’ worth now to move out to the woods.
She’ll hide away from the city scene
Far away from what has been in London town for far too long.

You said ‘sort it’
All is sorted now
You said ‘sort it.’
All is sorted now.

© SH 2012