Here I am, shitting in Robarts Library.

Just when my wifi didn’t connect

Into the academic industrial wasteland of this perfect privileged prison.

They say Robarts looks like a turkey.

I say it looks like a white man with too much time so he wrote 50,000 books and now we call it the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Collection. I wrote his name down in Comic Sans just to fuck him up.

Here I am, shitting in Robarts library.

Just when I thought I didn’t have any more shits to give to this place,

I’ve clearly got one more.

The librarian downstairs at the “Help desk” looks like she’s chained to her keyboard and the help desk should really be called the “Help Me someone, please?” Desk. Her name is Tonya and she wishes the fast food trucks outside sold Demaurier Lights.

Here I am, shitting in Robarts.

The bathroom smells like the bullshit I’m feeding my supervisory committee in my thesis

And the Starbucks barista downstairs is an eighth year doctoral student in Victorian literature. Her name is Alex and she can speak parsletongue but her Methodology chapter won’t make it past first base with her supervisor.

Here I am, shitting in Robarts.

Wondering why there are so many filled seats in this house of mentality but so many empty bodies yearning for purpose. So many international students given the promise of the West’s tomorrow, driving their depression scars deeper by staying silent about their mental health. So many Pakistani boys lying to themselves that they want to be doctors. So many gay boys capitalizing on their identity for scholarships. So many white administrators acknowledging land — but little do they know the people here before them would of never put up with this shit.

As the toilet bowl stirs I smell the shit of the academy shifting from promise to prison and I think I’ve been here too long. I think the university made me need it like an abusive boyfriend who tells me I won’t love again if I leave.

I take a sharpie I stole from the help me somebody help me.. please desk and write “I’m queer and I’m angry” on the stall. Maybe a commerce student will see it and go on Grindr for the first time. Maybe it’ll be the Instagram story of a second year who just realized that her woman studies course taught her more about her past then she could remember from that night.

An actual fucking spider,

a red-lit, monstrous, Halloween of a fucking spider

Just Charlotte-Webbed itself all over my bathroom.

How would an adult deal with this situation?

But i'm an queer-settler activist-facilitator-educator-artist-community organizer-academic

which as you know

is a code for 'i don't have a job'

so you can imagine this charlotte's web is about as good as I can do right now.

But I am doing what I love.

I talk about capitalism and art,

I have no real strategies for change, just a lot of things I hate

One includes reality, and the other includes the state.

When I grow up I want to be the rebel child of your dreams

The little girl rebel you wish you had always been

I will hold the people I teach, the powerful and the weak

But I will honour no other voice then the voice of the other

That's how our mothers, would of wanted it.

There was a spider in my bathroom,

crawling in the sink,

asking "all i want to do is live"

and crushing him,

i am a slut, with no job. 

i wish I was a straight guy named Dave. 

i wish I never found out about sexism. 

i wish I was lovely, 

and artist. 

and sat by the water to poems about love, 

and distance.

but all I wanna do, is H-I-T that bong, 

and see what tonight’s unfortunate thought patterns, have got going on. 

i’ll start by thinking about blowing up capitalism and my ex.

 and how one day, I decided I was sick of both of them, 

so I blew them up, rolled their ashes, and took a puff. 

and, well, I’ve been addicted to smoking ever since. 

what would my marxist reading group think?

i know last week i was already on the brink

of being kicked out, because i brought a starbucks cup to a meeting no doubt.

enough about capitalism. i just want to sit here, and write, 

be lovely, and not think about wrong or right, 

is his asshole too loose? or is it too tight?

why do i love myself most in dim light?

i just want to sit here. 

and write.

so i could stop the great fight -- 

the death of our hometowns that still beat in our hearts.

i’ve elasta-girled my adolescence, 

and autopsied my turbulent identity, 

but i can’t ever seem to leave this deep closet that kept me warm for so many years inside

the closet was the closest thing to soulmate, 

and my best soulmates always taught me not to tell.

i might be a slut, with no job.

in fact, as i have just demonstrated, it’s clear i am a slut, with no job.

but i will stay here, right here, right here, 

with a little bit of fear -- because i’m a prairie queer

and we stay through the storm. 

we stay, we stay, without jobs or money or love, 

we stay, 

and we fight for the night 

where we don’t have to convince ourselves,

the thing about cults

when u say words like

philosophy

religion

and metaphysical

i undo my pants and ask you what you like

when you say words like

oppression

pain

and spiritual

i undo my story and ask you to write

when you say words like

"trust me"

“i’d like to acknowledge the ancestral lands we are working on today”

says the white lady on the stage

i wonder what she means by acknowledge

i look around and see elder elder elder

i wonder if it’s okay that we use that word

or if we are just ‘acknowledging’

i look around some more

this time my eyes drift to the gay men in the room

i wonder if they have AIDS

I correct my cognition and wonder who thinks the same of me

i state my pronouns ‘they’

the elders continue to call me ‘he’

I went to a publisher in December and he said my poems were spicy I said do u have any salsa I'm kinda hungry and he gave me a look like I'm already too fat. So here you go Shawn, here's the potential titles for my forthcoming book in 2017.

I need to unpack my relationship to online dating but I only get 4 free therapy sessions: A memoir

I was depressed from a breakup so I studied affect theory but now I'm tired and over it: An unpublished master's thesis

My mom stopped giving me white bread, clearly I'm fat: A children's book

Actually I think I might be asexual, can you drive me home: A memoir

My horoscope said I'd find love today but all I found was lint in my belly button and some unresolved issues from childhood: a memoir

I think we might have taken queer theory too far: Four essays I never wrote that were due yesterday

I'm the funniest person I know: A love story

My therapist suggested mindfulness but I can't afford the classes: Poems on attempting polyamory

Plus, Plus, Plus, and moreover, and nevertheless, and neverthemess, and neverthebest, and neverquite yet.

And therefore, and herefore, and hereforyou, and leftforme. And therefore,

and Furthermore, and furtherless, and furtherbless, and further undress for me.

And because, be short hugs, be long love, be. Be with no clause, just be, just because. 

And in conclusion, and in confusion, and in fusion, all this was

As researchers, we come to the danger or blessing

of being able to fall in love with anyone,

or not being able to love anyone at all.

In our missionary of trying to understand the human condition,

we either come to empathize and love of all it's forms,

you’re the only piece of 

life in my life

that is new

i wonder the secrets, the sorrows you’ll brew

who are you when you are silent? what is your body in purest form?

maybe your text got lost in the cloud

I don’t know how to love myself though. I am trying to very badly but I am addicted to my phone and validation and so that sometimes gets in the way.

I’m am trying really hard to love myself but I hate when things are silent because then I become so loud

and I am scared of my own voice. And I am trying to regain trust with myself because I have lied to myself so many times.

Some of my favourite lies include the past being better than what it actually was, that the future will bring me happiness, and that he loved me for who I am and cheated on me because he needed validation and gays are fucked so I should forgive him.

Inspiring education!

It's a drowning deprivation

Of Alberta education

The system ruined them and

Spat them out like shit on the street

But some of those kids,

Are kicked and get beat.

thankfully we have ethical citizens like you.

To cover up, for the damages you made,

hoped your haunted curriculum would make memories fade;

but have no mistake, we are watching you here

washing them away, helplessly:

I’ll let you test them, publish ‘em too,

Hungry for food, bitter cold and cruel

at least your entrepreneurial spirit is fed.

If they stand here alone long enough,

will you stay?

I’m sure you’ll be back.

You don’t get your money without clothes off their back

And to you it’s just another kid in the ‘dumb track’

ARE YOU ENGAGED?

But you left them there, left

Them to dry

You didn't care if they live or if they die

Your to busy making sure your discreet

But we all know-