did you see the shooting star
and the comet apollyon? they
have just gotten married,
and they want to jump-start nature,
be the talk of the town.

their carriage whizzes by, angel
wings in its blazing tail, splashing
red on blue;
tell me, mr scientist,
cyan or a magenta hue?

by the time their honeymoon
is over, there will be no one
to calculate pyramids for the
day, the days of war and machines
their child will be born.

they say it’s too cold, drawing
their jackets about them, the
way i shivered in my towel
after swimming. my chest rose/fell
like a volcano on the edge
of eruption. if you look at it
with goggles, life is just
one giant pool;

chlorine-filled, bubbly, and overcrowded.

tired and sugar-free, my toes
are sticky on the ground, like
trapped insect feet. the world
is ours, so what shall we do
with it?

Andy tugged at the lapels of his jacket, and leaned against the brick wall. The frost was already starting to appear. He let a gust of wind molest his bare neck, then, shivering, fastened the zipper again. He needed a warm latte, a fireplace, maybe a cat (if he wasn’t allergic to them).

But Andy knew he never would have any of these. Andy was different; he was a wanderer, an escapist. He rode from place to place on his motorcycle, like a hyperactive migratory bird.

Once Andy had fallen in love with a girl. Her name was Liese. She was sixteen, and liked to run, too. Andy found her when they were escaping from a crowd. “Where are you going?” he shouted. “Away!” she replied, giggling as much as her rapid legs would allow her, and she was a blur, a beautiful green blur in overalls next to him.

The first thing he’d discovered about Liese was that she liked butterflies. She resembled one, herself – tall, thin, bright. They had cups of coffee, which spilled as he increased the speed of his motorcycle. She smiled at the black seats and and pasted a large butterfly sticker on the worn leather. They spent the night together.

However, the next day, Liese hadn’t been beside him, drugged and drowsy, as he would have wanted. Instead, she was up and about. About to step out of the motel door, in fact. “Where’re you going?” Andy protested. “Away,” she said, simply, but Andy knew she didn’t want him to run with her. He never saw Liese again.

Andy felt for his last packet of gum, silently cursing the fact he had no more money. He dropped it, and shone his torch along the ground. The light illuminated some graffiti. PER IL SOLO, it read. For the lonely.

Suddenly, out of the darkness, a young voice piped up, “May I have one, sir?” He saw a child in a white nightgown, and wordlessly handed his supper to her. She chewed on the gum slowly, taking deep bites.

“Where do you want to go, sir?” she asked.
“I want to see Barcelona,” said Andy. “That’s a long way from here.”

She tore the butterfly sticker from his motorcycle, and in one vehement movement, crumpled it up. “Follow me,” she said, and she was laughing.

He was only a boy, after all.

The brown bird was alive. It twittered, twitched, raised one foot awkwardly in the air. Sharon remembered the flamingoes; bright bursts of shocking pink, like lanky modern art. But of course, that was then, she reminded herself, trying to laugh. What was meant to be light peals caught in her throat, and she choked, leaning over the balcony.

The Italian railing swayed; so did the bird. It cocked its head, and shook its wings. A single feather fell on Sharon’s shoe.

“Don't go," she whispered.

The bird blinked stupidly.

“Give me some of your colour,” said Sharon. She reached at it feebly, pressing its warm body against her palms; but it darted out of her grasp, protesting wildly.

Suddenly, she heard the trumpets, and she knew the soldiers were coming her way. They had emerald uniforms, scarlet guns, and a licence to kill. The bird flew away, and Sharon stroked at the stains on her hands, as if nursing a burn.

Step One:
place fading letters on record players
and watch them spin and spin.

Step Two:
follow the revolutions like a blind hawk.
then wait for your short-distance lover to call.

(one day i will prove time is purely psychological)

where do you go to? where
do you go to, in the night? (somewhere
slippery and two-dimensional.) what
do you get that makes the flowers
bloom again? (and me with them,
and me with them.) where do you
go to, that sips hungrily
at all my finances? (somewhere wild
and wandering.) and where do
you come from

that takes me
sugarcubes again?

english homework. (now revised)

The man was very tall, as Joe could see – but he was slumped in his chair, a layer of greyish-brown hair obscuring his eyes. He was quivering slightly, as if the office was too cold.

“How are you today, Lopez?” asked Joe, carefully measuring out the words. The man sat up slowly, and his face was wan. “Nothing’s new, Doctor,” he replied, almost inaudibly.

They went through this ritual almost every day. Joe would probe, searching for possible neurosis, an Oedipus complex; but finding nothing. Lopez was shut as tight as a locked diary. His reponses were always polite, but painfully impersonal. When Joe ran out of questions to ask, Lopez would simply rest his head upon the table, as if thinking about secrets known to him alone. Sometimes he even fell asleep.

The instant Lopez had been admitted to this hospital, Joe knew there was something different about him. “He’s a funny one, that Lopez.” the nurses said. Many times, Joe had looked into his room. All Lopez seemed to do was to sit down, head in his hands, and his expression was that of one undergoing acute agony. He wasn’t in there because of voices in his head, or severe depression – no, Lopez believed he was a werewolf.

Joe, though one of the leading psychologists, had never handled such a case before. He’d started on research straightaway. Finally, after what seemed like endless hours of sifting through references, Joe stumbled across the term for Lopez’s condition. Lycanthropy, it was called; causing the afflicted to have sporadic periods of believing himself to be a wolf. With the facts situated safely in his head, Joe was convinced he could assure Lopez his horrific transformations were merely delusions, medical symptoms of a curable mental illness. He took great pains to explain everything to his patient – but to no avail.

“You don't understand, Doctor,” Lopez had said. “I’m not mad, like the rest of them. The full moon’s going to appear next Monday. It will cause my death.”

Today was Monday, which would explain the shivering.

Joe sighed. “I can assure you, Lopez, that you will not die tonight,” he said. They sat in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes, until Lopez spoke. “Promise me something,” he whispered. “Promise you won’t go into my room, not until the next morning. No matter what you hear, or what you suspect, don’t go in.”

Joe nodded resignedly. He always respected the wishes of his patients.

* * *


The first thing Joe saw, as he entered at dawn, was a crumpled body at the side of the white room. Shock rushed through him. Lopez’s limbs were twisted in unnatural, macabre positions; his meagre clothes were caked with dried blood.

“Lopez,” he murmured, but he knew Lopez was no longer alive. The poor man had killed himself, in a fit of desperation, ripped at his own skin, maybe rammed his head against the wall. Perhaps the scale of Lopez’s madness was more severe than what Joe had thought. The cause of death would have to be suicide. A burning sadness, tinged with disappointment, stung his heart. Joe had never been good at dealing with the deaths of patients. Apathetically, the nurses brought in a sheet, and placed it over Lopez...no, Lopez had freed himself of his suffering. All that was left was a broken body.

There was no use dwelling over this now. Joe took a few steps back and said a silent prayer. Blinking furiously, he turned to go out of the room. It was only then that he noticed the damage done to the door; bloody gashes in the wood which could only have been done by the predatory claws of a rabid wolf.

i didn't bring you to see
the couples making out, the mass
of birdshit gathering like swirls
of dirty paint; and i didn't mean
for the sun to hurt you as melting
butter. i wanted you to see
the little kid on a bicycle
and how his wheels moved,
like miniature steamrollers over
bumps, a spoon over rocky-road
ice-cream. here is the park,
here is the hole you can fall into.

(incomplete)

it started
with a blank page
and tightrope-walking,
hours of gazing in the fish-pond
with whispers that weren’t trees.

then came the flash,
the mouldiest cheese
peering past colgate teeth
and marching out like little mice.

i
have
the dreamcatcher
which
trapped
your
hair.

(shh)
do you hear that do you hear that? the
wolf steps and cracks on henna; i could
have tattooed him on my back
searching and sleeping in snow. he stumbles,
a blot on dawn. who would
have thought of

   articulating silence like a gunshot
and goodbyes like a falling body? (still
warm, still grey-furred
and fresh from the hunt). he doesn’t speak,
he doesn’t howl, just races past the
thump-thump-thump of his own heart. tippity-

      tappity trailing
the notes in my wake,
this is the wolf which took care of your children.
(shh he walks as night.)

a not-quite-nonsense-poem. also for evening by the pond.

The Escapist

being airborne, like a broken kite
takes on its own persona.
worried, you came along sick,
i’d liked to be painfully, rigidly sure.
escaping apathy, rejecting empathy,
and sucks to the unstopable slur.

aeolian, i’m free, i’m free!
i couldn’t take it, you see.
on a wet afternoon, somewhere past three
did they, cattle prodding, hurt her left knee.
in the end, who ran from them? me.
oh, c’est la vie --

you should have strayed,
i could have taken you far.
like me, your love has run away with the car.
beautiful dreamer, wake unto this,
give it a hiss (a miss),
the little blastula’s bourgeois.

staring in the dragon mirror
i realize everything in my face
corresponds with nuts.
pistachio-coloured skin,
a pair of almond eyes
with woodworms boring through them.

it’s because of these tidbits
that we find so often,
scattered across the table
and side by side with scarlet packets
during the firecracking exuberance
of chinese new year;

that within myself
i find a root, a deadend link
to poems about lotus buds
and a right to hate qin shi huang
for inventing a language which slithers
past the grasps of my tongue.

and as i worry
about how my great-grandfather
was exiled from my family
(maybe he was like me?)
the chopsticks don’t seem
to fit between my fingers.

i am reading this poem for evening by the pond. sad to say i have not revised anything.

once upon a time there
was a world full of people
who never could have everything.

except for a little boy. he
was one in a million billion.
everyone envied him.

on his thirteenth birthday
he took a scissors and
gashed out his left eye.

‘that was a stupid thing
to do.’ they told him.

‘no, i see better now,’
he said.

Antonio’s Lament (incomplete)

Watching you leave
was as essential as
calling checkmate,
shutting a door. Behind

you, I skip along,
retracing pages of plays
(and whatever goes behind
closed theatre doors).

One man on the shores
of Belmont equates
to a bond lost - I send packages
which will sink all my ships
and milk the seas dry. This
note crumples;

like a few tonnes of bone,
without flesh.

you said ii

you said, "don't believe my
words. believe me -" in such
tones i wanted to think you were
whispering,
"don't fuck
my body. fuck me."

*words are a little plagiarised.

you said

you said, "love is democratic."

casting my vote, in the crowd;
and ticking choice number nine,

i refused to look you in the eye.

you know, i could be lying.
i could be someone else.
maybe my name is steve. maybe
i'm a boy,
a druggie;
who lives in iran,
or venus,
or under your bed.

(this could be six months
of story-telling and lies.)

maybe i could be jeanine,
who lives for attention. a girl
who pretends she's dying
so as to gain the love she's been missing
or who wants to get popular
as "the girl who regularly slits her wrists". or
i could be someone's little sister
who regularly hacks into her big brother's email account.

maybe i am in
no way affiliated to the person named des.
she would be just one of my monsters.
maybe i didn't pass my math test, maybe
i didn't cry last night.

maybe i need an alter-ego.

maybe, you know.
you'd never know.

“The world is changed because
you are made of ivory and gold.
The curves of your lips rewrite history...”

now he’s dead, and you
never knew him. he’s just
another corpse, unshrouded
by a white sheet,
knife in his chest.
but maybe you remember
the jewels on his fingers. glinting,
glinting, that’s what’s left of him. (what
you knew him for.) draw
in his footmen: bring them through
the gates, and they all shall mourn
him,
in their gregorian voices and foppish clothes.

#

gather at the portrait; you could
save that for his obituary. he was laughing
then, standing in half morning, half night, half
black, half white; yin and yang. they said,
‘he was fine till he read the book’. by then
he’d broken ten thousand separate hearts, one
each time his clock struck midnight. part of
his body’s shrouded in velvet, the rest
fed on by wolves.

*
he hid the scorpion’s tail.

but the body's still unidentified,
and it’s lying by the piano. if you
look close enough
he won’t rise up to get you.
he's been dead too long ago.

there is a castle on a cloud

cosette is tiny,
with hands as delicate as silver spoons. she
sings like a toy celesta-piano, or
a pigeon begging for christmas gifts. cosette
wears long dresses, and she doesn’t
comb her hair.

it hangs in her eyes like
last year’s promises.

cosette doesn’t have money,
she sweeps the streets each day. she
picks up the fallen leaves
and sweeps away her nightmares,
veiling them with handmade lace.

cosette only owns some castles,
burnished, tarnished, but full
of lost children
whose lives get patched up
like wool; some castles
with warm fireplaces, angels
and where crying is not allowed.

and cosette is content
(not like the rest of us)
living in white music-boxes and pale rainbows
--though her castles are far, far away.

my legs are so small and scar(r)ed, as compared to yours.

i’ve been working on the railroad
as a khaki-shirted bystander, a
single audience
for the same mimed films
of train wheels counting time. when
they whizz past
i can safely say
i’ve seen the stars, dizzy
spinning hazy stars
in ritualistic burning coal.

(when everyone else’s busying
i live in a double, moving world.)

sometimes i take a step forward;
then jump backwards again, like
my toes have known acid, without
rain. in this tunnel
i find more than i should. maybe
if i took a rope
-and tied myself-
i’d be better off. on my back,
to welcome
the growling incoming train.

we stay the same; we stay the same,
and i’ll be waiting on the railroad
just for your suitcase,
and you, to hear your name.

if you glance at your watch
every millisecond, time goes
by almost as slowly as a plane
on its way to utopia.

hiding's always cruel, no matter
how you phrase it. funny how hi
should be a greeting
injected with a satisfactory amount
of rippling enthusiasm,
like coffee, perhaps. ding;
the flighty quicksilver sound
of a bell. christmas or death, you decide,
along with which shadows
to celebrate/bury yourself in. (some
body's done for.) hi-ding -
a circus bear, or

the wish for a wish, a whiff of solitude.

you eat like you’re fighting a battle:
each bite a falling bomb, and
swallowed food escaping refugees
fleeing down your throat; dispersed
as if from an explosion. sometimes
annihilation is beautiful,
the way a black painting
looks prettier when it’s ripped up.

& war never tastes sweeter
than when it’s tasted
on a lover’s tongue.

to c.

you move with too much velocity
for me not to shamefacedly love you;

you look too much like your father
for me not to be afraid of you.

a milder death

i learned
from yellowing newspaper cuttings
that suicide was banality,
so i would wait for the gods
to banish me underground
like they expelled narcissus
from his world of childish light. so
i would never kill myself:

regardless of how blue,
nearly aquatic
the air around here is. i reach
for oxygen and leave
ugly footprints in nitrogen, and
i strain - like a shadowed
plant - to breathe, to reach
like in those songs
i sang in math class. i live
in clusters, with the willow
trees outside my apartment,
occasionally drooping my head
in faint imitation.

and those digits continue
shifting, flicking
like obscene pictures
on a jackpot machine.

when i drink
i absorb too much from you,
till my lungs are compressed,
and you
swirl in my body
like thick chardonnay.

sometimes you rise, foam on
my tongue, and ask me
why don’t you talk? and i feign stupors,
because i’m drunk, drunk on you. and
i’m no better than those in the street,
shattered bottle in hand – no, you’re
not mine, i end up paying for you.

* not completed. to be attended to later on.

and this is how
i travel, dragging myself behind trains
for last words, a swansong of expression
and chasing after cars, for those who’ve
left their lipstick-stained handkerchiefs behind.
just like in films,

minus the speed.

Drew couldn’t figure out how they’d found their way in. All the windows were shut tight, leaving the frost to collide with equally icy glass, and yet the moths continued to fling themselves against the pink lamp.

“I’m sorry,” said Timothy. “I honestly can’t remember.”

Drew couldn’t either. He’d rehearsed this conversation over and over again in his head, and nothing had come out of it except for deep-set dark circles. “I don’t like your eye,” he said, finally.

Timothy looked abashed. “It’s not my fault I was born with one green eye and one brown eye,”

“You weren’t,” said Drew. When he and Timothy were still little boys in OshKosh, all the visitors, the strangers who made Drew xenophobic, never failed to comment on how alike their eyes were. Drew and Timothy looked nothing like brothers, except for the eyes.

Then Timothy had left Drew. Drew didn’t want to think about where he’d gone to, but the eye was living proof. Maybe Timothy had gotten tired of having the same eyes as him. Maybe someone was in need of a brown eye, and Timothy had sold his. The reasons were as endless as they were meaningless. All Drew knew was that the eye was intolerable.

The moths seemed to be battering themselves with even more vehemence than before. Drew felt sorry for them. They only had one desire on their mind, and that was reaching the light; which flickered like a real candle.

Drew realized he wanted to do the same to Timothy’s eye. He would injure himself, surely, but that wouldn’t matter. The eye emitted a strange diabolical glow which spoke of a new dimension, a new world. A new beginning. Drew imagined that somehow, if he managed to climb through it, he would wake up in a different bed. He would smile. Perhaps he would even have a wife.

The eye beckoned, and Drew hated it.

“I’m sorry,” said Timothy, again.

Another tiny brown moth fell to the table, defeated, and the lamp seemed to shine scarlet.

i think i am sitting again. if
sitting is an art
i believe i perform it
particularly well, with my
knees in right-angles. when
i sit
the world spins by me,
like an escapee top. it
never goes back to what
it once was; i wish
i were living in a cutesy roly-poly instead.
i could be sitting in termite-infested
chairs: coffee shop benches, though
clenched, and baying at the
moon. once i thought i was
sitting on you. once i thought
durability and trust were true.

and though my eyes
seem to be wandering,
you’ll want to know
that they are sitting,
too.

i wish i had a
skin addiction,
a psychological affliction,
so i could make people feel for once.

i like secrets
and how they smell,
like forbidden chocolates
in a black box. i like leaving
my fingerprints on them: pressing
inkstained nails into smooth skin. at times
they awaken, blinking into the light, and seem
to lean into the night. sometimes they fade and leave
completely; and it seems i have none –

but i know
my world is so full of secrets
i forget them one by one.

to a particularly obscure claude monet painting.

i think i could have been there. she,
wrapped up like grand cheese, and
white-gauzed
as a wound. smile speaking to herself
and knowing she would be washing dishes
twenty-four hours from then, sans
young face. he? i couldn’t see his face, and
he was inclined to the wind: maybe
wrinkling his nose
to the salt she eventually
would cook; in homage to the spaghetti
which would
in turn (with the screaming),
decorate their walls.

i still remember the vineyards
and the sound of the sea. me? i was
the old man watching them marry.

i’ve been thinking about you, my
bronze statue – and how cold you
are. i’m
sure you weren’t gold, a
virgin; and something
took away your shine and your heart. i
forced my way
under your skin
and i know you were freezing,
to start.

(you are africa and antarctica
married; and i imagine someday you
will break away, apart. you lie with the
wilderness
& elope with the sun.)

you could chew the chicken.
you could light the candles
and shoot the piano,
in its dulcet haze. what would you
see?
nothing, because i would take it all away.

you ask: who am i? and the world
may collapse, arbitrarily, because
for once you can’t answer the question

that is you. and soon you will come to
realize we are all
but mad scientists; fiddling
with our mitochondria and sucking
haem from each other’s necks. you
know you weren’t meant to be here, you
weren’t born to disappear
though consciousness states otherwise.

you were meant to be a king
with jewels, and not thorns. even
if your sun collapsed, if i died, you’d
still be you, you were
meant to be complete, unpackaged, yet
unable to play the piano. then you start asking
why

(though you’re as good a specimen as
everyone else)

you can’t really love yourself.

funny, this mirror,
and how there is another behind you.
they catch you in the middle, baiting and
constantly wink at each other
like incestuous twins.

you wish you had one yourself. another
you, fully you; red-apple wholesomeness. someone
who'd know how you like your coffee, kiss you
into bed. but they'd want the same things. and
you can see yourself
sapped dry
and clean as a disinfected tunnel

and then you remember you
actually like being alone. except
for virtual-image you, smiling
indolently;
who lives in a two-dimensional
world of her own

but moves backward, all the same.

paused here
like an awkward frog
i find solace in escaping. when
i stop

there are simple pleasures
in winding
lethargy round yourself
like a hug.

you will marry it.
you’ll name your firstborn Checkers;
and you’ll bury yourself
at the foot of its family tree.

(everyone has their
right into heaven, she said,
you just have to find your own.)

if you love somebody
tell them they have a cherry
smile and diamond eyes. use
their pastels, acrylics, and
abuse an easel. recreate, revitalize,

paint yourself with a universal smile.
give yourself their body parts
so you can learn to know
they are nailed in, tattooed, indelible.
part of you. if you
love somebody

perform words for them. make sure
your poetry drips and oozes them
from every word. brush them with
butterfly stories... tempt. if you
love somebody

forget you have ever existed.

i don’t know where i am, although
i’m lying on the same old bed with
the same old sheets which smell of
cold fruit, mild dust, and maybe you.
wondering if tomorrow’ll be worth waking
up for. the last time i lay here, flat
on my back, i was sobbing and straggly.
where can i place myself? when
i find my footing i grip the rope a little too
hard, and the ground rises to meet me; or
the day runs away. i’m not sure what i’ll see,
what i’ll be, or even who i am, but i know this
bed belongs to me, and so do the walls. i'll
get to know the vibrations from my radio. we’ll go
everywhere together,
my bed and me.

One day I ran into a boy. He was pale, and looked physically incapable of using any sort of profanity. He also wore a blue checked shirt which smelled of rain. He was thirsty; and as we sat down, he took long gulps from my water supply.

He drank like he was a chronic alcoholic or a dumped lover.

“Where’d you come from?” I asked.

He managed a weak smile. “I was from your land. I escaped a decade ago. What’re you doing on this path?”

“Trying to run away,” I said, trying not to smirk at the irony of it all. Then, out of curiosity, “Why’re you here again?”

He fiddled with stray strands of his hair. “I came back. To look for something.” His expression told me he didn’t want to elaborate further.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

He sighed; and a wave of heaviness washed over us. “No,” he said. “I didn’t.”

“Did you find anything at all?”

He moved closer, so close our I could feel him breathing. “I did,” he whispered. “I found out why I left.”

Then he kissed me, and knowing too much, we continued on our ways.

when i'm alone
i drink
mocha,
espresso. they foam like waves,
help me ride high,
    surfing on what i do not know. i remember

i used to believe in mermaids,
and i even prodded my own
shadow; wondering if they would
sing with me
using voices as lucent as glass.

i wish i could sing for you.

all it takes
is a flex of my wrist,
a twist of my veins. bringing
another cup to where it’ll all slide
down my throat
in rivers of caffeine. carry me further
from the edge. never grow up.

burn your lips
& think of me.

sunday morning, and the city
was rather sleepy. ding, dong, and the
churches were empty as well. you might have
wanted to call an ambulance – look how white
everything was, how much of a hibernation
we were.

i thought the laws had to change. i thought
all the smoke was wrong. so i ruled all.
i made sure everything was in its right place.
everybody
loves a dictator – everyone has
a hidden masochist in them. i twisted truth through myself
like gross piercings

and then i walked straight through you.
i walked straight through you.

somedays and sometimes
on airbrushed winter nights
she wants to write my requiem. but
mostly she sits by my side;
placid, benign. finding water

she skips words in my ears. for the sake
of remaining original
i try to erase
her eyes.

ode to basketballers. i haven't written a silly poem in long, long time. some for heather, some for trin.

we've seen you throwing
your souls through hoops
and
cheering by the sides. seen you
walking,
running, with some linear stride. seen
you with your sweat-soaked towels--
the ones she’d pay millions for. we’ve
seen you with the other girls
and
i’ve seen enough of you. (would
you ever allow me to?)

because
you’re the stars, the only ones;
you know that, you do. you’re the stars
of our heads, of the school,
and you know it’s completely, utterly true.

promise. promise all the tears
--and the stinging, the perpetual
over-turning (over-thinking), back-
and-forthing
frothing and filling
over a glass of marinated dew. and you’ve

woken me up again. you've started
revelations. there are doors, doors
which shouldn’t be opened, but you
tease their knobs with

short little kisses
which
      burn.

bear in mind;
the world may end – someday
soon
but i still won’t share myself with you.

Hotel Lautréamont

David knew there was something funny about the hotel the moment he walked through those gates. There was something cloying suspended in the air. “I don’t like the stench of the rain,” he said.

“Rain isn’t a stench,” said Vince scornfully. “It’s a smell. Whether you think it’s a stench or a scent, it’ll always be a smell.” He went in promptly, leaving David to squint at the fading sun. With Vince, everything was extreme. Black and white, wrong and right. The tiny hairs along David’s neck prickled a little. Placing his hand on the cool doorknob, he inched his way past his unease.

Vince languidly dangled the keys from one finger, mock boredom written all over his face. “I still don’t like this place,” said David. “It’s too quiet.” And that was true. There were no amorous honeymooners, no tourists dressed in hideously cheerful tropical shirts, no giggling children. The carpeted room was absolutely still with perfectly (“Too perfectly,” David thought) arranged furniture – except for a little old lady knitting in the corner.

The lift gave a subdued ping, and Vince pulled David towards him. “You have to stop thinking so much,” he told him. Vince was almost a head taller. Machinery whirred, and they stepped out.


Their room turned out to be empty, apart from a couch, and two single beds. There was a reasonable view. In the dark, David could see the elegant spikes of the gates and some trees. He could also feel Vince breathe down his neck.

“Go away,” said David. Vince moved like a predator.

Vince ignored him. “Will you kiss me?” he mumbled. David reached out, and placing his hands on Vince’s shoulder, attempted to peck his cheek. Vince moved his head, and their lips were pressed against each other. He tried to thrust his tongue into David’s mouth, but David pulled away. Vince tasted like wine and peanuts. “No,” he said – but in an instant Vince had him sprawled across the bed.

David rolled over, so he was no longer pinned down by Vince. He got up, dusting himself off. “No,” he repeated, as if nothing had happened. “I’m not yours, Vince.” But Vince had either fallen asleep, or was pretending to. He could never tell. David sighed and looked out of the compelling window. It was dead quiet. He couldn't even hear Vince's deliberate breathing.

“It’s my birthday,” said Vince suddenly, startling David. “It’s my bloody birthday and you don’t give a fuck about it.”

David glanced at his watch. Thirty seconds to July ninth, fifteen seconds, five seconds...midnight. Far away, with precise timing, a grandfather clock agreed. Vince uttered a harsh laugh. David knew better than to tangle with Vince when he became like that.

Outside, David sat down heavily, knees drawn up to his chin. He knew the whitewash would get on his back, but he didn’t particularly care. He noticed the curved corridors had only bare bulbs for lights. Something crawled up his leg; a glass dropped and shattered. He wasn’t about to stay in there till daybreak.

He rapped on the wooden door. It had no tarnishes. “Let me in,” he called urgently. There was no reply. He hit the door harder. “Open up!” David yelled. He was astounded at how frightened he felt, and he didn't know why. He wondered if Vince was as afraid as he was. Probably not. An idea occurred to him.

“Come on, Vince,” he said, trying to adopt a husky tone. “I’ve got something for you.”

The door was abruptly flung open, and there stood Vince, expression caught morbidly between that of a sneer and suppressed anticipation. David counted under his breath, and tilted his head slightly. He took a few steps forward. In a single fluid moment, before he could change his mind, he pressed himself up against Vince. His fingers began a slow descent down the back of Vince’s neck. Down his shirt. Vince’s skin was different.

“I want you,” he whispered against Vince’s collarbone, and felt Vince stiffen. David knew he’d won, again. The rest was history.


In the morning, David found himself alone. He threw the sweat-stained sheets off him. The next few moments played out as if David was watching a film. It was happening all over again, and this time he couldn't lie still. He couldn’t wait for the lift, and he ran down the stairwell, feet seeming to go backward.

When he reached the waiting room he looked around blindly, frantically. Somewhere, a vein pulsed. Vince was nowhere to be seen. The walls seemed to close in on him, and in the corner, the old woman was still knitting.

i have a diamond leash
which coils around my neck; and
i squint at the morning. questions
ripple
like contaminated water: why
do i sit in this manner. why are
my legs splayed. why don’t i
have eyes. these are not questions. why
don’t you call me anymore? one part of me
says

this is not right. our names should not
be on french porn sites.

if i found you necessary
i would keep up with you.
you run like deadlines, pacing;
for you make me chase you up
uncarpeted stairs, every footstep
arbitrary; sidereal and resounding
hollowly. i play with your fools; play
with myself. stay behind and watch
storms over and over again, whisper
inaudibly

that this is wrong, my dear. i didn’t count all
the days in which you disappeared.


*
now you’re laughing. you live in may,
but delight in fall -
you're right, darling, there’s
nothing left here at all.

art rests barely an inch from
my face, and when i swim across
     it slinks away. i work my way
like an ant
through everests of electricity but
to no avail: art is what feeds
on blood and mocks righteousness. i
guess wildly, floundering in manifold
dreams, &
this poem is almost

              complete.