god is wrong, the devil is wrong,
and tearing tissue paper is, too. you
can’t pretend. this is not
your own equinox
and you can’t fine me
for burning letters, dead wings. you
told me you were free for a day, and that
your name was insomnia.

what were you saying when you knew
i was here? somewhere, between this rainbow
and the storm, the odd transition
between summer and winter
i cry and get high alternately,
to help you find what you look for. tell me
what you want. type it out in courier
and i’ll give it to you.

our vision's burning now, like
dry ice. i can trust you to squeeze
all you can out of it into
laments as long as neverending
scrollbars. remember you once
lost something so rare
it didn't exist,
and i'll be a good screensaver.

part of a velvet goldmine fic. revised and edited, thankyouverymuch. i'll continue after exams, i think.
_

Curt Wild was, by all means, a rock star. He had it all – the wonderfully straggly hair girls with multiple piercings longed to run their fingers through, a constant ‘don’t fuck with me’ expression, and at least five guitars.

He was also very quietly depressed.

Curt had always been this way, as far as he could remember. He tried to live up to his name by dealing with everything as curtly as possible. Would it earn him money? Yes. Come here. Would it find him a place to live? No. Go away. Curt was rather proud of his obviously pragmatic attitude. He decided his main aim in life was to pursue reality till it was at its most lucid form. And then he would kill it.

A long time ago, Curt had a family who never could understand why he felt nothing for the Ministry. While other boys in his neighbourhood busied themselves with baseball teams and prom nights, he had been very different. Curt hadn't been afraid of anyone but his brother, and although the agony was equally bad each time, he knew better than to say anything. Even when they were discovered by their horrified parents, and nobody understood what happened, Curt had kept quiet. He would like to have said he had little recollection of what happened, but the shock treatment hadn't dulled any of it. The only word for the machine, complete with ugly wires, was Death - and his instinct knew that too well.

When he was sixteen, he ran away with ten dollars in his pocket, nicked from his fifth aunt(stick-thin, high heels, habit of picking nose)’s bedroom drawer. It had been a stupid thing to do, as he found out, rather painfully. Still, Curt lived as well as he could. He figured living on the street had its pros, no pun intended. He could go anywhere he wanted, and no one could keep tabs on him. His family never looked for him again.

At seventeen, he formed his first band, smoked his first cigarette, and had his first hangover.

At eighteen, Curt was offered heroin.

Most of his friends spoke of their respective drugs as if they were lovers. Still, the most Curt could say about heroin was that he thought it was funny. It acted as a mobile teleport machine – if he got sick of his life, he would find a vein and plunge the needle in. It was as simple as that. Soon he didn’t even grit his teeth.

The drug took away all inhibition, too. Last time, Curt forgot his chords, and when he stood there, facing an unbelievably large audience, his hands got so sweaty he felt his guitar would slip through his fingers. Now, there seemed to be no noise and no God till Curt allowed his hand to sweep past the strings. Curt knew he was performing in front of angels. He did things he wasn’t aware of; once, a thin, feminine boy approached him and said he’d liked it when Curt pulled his pants down. Curt had blushed like he was on fire.

The more he got used in his foreign world, full of aquamarine landscapes and wandering voices, the more unbearable the real world seemed. He found himself getting nauseous, his brain cloudy at the worst possible times. Heroin made everything would go away, leaving only a pleasant tingling feeling in his abdomen.

He now stayed in a run-down house, inhibited by at least fifteen others. Half the occupants were secretly junkies; the other half were alcoholics. His kind of people. Unfortunately, the police found him half-dazed, hacking away at his wrist with an old penknife, and sent him straight off to the nearest hospital. If I had somebody who’d listen I would be fine, you morons!, he tried to say; but he choked on his own bile instead. He made up his mind to be reasonable and explain everything to the doctors, but when he saw the stout old man, his throat closed up.

They put him on methadone immediately. This was all very foolish to Curt. It got rid of the shivering and the unbearable periods of desperation for a needle, any needle, but the instant he stopped trembling and instead closed his eyes, waiting for release, he found none. Every dose sunk him deeper into the world, pushed him into his grave. Soon he wouldn't even be able to dream.

Until Brian came along, that is.

Curt was surprised Brian Slade knew who he was. He'd never heard of him, actually. The man on the phone told him Brian could make him famous. Curt was vaguely offended, but made halfhearted attempts to iron his worn clothes. If this could buy him a good meal, why not? They met up in a notoriously expensive restaurant, with a manager whom Curt tried to like, but couldn’t.

Curt supposed Brian would be arrogant. Brian had been all low voice and smooth lines, possessing a delicate aura which made him automatically untouchable, different from even the grandest people. Amazingly, he had been very concerned and gentle. The gentlest anyone had ever been, in fact. For hours, they sat there, Brian patiently questioning about what Curt's style in music was, what he would like to do; while Curt coughed and fidgeted and answered half-heartedly, made Brian laugh. Without thinking, he signed the golden contract, and everything changed from that day onwards.

It was like somebody had come and pressed the fast-forward button on his life.

They sped around town in Brian’s convertible, literally; exceeding the speed limit several times. They talked for hours on end. It was the same in the airplane. Curt hadn't known how famous Brian was till they landed in London. Hordes of fans enveloped both of them, and for a moment, Curt felt like escaping for a smoke. Till Brian grabbed his arm, and walked them both through customs, and away from the massive crowd.

Britain was colder and darker but Curt found himself happy, for the first time. He hadn’t been on stage for a long time. He wondered if he would be afraid - he didn’t have heroin to block the nervousness out. But when he saw Brian, complete with stage costume and makeup,waiting for him at the microphone, the only sensible thing to do was to fall in eagerly.

Curt thought he remembered Brian from a far-off dream. He wasn’t used to the public eye, though. He hid from fame, and Brian understood, helping to conceal him. One day, he surprised Brian – and himself – by throwing on one of Brian’s waistcoats and winding his way through hordes of reporters, to join Brian in front of their glaring cameras; a pair of glasses balanced carefully on his palm. “Let me raise a toast to the loveliest man in Europe,” he said, meaning it. And when Brian took the glass and drank deeply, smiling; Curt whispered a line he'd heard somewhere, a line as distant and distorted as Brian’s features. Under the spotlight, Brian glowed somewhat supernaturally, and Curt realized Brian belonged to the world he thought he had given up. But when Brian kissed him and he found himself responding more than he ever had to any girl, he knew Brian was very real indeed.

Brian made everything seem like a game he had complete control over. They played with the tabloids, performing outrageous stunts to keep themselves amused; played with hair dye. Curt ended up bleaching himself platinum blond - Brian took up his dare and dyed his blue. They teased each other about it for ages, taking swigs from wine bottles (a guilty pleasure they shared) and wrestled each other into bed.

Brian toyed with Curt’s confusion, to see what it could do for them, and then discarded it. No matter what, Brian always took the pain away. Curt couldn’t be sure if Brian loved him. Brian wouldn’t – or couldn’t – utter that banal three-worded phrase. All the same, his uncertainty was mellowed by the simple communication that was sex. Somewhere between Brian faintly tracing his jawline and their rhythmic breathing, he decided this was much better than anything else. What Curt prevented himself from saying, he wrote into music. They made it into the Top 40 regularly, and other people would misuse them, making careless dedications to companions they would forget in a month’s time.

Short Poem Without Serial Number

living in an oil painting
is not exactly easy. after
a while, everything turns
glued, maybe printed. the
imitation artists chase you
like the dog pound. when it
gets too plastic, and you
reach out to check,

it breaks.

what do people do when loneliness begins
its roots, a contaminating seed? it
seems the more sunlight it gets,
the more it grows; so they envelop themselves
in libraries, be it science textbook or chekhov,
holding out dust and silverfish
like love.

tonight feels like it could be broken
like a dropped piano –
the whistling of wind, then a comic scream;
when you jump at quiet
noises, bore yourself to death
with nails, painted and rusty. a ring tonight feels
like happiness.

(you can’t. ca-an't
-- you’re too hungry, i mean; offer
food to someone when you're starving inside.)

who are you? the shadow,
lone figure between the bridge
of your nose and the strange
orbs between look like
a bomb-effused new world
with two moons.

if i ran after you
for all i was worth, two seconds, maybe;
i'd be leaning into the trap, tickling
it with fingertips with a vacuum wall. touch
me and kill me - make the shells
start to resemble artillery.

he lives the funny kinda life
--moves like caravans, shifting
from one silver-polished foot
to the other;
travelling with some sort
of black audacity, velocity,
the end of the scorned.

he lends you a collarbone,
says, your smile smells
like tequila, and your lips
taste like hell
(so we just might as well)
and you’ll scratch your names
onto the beach
to see if it bleeds.
and as he is fishing for fishes,

you wish for wishes.

the distance between your
world and mine is a scatter
of parallax errors, squints, and
broken edges. dare to measure
with your black ruler. if i’m here
and the phone is ringing
and your voice is sounding

poke me in the eye.

there's a lot of cats in this world
who sit and purr and mew
but are as pink as plucked chickens.
you know there's something wrong
when predators start resembling
their prey.
they scratch their fur out,
up-down up-down
and listen! (they wouldn't have to)
what i don't tell you turns into fleas.

it’s an odd blue, lapis lazuli, like a
fortune-teller’s bracelet, but
it's opaque and i can't find my future in it.
maybe i’ll just trace the wool,
weep for cold sheep
and save my neck from snow.
am i missing something here?

maybe i should write a poem
about how i like you
and your sweater.

we don’t always have reasons
for poetry – do you have a reason
for waiting by the radio, waiting
for a song reminescent
of what you used to remember? how deep
set you are, wrapped in chocolate paper;
and how you glue your
eyes to the television, the almost-
convex trail of my back. drench me
in sepia: someday you’ll
look back on six o' clock a decade ago,
the day you stroked a cat, fluctuated
like a balance,
and watched the sunset. baby,
i’ll see you around the bend,
and we can have coffee

          or something else.

my-stery: my-story

i used to live amongst mysteries: how
the light fell across my wall
and formed the curious shape
of our silhouettes breaking apart, the
way my bathroom-magnified voice
fused like the bulb in my bedroom. i
never used to have much use for it,
i never was afraid of the dark. and the
air is empty, a canyon; of wolves
running hungrily
with gunshots trailing after them.

then i play sherlock and spoil
it all. i fall in love with a mystery person
whose only grace is her profile, we
twang our guitars and guess
the endings of movies,
and i step a few breaths closer
to solving the mystery that is this.

in mosquito-infested eden
i trapped, killed a snake
with its own poison
and ate its apple, what it used to
erase the paperish-whiteness,
the soft smell of angels.

i stole it out of its scarlet scales.

if i ever should die of blood poisoning
with sin running through my veins
you'll know why.

do you remember the music box
and how we planted blooms in it? we

won, sky-carpenters, and the stars
darkened to wood. when

they fell on us pillow-like,
i visited your grave to start again. what

what i cannot figure out
is this immense heaviness, air

like lidded eyes - how everything
turns, in slow-motion, and spins. there

are as much fountains of
wool as fountains of blood. you

want to recall the streets, grey
like ancient white shirts, maybe

a wisp of willow or two.
careless brooms and brushes of hair; the

ground whispers softness,
and we disappear.

sharpen the knives, mr narcissus -
sharpen the knives. give them
to the sunflowers
and break the world with their shine.

sharpen the knives
and dab their coldness onto your shelter.
pretend you don't love yourself so much;
make echoes cry again.

i live in a silent circle
which never moves, where
i store armyloads of make-up
and black magic, where
broken greek statues
try to appear dignified. this
is where i grow comatose;

beautiful zombie,
i see you walk in, flicking on the light
which wakes me up
but won't stream into my
eyes. and no matter how many
glasses fall and shatter
in heaps, not reflecting,
like pointed snow.

i draw lines.

you want me to weigh
my options like anorexia,
just the way a dietician
gives herself pills
to stay trim for her customers.

fridays are sleep-deprived
and filled to the brim
with escapades which could’ve
gone wrong. fridays taste of
placeboes, empty yet oddly satisfying,
when you wake up alone and
know you’ll soon start all over again,
that there might be a chance
of floating away love-ridden
at the beginning of the week. friday,

you work hard to keep the sun,
but you’ll never go as dreadfully
far, over dragging wastelands
and a final scream
like thursday.

and fridays are the most beautiful
at the second, the tick of
a disappearing glow
which turns sad fridays
into sleepy saturdays, and finally
cloying sundays.

jane jones was really a very normal person. she had straight brown hair and dark eyes. she was of average height. she wore jeans and mass-produced t-shirts. overall, she had nothing exceptional to speak of, except that she was one of the most popular girls in school. of course, not everybody knew her name – she just had many friends who didn’t adore her, just hung out with her at fast food restaurants because she was fun.

one day, she tripped during a basketball game. her face fell with her, literally. the edges of her jawline smashed like eggshells on the bright court; and so did the rest of her features.

her classmates were stunned. she had never told anyone about this. nobody had ever guessed that she wore a mask.

“but jane, you’re beautiful!’ said her best friend, sarah. and indeed she was dazzling, like she had been born with the sun.

jane ran, and nobody ever saw her again.

i am a urban wolf
who wears dark sweaters
and reads the daily newspaper. i
do not trick little girls in red hoods,
but i wear lies behind my glasses.

i am an urban wolf
who doesn’t huff and puff
and cause myself asphyxiations
to harm little pigs. i blast them
with giant vacuum cleaners.

also, i am an urban wolf
who does not hunt
like other predators. i howl with
them, but i feed off myself instead.

i know her.
i know how she writes poems
and stops the waves even when
the sky's like torn photographs
which scream at us to
drench them in dye
and help them die a quicker
death, not paling.

i'll know her even when everything
reverses, sports cars are
tortoises, and we sing lullabyes
while our mothers rock in cradles.

this train is speeding off
into years of afterglows
and running on the exhilaration
of waving a surrendered hand,
shooting off into the future, through
time and into the open arms of
death, like a bullet.
i am picking up the pieces
and groping for the edges
of their atoms. i am
taking the express
to crawl and hide underground,
blowing out the only candle
and taking out the batteries
of the radio. i will know
nothing but stillness;

but it's coming all over again.

i gave up trying to
number or title my poems
because they are simply
wrapped differently. some in
gauze, crepe, burnt paper.
some are nude;
but they all have my name.

run from the scarecrows: feet
flying, like polished birds. you dash,
and i follow, splattering mud; through
horizons we know are either dead
or reaching out behind us. they have
claws.

and all i can make sense of
are the eulogies i find. a scatter
of white skin, a flushed
cheekbone. do you want
a piano tune with that?
(did you think i could actually
lose myself in you?)

we sink, we blink, and
i still notice bits of the street
on your shirt, drenched in sweat. the
you start to cry, and i lose
what i should say.

i swallow your insulin
the way we take photographs
of rainbows; and they turn
out white--
the way i need a gun
but would be afraid of it. in fact,
i want you like
i want a plane, so i could
spiral above the clouds, take
the pot of gold for myself,
and nail a wooden plank over
the rest of the world.

don’t tell me what my spit mirrors.
that girl next door has thick glasses,
and we love her for that.

She Said,

(breathlessly)
who stole my sunglasses from
their leather bed, who
slid my sunglasses from their
shelf and plucked away my
defenses when i was drunk? you
were the one who slept beside me
and smudged my make-up; sneaking
away the last chocolate slice from the
refrigerator, so there was
nothing left for me.

he says, i don’t wanna know,
babe, i don’t wanna know; pulling
the trigger, and the
rest is mad watercolour.

<3
(why
do
we
look
like
we're
eating
flowers?)
<3

i am
    going to travel
over star-studded landscapes
with overstrummed guitars
and destroyed art in tow; gonna taste
fresh blood on my tongue, tightrope-
walk over strings and strains
of alley shadows.

i will
    sculp the streets of new york
in my palm and pour snow over
the world, shaking flakes over
africa till everything is
white, dance over your grave
to love everything
you have left behind.

like a fish, i will sail my life
away: misuse buoyancy, ride
on the waves
and laugh like no one has
ever laughed before. you
can call me dead, call me lost,
but the easiest thing to say
is that i’m
            leaving.

boys in checked shirts slither down the road;
like beautiful snakes. which one
of them wears the correct glasses
and the correct scar? this would do,
you say, fluttering your wings: but
he should shift it by a few centimetres,
three would do.

#1 looks up you and smiles, a teasing
flicker, and in lust you nearly choke
on the hate you're chewing on. my feet
are sticky and the floor's cold,
iced, while sweetness falls
like droplets of peach. colours the
asphalt a nice shade too, but you
wish it would last.

someday, this looking glass we're
staring into's going to be
broken by burglars.

you can be sure the disco balls and stars’ll go away,
the bridegroom’s only handsome on his wedding day.

you broke my vase
on countless sundays, but
would you buy me new
ropes for my heart? love is
a game, a game of chance
and giving, not just taking;
carved on kitchen walls, cookie-crumble,
to remind us as we watched the television
pretend to move.

cheerfully mumble, each encounter
new booted footprints
over snow. i think you were
actually a child, after all. we
tried to give you
impressionism and sunsets, but
you ran past like deer from
a burning forest.
sleeping fitfully (without) i hold
on to the hope that one day
this will fade,
              this will fade.

when a poet falls in love
with another poet, you
can be sure their poetry
will hate each other
by asking stupid questions.

and then you go.

Mother was the oldest of us all. She sat in a rocking chair, and she went back and forth, back and forth for eight hours a day. She never got giddy; us young ones didn’t understand why. The rest of her time, she spent sleeping. Nobody dared to wake her up – she promised to give us the thrashing of our lives, if we ever did so.

_
"But of course," said Mother.