The Unwanted Poem

you were made to bring up the fireplace.
just like sadism, warmth from destruction;
only read when handed down beside
advertisements in a newspaper. killed,
re-written, and born from a gloomy mother,
that unassuming typwriter
which would whisk you out your void
and back to the future again.

to my nerve the world was a single noun. standing in the driveway would be to float in an atmosphere made out of smoke and empty heads. i did not believe i was blind, because i could count the seconds in which a single voice sighed and died. moving as a juggernaut, i got to hold out my eyesas models for my oil painting. panting hesitantly, with each cornea slipping down my wrist, for a moment there i thought i'd lost myself.

we are twins with the concrete, attune like jacks on a card, a series of chords. before the storm my jacket was once a shield but it has been abused, rained upon, so i hand it to you. here is also a pot that holds its namesake and will burn your fingers, too. while we walk the most straight-laced path in the world that has golden-brown footprints splattered like coffee on dad's shirt, whilst cold alleys wrinkle in symmetry.

you are right. they are in perfect ribbons..!

Oblivion is a strange place,
sullied and waste-like
where forgetting, discarding
are the mandatory reasons.

It is where little dwarves live. Their
cult is endorphin. Though corroded
by rain, they hold
axes to cut off your head,
thus eliminating your brain; the
elite black humourists.

Always an assumption,
I have been here several times
as a lodger in a hut
with no name.

sex makes friendship go wrong. don't ask me how, or why i know.

French, for Beginners

if i say si je t'aime et vous aimez-moi -
that is, if i love you
and you love me - we can find the antique
beauty; if you have peach hands, silk skin; we'll
wrap shawls around our shoulders and time on
our knees. just cradling, we're not bulletproof; but
i know the rouge and her sisters. they tottered
down the path like blown-off fingers looking
for their owners. and if i whisper
voulez-vous coucher avec moi -
that is, do you want to sleep with me...

Steady. the curtains are falling
like dew on fire, and in the end you know it's
c'est la vie, this is where they're lying,
this is where they're dying.

*
it starts somewhere in my bones. it is like
a plague waiting to happen
and i can only rid myself of it
by cutting out my vocals
or trailing the road of stars. the cars
are far off, but still barren.

#
needless to say i prefer the second option.
this is an experiment, is it?

*
i need my greek mentor to tie-dye
my skin. he would dry me off
and kiss me no different
from those who existed too high above
to grant me the same. maybe
the key is somewhere, and it isn't
covered with spikes, perhaps it is
only in a mirror.

the problems with silence, module a

he tapped his watch restlessly, tried to listen to the seconds ticking. that reminded him of a song he'd heard a long time ago, when his arms weren't full of air. a string somewhere in his body jolted, awoke. maybe when you were in love you grew an extraneous nerve. it made you dreamy and stupid, forced you to long for some sort of sedation, anything which could settle the ringing in your ears. he was quite sure it was between his heart and his stomach. every time he thought of corduroy and a curious tobacco scent blood rushed to what had become the new axis of his senses.

this way, he was coming along like a renaissance man, he thought, chuckling with the absurdity of the suggestion. soon he'd start dancing to jukeboxes and singing along to lara fabian. god, maybe even ballet shoes. the lady came up to him, and he smiled in spite of himself. 'do you want to say good-bye?' she asked, and he declined. he couldn't say he had no regrets. it was enveloping him already, the grief, slowly filling him - but all he could do was to stand still and with the same politeness he was accustomed to. her hair was greying and she wasn't the sort of woman who produced children that were splitting images of her, so he scrutinized her face to search for a form of recognition.

his eyes lit up. her nose. he could remember having kissed it, but no, the pores were different. besides, there had been no powder on the other one. she gave him a strange look, as if she was trying to figure him out, then returned to her car. he saw how it could have been. he missed the days of sitting under the tree in the yard, and even now he could remedy the situation by running after the vehicle and waving. maybe the person at the back would see him, and he would be able to rest. perhaps the nerve would wear away and he could find some girl. go back to school and eat apples. instead, his feet seemed rooted. as the car drove away, he chewed harder at his tongue, hoping to inject some life into it without it dropping into his lap; a wasted organ.

quagmires are succulent, don't
you think? they are excellent
rare and scattered with the
black pepper of tabloid and mouth. forget
the toothpaste and unbelievably shiny
ivory, these are so kitsch they are out. it
is with these delicacies that we set
up a menu, a remote-control. you can
even eat the smiles of
twenty-one leader harlequins
all in a row.

i sing of mass murder; a pedestral
sacrifice - dancing and pinpricking
in the street that smells of scarlet
fish. broken crescents, barely moons;
eyes that lifelessly stare and bodies
without toes. here is a minor to keep you
happy, don't flinch because the lamb
has splattered, light candles, dance. sing
along with me pounding notes

that sound like injured doves.

who wrestled him to the ground and
left creeping fingerprints
across his harmless face? shush,
a little bit of filth'll do you fine. mister, mister,
you know if torniquet's from paris? ever
heard of the soleil perfume? wrap him
up like salmon, dish him out to us
with the metal cover. you see him
cry and dissolve into blood and
soap, a tasteless suspension; bade
them gather in a bouquet
of truth, reporters, and lies.

the umbrella man holds his handle
so very tightly; walks like a fish
in love with the sea. he sloshes
across children - who will in turn
meld his face with that of monsters,
blood; he steps the soil away and
uncrowds the green plants. then when
he starts to dry, like a worm,
he creeps back into the ground.

i am purple. no longer royal
but bruised, a rotten grape.

i floated on candy floss
till it was eaten, always a model and
an apt seductee. would you
be as kind as to not
shoot the birds? would you
be as good as to not
further rush the sky with blood? too
much lynching frames me. and
if you save, i'd tell you my name,

vespertine; and give you the
grass of the evening rain.

it happens in a split-flash
when you bite into cake
and massacre its insides
without guilt - like when
you're singing years of songs
about nightshades and tears
and the phone rings. while you
know roses of tissue
and strands of time
are really quite a small price to pay.

let's have a pair of metamorphosing
habits which withold
sand and squalor, as well as
point out the existence of beauty
in your mouth. so you are the snake
which shivers and shudders
amongst the huddle
of the hotel. faint stains on the
carpet and the lingering fingers
of smoke prove i never had
a motorcycle dream.../
it was simply hopelessly imperfect./ so
i'll write to you
when i get home, maybe
to scribble our story gloveless.

i can say the rain lubricates
and conditions lonely nights
as tobacco smoothens throats.

each drop is a flicker of light
in its own right, each simultaneous
but curiously alone
in their own universe of
an eventual black death. i didn't mean
for it to be this way, as i regret
not demolishing my heart, and thus
this poem becomes a narrative about
a suppressed smile, a rooftop,
and nobody streaming away.

reading monet

fingerpaint a blue sky; full of
milkmen, gentle suburbs, and
marigold. with narcissus i see
no wrong in teaching colours:
flinging them each over easels
not stark in their whiteness,
more pastel. injured and in
for the hunt they search
and roam each other, bare
their nebulous teeth
then flutter away like lost ash.

you see what blooms
when you live sparingly? this is
what we were all waiting for;
the silencing of nerves, a cut.
undeniably i have learned
what my grandfather never did.

how do you speak of cold?
laughing children and felt
which covers raw asphalt, i
don't dare to believe. i could use
coniferous words to somehow
float above the tropics, ironically
very much like an autumn leaf. funny how
they think they're travelling but
are actually dying, that
they won't find themselves.

funny what winds
up here when i'm asleep, i get
snowed-in and on.

hurry home for the morning
bell, sleepwalker - the day
is waiting, and you didn't want
to be caught dead in pinstriped
pyjamas. you see it dawning,
very much like an ominous
prediction you realize
is going to come true after all.

they've hanging him again
and stones are what greet you,
velveteen with the supposedly
green grass of home. it seems
like rain was what
you wanted, and the sky
was a faint smear, a by-product
which helped you find more rules
to break and paint onto others.

you could tell all the insomniacs
to flock to me. i know exactly
how to fix gapingly ugly holes,
riding on the dragon
who's running out of smoke
and finding loops in the clouds.
i don't know what you were thinking
when you found your biography
in too-smooth glass panels. everything
about you screams change,
a new resolution. an ancient fable,
the hunted wolf. a skeleton of history,
that's what you are
when you smile like that.

A Severe Case Of Self Absorption

lazy days are back again - i do remember
the flickering of a lightbulb
which fused with a cockroach click, sending
waves of evil metaphors
showering down on my head. to each settle
into a sedentary poem;
pretty thorns among a decomposing rose.

time stops when i freeze thinking about
the juggling of old days, you,
which were both keening and strangled.

i mock them with my tongue, and
i have tasted boredom
which incidentally is spaced-out, struck-
out, and doesn't have a clue
who murdered the skies, yet killed the ground.
reading the papers,
i never knew there were people
who not only were deeper than me,

but who also dug their own graves.

well, you were an ambiguous form
which appeared at night,
a dream-carrying bat to grant me wishes
that i knew were inverted, because
i lied to get them.

then you slighted yourself in
the day. pure morning reeked
of elementary weakness - you
reflected stains at me - every black
fingerprint from the newspapers
you brought in.

you broke the laws of refraction
and my smile. i swear
i knew you were there
and it wasn't the air. and
like all shadows,
when i touched you with my charcoal

we became the same.

filming you is a different story;
a thriller which pulls me at
the edge of my seat
and makes the taste
at the back of my mouth
pulse, and turn bittersweet.
the angles shift and you gleam
in the spotlight, every eye a jewel, every
jewel an eye. i draw the
velvet curtains to frame you
like an ancestral portrait.

sunglassed, you can't stop the tape
from cracking at impromptu moments.
it dashes your face and all the flashing lights
in two.

the late phonecall told me
i had a new curse to
curl the back of my spine
because i buried myself
in a wicked garden
without candles, a blood sacrifice
to show i was taking its land
for my own. i asked

for the pencil behind it all. i said,
look; i know i'm fallible and that
i cannot grow my own flowers.

it replied, though hesitatingly;
flip the dictionary pages
and meld its nucleus
with your old Webster's,
i don't think death's the only way out.

did you just say
that this was nirvana?

well, i can't taste the air
with the stormclouds in the way.
question this, question me:

how many pirate ships
are shooting, blowing smoke-rings?

i lost count at the worst time possible.
spitting on the white pages
when the cow jumped over the moon.

transfixed,
i watch us labour over whatever we can't hear
whatever we don't want to know.

read me like you wrote me
in abrupt sentences,
one
<><after
<><><>another

(ZOOM)

like racing motorcycles.

that's how god flicks
his cigarette ash around.

you don't know how you
ever survived among the ties.
so many faces, so much newness
tingling with baby-freshness. there
are multiple names
for the tremble in your walk. adjective. noun.
you trickled down the street, chased
your own shadow, stalked the roses.

tonight's aching with clarity,
somehow; the busy chants of
bars and tramps and empty
houses which wait for you
like a wolf for its prey, silently
concerned and detached. step in,
flick on the switch. pause - hope
stunned, a heart rocks and falls.

how long more are you going
to live like this? there are those
squeaky-creepy messages which say
you just need another walk around
the block to start screaming your life away,
they'll come collect your ashes
and they'll send the bill to purgatory
just live on another day.

love is
        a four letter word
that masquerades with eyeliner; no
high heels, symmetrical sides
which fit into each other. lock-key,
the shutting of a prison door.

i don't know, or want to know,
why it creates strange desires: the
longing for a newspaper article, "she
reproduced through binary fission". i
can only attempt to fold its corners,
cut them out like antique photographs
and see if they yellow. you
see love developing
from a nubile nymphet
into an an old lady with bleached ringlets,
shamelessly vulgar and repeating
endearments on handphones
till each heart is black and mangled.

these are the reasons
why i told you to love off.