i don't need to twist you round
or chain you down; only to examine,
infiltrate, meddle a little - maybe
live with you, sieving the spit
out of your soup. every day
i carry bibles of your promises
in my shirt pocket,
dressing myself in swastika flags,
freezing your fear
like jews.

your scene is laid out
like a crime; yet shapeshifting,
malleable. you cure your wounds
through telepathy; radio sending
prickly signals, and your brain gyrating
in tune, in pitch, in shock.

but you have reason to believe
you aren’t really here. that if you
shut your eyes you’ll be somewhere else,
twisted in the roman empire. that if you
open your door you’ll see mother and
all her little children clutching lollipops
like captured game;

and she won’t come in, her alarm
beeping madly, and strip in a blur of pallid
skin. she won’t lie strategically on your
form and threaten to inform your enemy,
maintaining you still don’t know yourself
well enough. she won’t come in and spoil
it all. and

you will rise like oil on water, and your
bed will remain rooted to the ground. this
stupor is based on playing cards-

--luck, not strategy.

it’s so haunting, here; floating voices
in this cardboard box, but i may still be
waiting, silent and eager. offer me
some chocolate and dole out packets
of confused smiles

with warnings on them. too much
saccharine sweetness may have detrimental
effects on health. but i pick them out,
flinching and smiling alternately: wave
them around like cigarettes and pause
one in my mouth. then i swallow one, although
i know this is against my choice – scrawled
out in loose-leaf notebooks

(because i’m
rational, i’m rational,
i’m reasonable)

and only erasable by
lone
li
ness.

shattered alleys and muffled drumbeats: compressed
into nights of
sitting, staring and living
in cardboard boxes. cloaked,
we shudder our way
into underground railway stations, feeling metallic
rails pressing into our toes till they
become a part of us. sail into this frailty:

come into this fort and launch
your factory smoke upon us. (if you want
me then come and get me.) play chess
with our guards; live and thrill them, kiss
and kill them. breathe keep on breathing
because that’s what laughing does – and
i’m too ready for once.

throw and kick it all away, blow it into
pieces and pack everything into a parcel where
drive-in movie directors
will bend and examine with the
most colourless curiosity.

i went on a lone boat with
a ghost. i think we were
in heaven. he had eyes like you. we
dragged our way through the waves
and we were poems lost and
fighting in ink. but
i know all that will be gone in due time;

because –

i look down at the ground and
all explodes for once. yesterday
i was blind and nonexistent but
today i groped and gouged till
i could see the
deformed lines of your face again.
i look up and the
clouds threaten to pull me apart: they
rain down pills on my head, with each
an inscription. i keep them in
my numerous warehouses; they are
my fortune cookies because
i rearrange those letters and find
your name.

so come on, come on. you know
you drive me crazy. you know you
make me cry for you. come and bind
me to your skin. i’m ready. i’ll kiss you
and watch our swords flash
like an observer. come and
take me on for once. nothing’s new, i
still want your white fingers
served up for tea, and i need to be
someone else again.

she sings like she’s a dolphin
whispering miles above golden
oil. we might as well only be
seahorses and manta rays
masturbating a wave. she’s
going to be a star. sometimes
she goes off-key – as jazz pianos
always do – and her voice keens
above all else, wavering first steps;
then dashing away.

she sings like she’s a dying bird.

i have a white hair in
my head, bright and obvious. the
rest are just non-
streaked black – like
crow-feathers, or worse,
inkblots. i cannot explain
the sudden loss of colour.
it makes the light
intrude on my head –

when everything should be
opaque. the rest of those strands
are already dull enough. when
that white hair catches the
sun and make people comment
or want to pull it out. wrench it
out of its root, but i’ll never find
out if hair screams like plants do.

there is a strange superstition
in which a single strand
of white hair is a symbol
of deep thought; i finger it and
i think about mysterious old ladies
whose hair are all living ice. i don’t
know when people’re going to die,
nor can i tell you the capital
of the world.

i know i’m just getting older.

easy to fake a laugh for the
sake of tragic comedies: easy
to fake a limp for charity – but
so much easier to race
with shoals of fish and red cars
in the city and pick up rows and
rows of autumn leaves to decorate
torn lace;

why do you seem so sad, my dear? easy
to sing the same tune over and over.
too easy to poke yourself square in
the eye and turn the needles round;

but the truly simplest of all
is to stand here,
watching people fandago
in the rain; swishing in
triple time without
tripping or stumbling
--our most essential wish.

and i see, we’re all here again. with
the coffee and anecdotes and little
jokes we smile and sit to sing. the low
hum of the guitar rubs your ears

like rough silk, you said, betraying
every other thoughts
and leaving silence to wash
and ebb. we lay back and
watched the glasses wink and
flirt with one another. they didn’t
blow out cigarette smoke
through their noses – but
we were all cold-glassed
and bubbly, with carbon dioxide.

we were so sweet.
it was only when we
discovered how high
we were; and how the winds
whistled:
that we fell and clutched
our throats.

it’s not that she actually
planned her escape, stalking
feline-like through
anthills and anthills of coffee shops. it’s
not that the sun and the sky and the
sea bothered to meet for once –
it’s not like she started the
whole of revelation, hanging like
judas and spread out before
the law and all its stinging stars –

with all the people trekking
through her constellations, in
crowds recording down her voice. everything
was drawn, mapped and southeast
in her little brown instruction book. now
her forehead’s blue, beer-bottle in hand
and swig poised in mouth. she said
she heard the clock chime, ritardando,
and chained craws cawing. that somebody
was done for.

it’s not like she could
breathe
when her life flashed past
the cool shadow of her eyes.

the instant i saw you
i knew where you came from.
somewhere distant, oblique -
not pretty.
where no sound or reporter
could reach.

you lived in a vacuum, and
i forgot your name, scribbling
across a crossword puzzle. we tried
for an aeon, but
the bulb still wouldn’t light.

most people long to disappear.
i prefer to fade.
i would be here
just to wave goodbye
and scuff the ends of my shoes
in sync with a passing whim. i
submit what i hold with it. (i am
young, but i have old hands.)

perhaps
you could have been real.
you tasted like wine. you looked
so fine.

you’d have to be mine.

humming
you’re grounded. your shoes
squeak against the pavement
and your fly is undone. you dream
about dinner and scribble in your
notebook.

maybe the past is the best
to sleep with when you want to
tango with thrills. a century ago
there was water
that poured over your head
like manna. there was time, and
you splashed in puddles. it rained
while the candles burned
and frogs sprang out of the
ground. (do you remember?) you
married your bookcases. in lust. she’s
just too in lust again.

you just don’t want to lose yourself. not
in this smileless desert.

i may be one of those camels.