7/17/2003

i remember books with yellowed pages
that smelled like years

silverfish running over
the textureless lines on my thumb,

close enough for sunglasses
close as an eclipse.

what more are balloons
when letters rise like warm air.

7/16/2003

oldness -i think- comes in strains
of coffee, mad days

brown work and
kidnapped nets of laughter.

feet eased in the sea,
while a fishing rod rusts and pierces.

i see it in cobwebs and yellow statues,
toasts of wine
to those who spread their wings
and the epidemic. abandoned buildings
the same colour as

last sunday’s newspaper; a lady, hat tilted
tumbled down cruel stairs
as it finally saw and overcame her.
i am

drizzle in a teapot,
amplified black band
in an era of
quiet.

the tall man in jeans
on an empty bus, whose quill is stolen;
sad schoolgirl
and her dreams
of bottle, tower and lover.

a mask whose face lingers
like unwanted, unwarranted
smoke,

ripples from atlantis and beyond.
i haven't been writing for too long. some structure, for once, is in order.

OK, here's how it goes: i try a different theme every day, no matter how shitty, if i can. thus begins (c) Des's Poetry Project.
magnetic poetry

burn the blossom
of man

so dry
will morning
stagger.
some untitled stuff i wrote around three months ago, but never posted

the tattoo on my body
is fading like a photograph.

i can see vague reflections
standing on the bathroom tiles;
a line, a hue
a bucket full of paint and needles.

it’s moments like these
that my thoughts turn into
something shadowy and illiterate

and the air tastes like cold gas
prepared for a suicide.


the sun’s patchwork is stitched
so that from nine to four
i have too much to show you.

when we stop at the alleys
we set off on ships to the south,
across the bathtub.

and when we get home
i want to take your hands
and kiss you

till the dust rests on our backs
and the carpet turns red again.


dreamweavers are made out of
soft sandal leather
and rustling tea-leaves.

they speak to themselves
and call you darling

just like the sea,
only gentler.

if you rest long enough
they will continue to evade
the hunters
which are large and breakable.


she fancies herself
as a tall lampshade
with pink frills
that strolls around on sundays
and remains quiet
in the most precarious places.

though she doesn’t breathe

her plastic nose is growing
longer by the second,
and she turns into a zebra
when the time is right.


i captured the little man
and put him in a matchbox.

when he began to realise
the trees and street signs
were only a backdrop,

he made his own rain
and drowned me off my throne.


i have got

penguin tuxedoes
shirts with prison-bar pinstripes

and silken slippers
with purple sequins
on stiletto heels

so i forget

the oldest tee-shirt
has my name stitched on
in the most threadbare places.

7/01/2003

(incomplete)

ha
i bet even your wings
get waterlogged in summer.
you’re one busy girl. with your
tiptoes, jinxes, lipsticked smiles,

black cats to feed
erotica to sleep.

don’t think of me;
work on your bedroom eyes
stick in pills for pillows.

you're one foil-wrapped cigarette package,
an alloy, amalgam of smile and hate.
we want
deep laughs not purses
that shimmer, un-oblique
bicycles crossing the street.. ready

to breathe in
decaying leaves and singing air

not salty suspensions and
stinging rain.. death by a
guillotine, not monoxide
trapped in garages of black dreams

sleep without weight and teeth

café not canteen cafeteria.