Drowning Again

you need to leave now.

i woke up with a pile of plates
being hugged between my arms.
i thought i was dreaming when i
went to the kitchen and grabbed them
for comfort.

they told us we would hear the whispers
of our neighbours between the walls:
i didn't believe them until last night
when i wandered to the kitchen
looking for protection.

when i came back,
the entire room was ruined.

A Trip to Anna Sui

strange it has been made
by this business of people
that want to be your friends.
if you don't know where it comes from
you will never find it beautiful;
glittered and glazed,
my nails smell like baby powder,
and after shave.

good getting the good stuff

Brown Paper Bag

1. you're standing in a parking lot
with a dead goat in front of you,
his legs, hind and front, have been tied
by your hands.
you stand against the graffiti, crumbles,
with a skirt on your legs and a bag on your head
(everyone else should be wearing a bag on
their heads but its only you).

2. after bar binge:
the alcohol in your head
blurring your vision
screaming pizza, pizza
so you get it to go and take it home.

3. you wanted to keep the frogs you found
as pets so you hid amongst the rocks
and watched the jumping warted toads
eyeing their way back and forth,
and caught them and concealed them.

4. the barbeque blew up again
but this time it blew up in your face.
you cut holes in a paper bag for eyes,
and you cover the second degree burns so your
children won't have to go through the pain.
your face scabs over
and you remove the bag
and they stare, shocked and speechless
at the gentle monster in the living room.

5. you have promised
your friend that you will help him die,
but he's all out of plastic
so you tape the paper bag to his head
and tie his hands behind his back,
and watch him suffocate.

Waste Land

you're a wasteland,
representative of an entire nation
en vogue.
you're an icon,
coming home late with each of your costars
wearing their clothes,
drinking them silly,
drinking you silly,
wearing your clothes,
and changing your style with your character.

first: hippie lover, good looking, clever,
holding on tight to your surroundings
before finding the shame in your own face,
(you're always getting naked)

second: drug filled, littered mind,
punk rock stripes, better than the rest,
not needing anyone, needing anyone,
losing your mind, fucking your friends,
skin and bones (this naked on camera)

you're a wasteland
a perfect London icon,
for us to keep and be
we who were living are now dying
with a little patience
and perserve the wasteland.

Tripping the City

i wrote that
(about falling on the icy ground)
after attempting to write of you again,

its been so long since i tried
to write of you;
so long since i have cared to see you
to know that you were there.

you are far away, and i smell of ginger,
or of china, town, china, of the boots
i bought while i wondered
where in this city you reside.
while i wandered this city wondering where
you might have subsided.

where you might have formed your thoughts
or formed a thought that strawberry
thoughts were beautiful.

you're always disappearing
and reappearing here across my head,
across my forehead, across my swollen hands
dancing in the boots i find trying not
to think of you.

the pearls i find, trying not to think of you,
the stares i find
trying not to wonder where
in this city you might have wandered,
might have come out so close to
where i'm trying not to find you.

Skinny Anorexic

The light is dark.
The view is dead.
The mannequin is murdered,
cardboard breast revealed.

Unleashed:
Black
White
Vertical striped
Puckered sleeves
of your creative spark.

Made from your dark.
The day in here is dark.

The White of You and Me

milky smooth and
cream skinned white
(richness hanging from me

my every command)

your crocheted cap
does nothing
to distract your eye
from the milky white

and pink and blue and peach
and yellow
of the colours of my eye

my new eye,
(you must smell my milky white
and wonder
why i'm with you

why am i with you)

the papers here
are white like my skin
cut corners like my skin

move this
because there is nothing

either i or you can do
to eleviate the milky smooth

of difference between us

The Stitching on Kingston

who painted glaze
on the road
tonight

who painted
orange

on the glaze
tonight

pushed me
slow
ly
to
the
idea

of no feet
below me

Conversaton in the Living Room

ok, sooo you know how like people are
really insecure and they use certain things
to hide it, like their hair colour
or their jewellery or their outfits?

silence
silence
silence

no...

(hmmm ok, lets try something else here)

you're about to become a hypocrite.

Skatter

beautiful.
beautiful.

i said it twice so i would hear
your voice in my head again.

(i'm always writing
four-liners about you)

Hamlet, WAITING FOR GODOT, Whatever, Marissa and I and our fucking afternoon of INACTION

i want breadsticks.
yeah: breadsticks and cheese.
i wan to try out for things
you should.
i'm going to.
ya you really look like you're going to:
skipping acting class, can of chunky,
STALKING the actors.

Martha Focker

when you think back to Cannes,
you're supposed to remember
the beach, the houses, the stars,
the riches, the glamour.

when i think of Cannes,
all i can remember,
is you being asked to
clear the front of Fendi.

you're the prettiest freckled girl i know,
and you are going to sew for the world,
but sometimes the things that come out
of your mouth make me wonder what
Ghetto area of London, you grew up in.

(i almost forgot your last name)

These Girls I Fall For

this is to die for what i see
here in the coffee shop,
of all places.

a lovely artist girl with
her portfolio and a vente of coffee.

misty, ornate,
is it wrong that i stare,
that i listen to her, that i
want to see her;

and you're an artist,
what a beautiful girl,
i want to be you.

you on the other hand,
confuse me:

how have you perfected your
eyebrows when the rest of
you is so wrong to the world

They're at the Gap if you want them (the WHITE DENIM, its at the Gap)

"isn't it too early
to wear that colour?"

"it's never too early
for anything."

my response
to your calculated
rules of fashion.

(this is why i'm better)

All The Women Hate Freud

deconstruct me,
i know you can.

i am the daughter
of divorce,
of child abuse,
more specifically,

i am the daughter
of a mother who didn't know she could have
what she wanted,
who got depressed after she lost it.

the daughter of a father
who gave me everthing i wanted
and who hated me for my wants and values
simultaneously,

hated me for defending my mother
and her point of view,
her philosophy of the world,
or maybe it was i that hated,

either way,
the dinner table
was an uncomfortable situation.

i am the product
of bad mistakes
and bad judgements,
of wanting to get out of a math test
and embellishing

the way my father
kicked me.
that wasn't embellishment.

deconstruct me,
i am the product of a
Freudian agenda,
not where i wanted to have my father
but where i sided with him
and started to hate my mother

because i hated her
and i hated her
and i hated her for no reason
other than

that she was there
(she didn't have my father).

Marx and White Denim

your denim will be white,
like the lies you tell yourself
to keep breathing,

your prosthetic lips,
red like the blood that will
grace your fingertips,
the belt around your waist,
unfrilly fashionable,
the colour that will be left
after you cut off all the spots
on your body you don't like.

the world is human made,
can be human changed,
but you are all the same.

Ikke Noget Som Dig

I've never
invested in opium,
so I couldn't tell you
what that drawer's like .

"So how are you Braveheart?"
Buddy,
that's Robin Hood.
Get your shit sorted out.

Preface to the Edition

I want to die,
does that make sense?
Wordsworth makes me think
I want to kill myself.

The man in the taxi talked of war, of the shit of returning to society. I've heard of you, I thought, but I didn't say a word.

most concrete things I believe in
can be erased with a few words and a little knowledge
which I usually don't care to hear,
enlighten me please because your
words are far more political than any
thought in my head.
i'm not intrigued by racism
because i've been white and wealthy
from the second I was born.

i think you're grand and gorgeous.
maybe this will shut those people up.
i'm tired of coming across you over
intoxants and expectations.

did you think i was kidding
about that, about you,
about kissing strangers on foreign
bedspreads in messy bedrooms?
about wanting you to walk me home
and not just hand me some money
before swearing in my face and sending me off
in a taxi.

if i had to show you who i was i would hand you
a picture of a little girl in a white sundress
dancing in the grass which shouldn't mean
that i don't want you.

Found You at the Voting Polls, Patriot.

Georgia!
Sweet Georgia!

I found you with your face
turned in toward to the wall
as - per - usual.
And a look of sweet surprise
as I shocked your shoulder with my finger
(little girl in lacey pink, am I).

Georgia!
Sweet Georgia!

What a bunch of hometown decadence
you bring
to every chance that we encounter.

(What I really want to say,
has to do with the pages of naked women
hidden in cardboard boxes in the garage).

Enough of that you silly girl,
Only good for Mr.Georgia.

Ma Poesie Blues

so you give it to the wind
you can't write poetry all day, can you?

a temporary stall from poetry,

from subject manner,
manner, manners.

thats an acute
presumption to believe in.
not something you can trust
from words on a page.

as long as you're still there,
i love you.

theres always a better word,
a better way.

thought i knew you
until you approached me
told me about your life,

i love you, i trust you,
i need you there,
here, thought i knew.

thought i knew.

a temporary stall from your pictures,
the things in this life
you want to keep on paper,

like poetry

shocked myself
with retraction
thought i was there,
tried to erase you,

tried to keep you from knowing anything.

I am not a doctor.

she tells me i need medicine,
pills to kill the pain,

someone to tell me
whats broken,
and what is still alright.

i tell her i need strength,
rest,
and time.

Sailing to Byzantium

i forgot about Istanbul,
the mosques in blue and coral,
with painted domes and Iznik tiles,
courtyards, minarets and you,
adjusting my head covering,
telling me i should convert religions.

staring up high to the ceiling
feeling mostly bored below,
Hagia Sofia is getting old,
crumbling walls, fading paintings,
half of it closed off for reconstruction.
Bagge wants a cigarette,
we want scrutiny, indiscrimination.

the most beautiful mosque we found
on the crowded streets of the filthy city,
tucked away behind a poor man's stand,
shocking on the outside,
dirty tapestries, stairs, broken cement,
even more vibrant on the inside, our cold
feet warmed by the rug,
numbed by no shoes on in public,
and the natives of the city praying beside us,
our peripheral vision weathered
by the scarf around our head;

the most beautiful mosque,
surrounded in the aftermath of terror,
one cornerstore selling chips, pop,
things the villagepeople, can't really afford,
their broken down houses,
me the only one brave enough to use the
hole in the backroom for the bathroom,
girls on the top floor, only men allowed
on the bottom,
dirty, grey, gloomy, broken outside walls,
blue, red, purple, green inside tiles,
carpets, rugs, all invested here.

shocked by the snow
out the window, was i wrong
to equate that we would be in
better weather?

eat sweetly and speak sweetly.

me sitting to the left of the bench
so whoever developed the film would see
where we were, travelling over water,
bored. we just want to party.

my shaky description of the Blue Mosque
barely understood by my companions,
staring, laughing, smiling at my voice,
my face, my accent.

every day us walking up the hill
to the centre of the town
where we used our lira
to buy us random treasures and delicious meals.
by night the twelve of us, all blonde hair
rosy cheeks, and well dressed us,
turning down invitations to every place on
the strip before settling on the doorman
that looked least harmful to our complexion.

the Turkish man proposing marriage
to your tall and feminate frame,
your blue eyes, designer glasses, gold hair,
offering us tea in exchange for some information,
your name, your origin, how good we think
his chances are, in exchange for a rug
that will never fit in our suitcases.

where are all the riots, the bombs, the trouble
we anticipated because of our arrival date,
you crying in the airport
because you're a bit of a homebody,
me with the dagger in my carry on
careful security.

this is where we became friends,

where you chose to stand beside me,
wander through the bazaars in my company,
buying fakes, ashtrays for lovers, evil eyes
for everyone we could think of at the moment.

getting lost in the crowd of chesnut skinned
salesmen throwing candy in our bags, and
reaching their hand out for some money,
promising us good prices on perfume bottles
filled with water.

Sommertid Uden Dig

has anyone ever mentioned
the way your mouth curls up
at all corners when you smile

or the way your skin reddens
in the sun (pale, pale skin)

you're happy here, aren't you;
happy and confused and lost and wanting.

i can never imagine
my life without you again

too many words, written across your face
for me to leave it.

welcome to nightime,
we should talk, about the grass
in the dark and the sand between our toes

Lovely

i just read czeslaw milosz's
"a poetic state"
and then smoked a pipe
alone in my bedroom.

redecided i'm a hippie
smoked a pipe
and then went out for dinner.
stood in the phone booth

for three minutes,
searching for my cell,
and picking in my pockets,
while you stood across the street
watching:

"you're an idot"
you answered.

passed the bar as i was walking home
and redecided
that not partying
is not fun.
smoke a pipe
and i'll be home i thought
as i walked outside the door.

redecided that i dont care
that you're not coming here
anymore.
that you never came here at all.

redecided
that i'm a hippie,
bored despite the games in my head.
my perfume? "dangerous"

"every minute, the spectacle
of the world astonishes me;
it is so comic that i cannot
understand how literature
would expect to cope with it".

the redecided fringe
effects of life inside the head.

Dreaming of Dirt

do you remember,
when we were younger?
we used to talk on the phone for hours,
me discovering your boy,
you discovering my girl,

me asking you your favourites
and you saying you couldn't choose
because you didn't want to be unfair
to the other colours.

we talked so long that the boredom
became a silence between us,
the questions repeating with blank recognition,
my admiration for you
compelling me to dial your number
only hours after we hung up the phone.

we used to cuddle on your couch
and say that it was harmless because we were friends,
but it wasn't harmless,
it was sexual,
inviting, inticing,

our boyfriends, girlfriends,
surely would have minded.
where did we become friends,
was it our passion that brought us together,
that makes us still call upon each other,
though we haven't really seen each other in years.

the last time i remember you
it was dark and i was scared,
and we took pictures all night
as we travelled like rogues from one spot to another
with your friends
smoking bongs on the park bench
before leaving advertisements
for your non-profit organization
on the cement, wherever we had a minute to stop
or pose, or think.

my father likes you, i know,
because you didn't flinch when you came into the kitchen,
me surrounded with a pile of leaves,
rolling up relaxation for the evening
some laughs,
conversations, a growing admiration for the people
around us.
he almost got your name the last time he mentioned you,
said oh ya thats right, when i corrected him,
leaned further back in his armchair in the corner.

when i think of you,
i think of a sheep, a fox, and a duck
figurines, and tiny presents
that we gave each other when we decided for one holiday
that we would be jewish,
and the picture i have of you that i say is just like jesus,
even though
you are wearing a trucker company shirt and holding
a joint in your hands.

the last time i saw you,
was nights ago,
when you came across the road delivering a cushion
for both of us,
with your instruments for entertainment,
and a pitcher in your hand.
i hope you like lemonade, you said,
and i do.

Sandalwood

this is plagarism as far
as i'm concerned

because i certainly
didn't write it.

you did.

Fortune Cookies

Wealth is not in making money,
but in making the man while he is making money.

FAIR ENOUGH.

Love.

BEEN WAITING.

Our life is the creation of our mind.

BUT OF COURSE. You are clever, I am not.
You are gutsy, I am not. You are in control
of creating your own mind,

I AM NOT.

Conversation is dead, at least
mine is. You are a very good actress,
me? Not so much.

You: symbolic.
Me: simple tales in the back of my head.
Fortune cookies, for example.

STOP or stand there.
I stop,
you stand there.

I would rather burrow than continue
most conversations I begin with.

LOVE THE MAN WITH THE WEALTH
AND READ YOUR FORTUNE COOKIES.

"Gift: Li-wu,
Telephone: Dian-hua,
June: Liu-yue",

the symbols.

Night Walking

what becomes wrong,
with listening to the water?

what phantoms really have hands
small enough
to grab through the spaces at our ankles?

i promise it will happen suddenly

the water colding your freshened body,
your hair feathering your vision
in the darkness, eyes making out the animals
that are too small to touch, and the clams
and rocks and shells cutting your skin
across your back, head, breast, fingers.
fearing more the death
of the sky you see through the surface
fuzzied and burrowed and lit perfectly
by the moon set low across the distance,
than the ending of room for you to breathe.
forget that you are drowning

and consider
the case of my containment
for a moment.

so little left to fail at here.

your jokes are ridiculous,
ostentatious
like the cups you fill your hair with

and your hand hugging my bottom,
basking in our bodies,

leaving us nothing more
than the void of an ideal form.

beautiful time.

if i found a stone
that was flat enough,
would you grit it across
my glossy skin

revealing spots of cranberry,
would you?

if i were to be buried here tonight
would you break my bones first
or leave me

full and restless,
like the last time.

The Radiator is White, The Crows are Black, I am Tired.

(staring at the radiator.)

the birds
are
scratching
their way out of
the cage,

i can hear them
through the hazy white
of the radiator in front of me
and the sweated matted body
of your form beside me.

someone is banging
their wrench
on the radiator.
i will hurt them
if i ever get my hands
around their precious
throats,
which is doubtfull

at the temperature
and hour.

the crows
(vulgar, clever,
birds)
are
cawing
loud outside
the window,

i can hear them,
i detest them
and the wake up call
they hand me,
(i should stand tall
and caw back,
if i was braver)

are they flying over me,
outside the window,
it scares me
since the bandits came.

inside my head,
held hurting by the heat in this room
and the patient movements of my
stealthy death,
the bus is here.

i don't speak English,
anymore.

the woman
(black like the birds)
is talking
about how
she hates Paris.

has she ever encountered
the birds inside that city,

les corneilles ne sont pas
les plus mauvais oiseaux dans le ciel.

(i haven't
slept
in days.)

Casanova, you liar.

casanova.
you lied. you liar.

where are you?
i lost a pair of earrings,
either in the yellow hoodie in your laundry
or on the dining room table.
they look like teardrops, crystals,
big and white.

suddenly struck by the silence in my head,
the silence, in my head.
i lost a notebook
beside the big screen tv in the living room,
don't read it please,
but can you put it away when you find it?
don't read it.

you used to be like a banana
because you were cute and funny,
like the comment you made
when all the muffins disappeared,
but now you're like a banana
because you're bruised and your teeth are yellow
and the curve of its end is like the curve
of your hips when you move. slut.

how hollow are these walls
that the twang of your hand against
the string of your guitar, should echo here
amongst the water,
and shampoo and conditioner.
rose hips, when you find me
breathing against the tiles.
the tiles have no pictures here.
how hollow are these walls, what
was this house built on.

i've lost why i began this.
the silence in my head.
philanderer, is that what they call you?
you ugly whore, i hate you.

casanova. you liar.

Periwinkle Sky

do do do do do
do do do do do

i thought the streelight
against the periwinkle sky
was the orange of the sun setting
between the silhouetted branches
of the trees
tangled with the telephone wires

but it wasnt the sun
but it was the sky
but it wasnt the sun in the sky

do do do
do do do
do do do do do do do

i thought the lights in the distance
were the skyline of the city
but the streets are a lot closer than you think
when you stand and have a look.

the periwinkle sky
fading into midnight
the lights in the distance
fading to the lights on one street over
the snow on the banks
seperating the road
where the dirt on the cars
drags the perfect white to brown

the life at night time here

She's a Pretty Girl, Isn't She.

the girl in the green dress
was sitting when he got there
sipping kindly from her glasses,
while he arrived in scruff, in the shadows;
someone told her he was there
but she didn't look,
she waited.

he came,
asked her if she minded if he sat there
wondered if she was saving the seat
for someone else.
slipped beside her in the vinyl booth,
and told her about later
when they would teach a lesson together
in seperate rooms of the same building.

he wants to love her, take her home,
asks her not to start being who she is,
spoiled brat,
screaming when he knocks
her opal ring to the floor of the car.
sits with both his arms open,
tells her to wait,
while he picks up trouble for the evening.

noone knows they're here together,
but at the end of the night,
its him pushing her against the wall,
with laughter filtering through the thick of his back
to her chest,
asking her where they're going,
asking if she minds taking him home.

in the morning he travels home,
while she takes off somewhere,
looking for the cushion on the inside of her skull
where she keeps the things she's looking for.
the girl in the green dress
has other plans, other places,
not wanting to eat until completely bare,
savouring each piece tasted well inside her.