Play me a song and I'll dance for you
barefoot and twirling on kitchen tile
sing me a melody lilting and true
then take my hand and we'll sway a while.

Draw me in close as the beat takes hold
my head on your chest as we keep the time
We'll dance until dawn brings and end to the stars
then I will be yours and you will be mine.

the dispenser is out of water & i'm
going to die of dehydration

no kidding. i've really thought about it
and considered it as a way out,
but the pain is unnecessary

so i decided to cross it out.
that's an ancient game already
i've forgotten all the rules.

is this liquid? i ask
myself because there's no one else
in this room i fall in love with indulgences
never falling out again
i'm a loyal lover of unhealthy desires
if you can call it desire
then i can call myself a lover
of anything that goes through my throat
in and out, in and out
i ask, is this liquid? the bed sheet
is white, translucent at the part
where i lay myself
dry

this is a cry
this is a cry
this is a cry
this is a

parking lot. that is how big this world is. a sad space between the trees, east to a canteen, west to a badminton field. head south, there's a toilet. the way out is in the north.

we are full of cold cars and stranger's sweat. we are full of leaves, branches, fruits that fall anonymously. of raindrops, of muds that stain our clean white shoes. we are full.

come, wind. come and break the trees. come so they can wreck us into scraps.

it is no harm to the living. roots keep them alive. what does that make a human? people are abandoned, fences are mistaken as a protection. the lonely bridge. the raging river. the subject. the unidentified. everything is now an object to the eye

and it wrenches our emotion until we give them all up, of course, until we've got nothing left, of course, until breathing is solved and the lungs unravel

listen
this has been a cry all along

Get me out
of this pool
of pain and loneliness
I made up
a place as tight as my chest
with walls as high as the sky
I forgot how to swim
and water keeps filling my lungs
I forgot how to get up
drowning in the shallow water
thinking of a lifesaver
I made up
my own muscles and joints
my own breathing
I made up the pool. The swimmer
Get me out

She left me white flowers
on the balcony
on the day she stopped trying
to win my love;

the first time I watched her tail-lights
with a crumb of regret.

Used to leave a loaf of bread
on my doorstep
whenever she could not find me,
drunk, alone;

furious in her offer
of easy company.

She left and in her absence
I found little solace
in the poetry I kept from her.
All these pointless words;

another lover lost to meaning,
another lover lost to impossible

dreams of perfection.
All this time afforded to me
to form my words of purpose
and total inaction.

Departure lounge. Crown of tears
probably dried upon my father’s shoulder.
One year before I touch down again.
Everyone will expect some change.

Tried to swallow consciousness on the Bangkok streets.
Too much heat. There is no familiar face –
I cannot even read the road-signs.
There is no culture shock:
I had lived with that my entire life.

Made friends with the strays
for we had a common place.
Caught in no man’s land:
a need for hunger,
some awful drive to be free.

Left Bangkok for the coast.
New faces to hear old stories.
Born new, kissed each night on the mouth,
shared a hotel room for the month;
relinquished every memory

in a flood of beer,
old tears, the reservoir
to cleanse ourselves of doubt.
Dictated each depression

to a room full of strangers
until I could frame every disgrace,
put them to bed
until I slept full and new.

Fell in love with a singer,
red hair and a voice
that climbed a ladder to heaven.
Bid farewell in a country of mourning,

wore black until I found colour again.
Descended each rung
until I found that rock bottom
was still much higher
than where I had come from.

Wrote poetry and songs
nine hours from the foundations
I had built upon.
Black-eyed and clueless,
wrong side of the classroom,

I tried to teach a foreign tongue
in a place where I knew nothing
and no one. Far from every addiction
that once anchored me in place,

I shaved my face, pressed my shirt,
made amends for every cigarette end
that once painted the frame
of all I had amounted,
all I had done.

Fell in love with a town,
a pink sunset, stretch of rice-farms
and apple trees that patterned the view
of all I could see.

Still broken, still maladjusted,
still craving those twisted words.
Take my motorbike off into the drumlins
each time that I fear the worst.

Still broken, still singing
a song I cannot sing,
yet each muffled string,
each half-worn verse
is a half-formed reason
to rehearse
the melody I gather
each fateful, live-long day,

I cry out for meaning
before it fades away.

I refuse to worry
Mercurial one

Your accidents are
Planned to the
Finest detail

Scorched by
Moonshine
You flutter
And float
About lake and
Mountain

A wilderness of
Spirit urges
You down

And yet up you
Bob
A float

Fish bring
Hooks
To your feet
In homage