There are no right answers.
The sky rejects the birds, turns them
over to gravity,
embedding them in the concrete and dirt.
The grit refuses to become a pearl,
just as the wound refuses to heal
and the flesh eats itself.
The market sees a sudden spike in
sales of Champagne and cyanide.
Coordinated efforts seek and fail
to curtail the rising tide of violence
in the nation's dreaming.
You realise that this crude, barbaric language
that you can't understand
is your own.
Beauty glitches and pixelates.
Frightened, furtive confessions of love
are unheard over proud, visceral
proclamations of hate.
Tongues divorce mouths.
Every now and then, a voice
inside your head says,
'Thud.'
The measures of sanity become
more quantifiable and
totally arbitrary.
The horizon
tightens
like
a noose.

It doesn't matter if this is wrong.
There are no right answers.

Midnight
You drop the call
And I drop the phone.
I say goodnight
And try to sleep.

I search the long-abandoned rooms in my mind
For a song to put me to sleep
And I hear a familiar tune
Waft through a room that’s forever frozen
In a cloudy, but lovely day in the middle of September, 2016.
It’s a room I abandoned so long ago.

It’s been lingering for a while
I just haven’t noticed.
Listening to the old playlists does that to you, I guess.
But the memories flood back.

The messages, the voicemails, the questions-
What’s your favourite hat? What’s your favourite bean?
Questions I’ve asked you, my love.
And I’m sorry
But I’ve asked them before.
With different answers, from a very different man.

At first it was a trickle
Nothing major, just drops.
And then the tune played
Over and over

The floodgates opened, and memories poured down upon my brain
Knives and scraps of steel and alcohol mixed with the water
His name
Over and over
A name I’ve tried so hard to forget
And then tried so hard to bludgeon when I couldn’t.

It’s 3am.
And now I recall all the names.
Everyone I’ve lost, every single name that could break me.
Every single one.
Now I know what living with regret feels like
Now I know what it feels like to be broken
Now I know what it feels like to die,
Just a little bit inside, every day.

Now I know pain.
Now I know life.

They just don't understand, do they?
They don't see it.
The grace in your profession.

How you slide up the pole like a snake,
And come down like a ballerina on pointe,
And finish with a flourish,
Legs apart, arms wide, and wings brandished.

I watched you dance for flustered men who begged at your feet,
I watched you tease,
I watched you play with their fantasies,
And rip them apart like paper.

It may have been for a split second,
A fraction of a split second,

But I salute you.

Why?

Because of all the memories I had in Thailand,
You're the one I remember most vividly.

You've accomplished, in a fraction of a fraction of a second,
Something I have been trying to accomplish
Year after year,
School after school,
Lover after lover.

To be remembered.

You accomplished, in a fraction of a fraction of a second,
What I couldn't accomplish in 18 years.

I salute you.
I salute you.
I salute you.

It’s 2:38am in the morning
Why I can’t sleep, I don’t know.
I usually sleep earlier than you do.

I feel the poetry spill from my fingers
Onto the keyboard
And slip through the crevices in the keys
As I stare at the tiny, ever-spinning
Rainbow pinwheel of death

I’m grabbing at my nightgown
Because, in my boredom
I’ve set my hair into curlers.
I don’t exactly know what’s the point
But whatever man

Poetry.
Why do I write poetry?
It’s a pastime. A hobby.
Something to organise my thoughts when they’re as messy as my hair when we drive through the countryside and you roll down the windows to give me some fresh air
Away from the city

I’m tired, baby.
And I can’t sleep with the demons whispering sweet, lonely, empty nothings into my head.
Why won’t they let me sleep