Neon lights
In the city at night
Dark red lipstick
Painted on full lips
Dancing bodies
Writhing to the rhythm
Colorful cocktails
Sipped slowly
Piercing emerald eyes
Enchanting hearts
Meticulously manicured nails
On delicate fingers
Beckoning you

Step by step, tyranny
Tease me rough without laches
At least don't leave me in your protean arms, dissembled in activism
In my forged memoir of your laughing, your kauch killing me not
My katzenjammer can handle your astute Aesop's words and wanton
A lullaby to remember, an anxious feeling?
Pick me up at the open-sesame street
Lacunae, propitious, wasted by the remonstration and impertinence
This is my land of thought full of moral desert, in confidence
I am Tyler Durden's wasted brother in arms by namesake

I don’t know how we changed,
and when

I can’t remember the first time we kissed
or the first time we - well.
but I remember the first time you told me where you were living next year
and the second time
and the third.

you picked the right moment to meet me, or was it just chance?
that the club was closing but there was still time for one dance

and I only had one ciggie left but you didn’t mind sharing
and you knew where the after party was and you didn’t mind sharing

I have to stop seeing techno boys
Because I think that it’s meaningful when really I’m just high
on the music.

I really want to talk to you about how crazy it is that the light hitting the Earth right now is billions of years old
or maybe just how my day went because I’m not a Tumblr post

we’re sitting in the pub with two drinks between us like a moat
and I really want to tell you something
but I CAN'T because you're talking
about where you're going to be living
next year.

or what you study at uni & last week's pub crawl
you say all these words and you just say **** ALL

but I just smile and filter you out
because in the end I know there’s no doubt
that we’ll go home tonight and go through the motions
& in the morning you’ll leave to ‘charge your phone’

I’m kidding I’m kidding take me seriously, please
not that I care but it means the world to me

because the person you are in my head doesn’t match up
to the boy sitting in front of me on a ****-up

I think that I'm realising I’m in love with MY love
and it’s impossible for you to ever measure up

(but anyway you were kinda setting yourself up to fail)
(when you spend the whole date talking about trainer resales)

so I guess this is a break-up - if we even warrant that -
cause I know we won't speak if I don't text back

and then in three months, I’ll run into you again
and I’ll wonder how we changed,
and when.

Honey-flowing rivulets of jazz-beaten syncope,
Trumpets blowing smoke across the room,
‘Curveball’ Sammy hustles bass behind the bar,
Snares his songbird in a played back loop.

Harlem shufflers work the floor, breaking safe,
Clave rhythm scufflers with a New York twist,
Black keys write with borrowed brass on iv’ry walls,
Pick the lock on a swelt’ring southern riff.

I walked alone that night,
Uphill through the snow.
And when I arrived at the place
Not a single face did I recognize.
I got a beer and sat around,
Looking down so it wouldn't seem
Like I was staring.
The ice in my frozen nerves
Became blacker than the roads
Outside that I drove here on.
And this is why I wish I
Was truly dangerous. No one
Would ignore me, yet nobody
Would venture too close. I'd
Be an animal in a zoo.
But instead I'm a scared,
Lost puppy stuck in a
Land of lions and snakes.
But I poker-faced it so when you
Finally arrived, the little
Loud part of me crying for a
Place and body and mind
I could love instead of
Loathe withered away. Or
So I thought. I ought
To know better by now.
All it took was another
Chance not taken, and
I lost all the chips again.


-
by Aleksander Mielnikow

Techno beat
Ecstasy
Negligible happiness

Mind free
Curves
Circles within a frame

Crashing
Bashing stools
Ranch and fries

Appearance
Corn starched face
Blank expression

Back to Jack
Melted ice
Painful decadence

Blinking middle age
word ***** is everywhere
Diagnose the flu