Listen...

at least...

at...

the end of the day...

I learnt this:


I'm the type of person who

can have everything he wants in the world,
everything (yes, you)

But will jump to give it all up
in one second,
one ****** second,

all for the sake of adventure.


Take that as you wish.

God,
for some of us it takes a long while,
      doesn't it? Voices
stunted from first primal primordial scream, ***-slap
      at birth, howls at the moon
in silent chest-beats when no longer an embryo
      looking,
at it, the sky, awe plastered onto face-canvas,
      suddenly you're a poet   but
God,
for some of us it takes   but a long, long   while
      for anything,
if anything,
      to be born from our ever-screaming
primal primordial airless silent empty
      ***-slap mouth-breath hand-wrought
song
      to sing, to be sung
to sing,
      to sing
                   to sing
                               to sing
                                           to sing.

Google tells me it's an eight hour time difference.


Already absent,
my heart already fonder
for memories we hadn't been able to make yet.
Time is slow. You can sleep, then wake up.
Because of that: I haven't even bat an eyelid yet.

Unblinking in these unholy stretches
of distant poetry where I am God, I  
watch our oblivious universe. Make something of it.
Fashion us a happy ending, if you will.

But you're there, and
I'm here.
So...


                               ...would you mind

                               if we talked

                               about infinity...

                                                               ...tonight?


Google tells me it's an eight hour time difference,
so tonight is meaningless to you.
You see the sun, I see the stars.
But who can say
one of us is more blind than the other?

Who is to say what is wrong
and what is right,
when we live in a world
where I, Romeo
and you, Juliet
can commit suicide
when it's both day and night?

Such things are preposterous...
even more so than I pretending to be God
with my pen of hormones and heartbreak...
Who am I to think that I could  possibly... make something of it.
Or fashion us a happy ending, if you please.

I am mere, and powerless before the rotations of the Earth
just as I am powerless to my impulse
to click the refresh button
over any one of your profiles,
thinking it's somehow better to read 'About Me,'
then to ask about you.


Refresh.


Google tells me it's an eight hour time difference,
and neither Romeo or Juliet are dead.
Though they never lived as nothing more than characters;
we are people. You and I are not tragic concepts;
we are merely circumstance to
an arbitrary mixture of romance films, evolutionary biology-
all subject to the Earth's curvature, the Sun's shadows,
and the mocking Moon's stolen light. Simultaneous.

But because I am self-aware
I can be the **** of my own jokes
rather than the ****-end
of God's lonely, bored cigarette...

...It always has to end with
depressing existentialist philosophy,
doesn't it? More reflections or rejections
of purpose or meaning
of heaven and hope
or whatever will close the golden gates
of happiness to me. It just always
has to end that way, even though I'm not a French writer...

... I could still romance you with my words
and hold you as comfortably as I could my favourite book.
Not too tight. Not too loose. Lightly, effortlessly-
that's how it felt
to kiss you Goodbye
and all of that jazz.

And now after all that, the blues.


Refresh.

He lingered on in the cold,
her voice to his ear;
saving him
from the frostbite of a lonely earth.

All on her own,
all on that phone,
he heard her soft and
held out to reach her
against the bitter cough
of nature’s cold.

His heart his mind it
beats of it,
thinks of it;
them.
And therefore it,
because of it;

he speaks to sleep then.

Madness. Stark raving madness.
Leaping flames of the mind. Gently licking
at the heart. Blood set on fire, brought
slowly to a boil. Madness. Stark. Raving.
Madness.

The conversation simmered as such:
"Don't be dramatic."

Is this how we go about
pretending we are shocked
when people cut themselves shoot themselves
hang themselves end themselves when
they are told to simmer as such:
"Don't be dramatic."?

Drama is my eye sockets bleeding
heavily at paper-crumbled past midnight.
But of course I cannot do that.
I cannot bring myself to bleed.

Drama is my hands effortlessly
clutching a neck- any neck, I don't care whose-
and squeezing until my eye sockets bleed.
But of course I cannot do that.

Drama is not a breathless exasperation
when suddenly a wave of the same old
same old begs to drown you again
and once again you must pick up a pen
to survive. Darjeeling you
tire me oh so very much. You hate me
oh so very much I think. You...

No, me
and my madness. Stark. Raving.
Madness.

Which I can't let happen again
because apparently dramatic is
being able to barely
take my next breath
and wondering why
respiration in a classroom
should be a mountain climb.

I have never written a single poem
that my lovers could understand.

In truth, all my romantic verse is simple,
self-congratulatory applause

for not falling victim
to the virus of sentiment.


I am a gifted liar.

YOU.


  I.

I enjoy the simple things:


kissing You Goodbye
since that's the only time
when God will let me have You-
when I can't;

the occasional glimpse of this God
when Your skies meet my eyes
since that's the only time
that I'm allowed to have You-
when I can't;

Your hands on my chest
and mine on Your waist
all until the school bell rings-
since that's the only time
that God will let me have You-
when I can't.

Which seems to suggest
that no,
I cannot have You.


No,
I can't.

No,
I won't.


  II.

Once upon a time


when eyes and skies met
and ignored the sounds
of lockers closing
bells ringing
and other people talking-

an invasion would flood our vision.

A friend of Yours', or mine's, hand
would cut across the space between
eyes and skies
and block the exchange of poetry
that I liked to imagine
happened between our souls.

I was perpetually asked:
"Don't you have a girlfriend?"
And perpetually answered:
"Yes, I do. But can't I have friends?"

Then suddenly I understand
what 'perpetually' actually means
when You tell me
that in a few months
You'll be off in some plane
going somewhere
for some reason.

(Question:
is it thus
too soon
or too late
to say that I love you?

(Or do I at all?))

Therefore there was perhaps no choice-
You and I momentarily disappeared
and we momentarily came into existence
in the briefest of
separate deaths
then
singular birth
then
singular death
then
separate births.

Separate all again, perpetually

asked:
"Don't you have a girlfriend?"
Then perpetually
answered
with nothing.


Well,
then I did,
now I do,
tomorrow I won't.


  III.

We are together now.


Sometimes You talk
as if in an expository monologue
in the grandest and most acclaimed of stages.
Sometimes You don't-
and the threatening silence
makes me wonder if I should go, or stay.

I was attracted to the mystery of You
and am also now angered by it:
I have no idea what to do
and often don't even know
what to write.

Prose and verse often fail
when the author has nothing to write of.

(What I'm really saying is:
Do You plan on maybe
replying my messages
anytime soon?
Preferably while we still have
any time left

at all?)

And then, hours, or days
later.
I still have nothing to write of
so I instead write
this.

I also write how

"I will never know what structures
exist in Your mental architecture: You couldn't
bring Yourself to give me
even but a blueprint."


You still won't.


  IV.

Exams are over. School has closed. We near our finale.


Of course what about
those fights that You and I
never had. Perhaps
we should've. Perhaps
we would've. Perhaps
there was no point in anything. Perhaps
there is no point in everything. Perhaps.

See, that's why I asked You
what You thought of Yourself,
Because I too would like to know

Who are You?

But then again...
I've changed my mind
about the end of this...of our...
literature. Let us instead say that

Your eyes are the stuff of poetry,
but look at the title of this-
it's only just... You.
And that's all I want
to talk about today.


But...
we won't.


  V.

I count the days until the airport.


Take note of what I will say tomorrow:
"Listen, for I am…”

The Beast that shouted “I”
at The Heart of The World.

"...a poet missing his muse;
who wished he could have told her,
everything he could think of..."

The Beast that shouted “I”
at The Heart of The World.


Even now,
I can't.

Even now,
I won't.

My mother would rather have me
quietly contemplating worldly nothings
instead of losing my godly everythings
in turn-up bottles tonight. My mother
has learnt too carefully to frame
newspaper tragedies into final family
photographs waiting to happen. Poet,
who drove you home last night and
at what time and why night and
you've gotta realize when you're
taking the whole art thing too far. Poet,
you have to learn how to listen you're
naive you're young you don't know what
life really is. Poet, look at me when I'm talking
to you. Look at me when I'm talking to

Go ahead, listen
to Martha Argerich
play Chopin or Ravel, and then
tell me that words have any meaning-

they don't.

(after Sarah Manguso)

The darkness of your eyes is a curious darkness.
I mean when I close them. Old dances are equal
in distraction, like the shifts in subjects in a song.
That's just the different voice in a choir, I mean.
I mean, I mean to mean: Meaning from the random
statistical patterns of this... "world"? Is it right
to call everything "this"? "World" seems to mean "here" and yes,
with "us". Like the positivists told the scientists, "yes"
this thing with our eyes-- expansive eyes,
microscope eyes telescope eyes large hadron collider eyes mathy eyes
--these eyes are "I". Would I be comfort,
--and yes, the substance of that word and not the action
that entails the substance being a thing that can be
--would you be comforted by the thing that sees
being the thing that sees you as you? Imagine
some other singer singing that no other such thing
exists besides ourselves. Is that comfort? Is that
a person or a poem? Is everything in that the same? Wonder
with me back to empiricism. Knock on the table
and think of it not as Idea (that beneath our own
that we wished to wish). Wonder
with me on this song, back-of-the-envelope
calculated tipsily, alone, at the edge of a party
--okay, the party of (this) life. Wonder
with me, there, here,
always. And open
your throat.

Sea shell sings its whispers. Who knows how
but an ear.
Good music. To where, to how, who knows but
spring ear. It's the sort of song
one tries
not quite
to go to bed with; but before the eye closes there
is the ear. Warm sounds but
water is cold. So late,
so soon, and here. Bottle it. Throw it back.
Throw it. In your hands, a remaining. There, singing
as stone. It keeps itself. Rain for many
years keeps it
going
and it goes
as a palm with its old shape after the fact,
the throwing, the song the song the song the song. Thank you.

MEMORIES OF A PLACE I'VE NEVER BEEN TO.


Let's pretend
that her name
is
was
foreign

'Darjeeling'

like the tea
from a sunny
faraway place
of colour
and taste.


I mean that
this girl
is
was
sweet, spicy

and warm to the lips

like the tea
from a sunny
faraway place
of colour
and taste.

I have this mad dream of getting the Ninth Symphony back onto paper. I want it to scream even louder because I put it in a cage. The cell will be overtly tone-deaf and unmusical in the most obvious of senses but will still roar without complete complacently. After which I will know that I am Man. After which I will know that I am God. After which I will know that I am Me. This is my truest and deepest ambition as a poet.

Well, until tomorrow when her name comes up again: Haha!

Today, we marched, or rather, I watched him,
my friend, next to me dream. Of what futures, I'm not
quite aware. Some orange man has overtook
the american government everyone in their right mind
and heart
cried,
and a square in Boston was filled with lively
dreamers
with placards and gleaming eyes and faces
that said no! not again! A few toddlers
sauntered around the feet of their parents
saying and shouting and muttering and playing
with words and slogans they don't understand
yet in their minds,
maybe their hearts,
in them they know. Next to me my friend grabbed
an abandoned placard and I felt lost. I only
came to watch how the words of the orange man
came alight. I was afraid we would catch flame.
A grey-haired woman had earlier skipped across
the crowd in front of us to show us a different route and
told us useful things- we were fresh I had explained-
and we carefully avoided police but there weren't many.
It was cold. Not the orange man. Somehow we
met my friend's friends and we started a chant
in the crowd below us, perched atop a crumbling
history of a church. Pictures were taken. Instagram.
We dabbed to the beat of Hindu chanting and tambourines.
Muslims prayed towards Mecca beneath Christian statues.
Amazed. I felt a certain emptiness.
Then my friend joked,
'I'll make a social justice warrior out of you too!'
Why am I not angry? The orange man is wrong.
A fool, a jester. Yet our testicles are in his hands.
Sometimes, rarely, I feel a meager sad frightening pressure
between my legs. Some have already been castrated
in confused airports. Accidents of birth have left them
stranded in a great barren womb of this world. What
is a state? A foreign policy? Man? Woman? Child?
How much time do I have left to ***? On whose
face can I do it on? Is the orange man aiming for
mine? Ours? The veiled woman? Is the immigration
counter camera pornographic? What awkward things
to do with one's time. One's body. One's mind.
One's heart.
I am ashamed.
Instead of working, I am thinking. I am lazy.
I spend scholarship money in restaurants
away from the college dining hall so that the noise
around me will be something I cannot recognize.
Still both are the same bubbles of safety. Different
stages of cocooning is all. I am a caterpillar surrounded
by butterflies eating steak and salmon. I am ugly. So ugly.
Nothing beautiful at all.

Don't.

CLASSROOMS.


When eyes meet, lifetimes flicker
into brief birth, in seconds.
They then disappear, switched off
fading from glow as they look away.

And those small daydreams,
memories and ghosts;
diffuse off, dead.
Like momentary winds or clouds
shadowing the sunlight, sweetly.

...or the times I should have
talked to you but didn't.

Instead we had then looked away.

Gatsby's green light was orgastic, unreachable,
distant.
              Mine is a little dot on my chat screen,
also green;

your being in some corner of reality
that, perhaps, is also

                                   looking for stories,
  looking for me.

When I return      I touch the soil
    I used to think so much of the sky     the soil
in my hands how much thirst is there
    I could clutch it and save us all

                     the rain

might spill out of my grandmother's mouth
    if she strains her wheat-dry hands
long enough of all the liquid     blessings
of the church she crossed      again and again
    and the holiness would clear my grandfather's

                   eyes and

                   the rain

would spill out. I travel much
through skies thinking of the soil
the soil looks like earth clay mud
red rock heart
brown stone
cool coal mould
dark black hiding cavity gold
water sold concrete brick houses                            
                    acacia trees
the soil it looks like          me

and the things that made me:

I cannot take you seriously america

what are your bullets supposed to do to me?

And europe?

Your columns? They lean!

      much unlike my grandfather's back.

Have you see the man handle a *****?
     The shovelling he could do? The cows
and goats he can end? The snakes
      that fear him? These are my hands.

Imagine the thought that this soil is not
enough.
      Look at my hands. Look.

                                    What do you perceive?

I see everything. All at once and never.
     And still it is yet

                to rain.

the wine-singing ceases its crescents as the grasses' leaves' small leaves are blown/
by wind. the wind paused by sunrise. airless and plum-coloured. my fire runs grey-dry. i'm drunk./
and well? doesn't poetry arrive here then? imagine my wordliness!: i know things!/
claiming them on some soft days as if the end of time will not yet have happened yet, grand/
as big children in bell-towered schools and the word that is taught to them there. meaning that/
the affront of the word is not something that should compel a throat opening. my throat opens/
without expectation of an other entering. through. and then what if not surprise when they do?/
and after when my tongue turns sarcophagus?: a song?: singing/
black! like mirrors and black! within it saying how here we go again with how the sun did me/
before i was born. how sturdy and taut this sunned-skin is. how apple-mouthed and coffee-bean. here we go again,/
i watch the cars go by my window with great longings of elsewheres. and fear. the red, white and blue flag-flashes,/
passing by glassily and hologrammed in front of me as the question of when, the question/
with the gun, here,/
horizoned./

click. icarus./

Wherein the body is dead
and the mind floats for asylum,
what do the loud knocks expect
upon the door and what shall
the skull
do with such reverberations?

I will always remember you, your
blood just happened there
and my mind was you
all along.

     Have me before
     they take you before
     your black is washed
     away again by histories
     and before the moon
     buries you
     in the nomad opening
     of my tap
     song swallowed
     exquisite and clear
     along my throat. Have me before
     the seasons end and the next
     golden man on screen says
     we must secure our borders
     and soon, instead
     of turning your boats
     away, they will fire
     bold gunpowders, as if
     in another grand campaign
     of their castles
     and silver.

Wherein your mind floats
away and all that is left
of your vanishings is a body:

I will not know what to do with that
but hope for the flood to take us all, arkless.

My eyes are a constant glitter when such dreams
pop up. It's nice to feel that way again, still,
after the endless march of time separates the wheat
from the chaff. Guess which one am I:
the one that doesn't get exported, which makes sense
because
My eyes are a constant glitter when such dreams
pop up. It's nice to feel that way again, still,
after the endless march of time...

And what exactly is that glitter?
Stars? Ghosts? Memories?
Or the final flicker of a bedroom light bulb.
Or the last swipe of now-dark screen.
Or a distant goodnight from chaff to
wheat; fertile land to barren desert, yet

still planting himself to the irrigated seas
of Spring, where burning sun was still growth
and when one looked forward to growing up
like this.

Winter has never felt so warm.

Nor wheat and chaff so warm
and and
like the thoughts of you and me.

Knowledge is such: even
if you know that
something is true it will
hurt nonetheless. Acceptance is not

freedom

from hurt. It is
something else that hurtles in the sky,
something else completely.



I love myself.

I am the expanse of purposeless selves before me,/
summated like the stickily-shaded colours under/
a calculus-course curve, whose trajectory marks me across one axis/
to the next, just as I am the small drops of cloud squashed/
into one another as an ocean I now glare at, whose sands/
meeting the horizon are later stewed into the clearer edges/
of a mirror so that this glare may continue. There was a myth of a man/
who projected himself into a pool of water until he thinned away/
into anorexias of young girls with camera phones pointed/
towards their white faces. Snakes eat their tales sometimes./
Narcisuss is a poet. White girls are poets. I've swallowed them all/
into my large black mouth. When I speak: soft-spoken integrations,/
meagre, selfless, hollow-- filled with stagnant historical airs formatted/
cleanly now on a word-processor-- while my hand reaches across my navel,/
bored, digging: then a birth there as my spine cracks across my bedsheets/
with my lamplight flickering as candles once did,/
and shadows wall-dancing with the idea of ancient meanings/
now lost but never once there, self-defining, self-signifying, self-pointing,/
self-shaking self-but-not-self./

I'm a tea-boy. You're a coffee-girl.
I leave my tea bags in for so long
that the steam-water turns heavy

and black

like the coffee you love. But
you takes yours with milk.


...


I don't.

HIM, LOOKING AT HER.


She is subtle.
A face hidden behind an iPad;
Only silent eyes are left-

they speak:

-my world is here.
i choose here, i hide here,
i like here.
see it shines?

-my world is here.
pictures picture pictures
the river my news feed;
a status a raindrop;

-my world is here.
and we are the cloud:
condensing, condensing, collapsing
relaxing, relaxing, relapsing

-my world is here.
so send me a message  here
don’t look at me…they're watching
     send me a message

please.

-my world is here.
i choose here, i like here,
i hide here.
so why…
    
...why do i keep looking at you?

outside.

From a distance,
planets look just like particles:
you can't see them.

So when I disappear
into the edge of the sky,
maybe

we won't orbit each other
so much.
Maybe

you'll sleep without my
gravity
while knowing how small

I am,
but still a small
part of you

like a particle
which might be or have been
a planet.

Tired.

I had been able to close my eyes for a bit and even went as far as letting the blanket of black envelop me. Strangely, it had held me like no one didn't. In short, I was alone. But this time, content with being so: I could finally enjoy the voice inside my head.

And then tomorrow, once a concept that didn't exist, existed once again. Then my chest began to hurt. Exam sadness was setting in. It was thus the time to write insincere essays and meaningless equations. All for a certificate that will say I am qualified for something. For what, I do not know. All I know that I was once able to smile...not too long ago.

I said goodbye to my blanket of black and said hello to my gentle heart attack. And afterwards I logged onto more emptiness on a screen: dreams and seens. I didn't, I don't, understand anything yet. All I know is that I am suddenly not a child anymore.

A GOODBYE MESSAGE.


When the last girl broke my heart, I had died a romantic
-Shakespeare was getting old anyway.
Sleepless and young, I withered a while
And tireless sweat formed dewdrops on my skin
-I see you.

Wait,
what I meant to say was...
I died for nobody's sins
and came back for nobody's hopes...
nobody's hopes but mine.
Hoping
that I could and can still see you.

No.

I don't agree with the opening line
-it really has nothing to do with her.
What I'm trying to say,
What I'm trying to say...

Is that it's better we talk over the phone.

See the last time I broke my  heart, I had died a romantic
-I thought Shakespeare was getting old;
But it was really me of course.
But God you look so timeless right now
-I can still see you dancing in that dress (right now).

And the turns of your heels are kaleidoscope
-You shift from one dress to the next.
Or is that just a way of saying
That my inner clock is a slideshow of you?

I had died a romantic
and was reborn a realist,
and I'm very, very lucky
Because there's nothing...
nothing that's realer than you.

Though

what I' mean and I'm trying to say...
what I mean and I'm trying to say...
is that it's better we talk over the phone...
that I like it when we're on our own.

Goodnight Darjeeling.

Promotion counter with free drinks.

Pretty white Italian girl, costumed, with saucer.

My hands are empty.

I go.

The man at the counter, costumed, I ask him:

How much for a shot?

He says it is free.

May I I say?

I don't know he say.

Why not I says.

I don't like black men.

Why not.

You know why.

I don't.

I get the shot.

                            We laugh.

I get the shot.

                            We laugh.

I get the shot.

                            I hear

the others are looking for me outside.
                          
                                                                ­           I'm sorry:

                             I hear

my friends: are looking

                                                        ­                  for me

                                                            ­              outside.    

I drink the shot.

I laugh I drink the shot I wait in line I type on my phone while the others my friends wait for me god the line they are waiting for me while I type on my phone while they are waiting I am the only one here how can it be what an awesome place this country is what songs what statues what music what marble what ******* people that push in front of you in the drinks line I like this song a European house music remix of the song I know ******* ******* ******* ******* ******* ******* ******* ******* ******* ******* ******* ******* are these:

the types of songs You wanted me to sing to say that this is my skin and so is the Muse happy now?

Night Lights.


At midnight her heart, a vulnerable spark,
looks for some warmth for fire.

There is something warm, warmer than herself;
something to keep her alight.

She speaks in shortcuts; '***!'s and 'LOL!'s,
and in pictures; smileys and stickers...

Hoping he will  love her quicker;
Hoping he will love her at all.

But at midnight a heart, vulnerable spark,
is tired of looking for fires.

There is nothing warm, warmer than herself;
nothing can keep her alight.

She'll fizzle and freeze into cold blue hues
and shortcuts and pictures will fade...

But he had just loved her slowly;
In hoping she'd love him at all.

I.

In a world made of glass
I am your home
and you have begun
to throw stones...

...because maybe you forgot
that you can still see the world outside
without breaking me.

Not only that,
but your home had a door.


II.

Science says, that as glass, you will do a number of things
to my white light.
Let us assume then, that you are prism.
Let us also assume that it is a coincidence
that 'prism' rhymes with 'prison.'

Regardless:

When I go through you, my white light
will scatter
into a rainbow. While together
we are momentarily beautiful...
...one cannot help but wonder
about my sacrifice.

I've been torn apart into different colours.
No longer myself.
Just so you could have this poem.

With the possible exception of one person, I tend to leave people worse off than when I met them. Sometimes in small ways. Sometimes in big ways.

The big ways are getting more often and I think my heart-growth is stunted.

I'm worried.

You are so tiny but so large.
Many oceans you carry in your bloodstream.
More than I can ever hope to witness.

Even the tears forming on the very edges
of the pinkness of my eyelids cannot touch them.
And you've always been so gifted. So much so

that knowing you becomes gift in itself. So much so
that even the tears forming on the very edges of the
pinkness, the once grey pinkness of my eyelids

speak now, with rain-drops. Pattering metaphorically
into your heart. I can't even bring myself to read
the whole of your goodbye message before rain-drops
become floods.

Congratulations, you did the one thing that
not a single one of my adolescent girlfriends could ever do:

You turned me into a cloud on the very edge
of turning playgrounds into cemeteries.

And still those will not be oceans, Little Girl.
Even when you say goodbye to me-
I have nothing of my own to wade in as you
drift, drift, drift,
and never sink

in the mad richness of your effervescent soul.

Little Girl, you remind me of how I used to be
and I am not even an old man yet.

You remind me that there's hope in this big, big world,
Little Girl.

And you thought you didn't matter.

God lit us into life
and enjoyed us for just over seven days-
when clouds were still white puffs of sweet nicotine
and a volcanic eruption was just another blaze
in a series
of ***** inhalations.

But then God coughed his lungs out
and realized that Humanity is a cancer
which divides uncontrollably into a collective
body without a head to control it; a cancer
that insists on tar-

-ring its own pathways
along pre-existing pathways
of life-giving oxygen
(cities replace forests just as
carbon monoxide replaces oxygen
in red blood cells' haemoglobin).


...Evidently, the pleasure of her eyes was not enough,
so you sought for some clouds and volcanoes.
But then again, the absence of that same pleasure was what
drove you to become God in the first place.

We laugh
at the racism
of our parents
like it doesn't secretly exist
between us.

How else, does
1964
become
1994
become
2014
while staying the same?

Stagnant freedoms.

.              how disapproving. to hear chords as yours,
I thought how clean as a viola;
               well, then as smooth as looking through a person.
I thought this blackness was opaque.
               so why sunlight through my ears when I hear
your ******* like water through a straw:
               notice: in my country, drought-heavy
cow-full, dust-bowled, bare-footed, large-
               accented-- skinny-boyed, big-thighed sauntering
girls-- what words: girls, boys-- notice:
               in my country water is desperate and
mottoed. we sing for it as god. when it
               rains mothers cry. your ******* is a waste
of water and a waste of my skin. transparent.

(o lightskins!: post-colonial nymph-paragoned
sibylline demigoded golden Greek-statued heroes--
               how full of **** y'all are!

and I Hephaestus...)

This morning I figured:

(1) The reason I'm so thin is because sadness kills my appetite; I'm a love poet.

(2) I keep thinking about how, in order to complete the aesthetic of a damaged artist, I need even longer and even messier hair and a never-ending supply of cigarettes. I want to be the black Albert Camus.

(3) I'm obviously very, very bored because I've never smoked anything in my life.

Museum. Utter me as wind
with mouth-*****. Consent
to it as deer in headlights, smacked
all up on the floor, smacked
give me some more. Head
-crash gorgeous a finish. Love.

Drink we me! Regale me
with song! Breathily
transform me as seed
and meter. Ruin me
as ancient crumbling
tower. Marble. Pose
in certain frame and
snap and post as private
adventure. Swallow.

There are days when I feel like letting my bathroom tap run open and then crawling up into my adjacent bed-sheets. My room and its impersonal bathroom aren't water-tight so I obviously wouldn't drown.

But I do like to imagine that I'd disappear for a bit.

There were words once.
Meant to be heard and said across
various distances, sometimes
an eternity, seemingly, continents
pushed together into one, sometimes
a whisper, momentary, finally, lips-
they say things that very often mean
nothing. Nothing she says. What's wrong he asked.
Many things. Nothing at all. You press play
and something sings in your ears and you
wait for another flight to somewhere.
Nowhere feels everywhere at once, always,
which is why we built these planes. Sometimes
out of paper. As a child I did those things.
Watched how they gleamed across the tops
of my eyes- never too far they went.

Memories are blurry.
Feelings are not.

I do not know what to think of this
when I think of you.

The scene is a certain school courtyard, full of certain adolescents. Boys and girls are criss-crossing haphazardly and are bustling about, caught up in their respective little lives. They go in, out, from and to their tiny and certain daily adventures.

A certain boy and a certain girl look at each other as they walk; their eyes meet.


CERTAIN BOY:

When I look at a girl in the eyes, I imagine both of our lives up until the singular moment of iris and iris, me and her. I imagine us somewhere in the beginning of a little chick flick movie of sorts.  Or the starting line of a flowery poem. Or the prologue of some great literary novel... Though that moment of pupil and pupil is the first ****** in our mini romantic comedy.

I can see the whole story being laid out:

The nervous greeting, the fruitful giggling, the blossoming smile. Then the shy hand-holding, warm hugs, the sweet first kiss, the ***** grab and tag and rustle in whatever shadowy make-out spot in the school. Followed by commitment, sentiment,  "I like you"s , "I need you"s,  "I miss you"s, "you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life and I don't wanna lose you"s and finally- "I love you"'s.

And then of course the inevitable bored, lifeless, un-innovative, sad, miserable, heartbreaking and mundane conversations that happen once the mysterious honeymoon period disappears. The under-appreciation and the desperation and perhaps some cheating, but more likely to be found is loneliness.

This then ends in a 'break' or break-up, which are essentially the same thing.

However that may not be the end just yet, they might just get back together. Maybe. Maybe not. But no one has that much time to worry so... On to the next big thing.

But-

I can already see that whole story being laid out:

The nervous greeting, the fruitful giggling, the blossoming smile. Then the shy hand-holding...


CERTAIN GIRL:

Why... why is he looking at me like that?


End of scene.

when i was about thirteen years old and had the beautiful luck of discovering that hip hop music wasnt all so bad and could actually be called music and was really living poetry and had little touches of jazz and wow i like that beat it doesnt have to be all about *** drugs and women but its okay if it is because at least it can actually be music i happened to notice kanye wests ever so important message of dont listen to anyone trying to bring you down and thought o thats a really ever so important message i should keep fighting and keep or start fighting something so i guess now thats writing and i supposed ive been doing that ever since but now i find it kinda funny that the message the ever so important message of dont let anyone ever bring you down dont listen to them theyre haters suddenly turned into dont listen to anyone and i think thats more than slightly tragic sorta like how i told myself for a long time that id always have everything about me together still at thirteen and that i wouldnt ever touch a girl at high school but gosh ive touched more than a girl so i wonder what was up with little me and whats up with sorta big me and if thats more than slightly tragic how id always wanted everything about me to be together in some tightly knit structure but never could never could fit until i joined debate and learned how to put coherent arguments onto paper and then speech and then started winning trophies but more importantly attention and affirmation that yes im important and interesting and love me exclamation mark exclamation mark exclamation mark exclamation mark exclamation mark exclamation mark exclamation mark exclamation mark love me love me love me more than i love myself or loved myself ive always loved myself i think anyhow debate taught me a bit about structure and soon my ink bloodied all over the notebooks debate points that adventured all over the amazing lands margins i mean of my paper learnt how to be put in tightly placed lines that sometimes had horizontal arrows pointing out links between one piece of evidence to the next then one day while i was speaking well actually afterwards more than one person asked me what happened to the old me i used to have this special fire on the podium an untouchable energy spirituality youth exuberance passion exclamation marks times infinity and i told them that i was just trying to me more calm and logical and better and perfect and now i think thats more than slightly tragic but really more funny because now that i learnt how to put myself into a box i discovered again that i cant ****** fit what the hell so now im trying to write without any grammar or punctuation marks in order to get my heart out of my skeleton and my blood out of my veins and my being out of my body and maybe dissolve into the universe and be

Siesta in darknesss. The sunlight disappears to the clouds.
I could wonder hazily from one step or street to the next
yet feel unfurnished and empty. Walk through me.
A bash to the shoulder and some books fall, I'm sorry.
These magicians flutter past as I blink unthinking
and there is the joy of the thoughts glittering:
But I am tired, so, so tired.

It's not my job to give answers.



Yet.

finally came home from kgale hill and a weekend with my baby cousins and my head is throbbing throbbing throbbing heart is sobbing sobbing sobbing have i always wanted to become that good like all those big people or is this a recent thing i do not know i stare at peoples poetry like how the hell did you write this and not me and i even do it with big established dead people  like ts eliot who i used to spell like ts elliot until everyone kept correcting me including google chrome spellcheck

AN INBOX.


I watched our brief memories shatter before my face,
          and wondered

About our inherent chaos and implicit shapelessness;
         crying now

Before me. I meet grey scars in your heart-broken eyes,
         cataracts,

Singing a siren’s song that drags me to drown with you-
        I hate you

For bringing me back…my head had just broken through your waters…
       I miss breathing…

                                      ...so, so much.

It started snowing recently: my first thought:
let me go skip along the ice-encrusted glass,
let me make a snow-angel: my second thought:
let me go skip along the frost-covered pathways
let me slip and fall and fall and crack my skull.

I'm not angry I'm calculable. I'm a fathom.
That phantoms
are things that people would wish in themselves
alludes me.
We can talk past midnight and our hairs will grey
and our all else will dust. But if the brain remains
then we will have achieved something. And with a computer, too--
as if that time Jesus ascended-- we can travel somewhere
that is not a country and it won't be strange, it will not be
new. It will be as the same thing as everything else has always
been: chance, calculable, a fathoming-- something called for a while
ago by that first big thing with all the light, that first wiggling thing
splitting into two (I skipped a few seconds), that fish
walking, that ape talking

this. Will you
talk to me as if called for? It is not hard. It is any
such kind of speech. You open your mouth,
a sound.

I would
I wish
I could
I must

I cannot.

Though, if not,
may I have only
this last glance?

Glimpses into dual starlight, twinkling
milky effervescence with
rings

Of infinite, sonorous brown, towards
deep black holes which
cling,
        
To these imagined night skies,
          I utter my utter soft words
The sun in my closed eyes,
          I dream a dream of stars and hurt


Your skies have met my eyes.