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 suppose that's how they live,
like suicides. I dream often of them
without this body. I resent
this creaking, of course, but you
once looked at me in that way
I wanted. When I look long ago enough
sometimes you still speak. It's the heights
and the grey that gets to me. The stairs,
and the stares I give down to them
when climbing more floors. This cocooning,
I wonder it. Its ending.
To leap undiscovered for a few seconds
and flutter. Couldn't.
I'm living. The child's pretty silence
of match-playing, that light, that living, that
no-reason of everything looking
like this at all: this strange
clicking, the pulls of the iris,
the lens-widening, the swallowing
blackness the center of a looking that
I once thought was new. Like it,
the skyscraping growth of any tree
deciding against earth, I look pretty.
And short.

Awakes, crack of dawn, morning
breath. Mouth opens, wonder
what sound  made first by it.
Song.

What are they re-
constructing
from the brain waves inside you.
They say they
can
from the electric signals singing in you,
translate it
and put it up, and then the hot fuzz
appears on a screen
and it is pretty close.

I do not trust the hot fuzz at all. It is not
an image. It is
not me, it is not
what I am seeing. It is
not.

Song, give me the words to destroy myself. Not this
body, this broken music that wishes only for my peace. Why not
the lightning of genius instead? The cool stare of the man
as lover, loving me. As flower,
instead we mirror-look. Mirror as water:
with water, flowers; within water, bodies; within water,
the girl. She has no words. What singing she has
is this body, is this thing I do not want, is this air,
is the address I flare to you. So, to me. She is the genius.

Reindeer
     scuttling through snow:

these
were presented to us
kids
     scuttling through sand

in lands where rain is scarce.

idontknow

My feet smell the deliciousness of long Thanksgiving. O! plain footsoles
wandering about carpet-jailed stairs like violin strings'
gravity encircling a soul. Hum a-long enough and you can conjure whole
oceans in my eyes, whole masses of water that don't exist
where we were born (hey, landlocked love). Outside in New England it
sometimes snows.
Today it rains.
Anyway, I am a magician. Look here. Can you see
our landlocked love from the shore it does not
have? Like the Pilgrims
finding Indians not from India,
I find me
not from me but from these smiles, our people, these feet,
sinking and stinking of some small peace and walking sockless
up and down a small warm home. And tomorrow,
Harvard again, and someone has snapped my wand
and killed the sparkling airs of incantations I had.
But wait! Isn't this proof of a person who was once
something not transplanted, but rooted earthily into a couch
as brown dancer? I'm waiting for movies
and the seizures of memory there as our minds' own lenses,
and that empty feeling here remembered as good enough reason
to greet us, draw further breaths, comb curls, chew and walk and talk
of the cold outside (waiting endlessly for the landlocked sun), and talk
of the bitter pinpricks of our still-life skin.

I don't write love songs no more
You then ask what is this for
I said that I really don't know
But either way would you come home
                               come home
                                                       come home
                                                            ­        
....Yeah yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah....

Baby I got it and no not ironic
The way that I see you go way past the logic
All of the girls in they summer dresses
Got me rappin' without none of the stresses

Blessings on blessings I'm countin' them: Chance
Sonnets to hip-hop that modern romance
Fly me to China, I teach you Setswana
Drinking that wung zai 'cause batho ra tshwana-

Pink: pretty girls like trap music
Think: of who got dat music make movements-
That's me, that's real, any other nig gotta deal
got 'em feels, give 'em tissues, take no issues, under heel-

Step on 'em: let 'em know that I'm only one
Tell on 'em: got the screenshots say I'm the one
Did on 'em- right **** I hit 'em with dat beat
Pretty picture model sisters never follow though like you

See I got you boo
Like no one else luh you

Some people want it all
But I just want you

Yeah, I got you boo
Like no one else luh you

I also got dem views- and ****-
all of dem views's you


                                              *

What was the joke that we thought was so funny?
Can I hear it again? Can it touch me at night
and make me feel again?

I have this nasty habit of doing what I want.

Southern hospitality. Biscuits. The delicious
slur of various r's
into meandering sense-making
when mouths open, blonde-wide and
future-fat heavy. I love this. Then
all of a sudden in some history the r
goes hard, ******.

I was scrubbing toilets for
money, then
a rhythm came upon my head
"da-da duh-da-duh da-duh duh" then
the smell of *****, yellow brine.
Later, when I think to send you
the poem it came from, I think of the discovery of it
"From a magician's midnight sleeve"
                     and the way that we read. And
I think of the toilets I scrubbed, and the words
hidden there lost in all the little flushes, like
everything happening outside my window now: I ran
and ran in the thunder. I am still soaked; home is so far.

Before-

my life is
a waiting list for a dream

-deferred.

The window creates a square on the red carpet. This is the sun.
It is not in space. It is not even alive. My eye is though,
breathing heartlessly, it attends to each as bean-sprout
splitting earth. As the young ways we were taught to grow
in science classes. The dying of it when I watered it
too much. There is too-muchness everywhere. With you
my watering magiked a desert. The sky
is good today, so good that it has even created its own
on a carpet. The teacher's foot steps there.

I am no good at talking to things that are not myself.

The crystalline brown of my eyes sings certain songs.

And my coffee breath makes such certain impressions on the mirror.

And my coffee skin makes such certain impressions on the mirror.

In the former case, that mirror is me.

In the latter case, that mirror is you.

I have no idea of how I see myself, or how I should see myself.

But I know how you do. I know your lisps, your staggers, your stares.

And the way you vibrate sometimes to see someone such as me.

"The **** is wrong with you", I say to no one in particular being myself.

But I would scream it to the world at large if they would listen.

And yet the sounds would carry to no where but to some gaze of me.

That glint of me in your eyes.

That glint of you in mine.

And we are not talking at all.

We are only kissing ourselves by looking.

We do not know how it tastes.

(What happens when you give a monkey a mirror?)

I feel like an unnecessary pause. In the grand poetry of the universe.

I hesitate to talk to you afterwards
because I'm not in the mood
of insulting your intelligence

with excuses or love songs
or whatever else.

You wanted the truth so now here it is:
I want you to **** me up.

I want you to eat me alive
and tear me up and
rip out all my pages
and then struggle to glue them back together knowing
that you probably won't try because -oh!..-  there's another page.

Open me.

End my being with your marginalia.
Write on my skin with ink if you have to,
but stain me. Stain me
with your negligent splashes of volatile
explosions of how your name tastes on your tongue.
Show me what it is to cry until you cry out blood
off of your throat. Let me know  
why your vivid hair always curls like that
without your permission. Tell me that I don't need
your permission to do the same to you
because everyone says my hair isn't combed
and you say you can't see the difference when it is so
bite me.

Bite me.


Bite me.



Bite me.





Tear apart whole chunks of my flesh until
you have had your fill. Smile that smile
that smells its smell of blossoming blood
like a poppie that decided to implode outwards.
Do it so that Faust is not even a second too late
to offer us his bargain because we were eons
ahead of him. Do it so that I understand why
you called me a hurricane. Am I your disaster?

Take me to your hell. Your eyes
excite me and I want to know why.
We should burn out violently.
Not be put out. Not gently.

Yes.
In the silence I don't grab you.
Next time I might.

THE SCIENCE SECTION IN THE LIBRARY.




Why is it hard?

To suggest to me, you;
that I do not love you,
as Einstein and Newton
glare at us from their spines,
in truth and in shelves,
here?


Because when months pass you’ll be both here and not here
like a creeping silhouette: a black cat in shadow
-though within the boundaries of bookcases
instead of inside some sad quantum box.

Because when I am here, you will always let go
again of my hand or may not. Regardless,
I begin to notice- the bookcases expand…
…leaving space for more spines to glare at me.


Stupid, stupid questions;
curious, unanswerable.


Why is it that

I will then hear your name,
as rusting papyrus
is turned by young fingers
crossing yellowed ruins,
for truth in these shelves,
here?


Because today passes; you‘re both here and not here
like how light makes your tired iris amber-
by absorption of all visible rays but one,
which when reflected, leaves the rest forgotten.

Because when I am here, you will always let go
again of my hand or may not. Regardless,
memory is vacuum; you won’t hear me choking
in the Brownian motion of reality.


Thus the library is such
an awkward place to break up




*T.W.T Mulalu

Sometimes my mother forgets that the traffic lights turn green.
When this happens the other cars pile up behind my back-seat
until I get round to turning my head away
from the window and tell her that the robot isn't red.
Truth be told she does this with her heart songs too.
They suddenly burst into being after past events
pile up and honk their horns and pound on her steering wheel and
cry out to me: "What do your headphones sing that my heart can't?"

Today isn't one of those days.

Today is one of the rare days where
my ears are open to hear her say
that my brother's birthday was today.
Today there are plenty of listless drivers
in front of us going to some nowhere
called somewhere. Today we are
behind as somebody else forgets
about colours in front of us and
Mama gently pedals forward
as the gas powered dominoes
fall back to their homes to see
their children.

I don't know how old he would have been
but I would have taught him how to read.

Then this academic high-flier, Little Miss Sunshine, who was very clearly an endless faucet of happiness and fulfilment... she took her own life just a month after getting the exam results of her dreams. In her good-bye note she said she wasn't miserable- and I honestly don't believe that she was- but that, at eighteen years, she was absolutely sure she had had a good life already and didn't want to spoil that with a bad back and divorce.

stars shine and world spins
and we breathe
and air sweet
and I me
and you you
and blue blue
and red red
and purple purple
we breathe
and see
starshine and worldspins

Elle a un certain

je ne sais quoi
je ne sais quoi
je ne sais quoi

que
j'adore.

Mais.

Day happy. Day sweet.
Day sunshine. Day me.
Day you.
Day home soon.

Day was gone.
Day was missed.
Day now seen.

Day glow now.
Day rise on
horizon.

Day still happy. Day still sweet.
Day beautiful. Day still
me. Day still
you. Day still
day.

Day still day.

If I start writing again it'll become real again.

I liked not knowing what to do
and doing it anyway,
without practice, with abandon;
imperfect kissing. Undeserved certainty
laughing out between sharp brace wires.

Did I cut you when I pretended,
for a second, that we were almost,
almost, uninnocent; naked
when I grabbed your leg, then
all of you. Again. Then
again. Then
again.

And then somewhere in that mess of hair,
you breathed
and I thought it was for the first-time
because
that thought made me feel nice,

just like you did.
Again.

is simply to believe
that some thoughts
are so beautiful
that they could not
not be shared.

I.

Same image: Smash a skull, pour out the mush--
isn't that a person? Or is that just some smooth thing
--skin for a jellyfish!
--gummy wrapper!
--used ******!--
that we might have figured as an infant without legs?

II.

Same image: pink-wet brain. Send some
pulses to me. Is it beneath me? This thing
that sings "this thing"? This thing
insisting these words? Persisting
in carpal-tunnel clicking wrists, knowing
itself by coughing up stuff
I didn't know I had. Send some pulses
in that machine that maps me. And
thinking of jellyfish, of a gummy wrapper,
the ******.

III.

Same image: we kiss.

The Justice League doesn't exist because Superman can't save the world by himself.

It exists so he doesn't have to.

White gleam. Sometimes we cross another biscuit-box
of people tossled opposite towards us. It is much cleaner
than the T in Boston. There is nothing like this in Botswana.

Sing, dance, soliloquy
alone. Audience
is excess and-

the universe's applause is worth
more
than the standing ovation of any
Man.

It hasn't even been a month yet but
I look at pictures of you sometimes
and wonder what it means to forget.

Then the emptiness comes back.

I.

I am surprised at how simple it is.

When I first met the girl we were staring at each other across five metres of party space, ***** and blue light. It felt good.

Her number; I somehow managed it.

A week later I clear the trash and toss the unshelved books into my wardrobe and stumble off far away to buy some new bedsheets, they smell clear and clean. My desk is empty and few and neat and is everything my own head never feels like-- she arrives from her elsewhere about five minutes after this thought and we’re here, she puts her bag down, we go to the art museum, we go to the other art museum too but it’s closed, we look at each other the whole time and I don’t really register the paintings, we come back to my room and then stumble across each other’s bodies on my bed and she gives little butterfly moans and kisses in short puckery bursts. It is nice. It is simple.

II.

With the other girl we drink. There’s a secret society that I’m a member of somehow-- would you like to go with me to some party? Yes.-- and we drink. The floor is wood and aged with the fact and feet of so many dead men who didn’t look like me and wouldn’t have me here--and her too, her hair took a great deal of fuss even if it didn’t look that way-- but we drink. She wants to dance, she says, but I can’t dance so I drink. There’s something calling so she drinks. I am scared of being boring so I drink. She is scared of something else, probably work, she drinks and I’m scared for her work too, I drink, but what about me, I drink, she drinks, we drink, we kiss. I waited before it. I looked at her before sometimes but nothing, it couldn’t be simple, it isn’t allowed. We’re both so busy. You have nice eyes. Sometimes we work together. Yes, I’m funny. I’m glad you think I’m funny, too. Stop that. No. I can’t. Okay. I can. Can this be simple? We drink and kiss in the secret society and the wood creaks under us and our bodies and the other guys think I’m cool now, I guess. When it comes to snow I’ll walk her back to her work and we’ll mildly do this again. And again. Another time, too, we drink. And then we won’t, because it’s not simple. I want to have fun.

III.

When the morning comes someday I’ll wake up then make-up my bed after leaving it like I’m supposed to and it won’t matter if a girl shows up again. Okay. I don’t feel like going to class, again. Okay. I go to class this time and it’s such a bore compared to the other things that seem to me to be worth doing. Everyone in front of me and around me doesn’t seem to care, too; but they type up their notes and the lecture hall is filled with clicks and clicking and their faces are brighter because of their screens and their expressions are cold and mute. Something feels wrong. Something feels quiet even though the professor keeps talking. It’s really only been, like, ten minutes and my legs start doing the thing, my mind starts doing the thing. I think of how clean and clear my desk is.

Were those your tear drops or just
your temporary diamonds
of gentle morning dew?

You couldn't reasonably expect me
to be able to speak over
your immense silence,

my little flower.

My brain invents a new kind of sadness for me.
I wrap it up in newspaper and carry it
somewhere. Debone it, then grill. Wish
that it could swim, watch it swim
back in me. Certain kinds of meals you cannot share.

Finals season.
        Open fortune cookie.

"Do not fear failure",
        it reads.

I.
//Yum Yum, No Vacation//

Such remarkable running you did there
You look like you're out breath, where is the air
You carried around yourself, air-bending monk
Heaving this way and that like you're in a funk

Yeah, I know, promised to never comment on you or your look
No more, at least to myself, but, baby you shook
Like how you shouldn't be, like someone like me saying 'baby'
Please, I trickled down your throat- gravy

Maybe, if you wasn't lying to yourself, life would be gravy
But then again- my mind is hazy
Maybe, if I'd been more faithful than lately
We coulda ended more stately but that's just a maybe

I like to deal with certainties so if it ain't that physics
I gotta ask why, where and when is it biting me
My space and time aren't hyphenated I'm not prepared to give
Myself away like that- so, can I live?

(Eh, you prolly didn't like me that much anyway
Eh, it doesn't bother me that much anyway
Yeah, writing past that call me Hemingway
Blam, end of a verse just like Hemingway)

II.
//Beach ******, No Vacation//

Oh wow, what weather indifferent is difference
Hello Boston, with your moodiness, how is you feeling?
I'm doing fine cause I'm doing me
Shower with rain and ice, movements in your symphony

Sympathy wasn't no nothing I asked from you
But double negatives ain't mahala so hala with sunlight akuna mathata
Lion King if you really wanna know
Roaring on so bitter with this flow

like

You really gon' try play me out of this Simba
Like Mufasa didn't gift me that rhythm marimba
Whatever homie, they don't even know me
Way they actin' up, they could win a Tony

******- and I thought I wasn't good enough
I'm good, getting out of my dreams, getting out of my seat
Good- like the only house concrete after a huff and a puff
Summer- only time the lyrics get done- sheesh!

III.
//Biking, Frank, Jay, Tyler//

Watch      what you say to me
Watch      pretty clear to me
Tick-tock til' next drop you don't mean none to me
No more if you play me, see

Soft boy, hard heart if need be, breathe
Not just for next stroke, left strokes, knees
Don't get weak, leave ***** sheets hang in breeze
Last whole night b, don't mean I'm happy

Pretty nice problem if you asked him
Little boy playin' 'round Invader Zim, where his friends
at? act   like   you   -   don't care
act? act         -you do-  so scared

Of dying lonely, crying won't be done
Nothing welled in tear ducts since fifteen, no fun, so done
with this shh... where the catharsis
Hamlet complex: the rest is shh... silence

IV.
//Fourth of July- Sufjan//

O, when the crickets clunkered and thundered
I thudded against myself- mind against skull
Bruce Banner in Incredible Hulk, whisper in bulk
Ghost in the Shell, heard sorta mumbled

Skip a few weeks later she breathes on my neck
Same thoughts really I don't like how I see me
I mean, I like myself, I hate my body
Or rather the idea of a body, microphone check:

Can I finally hear myself? Am I still stuck in myself?
Can I get outta myself? Can I please get some help?
I like living and touching and I like what she did there
But imagine if could disappear into universals and share

the same space as numbers and shapes
with none of this creaking and yearning my body it makes
I am a corpse in the making- and so is she
No matter how long we keep at it I am still inside of me

I didn't finish
I didn't finish

I didn't
I didn't

I
I

When the wind would fill and be gloried like your chastity right before
my voice
couldn't have been there to make paper out you, your
wholeness.
I am eager for these voices to go
from my mouth to yours, to end up somewhere.

When I am with the people who look like me my heart is sudden
warm
the sun before it hits the earth and becomes idea.

Or, Sometimes that **** just hurts.

WAKING FROM EVERYDAY.

The chords of your laughter, unexpected,
echo from the clouds above me
and scatter
like fragile light; dancing
across the green tips of grateful trees.

Briefly, I shuddered. Behind the bricked wall
of the cemented dreams I have of us-
I had head your little song of life.
But now I am smiling.
Your fragile light has made me grateful

to see the world in colour.

Because I'm young I tend to forget
that the world still turns
when you can't see yourself.

But you sleeping is how God reminds me:
flowers bloom best in the morning.

MY BED PAST MIDNIGHT;
YOU ARE ASLEEP.


The presence of you,
next to me on my bed,
is gentle and existing;
ethereal as you are.

And,
soft as you are,
it is nothing deep,
nothing carnal.

And,
cold as we are,
in needing warmth:
we cuddle,

with
hair quietly tangling
in the background
of our bodies;

with
blood warmly murmuring
in the background
of our hearts;

with
our tired eyes talking,
when we’re silent;
saying things
they weren't supposed to say.

I know
that we’re online
in the pixels, of my screen,
and type to tell you
that I wish you were here;

that my bed is empty, despite me,
as it always was;
that you'll only see this message
when you wake up…


But


The presence of you,
next to me on my bed,
is gentle and existing;
ethereal as it is.

What good is an olive branch
if used to start a flame?

What good is a dove
if its an enemy plane?

What good are hellos
when taken as goodbyes?

Bishop described lichens as "still explosions" and am I
to continue to try my mouth around her, or this, or you?
Call sometime.

One thing he always thought was that
if he could share his heart with the world
he would become it.

He ended up being promiscuous instead.

When singing songs they are a chorus
of me and my shadows together opening
     our mouths (kisses at a distance
     some touchings of the self: love). When bees
buzz by the way that they do I imagine they
buzz by via their own tunes and not the wind:
     which happens to be around their wings. To sing
is something so simple and selfish and sweet
and right—wouldn't you like to know? —and when
you do it everything becomes yourself like a shiver.
     When I am with you: myself: the world
     is so much with us while really it is not,
but to sing it is good and is right and is sweet and is selfish so simple.

AS WE THINK OF WHAT TO SAY NEXT.
                
                                    
…


The quality of this silence
   is as grand
      is as wonderful
         is as eternal

                                           is as everything

as the sudden crescendo
of a piano on the moon.


…


For words are useless
when it comes to such things.

Rather suddenly he said:

"What if depression is some kind of middle class *******? Like, for people like us...novelists, dramatists- so we can still write somewhat interesting **** about ourselves even though we don't... I don't know, have some sufficiently dramatic background story? Have you ever figured how many kids in the world are born into armed conflicts? Or survived an encounter in a plastic ******* bag on their first birthday?

We can't write about that because we don't know jack **** about it. But it's really, really difficult to read something that's not in some way about you. Do you know what I mean? So you and I, the lucky ones, we have to write stories that we can read. Stories about people likes us: the lucky ones. And to make **** like that interesting we need depressed guys with psychiatrists.

So yeah... I'm probably not depressed. At the very least, perhaps desperate for a story."

Believe me when I say that I will float
with you
to eternity and beyond.

But life is finite,
and so are we.

This is a really ergonomic chair!