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?)

A few more words about: coherence,
it doesn’t exist for me, I’m so hungry
for everyone else and their platitudes.
It must be nice to avoid existential breathlessness.
I like that word: breathlessness.
I resent that platitude: existential.
I am not bitter, I promise.
It’s just that the air…
it tastes so…
                      …(blue.)

My dreams can't fit inside my mouth.
CPU fan spins a lil' too fast, what heat!
    If I was a computer I would have legs.
    I'd run sometimes.
    No one would use me.
I'd write every little thing down if,
well, if, if I was substantial. Then
    something might follow. Then
    this instead. Then,
    somewhat remarkably, a smile. You
    are adorable, let's get coffee sometime! I
    don't even like coffee that much. Is
    that a thing that real people say?
    Say to each other. I'm still
chewing.

There's these moods I'm having,
   life cinematic,
I don't care much about grammar,
   ***** are you listening.

Rabbit, run run
    Poets see things other people can't
Don't
Want to
Where were your eyes, my eyes, where
         do
Rabbits run, run
                               Back then I wanted to kiss everyone
    (everything).
All the pretty girls in their summer dresses, always
    Rabbits, running, run, ran

                        Look at how the world goes by when you
                        walk in these moods
                        Mr ******

***** are you listening to me.

What was it that you were looking for.

     Rabbits run run.

Lives were lived across those school fields the rabbits ran.
                                            I missed those moments of encircling.
                                            Arms of yours.
So soft.
                There's the small body of the Chinese girl
                I wanted to take.
God.
                Shame does not concern me no more.

If you look hard enough there's always a somewhere.

But the trees, the way they sleep
my lungs cannot hold it all
the world is all too all to be compressed
by breath, nevertheless, there were my lungs
squeezing everything at all my chest-

I'm sorry but I can't see anything
everything is too much and all at once
all at once the world is around me
all at once, somehow, saturated, undistilled
thick, slice the air with hand, hold

that breath, I could stare at everyone
and everyone could stare at me. No one does.
I'm not very fond of mirrors. I stare
all the time and each time I learn nothing
outside there is so much and it doesn't fit

it doesn't fit it doesn't

Baby cousin points at my old toy robot
Declares, 'This robot used to be big.'
I say, 'No, you used to be small.'

'What?'

She then crouches down to old toy robot's
height and smiles and laughs,
'I used to be small like this!'

Maybe, just maybe I'll have
one of those little things
and teach them about stars
and boys and girls and words,
but I already told you
I can't live like that,
I think.

Art is the great hope,
                   the creaking at dawn, the anti-
cognition of frightening sounds--
                   the churning, thinking machine-like,
                   of all our libraries, strained of fluid
until
dry, chapped turning, the rows and rows
of solitary whispers-- a certain kind of madness
                   that offends my heart like no other. Where
else would peace be but not here? Somewhere
inside us was once a light that was not
in a bulb and it flew like a moth towards
                   itself
but beat itself apart into its own sun, fell,
its wings little mirrors descending while our
father
                  screamed for us, a howling like birth
itself,
                  and there was the tower anew,
no longer a prison no longer a library
no longer a school or even a thought.

Okay, so that didn't bother me that much,
anyway, people are nightmares,
but that's okay, okay?
that wasn't even the problem.

I think it was the gleam,
***-light.
People think that there's a sun,
a whole ball of it,
up their *****.

So yeah, it's hard to say:
maybe you should stuff it
maybe you kinda ****.

There was another light.
It wasn't so bad.

I sort of liked it.
It was nice.
It didn't wake me too harshly.
How can I explain:
     stained glass, church
     small solution, math book
     small ocean, ******
     curved shaft, *****
that sort of thing. I guess.
the perfect sunny of not giving a ****.

Not everything coheres.
          Remember: not everything
                         coheres

Nerve cells are assumed things seen
       assuredly. What then are our
eyes? Thinking things
      whispering maybes with
light, guiding
      us towards hopeful
touch, threaded
gently with needle through an other's
      slivered eye: we
return to looking. Silk-curtained. Through small science
glass I have you. Here,
let us speak with colours. Blink for me.

Less the collapsed wound in the chest and
more of coffee, pen-flickering some things
achieved in a college library. A hope
of a future as endless learner. Online laments
that universities are now nothing more
than degree mills: notice the rising tide of shadows
in students' minds as they seem to notice this
sort of doom as noose as tie at middle-age. But for now,
before that moment returns where sleep is preferred
so much so to waking, where anything is preferred
to waking (but the thought of that final jump
off the corporate tower
is yet to find you)-- some slight work here
in this library like a normal person
with normal fears. An uncollapsed chest
like a star within its lifetime, swallowing nothing and
twirling planets all around itself, long long
before it swallows itself
and its own light.

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./

Mainly and namely, some form of grace
would be required to continue. Player One
should keep going at it. Player Two
can join whenever he or she or they
would like. Running out of coins-
finger click, bone snap, running
breath sitting. I'm excited to touch you,
I guess,
                let's not make it a big deal, she
said of this, practicing for after
her heart wouldn't be so new. But can I
grab it and you and all else new
and let it taste, let it, that might
be some semblance of my weak word, nice.

Whether or not you could've foreseen it
Whether or not a ***** had dreamed it
I dreamed it, somewhere, possibly
   dreamed it, multiverse hypothesis

-dreams, of course, are a common *******
catch dat alternating history, it is discography
of movement of movements from Romantic to Classic
**** it, I know I went backwards

I'm backwards, because, I never look forward
I'm bored, oh god, it's already the morning?

                    oh god, it's already the morning?


I die pretty like a girl
Ophelia
I die prettly like a girl
Ophelia

Way my pockets were snug- **** print felt like a hug
Know that you like it and liked it like that
No need to be mad, a ***** spitting facts
Fax- obsolete but scan and send me, fly like a bug

Cockroach, black Beatle, K-West, bald eagle,
w/ hair, long like Samson, no ***** Delilah
Delilahs flowers mysterious powers in the ***** print too, even after the shower
Not golden- just clear like water: breath and drink and devour

Let's pause for a moment and think about that
                                                      think about that
          pause for a moment and think about that
                                                      think about that

To speak on things one knows nothing of
takes either hubris or innocence: I lack
neither now. I just speak sometimes,
                       I don't know. Nevermind
me, the amnion was not blue, I chase
nothing, I will not **** myself, I will
not drown- I don't like that
kind of music anway. I am not blond(e).
                       Sometimes, though, Frank
got me and I can't sit down for days.
Not in the ***, just an ocean, always,
sometimes. Nevermind. Baby blue.

So sad, so sad.
    Not quite anymore.
Sisyphus bolder,
    air.
Skyscrapers are wings
    with feet.
Wouldn't you like to clip them?
    Babel
    Icarus.
Either way, things are so
    beautiful when they fall-
look at us- the way we are
    talking-
it's like we already knew
    what it was once
         like, not too long ago,
               to fly.

Everything is amenable to a pen--
so nevermind this sudden splash of water
on this page, nevermind it all, it is
something I ought to have been able to make
for myself back home-- if I so desired it,
and finally, I'm glad that I no longer did:

You see,

travelling is a game for me. It is no
urgency, no need. When I was younger
how many times was I told that: it would be
this way? By teachers and others and televisions
that to leave home
would be the great mattering;

Let me remind you of the Acacia trees!

Nevermind this sea! And its constant blueness,
their imports of me and those who looked
like me; then their denails of me and
those that look like me when finally
the depature of their self-righteousness

A funny thought:

In RPGS they're NPCS:
In role-playing games they are
non-playable characters:

when you walk your character
to them and give a little click
upon them they might talk and say
something of their


                                     lives

the question is, is what happens
after you switch off the video game
console. Are they always frozen
in their space in that time or is it
that the need for you to journey
keeps everybody so still in your head
that you forget that they too have

                                      lives

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.

Snow: the gentle magisteria
that we crumble by, fighting
and flinging and fluffing about before
the touch-- of ice, of each other-- the same
thing
gathering about in the utmost
dust of things that were. Water
is in between us all the time, but
we couldn't possibly notice until we do it,
the touch-- of ice, of each other-- the same
thing,
y'know? Y'know what I'm saying? We talk
about it constantly. Flinging and fluffing
about before that
thing,
the touch. There you are. Hello,
how are you?

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.

A road runs down Harvard called Massachusetts Avenue as if
we own the whole state. Because we do. We took the land
from its people. Violently. And who is we? Ambulances
burn red nightly-casual outside the window of this pale yellow
building opposite the smaller university hospital. The red
reminds me of a different kind of burning. Of bodies.
Wonderful cremations of us down that tree over there next
to the libraries that now belong to us. And who is us?
I am reminded of the burning because the red is part
of the white and the blue and the sirens and the men
launching out of their cars with faces saying, in strange
tongues, strange indeed, And who
are you?

Scale 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.

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.

I cannot speak
with you.

And yet words;
I still sing.

It is a strange song,
even to you;

but you hand back some coins
after I give you some coins
and then you give me some coins
back again and I feel the coins

and this time the coins: I can't count
with you; the coins make sense.

And I stumble towards the other space
to the right, give the affirmation
(in the form of a: coin
(plastic))

and there then the drink. Another stumble after.

Language.

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.

In the experiment, we put the chicks in the box
and make them love the little toy ball, then
show them many *****, then hide them and see
if the chicks can count them: and they can. In the city
the people rush around and the stray people with skin
like mine
remind me of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers (mine)
   sometimes even you (once)
but I lose count while God watches, wondering.

This was once all that we knew.

A world in parts before we knew

     it

as such subdivisions as this, that and

more beneath that still: there was

once good and evil, god and them,

the rest of us, and

Jesus, simply looking upwards after

he flung himself forth from the dust

to the sky and the light was bleached

off and the colours leaked from our

eyes to our canvases. What more

can I say before we take more

of ourselves away from each other? What more

before you implant me into some other's

body, and the prayer completed,

and I am finally a computer? In

the meanwhile my eyes will look and

my neck will strain as the sun sets and

so does my little life: how long have I

wanted to see you again, o lord, since

my first scream of myself all so long

ago when I left my mother's salt

and was flashed into the flood of your

      world?

How long, o lord, will you have me here

to see your work through these ceiling

songs, such sonorous ringings, fleshy

twists and turns of paint as muscle

and what's that behind the cloud?

     Your finger

appareled in such golden rays?

Endless. When your ships brought such

dark skin as mine across these

times and spaces, what?, where you

surprised of my dreams to see it,

     this,

all engulfed in flames?  And

yet here you are and here I am and

here is the quiet my birth your

glory your joy the brushstrokes

the colours and the full fleshy taste

of my non-belief, leaking into my fingers,

sticky, frisk, and always.


    When I leave these, they will fall

and crumble. It will all go. In the hallways,

as I walk away: several big windows:

     Rome, sunset.

    When I leave these, they will go

and disappear. Into salt. Those large windows:

blue-shadowed branches begin some small slow dance.

     When I leave these temples they will dust

and return to dust the soil of our hands.

And the trees remain beautiful.

White girls in Italy.

Moi: "Sorry, I'm next in line".

Sorry, I'm next in line.

Sorry, I'm next in line.

Sorry, I'm next in line.

Sorry, I'm next in line.

Sorry, I am next in line.

Sorry, I'm next in line.


The hissing swoosh of the flush after the cold metal swivel shift.


Also,            ****. You.

Reindeer
     scuttling through snow:

these
were presented to us
kids
     scuttling through sand

in lands where rain is scarce.

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?

The madness of caring
is like a hologram;
it's there,
but you touch it
and then

Cartwheel across an ocean top
and you will never drown again.
Flutterings like this will keep you alive
forever, I promise, it doesn't matter; you
are dead already. You were so young.
I like your body. I like that you can see it.
When you drink water it doesn't taste.
Things don't cohere but puzzle pieces fit.
Some fires keep burning and the physics stays the same.
When I look at you the puzzle pieces turn ionic.
There's another, there's another- it all
goes like that on a gentle march to sense.
When you were younger you liked things.
Older people don't like to sparkle unless they're weird.
I want the strangeness of everything to swallow us.
I didn't like who I am anymore. Longer.
Long, long widths of water to sing across.
What a voice my Mama had before I could hear.
There are so many ways of being deaf.
The way that death sings is so black.
Water, water, baby blue couldn't see a thing.
You still gargled though when the light struck your ***.

I am not a serious poet.
    (if only the water was cleaner)
It's not a matter of laziness.
    (the air is thick, the skies are grey)
I can't sing the way the ancients did.
    (listen closely, they still do)
Why whispers of love appear I know not.
    (in the quietest moments, a closed symphony)
A pen is something I hold sometimes.
    (oftentimes it could have been something)

All on its own
    a world and me
           (kiss
                  hold hands
                                leave).

I don't know your number so I cannot call again.

Cracking a cold existential one with the boys.

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?

And what you'll find is, your highness
Can paint a picture that is vivid enough to cure blindness
                                                       ­        - J. Cole, January 28th*


And because they have never before seen a naked soul,
they ask me
if I am being deliberately provocative
with my pen.

And then I paint.

So that they too can undress
that mental amnion that has cocooned them
since birth; which itself became still-born
as it was followed by an undying funeral
of parental expectations.

And then I paint.

So that they too can reclaim
that aborted clay and mould their burial
into gestation, and shatter
their amnion coffins
from the asphyxiating breath of non-existence
to the respiratory lust of Being.

And then I paint.

So that I too can remember
that I am they. A victim
******* into the darkness of lost light,
dreams deferred at birth;
who still focuses his pen on this canvas
to cure his own blindness, to see
and paint his naked soul before me,

which we then call Life.

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 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.

Bathtub music and drums played on the surface
of Davy Jones's mirror: the ceramic holds
the sea, the sea, and all within it: ***** me.

Scrubbed you off my skin again for
the umpteenth night in a row. Row
row row our boat away from the constant,
constant rows. Stormy arguments and
weathered mistrust. You'll break me,
won't you? I'll break you, won't I? Won't you
come drown with me Ariel? Won't you
come up with me to the kitchen and lock up
the door then lock up the oven then lock up
ourselves in carbon-monoxide poetry?

But then how does cooking gas end up as sass
in a library? How did sustenance turn into
asphyxiation?  Why are our hands on
each other's throats instead of being binded
by the absoluteness, the certainty, the assuredness
of palms within palms and fingers interlocked
and question marks dispelled.

Splash! as way in and over my head
is the bathtub music
and my absorbent curls are
drinking, drinking, drinking, thinking
about the why you only call me when
you're drinking, drinking, drinking; thinking
about the way I cannot suppress you when
the cellphone has long gone quiet and
your Hughes of blue are still loud but
your red is dead.

Ariel, Ariel,
I want to be your dark-haired prince.
Ariel, Ariel,
my country is landlocked but I still see you in the sink.
Ariel, Ariel,

gurgling away as the bathtub music fades
into ugly brown rings around the ceramic
pause button
that shows no hope of continuation
Ariel, Ariel, you are the final splash!
as the false sea drifts away, the final splash!
that scatters bathtub music past the drain
and into the air. Ariel, Ariel,

you are the false rain
that my landlocked country never prayed for.
Ariel, Ariel, toneless, begotten and forgotten
Ariel, Ariel. I cannot sing for you. I cannot.
You will not sing for me. You will not.

The final splash! past the drain and into the air
is you Ariel. The false rain.

The rain song of our endless games.

Perfect: I used that word once to talk about you
as if you were a doll with limbs made of plastic:
stiff and whimsical and subject to the niggardly
commands of the conscious- yet you, who thinks
as aggressively as any doll-house builder do not
construct your own set-pieces; instead you
pirouette into one carefully constructed day to the
next as you delicately
stride
from bed to shower to wardrobe to mirror to desktop to
window to mirror to mirror to
mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them
all-
and the staid look on your face when the mirror gives no
answer
because it can’t. Checkered skirt, sharp eyelashes, wary
jumper, almost heels. Perfect, you might think
for a moment before your eyes roll gently from self
to mirror
to self
to mirror
to mirror
the self. What was
it that you were looking for if all it does is lead
you back to your skin? Meanwhile, the snow
stutters softly from above as if God had dandruff-
perfect- and it all gently glazes the spongy surface of the world like
flawless coconut icing on some sorry party cake- perfect- and the morning
bell rings impossibly on time like the last
breath you thought was your last- perfect- and somewhere in
America I use words to remind you of the little
unreachables
of perfection that both start and end with your perfectly
snow-pale skin, where somewhere in
America and somewhere on
your thighs perfect ridges of red have formed themselves like
plastic scratches on a Barbie which we both think
are little but we both know
are big
because you are not plastic.

                                               At nighttime our feet
skip on the icy brick pathways that lead from
the dorm-rooms to the library and we shiver
as the snowflakes bob in and out of our bodies
like thoughts
that seem funny but aren’t quite- they melt away
as soon as they stumble upon our skin. From our mouths
cloudy puffs of being flutter out- little butterflies affirming
out listless snowflake-filled minds, sperming out ice-clouds
from our mouths, our mouths, our mouths; birthing friendship.
Breath, visible, is laughter. I trip and swear and momentarily
skate
across a sudden ice-surface as you speak another ice-breath. We
arrive
at the library but dart towards the empty right-side, the science
classrooms. We hope
to examine the thought-skirmishes on your right thigh, to turn  
and change this hopeless world-spinning into centrifuge
separation-
make apparent the light from the dark
                        the firmament from the void
                        the flesh from the plastic, the-
here we are as you talk
about your family and I
try my best to look you
in the eye so I
can become
your eyes
even when
normally
I
am
so
vehemently
against

staring

at the soul-gates of another being-
here we are as you talk;
God is still missing from the centrifuge
of the endlessly turning world- your
axis
is your skin yet
you trust it
not. The salads without dressing,
        the weighing scales,
        the taste of bile at the back of your
throat-
all for skin that
       you
do
not
      trust.
All for flesh that you think is plastic
so
     you
     cut.
      
             Enough
talk because the bell cuts through the flesh
of our conversation. Enough
talk because the world insists on
turning still
and forcing us to revolve
with it. Enough
breathing, enough
snow, enough
life. I remember you saying
that the ratios of your face are wrong;
that certain equilibriums do not exist between
your cheeks your lips your eyes your life…I remember the science
classrooms where parts of you were as mathematical as the architecture... I remember how
you keep thinking your flesh is plastic… You forget how
inglorious the nature of these words is. The problem
with human thought, with the ratios of your face, with the
geometric structures that cut across your thighs, with the
statistical neatness with which your family decomposes;
the problem with our conception of perfect is how
awkwardly it both exists and does not exist for us to
see.
The ratios of your face which you think are broken are
the same miracles I wonder about as you laugh. The incorrect distance
from your cheek to your eye which you think is wrong is the same
lightyear which separates the stars from the planets. The curvature
of your stomach is the bending of a spacetime to accommodate
the way the air must move to let your body occupy the space and time in which it
exists.
The ratios you speak of spring from your own limitlessness, your own
perfect imperfections , imperfect perfections-
strange oddities and unfathomable beauties and yes. Yes,
even the ridges across your right thigh are minute, red,
gasping
grand-canyons of
flesh,
of human, of breathing clay
flesh-
           never
plastic;
            always
worthy.
            
              Recently the voices in my head have been getting louder,
telling me all sorts of things about how the snow ought to bury me
in its mercilessness. They mention also that my words bear no meaning,
my thoughts even less so. Assumedly, the ridges across your thigh
carry such spectres as well but, I messaged you before you went to bed
about coming out and having an adventure because tick-tock-tick-tock…tick…tock…tick-
the last bell of the day is going to ring soon and the voices and ridges
will assert themselves again with the bedtime silence, but check your Facebook
messages and come outside and let’s go skipping with your friends across
the century-old polished prep-school brick pathways that smell archaic because it’s

snowing outside and it’s lovely.

There was a time when your lips were painted
bright red-

but this was not when you had painted
me goodbye in the car-park, and somehow
left me grey,

as your little red Volkswagen
rolled softly away.

(for children)


(1)

I heard a big word once. 'Armamentarium'.
It's a word with old parents. It means things
like medicine and how doctors feel your chest
for beats that don't quite fit. It means red
and the things inside your body that need
hands to help you. My hands help by wandering.
I tap my hands on tables, I comb my hair,
I pick up flowers, I hold up faces
of people I love when I feel blue. But my favourite
is red, because it is inside me, beating.
I learned a big word once. It was my name. I said it and it sang.


(2)

If you peel me you will find songs
as thick as grapefruit. I am red inside.
I take some time. I am always late.
I am best in the mornings but at night awake.
I'm from a place that is not as green as here.
Our grasses are yellow and say so with the wind.
My mirror is both my best friend and enemy,
sometimes a lover, often a bully, either way
hands are caught. I like to read. I read
so much that I think of my skin as grapefruit.
I don't even like to eat it. I just like the red.


(3)

Planes have mouths. They swallow people.
They fly them away. They spit me out.
Sometimes I do not know whose stomach I am in.
Inside the planes I dream of reds as dense as
roses. When the planes land I give them to
me as myself. Let me explain this better:
my accent is a grand liar because my
country is blue. It never rains there
but when it does you will find my mother's throat.
I croak with such dryness that the sounds turn to words.


(4)

When I see me I see soil. I grow roses
in my skin. People who don't look like
me first brought those kinds of flowers
to my country with ships. Kind of. We do not have
oceans. They must have walked so far for me
to speak with things they then planted. People think of me
as oceans reflecting the sky. I say I want the sunset
petalled perfectly into soil. My skin. When you see me
you must adore me because of your planting. I am not
your garden. I bloom.


(5)

When you hear words do not forget that someone
taught them to you. Maybe your mother
who read books about cats in hats to you
at airports. Maybe your father
and his stories of his childhood with feet
twisting through thin sand as roses dancing.
Where I am from we do not have soil
for those kinds of flowers. My father still grew
and my mother still grew me. Peel my skin
and you will find that sort of red beneath. If you ask me
where it came from I won't say. I will sing.

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.

SECOND LOVE.

Hand-holding as the stars sing:
I think I am getting older.

I don’t believe that’s the roar of God out there,
it’s probably just the wind or crickets, who don’t
burn so bright and distant; screaming in the dark.
Sound doesn’t travel through vacuums anyway so
it’s funny

that I can still hear you
whispering through my phone.

Didn’t that conversation happen a week ago?

You’re under-cover in your bed-sheets,
hiding from your parents while mine just watch TV.
Again, this is all just memory
where sounds cannot reach us,

but I’m sure you can still hear me
as I tell you that, yes,
I’ve finally written words for you, words for me.

What will happen tomorrow?

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

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

We want to see ourselves
see ourselves
because we're afraid that nobody else will
ever want to capture us
in a camera flash- so we take our own pictures.

Click. Our front camera becomes
the one minute we had hoped our fathers had for us
when he wasn't busy on that same phone, speaking,
not clicking. Without us.

Or it becomes the one minute we had hoped
that our lovers would hold us
before they settled on to someone
with more likes,
more comments,
more friends,
more happiness...
than we could ever wait for.

We are impatient
like the frequency of data on our profiles:
here are our feelings now... here
are our feelings again, five minutes later,
performing for social algorithms
in place of photographers
besides ourselves who
see ourselves.

But our ignited pixels,
and overstuffed inboxes,
and masturbatory statuses,
and glittering timelines,
and social everything-

are popularity contests
that all of us are losing.

Yet still we want to see ourselves
see ourselves
even though we are afraid
of what we know is true...

...Because what difference
is a poem to a tweet
besides the number of characters
that we wish we had to populate our own stories?

Please let us be different,
just like everyone else.

We're still bothered by our births. So, science.
Leaving college English classes horrified at answerlessness.
Calculate me.
Here's some simple answer on a once clean page.
Blank slate, painted with the codes of all
life, thought; numbers.
Before sleeping, once more a wound appears with a roar,
the sort of roar of the wings of an ant:
bright particles shoot through a double slit
and our comfort is misunderstood as the pattern
on the wall behind in front of us.

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