don't harangue my life with care for pity at woman's idiocy, not having adopted Caesarian birth as universally adequate and prospering her, to instil this barbaric guilt in me wondering why women, of all mammals had no natural anaesthetic produced when giving birth... **** your little guilt-trip argument! Caesarian or no argument!*

to be robbed of a glorious death, and be given an
inglorious birth, esp. when women were given an ease
with a Caesarian birth diplomacy... what's there to retain for man?
ardency in labour? old age? i too was robbed of what
Caesar described as the ideal death: the sudden one...
am i to wait for my sickbed...
if i only chanced the thrill of life
within one sunset and sought no night
to encompass my life as worthy compensation
of nothing.
a life lived to the bell-tone of a replaced
uvula, no care for charity asserted...
in that one momentary exception of all life prior,
to have lived it, and hence entombed,
readied for the element acquiring me to
further its signature... as sustainable...
i'd rather die a painful death that live
a comfortable life: pain is eased with its short-lived
establishing awareness when the glory prior is "prolonged"
ascribed to the fates akin to Achilles... and indeed pain is
merely pain with its prolonging on the sickbed...
counter heroism, so defeatist;
how many times am i to be robbed? to thus experience
such shallows of thieves with cheap constantly
expedient thievery? i've had enough to concede to a juggle
of fates and fortunes! one smooth stroke of the ace
rather than the many axe-hackings of the neck
of ****** Mary. bothersome agitations via pride, honour
and braveness, only if they do not happen,
and should they, they'd be undertaken, but to no quest
of celebratory non-enactment, i.e.: farting rather than *******
prior: to be given a wave of the standard acupuncture
of infantry: as guarantee of mythology; and a nobleman
on his horse without a stirrup prior to the *** intervention.

DREAMS

I was an ice baby.
I turned to sky blue.
My tears became two glass beads.
My mouth stiffened into a dumb howl.
They say it was a dream
but I remember that hardening.

My sister at six
dreamt nightly of my death:
"The baby turned to ice.
Someone put her in the refrigerator
and she turned as hard as a Popsicle."

I remember the stink of the liverwurst.
How I was put on a platter and laid
between the mayonnaise and the bacon.
The rhythm of the refrigerator
had been disturbed.
The milk bottle hissed like a snake.
The tomatoes vomited up their stomachs.
The caviar turned to lave.
The pimentos kissed like cupids.
I moved like a lobster,
slower and slower.
The air was tiny.
The air would not do.
*
I was at the dogs' party.
I was their bone.
I had been laid out in their kennel
like a fresh turkey.

This was my sister's dream
but I remember that quartering;
I remember the sickbed smell
of the sawdust floor, the pink eyes,
the pink tongues and the teeth, those nails.
I had been carried out like Moses
and hidden by the paws
of ten Boston bull terriers,
ten angry bulls
jumping like enormous roaches.
At first I was lapped,
rough as sandpaper.
I became very clean.
Then my arm was missing.
I was coming apart.
They loved me until
I was gone.



2. THE DY-DEE DOLL

My Dy-dee doll
died twice.
Once when I snapped
her head off
and let if float in the toilet
and once under the sun lamp
trying to get warm
she melted.
She was a gloom,
her face embracing
her little bent arms.
She died in all her rubber wisdom.



3. SEVEN TIMES

I died seven times
in seven ways
letting death give me a sign,
letting death place his mark on my forehead,
crossed over, crossed over

And death took root in that sleep.
In that sleep I held an ice baby
and I rocked it
and was rocked by it.
Oh Madonna, hold me.
I am a small handful.



4.MADONNA

My mother died
unrocked, unrocked.
Weeks at her deathbed
seeing her ****** herself against the metal bars,
thrashing like a fish on the hook
and me low at her high stage,
letting the priestess dance alone,
wanting to place my head in her lap
or even take her in my arms somehow
and ****** her twisted gray hair.
But her rocking horse was pain
with ***** steaming from her mouth.
Her belly was big with another child,
cancer's baby, big as a football.
I could not soothe.
With every **** and crack
there was less Madonna
until that strange labor took her.
Then the room was bankrupt.
That was the end of her paying.



5. MAX

Max and I
two immoderate sisters,
two immoderate writers,
two burdeners,
made a pact.
To beat death down with a stick.
To take over.
To build our death like carpenters.
When she had a broken back,
each night we built her sleep.
Talking on the hot line
until her eyes pulled down like shades.
And we agreed in those long hushed phone calls
that when the moment comes
we'll talk turkey,
we'll shoot words straight from the hip,
we'll play it as it lays.
Yes,
when death comes with its hood
we won't be polite.



6. BABY

Death,
you lie in my arms like a cherub,
as heavy as bread dough.
Your milky wings are as still as plastic.
Hair soft as music.
Hair the color of a harp.
And eyes made of glass,
as brittle as crystal.
Each time I rock you
I think you will break.
I rock. I rock.
Glass eye, ice eye,
primordial eye,
lava eye,
pin eye,
break eye,
how you stare back!

Like the gaze if small children
you know all about me.
You have worn my underwear.
You have read my newspaper.
You have seen my father whip me.
You have seen my stroke my father's whip.

I rock. I rock.
We plunge back and forth
comforting each other.
We are stone.
We are carved, a pieta
that swings.
Outside, the world is a chilly army.
Outside, the sea is brought to its knees.
Outside, Pakistan is swallowed in a mouthful.

I rock. I rock.
You are my stone child
with still eyes like marbles.
There is a death baby
for each of us.
We own him.
His smell is our smell.
Beware. Beware.
There is a tenderness.
There is a love
for this dumb traveler
waiting in his pink covers.
Someday,
heavy with cancer or disaster
I will look up at Max
and say: It is time.
Hand me the death baby
and there will be
that final rocking.

Modern life is killing me
Yawn, yawn, block out the TV
Pictures of bears, wales and lion
Dial the number, save the newest extinction
Money wanted for the latest charity
Save the children, comes the plea

It’s all too much for the heart to take
So it’s numbed in ice, to prevent the break
I am now part of the world’s population
Where denial is guaranteed self-preservation
But here we go with another newsbreak
Money needed after a recent earthquake

So I will travel upon my merry way
Living in ignorance every day
Paddle in an ocean where plastic rules
Ignoring the singing of dolphin blues
Don’t want to hear about what’s at stake
I can’t make a change, put in the firebreak

But to the next generation, what can be said?
When they look at oceans a long time dead
And a lion’s roar can only be seen
In a cartoon film shown on the big screen
The only animals in the world are biped
Trying to survive on this floating sickbed

I am not one to name and shame
Or make judgement, place the blame
But don’t want to leave the world as I found it
Hand it on, like it’s a gambit
So I will make one change, I hereby claim
I leave it up to you to do the same

i mean, who the hell needs an individualised
orchestra? Mozart doesn't, Beethoven doesn't,
Chopin and Liszt is all piano
so never mind the punk renegade violinist...
how the Indians or the Chinese orchestrated
a population of a billion is staggering,
western powers ******* blanks by comparison,
it's like a body and a virus, translated
with optometry the way we say things,
Sanskrit or the Beijing Ouija - looking at it
is like ingesting the Swiss champagne miracle - nausea
or alternatively lysergia -
it's ******* me up acquiring this tongue
given the history of celebrated colonialism -
proof of the Hackney populace being solely
Caribbean - what a desecrate groundwork to begin with,
maybe Irish maybe Scout maybe Scot,
on the word of honour dynamic pledging
conveniences with the Vatican - look
no further, we're naturalised sadists, football matches
and the sickbed eventualists rather than
evangelists, former nonsense reductionistists...
so they preached their Darwinism exactly against
the theologically roundabout of the pyramids
and the celestial intervention - but expected
nil barbarism... kingly kindness was at least
the expected norm, but if you preach Darwinism
you'll hardly convene on kindness as
the standard norm of expression -
track 12 of the beach boys' pet sounds is elevator music,
i'll be honest... pop music drama of
the band... you never hear of it with orchestras;
the point of genius: you're not really there,
absentee, you do the sacrifice, and make others
make the dough for the bread that's a house and
a family of four, e.g; and just by petting
cats i learned that all animals, petted or wild,
are naturally / intrinsically autistic.

i gather, all philosophy is written on the anti-cross, or a sickbed... and all maxims on the deathbed - in between there's nothing but vain distractions that have no basis for a consensus of surprise - they are merely therapies of manual labours, shadow-caste by weakness to invoke a sense of belonging to this world akin to a labourer of pure action - reduced to the same pure action: as one might showcase faking one's own death.

Kant said of poets: bothersome flies -
here to steal the cupcakes of my pondering:
zwischen die volkern erzielt wird
a mondus vivendi - in vivo or in vitro?
alter: mondus quasi vivendi -
and all that talk about sabotage (canto xix)?
his own poetry - even the sarcasm, but
especially the sarcasm shines through pristine
as if Hannibal Lecter talking about Alabama:
i gawt dem tousand doughlars tough mak 'em...
        awl over the plaice -
            got to give Ezra the cheek for demonic
slapping to shove that one, up their pristine
temple of ahoy ****! still, the variation is there:
usury and simony - talk of,
       Thomas the Cartesian -
Peter Simon the Usurer - the rock that gave
way to 1000% a.e.r. of maggot - interests rates
and what they said about her:
         piece of meat for the film, *****,
second rate: ***** slapped to Disney - and aren't
women natural sadists? i guess the Cesarean section
was a move in the wrong direction:
*****, pain! *****, pain!                well...
          if i was ever to be bothered, i'd be bothered now:
they're saying you need your genitals stretched
like Armstrong winning the 8th tour de france -
but f.g.m. is bad, bad bad bad -
hey, i was the one who said: get an abortion,
i didn't love you in the same way i ****** you...
you'd think she wouldn't think she was a murderer
akin with me, until the **** ***** turned into
a yanking diaper wearing blob -
                  i love how precursor physics akin to
post-physics (metaphysics) is entombed with pepper
ante: so sneeze into the benzene ring and get
either para- or ortho- physics out -
but she was russian orthodox, which is worse
than roman catholic: no feeling of guilt -
just the relativity factor: forget female rights:
let's just **** the ****** for giving her freedom -
yeah... and i just graduated and couldn't find
a job in chemistry, was working as a roofer:
she has two apartments in St. Petersburg and a mansion
in Siberia... and she sums it up as: i have no money.
blah ha ha ha ha; and i have an aunt in Warsaw
who sends me monthly stipends to drink myself to
death while i write the alternative to Proust.
  he really gave it to them in Ohio: i really gave it
back to London, imagine being published in the town
of your birth, simply because the western notion
of a book: is actually a brick, or a rubber door-stop -
unless you're famous? forget it... seriously,
they really have destroyed poetry with the idea that
autobiographies will **** poetry off...
question is: if you lived an interesting life...
why would you write a book? why would you?
i'm sure you'd continue making life interesting,
Don Juan wrote a book, Faust was like: bartender!
next round! and what's with these ghost writers?
that's like taking the concept of narration
and inventing a fourth dimension -
            our literary tastes and ambitions... are actually
ruled by dyslexics - people who not only can't
write... but who primarily can't punctuate...
now... if this is a healthy society (that we live in)...
then i guess Iraq is an improvement after toppling
Saddam... bra-*******-vo.
                         if i were the west i'd shut up
for one generation, and stop this political fetish of
foreign policy - but, as you guessed it... it won't work...
           just today, a program: 15 years after -
truth, lies, and conspiracies - well... if Guy Fawkes
did blow up parliament, we wouldn't be having
bonfire night celebrations, we'd be having debates...
but since Guy Fawkes plot was a failure:
ola anonymous! ola whoever...
                  and that massive tower in Dubai?
it was an architectural coup - let's freshen things up,
let's keep the competitive streak coming -
who's ******* overshadows all other erections
(egoism)? point is... i don't even care,
         there's no point playing hide (deny) & seek
(doubt) with these people... there's no point!
         i'm not seeking the ultimate noun -
    or how you perpetrate grammatical cleansing:
you basically strip words of meaning,
   and drop them, face-down, into their respective
grammatical category, and the job's done:
no grander meaning, no ulterior purpose,
    no alternative suggestion;
        or rereading Nietzsche - you either recite
something by the author, or you cite the authority
behind your own investigation - the former is
sycophantic stagnation, the latter a narrative continuance:
                furthermore? continual nuance.
    that's how rhyme will remain until i find
the original intention of poetry's need for rhyme to
   be anything but what it currently is: unappealing -
it's like poets want to write something that can be
classified as poetry... which obviously leads to
  the controversy of: but it's so ****** unappealing!
  hence the revision of rhyming to and from couplets -
   i only came across an interest in philosophy aged 21...
  any sooner and i'd fall for reciting dogmas and
upholding the arguments of others...
                   but i only came across this subject through
a collision with strife: or the lost care to strive
   in order to suspect a need for social ascension into
  the heights of respectable society of: horse racing
at Ascot, champagne and caviar: and airs: oh may i,
   oh you do indeed, sir.
                            and in each and every one of us:
   the brute: the comedian.
       what Nietzsche did to emphasise with italics,
  i'm doing it with the colon - for it is said that the colon
economises emphasis without Niccolò de' Niccoli
                           (ò) - i.e. Nichole - née coal -
in French: cut short; which means? have you ever seen
a new form of literary monopoly emerge
that wasn't ecclesiastical? i have... the diacritical markings
on standard Latin letters - they're not taught:
merely accepted -                   suspension of illiteracy
             hibernating in ages of education:
on purpose dangling - the stick a metre from your
head, the carrot a Don Quixote fata morgana -
  truly: a mirage.                SKY: believe in better.
all those guys in advertisement know their philosophy -
once i met a guy who once worked in advertisement
and was shocked when i summed up Sartre as:
                                                                         voyeurism.
  but there's a new monopoly on literacy in town,
it's obviously more refined than the old way of
telling secrets -
                            it's refined in the sense that i too would
have doubted whether that's haiku in ensō or enso'h -
dried up laughter, or the desert of once heard
laughter: lo'h 'n' behold a stammer for an earthquake -
so soon? yep, that much sooner.
                           looking at it, it's all Copernican
east north south west with some encoding, or all of them:
   up there, on the international space station
you get a hard-on thinking about nautical mathematics.
   i get him though, Nietzsche the Preacher -
              although i limited my experiences in order
to never agree with his observations that precipitated from
his experiences - none of them could have come
from *a priori musings - what with his menage trois -
   again: ménagé (à) trois - or faux pas, i.e. fau(x) pa(s) -
                   as Xerxes said: war!     (alias Łar -
     warsaw - or?   Łarsała - siała baba mak, nie wiedziała
jak - chłop powiedział: a to było tak... a sea-saw)
  while  some dwarf Polish Duck, a.k.a. politician added:
     V'AR!         -             while in this
  retreat in France - Taizé - i served out lunch and dinner
for the congregation, working with this German
  who preferred spiritual duty than army conscription
service; a memorable quote by him though:
   vey d dn't oonderstaand my good En'glish arr-cent:
   plus the Schwarzenegger for comparative literature.

This rainy morning you gave me a feel of your flowers
Thank you I want to give you a poem in return
Soaked in  pleasant smell of the showers
I like your eyes going through these words from green fern

Thank you I want to give you a poem in return
As you sing in the fifth avenue pavement
I like your eyes going through these words from green fern
As the passer-by drops a dollar swayed by the moment

As you sing in the fifth avenue pavement
Raindrops dripping from your soft brown hair
As the passer-by drops a dollar swayed by the moment
You smile and feel you can now pay for the Medicare

Raindrops dripping from your soft brown hair
Your old mom is in her sickbed at your home
You smile and feel you can now pay for the Medicare
I have mentioned her in a stanza of my poem

Your old mom is in her sickbed at your home
Look the sky is clearing up and the blue returns
I have mentioned her in a stanza of my poem
Let us pray she gets well and you are in my arms

Look the sky is clearing up and the blue returns
Soaked in pleasant smell of the showers
Let us pray she gets well and you are in my arms
This rainy morning you gave me a feel of your flowers

i hate technology, its automated typo system, i write one thing and then it starts playing hide & seek with me... i rarely make mistakes, but this a.i. automated typo system makes me look stupid, or neurotic in the least, i hate this automatic typo signification as if i am teaching someone!*

i love that drinking wins over writing sometimes,
like this strange neo-left asking me to top it all off
with my communist grandfather living under stalin
completely in agreement with them girlies weeping
when he stank the dog off the grave in terms of bio-tech
completion; he wouldn't be dear to the left epitaph,
he'd be like voltaire & the priest: given the devil
in the sickbed there was not time to choose enemies...
he'd be branded a ****... worded... the worst kind...
a pseudo pacifist of some sort... couple economy
and atheism and you get a darwinian exclusion
where the ants aren't oblivious to lions but exclude them
for their species so well organised, god can take
the hangover route and make the "self" less sellable;...
(economy of a species and darwinism
demands communism - exclusive economisation;
not inclusive economisation...
that's some sort of theological branch
of personification where man minds spider above
another man, etc.)...
there's no self included, esp. a (")self(") worth selling...
which means exactly that (the opposite of now)...
NO TOURISM INTO THE REALM
OF CELEBRITY LITERATURE...
WHICH IS ONLY BIOGRAPHIES....
GET YER **** OUT GIRLS!
YOU'LL WRITE A BOOK SOMETIME!
god this culture is barren, and to think i dressed up
in uniform for school listening to jethro tull once...
this ain't the same country...
it sold out to the arabs... charles iii
is a ******* traitor!
traitor!
charless the iii is john ii... character assasination
you like you did with diana...
diana's revenge... yeah i believe you
were wearing silk straps of safety and the
driver survived and the parapazzi blinded the driver:
one thing about jealousy... it has dwarf legs.
they pass into the political realm they do....
easier come easier to take on in politics...
economic migrants (we'll see about that,
your philanthrophy just took to faking flight
via an invisible magic carpet flapping its trims)...
i told you once that democracy is like inverse voyeurism...
mark the x on paper, ***** an ****** into jugs for
pale ale... excess carbonation... it turns all fizzy...
the geese marched into winter...
the swans marched right into a royal edict...
the neo carta was never crafted...
but i got the hang of the diacritic marks...
i was walking drinking a belgian cider...
C DER.... in belgian french there's an accent,
stress the c, makes the vowel missing...
cídre - not really acute i, but an acute c...
c         dr. dre, i.e. dre, c dre...
it's the acute stressor of c that makes the vowel
disappear... not that a vowel can actually
become acute... vowels like women wear
mascarra to look pretty, the consonants are
serviced for a complexity... via hebrew original...
c                        dre
not
               si                        ahem...               dre.
in passes on the pompom for expected pomp -
i can't believe it took a bottle of belgian cider
to get that across.
oh sure they can hang me... by the snout...
for i won't be able to march into a field of truffles...
but hey... big snout worthy... never mind
trying to wear leather shoes given the hannibal
treatment for tacky snakeshoe leather.
most say that difficult literature is literature unread...
there's no other difficulty in literature...
difficult literature is simply unread, that's why
it's difficult... simple literature trickles down as easy as water...
and that's why it's easily managed by what
the chinese done already, having no hollywood and
damning india's bollywood... their phoneticism
is lodged in ideograms... pictograms...
european phoneticism is lodged in a skin to number,
B akin to 8, e.g., we get rich owning ovens
televisisions and satellites... but we also own
watiers and cooks who are mechanised...
and have no richness of thought...
who cares if beijing is clouded in smog?
we have 15 more years of carbon emission to wait for
before our idealism is profitable!
ah but the arab girls will migrate to london every year
between may and august... i should be so lucky lucky
australian girl pop lucky with them shopping
in only one hot spot, a grieving egyptian's legoland
of tacky known as harrods!

This end of the trail is where Christian values drive up social status,
Tell you your friends,
Who not to glance at.

I'm not one for all that purity,
And no one else in my shoes could deny the *** in the air.

Crisp and new,
Shining like the grass in the rain,
Remarkably less discussed.

I feel no need for forgiveness tonight,
Which makes me happier than usual...

Typically, I will count the days with
Input to the last time I felt like I had direction— spend an hour telling Rothko I almost relate.

I admire you, but tonight I hope you're miserable.

My bones went hollow, the mood went heavy,
And the bridge went to ruins...

Can't say I'm surprised.

I'll fall asleep with ambience tonight, and wake to all the correspondence I'm not waiting for,

But I'll be of use to you.

I'll be of use in the North,
So odd to imagine my purpose,
Replaced as I am
Or even just looked over.

It's a downpour,
Yet I'm having the strangest drought,
Feeling like I need more light and far less space,

Who now will be at my sickbed?

It hurts to love
To draw deep from the well
Of another’s spirit
To mix your own sweat with their
Sweetness
And taste
Something no one imagined
Together

Entwined
My hand still enthralled with yours
Even here
Even now
On this sickbed
I am nauseous with this viris:
The thought of losing you.




Soon I will be nothing but
bruises and holes





…




I ............. I...............I
am.......... am.......... am
sic­k......... sick......... sick
of.............with
fear.........­ fear

I feel like a sick lady waiting for well wishes from my sisses and mates. I’ve been a giver and a settler and in three weeks, I found myself hanging in between. And now here I am, in my sickbed crying for attention— living in this pocket-sized, time-filler, slick box for most of my days just prying on everybody else’s lives to check how incomparable it is to live a life less like mine.

Everyday at five, the sun sets, overshadowing the blue sky with soft transitions of reds and oranges. And just right before I knew it days, weeks have already gone by. I found myself with nothing but dull empathy and collective misery. I re-spiraled down to the mantle of my being until it hit me— attention is cheap, but intention is gold. And I have wasted so much time, so much time, chasing the idea of perfect romance from the most impossible people. It made me worry, too, on how bad I have been in making decisions just to curtly satisfy my longing for any human who can provide even the slightest damp on my cold skin.

I’m not trying to compose a self-help quotable narrative nor ****-**** essay about self-love. I have stripped off the idea of 1-2-3s, of healthy coping mechanisms, of capturing perfect moments from the most mediocre, mundane fragments of life during my trying times. These past few encounters have been merely playdates and guessing games where I’ve lost sight of innocence and sincerity, making it hard for me to differentiate temporariness with permanence. And knowing kindness with or without an agenda is like a cloud in my head. Therefore, throughout these years, the flowers I planted have slowly wilted under the shade of infinite uncertainties. I have lost the love I was willing to give, and I can’t help but think that romance is not for me. I’m tired of giving and losing; I have given up moving mountains and breaking walls just to find myself being stabbed for being too much. From this day on, I am going to be me, with me. A bloke. A woman—alone in a swarm of parasites and flock of birds. A strong, pragmatic, detached woman in this horrifying epic journey of self-salvation.

—Advent
3:27am

i sometimes wish i could age to be old and modestly rich, and see my own face in the girls i might care to swoop under my monetary belt in order to see rejection’s expression (pst! articles aren’t used when a meaning is duo possessive / either what you expect or what you don’t expect doesn’t matter) of my youth... a woman’s ***-drive gives her ample time to live longer than man.*

it’s a ****** da vinci...
it’s so good
the only thing you
can do to it is.. graffiti it!
so you quote heath ledger
on the mona lisa:
'now i'm always smiling!'
he stole the fiction, heath ledger did,
he stole the fictive character
and committed suicide
because of it... heavy toll i say...
i sometimes wish more actors
took the character off the page
and into hades, as a way
to execute the relation of having
a father extinguished... that's classic that is.
me? *****? i think i got the
actor's part of christ... i.e. the antichrist...
and my crucifixion scene is in a sickbed...
and lasts too long like Tolstoy's war & peace
that no one reads...
and i sometimes get a sponge soaked with
wine given to me by a centurion,
or as i like to call it... some writing time
from the excesses of perspiration
doing the easiest of household activities
with the energy of someone aged 80;
no seriously, heath ledger stole the joker
from the realm of fiction and made it a reality
when hades dully acknowledged these
words to ring true:
telegram from the mediator of yhwh... heath ledger
is the joker... hades didn't reply and merely
gleed with awe like freshly oiled wooden flooring,
although a few dimples appeared on his face.

When I heard today
Your passing away
Regretted I
Failed to pay
You a visit why?

Regretted I
Why, why, why, why
Failed to say goodbye
On your sickbed
Looking at your eye?

Regretted I
Told you not why
Your kindness and honesty
Were descriptions that defy?

Of course
I was submerged
In life's
Rest -not- knowing chores?

i always said
i would
never
do it.

i always said
i never
think
about it.

i have,
though.

does it
hurt?
who will
miss me?
what happens
after?

take back
please
to when my
life remained
free
and
blessed

fast forward
it to when
i lay in
sickbed
not knowing
when it is going
to come.

rewind to when
i was fresh,
innocent,
an angel.

and keep me
innocent,
fresh,
an angel.

save me
from the
gaping hole
that sparkles
with
black

because
this disease
has left me
*dead.

mind, taste sleep one last time
bitter chest and burning ribs
break your fingers tearing yourself open
one last time: let them drown you
bitter chest find bright wonder

tough years, broken people,
wrong friends with hate in their hands;
love them harder than you loathe yourself
remember what it felt like
the beautiful things left behind

eyes, look your last
time will show you the sickbed
where warm love points to the sky
asking for gods as her hands
lie clasped, cold and hardening

a good mind turned dark,
these chapped lips purse
and you kiss his body one last time
and when it rains, you swear
it rains blood—no more better days

heart once locked inside breaks free
seek out the white light
mind, taste sleep one last time
eyes, look your last
the beautiful things left behind

i like that expression,
a little time for myself,
it's not exactly
about being selfish,
a momentary trick of
faked disappearance,
when i say a little time for
myself, i mean it's
a time when i can be selfish
in my pain, i can appreciate it,
and i don't need to turn to
sainthood; like the concept
of the anti-crux with the anti-christ,
the anti-crux being a sickbed...
the slow digestion of either
body and its liver and kidneys,
but also the slow disintegration
of the mind and the representatives
of the body's organs akin: the faculties:
intellect or the brain, memory or the stomach,
imagination or the heart, arithmetic
or the bones -
we have provided splinters of what
ought to be abstracted,
pains and pleasures, whatever extreme is
forced upon us, we abstract it,
as is due in the encapsulating capacity
of our potential, if not will,
for in the capacity of expressing will
we follow through, wholly embracing...
but the power to a potential...
well... that's like almost *******
but withdrawing from *******
as an obstruction of giving life, a furthering,
rather keeping it all to yourself.

The extra,
Understudy,
Alternate.

I’m the topics not covered in health class,
The friend you only talk to once you’ve run out of options.
The opener for Duran Duran,
The new moon not seen,
The sexuality deemed “fake”,
That feeling you know but can’t name,
The secret you’re forced to keep hidden,
The rock in a sea of people terrified of change.

But Change is what you do,
And leave me,
Your sickbed shirts,
In a crate.
Me,
Your wooden pipe,
In the trash can.

You terrorist.
You Ziggy Stardust,
Landing on this rocky planet
Only long enough to make a mark,
And then changing,
Leaving me counting on the 3 hands I used to carry your baggage,
The number of things I did wrong.

If you were human,
I’d be a dog.
You’re the ocean.
I’m rock.
I’m the extra,
Understudy,
Alternate,
Unspeakable,
Acquaintance,
Lone wolf,
Phased rock,
Fake,
Forgotten,
Desperate,
Unchangeable,
Other.

“But that’s okay.
You’ll change.
It’s just a phase”

from out of this sickbed
i put my heart on the floor
take it break it smash it fake it
because i don't need it no more

it's heavy, locked and loaded
and doesn't belong to me
i'm tired of myself these days
waiting for angels to be free

they would like to walk with you
feeling sorry for the other side
i can still hear them fighting
playing seek and hide

The virus

This forenoon
is like a new summer day
people smile
behind mask.
their eyes sparkle
like the worst is over.
Superman,
not the movie one,
is in hospital.
the hope is, up from
the sickbed
the Phoenix will fly
on fluttering wings of peace.
failing this
we put our hopes
in prayer
that he might not suffer.