Very slowly,
I will breathe out stardust,
in the hopes that some of my soul
will collect upon the glass shard cheekbones
that I have come to love.
Take the stars inside you,
and carry me in your lungs.
(And if,
at three o’clock in the dark & sweltering summer night,
you feel me shudder & shake inside your comfort prison arms,
will you believe in pleasure or pain?
Will you feel hell wrack through my skeleton,
or press a kiss to my forehead whilst heaven slumbers on?
Will you be a nightmare, or a daydream?)
I am scared to fall asleep
with your arms around me.
I am scared to fall asleep
without your arms around me.
headstone
When your flesh turns to dust,
and you become nothing more than cigarette ash
scattered on Atlantic breezes, they will decide
how human you were whilst you breathed.
On your tombstone, they will etch the essentials,
and summarise your million heartbeats in hastily carved letters,
by an impatient ancient man (and each slab of silent sandstone
only reminds him of his ever fading mortality).
19?? – 20??
Each heartbreak, joy, childbirth & childdeath
contained within a single hyphen.
You have been reduced to punctuation.
You have become nothing more than a collection of dates.
They will not remember you—they will simply remember
the moon launch the year you died,
the corrupt president that burned America the year
you announced your presence, screaming bloody murders
that you were one day to commit.
When they embalm you with salts and pure white rags,
when they trap you forevermore, to sleep silently within
a cruel, confined coffin, they will speak dramatic eulogies in hushed voices,
standing over your grave-to-be. Quietly, they will remember you,
as if frightened that they will wake the dead with their muffled,
forced tears. And as they lower you into the ground,
will your mother cry?
With aching arms,
the workmen (hungover, lonely & longing for absent wives)
will seal the grave with a kiss and a headstone,
and there will be no epitaph.
Your humanity reduced
to sandstone, dates,
and a name that will cease to mean anything
(except to the moon, except to the stars,
except to the lonely dead).
My flesh crumbles, cigarette ash skin,
grey & charred & burnt away. I am the
inhalation of death, the breathing of
destruction, the promise of cancerous
regrets on your death bed. I am, I am,
I am the end of all things. I am, I am,
I am the end.
They will take you into surgery,
slice into you with aggressive scalpels
and cauterising fingers. They will stop
the bleeding, before they stitch you up
with unsolicited advice and a psychiatric
appointment. They will discard me, the tumor,
as medical waste, as the end of all things,
as the end.
I am a quit line in the dark of the night,
numbers screeching the promise of salvation
in Helvetica and Arial and the dreaded Comic Sans.
I am both destruction and renewal, I am the Jesus of
tobacco romances. I am addiction and victory. I am,
I am, I am winning the battle, I am the end of all things,
I am, I am, I am
the end.
Willow Girl
Willow Girl,
collapse into the dirt,
wet with the tears you lost under moonlight.
Willow Girl,
let your pale, fading leaves fall,
drift slowly to the dewy grass, your colour vanishing.
Willow Girl,
let your branches be bare,
expose your fragile skeleton to the harsh Arctic winds.
Willow Girl,
let your limbs dislocate,
and all strength leave your barely surviving frame.
Willow Girl,
the Spring will come again one day,
or so said the old maid as she shuffled by the winding river banks.
Willow Girl,
the Sun will warm your heart again,
your flame tucked deep inside your treetrunk torso.
Willow Girl,
the Winter is cold and long,
or so said your mother, when you grew from a weak sapling.
Willow Girl,
you have not yet blossomed into green,
but the stars are twinkling ever brighter, and the ice begins to melt.
Willow Girl,
you droop with the exhaustion of existence,
yet Summer draws close, and the birds begin to sing.
Willow Girl,
breathe.
beat rhythm jazz
I heard New York scream last night.
I felt the agonising primal roar
rip through my too-thin chest
just before dawn. The night still lingered on,
a lover’s caress on the walls of buildings,
where vines crept in between bricks
and ripped apart the mortar tendons.
While the stars still winked their distant secrets,
gathered from centuries of watching
bloodshed, war, love, and all that
twenties New York jazz,
the city convulsed,
a colossal panic attack shielded by the dark.
The junkies shoot up their devastating drugs,
while husbands make love to unfeeling wives,
and hopeless(ful) teenagers write poetry
on misted windows.
With cheap beer in hand,
and cancer cradled between yellow stained fingertips,
I watched the city choke.
Aching, transatlantic feet
dangled over the edge of buildings
suffocating on weeds—like rotten love
that decays the flesh of the two men,
foolish enough to think that sexual desire
meant true love. It does not.
(The Boroughs will screech again tomorrow.)
I left L.A. for the fluroscent lights of
Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State
and the ghosts of Ginsberg / Burroughs.
From Queens, I’ll watch Manhattan drown,
swallowed by greedy Hudson.
All the while,
I’ll smoke tacky cigarettes,
get too drunk,
and send a greeting to the Devil
with the flooded Rockefeller.
and you will know me
New York does not yet know my name,
and Paris has not memorised my signature.
Berlin has not learnt the way I sing beneath the stars,
the way my body bends beneath the the moonlight.
Men do not feel my soul pulse through their hardened hearts,
women have not empathised with the curves of my soul.
Children have not been lulled to sleep by the rhythms of my poetry.
Humanity has not melded their minds to fit my aching frame.
You do not know my name.
You do not know the cadence of my breath.
Nonetheless, the cosmos beats within me,
the universe whispers her story through the cracked windowpane
late at night, while suburbia slumbers on.
I am insignificant amongst the bricks and mortar
that hold our crumbling lives together, and yet;
my words will one day burn
as bright as the stars,
as softly as the moon,
as brilliantly as the sun,
and you will know my name.
In Paris
In Paris,
I tasted contentment on the Spring breeze.
I smiled at courtesans who lingered in corners,
who rested their lithe bodies against cool cobblestone,
who seduced their patrons with curves and the language
of love. I felt the Seine move endlessly, as the waters rose
at midnight and entered my soul through my mouth.
I swallowed the river in my dreams, and even to this day,
I can feel the everlasting movement. I can hear the water
sing. I saw the Eiffel Tower sway to the accordion,
watched the metal structure waltz with the wind,
gazed as the pinnacle of France flirted with the air.
I savoured escargots, melted chocolate, creme de la creme,
and wrote down recipes on paper napkins, the underside
of my caramel wrist. I darted through alleyways,
hiding from the dusk in second hand bookstores,
making love to boutiques just before closing time,
finding the secrets of Picasso, searching out
the stories of Hemingway, the melodies of Cole Porter
thrumming through my heart.
In Paris,
I imprinted the fleur-de-lis above my heart,
captured within my softening skin.
In Paris,
I heard the way the Seine whispered to the stars,
and I will murmur to you with the same softness.
In Paris,
I tangoed with bliss, cha-cha’ed with romance,
and learnt how to dance in time to the beat
of beauty.
I am made of mooncurves
and promises. I am made
of starlight and future loves.
I am made of broken bones
and perfect flesh. I am made of
unblemished skin and scarred
lungs. I am made of humanity.
Today, they took my future to pathology in a transparent plastic bag. Three vials, each to be tested for three different diseases, and I sat shaking on the chair, while a medical student smiled at me, admitting that was the first time he’d taken blood. His eyes flashed awkwardly up to mine (quickly filling with tears, as they were) when he saw what they were searching me for. I did not want his sympathy. I watched my blood be taken away, and hoped that when it was returned, I would be given a positive (negative) answer.
