One day,
we will smoke cigarettes,
naked beneath the moon.
It will be raining outside,
and we will hold each other
close.
Flesh against flesh,
one day.
One day,
we will smoke cigarettes,
naked beneath the moon.
It will be raining outside,
and we will hold each other
close.
Flesh against flesh,
one day.
Half an hour before:
I’m absolutely exhausted, physically and mentally. I’m home alone all day, which I think I will enjoy. I need to write and I need to do it quickly. I will likely have to do some homework, given that tomorrow is Mother’s Day. I think, right now, what I will do is take a walk. I’ll get out of bed and put on something warm, enjoying the sun (even though the air is cold). I’ll stroll the five minutes to my favourite coffee shop, and flirt with the barista there, because he always flirts back and he’s sweet. I’ll walk in, and he’ll smile at me and say, “A caramel latte!” and I’ll laugh in response. “You’re so predictable, baby,” he’ll murmur, before we talk about the intricacies of the moments since we’ve last seen each other. When he’s made my coffee, I’ll give him my best smile, and make sure that he’s watching me while I walk out. Nothing will ever come of it, but that’s part of the fun. I think I will like being alone today. Well, alone besides all of you. I love you for being here. x
Half an hour after:
I’m home from the coffee shop. He said I looked beautiful today, which made me blush and smile, and then he said my smile only made me look even more like a goddess. The other waiter rolled his eyes, and offered a friendly greeting to me, before walking off with two coffees in his hand and shaking his head. On the way home, I saw a cat. This cat was utterly beautiful, a sleek burmese cat. He mewed at me as I walked past, and I was tempted to say hello, but he seemed to be enjoying the sun too much, so I let him be. I love where I live. It’s a gated community without the gates, and all the grasses are mown and the buildings are a sparkling white. It’s called Breakfast Point, because it’s where Captain Cook first had Breakfast after landing in Australia. It is an absolutely beautiful day and I’m thinking I may write outside. I’m rather content today. x
Drunken words are sober thoughts;
or so I’ve heard from
some bar side scribe,
as he sips on his brandy and ice,
trying to remember in vain
the taste of your lips
in between shots of vodka,
trying to remember in futility
the feel of skin beneath my fingers,
holding a chilled glass in hand.
The clink of ice against transparent glass
distracts the poet from his musings;
the smell of alcohol too tempting to resist,
a sullen siren in the night, pouting in an effort
to seduce. He’s been writing this piece for months,
a word a day since she left, each syllable accompanied by
a shot of tequila, each finished stanza by two shots of rum.
He cannot write her sober.
In his memory, she stumbles through the bedroom door,
drunk and slurring, throwing abuse like darts.
She is a hit of raw alcohol, burning his throat and eyes,
slowing his reflexes until the only thing left to do
is write at a bar side, alone; writing
drunken words & sober thoughts.
One of my very rare collabs. Italics is trebemot, normal text is moderateclimates.
You dream in syllables alone,
as though the screen in the movie cinema isn’t working,
the projector’s broken, there’s just sound.
A long, drawn out moan—
my name—
and a gasp that emanates from my claimed lips.
I cannot see you. I cannot watch your eyes roll back in ecstasy.
Instead, I feel the phantom caress of fingertips, over sensitive skin,
goosebumps raising, as though it’s winter. But your touch warms.
I am an open flower, dreaming of your pollination.
Gasp, my lover, gasp. I will moan in tandem.
I dreamt you were suave, cool, composed, in an ironed suit
and polished black shoes. I wore a dress, burgundy, velvet.
Under the night sky, we drank champagne and fucked,
your hand raising welts that were begged for. Dreams are
so much more real than reality. You moaned my name.
I moaned yours.
The projector screen is broken,
but I can still see every thrust you make with perfect clarity.
And your shout when you finish is as loud as my own beating heart,
alone in my bed on a cold Autumn night.
they told me
They told me, “Do not write about the Moon, for that has been done for thousands of years.” They told me, “Write only what has touched your heart. Write only what has shaped your universe. Do not write about the Moon. Every new writer will.”
I wanted to scream when they told me that. I held a pen that had never been used, and they paused to let me make notes, to validate their formulaic writing advice with quick notes and bullet points. I never wrote down a word. The lecture continued on, but what they had muttered carelessly before kept running, ‘round and ‘round my broken mind. I wanted to scream when they told me that. I have never wanted to write about the Moon.
I want to write about the Sun.
I have been living all these years, these long years marked by the passing of false romances and growing wrinkles, to find the perfect way to write that exploding star that lives so near, and yet so far. Between us and She, there lies an eternal, impassable vacuum, where dreams go to die and wishes fly in the drowning, dark night. A scalding spot just above the horizon, She haunts us with her distance and her immediate presence. Does she think I cannot see her?
I watch her rise and fall, in opposition to my daily routines. She lives in perfect balance to me, imploding whilst I explode, resting while I scream. It is her fiery caramel skin that gives me rest, that calms my racing heartbeat when I awaken from that same old nightmare. I cannot count the number of times I have falling asleep, longing for her charcoal embrace, embers burning an immutable scar against my ribcage. My heart finds reason to pulse from the stimulants that are her eyes, a dark, passionate stare that sets my skin aflame, and memories to be flashed brilliantly across the film of cognition. The scent of a once-burning flame has permeated my lonely bedroom, where She once slept beside me.
The Sun was once a girl on this fleeting earth. She was born with two arms, two legs, ten fingers, ten toes, and passion. She sketched out her childhood with chalk on the driveway, an ever-expanding poem that was recorded in the brilliance of a rainbow against the mechanisms of humanity. She used to fly down hills, travelling in a timeless moment from the ocean to the desert, from the Amazon to the tropics. I never knew her then. I never knew her when she cradled her innocence within the palms of her hands, a secret she kept locked away from a divided home. I never knew her when she was whole. I only knew her when her purity had been defiled and her trust betrayed. That’s when that little girl became a reluctant woman, and the reluctant woman became the Sun. I fell in love with that Sun, as She fled this hurting world for the sanctity of empty space. She was tired, and her flesh was cut open. She began to burn. A star.
You see, I have fallen in love with this girl that burns. She consumes me with passion, with ferocity, with determination. The moon? I remembered that they taught me how to write—that they tried to teach me how to write. Why would I ever write about the Moon, when I could write about the Sun?
They cannot tell me how to write. They cannot tell me which words to put in front of others. I cannot tell myself that. All I know is that I write for the Sun. I write for my very own Star. Her.
(I trace the rhythms of your dancing feet
across the distant constellations. You dance
between the Blackspace, from star to star,
a wraith who is constant in your inconstancy.)
1. You are a dance that I learnt in an antiquated ballroom as a young girl, my tutor’s sweaty palms grasping my waist. I had not yet developed womanly hips. While I sketched your rhythm on the mahogany floorboards, I felt my childhood melt away, snow in the tropics, fleeting.
(Inked with permanent marker into fragile skin,
your name remains, an everpresent montage of
phonetic sounds & histories. The Phoenicians
brought you to my open, waiting heart.)
2. You are a scar on the flesh of my inner thigh, carved into my cellular foundation with inhuman steel. I carved a Mona Lisa into the skin that Cleopatra envied, a new artform to overtake a dying, apocalyptic Art World. Your twisted reality infects my purity. I do not need to remember you, for I carry you with me.
(You flickerflash before my tired eyes,
your scent awakens poorly buried memories.
I cannot sleep, I cannot dream, save the waking
vision that haunts my aching frame, by day, by night.)
3. By starlight, I let your wraith arms envelope my aching body. I ache for contact, for your nightmarish lips to descend upon my own. Descending into illusion, I deceive myself willingly, a hostage to the past. Stockholm, take me, I am yours for you to do with as you wish.
There exists a moment when the heart does not beat;
a split second where time simply stops—
an infinite pause, time for the universe
to breathe. You cannot feel it. You cannot
feel. But I have felt the gap between
pulse&pulse, a sprawling chasm
between instants. You gasp
and come (inside)(toward) me.
Can you see the wrinkles on your palms,
how they quiver as the years go by?
Your eyes remain
deep and dark, an abyss I
cannot understand. Inside light
vanishes. Flutter, my muscle, shiver,
and when you do, I will blink—
an inconsequential movement
that makes up for
silence.
I am the honorific Oak.
I have stood tall, the Twin Towers,
(without my beloved halfsoul)
surveying over an organic Manhattan
for tens / thousands of years.
My calves grow roots,
which sink deep into your virgin soil—
I am rooted into past & present & promise.
The nutrients here taste of sweat and semen,
which we gathered in the long Summer night,
a sweet, whispered contract between two broken
souls.
(ours)
The night passes in the same way the centuries do,
a slow-building wave, confident in size and power.
Inevitable movement shakes me to the core, and while
my oakleaves tremble and my oakbranches flail,
my roots stand firm & strong,
signed into the covenant
the Earth and I signed in blood.
I am scarred where huntsmen have carved initials
into my paperbark, but I have healed,
your tongue tracing stitches over broken flesh.
Watch, how skin knits itself back together again
in an instant! in an eternity!
I am the honorific Oak.
I reign over this organic Manhattan,
where SoHo resides in my left kneecap,
Harlem in my right shoulder,
and the long Central Park lazes down my spine.
I have breathed in cityforest for thousands of years.
I have breathed in cityforest for barely a moment.
Here,
(time travels through,
blink blindly,
fall.)
I think it would be beautiful if someone wrote me a book, one day. Perhaps I am narcissistic and demanding in thinking this. I am hoping that I fall in love with a writer. I would want to fall asleep in each other’s arms at dawn, having written our own worlds and characters down over the long & lonely night. I want to fall in love with someone who understands that reality is not the only real thing to me. I want to fall in love with someone who will devote themselves to language, as well as living for me. I want to write the curves of their cheek as an artist would sketch it with charcoal. I will write the writhing dance of love-making, rather than film it with cameras and actors unrealistic. I want to fall in love with someone who will not be content with cradling my body in their arms alone, who would crave the sensation of their words and I making love on papyrus. Please, embellish my flaws and imperfections in permanent ink. Let me live on in the immutable world of novels. Put me through pain and suffering and heartbreak, and at the end, enlighten me with the sort of knowledge that comes to a protagonist at the end of a thousand page novel. Please, write me. Please. I will only fall in love with you if you write. I will only fall in love with you if you fall in love with both of my hearts—the heart that interacts with this fleeting world, and the heart that longs to be immortalised in a long and lonely book. Please.
I did not want to kiss you today. I did not want to feel your lips move against mine with lust. That would have been too real. I did not want to hold your hand. I hold secrets in my palms which would have flown away, had I opened my palms to entwine fingers with yours. I did not want to feel your heart beat against my back. I did not want to feel blood flow through your body, quickening in response to my own flesh. I did not want to feel you. I did not want to feel you. I did not want to fall for your flesh. I wanted to feel your palm against the curvature of my hip. I wanted to feel your fingers dance down my arm, your lips on my neck alone. I wanted to keep my butterfly lips away from your flesh. I wanted to be separate but I wanted to feel. I wanted to be reminded what sensation was. I wanted to feel another’s flesh and recognise that you are you and I am me. Please don’t kiss me. I need to know I am an entity with life and tears and nerve endings. I need to know that I am not a dream that I myself have dreamt up, to live in a lonely, darkened room listening to Clair de Lune. I need to remember that flesh holds moments and memories within it. I needed to be reminded of a physical love. I hold no emotional love now. I cannot. I am sorry. I am sorry. I need to be better. I need to be okay. Even now, as I breathe in the silence of the night, I am forgetting about the warmth of your eyes. I am forgetting what you said to me when you first saw me, what you thought of Howl by Allen Ginsberg, what your mother said about your father. I am forgetting everything. Nothing is real but flesh. I have come to this realisation, that the only reason I know you is because I have felt you. Your words are a passing cloud, soon to fall like glistening raindrops. Your soul is as translucent as the water, but so is mine. All you are is flesh. That’s what you are. I am sorry I cannot love you now. I am sorry I cannot wed your heart in the moonlight. I need to be better. I need to be okay. I need to stay in my room with the blinds drawn, reading books and dreaming dreams. I need to venture out only for a caramel latte and a new book, only loving those I have known for an eternity. You are too new. I will fall in love with you when I have sewn the tattered parts of my heart together again. Please do not hurt. Please do not hurt. You are wonderful. I am broken. I need to unbreak. I need to connect with myself again; my soul to my flesh. Only then can my soul fall in love with yours.
(I cannot promise anything.)
