this day last year

Lying in child's pose with my forehead pressed against the dirty, sweaty studio floor I felt suddenly incredibly happy with exhaustion. A smile forced itself across my face – looking back between my knees back to see the rest of the class behind me – I didn’t try to contain it.

the happiest kind of lonely

We are all infected with each other. There is no pure breed because we are all cross-contaminated mongrels whose lives seep into each others’. If you would like to be yourself – I wish you luck. It’s unlikely you will ever see your own face and even if you do it will be made up of all the hundreds of thousands of faces your own eyes have seen. 

You will fill yourself up with other people until you are balancing bodies stacked above your head like a twisted family tree. Your branches will extend beyond your own limbs.

I am too tired to decipher who belongs to my family tree. My body second guesses itself and my sight shows me different things to what my ears are hearing; I am out of sync. I hate that insecurity can win over truth. I attempt to not be afraid but attempting is the end. Honestly, let’s just fit. Our shapes match. I’m exhausted by my uncertainty and by my choice. I have exhausted my options. 

Aside from superstition I will confess I was third time lucky. Truly, I have offered you my faith. Don’t tell me you are too holy for love. No-one can say this without lying and thou shall not lie. I know, I know. How can I expect you to decline earnest gestures? I did think you had eyes though. 

Look, I am most honest when least grounded. Can you rattle this out for me all the time please? Then you will know how to stay on the spot. And we can all mark time.

jump theory

A brain aneurysm – a surge of energy to sabotage the circuit – he switches in a nanosecond to the most bizarre of moods even he can’t recognise it. Standing on the second storey he feels like he could easily and accidentally jump off without even realising what he is doing. Second storey safety and false fantasies of crash mats. It’s so easy to think you could survive the jump listening to the most fucked up of music. 

His muscles don’t remember how to sit still so his outside conjures up light images and his blood cells run races against each other where everyone loses. He won’t look you in the eye. 

The guy sitting at the bus stop can’t sit still either. The two of them are disintegrating together in a hideous symphony and the first feels as though he might vomit and is trying to cry but all that happens is his eyes leak slightly. On his neck are faint blushed dark red splodges from where his ex-girlfriend kissed him and he can’t remember what she looks like because all he saw was the top of her head and the black cavities of her smudgy eyeliner scooping out her eyes while she successfully cried – envious that she can drain herself of her fluids but he can’t. He can’t tell fiction from reality and what are either of those things anyway because they leak into each other like her make-up leaks into his neck and he doesn’t even know anymore if trust is worth investing in or what he will do when he no longer has a rooftop. 

Maybe living high is what’s making him want to jump. He’s feeling so strange he presses both hands around her beautiful strange head while they are kissing and she is smelling like hints of blackberry so she doesn’t feel a thing but just takes pleasure in the weight of his knuckles and his collar bone under her lips, until he presses harder and his hands become closer to each other and she can only think about the colour of what she drank tonight. Neither of them have scars but they both give their bodies up in order to remember what living feels like. It’s something like imagining, they decide. Breathing feels so surreal and he admits that he is utterly, utterly frightened and she says she is too, literally right out of her own skull but she has to leave on a plane, her plane is leaving now.

Your plane is not leaving he tells her. Your plane is not leaving. Your plane is not leaving. Why is it not leaving she asks, her head a different shape. My plane is leaving now. No, your plane is not leaving, he says, because I am afraid and so your plane has been delayed perhaps indefinitely. Ad infinitum. Your plane is not leaving, it is not. The only plane that is leaving is the one off the top of this building, and he drags her out onto the soot-covered roof and shows her the bottom of the city. Look at this, he says. Do you think this is big enough to be a runway? It’s not. So again, your plane is not leaving. This is not an airport.

And he cries honestly now and he cries from every pore and every opening in his body like an animal that dies and is rid of all its fluids. 

This is not an airport, he says. He stands on the edge of the rooftop and tells her, I am the only plane. I’m going to take flying lessons. I am going to see things you have never seen before from heights you can’t even imagine – how can you possibly imagine heights if you can’t even understand breathing, that’s basic biology right?

He invites her to go back into his room and curl her fruit-caked body into a chair. Make yourself comfortable, he says. There is never enough room in plane seats so seize the opportunity. Pretend you have been upgraded to first class. Here’s the truth baby: your brain is beautiful but I found other sets of grey already.

ante meridiem

these sounds are practiced so often now but
I’m still astounded each time
higher voices travel the furthest
and whatever was accessible before is now taboo
there is no way we can be ourselves
when the floorboards are creaking and the
cupboard door flaps about, refusing to stay shut

There is a violent moth inside of me
with wings that have bits missing
small gaps chewed out
by fury
it is
fluttering around in my throat feeling like bits of hair clogged in the shower drain.

It is difficult to eat (which we all know I like doing) because the moth flutters everything back out of my mouth. Small bits pass through the holes in its wings but it is not very comfortable. I have to chew twice as much to make everything twice as small - at least it fits into my cells better.

When I am not trying to eat though the feeling of the moth is quite enjoyable. A nice kind of breath passing through my insides; some sort of wind creeping up my throat
and I feel how much empty space I am made of.

Maybe I should just stick to drinking. Liquid passes through the gaps in the moth's wings easily. With a bit of luck I can drown the sorry parasite
I am sorry moth
I wish my throat could house you - I would
like to be your cocoon out of which you emerge
a butterfly
metamorphosed
but you have bits of you missing and would only come out more damaged. Let's be honest. If you had no holes I could not eat at all and I wouldn't get the same fluttery/airy feeling...
and, secretly I'd like to think that if I open my mouth wide enough
the light can shine down through
you into me and
we will both be warm.

frame of mind

Perhaps I am due for a lobotomy.

green-eyed monster

Let me get high with you.

Your bedroom door is made of glass. I can smell your colour from my end of the hallway you know. Perhaps we could meet in the middle and have sitting conversations slumped against the wall? We wouldn’t be the first.

Believe me when I say that I have seen Sunday nights too. I took photographs in your wardrobe before it was yours. My bread sits next to your memories and my memories sit in your home town. We are both geographically sound and you are good at horticulture. We can start a business which provides return. A home business. From home, at home.

Here’s a good idea: Let’s build our own city over the existing city’s rooftops. Lay down a gigantic drop-sheet and tip-toe around pretending we’re well supported. We will be well-supported when we have our working-at-home in-house horticultural fool-proof money-making scheme up and running. Then we can buy a hot air balloon so that we don’t have to tip-toe anymore and we can light our smokes on the gas-thingy-whatsit underneath the balloon. We’d never have to spend money on lighters. Getting high while high up. That'd be great.

We could flick the ash overboard the hot air balloon basket and you’d get fourteen points for it landing on someone’s head. Which is more difficult than you’d think, with the drop-sheet and all.

I’m serious! Can we get high together? I mean, I’m half smoking now anyway. I mean I’m second-hand smoking. We are circular smoking: out your window and in through mine.

No, honestly. My lungs are well-loved – for now. But my gut is not so much. I won’t pay for it but I do like the idea. Go on. Convince me. You know I’ll accommodate.

theory versus reality

someone dial 111, this is an emergency!

Shit’s going down in the hallway
at 1:48am
we have drunk ourselves into crumpled faces
doubled over from guilt
as I am I play the mender, I
rushoutofmyroom!
here is what I mean to say:
“shut the fuck up I am trying to sleep!”
here is what I actually do:
fold my arms around the culprit and tell the other very politely
“please don’t hit the wall, I know you’re frustrated but you
can’t just go punching the wall”
now how am I supposed to sleep peacefully knowing there are tears
inches away
our walls are not very thick you know
I can hear heartache better than I can hear dialogue
which includes snippets of
“…fucked me” and “sorry but I..”

Here is what happens to friends: you begin,
you share yourself, your self grows and your arms become part of the other
you forget that your arms belong partly to other people now
they are not your arms anymore
you decide you no longer like your arms
it is time for modification to self and you
try to cut them off
forget about the other body
who is actually now also your body – shit. Problemo.
Incest is quite an issue in our society

See I could sit down too but instead I
choose to lie
“no it’s fine” I say, “…but can you
please be quiet thank you sorry thank you sorry please thank you”
I am so polite
oh sure do I assert my place, I am right and I am
very assertive don’t you worry about that sir
yes I always tell someone if what they are doing is bothering me, I do
not let people push me over, no
in fact just this afternoon I walked a man off the road
I shift bodies all the time, honest
this man off the road, like I said and this
man off my bedroom wall and the semi-broken, well
he shifted her into the hallway
but I played a part in shifting her too when I put my arms on her
I do feel sorry for the ones further out than myself
sorry
I hope it’s a girl
I hope you are ok to drive
do you know if it’s a girl?
a girl would be nice
then we can all be the colour green
although honestly, I know you like green
but I’m not sure if I could like green
I liked it once and I think that is probably enough
but maybe we can work out a compromise whereby
you like green and I just like you?
passive green loving
yeah, that'll work
as long as we do it quietly
because I wouldn’t want to keep the others awake
and they certainly try their best to live

Then it happens
the animal is tearing off its own arms
that hungry feasting on the unknowing air
which I am never quite sure if it’s wonderful or awful
I find it quite hard to tell without seeing
or maybe like he said
“there is beauty in the break down”
but I’m not really sure
I think they call it nostalgia when thinking of happy things makes you sad

Don’t worry everyone, I
have a solution
we are all going to
make it out alive
here’s what we will all do
come now, sit yourself down in the hallway and sit for quite a while
until you feel your backside go numb
that’s a sure sign things are improving
and we can just talk it out
and pretty soon you’ll be laughing,
I promise
there now don’t you feel better already?
yes, smiles all round
there we go
see it's not so bad
everything is lovely and fine
no more tears
everything is
Fine.




Dear God I need a smoke. Who has a lighter?






[Lyrics "there is beauty in the break down" from Let Go by Frou Frou.]

are you a bird or a rapist?

girls walking along the beach
"kia ora" they said
boys not far behind them
"how's your day miss?"
one asked

sorry, but your car is bleeding

always awkward bumping into people you thought you'd never see again

 

 

haven't been here for days
been walking old ways around my flat
liking dreaming, feeding
all my night-time thoughts

who'd have thought that you've known

bodies pressing gently on you

need a body
need a face
need a space reserved especially for -

need some weight to hold me down so

I can be heavy with magic

sinking smell that empty thought

 

haven't been here for days
been sleeping old ways around the city
knowing, dreaming, feeding
all my night-time thoughts
should have known before you thought of
bodies pressing gently on you
can't remember bodies, faces
can't remember places I should
need some weight to hold me down
heavy with your magic I could
taste myself on your insides
sick with kisses and the
stench of empty heads
don't think I went to school that year
kind of want to know your insides
scared how many sides your insides have
I saw your lips switching
yeah I saw you and you were heavy with your magic

[ film in the fridge !   film in the fridge !  film in the fridge ! ]

the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had

“I don’t know… I mean I’d like to believe I’m not but I just … I’ve just never seen any proof so I … I just don’t debate it anymore, you know, it’s like I could spend my whole life debating it over and over and weighing the pros and cons and in the end I still wouldn’t have any proof so I just … I just don’t debate it anymore. It’s absurd.”

- Donnie Darko

He doesn't have a light.
He's leading the way and he doesn't have a light.

guy fawkes

At first the fireworks look spectacular... Then after a while they all begin to look the same and you are just looking at different versions of the same thing over and over and you don't even notice the POP!-BANG! noise anymore and the streetlights are probably brighter and better and at the very least permanent and no matter how high you climb - from lying on the floor looking out the window, to the street, to your rooftop, to the summit of a mountain - you can't get a better view. Watch out. The fireworks are probably going to set your pet dog on fire.

the contract

I know the rules. They lie between myself and each person I meet. They are floating between blankets and sprawled out over couch arms.

Here is one of the rules: If you choose to play the game you realise that you play only as a body, a vessel. I want to be a person but people are only interested in bodies. Static bodies carved from soft pink flesh. We are trading on the black market and selling human organs for pittance.

How extraordinarily odd ... tempting, bizarre, freakish, worrying, repulsive, intriguing ... to know that if I wanted to sell my goods at a side stall in a rundown part of town I could. There is a demand for what I have. I would receive a profit for the risk involved on my part. It would be an effortless act oozing with class. Men would know my name, seek me out, open their pockets carefully to make bids. The entire concept is peculiar.

Sometimes I feel like I am foreign to this people. I like to be amongst them but I am not always with them. I am isolated on an island which consists entirely of other versions of myself. I am stepping on too many heads.