bpm

I'm pretty certain that I could stop time around this darker hour, if I wanted to. Like, I could just think about slowing the world down and it would comply. Like the boy who slowed his heartbeat: "I can make my heart beat slower," he said. I put my ear underneath his collarbone, to document the evidence. And he did. He made his heart beat slower.

"Take the day off work", he said.

"I can't," said I.

I didn't.

"I hope you're not doing anything naughty," joked my boss the day before Labour Day. You wouldn't understand, I thought. Culture clash. Then I went and committed the one act I regret.

"You look a lot better than I do", he yawned from his catafalque of a mattress. He smelt vaguely of whiskey as I pressed my nose into his scapula. "Yes," I said, "I had a shower." And I'm wearing make-up. Oh, and I used your soap. I hope that's ok.

"I wish we could have breakfast," confessed the back of his blonde head to the almost-empty room. I picked up underwear up off the floor and laughed at myself. I've never been one to like blonde boys. Not before and not since. This is ridiculous. 

My 'mature' self would scold my coming-of-age foolishness. Live a little more recklessly, she would say. No, she would say: If you're going to be reckless, do it with full commitment. Don't chicken out in the morning. 

Oh yes, I would rather betray the people I love than the part time job I don't even need. I had four grand in the bank, that year. Spot on, teacher - I am so accommodating. Fitting where it doesn't count and resisting all goodness til the end. Resisting sleep and welcoming bursting stomachs. Lack of sleep leads to an early demise, my mother threatened. Fuck off, I said. Fuck off.

Then I threw a plate through the window. Did I prove my point?

I slept with the weather spitting at me for two nights and then I invested in some masking tape. On the fifth day I emptied my savings account. With resent. Picked out an aesthetically pleasing piece of sharp and tried to dig it into my right thigh. But I really hate pain. I do. I didn't get very far. I probably scratched out two layers of seven skins. What a joke.

Laughing at myself, collecting the night before off his floor.

So I paid twice, in the end.

I paid to drive the winding hills of some place I couldn't pronounce. I listened to my favourite songs in alphabetical order. I resisted sleep and substituted it for make up. I substituted sense for a fleeting Hollywood score.

What's the score, dear Nathaniel? Dear Nathalia? My dear, my dear. Oh dear...

The rain gave me a fright when it finally came. I swear it put the house in motion. It ushered the car across the white lines (briefly). It snaked its way onto my bedsheets through the masked hole. Clutching my little transparent triangle, there sat I. Whispering, go slower. Go slower. Go slower. 

I want to write poems
that sound like music,
that have a pulse behind them when they're read.

Something
has to come out.
It's all going in
going on
caving in
going down
now.

The candle by my bed is a graveyard for anything that needs burning. Empty muffin cases and used matches and forgotten hand-writing. Sometimes the light springs from the glass cylinder it sits in, reaching up towards the electric light. I worry it might catch fire but not enough to put it out. I sit the waiting box of matches right next to it and wonder what would happen if the whole thing flamed.

The mangled plastic around it which holds my high school emblem reeks. It reeks like that plastic-furred orange jacket you burnt outside in the barzier. The burning which made the neighbours come over to check if we were O.K. at number 11. Yes, we're fine thank you. So fine we'll run away to the second-best, almost-here land. Malnourished and burned.

Which came first, I wonder?

Maybe I'll take the legs off my bed and live low-life like you. I am very good at wanting everything. I want each thing exactly when it suits me. I want the damn cupcake paper to catch alight and settle with the wick, but it keeps burning itself out.

When it finally catches, it stinks fucking awful. Oh, we're really raging now. Orange jumping up the wall. Reflecting in the green. I came green into this house and stunk my lungs out this same colour. From bright hyper-pink bathwater holders. Left the evidence out to be ignored by new flatmates.  Is it ok to inhale aluminium? Probably not. You know what else I am good at? Getting fucked up and then waking up early without effect.

I don't know why I want the dark so much when I was raised on light. When I have this incessant need to see.

My pillowcases are near turned black now. There's wax all up the wall - it looks like spilled beer. I wonder if anyone's ever fallen asleep with their candle on?

the long roping lines of you
coiling down between the sternum-met lines of me
coiling into my neck, waist, etcetera

my legs making triangles against the under-surface
(she said, it's unlike you to have a blue blanket
- that's a very strange observation for someone to make)
...I don't know what shape yours make
your legs, I mean
maybe triangles in some other orientation?

you are the second one to use my second name
the second to un-make the bed
"just wait a second" --
the second with knotted thinkings

not only are we the wrong way around, sleeping
but we are the wrong way around in seasons

Feels like my vertebrae
are made of weights.
Those little round grimy metallic discs.

tonight

subordinate sub-drone
sending shockwaves through my nasal passages
that familiar K' Rd pizza-pussy stench
stretched and scathed skin along
rickety-textured footpaths
we're all in bright-warm Amber-orange here

I want dirt on my walls
under my nails
food stuck to my feet
I want immaculate cleanliness
and
immaculate timing. Immaculate
adrenaline through my veins
(the ran kind), signed -

I want to be chased by choice-danger
I want Hollywood movies made of me
I want drug-run order in the daytime
sleepy chaos at night
and another's head when it suits me.