circular II

They all seem 

to begin and end with drugs, so that some of the most 

beautiful moments

are the most nostalgic - seeing things 

only half there, and 

wondering whether the space 

my eyes inhabit

is a different color 

to theirs. 

like me, please

"Of course you're beautiful," I tell him. "You're sixteen and you're drunk."

He shifts his chin higher, hearing sarcasm despite my subordinate sincerity.

I smile at his inebriated grab towards indignation. I  remember being beautiful too, though the peak of mine came around the better parts of 19 and the more jarred parts of 22 - the former when this wrongly-accused pseudo-lover inhabited the room next door, and the latter when the night skies were dancing in spite of my paralysis.

Sixteen's proud of pushing double digits. He thinks he's beyond us. And sure, I was before the starting line at his age. Not that I cared. I was in love with other things: the idea of dancing, paper-thin hymns and words. Though now - contrary to his suggestion - I'm his equal, at least. Knowing is my dancing. Exhaling is about as holy as I get. My poems are spoken in contorted flesh. I don't schedule my trysts as he has to, and I don't need to steal phones for an excuse to run into the darker corners of Aotea Square.

He's got it all back to front. Including my intentions. I don't fuck everyone I share ice cream with. The pseudo-lover shifts along the seat and is accused of doing what we've denied. Sixteen laughs when I suggest it's him who's being looked at. Wrong, of course, but closer to the truth than my own skin.

"Is it because I'm beautiful?" he says smugly.

'Yes,' I say. I'm not taking the piss. "You're sixteen and you're drunk. Of course you're beautiful."

I envy him his tangled little head. I've a vicious wave of nostalgia. And yet I know there are reasons I have chosen to ground my own atoms. Perhaps I have grounded them too much.

So, on Saturday night, I go back. Not very successfully, but I'm there. I encourage others to do the same. Forcefully. I miss the first hour of sleep waiting for the future to repeat itself. Then I miss the first hour of the day recovering from the wine I didn't drink. I manage to steep myself in some short history in the afternoon. I visit the supermarket as per tradition, former lover in hand but not held.

Then I write about it.

golden

Something in my body
badly needs to press itself
into another skin

and it's not even
a lust thing - no, it's like
I need some other pores to breathe with
some other veins to push my blood through
just to be sure
that I'm feeling
live

really, here and me
is fine - in fact,
when I have that, mostly,
I feel how I imagine I should -

but when I'm energised so,
I become a greedy glutton
for repulsive atoms:
I need them all 
pressed against me, into me, through me
I'm shelling onto the rocks
or else,
melting beneath the floor

oh yes, I know alone's better
but skin-tight feels so nice
and the idea feels
even nicer
and even nicer on a whim
held in a fleeting moment
those atoms sieving through my lazy hands.

revilery II

There have been few words
these seventeen days -
my words instead
riddling in their bodies,
writhing around their arms,
fluttering in their oesophaguses

my words have been spinning
in their pretty little heads, their wrists weighed
with the binds
of my gravity,
done up by the ribbons
of my mind

out from their arms fold my thoughts
I have unwittingly asked them
to hold a mirror up to me

and so
instead of talking
to the page, I have been
talked to
by my other

- that angry
dark-haired faerie
has let loose, in the dripping walls of
this third floor on Cuba,
rattled by tens of tiny ballet shoes
and buskers' strings. I have
held white up to my eye
and though those whites weigh heavy

I am all the better
for not having slept. 

back in forward

I stopped
on the stairs above the hostel

because I heard your voice -

not yours, of course, but

so much like it

and my ears, having been lacking

but for drones of engine buses

and crackings of skulls,
a phone call, and so on

drank (you) in

I stopped for longer than necessary

to stand on the stairs 

to absorb that pseudo-voice
and eavesdrop on imagining,
to make the strange familiar. 

revilery

There’s a particular pleasure - a certain sensuality - in our self-inflicted suffering. In our madness, we find ecstasy. In the familiarity of self-abuse, we are home. Our fragility makes us resilient. Like undercover masochists, we revel in holding on to the habits that hurt us.

icicle

Oh, I melt so easily into
    things

    this little iceberg
so submerged, just
 skimming the surface with my
    brain-bits. I'm
there and I
don't want to
  rise out

           I melt into songs, people,
                             substances, moments

and once I'm on the floor 

   I'll never stand back upright
if someone doesn't 

      freeze me fast

though I'd rather be liquid
   and slither around
- you just can't allow it
      because I'll forget what I am.