a poem that shouldn't be written but I'm writing it anyway, in what I'd like to think is a moment of bold honesty, but probably is more like embarrassing stupidity

i.

I want to fuck you
like the dirty fucking whore
I once was
/ still am, but
not practising, like a bad catholic who's
skipping church

I want to
open my mouth
wider over yours, and take giant gulps of you
run my tongue along your teeth
and smash my jaw on your edges

and even though I get off
every time with you, without fail, and even
almost always
more than once, I just...

feel complacent in my climax
coz it's just so
goddamn easy

I want the performance back.

I want to dress up in thigh-high socks
and short skirts
and still be wearing them
when you come inside me
(my top off,
but in my bra)

I want to find you in a gutter at 4am
and lick drugs from your sticky palms
I want to wake up on your floor
with broken wine bottles everywhere
and stains in the carpet
that aren't from the wine

I want to smell myself on you
when I walk back into your room
after pissing in the morning
and walking back through your lounge
your conventionally good-looking flatmate
half glaring, half gawking

I want you to smack me across my face
I want you to dig your nails into my spine
I want you to chuck me around your living room and break a
very expensive heirloom

and tell your girlfriend all about it

and write poems about it

I want things that grate entirely
with my actual
ideologies

I want the sordid satisfaction
of you thinking I'm something I'm not
and knowing you can't comprehend
human duality

(or you know it entirely, and
that's why
you're here)

I want the pleasure of having power
over giving you an alter-ego
like, fuck yes this same
binge drinking, cock-sucking slut
also votes green, shuts down the patriarchy and
recycles correctly

and sure you can take me home
if you buy me a vegan burger first
coz I'm a dirty little hippy
with zero dollars to her name
but you're gonna buy me breakfast -
not because you're the male
but because you fucking owe me,
because you already want to see me again
and it's only
the morning after

and I'll answer your 10pm texts
coz it feels like summer,
and we all want that

I'll walk through the park at night for you
I'll risk my life to open my legs
I'll play the right song
and postpone sleep

just to feel in control
just to feel like the mad seductress
just to bear the weight of your form
and hear the aliveness of your breath

and conquer
and know
and decipher
one by one


ii.

here's what I don't want to do:

I don't want to go back to your windowless apartment
I don't want to hold your soft, spineless back
I don't want to pretend I'm enjoying it
I don't want you to shove yourself inside of me
I don't want to eat your fucking pumpkin seeds
you sad excuse for a vegetarian
I don't want to
go fucking slowly
I don't want to be fucked the way you want to fuck me
I don't want to wear a short skirt because you told me to,
I want to wear it because I fucking want to wear it
I don't want you to tell me to be quiet
I don't want you to be such an ugly, pathetic excuse for a man
I don't want you to
have me

I don't want to cry on your bed afterwards
and try to politely, kindly
explain why i feel revolted,
disgusted,
sick to my stomach
in a way i can't even comprehend, yet
and tell you sweet little lies
about not being attracted to you
when really the truth is

you fucking shoved yourself inside of me
after I literally said no
what the fuck was that ?
what the fuck was that

the time I stepped outside of myself
the time I played the game but no longer for the game's sake
the time I put myself in danger
the only time i wish i hadn't


iii.

I want them to enact my nostalgia

I imagine them sneaking across the hallway
at unholy hours of the night
mis-matched lovemakers
sharing rooms within a shared home
existing between the spaces of the house's other inhabitants

I imagine them indulging in the easy tension of holding a secret in the kitchen
the morning ritual of opening the fridge
and boiling the jug
the sterile intimacy
the stoic lust of taboo
the heroic triumph of doing the forbidden thing

sometimes the only way to appreciate someone you don't get along with
is to put yourself inside of them,
let them wear your skin
and shower together afterwards

pre-apocalyptic walnut

I imagine our brains
becoming two halves of a single walnut,
enclosed within an old shell ...

and then I remember
my atoms
aren't mine
      anyway,
(and suddenly (this poem)...)

and nothing really matters

that boring cliche
is cliche
'cause it's true.


... Forget about the walnut.
I want to wake up
dribbling on your pillow
every morning,

Most mornings.

Sometimes
I want to wake up
and sneak out of bed before you
have time to disrupt my
fantasy routine
of apple-cider-vinegar-homemadekombucha-alkalinewater-yoga-mediation-readingabookleisurely...

...

... but I also want to
melt my skin into yours,
fold myself into
your shell.
forever
which is an utterly stupid concept,
I know that, but
still I...

-- and then the ellipses come out.
Ah, see, now we're getting there -

and then the ellipses come out,
the poems go nowhere...
but they arrived
so ...
whatever, really.

in an ideal world
words flow
in an ideal world
I write everything by hand
and it still has global reach
In An Ideal World

in an ideal world
there's tea for every meal
I never question whether honey's bad for me
flute music is always funny

in an ideal world
laughing in motion
isn't met with cynicism
in an ideal world

writing really bad poems

21st century zen

Nothing will let me go under.

I promise you, I'm not trying to run away.
I'm trying to run into.

I want to run further into myself and further
into us, I want to
      get lost
in the labyrinth of the world -
                  but in a good way.

I want to know before knowing
I want to see without ever having to
     open my eyes
I want to hear everything
     but still
take part in the conversation

I want to cut off my own ears.

Nothing will let me go under.

I chew it
I smoke it
I bake it I
grind it
I blend it I
extract it, I inhale it
I
avoid it
I digest it
I tip it from the bottom of a
brown glass bottle
into my throat;

nothing will let me go under

even though I've been on top of it
for so long (so long),
so good
so good
so well-
behaved...

Nothing will let me go under

It's as if
I'm meant to be here.

But it's not that I don't --
I mean,
I'm just trying--
to go
    deeper,
really, I'm...

and then ...
when I'm sitting in my own silence
in the after-stench of glutton

it comes to me

there's just too much
nothing will let me go under
'cause I'm already swimming in it
already bashed about by the current
already
miles beyond my own body,
chasing after my
mind.