Anawhata - 1

I love how wild you become
blinded by a vision of white,
your forearms braced around my chest
in hap-hazard triangles,

how far my back can turn to meet you and
the way your hand sometimes creeps up to my throat,
the window almost always open and
space flooding in, the night
flooding over us - and even the
ocean crashing softly in the distance
- or sometimes just cars -
the manic pursuit of exhaustion,
followed by the beautiful rest...

waking in the morning
and finding ourselves still skin-to-skin.

legs

oh, I know
                   that flush
               that glint,
           that close-by sit
     those footsteps down the
                                              hallway,
that gently euphoric
                                  emergence from the shower

that suppressed
       flutter through normality

the waking up late, warm in the cold
that soft melting in the eyes
that lovely crash of
                                juxtapositions
oh, yes
             I know it

that (after) separation
that trip to the laundry
I've held it;
                  I've hung out
               someone else's
                                             bed sheets

That beautiful quiet, that
              shared omission

that piercing stillness --
I've also held it

that
        space alone, afterwards

that fumble with the light/s on
that listening for the timing
that 7am escape trick, I've also
                                                  done it.

I've spent Mondays making sticky pancakes
and Sundays watching
                                      bad films
just to hold some skin afterwards
                                                       - trust me, it's
                     worth the weight.

I can't help but indulge in your
                                                   present-nostalgia

I can't help but want

to re-live, to unfold
my parallel past

I spend most of my weekends in a state of high anxiety
some invisible claw curled around my throat,
a pin stuck between my eyes

the ultimate self-sabotage
there's no down time in this body

its head is restless
and the only way to sedate it
is to administer some heavy fists
so then at least I'm crying from pain rather than guilt

but soon enough the ghoul surges, back from the living
looking to suck out my eyeballs
it doesn't care how I look in the morning
much less how I feel right now

he turns me into a gasping mute
whose words are mouthed rather than spoken

I spend my whole week waiting for a break
and when I get it
it breaks me, alright
it snaps my ribs one by one
and then suddenly
it's Monday again
and I begin my week
as a well-composed pile of bones

liive

on stage
I've committed many suicides
and had others commit them for me
knowingly and
                         unknowingly

I've died many
tiny deaths, I've
melted into the
masses, drowned
in their arms.

I've performed my own baptism
I've held a chalice to my lips
I've swamped myself
in a duck-shit-filled lake
in the name of art
I've snuck around the sleeping
I've begged, borrowed and stolen
I've clambered through labyrinth limbs of strangers
I've lived inside a tiny box

I've stood for five hours, freezing
and rinsed myself blue
I've broken bones
and worn out tired kness
I've scraped the inside of my stomach
I've let strangers put their mouths on mine

I've breast fed plastic dolls
I've stood on giant pedestals
I've exposed my flesh
over and over, so many times I've lost count

I've been lifted up, trodden on, dragged
                                                                by my hair
I've let people cut my hair
                                           off
I've let people
                       etch signs into me

I've left my sweat in foreign cities
I've stuffed food into / onto my face
I've flown giant birds
I've borne the the onslaught of abuse
and made many people smile

I've written countless bad poems
and never spoken one.

I've died many tiny deaths
and orchestrated countless suicides

I want the certain ritual
of being
reborn.

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.

revisionalry

I wonder if I should
                                 send my poem to you,
                                                                      Ella

   .

imagine
every'neI've
ever
   written
      a poem about

reading
             about
                       themselves

and knowing
                      all their own

secrets,
and

maybe that's why I 

                                           

                                                  (of course it's why I)

,why I                                    

tipped you off, Nicholas

                            because 

                           I wanted

                                     to

I wanted

you

to

know

the things

you didn't know

I 

knew you didn't

know

I knew about you

\ so 

that in 

twenty seventeen

I could write poems about

yearning 

about you

forever

whilst being

perfectly

happy

in love.

in the first line of a poem

in the first line of a poem
there's so much
pressure
              \
                anxiety
to grab you, reader --
especially after
eight hundred
and
     no one
                even
                       reads them
                             
     anyway.

atrophied

when I feel the kinetic energy
accumulating in my joints
and near bursting from the corners of my salted eyes
then, I think of

all those women
who were kept quiet in their bodies
their wind knitted down under their
crinolines and corsets

who never raced through the mud
on bare feet, a hundred miles
who never got into a war
who never beat their best friend

who never smashed their knees into the pavement
or bent their bones over tree branches

who maybe, at best, felt their own way through the darkness

(like I've found myself clawing through
at odd afternoon intervals
in lieu of evening solitude
or actual intimacy, culled
by adultly exhaustion)

all those women
whose flesh was held still
against their own wanting --

how tragic it is
how shameful is it
that they have not felt their own blood
causing through their own veins

that they shall lie dormant
when they could be beautifully volatile