bad faith

we're walking down a dark street
at 4 o'clock on this
freezing morning

we're holding hands
inside your pocket
and i'm asking myself
why i bother

you always leave me
with a blank expression
on my face & a jar of coins next to my bed.

when i stand close enough
to you
i question whether i believe in poetry at all
whether i believe in anything
broken beneath this pen.

nil by mouth

so much has gone unsaid
that there is now
nothing left to say.

i sew my lips shut
with these words

-letters left ticking around my neck-

it took me a whole cigarette
to decide
i don’t believe in eternity

but it still felt like forever
waiting for you to call

[to tell me just what
i knew you would say].

i am mersmerised by the impeccable logic
of our bodies
the way they come apart beside each other
like some pathetic opera

my hand
in
your hand

you kiss my wrists
& spill tears over the version of myself
that understands:

there is nothing more perfect
than what one has
just lost.

live in (interesting times)

riding your bike down wilson st
you told me an old chinese curse:

may you get exactly what you want.

speaking of which:
it would be a bigger
man than you

to read history

to get yourself into
-something bigger than yourself-

maybe it would be a woman,
a barefoot bruce springsteen girl
sitting in the rain on the hood of a car

maybe it would be me,
singing patti smith to myself
at a traffic light.

i can't remember
where i read these words:

‘now we know what we are
fighting for;
just what we had
before we went to war.’

but,

speaking of which:

your world

is not a world worth fighting for.

is such a heavenly way to die

your zen teacher told you:

If you love someone,
You agree to watch them die.

on my shoulder
the thread of my jumper
is unravelling

-where the chip should be-

i carry your book around with me,
under my sleeve

-where my heart should be-

****

wearing the shoes i stole from you
(having learnt nothing)

they smell of the whole last year of my life

a scent so strong it will pierce the entire sky:

and i

crawl into the hole
to spend the night with the smiths
dreaming of seagulls lovers fingerprints
& traffic

all those things
which i devour

all those things
which devour me.

patterning

it’s raining
sad summer rain
at 5am this morning

as i go to bed
to the sound of birds.

i write an inscription of

the people i have allowed myself to lose,

a memory of
(the rest of my life)

shot into the sun.

i can barely feel your arm around my waist
as we speak
in silence and subtitles

i wanted to be a witness (to this)

i wind up

humiliated by the dawn.

lightbulbs in the sky

the eyes were lustreless

peripheral visions

and i am speaking in sentences that end as they began.

i never write people's names in my poems.

this way i can recycle old bodies
stacking you up against
endless metaphors of others.

this way i can remember new bodies
re-written over lines i have already read

lines i have already read.

(and i wait here
just beneath

that which

holds you open:

like sheets of paper
laid out across your stomach,
like palms).

this way i can keep my days calm
and separate

between the borders of these
little white pages

surprising myself
with the way every letter every word
every letter every word

somehow appear the same.

fine line