vital signs

the first thing i notice
is the dirt underneath your nails

this leads to us pressed up
against a plastic
slippery dip

the moon drains the colour
from my bare feet

you go to find
a tree to piss on
& i am charmed by your discretion.

while your back is turned
i try to put my ear
to my own chest

check if i’m still breathing.

beginning with insects

there were so many flies
in sydney that week
i felt something must
have been rotting
beneath the asphalt

as if the thickness
of the air
& those insects
spoke somehow of decay

we stood on your street
squinting
our sweat redolent

and it occurred to me then
that i could consider
finishing what i started.

anywhere but here

the sun hovers low & hazy
like a hangover,

hanging

over

every pore on my body.

back in bangkok

& it is too early to know

if i will ever clean this city
from my skin.

just say it

i think it was your handwriting
that i fell in love with first

now i despise the way
you write myths about yourself
with erratic gestures of ink.

i’m reading back
behind the lines
of everything we ever said to one another:

you never wrote me poems
i hadn’t already written to myself.

lastline/firstline

her eyes

as tired as a mother’s
stare straight into mine

be gentle

she says.


your limbs

flex hard against my bed
in your eyes i see
an old man waiting to die.


i am as gentle
with her
as i am with a poem

the way i slowly start,
hinting at first
at that first half-thought

the way i softly stop,
slowing it all with that

last line

lastlight/firstlight

i wake up covered in tiny scratches
as if a new born bird
had been caught beneath my sheets

scraping its miniscule beak
up & down my body
in my sleep.

it takes me
10 or 15 minutes
to remember

the desperation of dawn
-my fingers clawing-
out of this skin.

fishbird

and all that i can see

comb through these streets
-your footsteps as fine as follicles-
and i realise there are some cities
that will never forgive me.

i spent a whole night
examining
the size of my pupils

8 balls

squeezing out of their sockets.

you didn’t see me
walking to school with
tears streaming down my face
i felt like i was 5 years old

if i could have found a softer way to cry
we'd be dancing ballet on my cheeks.

3 fragments for a language i am learning to speak.

-if it were said-

would we step outside of history
outside of language

would our whispers deliver us
from this attempt to articulate
what only exists beyond [this].

i wanted to tell you
i had been living off that conversation
for a week

but…listen

is the only word i still know how to say.

***

there are little black stools
scattered around this room
like cockroach carcasses

we sit on them and listen
to chinese poetry

the sound of those vowels
makes us ashamed of what we will never know.

***

staring at dirty dishes
the kitchen collapses

like an origami giant
folding over in the rain,

like a cancerous lung
drawing its last long
breath.

i would have washed the walls
of every room in this house

i would have been waiting here for you
with a scrubbing brush teeth gritted

deciding not to mention it.

(how could you have been here,

as you were

and now,
nothing.)

voice of a generation

scraping cigarette burns
from my forearms

we’re lying in my bed

screaming

“LIKE A ROLLING
STONE!”

at the ceiling.

and how does it feel?

it feels like:

for the first time in days
i believe in what i’m saying.

every waking moment

i barely know you

on the bus you tell me
that one day your cells

will just stop regenerating themselves

(i am left quivering by this simple fact).

***

in the sushi shop

where the walls are as red as velvet

i put on my blue shoes and dance with david lynch

there are hundreds of children
around us

they are eating seaweed and rice with their

sticky

fingers this is the most ominous thing i
have ever seen

chopsticks splinter on the ground

the smell of fish and the sound of robert smith
his lips so close to me

i wonder who is watching.

fridge poem

in 5 hours
i will know.

(i could count this on two hands)

all of my life behind me
& the rest of my life in front of me:

the only thing i want from you
is the one thing i can't give myself.

our lives seem to be collapsing
in this tiny house
with a brand new fridge

every morning
i put a new piece of myself
in the various compartments

my toes :
in the vegetable crisper

my kneecaps:
in the freezer

my better judgement:
in the dairy cooler

my hair:
running through your fingers
like sand.

call me a romantic,
i still feel myself fall away
in your wake.