the best hypocrite is a happy hypocrite

sneaking cigarettes
in school uniform
at the train station

my highschool friend told me
if you drag on the filter
your lung bleeds for
9 seconds.

i watch you now
never finish your cigarette
while i suck each one to its
dying breath.

already packed my bags

the city was so far behind us now
that this might have been
the last road left on earth.

i wanted to follow it
until the highway fell away
into the sea,

instead i pressed myself
against the horizon
to inhale
the warmth of new bitumen
as it turned hard against the wind.

we half suspected what would happen
if our enormous scaffold
ceased to hold up
this corner of the world,

& it occurred to me
that hundreds of engineers & labourers
had worked for years

to build us a stage
for this silence:

we waited for darkness
to fall,
but time
insisted on defying us

by standing
still.

holiday in cambodia

i walked through the set of blade runner this morning

overhead cables and antennas
bore down on the dirty colours of the street
& i was caught quickly
in this mechanic web

a sudden subject
in an empire of signs.

i deciphered numbers such as:

seven &
eleven

in a foreign script

(only because i recognised their colours)

i flattered myself
that i could read a poetic language
accessible to all the senses

i reversed the alchemy of the word
and i learnt the meaning
of "fitting in"

by not fitting in

watching my body pulse &glow
like an amputated limb

and in the same second
dissolve
into the diesel laden air.

a final cartography

i’d just been through the process
of ripping all the maps
with your city’s name on them
out of every atlas i came across.

i thought that this way
i would wipe you off the face of the earth.

but you reappeared
in the only city i refused to delete
back in my town for one day.

as soon as i speak to you
the words start running together:

to stop my fingers shaking
i grip my chopsticks with
an archer’s steadfastness

and i catch myself wishing
that they really were arrows

(or tiny poisoned spears)
(or some other soft technology of destruction)

that i could fire neatly between your eyes
and around your mouth

to put a quiet end to this
little charade.

writer's block

every time you blink

fullstops …

fall from your face
and litter your chest like dandruff.

i find myself running circles around
these sentences

words that drown my senses
until it is no longer clear

if we are speaking about hunger or hate.


you left a note on my desk that said:
fuck mum, just bring me my typewriter.

i knew this was the beginning of the end.

morning after

her veins explode
like japanese sunsets

the world is over
every night
in this way.

the cannibal haiku

He said

This has to be

In and of itself

I wondered

Is this obvious

Or ambiguous

Am I seeing

What I have

Already seen

fullstop

what we are doing now
is the opposite of speaking

you have both given and stolen
the poems within me.

the demise of civilisation

i didn’t have an umbrella with me that day
but i’ve always loved walking in the
rain.

the pavement was very slippery
and i fell on my hands & knees.

no one stopped.

from my vantage point
on the ground

i watched a man emerge from his terrace
with two white dogs.

i overheard some people passing by:

every morning with those dogs, he said.

like clockwork.