cigarettes and candle wicks.

2010-06-04T16:51:00.001-07:00

you are a fool for the figures of beauty.
walk the painted line,
walk for painted love,
watch your heels sinking
into flaking facades.

you will try to write the saddest words,
rearrange them in chemical disarray;
learn,
draw your distance,
for honesty is still
your greatest weakness.

but if you keep on moving,
you will feel yourself breathing-
and that will do,
for the time being.

06.10

2010-06-02T08:52:00.001-07:00

To some level I was always your sinless survivor,
thrust heartfirst by amateurish palms.
The dull tapping on your bonnet
that reminds you again of children’s tales.

Like before, I had stolen your tongue,
coiled your vocal cords around my ring finger
between old silver and worn bone,
and wrote songs in minor keys
about other people’s lives,
and other people’s obsessions.

That day the earth completed,
I found some quiet beauty
(curled around my fingertips with her’s)
of immovable, obsidian grace,
and smoky perfumes borne of a liquid haze.
Under lighter nights, her reflection
calls back with the curled lips of the nymph-girl,
St Theresa of the ivies with the pressed lavender shawl,
still transfixed by those strands, yet
the air tastes different, drier than before.

and the softly held, the echo
of renaissance cafes and lipstick prints-
like carmine butterflies, blood wings, that
I did not need yet, just to lean in closer,
to the silvers and lilacs, vignetted by boyish hands,
curled at the eye in a toy spyglass;
polished, primed.

Now the threads you pulled along the beginning
are dusty, latched, tugging on dulled nerves and
old capillaries, resonating through artery walls
whilst blood flows lukewarm regardless,
still strumming to a hoarse rhythm,
to still my coughing
and hold me alive.

06.10

2010-05-27T08:00:00.001-07:00

I took a black and white photo of you
not so long ago,
and since then your ghost has faded
into memory, into grain and rust, slipping
through the cartier-bressons,
their humble sepulchre too grey for your skin,
yet elusive, lightfooting
further afield, with the mapplethorpes strewn
bare at your feet, wrung by your ankles.
your image still lies, unfolded,
dog-eared like an old journal page
with coffee stains intact,
and I’m still searching for your face.

deja vu

2010-05-23T12:49:00.000-07:00

awake. mind, dried to concrete,
chipping brickwork serenading pillows,
grazing your cheeks, brow,
like shattered confetti;
at some saturnine rite,
in some macabre vernacular.

still your mother's son.
but perhaps you will find youself
taller than her,
and older,
with lighter steps.

white. sunrays, drench me deep
and wash me of memory.
a dry stinging on tired skin
to remember your silhouette.

some days,
you could use a little less
deja vu.

to sleep

2010-05-23T12:45:00.001-07:00

Wry smiles.
How the music begins to make sense,
Startling, once-elusive.

For whatever is said
Towards the beginning,
It is easier for some.

He had watched their space,
Cast it with their shade,
Reached for their light.
He had watched somebody else’s breakdown.

For God’s sake,

to sleep.

05.10

smokeless room.

2010-05-22T15:39:00.001-07:00

Smokeghost visitings,
strong ephemeral hands, twice now.
I could not be held upright.

I had no answers when they asked,
grinned back through heavy haze because
I honestly did not know.

And I said then
that I could live forever
in fifteen minutes,
and I still could-

Give me a smokeless room,
Dylan,
a clove cigarette.
Just long enough for a third playthrough
of tangled up in blue.

I am still collecting
cuttings and trash,
to find something with sense,
scrawled there on the handle,
in a dire need of clairvoyance,
to slip under the door,
before it sinks
past.

05.10

muse

2010-05-19T08:55:00.004-07:00

Can you remember the last time
you cried, for anyone in particular?
Hands have held you, shaken you, scores of
pale wrists, empty ribcages under anaesthetic,
and with numbness overflowing, you’ve cleared your vision
to find Rome burning in cluttered silence.

You’ve never felt this close to drowning,
nor felt so sure that it was for real this time;
that she would stay to whisper to you
every one of your truths.

Who is she?
To find a face and utter a name
would be to climb into lucid clarities
too much for you to bear
for any number of tomorrows.

You will cease to function,
to exist,

on the day you find your muse.

05.10

jezebel

2010-05-19T08:55:00.003-07:00

Welcome to the act-
this one I wrote for you,
My palest virgin,
Jezebel.

Won’t you feel my beck pull
like your plucked daisy,
like another lock of hair
scented with my lips?

The lights are set,
I’ll let you play Electra,
no dry fantasy;
I am blood and bone,
your softest flesh.
05.10

cellist

2010-05-19T08:55:00.001-07:00

She outgrew the reach of his pianist’s fingers
As he clutched to pull her back, under the surface foams
Of his well of precious divinities.
She could not stay and he could not reconcile
The perfumed intensity of her beauty and her taint.

And he watches her across the way, with his pocket watch held tight,
Follows the diminished ends of her marlboro whilst
His words are still failing him, flailing for her shoulder, spine,
For the manner their knees touched in her embrace,
As his fingers held the lonely cellist by his side.

05.10

winter

2010-05-19T08:54:00.002-07:00

I lied in the winter
and resolved not to look back,
only shrugging to tell you
that your hands were still delicate
and your breath was hot on my neck.

And I’m writing now, for self preservation,
from when you bore meaning,
if I did not.

It matters not now, child,
(and I had known you so);
Little does, I lie for my own sake.
For there on, you found currents
out of meloncholia,
groped for your release,
and holding no contemn,
I find myself still adrift.

05.10

feathers

2010-05-19T08:54:00.001-07:00

It is the cry of another song
named after the anonymous girl -
not a real elegy for the feathers in her hair;
there’s too much truth for her in there.
it is the rare gasps of light stolen
before middle age from childish impertinence
that rob you of the sinful sun so completely,
you are but fingernails in deep in the dirt.

And you were that murderer with the fancy prose style,
she had perched on her tongue.

It may be that you could sing for her, howl -
but your voice would fall to her hesitation,
just as her song brushed yours
in a echo from another room.
The extensions in your mind erected themselves
for your worldly sensibilities,
but you will not find your debutante,
no, not half as soon as she.

05.10

2010-05-06T11:33:00.000-07:00

The strands that you held along the beginning
are dividing, holding taut to pull you out but
as of yet undeciding, carried to umbrage and back
until you are estranged to her reasons, like new leaves
set on turning with no regard for season,
with nothing to bear at all.

You are but the lost Baudelaire, extending a raw
knuckle trickling ichor between webbed creases,
mirroring the lines beneath her eyes
that you had studied as a map to
all her poetry and her lies, crying for Arcadia
who will not come, not for your dull disguise,
not for the bull whip
nor the olive pits in her eyes.

05.10

2010-05-03T10:49:00.000-07:00

He see glass figures under rain and
runs fingers down nervous silhouettes,
disturbs droplets on the surface, neither
here nor there, broken surface tensions
tracing arteries to the ground.

Dripping into street corners,
storm drains and alleyways, with
no love lost for the nothings there,
to give or take, mutes for pay,
hovering at the bar.

He is to understate his existence
to a blemish on a porcelain cheek,
permanently lipstick stained By lithe bodies,
old raincoats clinging on like curtains
dripping hot wax on skin, hugging pores;
an imperfect mould of his self
inverted.

Je suis un peu perdu en ce moment.

05.10

2010-04-28T14:03:00.001-07:00

In her haste her mind cries dissonance,
stepping quicker, in foreign rhythms and
there remains nothing to consider
but a vagabond’s ruminations,
full of whisperings and husks.

Through her ears violin strings are
breaking, shrieking far past and
above the confusion in his voice,
he kisses splinters on her fingertips
but does not ask where she’s been climbing
lest he has not the strength to follow.
she looks to him still because he clamours
to find reflections in her pupils,
but she knows the furtive hues on her lip will draw her end,
sooner than she can bear to comprehend.

04.10

2010-04-24T03:41:00.000-07:00

I used to know you, but I don’t know anyone now.
There was a time, maybe ten months ago that I
understood, and let the grains seep through gaps
in my floorboards as time is wont to flow,
preciously; graceful and vindictive.

Mists grow moist with soft exhalations and
tentative release, taking to homeward plains, and
furtive days. Your gentle poetry still sighs,
it has served me well, but hasty words will misalign;
I cannot read you now.

Each way I turn there are spoons of
sugar and rust. They thrust, hurtling yet
no eyes meet mine, and their longfelt expressions
are sculpted only of wood.

I do not bear scorn, nor faithless demand -
for you I bear nothing at all.
Not out of chagrin, you understand,
I’m just drifting now, that’s all.

04.10

2010-04-20T17:21:00.000-07:00

Delilah had never been her name, and patience would never be her virtue. She had scrambled like spilt marbles for any trace of breath pervading her presence but was met only with frantic usherings of her own arteries, and a shattering absence of peace in the silence ringing out around her legs, and arms, and ribs, coccooning her shoulders until only the fetted sweetness of past beauty lingered,
uninterruptible by her own flickering hands.

Delilah turned to the cold side of the bed, wiped the dust from the sheets and pondered the irony of her misgivings, whilst her fingertips studied the imprint of his shoulder blades.
Where is he now? In some foreign land, adorned with foreign hands, but he would be alien always, to her and any other blips on the horizon.

On good days understatement would engulf her in some bathetic parade, and she would watch the sailor boys pass the pier through the tear of old light in her blinds.
She would stray out to toe the water but it was never so pretty in the dark, and as the seamen left, the biding silencing would not be drowned. She could never understand their murmurings,
of cigarettes and candle wicks, and all things fading.

When she thought of him she felt her skin stand ready to dissolve and detach,
and when he thought of her (as she knew he never would) she made it so that his must too, so they would go together as they had never come.
And he would say to her, 'where have you been', and she would breathe him deeply (as she was wont to do), inhale him through for all of his poetry and his pestilence and reply, (as when it was true)
that 'I am all here.'

21.04.10

2010-04-19T16:55:00.000-07:00

You had found her first,
had watched breathless embers of
Marlboro poised between soft carmine,
extinguishing your candlelight with practised fingers.
But you did not mind;
the flames have gone out but the smoke still lingers,
as you feel her once over with a lucid gaze;
you're watching some some lost dionysus
from some forgotten tome.

Your companions of old, you are older than that now,
The heavy hearts you hold, they mean nothing to you now.

At last you've found yourself a soulmate,
You're swallowing a tear to make yourself hers,
so pack her best dress, take your butterfly net,
wipe the salt off from your cold wax wings,
your passion is heady, it will not clear yet,
you are still icarus and she is still so many things.
So close the door and draw the blinds,
you won't be coming here again
until you're a few years younger.

04.10

2010-03-24T10:58:00.000-07:00

pause.

You had so interested me
because you never came to know me,
and there are no delicate ways
to mask your face with my days
until the currents began
again.

And from here the thrill is gone,
once those fingers had shone
styled from inimitable flicks
and other arbitrary risks
you took to spark a kindred heart
from inertia

I’m here again, you are gone and past
and I tear at the carpet, clutching for grass.
The lights are blossoming out of focus
to nothing but moss, and wind, and dust,
until you take time to pause,
to listen to the words

03.10

2010-03-14T16:17:00.000-07:00

Mild recycling
==

It was you who bit your lip on days
you wanted only to drown in the endless gyre
of old needle scraping older vinyl, 78
rpm crying out in restless serenade
of early Cat Stevens, who was like
you, once unjaded, porous,
naked drifting through the reeds,
but as you watch him fade into white,
you find that you could never rest quite so easily.

And you as well who stood to watch
the finest specimens of your time
as they each passed you by,
every one mother's taut, upstanding
contribution to society,
with each of father's polaroids pristinely
Xeroxed into individual stretch-mark,
Instinct selects the right Crombie blazer
and left of centre broadsheet.

You, do you enjoy it at all? I think not,
Of course to think would be to miss the point
For your life is just another dusk, dawn,
Ranks lined like dominoes latched with
Grit salt, oxidised cobalt rigged
For scoring another golden line
For masses and minds and bodies incapable
Of real sweat, only sordid misconception,
With every feeling and not an inch of worth.

You as well, who had clenched your fists
into black, crumbling animals at
their culpable sight, every fibre fixed until
molar dragged against molar like
Imperfect palms across polished hardwood,
Judged before a blinkered jury
Following crosses, and dotted lines
Left by squalid intellectuals
Or something of that mirthless vernacular.

And you arrive now to find yourself again
Entangled by beauty insufferable -
Intangible, the most transient gazes
Holding more wit than you could muster.
What now but to seal it all again and
Swallow your pitiful upstream strife
Out of deadly lust with deadlier pride,
Haughty eyes, one nervous kiss; you see clearly now,
That you would always be my muse.

03.10

2010-01-28T13:17:00.000-08:00

2010

I left her on the eve for older thread and a fresh pair of slacks,
and I was right, though neither of us could fathom why.
Her faith still lingering like slowly parting lips
that I neither deserved nor desired

On the first hour there was jubilation, a haze of bodies intertwined, your virgin in open fields
On the second hour was justification, but the value wasn't worth it
When daylight came at dusk.

It cannot yet hinder me, I would replay it over
At the fork of a beaten trail you only wish
not for the scent of her hair, but a fragment of her faith.

01.10

2010-01-18T08:33:00.000-08:00

histories

Your heart is in place but your faith is lacking,
soles dragging in indeterminable rhythm;
She has closed your mind and left you aching
but never out of breath,

And on the days you wanted only to drown yourself in the reel of a cassette,
Push claying linseed out from between your fingertips
you would look out with longing to the light house
but Virginia isn't looking back;

Companions you have loved on darker nights than this
could not shake the lightness behind her eyes
nor the curvature of her shoulder.

For history is written by the winners and never by the fighters,
and you will keep hold of the centimeters and feet along the beginning,
but not quite standing and never as strong as before.

12.09

2010-01-12T13:36:00.000-08:00

She left with little trace
Only lipstick on the mirror and a mug of dried coffee,

You threw away a soul for a little piece of her mind
Her scent like a Bruges café on your shirt lingers,
If you inhale deeply enough.

Stare deep into the bottle, tarnished burgundy
Eyes, half shut,

The perfect picture of lips pressed against glass
With Degas’ poise
With beautiful noise

And the best you could hope for was a glance
Reflection from the base
If only an echo

But she has left nothing - not even memories
Fading still like the haze from her clove cigarette
You will still smell it.

01.10