Category: #humor
Want & Ritual
I grew up fetishizing
the nubile antonyms of beauty
Helmut Newton’s exploitation
penis behind camera stroking
sloe-eyed girls with tired mouths
smoking yellow papered Gauloises
nipples grazing peach crinoline
men’s eyes like dry stones, seeking squeezing
I grew up thinking
contortion and bondage was
an art form not
excuse for masochism
as unsupervised child, I’d look through
graphic design manuals
that inexplicably had vulvas and
perky breasts
to illustrate Pantone
it was after all
the seventies
what did I know? Except
women on beaches without tops
giving me francs for not spilling their dirty martini’s
Mon sucre d’orge, sois gentil, va me chercher mes cigarettes
always gentleman watching
the rise and fall of female throats
nicotine mouths, stained vermillion
long tan legs swept beneath chiffon
men taking them to hotel rooms
children
smoking the leftovers whilst adults
fucked behind closed doors
wondering
when I grow up
how can I lie beneath
a girl whose sweat glistens
like marzipan
and if she should
sip on me I think I’d scream
all my silver bracelets falling off
like metal flowers on hotel carpet
after all
life is a film
where we tie ourselves up
with want and ritual
She told me, don’t worry about it
We’re sitting talking about how we know
You’re making me laugh at jokes, about Hannibal
How I only like Gillian, because she’s a bit like you
And I can’t tell anyone, including you
You reminded me how I knew, I was still alive
In the video of you dancing, uncaring and wild
That’s how I’m reminded why
I know beauty
How women
Are the possessors of
All that is beautiful
With your downcast eyes, the color of absinthe
Hair falling in your pale face, cut cheekbones and grace
The switch of your merciless, marching intelligence
The sorrow, the humor, the passion lines
How you make me laugh hysterically and blush
Pouting, pulling on your cigarette, getting me aroused and nervous
Without trying, you command all attention
Your wit is sharper than a sword
When you didn’t talk to me
It was like a blonde flower, turning her lights out
The night was darker
Still I heard
That song you made immortal
The sway of your slim hips and secret smile
And I’m speaking to you in a language, I outlawed
Because he dirtied it for me, forever
But you sound so lovely talking in the fog
I know I have to stand at a distance, or I’d reach out
Grab the concentration from your lovely brow
But to be in your blazing aura
The tiny, angry, intelligent, firey soul
You inhabit like no other
You were the girl who woke me up
I’d give anything to dance with you
To that exact song, in those same clothes
Your then blonde hair, a chaotic wisp
The crunched concentration on your francophone face
There’s classic and there’s disheveled-perfect and you’re both
I’d take your hand and say
Don’t worry, I know the rules
But for fucks sake we’ve both been here long enough
born the same year
You got the small chest I always wanted
And you said you liked my eyes
Same color green as yours
Not narcissism
But sisters
Lovers of
Pain and hard living
We only trust those like us
Who smoked and drank and have to show on our tired faces, the weariness of living
Where boundaries are never crossed
But fantasy is free and inked
And you like being adored
I am good at loving
Sad, happy, gorgeous girls, with crooked smiles
Who hold my attention with their spark
Catching in the darkness like a skinned rock, thrown out to sea
On Brighton beach
Where we’ll always be young and beautiful
Me chasing you in the cold sea
You disappearing into green waves
In her cull
Before
Who knew how to die?
That it wouldn’t be instantaneous
As children imagine
A sudden pain, then unconsciousness
Who knew?
Death could go on years
Building and slowing like cold sea water
Burning firework left to fizzle alone in inky sky
That it would wind and unwind, a mad clock void of correct motion
Who knew?
It could take the very young, wrap them in wool, to cast down wet hill
The jarring and bumping eventual colission held at bay
Till forgotten
That it could take you
Suspend you from me and all familiar things
Where the recognition in your once clear and beautiful eyes
Became muddied and clouded with quiet violence
Your touch so soft, stolen and replaced with flinty brush off
Who knew
The courage of fighters
Seathing against their sentence and eventual
Chop chop of parts, scars and marred
Skin once free of blade
A scratch board of operation knives
She reached me
As I sat in my safe world
Pulled me through
I smelt anticeptic
Read her clever whirring mind
Far too smart for this dull world
How can such people die?
She laughs and says
At least I’ll go young and whilst I have my looks
So long as you don’t show the undertaker my scars
They remind me of barbed wire and grey hair and the lines you cut in snow
When skiing downhill
Her lips are red, she says
I used to ride horses and can speak five languages
I say
I wish you would stay
I could read you eternally
It’s the macabre and giggling nervousness you feel
Around dying
It brings out the worst or the best of us
I wanted to bolt
Race down the road
But I remain and listen
To the gurgle of her catheter
And saw the bruised clouds grow
As rain came like tears behind pitched fingers
Her humor never left
She knew more than all of us
What a terrible, terrible waste
She said; I can make an authentic French 75
I wanted to swap places, I am not so rarefied
But I am a coward
Before the machinations of surgeons
What devour they do, to our poor skin
Does it really prevent anything?
She asked, laughing at the cat
Who is also old and infirm before his time
Still batting the window when birds come to peck
At crumbs of comfort because it’s those little things
She says, keep you going
Like my favorite soup, a funny film, the sun coming over horizon
Reminding me I can still
Breathe
I learn to appreciate life
From her dying
The morsel of me
Though of language I only know two and
Cannot spell in either
It seems
Life is savage in her cull
The bright and wonderful snatched
Who among us had an idea of
How to die?
Then she laughs
Her teeth still white, her skin waxy and hot
And says, oh dear you!
Who among us
Knew truly
How
To live?
Thrift Store Special
If I hung in a storefront
I’d have no label
It was torn off in the wash
The store owner lied
Trying to cover a great crime
I’m not gentle cycle, nor wash below 30c
I don’t fluff up well in dryer
Or need ironing on low heat
I’m a thrift store special
Good for a gander, then better cast off
Stuffed in the back of your closet
Forgotten until you move house
When you hold me to the light
Exclaiming; where did I buy this?
A little wistful, a little disgust
Just like a spare thread can run
Through any knit and mar its form
I was shrunk on hot and stretched in cold
Long before you grabbed me out of the lucky dip bin
It was the elongation of my experience
Like wool is malformed turning huge in water
Expanding and reducing, I am the sheared sheep who took off
When the shepherd came to my turn
I never backed down, nor avoided spitting in their eye
My fur smells of energy and emptiness and freedom and neglect
You wear me when you want attention
Or to be someone you’re not
And I’m sequins gathered in a pearls bosom
The knotted mohair and impossibly soft angora
But most of all, I’m the time you left your possessions behind
And rode in the dark without lights
Imagining your bicycle a horse and you …
with your dress catching in the spokes covered in oil
You just wanted him to catch fire on your edges
Sounding the cavorting need you had to bloom beneath
Then you were a water-lily and even years later
You are reminded each time a candle is lit, the smell of wax
How he burned your fingers with his inelegant desire
And you opened like origami to his bewitchment
Then you were a dragonfly, passing through fountain
If I hung in a storefront
I’d have no label
But you’d purchase me all the same
Over again
Smiling
At the memory of
Something you couldn’t quite grasp
What I learned from my father’s girlfriends #2 Leslie
Canadian Leslie
sensible tweed and corduroy
dressed like 50 at 25
white turtleneck and tanned legs in Winter
a talented skier who told me; don’t slouch kid, you will stunt your growth
she disapproved of children who stayed up later than 6pm
from next door I could hear her twangy voice
then the creek of stairs as they climbed to my father’s room
women from any part of the world make the same sounds
hmm / yes / hmm
Canada, I thought when very young
must be a strange land if it’s covered in snow
and still the girls can be tan and have golden streaks in their hair
she didn’t like European humor or sleeping in on weekends
it makes you fat to be idle, she scolded and ate her sugarless oatmeal
after a while she didn’t like public transport or pub culture
so Leslie applied for a PhD program in animal husbandry and moved to Alberta
where I hear she raised eyes
adopting Vietnamese pigs and falling in love with a man from Beirut
her WASP parents wished she’d stuck with my dad
they weren’t ever going to work
she hadn’t liked my baby photos and wouldn’t watch
film noir detective shows on Friday nights with Indian take-out
she left behind some maple syrup and we poured it
on white toast
because after all, this was before we’d learned
how to make Canadian pancakes and Canadian waffles
from French cooking shows
TheFeatheredSleep 