I’m 24
Funny shaped tap drips without end,
birds no longer sing in this city
I tell myself, I cannot survive much longer
If my view is a saffron robed Pakistani man, hawking up phlegm at 8am, into his dying rhododendron
Despair like me, at these four walls and dirty pipes protruding from beneath singleton sink
Who ever made sinks this size? Sometimes you throw up in them. Other nights you heft your hiney and pee long and shameful
The golden shower of malcontent. I don’t like to share bathrooms with strangers or friends
Poverty and her gifts, laying each day another absence, a reminder, you are in the meat grinder of the city, she waxes her legs on your sharp disappointment
As a kid you thought you’d wrangle diamonds from street corners, the fizz and pop of bright lights luring you to the center, like a Christmas nectarine
Is always spoilt.
In the petting evening, wet lipped men come to the spindly girl upstairs
She has thin shoulders and jagged hips, her eyes are always transparent and high on pyramid crystals
These men grind their dirt into her pretend cries of ecstasy and she gets crisp and filthy notes left on her childhood dresser afterward
I fantasize about asking her, if it has to be men she admits into her sanctum
But I’ve never paid for it and I don’t want to step in their cooling semen
If she knocked on my door and offered a damson breast I may
Break that rule and risk, even in the AIDS era, even as a feminist, even if I can’t afford the powder, her hungry nostrils crave
Just to feel the rub of her emaciated hips and hard thighs against my parched skin
I’d fucking inject it if I could, to take away the feeling of savage loneliness in the big city
That sick feeling, you’re stuck, among landlords and low paying jobs, even at 24
Massaging an ancient electric meter with dirty coins, for a little light showing more dirt
The temptation to let it fade out and lie, door open, legs open, coins in your mouth until blood freezes in your veins.
Come in and pay for me then, what am I worth? What can you fill me with, I haven’t already drunk?
Strange people’s scarfs on universal banisters, the smudge of sex in screwed up foil and old bus tickets
Lift up my hips, ram it in, pay your due, switch poison for love and love for death, welcome to the pleasure dome.
The man in 4b puts his hands down his granddaughters dress but the abuse hotline just rings and rings and rings
There’s a gypsy in 5a, cries for his lost lover til dawn. There’s a 13 year old boy who turns tricks in the street, who asks for bus money and new socks
The flashing lights of the strip club opposite are flamenco pink and penetrate through my squalid curtains, wailing their synthetic dreams
How far will you travel to see the sky again? To touch sand and sea and gulp with fevered breath, the pollen of forgotten worlds, lost in your lust for noise
I think of the Pakistani man and his phlegm, growing flowers from spit
As the Eastern eyed girl sells her small fruit for a ransom and a cry
Breasts like pinches, thin ribs beneath wool, taut ride of her skirt showing little pursed mouths of bruises
Her feet are always bare andlacquered, mine are unwashed and leave imprints of desire outside her door in ring-a-rosies
She wears her tips without a bra, nipples hurting in their push, smoking cheap cigarettes before light, smell of burnt coffee and sex on her chewed neon fingernails
They pay her to keep them hard, I beg her to stay soft
The city is a searching arbor of need and want and ingratitude
At 3am people wander the street for drugs and pain and death in little sealed packets
She leans in the doorway, exhaustion a shroud, touching her bottom lip with a haloed question
I open my mouth and let her in.
To her, and all the men she brings, to 24 years and not a minute more, to the nialism and thready vibrant flowers growing from scorn
Her body is a violated temple, a bingo hall, an arcade game, with multiple slots for change
Her mouth tastes like ashtrays and night clubs and old men, skinny throat a pin cushion of bite marks
I make her sing
As light wakes the rest of the world, all the lost birds hear her call
The Pakistani man admires his flowers and thinks
How beautiful this little piece of color is, here in this metropolis where all are brushed beneath concrete
I brush my hands across her small deflated breasts
Seeing sunlight find its way in between crowded houses filled with sore tenants
Touch her violet tinged skin in patterns, warming her before she awakes.
I’m 24 and she’s 22 and an entire life time, of fag butts and misery, washed down on lines of coke and old men groping for their last fuck
Later on I’ll take her to the coffee shop with the little bell above the door, and we’ll clasp hands beneath the sticky table cloth
Blue rinse ladies in the adjacent seat will remark, on our bright eyes and shining hair
As if we too were born
From the cracks of despair
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TheFeatheredSleep 