chocolate, red wine.

i could spend a lifetime wondering
at the details of taste but that
would leave me here cold
in my noises
and my silences.

there are stones left to turn
and some fingers
to be burned.

some rules to break.

it's no simple path out that door,
we have ceremonies to follow alone
that get ugly fast
and we're known to move slow.

sometimes i am asked
about my beings or doings
but i have no words to appreciate
the sentiment
so i answer with no words.

sometimes i'm not good enough.

but the wine is good
and the chocolate sweet

so why do i worry?

Singing

Give me a piano and
I'll try to
play it
and I'll cry.
Come on, it would make
a good song.

All I wish
from this world is
a drunken stupor
by any means possible.
Some beauty, some angels
to caress

and some
courage to live.

Anything more would crack the
glass and send me back
under the covers,
shivering.

But that'd be a good song too,
I'm sure,

like a
little bird
that hit
the window.

-

listening to the occasional staccato steps
of rain on the sill
i have charred feathers and perhaps
forgotten a warm meal or two but i'm still
trying to recall who
and why
and i inhale the gray air
building castles of leaves in my mind

sometimes i give all
of my breath
in one great cloud
and others
i feel crowded with people
who are not me
even in all
the quietness of
thin fall air
and i want to
scratch my skin
until it stings
until i find a peace
and for a moment
lie still
as if there was
nothing important
to do

(written somewhere in october and just now)

it's no trouble

i spend most of my days
wondering if i should be more
verbose,
murder lines upon lines of innocent adjectives
and verbs that do nothing
but sell themselves at a street corner somewhere
and if it ought to be raining all the time
because i'm beat
and bruised from fighting
all the gravity, all the concrete, the only
sure evidence of actually living,
even if only on occasion.

the bandages
won't do anything if i can't remember
whether i should laugh or cry,
not a single thing when
i can't remember if i should
remind myself of the way
i'm dying or living
or trying to expect nothing
and wish for nothing
and if there is anything at all to be.

but if
all else should fail,
shouldn't i still
be something,

shouldn't i still be dreaming?

shouldn't i imagine
someone
thinking up thousands of emotions to write
cheques on my name with
until i'm really, really poor enough
to starve for days
like a proper homeless gypsy bum for once,

or a life
that's so full of life
that it burns
the ever-living shit out of my
ugly weak freak body and leaves me weeping of joy
at times when i collapse on some bed somewhere,
somewhere where there's someone,
alive at last
and the air, it smells of the endless arousal
of talking until throats become pillars of sand
and the sun rises over the dunes
those swollen red eyes stinging?

and
even then
i still don't know
if i should be all by myself
until i'm reminded of what is right
and good for me and what i want,
should i be the
broken record player
singing all the broken old tunes
or should i just try and try to be happy
with whatever i could ever be and keep
all of this
wrapped?

-

trains go by and days
go by,

years and yearnings
and tears,
they go by too

and we'll
survive the rain,

all of the rains

and fathers,
stairs and soot,

we'll survive

the flowers
and sunrises and sleet

tired
with stained eyes,
glassy,

the shawls and
soles and burns
are survived,

the kittens go by
and torn
jeans go by,

and we'll get by,

we survive,
are suffered
like all the rest

and drink
to the restless
eyes of all
nights,

many of which
go by.

For a week I'm not a guest

We're both curled up,
feline,
half-asleep,
me on the sofa and the cat
on a duvet on the floor
and this kind of life
is the kind
I'll have when I find it.
I watched a bat
while outside
for my endless smokes,
swooping in the air,
quick strokes
and thin wings
and friendly english banter
from the bakery next door
in the middle of night.
I'm the happiest and saddest
without comparing,
superlatives in their own right,
because nothing compares
now,
here,
and I guess I know why
Virginia said
all a girl needs to write,
or live, as I'd see it,
is a room of her own
and a little money.

make this death look like a rebirth

i've been a shut-in for a week now
masturbating to the thought
of burning
yet another hole
in the thin fabric of
yet another boring
thin face i'm wearing in fear
of spilling and stains
of breaking my bones
and wants
and needs

(my fingers
always marked with
nicotine and copper and a thousand
small deaths
as they caress the most
difficult
paths of my ill-fitting skin)

fantasize of a me devoid of shackles
of suppression and silence
dream of a storm to tear away
the walls

and make me wet
and take me as
i come
again and again

until i bleed through and
show everything i am
or could be
all the colours
the words i cannot
bring myself to utter
in any language

until i'm rubbed raw

embraced by bruises

exploding

exploring the sea of
open wounds that finally
speak of all the
passion.

stains

I am only adding stains
to a stained library book
on yet another
tick tock tick tock
of a sunday evening
I'd rather spend
sleeping away
in some secure hideaway
I haven't got so I
sit here instead listening
to the ceiling
to the time
and adding
stains.

(22. of may scribbles)

you will not eat me

no
not this
shit again
not when i'm
finally feeling myself
again
feeding myself, finding
parts that
belong
and that don't
i am not a shell, i'm not
boring
i am not a ghost, not
mine nor yours
not lonely
even when alone
i'm not
easy, i am not
nothing and
i will not disappear
and you will not
eat me
without an explosion
of bitter
bile
and sharp nails
in your guts
i'll pull your teeth
one by one
tear you up
even if i break
or shatter
you will not eat me
don't you
fucking dare
because
i'm not
lost
yet.

(last night, 3 am, good riddance)

growing cold

you wake up
with wet fingers at 6
from the dreams
in a mix
of ghosts caught
in the act through frost
in window panes
and the frontmost
ache
moving fire
and ice
as slow waves across
your eyes
your
whole body
limb by limb
and the whole room
is seen again
in dawn's
soft
downy gloom.

it's all fine
all is
nice
but they leave you
wanting someone
else
and little dreams are
ugly lovers
to rip you apart at
the seams.

everybody wins.

there's no reason for
you to be like this
when there's no
reason
to be whatsoever
but it's the survival
of the bitterest
and the last ones standing
get to remember all
the times they
gave up when they
should've fought,
were against
when they should've
agreed,
stayed silent when
they should've finally
opened a mouth
to speak from the heart
worn in the sleeve of
another jacket,
now put aside
to wait for
another
warm breeze
of springtime.

falter

is there anything i
wish more than
for anyone to see some
kind of light beneath
the facade my body
creates? under
all angles, bones, muscle
and veins, organs
covered
by skin and
membrane and the
softest and the coarsest
of hair,
under scars and moles
and eyelids, the curve
of drying lips
there lives, battered
and dim, just a
flickering girl
of a heart too tried
and all too tired
to portray a real man.

admit

wait! there may still
be many a buried thing to
kiss before we fall
        - crack hearts
out of ribcages pumping blood
on these cold cold grounds and
 lay eyes like
emerald eggs to
nest in each other's
fleeting glow.
do you know
this ghost is far from ready
for war of broken arms
or any kind?
     "so when
 will it then?"
you may trouble in
your troubled mind
but see:
 there is
no answer until
 there is
clarity, and no clarity
'til it's too late to cry
over spilt milk
and teeth that shatter
from
the chatter in the
                   cold old
bitter freezing breezy
wind are
but the first
steps.

a word

we say when we
don't see and see
staying silent,
but somehow I always
hear that
faint flutter of
butterfly wings
carrying out of our lungs
with the smoke
whose fire
lies hidden in half-
uttered truths.

question posed.

do i crave
something a little more
than a birdsong
in spring morn
after staring
at the insides of eyelids
in last night's dark cold
blank under two blankets
thinking of future
conversations never to come
and abstract forms
then kissing and missing of
another's soft touch
and trying to
replace it
with my own?

not minding at all

say hello to those times
again with the same sad, tired,
old eyes
all over your face
and an ache that keeps the heart
strangled and lungs
struggling for air.
there's nothing
you could wish for
more than something to
hold on to tight
all the cold nights
under heavy blankets
and tears keep welling up,
trying so hard to erode through
the walls you've put up
in a vain effort
of being stronger than
you ever wanted to.
these days flow
through teeth
clenched together
and while out of every moment,
you're in every second of
your life at the
same time,
attempting to find
some means of untying
this untidy mess of a knot
you've become.
and here you are
with burning eyes,
three in the morning
knowing you'd never
shed a tear
without a shoulder
to cry on.

every now, then again

i'd whisper, dear, in your heart, yes, but
i couldn't ever think it's me, or at the
very least
i'm fairly certain it's always
someone else you'd rather give the
chance, the
privilege to, as it usually
stands, so i'll just go
on, give up, fidgeting, trying to
forget what it was that i was thinking
and hang mine in the clouds,
where
it's always been.

Betelgeuse

I heard that someone is dying
hundreds of lightyears away,
sometime between next year and a
billion years.
when the light of it
finally sweeps to the Earth
there will be a
spectacular show in the sky,
the last fiery breath of a star
a companion for the Sun for
a few weeks.
everyone is invited.
while it's wrong to
wish for
anyone's swift
death
I just wish I won't
kick the bucket
before
Betelgeuse.

more

maybe you should
know by now
i'd like to
see you as more than
a friend and kiss
as more
but
although i feel more
than usual
when i think about you,
i'm having hard time
telling
if we're even
usual friends,
as is the case
with most
i know, so i'll
probably never
tell
and in any case
i still
don't know
what it is
that i want
with whom.
so
who
are
you?

i know nothing

i must admit
i'm fond of nothing.
nothing seems to describe
my life very well
and
there’s always
nothing in my future
and nothing to achieve.
nothing’s more
beautiful
than everything i see and
nothing hurts more than
everything i don’t,
nothing feels nearly as
good as
your smile and
lips
and when i'm alone,
cold and terrified
or in my bed,
there's nothing to
keep me company.
all in all, nothing
is good enough for me
and maybe, in a way,
i'm like
nothing.