We drank the time in azure cups,

in the old attic of our house

and watched the rain pour down in torrents,

deluge the world in April currents.

The smell of hail, the taste of salt,

no words between us, no tales told,

our silence kissed the storm hello.

The skies hung low, enfolding us.

The rain blurred out the vast expanse,

drew closer the horizon line,

its thread entangled in our hands

for us to play with it like cats.

Do you believe we ever had

the primal innocence for that?

To play like cats with time and fate?

To pounce on sprouting grass in mire?

Maybe it ebbed along the way?

Either way, on that day,

the gods in their mad grace

embraced us in the April rain,

and water galloped down the roof,

and on the ground, and soaked the dust,

inured to violence and time lost,

and turned it into clay —

from which I shaped my name.

Lingering bitter on the tips of my fingers

cigarette smoke and the smell of you.

Morning frost silent on glass while my bed

spins round and round in tequila afterthought.

Or is that my head?

There is a dent in my chest now, a missing part,

where the wind feels cold and I feel numb,

where you whittled the curve of my heart

to properly fit in the shape of your palm.

Tongue too sharp, thoughts too loud, disruptive voice

in your complacent static noise,

slivers of me shaved off one by one

as years went by in your toxic lullaby.

Grandmother’s smile in the evening and her apple pie,

wishes on dandelions into the sky,

peach fuzz shaved off on and on,

in alcohol vapour of your numbing love.

It hurt, and I did not feel, sedated instead

in a whisper of love conquers all.

And it did.

Conquered my heart, my ground, my shining star,

in alcohol vapour, now cleared from my head.

Morning frost on my window, pellucid and cold,

old sparrows in the oak tree above,

now too bright to reach or to forget.

After all the things lost, illusions have ebbed,

and you are only my drunken regret.

Bite me.

Bite my heart

with tales of love,

bite my thoughts with the sensation

of your fingers on my thighs.

Bite my earlobe when I hear

all the things I should not know.

Bite my lips,

my breast,

my belly,

bite me lower,

bite me deeper,

make me tremble

when you're craving

to be in control.

Bite my lips when I'm too loud,

hush me in your song.

Bite my core with your desire

that I'm docile all the time.

Bite my mind with reasoning,

Bite my dreams with your ambitions,

stacked in boxes, labelled neatly;

bite me when I am too much.

Bite my flesh when you are hungry.

Bite my fingers when I feed you.

Bite my silence with your chatter,

tunes repeated on and on.

Bite my wings of feathering

with the engines of your plane,

Bite the soil I walk on

with the concrete

of your fucking motorway.

Bite me.

Chew me.

Maul me.

Maim me.

Because I will bite right back,

and there's no vaccine for the rabies

that I'm bearing on my fangs.

So here I am.

And here you are.

Bite me.

I'm leaving, she said one evening.

The TV is on, my thoughts are dry,

I give her no reply.

I'm leaving, she says,

brown hair, chapped lips,

dark shadows under her eyes,

my watch tight on her wrist,

my bruise dark on her mettle.

I give her no reply.

It's quarter after ten,

mundane talks on TV,

my head is dry of thoughts

and of the outside rain.

My chopsticks on the kitchen counter,

her housekey on the table,

this silence doesn't suit us.

Where is the static buzz?

I’m leaving, she says simply.

I’ll soak my skin in rain,

my feet planted in mud;

I need the sky to flow

through me in lucent waterdrops;

this living room is killing me.

I grab her wrist to keep her.

The two of us lock eyes.

Hot breath against her coldness,

like sex, but not quite.

Fingers

sliding

down her

back.

No shiver in her breath.

No flinch along her shoulder.

Perverted tango of our wills,

where I'm the one to lead.

Lips touch flesh

cold like alabaster.

Hot tongue,

small waist,

teasing,

tugging,

she's tired, I'm not,

I drink her to the last drop.

There are no screams tonight

in our kitchen, and on the counter

my meal of minced meat has gone cold,

my chopsticks lay discarded;

the TV is still on.

Somehow she seems disgusted.

She doesn't say goodbye.

I'm leaving, she said that evening,

five years ago and fourteen days.

She took her card, her passport,

her keys are on the table still.

I need to soak my skin in rain,

she said back then.

Beyond these smudged windows,

outside, the rain still pours.

City lights across my vision

when my thoughts drift into mourning

the felled orchards and the soil

cleared of life for dwarfing wheat.

But the city colours splash,

bright and blinding, blue electric,

to my senses sugar rush,

and I’m easily distracted,

and I leave reason behind.

See the beauty in the small things?

Cotton candy, plastic bottles

filled with Coke® and teenage laugh?

Painted glass in hues of cherry,

prickly pear taste on my tongue

from a lolly, aromatic,

benzophenone sickly sweet,

and I lose my thoughts of sorrow

in this dazzle loud and hollow.

Should I pine for ice that’s melting

when there’s lust in August nights,

love reflected in the sequin

sparkle of the city lights?

My head numb, senses sedated,

I don’t miss the touch of willow

as I get high on cough syrup

undernotes in your perfume;

poison, medicine, sweetly stringent,

will escort me through the rush

of anxiety at noon.

Will there be a time for grieving

when days reel in high-strung buzz,

reason muted in the fervor

flashing in electric lights?

PAC-MAN™ music re-pe-ti-tive

paycheck, pay bills, pay attention

to the joy in the mundane,

like the schoolgirls holding hands

or Madonna on TV,

popcorn popping, candy crushing,

eighties neon in my head,

and I’m dumb for the aroma

of your lip gloss on my neck,

easy beauty swirling, dancing —

quintessential alibi

for not minding melting ice caps

or the penguins who die.

Why are you here?

Did you expect my words to be your pain

painted on walls in this industrial town? 

Like Bansky but cheap?

I’m not that good, but stay with me for a while. 

Have you sat on the verge for so long

you halfway live on the other side by now?

Do you no longer recall the smell of the sea, 

but you dream of it at times, 

when the static in your head has you tuning out

and you watch the world through glass, 

waiting maybe for a ride 

into the vast colourless distance 

beneath unending colourless skies. 

Are you shivering? 

Do you leave the radio on at night?

We’re both sleeping on train rails

in the days after Christmas, so let me hold your hand.

I’m not good at it, but your fingers are cold,

and so are mine.

Do you feel a draught in every room

from the place that is now empty

to the fissure in your heart, 

where the haze is seeping in?

I know about the days when the world slips out of grasp

and your body cannot move, 

and you crouch down on the ground. 

I will sit there with you. 

Simple.

I don’t know your name, 

but I’ve forgotten mine along the way anyhow. 

Maybe we’ll find new names one day, 

or we’ll find our old ones, 

primal, as they were

before ballpoint pens wrote them down

in the annals of this sordid establishment.

What I’m saying is

At times we both dangle our feet over the abyss. 

But take my hand, or better yet 

I’ll take yours, 

and we’ll stay here a while longer.

I hear there’s a bakery if you walk the other way. 

It’s not much but 

there’s a lonely cat along the road, 

and the smell of bread is filling, 

and the old lady knows stories 

about the fisherfolk and the sea, 

and she’ll make tea, 

basil and thyme, 

likely a bit bitter 

and a bit warming all the same, 

and we can stay there for another while.