a_dire_dawn
the nadir (revisited).
catapulting at alarming rates towards that crater that is the dormant volcano that is the nadir, that is the cave, that is losing yourself, that is love. that terrifying place between the fall & the ache. that frightening fear of traveling well worn paths. that these might just be new words for old desires. because the catapult's only passenger is Icarus.
& i know i say 'i do not fall in love i fly in love', but these feathers are sizzling, this beak is burning.
Icarus takes many forms & is a jerk. & we all know, we all know his form, & that the transformation is the most feared self destruction of all, the skydive, the plummet, the failing parachute, the crash landing, the guts the spilling.
all i'm saying, i'm afraid as hell. because your love is the fire, is the earth, is the wind, is the water & i'm burning drowning being swept away & buried.
it's always been easier in my cave.
& the metaphor goes on, the metaphor goes on.
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but i Don Juan to sleep alone.
parallel loves. the most tiresome of pass-times.
&everyone's okay with everything that goes on here. but i'm subdividing all my sentiments & oh gosh am i tired. but i've never been good at sleeping alone.
&if love is a water then i am an O between two H's, & if i could extend that metaphor to include negative & positively charged ions, occasional free radicals, i could probably explain the sort of CHEMISTRY here, the chemistry that's throwing me around.
f.
everyone is someone's ex & everyone has secrets.
so i can't trust your magic mouth - we're both too real, we're both too alive. yr everything i am, & everything i'm not, yr a sneaky sunset, yr stealing my sleep when i turn my back &.
&.
when it gets to this hour i start wondering where yr wandering, whether you wonder about where i wander - there is a tree, or is it a birdcage, that pulls its veils over my exhaustion & whispers 'arms, arms, arms'. so i find any. &don't rest until i do. i can't trust when my eyes get droopy & my neck gives way, not to pillows or bus windows or the dirt, but to shoulders, always shoulders. it's been months this way, but i Don Juan to be that sort of person.
&.
i can't trust yr warm eyes, because we're both sad misanthropes, cynics & cave-dwellers. we both wear our Brave Faces all day & all night but we're lone wolves through & through, & one day yr gonna wake up on fire & walk a hole through my walls, yr gonna skid off somewhere shiny & rose coloured & that's just that. & i'll probably try to beat you to it. because we've fallen for each other. & we're both more terrified than trembling.
a.
i wish there was something to say.
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i Don Juan to do this anymore!
a + f
because i Don Juan to hurt anyone.
i'm a sucker for the sinkholes & my soul is Guatemala - i've got two. real deep ones, too. &everyone's gonna drown somewhere.
on one hand there's the warmth, the quiet nights in, the fatalistic sentiments, there's an unnatural security, but the love is nervous, & has spent 8 months on a choke chain. the love is drug damaged & hazy & breathes in erratic intervals. there's growing old & there's critical cynical eyes.
on the other hand there's the youthful fall, the deeper deeper, the mixtapes & dumb daydreams, there's fuck it all, there's let's sit in this cave for the rest of our lives. there's a muse, there is no 'there there', there is no 'so there'. there's fucking ichor is what there is, blood of the immortals. it's i don't believe my eyes.
but there's no choice, just courage.
because.
on the train i wear loud headphones, F is speaking. 'i can't hear you' i say. he keeps speaking. 'i can't hear you!' i say. he keeps speaking, & in the brief silent stopover between tunes i hear him.
he says 'will you marry me.' & i pretend not hear him.
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falll in/fall out - making love
a.
it's been seven months, & the more we untangle our lives, the more we melt into. keep in contact like distant friends, make love like a married couple. the whirlwind is over, there's nothing to question, to quarrel, to pound our distraught fists into thin walls over. i'm forgetting yr smell. yr forgetting my worth. but it never quite fizzles out completely. &i'm still crazy about you.
d.
i can't tell whether you're my rebound or i'm yours. either way it's dumb. i roll over.
b. + j.
five women naked in a spa, bottle emptying of vodka & filling up with bubbles. b is fully clothed, sitting in the bathroom petting his cat. 'there are five hot women in your spa!' we cry. 'hey, pussy's pussy,' he chimes. we giggle, we howl, we cut our hair. girls just wanna have fun, &
one by one they drop off like flies, until it's just j & i. she is a real woman. i am a real woman. it's a bit too much for both of us. we invite b in & in a matter of moments it's plummeted from platonic to something less or more. we all feel slightly absent, only 1/3 ourselves, but it is raw, it is real, it is massaging oil in after three hours, it is sunrise in the worst ways, it is bruises in the best ways, it is free & it is our secret.
a.
a better secret. the next time always feels like the last time. you hardly leave the house, & no one's seen us out together in months. but it's happening. it's always happening. it is always dark & sometimes i'm crying & you can't tell, sometimes i think you're crying but i can't tell. always feels like the first time. we open ourselves beyond & elevate to great heights, this is transcendence on earth, baby, & i'd do anything to keep you round, but you're never round, & it always feels like the last time.
f.
another skeletal scarecrow. you ask me if i'm the tin man or the lion. you say yr all three. i say no no i'm toto, the pathetic lap dog with a mean yap. &why don't you stay over. with yr nervous hands & my all too confident hands we intimidate each other, but we find it, in the morning with the dog in the room. you're always smiling & i'm terrified we're falling in. our hours begin in the dead of night, i'm not sure you exist in the day, we're werewolves out hunting & we find it. & i'm terrified you're going to confide something in me, & then it will have started. & then you confide something in me, & now it's started.
a. + f.
i'm falling in & falling out in parallel. there's no real way to negotiate. i lay on my bed listening to the rain & find it hard to make choices. can i live like the fat cat & go out perpetually house-hopping? or is someone going to get hurt. & i know something's gotta budge. & someone's gonna get hurt. & it's probably going to be me.
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holes
in the morning in the rain in the tent she makes a heart from her fingers, then breaks it.
'he can't fill my holes,' she says.
'no one has holes,' i respond.
'i have holes.'
'i guess we make holes.'
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lunacy
a.
covered in dirt driving home from the festival, the five of us. the first goodbye - he & i stand in the stairwell, forty degrees outside, hot stagnant air, feet black & lungs full of dust, we can't stop kissing. i say this is just like new york, & disappear out the door.
j.
finally we're home. the other & i stand in the shower watching the water run bloody brown for the longest time. we stand still & flaccid.
b.
he wears vampire teeth & drains my neck. always looks at my lips, never in my eyes. i am beginning to wonder how queer this boy really is.
a.
he's got a dark dark past, & some shadows left over. yet i stick around & even smile. in the afternoon shade there's a sombre moment.
'i've got crazy affections for you. you've seen me now. if you're okay with who i am, i'm more than okay with that.'
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intergenerational
4am, post-coital & mosquito-ridden, the kind of sweat that only drips in the australian summer.
i turn away. 'a lot of the time i try to tell myself we should stop seeing each other.'
you turn away. 'i think i kind of - & here is the N bomb - need you, in ways.'
&it's funny, because if yr Gen X, & i'm Gen Y, we make a perfect male chromosome. it makes sense, then, that we try so hard not to express ourselves, to remain flippant & veiled.
&it makes sense that no Gen Y romance can ever work. because there's XX & there's XY, & anything else can't survive in air.
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cODeine
holds me closer & closer. 'i've spent so long building a maze around myself, full of trap doors & dead ends & signs pointing the wrong way, & for good reason, but you've somehow bypassed it all & made it through. i'm so thankful.'
i come out of general anesthetic & he pats my head & makes me coffee for forty eight hours. when he says 'love you' i just reply 'oh'. falling into cupboards & walls, painkiller hallucinations. he tells me he wants to care for me, but his primary relationship is with the stars. but still he holds me closer & closer.
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hazeldean.
& oh, if every housewarming was a bit more like this. the no clothes policy. so he invites me for a shower, & i don't sleep in my bed for days. but that's all a big secret.
(ii).
we're kissing & he breaks down, doubles over & buries his head in sheets. he's been staring at the ceiling for hours, catatonic, eyes lit up like a maniac after a fresh kill. &he fucks me tho i'm bleeding. i'm so distressed i sprint to the grassy knoll & scream at the yellow half moon bobbing on the ocean's surface. a shooting star as big & slow as my intentions slices the sky. he sighs, 'you know yr spending time with a drug addict.' i run my fingers through his hair & sigh right back.
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basket case
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puppeteer
&i've never moved so slow, soft, sombre, slaloming the spring ski fields of this seaside city. &i reckon it's the way you swagger & sway around me, through me, i'd forgotten such sincere sentiments. there are no pierced collarbones or bruised breasts here, just skin & skin & skin; sheets & sheets & sheets. &then something else. who knows. my synapses slow to skid to a halt & gallop alongside yrs, its strange & sudden & sincere, i suppose.
but 's' is the wrong alliteration here. we are all the softer sounds; mm, ah, all the sleepy syllables. &when we lie we fly. it was a flightless dream long forgotten, but we've found it, somewhere, here.
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yr the best i've ever lied to (new words for old desires)
lose sleep over,
would you laugh if i said - yr the only soul i'll ever shout hyperbole for,
o flightless fools were we we were,
OR,
would you say - you know i'm a drunk & i know you just forget but heck, this could work i bet.
because i was just sixteen but we built the finest fictions, & if that is just what was & all that will be, can't i just please print it all & poke it into tiny bottles & sail it to fools the world over?
cos i still i still i still love ya.
& i might always.
&if i can't shout it from rooftops,
this'll have to do.
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sweaters
every object opens doors. not least of all a door handle. in the house made of old forgotten sweaters.
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hound dog
tightroping the clothesline between the twin towers almost ten years on, my only balance two pendulous candles burning, dripping wax on hotheaded city slickers a thousand feet below. all the oscillating concentric circles & spirals of my life aren't crossing over at the right times, i can promise there'll be atoms colliding & dark matter shooting tangents every which way. time is a cosmic treadmill & i wore a hole in the soles of my sneakers
not a metre from the front door,
for want of a better metaphor.
how else to say 'i can't keep up', how else to say 'help'. it's hard work for a hound dog who pants 'yes' to everything & everyone, drooling on their shoulders, slobber sliming up the tightrope & slippery claws clambering clumsy to a fall.
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this is not adulthood, this is not smart
he'd been in bed for two days after court, she'd escaped the dark dank den (or so she thought) - the festival had never seen such rain, & the glam punk rappers stunk out the cafe. so they decompressed in a cohort's bed while she put on her play, & the city was a-shambles on TINA's tenth birthday. the locals felt the high tide, they sunk & screamed & cried so much they flooded hunter street & on the moon they spied.
no one saw the sunset, they'd bled clean all the skies, & on the dirty mattress by one orange glowing light he pried himself from sleep to sit cross legged & close eyed.
connecting fingers became connecting foreheads, they were ballroom dancing with the senses, this full moon has made fool moons of us all. & the moment their mouths moved as one the stereo sang 'Contact Lunacy'. the neighbours heard & joined in the howling. answering the door, one of them topless the other bottomless the night could now begin. put on their best 20's attire & though the big band had finished the vaudeville stripshow had just begun. outside two men on sandstone pillars waving their cocks in the wind, dj set from the back of a thrifty van, no one quite knew how to stay still, they spilled onto the streets & dispersed. someone called "MOONTANNING" & in an instant a merry band of red-toothed lunatics metled into a single breathing embryo on the hillside.
found him fully dressed in the bathtub, edges lined with black, wet cigarette ends. wild black hair, handlebar moustache, the eyes of a first prize scary clown at the fair, teeth of a vampire. catatonic despondant, cold wet & clean. the pinstripe shirt stuck to his skin like the helpless ex-girlfriend he's not handling well. steam rises slow like the turbulence behind his full moon face. & time convulses in that bathroom. he smirks & we shiver. his eyes are not doors or windows, but rather wide open wells. leading inward or outward, no one can tell.
full moon waxing but we're barely alive.
&tonight, the full moon waning, we cannot even begin to prepare.
just ride the tide, brave the waves, origami tsunami, cocoon in the monsoon, staring into the barrell OF THIS. FULL. MOON.
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diamonds within diamonds
&as the sun goes down in that same cafe they all say 'stay another night' but before i can respond i've slept the entire three hours home. in a couple weeks i'm moving back there, & this shit sure is going to spiral. the town that couldn't be tinier.
& because we're all just made of carbon, & we're all so close, we press into each other, we glow white hot, & we all melt.
we become diamonds, & diamonds within diamonds.
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the soul & the soil
hi lovers, high hopes, hi insects -
scream at the sun, hi morning, hi death,
spend warm evenings with the one you spring best.
&you know these past five days i've been making so much sense, feeling so carefree, talking open as a window in summer.
& i said, you are the best boyfriend i've ever had, because we share space so well, so comfortable so close, & we're kind - but we're not dating, we're not having sex, & we aren't in love. you're all the good things about a lover without all that stuff that fucks it up.
three of you carry me from the car, tailcoat tying up my torso & masking tape muffling my mouth, & drop me at the terrace doorsteps, knock on the door, run away. all ablur in giggles. oh my dearest friends, oh my dearest friends. this spring will be the best spring yet.
went out this morning to see the dawn & it sobered me up entirely. fell asleep in an L-shape around yr frame, drawing in the lotus position, all-night meditation & what not. woke up two hours later to the rest of the house clambering around our frail frames, it's early, we play silly songs we finish off the junk food, i pry myself off the floor to take a shower for the first time in four days - this is rest, this is stillness. when time becomes a fictional falsity once more. yesyesyes this has been entirely therapeutic. give each other gifts - our favourite clothing - kiss my nose & my mouth good night, where the fuck did you come from tall red mountain grizzly?
but it matters not a bit. we're sleepless but still somehow moving through the day. yesyesyes this is exactly what i've needed. a new skin, a half moon, a deep night sky on our bikes on a hill. the long walk home shouting at the scenery, stupid accents, stupid sentiments. sharing all our thoughts on the dumb stuff - sex, mostly.
we will never.
& i am more than fine with just holding you.
in the light of the goodbye i can see the wrinkles on my hands, deeper than ever. i feel alright about ageing. i feel alright about failing. i feel alright about most things.
this spring will be the best spring yet.
& no i will not stop saying it.
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(no title)
we were lovers, once. i've been waiting three years to be alone with him again. on the floor in a sleeping bag, drunk & cold, i ask if he's cool with cuddles. &i know he means it when he says it.
'i don't really touch humans anymore.'
d/t
staring at the ceiling giggling, telling each other how we've both got reputations, that it's alright, we know better. but we don't know better, & suddenly it's sunrise & we're smoking on the fold-out light headed light hearted. words at the coffee place too lovely to relay. i leave & fall asleep on the train in the sun.
j
it's not going to happen , i know it. you threw me into yr whirlwind one night only. three days together & nothing, nothing, not in the innumerable chances. but we make fucking beautiful music, & that's all i care about.
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well yr whispers left marks on my neck
even if there were words i would not use them.
let's keep this to ourselves,
tho it's hard to hide this spring, this glint, this grin.
i promise i will only ever feel
good things,
good things,
good things.
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jack skellington legs
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guy whittaker
synapse overcast in the morning heat,
stagger fumbling between the streets,
wire tangled on my wrist &
a bruised jaw covered in grease.
out of apathy we spin vinyl & get pierced
out of mediocrity we embrace amidst bookshelves
(out of uncertainty we let go).
somewhere my silver shield fell,
somewhere a plan was hatched -
i was left unguarded & frail,
went to hibernate under silken seas.
there's seismic activity 'neath these bones,
frigid rigid ruptures,
& i would hold you if i wore a grin,
beginning to become akin to
these overcast synapses & seismic skeletons,
tragic
train wrecked
tumble
weed.
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tiny insects swimming content in a glass of red,
it is morning no one's ready.
who knows where anyone's sleeping
& we all swap again at dawn anyways
so why bother getting settled.
promise promise promise we won't call ourselves the fancy four
let's go let's go comeon interstate
burn out on the bus
i've treaded this end of the world to its death
oh oh oh get me back west.
---------------------------------------------------
poetry readings to strangers in the sun
at west end central
we, too, are disabled deformed city downtown birds
rife with disease & malnutrition,
o yes we too are the pesky pigeons
the sickly seagulls
barking
for attention.
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i don't mind that it only sounds fine in a Boston accent
i don't mind that i got so full of wine i felt like a murder scene carpet
we are all photographs by the coroner
we are all inconclusive evidence
we give no leads
we make no pleas.
it's all pure cunning & salesmanship now
that i've begun to furrow my brow,
well & truly forgot you now.
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&even if i tried o so hard
to describe these last six days
i think i would possibly end up in a vortex
of amylnesia & worrisome nostalgia -
aye, forget this bliss!
beckett would not approve of this!
stay hidden, dear elk friend,
the hunters prey in packs -
don't think of yr young cubs,
don't think of that eternal hibernation,
only think of stripping the trees
of their bark
& solemnly swallowing -
before they shoot their arrows
before they chant their warsong
in victory.
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oh hi oh ohio
we climb & fall around giant abandoned hospitals, through the empty banana joe's carpark, fight with limp skip bok choy, construction sites, jump from shaky piles of wood ten feet off the ground onto mounds of wet soil onto scaffolding, over fences into alleys.
my last few days in mville leave me with the bruisedest thighs.
& this tiny boy is fairly incredible. cystic fibrosis. he whimpers in his sleep, arms round torso it's hard to imagine what's happening inside those lungs. i dream of cures.
scattering ashes, from a straw urn left in an alley, i think about what i'll feel when i make it to illinois.
oh hi oh
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migrate
what does it mean to be a lover?
can you smell it somewhere the moment its true?
an abstract pheromonal cue?
or does a twinkle lodge itself in an eye,
& swear by every lullaby?
is it in the moment you hold wrists,
& when you fuck, it just insists
to bloat & float like clouds or birds
migrating northwest in monumental herds?
these notions no one has explained,
& so thus far, i have remained
a naive lover, if there were such an instance
in all my unchartered time & distance ...
until someone gives me a viable clue,
i'll just have to love
the hell
out of all of you.
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he despairs!
Dead Guise: In 1987 I grew up for five minutes then started growing down again.
Dead Guise: In 1989 someone put a funny mirror in front of me & I stood in front of it for a while, & the further I stepped backwards the more it looked like I grew up.
blisters taste salty,
an overcooked poultry
inherent failure in syllabic metre
wha-te-ver.
clusters of seizing sparklers,
he runs down the hallway all coked up
glimpses at the television
projecting its godly union with colours rectangular.
is this some paraphrased
soulless
carbon copy?
set the kites on fire
& glue the crabs back together.
aching wisdom teeth numb all logic -
i find it amusing we have devolved from needing them:
NO ROOM FOR WISDOM
AT THE BACK OF MY TONGUE!
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no more ssimiles.
when the drink & the painkiller lulls us into an anesthetic sleep.
tumbling through time we notice
we're snoring on each other's forearms
or accidentally nestling like spoons.
something so unique about the way the dreams flood me then
when we're in a white room lips parted,
& intimately failing each other
so instead climb a bridge.
there is
something so pure about doing
none of this intentionally,
but happening,
something so true
& beautiful
& true.
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sleep on it
he has been a hero of mine for a long time. he is thirty eight. his (ware)house is an arabian otherworld, a chimerical wonderland of camels & naked mannequins & wonderful lamps & dusty old gypsy guitars. it is the end of one of his shows. we're by the piano talking for the first time in a year, maybe. i spot several well-concealed ARIAs. we spend a night together. he loves my body.
we become neighbours. spend evenings there when our place floods or loses electricity. find each other at the cafes.
i am not in the slightest attracted to him. we spend another night together.
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shams.
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forever always
in the last week the whole world has been uttering the words 'i do not fall in love i fly in love' & writing their et ceteras as &c.s, we've all been shouting about the moon & the ocean & Hafiz as a child.
i feel like. i feel like the next thirty hour will be just fine - to remain still, sleepless, heading through the unknown toward the even less known.
i feel like. harbouring emotions especially desire is the worst thing to do. like. it must take a lot of thinking to work up ways in which i've done you wrong. like. i flew in love so brilliantly in the last month, & last night on Santa Monica beach, between the pier & the sand, zig zagging through the wooden beams trying to find the moon, i freed myself of desire & of longing & of regret. i met a shaman in San Mateo & he told me not to fall into the trap that people in my age group do, which is to believe that our relationships make us who we are. just to fly.
if i were Rumi i'd have surely met my Shams & he told me to stop trying, but not to give up. the cheshire cat grin & wild arms will stay with me forever always, but also, never.
i feel the deceit of this City of Angels but i also hear everyone's frantic whispers, somewhere underneath there, free me, free me, remind me i love me. so i smile & i approach everyone i possibly can. they are all just great people & in expensive clothes & i remembered THERE IS NO EMPEROR. i sleep long & dream vividly of the most banal experiences. perfect.
the vortexes & nadirs we encounter. my friends are so heavy with their nadirs. why not nebulae?
let's me & you, fly into love.
always forever.
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v day in the bay
earlier in the evening Trius agreed to let me fuck him in the ass with a strap-on. this is not a joke. as long as i reach-around. we exchange sincere hugs of gratitude for each other. it will be our first times. we kiss goodbye with the camera rolling, a new documentary to be shown at this year's Sundance, & the van tears away. some San Francisco, huh.
i walk into the sex shop & am completely overwhelmed by the choice. what does a man want to be fucked with? what kind of penis should i brandish?
i spend the second jcm show with a stranger. some skinny, cold dyke with an amazing moustache who scalped her girlfriend's ticket onto me.
we move into our new apartment on 19th & Mission at two in the morning. then race off to Safeway to tackle each other next to the Craisins & give more blankets to the homeless from inside the van. it is raining so majestically.
guys, this is Gonzo. he is many people. he is everywhere. he took me under his wing & he is starting the revolution, my friends, of free love & of freedom in general & i have never been more at peace!
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Be Well