par les vous francais? nope.

I'm going to paris tomorrow.
yay.

that is all.

keeping up with the joneses

safari gone wild

they walk
barefoot
and nearly naked,
hair in braids
skin mud-stained

an attempt to conceal
their white privilege
and "civility"

perfectly round breasts
adorned by necklaces
keep the women
leashed
under the control
of their master

they pose for pictures
insecure
but secured

two smile
the third
hides her face in shame...

the challenge
of walking a mile
on another's path
makes for a good photo opp

they'll brag to their friends
about the safari they went on

hanging with the savage
uncivilized
natives

i desperately need to write something other than shit.
i need a new writing challenge.
i need a topic.

i need my mind to think clearly

i need more than a few hours of sleep each night.

i need TIME.

unraveled

I laughed when you tore
the Sun’s astrology pages
into strips of confetti,
and flung their false sentiments
from the balcony,
where they settled in muddy puddles
like marooned white petals
soaking up filth.

Delighted by your encyclopaedic
recall for facts, dates, explanations –
I would lean over your shoulder,
a vague toddler;
asking and finger-jabbing
as you doodled diagrams
on beer mats.

We’d switch off the History Channel
half-way through documentaries,
knowing you had already gone
beyond their bite-size range
and could expand upon it all
with greater finesse.
The television became
a discarded object
towards which all our furniture
had mysteriously gravitated…

It was unnerving, to be this sudden
symbol of exposed ignorance;
a precarious flamingo
with no leg to stand on
as knowledge stampeded through
each one of my barren gorges.
Even the admitted-to gaps in your wisdom
offered little hope for a future
in which we erected bridges across them;

I was too far behind,
could only gather
the dust and olive branches
marking your trail
whilst you galloped ahead
in search of bigger and better materials.
I took refuge, “as-per-fucking-always”
in shelves of fiction – something you,
lacking imagination,
continued to dismiss
as a complete waste of time.

It wasn’t just a need to be
sucked into alternative dimensions;
it was to convince myself
that aspirations of becoming a literary intellectual,
if nothing else, were within reach. Worlds where
you couldn’t follow – refused to – I revelled,
and filed their titles for later use.

It was my little scrap of dignity:
to reign supreme
in an exclusive corner of academia;
to know I could
bowl over your bluster
with a litany of classics and writers
and linguistic terminology.

I exercised restraint
with your grammar, reserving
red ink underlines
for internal triumph and emergencies.
Over-brimming with science,
you ruined rainbows for the kids;
sneered at my love affair with the sky.

Fucker.


“Pets do not love their owners.
The illusion is merely a result
of operant conditioning.”

Quite.

Thanks for the enlightenment, dear.

divorce

inversions and metric conversions and numbers
slipping back and forth
undulating through time
in a third
a second-
time to burn, to breathe,
chanting. searching. for a...repose,
define me
in the darkest of landings
flat-bottomed boats traversing the catacombs
and I need you
to need me
to need this to all
end.

over.
over and out.
like a walkie talkie game

full moon

i went to bed with wet hair.
scant few inches, curling,
dripping.
but i waited,
upon your insistence

find your rest between my knees,
soothe your tipsy head.

esoteric

beautiful one, you are
sliding serenely into sleep
like satin sheets
like silk pajamas
like the Dreamer’s
coat of many colors.

you are
alice in wonderland,
drifting down the white rabbit’s hole,
careless of appointments
and dates.

tired woman, you are slipping
so casually
into sleep:

as though dreams
are meant to be taken
lightly.