Wish me well a hundred times
and love me until I sleep.
But tender lies the knot
somewhere inside the pillow.
Growing dull with time
to change in size and shape.
These bodies are not inert
but interacting. We are
mindful of production
to the moment of completion.
One moves beside the other,
generating frameworks
to contain ourselves within.
Remember… this body is old
it will not heal - and I don’t want it to
sit inside those magazine lines
and plastic skins. Health slowly fading
into calmer shades and wrinkle lines
releasing agitation, held so rightly
for all that time in front of cameras,
caught in mirrors, perfect thin
and crisply eaten.
My stubble
Is ice scraped from the freezer,
When I scratch
It snows on leather
My skin melts
Under the white caps
Of my nails
As my chin spurts a leak
Down my neck.
It’s time to shave
These polar blues
And chip away
At the walls
That have kept me
Frozen.
This is great! =D
Can I be honest?
As if there is a real me
Caught up bound
In a certain skin
And waiting to break free,
As though the narrative
Has already been told
And all I have to do
Is walk it.
This need to name
the nameless
rushes in.
But can we see
the Self
in so clinical a way?
The spectre of Orlando
climbs the rugged mountain,
making no attempt to cover it.
Such an object!
How can you wrap it ?
Once desire
is given
an order
predicated
on the gender of the partner.
Defined and delineated :
Are you
or aren’t you
gay?
As we claimed
each of us
that we desired
to be gay -
wishing to form
a better part
of the circle
of our friends -
you say, “It’s a thing now
to come out as straight.”
It feels to be an imposter
on the margins
riddled with guilt.
“What are we going to do about it?”
you say,
seemingly expectant.
As though I could solve the riddle
with a simple statement
to shack up
and make babies.
Here
I am all blank;
a body
waiting
to be written,
given shape,
moulded,
like dough
into forms
you recognise
and in which
you worship
your own
handiwork.
Labels, categories,
ebb and tide.
But cut this river
in a dam,
build up big walls
and control the flow
of this wandering
desire.
These are labelled bottles, filled with history, fixed with tags. These are bodies, not chessboards, constantly in play.
At the party she is a siren; a vestibule of parts:
of arms wrapped in lace,
and legs in fishnet stockings,
face all pretty lips
and body that is bending.
The desire is (supposedly) innate:
to engage
in the subtle movements
of eyes
darting
this way and that
and hands
fidgeting forward;
flicking back.
The Gaze shrinks the space, draws the faces close. It is an intimacy of stray hairs. He stands on a precipice; hands stretched out to catch himself. He wants
to act like wings
that fly into her heart.
He think he sees it pulsing
in her chest
and seeks to scoop it
in his fingers.
The sound
Of wharves
Groaning
From the weight
Of chemical moons
Dissolved in darkness
On the edge
Of before.
Figures the self
Through dreams
In different ways.
But only
In transgressions
Of before.
