Évariste

Évariste lying in the grass, face up

probably felt the dew soak his shirt

realised it was his own, cooling blood

perhaps serene he had laid down

his numbers to rest, his words to rest

his mind perhaps churning more

connections of higher orders

as life became clearer ebbing away

perhaps he saw another version of himself

die as well, die again, die afresh

perhaps he saw Évariste, face down

lying in the sky, hand pressed to his chest

perhaps terrified that time now

converging in with all the momentums

life, death, love, hate, tragedy, comedy

aware that the hardest battles

the ones with the highest cost

are fought in the mind and in the heart

bring inertia to stillness in pure velocity

fathomed the symmetries can’t just stop here

have to fold in on themselves, coil and recoil

as breathing, as in the awe of the storm

until the most formidable of lights

encased in filaments of darkness

bore him into interwoven infinities

inside of which everyhim,

everywhen, everywhere

finally made the sense

the numbers pointed to

Filinz

he sez he wans us intimet

that he luvz me

so i duz wot he sez

i wan kissiz an hugz

but he duzn

he sez he wans my hart

but my but to

wen he comome

late an drunk

his handz en ma throat

an mout

i cant screem

he smelz ov uver wimin

but i cant leav him

i luv him

an he luvz me

an hiz intimet wiv me

wen nowun els duz

he luvz me

an a litel pain iz ok

iz ok he sez

but less i sez

sumtymz less

sumtymz mor he sez

he sez hel be beter

if im hiz an if i duz

wot he sez

he sez we doneed filinz

filinz hurt but i don inersten

luv heelz it duzn hurt

buthen hiz sad

so i let hiz finguz in me

surchin an

he forsiz me

to open ma mout

an swalo bud i

donwan an he lafs

an pushiz an pushiz

an lafs an kumz

an i cryz bud he duzn care

hez gun hez alwez gun

he duzn sleep hear

hez alwez gun

an i alwez cryz

im despret

he sez he needz me

bud he duzn i no

hez gun an leevz me

alwez leevz me

i wana die

mebe hel care

Aporia

deep rumbles through

the soft tissues

absolute skinquake

folded in the flesh

the sentiment

nested like an origami

waiting to unfold into

another shape with the

pulse of a wild horse

lain slain in pain

gushing blood all over

severed arteries

on the brink of breath

eyes wide as quasars

the heart extracted

in our own capable hands

impossible anomaly yet

alive alive alive

if/and

 
If I were a piece of paper,
I’d probably burn myself.

If I were a car, I’d crash
or run myself over a cliff.

If I were a particle, I’d box
myself in with a cat, and wait.

But I am none of these things,
I am not sure of what I am, exactly.

I am not sure of what I am not either,
but that hasn’t got me very far.

Perhaps, perhaps I should be
and not be any and all of these things.

If I were a piece of paper,
I am turning myself into a poem.

If I will be a car, I ought to
visit every corner of the world.

If I also am a particle, I am a cat
and a box and I awake and sleep.

In case of doubt, I should be and do
all and nought, unbe and undo all.

 

The exchange

 

The exchange happened at the end of a world
Without a word, without a gesture.

A clear night was thus born
The city purred at its feet.

His heart was no longer the matter
He gave her the most beautiful thing he’d ever made.

She hurriedly wrapped herself in the rainbow cloth
She was no longer cold.

Her own heart filled with pulsing joy
She listened to the lightwaves of love
She slept, and slept, and slept.

When she woke up, lightyears later,
She unfurled wingsongs covering the night:
He knew the world would never be the same again

He knew he’d bleed, every day, and not quite heal each time
Waking up to the city drowning in a sleepless coldfire
He’d hear ghosts calling out his fading name
Unrecognising it, slowly, slowly too thin to be heard.

The clothsheen faded, quasarcoloured the night instead
He knew chaos had begun long before the exchange happened
Entropy fractalled into his very frame, from the onset of worlds.

Never once questioning the concatenation of souls
He stepped in the darkflow with his eyes wide open.

The citylights faded into the quietest, dreamless sleep
And the night was of the deepest, most vibrant dark
That it might have been the bottom of the ocean
That it might have been the deepest recess of space.

The exchange was finally complete
Holding his moonheart in the palm of his hands.

How do you

How do you get back to a time

when everyone you knew was good

and kind, and patient, and soft

– you don’t, says a voice within.

How do you find a loved one again

when they’ve moved away

from who they used to be

– you don’t, it whispers firmly.

How do you find the peace within,

that which was before and is no more

and not give in to the rage

– you don’t, rage all the way, it sneers.

How do you get back to being loved,

regarded, and not just casually checked,

given cold shoulders and rearward looks

– you don’t, silence is the price of the spurned

– you, love, hate, have no reason to exist, it mocks.

How do you, how do you do all this

without going nuts, how do you not

want to set everything on fire and,

and leave the world an absolute ruin

– you do, and whining is the fastest way to a CVA

– everyone’s nuts, the world is on fire, look around

– get on with it, tears are useless in this dead world.

How do you go about just breathing

when the absence of love smothers

when life is – life is beyond your words

– love is that bitch thing that squirms in its sleep

– people can’t bother when they barely get by

– we all hurtle down the wormhole, ill at ease

– our bodies cumbersome, fragile machines

– vain every effort to love, hate, talk, search

– your concepts a waste – your worries pointless

How do you – how do you, you keep asking,

– so let me tell you how real reality is

– since your brain doesn’t seem to twig

– life’s not done with you all at all

– it simply doesn’t factor you in –

– your how-do-yous are gargles in space

– love, hate, feelings are constructs, life isn’t

– that point was missed from the get-go

– and I don’t hear you howdoyou about it

– ask the right question, or die like the rest of them –

In case of heartbreak

 
In case of heartbreak, be blue,
take a glass of wine, and another
but you’ll also want to do
a couple things so it’s not a bother
things that’ll pull your sanity through:
grab tissues, booze, and a mirror.

In case of heartbreak, shatter
your hopes and expectations,
they stab the soul like a dagger
pinch the heart, punch the guts,
each a station of rage a notch up,
leave a taste like silt in the mouth.

Better let curiosity guide your step
– it is a much softer, finer feeling,
it leaves the fingertips alert
– and tense – keeps the mind sharp
– it also dulls the will, dulls the senses
because let’s be brutally honest:
you’ll need a lot of dulling.

Yet do not – under any circumstance –
and I cannot stress this enough:
DO NOT LET THE SILENCE TAKE HOLD
– for you cannot trust your thoughts –
– because in such a heartbreak –
none of these thoughts are truly yours.

In case of heartbreak – break glass –
do cry, do rage, do go sleepless
– both heart and mind need this –
and if you become a fucking shambles
– let sadness invade, pervade
so you can come crashing down –
– obliterate all life out of your existence –
and forget everything and everyone.

In case of heartbreak, letting go is behovely
– pick up the pieces, glue the puzzle back –
with self-love and care, sullenly if need be
– ‘suddenly’ certainly not recommended –
let the wound gapeopen for a while
– then cram a handful of salt in it,
clench your teeth – and saw it shut –

And if your loved one calls back, do not pick up –
if messages pour in, do not read them –
if your loved one reaches out, just leave –
– trust me, it’s best that you walk away –
revived hopes have always set worlds on fire
spurred expectations are bound to rupture
and spill tar eventually bursting into flames.

In case of heartbreak, you’ll walk alone,
but it doesn’t mean the work can’t be done,
it doesn’t mean you won’t get there
– wherever and whatever ‘there’ is –
it doesn’t mean you’re not worth the fight
– heartbreaks grind the heart, efface the soul –
yet when they stop, for they do stop,
they always leave rich ground to start afresh.

 

Ghost ship

– fable fading now like a frayed,

sunbleached atlas

– unmoored, left to the currents

– gathering headway towards 

the edge of the map

– oblivious to the homeport marks

– yet calling at foreign ports

– making time to anchorage elsewhere

– seemingly shoaling a chance course

– – now known never to return – –

– despite its casual erring

– sails always in sight

– hovering the homedock

– – it is time to storm the doldrums – –

– tonight, the locks to the harbour

shall be shut – till the seas sweep away

that fata morgana of a ship –

I mastered the art of falling in love

Dreamt lives lived with each love

Every possible scenario enacted

Every pleasure and pain achieved

I mastered the art of falling in love

This man delivering a package

This woman serving morning coffee

All the beautiful and ugly people

I mastered the art of falling in love

Imagining them love me, hate me

Is what I do to take on the hours

Proof that people can love still

I mastered the art of falling in love

All these lived loves always ending

For my love for you refuses to die

For your love of me refuses to begin

I mastered the art of falling in love

Every day hoping you’ll call but don’t

Every day you love this someone else

Us two dying to be loved so this is why

I mastered the art of falling in love

 

Pebbles & Bern

This morning I saw my dog

using my kitten as a pillow —

Bern’s massive head on Pebbles

who didn’t seem to mind.

Bern isn’t getting any younger,

he gets stiff hips in the morning

and has lighter hair around his eyes.

Science says one year for dogs

is seven years for us;

it also says their body systems

have factored in their own mortality.

But we haven’t. I haven’t.

One week for me, seven for Bern.

— it’s even worse for Pebbles:

twenty-one years taken the first two,

time is ruthless for a kitten.

I spend my days bummed out,

sometimes not even leaving the house,

just letting Bern out in the yard,

just letting time go by for lack

of knowing what to do with it.

While Pebbles sleeps all day long.

I have to get out of that rut,

not just for me, but for them too —

time passes differently for everyone,

but it matters for all of us.

Factoring in my own mortality.

So I’ll play with them. Go out, rain and shine.

Bern needs to go run after squirrels,

— he used to when he was a teen —

have Pebbles chase a fake mouse on a string,

make the day matter, make it unpredictable.

Get a tennis ball, grab a piece of yarn,

goof around, cuddle, nap in front of the telly,

make dinner for all three of us,

so that when we all go to sleep

our dreams make us twitch and bark,

paw and run, huff and purr.

Time that matters isn’t time anymore.

How are the five minutes of a mayfly’s like?

A day in the life of a Greenland shark?

Different, yet the same, I guess.

There’s no time in the life of a dog to get bored,

yet sometimes that’s we like doing

when boredom matters

more than time.

Pebbles just woke up.

Spheres

A second ago the air the same

now vaulted in a spherical film

wobbly, iridescent, tense

now two different airs

inbetween, the thin pellicle

clearcut yet transparent

slowly, as water drains out,

the black spots turn into a film

darker than closed-eyelid eigengrau

the tension surfacing rapidly

some symbol hanging there

love perhaps, life, death, whatnot.

perhaps someone’s ego

protected at all costs

until something runs out

then the air in, out, the same.

The Odyssei

 
Another bottom-shelf Odysseus thinking
having a lofty goal is all that matters,
that Ithaca is just the one place,
that the destination is everything.

Those Odyssei merit to feed the crabs,
or to rot on the shoreline in the sun,
kelp in their matted hair and beards.

The fool will get lost indeed, and drown
– manly him and his ignorant ideals –
he will only find gods and monsters,
marred plans and fleeting riches,
unmemorable deserted islands,
– not the Penelope his guts are yearning for,
the Ithaca of Ithacas, the journey of journeys.

Those tacky, fragile amphoras of Odyssei
praise the wine, the flagon, the cellar,
forget the vineyard, the soil, the sun,
that Penelope handpicked the grapes.

This Odysseus remembers her proud beauty,
everyone’s envy, her shimmering garment,
he trusts in the olive tree’s roots in his bed,
in his aura to ensure none replace him
– forgets Penelope is the weaver, the teller,
has ousted many of those brash Odyssei,
elects who will rule and who will fall.

In this Ithaca, as in all other Ithacas,
many an Odysseus ended up a beggar,
ignored, unsung, wishing he remembered
how Penelope smelt of tangerine,
how she used to own the night,
herself an Ithaca without a map,
the reason, bearing, quest, and deed.

 

Missing

—

something

amiss

off

unthere

—

missing someone

is hard on the heart

—

guts twisted like a wet rag

with every single recollection

—

shivved in the chest

at the first memory

with a notched blade

grazing bones, tissues

exposing the flesh

so it cannot heal

—

every DNA monomer

branded, rewired, retranslated

so even the sense of smell

gets tricked into thinking

– the memories are real –

– the missing isn’t missed –

only to each time find out

– the heart heaving as

going down a steep slope –

that the missing is decohered

– neither here and – nor – there –

unable to freeze it into place

if one stares at it long enough

– love unaffected by

any law of physics –

—

the air unbreathable as

every pulmonary alveolus

collapses like a promise

when holding it fails

– the only option is to hold

– breath, attention, heart –

and sit still – so very still –

counting heartbeats to zero

until infinity hits

—

missing someone

is hard on the heart

– shattering its walls –

– supposedly denser

than the core

of a neutron star –

into absolute smithereens

– its ash to be repurposed

but for now, for what, for what

—

missing someone

is hard on the heart

– but missing someone

you’re never to see again

– that lays the heart

to unequivocal waste.