Sometimes Tuesdays make sense

She comes from nowhere
just appears;
a stranger of cups
suddenly dealt upside down
from a deck
you know is marked by the divine

and so

when you shake hands
another wind god wakes
and starts licking the dice

and so

you order wine
because what more is there to do
when she’s on every chip
you’re playing for
with trembling hands
and earmarked credit cards

A story for Biscuit

So Biscuit,
your daddy, he goes
to east London on Tuesdays to
a rented flat
in a house of brown bricks
where children play cops and robbers outdoors in the summer, and
women gossip and hang laundry out
their windows to dry.
Your daddy goes, Biscuit,
and knocks on door 22B

She lets him wait, Biscuit
She lets him wait two minutes, maybe five and then
opens the door
in her knickers,
lets him in without a word and he enters
without a word

So he comes in, Biscuit, and the flat
smells of smoke and her perfume
(like heaven)
Her black skin reminds him of coffee and gold
and her ass sways
as she walks to the kitchen
while his palms sweat
and his fingers burn

He grows hard, Biscuit, grows so hard
that he thinks he might die,
that his heart will stop
And Biscuit, I don’t know if he even
still likes her,
but a girl’s gotta live,
and daddy pays rent and he fucks like a prince.

When he closes the door to 22B
two hours later
he knows, and she knows
that they never
closed
their eyes,
even for a second

Stockholm, 21 October 2010. Trendy bar.

This is no Orleans.
the mirrors of the beautiful
surround me
In a cacophony of monkey
voices
Dreaming
of minimalist sofa groups
Lust? Allowed, but through ethanol curtains
Desire – can’t find no parking space
Everybody answers their phones
and that’s a lie too
(voice mail smells like success on Thursdays)

mama, let me get thousands of roses,
your grave matters
are the only valid ones and
the Dog is out in the cold too
while
understanding faces
Repeat last week’s lottery numbers and
the wronged
dream of shopping and spa treatments
Not me though,
I only want
The blonde across the bar

so tell me nothing, stranger,
we are children only of salt
and our blood and come
keep us from slipping
on winter roads

The music made no sense

The music made no sense.
I was decaying
one lead beat at a time,
twirling downwards,
The drink in my hand
a dead weight
pulling me toward void,
in an autumn of Everything Too Soon
that I couldn’t stop.

Too old to offer a smile,
too young to matter;
nobody could break out of the mass
surrounding me.
their joy blanketed me like flowers
and they were right, right in
Everything They Assumed.
again I was wrong
in what I was, and where I was,
wrong like plastic tulips at a funeral,
and I saw no way out but
the bus .

It beckoned – a cure for the panic of being here,
of the error
inside and out

I wanted to wring myself dry of me,
to be as pure as them,
but feared losing myself.
I was still a coward
and the fear I carried
was safe
for today,
with no direction besides that of tomorrow,
and tomorrow’s tomorrow

I stayed,
until the warmth
of being surrounded
by the movement of people
pounding a road my feet couldn’t see
repelled me beyond
the threshold of being,
and I realised I was alone
in the crowd

I thought:
Is there a poem here?
but there wasn’t any
so I started walking
through the noise and ethanol mist,
Thinking of
Dogs
and that time
when I danced like my life
depended on it

66 Wardour Street, W1F 0TA

Freedom’s open till 3 am.
Then freedom closes.

Freedom opens again, at four or five the next day.
Hours of freedom,
as long as you can afford the drinks at
nine pounds a pop.
The laughter of the free is pearly,
their movement your movement while their longing fills you until you’re bursting with freedom, longing to burn the bridges or fuck in a toilet stall,
to the beat of a girl who kissed a girl

Freedom’s open till 3 am;
then freedom closes
You feel the oppression when
there is no freedom to be had,
and you catch a quick cab for a quick rub and a quick death and a quick goodbye,
coming home to an expired milk carton and
laundry and
email and
Life
that
does
not
stop.

And you long for freedom to open, even if it will close at 3 am

Tonight’s Gonna Be a Good Night

I stood in a place of Hunger
where the heat was on.
Ten euros to enter the darkness,
lights flashed a staccato of polaroid seduction
across my face.
After so many years
I still hadn’t seem to forgotten
how to
Be Fresh
or how pointless the beat is,
As it washes down drinks
at ten euro a pop, while
bodies sway and bite and grasp
an surely even fornicate.

There was no sin there
in the bowels of the discotheque,
Only the abstraction of music
And something else,
to which I wasn’t privy.

To try to understand is to kill,
And one who doesn’t practice,
doesn’t learn,
But the Peas had a Feeling that
Tonight’s Gonna Be A Good Night
and the dance floor enveloped
me in an short embrace
That did not offer anything

After dinner

Around ten thirty we emerge from the restaurant
full of crab meat and oysters and shrimp.
A queue is blocking our way and it’s cold in London,
colder than I remember
blue claws reaching inside every layer of clothing -
a merciless reminder of suffering oblivious to appeals

We push through the line, politely.
It’s full of these young girls – identical fabulous dolls – straight hair, straight backs, high heels, short skirts, makeup, gloriously mechanical in a
Henry Ford take on lust on a conveyor belt towards loud music and alcohol
once the black maw of the club swallows them
one
by
one

Why they are standing here and
who knows what they’re looking for
not me I don’t.

Their long legs defy cold and night
and their impatience makes air tremble.
Their anticipation steams and my breath steams
and Heat
escapes escapes escapes
all around us and we can find no answers
here, or elsewhere

We walk away full of wonder,
He gets prepared to travel.
I get prepared for solitude.

We continue with our goodbyes

October ends

I do not see
how a dawn spent warming
my body against hers
shifts blame,
when my hand meets her
face
and she moans instead
of calling the cops

Never have I ever
and other games
have no meaning, when
four empty bottles of red and a quart
of Jack are the kegs
in our bowling parody -
bodies
hit the floor
and air leaves lungs
with a grunt

Desire turns dark, smells like
paper secretly burned in the toilet when you were five
with stolen matches.
This must be love, this must be;
Growl, leap, for tonight
we understand
only
the longing of the centurion

Go back to your boudoirs, strangers
Tonight we march. Our cruel games
are the pinnacle of every hymn
sang during vespers and
we do not heed your calls for restraint

You have one new message

I want to enter
YOU
in an Orca’s pool game of
‘smack the trainer’
while Seaworld watches

Undress in silence
daughter of songs,
Your golden years are not forgotten

Tonight

I want you
to be the one joke I remember
As I repeat you again and again
until we cannot stand

and

The sound of your name,
And the sound of my voice
sicken us both

Steps taken

There is
a different kind of catharsis
to be found:
the perfect storm
in the smallest teacup and
the delusion
that something has happened, maybe,
at least one step taken?
NO STEP TAKEN!
Today.
no step taken
the next day.
when you return
to the Chair and
a smile that does not touch your eyes

the Wellingtons of your dreams
leak with the need of your rent
and the Amex bill and the champagne
you ordered in
a small trendy booth in a bar
with some girl
who ended the night
with a handshake

Untitled

on the metro,
seven stations to go
Nobody meets eyes;
Asian girl reading Cuelho – she
is so serious when
Veronica decides to die again
and again and again

She’s serious and suddenly I’m bitter,
like the shit you eat at work; or a
beetle chewed behind the
school building, certain that somebody is
laughing

the five of JD on ice on the train
didn’t reach me – I’m still unfound;
but back in my city a
Hipster girl swings from the pole
mid-carriage;
robots have
made holes in her stockings,
holes which will never tear and
the whole group of them is laughing
I’m not laughing, I want to get drunk
tonight
and porn and Lady Gaga will
wage a battle for my retinas

Quiz – a tribute to David Foster Wallace

A man, whose mother/wife/daughter recently died, meets a famous illusionist or stage magician or wizard, maybe after seeing a show and bribing his way backstage afterwards or maybe in a bar or in a hotel lobby. The magician/illusionist/stage magician, who is also a man, draws the man (whose mother/wife/daughter recently died) in to his world. First with intellectual discussion, then high class parties with people in the entertainment industry, and bankers and loose women, then sex, swinging, group orgies, alcohol, drugs, perversion of all sorts, laughing gas, pain roleplaying, sadism, the wearing of masks, body control, contortionism, yoga, asceticism, deep meditation, religious zealotry, gambling, psychology, herbal medicine, holistic medicine, acupuncture, pornography, comic books, line dancing, verse reading, shopping, dating young women (and men), dating mature women, et cetera, et cetera. In the end, the man (the one who had lost the mother/wife/daughter) leaves the company of the other man (the illusionist/stage magician/wizard) and is somehow wiser, richer with experience and has a lighter outlook on life.

Question: Does it matter that the man (who had lost a mother/wife/daughter) has developed a foot fetish after the whole experience with the second man (the illusionist/stage magician/wizard), and if yes, please quantify the annual budget, necessary to maintain a linear level of happiness for the man (who had lost a mother/wife/daughter) over X years.

Diving towers

Wicked with sadness
Boys lost in mazes of candy
Fill their glasses with honey
Drink until they gag and retch

Aroused by the sounds
And their own long necks
Girls climb diving towers
Just because they want to

Boys spit and cheer
Eyes reaching upward
Where girls wear skirts
On top of diving towers

Haughty girls look down
At boys the size of ants
Jump with gleeful squeals
Leaps that last a lifetime

The sounds of their splashes
Intertwine with sound
Of cymbals some marching band
Just cannot stop banging

Smoke

Light up another one and pay your dues
Your cry is stifled, and your sex betrayed
The hand that chokes your throat is happy news
Until another lover must be spayed
Alas your cry it echoes ever more
We like to see you writhe in pleasure tense
Your face disfigured, teeth bared as before
When little death concluded your suspense

So light the grass that changes pain to dust
And wear the whitest dress that you can find
Forget that you again donate your trust
To those who wish oblivion on your mind
No death, however little, shall attend
The sacred space between your secret lips
And when the next one that you found is spent
The smoke will make up for your lost eclipse

Token resistance

She offered token resistance
To hands ready for flesh

She never told her mother
That on Tuesdays
She was a working woman
On Wednesdays
A secretary
On Thursdays
A dog walker
And on Fridays she met me

We never laughed together
We never shared silence
She thought I had plenty to offer
In fair exchange for her breath