what we are doing now
is the opposite of speaking

you have both given and stolen
the poems within me.

i didn’t have an umbrella with me that day
but i’ve always loved walking in the
rain.

the pavement was very slippery
and i fell on my hands & knees.

no one stopped.

from my vantage point
on the ground

i watched a man emerge from his terrace
with two white dogs.

i overheard some people passing by:

every morning with those dogs, he said.

like clockwork.

the first thing i notice
is the dirt underneath your nails

this leads to us pressed up
against a plastic
slippery dip

the moon drains the colour
from my bare feet

you go to find
a tree to piss on
& i am charmed by your discretion.

while your back is turned
i try to put my ear
to my own chest

check if i’m still breathing.

there were so many flies
in sydney that week
i felt something must
have been rotting
beneath the asphalt

as if the thickness
of the air
& those insects
spoke somehow of decay

we stood on your street
squinting
our sweat redolent

and it occurred to me then
that i could consider
finishing what i started.

the sun hovers low & hazy
like a hangover,

hanging

over

every pore on my body.

back in bangkok

& it is too early to know

if i will ever clean this city
from my skin.

i think it was your handwriting
that i fell in love with first

now i despise the way
you write myths about yourself
with erratic gestures of ink.

i’m reading back
behind the lines
of everything we ever said to one another:

you never wrote me poems
i hadn’t already written to myself.

her eyes

as tired as a mother’s
stare straight into mine

be gentle

she says.

your limbs

flex hard against my bed
in your eyes i see
an old man waiting to die.

i am as gentle
with her
as i am with a poem

the way i slowly start,
hinting at first
at that first half-thought

the way i softly stop,
slowing it all with that

last line

i wake up covered in tiny scratches
as if a new born bird
had been caught beneath my sheets

scraping its miniscule beak
up & down my body
in my sleep.

it takes me
10 or 15 minutes
to remember

the desperation of dawn
-my fingers clawing-
out of this skin.

comb through these streets
-your footsteps as fine as follicles-
and i realise there are some cities
that will never forgive me.

i spent a whole night
examining
the size of my pupils

8 balls

squeezing out of their sockets.

you didn’t see me
walking to school with
tears streaming down my face
i felt like i was 5 years old

if i could have found a softer way to cry
we’d be dancing ballet on my cheeks.

-if it were said-

would we step outside of history
outside of language

would our whispers deliver us
from this attempt to articulate
what only exists beyond [this].

i wanted to tell you
i had been living off that conversation
for a week

but…listen

is the only word i still know how to say.

***

there are little black stools
scattered around this room
like cockroach carcasses

we sit on them and listen
to chinese poetry

the sound of those vowels
makes us ashamed of what we will never know.

***

staring at dirty dishes
the kitchen collapses

like an origami giant
folding over in the rain,

like a cancerous lung
drawing its last long
breath.

i would have washed the walls
of every room in this house

i would have been waiting here for you
with a scrubbing brush teeth gritted

deciding not to mention it.

(how could you have been here,

as you were

and now,
nothing.)

scraping cigarette burns
from my forearms

we’re lying in my bed

screaming

at the ceiling.

and how does it feel?

it feels like:

for the first time in days
i believe in what i’m saying.

i barely know you

on the bus you tell me
that one day your cells

will just stop regenerating themselves

(i am left quivering by this simple fact).

***

in the sushi shop

where the walls are as red as velvet

i put on my blue shoes and dance with david lynch

there are hundreds of children
around us

they are eating seaweed and rice with their

sticky

fingers this is the most ominous thing i
have ever seen

chopsticks splinter on the ground

the smell of fish and the sound of robert smith
his lips so close to me

i wonder who is watching.

in 5 hours
i will know.

(i could count this on two hands)

all of my life behind me
& the rest of my life in front of me:

the only thing i want from you
is the one thing i can’t give myself.

our lives seem to be collapsing
in this tiny house
with a brand new fridge

every morning
i put a new piece of myself
in the various compartments

my toes :
in the vegetable crisper

my kneecaps:
in the freezer

my better judgement:
in the dairy cooler

my hair:
running through your fingers
like sand.

call me a romantic,
i still feel myself fall away
in your wake.

we’re walking down a dark street
at 4 o’clock on this
freezing morning

we’re holding hands
inside your pocket
and i’m asking myself
why i bother

you always leave me
with a blank expression
on my face & a jar of coins next to my bed.

when i stand close enough
to you
i question whether i believe in poetry at all
whether i believe in anything
broken beneath this pen.

so much has gone unsaid
that there is now
nothing left to say.

i sew my lips shut
with these words

-letters left ticking around my neck-

it took me a whole cigarette
to decide
i don’t believe in eternity

but it still felt like forever
waiting for you to call

[to tell me just what
i knew you would say].

i am mersmerised by the impeccable logic
of our bodies
the way they come apart beside each other
like some pathetic opera

my hand
in
your hand

you kiss my wrists
& spill tears over the version of myself
that understands:

there is nothing more perfect
than what one has
just lost.

riding your bike down wilson st
you told me an old chinese curse:

may you get exactly what you want.

speaking of which:
it would be a bigger
man than you

to read history

to get yourself into
-something bigger than yourself-

maybe it would be a woman,
a barefoot bruce springsteen girl
sitting in the rain on the hood of a car

maybe it would be me,
singing patti smith to myself
at a traffic light.

i can’t remember
where i read these words:

‘now we know what we are
fighting for;
just what we had
before we went to war.’

but,

speaking of which:

your world

is not a world worth fighting for.

your zen teacher told you:

If you love someone,
You agree to watch them die.

on my shoulder
the thread of my jumper
is unravelling

-where the chip should be-

i carry your book around with me,
under my sleeve

-where my heart should be-

****

wearing the shoes i stole from you
(having learnt nothing)

they smell of the whole last year of my life

a scent so strong it will pierce the entire sky:

and i

crawl into the hole
to spend the night with the smiths
dreaming of seagulls lovers fingerprints
& traffic

all those things
which i devour

all those things
which devour me.

it’s raining
sad summer rain
at 5am this morning

as i go to bed
to the sound of birds.

i write an inscription of

the people i have allowed myself to lose,

a memory of
(the rest of my life)

shot into the sun.

i can barely feel your arm around my waist
as we speak
in silence and subtitles

i wanted to be a witness (to this)

i wind up

humiliated by the dawn.

i never write people’s names in my poems.

this way i can recycle old bodies
stacking you up against
endless metaphors of others.

this way i can remember new bodies
re-written over lines i have already read

lines i have already read.

(and i wait here
just beneath

that which

holds you open:

like sheets of paper
laid out across your stomach,
like palms).

this way i can keep my days calm
and separate

between the borders of these
little white pages

surprising myself
with the way every letter every word
every letter every word

somehow appear the same.