his nails were bitten down so that the tips of his fingers resembled bulbous turnips swelling up from the earth.

i pressed the barley sugar between his lips, they parted with a dry crackle, revealing the cold moist interior of his mouth. i let my hand linger there for a moment, sensing his taste buds moisten as he savoured the sugary pellet, a sweet film developing at the corners of his mouth as he sucked at the lolly.

after a moment i let my hand fall away, watching the old man relish in the onslaught of flavour, his wrinkly eyelids slinking down like a toad as he swallowed.

it should sound like a voiceover
sent back to earth
from a space station
in the future.

if you could muster
the tone
of a history book
summing up this civilisation
in a single sentence.

you would be close.

***

how would you say it

if you were to tell the story backwards

if you were to turn the words inside out

if you were left only with letters?

how would you say it

if you were to devise an entire theorem

to explain pattern and form

to account for dynamics and tempo

and then break it?

how would you say it

if you were to say nothing at all.

a whole rack
of freshly pressed
perfect suites
poisons my mind
this morining.

on the telephone
your words,
so weak,
they don’t even make it
down the receiver.

they hang like empty shoes
clinging to powerlines
by their laces,
decorating the skies
of a thousand suburbs
that i have never been through.

it always seemed
such a bittersweet
metaphor

the word
eternity

written in
chalk.

hooked up
locked down
stitched up
on board

you had it

all tied up with string.

all of the men
were pulling up
the train tracks
they had laid
the night before.

i took a long bath
and shaved off every hair
on my body

you found me just
before i started
on the skin.

***

waking this morning
as if rising from a coma,
the world a sketch book
slowly
filling itself in.

i stumble home,
stoned & cold,
with bags of unassembled
curtains
and dirty clothes.

***

i could have used
cardboard boxes
to build
a home for you

but we marched away
like emperor penguins,

empty handed.

trees bulge
with translucent
bulbs

series of strange numbers
appear in
unidentifiable patterns

crowds of people
burn furniture
on their front lawns

layers of sound
fall like a universe
of curtains.

during that period of my life i was only eating sugar.

i cooked copious sugar meals and kept what i could not eat in the freezer.

i hunted down fresh fairy floss with the unhinged menace of a vietnam veteran.

i stalked through fields of sugar cane drinking diluted sugar juice.

even when the sugar insomnia hit i could not stop. sugar haunted my dreams.

i quickly began to resemble a speed freak. it became impossible to concentrate or keep still.

i was constantly under attack by swarms of invisible sugar mosquitos.
i swatted frantically, but nothing could repel the insects from the taste of my saccharine blood.

despite all this, i continued to consume nothing but sugar.

i became a connoisseur of different varieties and blends of sugar.

hard white cubes
soft moist brown
fine caster
crunchy raw
powdery icing
runny treacle
cane and palm
golden demera

it was plain to see that this had progressed from merely
searching for something sweet.

i was completely under the sugar spell.

there were 12 seconds
of perfect pitch

the frequency of a nuclear bomb

sound as clear as light

we closed our eyes
and brought our fingers
to our lips

an instant detox

bodies empty of everything.

we slept in the ocean all night.
it was the only place i could take you
to regulate your body temperature.

you dissapeard
into that warm dark mass
that holds its heat
like a palm.

my sister sits
at her kitchen table
shooting the chandelier
with a rifle.

pellets of glass
explode all around her
like frozen peas bursting
in their pods.

if i have learnt one lesson
from my family,
it is that no rule
is hard and fast.

Veronica had a toothpaste stain on her black button-up shirt and a plate of cold eggs in front of her. It was immediately apparent that nothing had changed. Well one thing had changed. I had come to the realisation that in a situation like ours, there are only two actions that you can take. You can either let go and walk away. Or you can hold on tighter than ever.

I had arranged this meeting with Veronica, out of the blue, because I had the intention of performing the latter action. However, this was not going to be a simple task. We had not seen each other for three years. And then there was the matter of ‘The Curse’.

I noticed her from the moment I walked into the café because she was doing her typical nervous thing. Whilst pretending to read the newspaper she would neurotically survey the room over the top of the page. Pathological behaviour such as this, that most people would find unconscionable, was what made me want her back like nothing I had ever wanted before.

of course strange things
had been happening in the sky.

i had been reading murakami all night.

fed on visions of highly saturated
disaster, magic items of clothing
and

convinced
that some things are
inevitable

even before they begin.

my hands are
flamethrowers.

i could have fought you,
but instead i produced a
white flag
and together we painted it
red.

***

all along the international date line
flowers were blooming from miniature
window boxes.

we carefully allotted ourselves
rations
but they were devoured
by the constant
changes in time.

***

your finger
in my belly
button
as gentle as

a grenade pin

pulled out
quietly
into a place
where silence rings out
like shellshock.

we sat in the yard all night
and set off
black fireworks.

you & me

fat sparks raining down upon us
in an oil spill of light.

gradually you turn to me,
cloaked in that thin greasy slick

and my shivering body just
disappears

a nib

dipped into the darkest ink.

you send me a txt msg
with my horoscope in it.

it says:

with so many guns in this city,
no wonder
you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

and i believe every word.

***

there will be three more hours
of darkness
before the city lifts its head
on the morning set aside
for remembering
its softest revolution.

i brush my teeth with tea
and take a photograph out of the window.
the car horns
have already started for the day,
although it is doubtful that they ever stopped.

we hear reports that
crowds are massing
at the people power monument.
i’m drinking calamansi juice
and concentrating on the sensation
of ice rings on my tongue.

***

belt slung low
white teeth and orange shirt
i stuff chocolate cake
into your back pockets
and we walk down the middle
of the road
hand in hand
believing that we can
stop traffic.

prostitutes in ludicrous outfits
are soliciting all around us
we buy some shabu-shabu,
two bowls of halo-halo
and drink eighteen litres of water.

somewhere along the line
you notice
that i have
taken off my shoes.

we perform a valentines day vivisection

rows of red paper hearts
pour out from the sky,
dangling like messy handwriting in the thick clouds.
leaking paper blood into the gutters.

you are still humming to yourself
a body memory

it takes me a whole morning to remember
the tune

(& for that moment
i thought i had found
a soft place to fall.)

we’d seen cemeteries in every city in the southern hemisphere.

-i was looking for a place to take you when you die-

the smell of cremation smoke buttered my lips.

kids were singing karaoke from the tops of tombstones.
chewing american gum.
john lennon echoing from grave to grave.
and i imagined
all these people.

it was late in the afternoon
by the time we left the funeral procession.

on the way home the cab driver was playing country music.

‘pass me by, if you’re only passing by’
‘pass me by, if you’re only passing by’

i thought to myself, i might just be
developing a sense of humour.

there was some kind of tension between us. she wore cowboy boots, had remarkably good posture and i hadn’t seen her for three years.

she picked her way across the cafe towards my table. i stared intently at my newspaper, pretending that i had not noticed her come in the door. this meant that when she finally sat down in the booth in front of me, i had to elaborately feign surprise at seeing her there.

“Wendy!”, i exclaimed. “You look marvelous!”

Wendy said nothing. My coffee and eggs lay cold and untouched. She fiddled with the cameo brooch clipped to the collar of her blouse. She crossed her legs and then re-crossed them. It was apparent that Wendy would not be making this easy for me.

i’d already lost ten days to february.

each morning, i would send you a postcard
with detailed instructions for seeing the world.

on the front
the photograph would always be the same.

on the back
i would say,

picture this:

thousands of bodies
embroiled in each other before the bay.

the street lights are neon hallucinations
coloured in by a cacophony of sound.

there is an expectation
that the couples might all
start kissing simultaneously,

although you do not see this happen.

white lanterns are raised to the sky.
in red letters they say,

‘Breathe Life into your grand Expressions of Love’.

picture this:

a landscape of synthesia.
the merging of the senses

like a horizon lost between
sky and sea.

you put your arm around my waist,
forming an equator across my body.

clouds move backwards above us

the Southern Hemisphere is hot and sticky.

the Northern Hemisphere is colder than ever.