letter to my agent

It’s hard to disagree with you when you’ve so much conviction, and I’m growing sleepy and warm lying the wrong way on my bed listening to your voice late at night. The truth is, I think most of the things people do are full of shit; especially what I do and what I want to do.  It doesn’t mean anything, we are all just filling in time until the end comes and only survive in conversation as long as there are people still living who remember us. For most people it stops at their children.

I want to believe you, but I’m siding with Bukowski.  I wish I could be a pretty, well-kept and manicured girl but I’m just not. I’m a slob if you’re lucky and just plain cranky if you’re not.  I’m always frowning and thinking about stuff that makes me unnecessarily anxious and I just discovered mascara six months ago. I would drink way more and write that way all the time if I could get away with being drunk so often, but I left that behind in London too.  I love O’Hara and Buk equally, though I think Buk would have offended Frank’s tastes greatly, or they would eventually grow to be good but temperamental friends with me half-heartedly playing peace maker.

Frank would want to make us a nice mixer while Buk would want to swig straight out of the bottle, cue some choice words and animated eyebrows.  I would drink both, to be honest.

I know you think I am great, and good, and can do something meaningful, but I’m telling you…I just don’t think I have it in me; and if do, I talked myself out of it a long fucking time ago.

the orchard eternally

There's something in the anatomy 
of hands that fills you
with chimes, you told me.


That lone gravestone lilac
-part woman in the soil, ever
to be carved around her being.
Driven by the harvest, may 
her stellar attempts haunt
the orchard eternally.


Yet words still sprout as
though they were echoes in sleep
(and I know the chimes you
speak of; they're heard roaming
through winds arranged gently,
half knowingly by a Zephyr
made happy) when she once
smiled at the sight of 
you deep in 
a puddle of memory.

the cellar

I saw you the other night at Pinter's birthday party. 
You were mostly obscured by a strategically placed box of cereal and an out of tune piano; but when you threw your head back gently to laugh fondly at Meg & Petey, the lamp above the piano illuminated your face. Damn, you really are beautiful when you're in the moment.
Like that time you were down on your knees asking for someone to be your Lady Windermere, or was that your Mrs. Erlynne? And when Stan was once again being all tragic around the piano, you seemed to be looking straight at me. Then you stared as I walked past you smoking your cigarette. 
It should be a felony for people to smoke so heavily yet still own such flawlesstranslucentskin.


I saw you yesterday as the six-fingered man; and, darling Timothy, when you saw me laughing with glee during your sword fight, I swear by all the heavens you replied with a little smile back.

finis

The sun shines on him I think. And a little on you too perhaps when you're around him.
He was the first person I'd met that actually sent messages in a bottle...to be found  by a child in Norway looking for treasure with his father along the beach.
Now it is one of my favourite stories, along with 'the selfish giant'. I remember asking him excitedly one morning to guess what song I'd heard at 4am, only to have him reply 'piano man' without missing a wretched beat. It would be much later when he took me to his room and showed me Goya sleeping on the wall above his bed, the kind of sleep that produces monsters I'm told.

night garden

She snuck out to the garden
at night armed with a
torch to track
down what she was
after. In the morning
though all
was discovered.

The acrid smell.
The soft red smears on
her fingertips slightysticky but
what gave it away was the
smattered trail of vermillion petals
leading up to her
desk (like some forward-thinking Hansel
being led by his parents into
the forest placed them there)
The geraniums sat
dismayed in a Black Douglas tumbler
stolen in darkness.

Harpur

Swept up in a diagonal
rain of yellow leaves and
gleefully eating my avocado I
find the silverwood bench that 
I often fantasized about stealing


('cept it's bolted firmly to the ground)


I sit there as the sun
places her warm hand on
the back of my neck. Above, cirrus
clouds make sweeping 
gestures like a relative
just returned from overseas. Those
ancient bells stupidly ring out
'the Nutcracker' and 'when the saints 
go marching in' so that I cannot hear
grace above their commanding 
echoes. And I do 
not want to go back to
that stifling room of
orange
and 
brown
where the mean
tomes give me papercuts
because they know 
I do not understand them.

Epyrus

hey boy, I watch

                 you take the skyway

while I remain here on the ground

knowing that one day you just won’t come back

so until then…

my mother in the next room

watches videos of the island she left

as a child 25 years earlier

to make her home

somewhere else

she tells me that a lone cypress

tree still stands in the same

place she remembers it being

                        as a little girl

and I’m not sure if it’s

                       a miracle I smell or

those lilies of the valley

imbedded deep into the soft folds

of the woolen jumpers she always wears.

Tess climbs up onto my desk

to watch me work

                        and he calls her

                        ‘the perfect killer’

because she is so small & beautiful

                      and deftly quick & silent

but that is simply

the nature

of felines.

Georgia

It is here that this moment of splendor fails us.

Give me your sight and come now, for we have

both lost. You make ready your shoes

and suitcase (it seems the parting was inevitable)

while I hide here amongst the curtains, clutching

your photography and praying guiltily.

Now sorry I, who failed you,

must watch from the window

as the old glass distorts this last image of you

so that I can’t remember how you really were

(a blemish, something minor, like

the sliding of my hand across your skin

or the dialogue swerving to somewhere

we’d never been)

New tulle of my skirt quivering as we danced

too lost in collected notes to worry. I scratched

your arm trying to stifle the shock that came from

an idyllic clarity disguised as sound

Who was playing that night? All I remember is

you liked my dress, fascinated by the fabric.

Your palm on my wicker-chair, silent.

Then you said you loved the evening

since it held no light, and forced people to

concentrate on the idea of a person, eliminating

physicality which only obstructs.

Wine and darkness you said,

are the two quickest ways to

really see a person for who they are

(you untying the ribbon around my throat,

laughing, then following the stepping stones

of my spine from my neck downwards)

and my hand, perfect

there upon your sleeve

is the clearest of any

regrets I’ve known since then.

the second

December boy,

while you help me find my shadow,  you lose yours

like in some stuffed up Asklepious dream

where it is Holofernes who cuts

off Judith’s head and so

the courageous suffering

woman dies instead

I stumble across your room         

                     knocking piles of records down

trying to ignore the feeling I’m in a

well lit Howard Arkley painting

(god, why does he use those colours?

                                     they make me ill)

And where were you when he tried

              feeding me a line from

              Casablanca?

something about ‘all the  bars in the world’;

it doesn’t matter, he wasn’t even wearing

a fedora while he was saying it.

the first

Here you make sense of the rare moment

                    where the pulse distorts;

turning all into chords

full of Valentines

and sorrow

the storm salt            the peace touch

a lighthouse and I framed indefinitely

(the rare moment;

where the pinstripes have

fallen off your trousers)

have I really know you

            for so long?

a reply to Thomas Stearns;

The phone rings but not for you

and you try to be calm, composed

-but that is not you

You throw a plate to the ground

in frustration

You weep into the crook of your

arm at the sound of the china

breaking. And upon looking up

you see Eliot

waiting with words from Burnt Norton

(and like the best of them, dead

so long) articulating your sadness,

making it all seem so trivial, and so

you sit up, and stop crying

and read well past East Coker.

blue

In the grander scheme of things

you and I are separated by eight

shades of blue. You, kingfisher,

mix it with the turquoises while I am

ultramarined between delft and smalt

And don’t you know that

a little blurring never hurt

anybody?

a day in the life

Wednesday, June 25th 2008


Reading Schopenhauer on the tube...everyone thinks he is a mysoginist and a pessimist, I actually am quite partial to old Arthur. I feel for him. I know why he has these opinons of women and understand that he doesn't really hate them but he never managed to get the love and attention that he craved. 
When the first female role model in your life (dear mother) doesn't make you feel your own worth and bags you out to Goethe where do you go from there? Endless rejection, endless longing. My favourite grumpy German.

Cradling Marlboro lights on my fingertips. Old friend. Always there when I need to regroup and focus, cigarettes will kill you though. Gah. Red red wine in the evening leaves me looking like I've been punched in the mouth...a suitable illustration for how I feel. I have been converted to the Church of Blossom Hill...who knew the Californians can make a mean Merlot? Certainly not me. 

Decide I want a poodle as an homage to Mr. Schopenhauer. Ok maybe not right now though. 
I read an article that said listening to sad music when you are down actually makes you feel better, as opposed to worse; cue Ryan Adams, a man who has given me more comfort than he will ever know. Oneday I will buy him a drink or three. Absolutely.

Being a hopeless romantic is hard work; it's hopeless because inevitably no one will love you the same way you want or need to be loved. There are people out there, I'm sure. I've only met one so far and I'm too terrified to explore this further with him and so keep him in the shadows, much to both our dismay...the dissapointment and longing is a badge we hopeless romantics must wear time and again. 

Try in vain to keep away from one very very lovely English boy who turns me into a gibbering idiot with every interaction, and he reads Schopenhauer too, oh the pain. Searching for converstation but only find stammers and stops and banal comments on both our parts; "it's really bright in here isn't it?" Holy crap. If only you could just say "look, I really want to kiss you" maybe just to see their reaction. Ok, I like stirring things up...but I will keep that comment to myself. I hate when people ask for permission to kiss someone for the first time. The tentative politeness ruins it. Passion is not synonymous with politeness.

Schopenhauer is an old friend to me now. I rue the fact we will never have a proper dialogue..our conversations are so one-sided; I read him and relate and say to him "oh you don't really mean that, you're just hurting and scared like me" and he just keeps on going. Sometimes he relents and I break out into a grin, gleeful that I cracked his gruff exterior if only for a second, buried in a sentence somewhere.

Thinking about Virginia Woolf and she's right, I do need a room of my own. What am I going to do with all that spare time that was once gobbled up and filled to the brim with a lover? Be completely selfish, that's what. It's about time. Boys get more attention than they deserve and don't give much back for it either. Write, look out the window, do my own stuff without feeling self concious...it's been far too long.

summer

It creeps up on me in my room, causing a soft whir in the background until I look up and see the view outside is all milky, hazy, fast falling droplets. The gutters on the road soon fill and swirl and the cars seem like they are surfing, throwing up perfect arcs of water as they race past.

The pedestrians are another thing entirely. Faces turn even more anonymous under shining black umbrellas, there are too many of them in this city. There are more people without them, not prepared for the impromptu downpour.

One woman is ill-dressed for the occasion, skimpy summer dress, long hair and flip flops. She protects her face with her hand, grimacing as her tresses now cling coldly and damp to her back. Walking slowly on tip-toes to not lose her footing she is at odds with the perky black pug attached to the leash she holds in her other hand. He trots proudly and excitedly at this fun new obstacle on his walk. He almost looks like he is smiling. I think he probably is.

A family turns the corner; the father walking slowly, deliberately with a bag of groceries and a mother following soon behind, keeping step with their small son who is desperately trying to hold his hood up over his head. It doesn’t even seem to touch the stoic father, his face bears no hint of discomfort from the deluge, his clothes are not several shades darker and jean hems are not soggy. A miracle.

window fragment

Apollinaire told me to ‘kiss only in elevators
when you become old’, supposedly to
remember the feeling first felt
-of the stomach churning with
enough energy to produce a pearl
Hey love? I don’t know how this ends

Tourmaline eyes, you are
dancing on your own to Carole King
lit by the amber glow of the jukebox
while we sit around tapping our
fingers awkwardly, not having the courage
to come dance with you (lest it
become all too clear how inferior we
really are next to your slow liquid dancing)
So we down another drink to
dull any feelings of inadequacy

You placed a part of Apollinaire’s window
on a lamp post, since it had
served you well. And I could have
cried when you told me I
belonged in Paris.

0104

the queen’s birthday passed
there on that bench
where you touched my arm
and everything changed

winter passed and
you are no longer here
wrapped around me like the twine
you use everywhere
-but it won’t lead me back to you

in this city everyone is tall
and I don’t even reach their elbows
looking for a thread
of twine to pull
and lead me back to you


0104

September skies

the terrace floorboards creak and groan
seems like me, they don’t want you to leave
you know I’m right, beyond these bones
and houses disillusion reigns and reminds
me of a time when you turned back to trace
those words into the moisture on the window pane
-words like now and time          new and touch


and how you hated the strong heady smell of
jasmine in summer it made you spin when
I wore some pinned in my hair
but I always liked it
-words like sigh and hands        wish and stay


I watched your shoulders as you walked away
but now those September skies
don’t mean as much these days

for caspar david friedrich

she asks me what use are words to her when
the perfect place has none
and mentions that if you
just separate yourself into
the seasons you become scattered
like a ruined cloister graveyard in the snow
and can begin to see that
poetry is nothing more than
words in a jar
melted wax on your skirt
a poor companion whose words fall short
a wisp of a dead man’s hair found inside
some second-hand coat pocket


and when I find my voice I tell her
that it is a fragile touch
a lantern hanging from a tree
a corridor with doors to the past and
future at either end
and a universe in
twenty lines

something soft (for Kenneth Slessor)

something soft stunning supple
eternal
survives silent keeps nothing
not even the years
lingers limber
perfect and just
sparkling kissed
gloved weightless
mute fair
soaked in sun
knowing loneliness is like
salt on the tongue knowing
something
soft something
stunning something
supple something
eternal


0901

herald

your heart is made of moss,
mine of mud;
together we breach
the silent gawking
with a look, a beatific look
to counter the cynics
and i knock the
ashtray over and sigh
-it's too early for promised
late night conversations
and drinking
situations

we are dry

four

I had that dream again
last night,
where my front tooth is
reduced to a stump, and
the fragments are lodged like quartz
in my strawberry chewing gum.
I'm wide awake
by the window and
the light outside is
that shade of blue we can't pronounce.
I get the fever to leave
this city sometimes
with just the clothes on my back
and come home to you,
but I find myself
just sitting here
listening to the antagonistic hum
of traffic and drunkards
on the street below.


I've been awake too long
and I hear their staccato
shouting, but
I'm too weary to care.

village

here in this house i peel
potatoes with a knife
place wood into the fire
plait a little girl's hair
and focus on the layers
of crumbling paint
watch my thumb blister
from the burns, arch my
neck towards the mountains
and wonder how you cope
on your end with all
the humidity


there is room enough here
for both of us.

good to know

It’s good to know that you

aren’t the person I
will be most happy with,
and my children won’t look like you
or shrug the way you do.
We won’t stay up till dawn talking,
dancing in the kitchen, red wine lips
or console each other after a crap day at work;
run around new cities
nor hide in the pockets of old ones;
light each others cigarettes and
grow sleepy in the back of cabs.
You won’t make me cups of tea
while I remain under the covers,
or read me parts of your favourite books
as my head hangs over the mattress
and my arm rests across your stomach
I won’t remind you how brilliant you are
when you feel so insignificant,
or sing the wrong lines in songs
to try coaxing out that grin of yours.
There will be no midnight walks or
stumbling up stairs, no hand against
my back or oversized jacket on my
shoulders. Arguing in supermarkets
and sniggering quietly in art galleries,
rolling eyes at parties and blinking
too much in the bleached sunlight.
sprawled on the fuzzy grass in the evening
while our friends are across the road at karaoke
waiting for us,nor fat raindrops
under heavy tree branches that hang over us.
No wondering if
everyone feels this way or
is as lucky as us, and our voices won’t change on
the phone to each other, growing soft and playful;


It’s good to know
I have been spared all of this
because it’s not you these things are meant for.

mix tape

in this room there is
space for you yet,
beyond the silver foil
on the walls, between the
cracks of stained Victorian floorboards
(after the flood the roof caved in).

Your feelings too retracted, once
I reached the same page you
were at.
Melodies fill my head, but I won’t
allow myself to give them to you
just
waiting
for some semblance of
reciprocation.

an afterthought

The lightbulb shrieks at me
inconsolable that you’re
not here
-lightweight.


The room goes dark, save
for your memory;
smoking in my armchair.
Am I cursed to always
be around the distracted?
never a time to shine
and dance around my room
(boysenberry lips, sleeved heart)
always hoping,
dark eyes overlooked

featherweight.

Dickens

my gloved hands purple,
raw while you steam yourself
in the tropics, birdsong;
idle, taking no control


I will not call for you
damn you to hell;  your
mousey ways
and half-truths
ruin me as though
you think I cannot tell,
artful dodger.

I laugh and make imaginary
space for your desk and things
in a room you will never inhabit


as though it is some incentive,
as though
you will fall for it

(hardly).

17609

when I open the parcel

and lift out each item
I press my face
into their textures
....smell sunshine, your small hands
long dark hair and sad eyes
in the silk and cotton.


I think of you;
carefully, how carefully folding
each piece of my former armour
in my last life,
to send to me in my new life,
which is so full with very separate
seasons and skylines,
and then the salt crusts
under lower lashes
-because now I have Europe, but no you.

I catch glimpses of you still
first thing in the morning, or late at night
-in shop windows walking home
when my guard is down.

Here there is no bleached sunlight
but still, small hands,
long dark hair and sad eyes
that live amid the folds of silk


and cotton.

circus freak

you paint me not
as a muse, nor sleeping maiden
but a bearded lady in a hoodie,
dolphin smile, with stubble
The imagery suits
-circus freak me; grotesque carnival of
such strong emotions I feel for you
(they always come out
the wrong way and you
cannot match them)

On the street I hear a girl; crying
or laughing? I cannot tell, such a fine line.

At least, you painted the
sadness in my irises
just right.

Helios

I wear your jacket now

in the absence of your arms
around me. The one you brought
once to keep me from shivering
(to keep me a while)
sitting on the dewy grass before dawn,
talking while waiting
for the sun
before realizing it was far
too cloudy to witness the
Anticipated Majestic
Daybreak.


We should have listened
to the gods
there and then.

Goya

When reason is awake,

stuff and sweetmeats cannot touch it.
Idealism gets beaten out of you eventually
by abhorrent reality
only to return
-murmured in hindsight to a heavy-lidded friend
(laced so weary and wistful at how things
should be instead of
how they really are)


Reason sleeps and desires emerge
-the want for truth (so different from a reality)
Sunlight yellows the pages left
open too long by
carelessness


and I cannot shake this
feeling that you
are leaving without me

Nocturn: girl smoking in stairwell

wrought iron tattoos its curving form
temporarily on the wall
against my own crouching silhouette


my sad lover,
I inhale and exhale
-guilt and ash
at the things I do not know how
to say to you

will it suffice;
my first awkward words
uttered in years
and I cannot move my
mouth in the shapes I need to


I write quickly
before the light goes out
leaving just the embers in my hand


and then I must go inside
to you

into the woods

architect of misery or
architect of longing?

stacking post and lintel numbly
-leaving out the keystone
so the whole arch collapses
at my feet

(am I a forest to you)

I look out into that forest;
at its heart there is
no light from where I stand
but that doesn’t stop me
wanting to walk
deep within it

maybe when I reach the
middle to look up
there will be
light and birds
after all
not just
the immeasurable

stillness

Hermione

over coffee with
her it occured to me
that i must have
missed the transition
of when Hermione
turned into a realist
and now i
see nothing
of her i recognise anymore
except

the slight spring
in her chestnut curls
when she looks at
me
dissaprovingly

little pockets

this is what matters most:
a fleck of gold in someone's hair
-watching the skin heal after a burn
The mad dash as the train pulls in.


The last line in a Woody Allen film
-people breaking up into mobile phones
tripping over cobblestones
(little pockets of the city only found if lost)

The prominent line of the jaw when he is thinking
-a silent, tired community of workers heading home
believing the ability to sing will make everything fall into place

The wind chiming above King Street
-a lady's perfume making you hungry as she passes
(the unfathomable possibilities of twilight)