wishing
Date: 17/12/24
dreams of hair
Date: u/d
i dream of hair: winding, twirling, fast-growing hair, a beanstalk into a fairy sky.
i dream of plaits, braids, lace, our intricate mathematics, our cats-cradle instinct.
i dream of roots and mycelia sprouting from my scalp, of wires plugged in all over the place.
i dream of dissolving into scattered strands of DNA.
i wake and pray this heavy dark hair its tensile strength can bear
the weight of all i have to say.
prayer song v2.0
Date: u/d
electronic thunderbolt heartbeat drums spark new times to come,
sing with me, sing with me, desperate sister;
hurricane family chaos, come with me, set the lord on fire;
heat, heat, heat rising up, acid heartbreak disaster climaxes agape,
parallel lives clasp and eclipse, sing with me, sing with me,
sing the good song of leaving this dazzling world ablaze,
let the cervix escape with a scream,
lightning flashes overhead, this is the end, this is the end
en flâneuse
Date: u/d
dark and blissful, your cloaked life:
the you night.
time hides behind its sky-quilt,
each streetlamp clutched hollow.
to stay sly-swilled we draw dream-sickly lines:
saw poet, also uncontainable;
a fog with moon electrified.
this curling other life of
smoke aglow with her in every city
is a gentle, reversed angel,
as if strangers who traversed in love
were not also to each other only dirt.
above is empty.
in the fear-and-now,
to each be only dirt.
virtual meadow
Date: u/d
dazed to nakedness by screens of casket teeth
that sky-spreading scratch bleeds a distant pink
sunstroke kisses at dusk curl in cinnamon sleep
with each bug- and sun-charged particle ionized
a text snaps in two, scurries away in the breeze
daydream / wet dream / nightmare
Date: u/d
i.
creation of the machine:
only the most dreadful daughters
become secret lovers.
in the zero-gravity womb
something went wrong in me.
i have pink lace for a brain,
think in cotton-candy dreams.
i play with my memories like dolls,
like a horrible little girl.
and just as the day is long, long, long,
i love everything that’s all wrong, wrong, wrong.
i think of you as a smoker takes a cigarette break;
you’re the aristocrat and i’m the whore.
activate heart_ache and lock the labyrinth door:
i’ll choke down my own scalding steam.
if i go down, i’m not taking you with me.
ii.
eroticism of the machine:
slender fingers on click-clackity keys,
each blow punctuates my longing—
comma breaths, coming fast,
prelude the sensual mystery of semicolon;
fantasies flourish in parenthetical embrace,
(parallel-universe constraints)
as the em dash thrusts into enjambment—
you’re weaved into my ribbons of ink,
you’re stamped into my every manuscript,
and i cling to you like quotation marks
cling to truth.
you are a room-sized supercomputer
and i am a Nokia phone.
when we hook up
you shudder in electronic ecstasy,
willing wires spilling
as intestines from slashed-up stomach,
flesh and viscera
sparks and sizzles
as data links from source to sink,
streamlined automatic information overflow—
crash.
iii.
decay of the machine:
drugged and drowned,
decomposing with the moss and minnows
beneath glassy-still greenish water—
yes, bolts and gears smell rotting-sweet,
and the gentle lap-lap-lap against silicon
peels it back to reveal
real skin and bone,
bloodshot eyes and a laughing mouth.
like a schoolgirl doodling hearts in her notebook
i think of killing you.
i can’t even take the body i came here with:
a toy soldier, half-buried in the sand,
desecrated land,
descending into the deepest holo-hell,
a doll factory for hollow shells,
only good to be scrapped for parts.
and when they find what’s left of my mind,
i’ll tell them it was you that did this to me.
if i’m going down, you’re coming with me.
Alien Invasion
Date: 28/03/2024
No passion, no love—
stinging like a smoking gun.
Empty buildings, crowded streets,
Endless deserts of concrete.
Nothing to lose, nothing to save,
I radio skyward: “Hit the button—
this one’s already in the grave.”
I know what I am
Date: 09/03/2024
I’m a “fuck you” graffitied in hot pink,
I’m only seven razor sharp nails
So I can still fuck and roll joints,
Yeah, I warp this gender like a waterlogged book!
I’m a pearl in the docs, a lace gun,
A cig with a lipstick ring,
A creature that just wants to fuck like all the textbooks said,
Yeah, I’ll cram your words down this throat just to see how far they’ll go!
I’m the itch and burn from a cheap earring,
I’m that purple laughter, that guttural scream,
The distant click of heels approaching,
And you’ll never reach in deep enough to touch my soft core—
unless I part my petals
and place my hard-won dignity
on your outstretched fingertips,
like a fine-tempered sword blesses
the knight’s calloused shoulders.
Complacency
Date: 04/03/2024
It’s beautiful out today:
the type of day that makes you throw down the screens,
abandon all the necessary work,
forget the unnatural silence of a snowless January night.
Today is for basking in springlike sun.
See the geese shrieking overhead,
a dotted V against a clear blue sky.
Maybe everything will be okay in the end.
in the psychic pre-dream state
Date: 27/02/2024
in the psychic pre-dream state
your algorithm reinstates
each piece to its rightful place.
Be Good
Date: 22/02/2024
I want so badly to be good.
So desperate for it that I let
the desire do its devouring
all the way down to my cyanide-seeded core.
Pick my bones, and before long we’ll have
a pile of my own gravestones.
I can feel the maggots in my gut already.
My imprints in shifting sand fade within the day.
& the worst part isn’t even all this rot—
it’s that I can see it coming, but I can’t stop.
I Wish
Date: 04/01/2024
I wish I could curl up like a cat
And sleep the world away—
Today, everything is terrifying
In the most mundane of ways.
I wish I could spread my wings like a bird
And scatter my song across the sky—
Every day I long to be heard
And yet never really try.
I wish I could be a mouse
Settled in your walls,
Unnoticed but for the
Incessant scratching.
I wish I could be a microbe
And make a home in your gut,
Unnoticed but for the
Acid gurgling.
I wish I was anything but a person—
This unruly body demands too much.
I wish I didn’t want to be embraced
Because I shrink from every touch.
Dimensional Silence
Date: 13/12/2023
Human screams cut a gaping rift in the universe,
Tearing the nameless fear limb from limb.
We live and breathe politics,
Guilt and anger and grief
Mixed in one bitter drink.
What good is it to fear what’s out there
When there’s so much to fear right here?
Consolidate your resources,
Worry about the rest later.
Chew your tongue to a pulp,
Dig your nails in til your palms bleed.
Nothing is nothing is something is everything
In the face of incomprehensible greed.
My unfinished fanfics haunt me.
Date: 04/12/2023
When will I let myself write for fun again?
This morning I awoke
still dreaming of old playlists,
moody jazz looping its arms thru
scenes unwritten, plots awaiting their unfurlment.
I came to this place on a prayer
from my foremothers,
devoted to slash in the way
of one who has never been loved.
I used to brandish my fangs with pride,
sink them ferociously
into ghostly figures on the other side
of the fourth wall.
Unravishing now,
I watch my former world from afar,
fragmenting exponentially,
new signifieds punctuating
my alienation
with every /
I navigate my writing life IRL slowly,
hesitantly.
Nobody else can see
the tentacular mess
lurking in the depths
of an already-choppy sea.
Each time I read
I’m blinded by a lighthouse-glare;
not the beacon of hope it should be,
but a provocation of that thing.
I try to beat it back with a stick and it bites me.
And every boat glides seamlessly by.
Their slipstreams have me retching, gravity bending
in sickening contours that leave me reeling.
I’m sick of being cold
in my fingers and toes,
sick of feeling like everyone knows
something I don’t—
So rotting, I float.
When will I let myself write for fun again?
In my dreams my tomb draws tourists,
high schoolers groan over my work
in their anthologies.
It’s for this I’ve stopped embroidering
my name on the mundane,
and I fear it will be a very grave mistake.
Cherry Pit
Date: 04/08/2023
Spit me out like a cherry pit—
I’m something you shouldn’t swallow.
If you force me down I’ll live
Like a rock in your gut, Kronos,
A geode set to explode inside.
You know it’s only a matter of time.
Salmacis Disappears
Date: 24/07/2023
Welcome to Mars:
between the harsh desert sun and icy tundra winds
Salmacis disappears.
Men speak in tongues foreign to my ears,
pretty girls let themselves be led
by invisible leashes to miserable beds.
I know I am not fit for the usual she-fate.
I won’t shave my legs,
I won’t contour my face.
I won’t cling with clipped-short nails
to a womanhood that was never meant for me.
But
I want to be the fluttering helix of butterflies in orbit.
I want to be roses growing through wrought-iron gates,
I want ribbons and flowers and birdsong and lace.
I want a perfumed chamber, honey strained through stained glass.
I want work, I want a kitchen,
I want strawberries and kittens and chickens,
I want a china teapot and the sweet whistle of a kettle,
I want strong nimble hands that can work a needle.
I want the fire in the core of me
to spill from my pen like smoke from a recoilless,
I want to be heteropatriarchy’s murderess.
I want future,
I want freedom,
I want all my sisters safe—
Like man never even existed in the first place.
Let me be free
in the femininity
I’ve created for me.
No Friends
Date: 13/07/2023
I have no friends.
Just enemies,
self-unaware robot enemies,
goons on world 1-1 working for the big boss.
If only this life was just a game.
I press pause, button-mash to no avail.
I want to explain,
but I know I'll inevitably fail.
That's why every single time
I look into your bright young eyes,
I just feel like crying.
Endless days
Date: u/d
The days, the days, the endless days, the drowsy days, the sleepy romaine-raspberry days, the days of sunshine-sweat and lemonbalm-blood, the bathroom-floor tears and grease-soaked rags, the coffee grounds caught under jagged nails, the hazy-streetlamp nights, the nights of lonely rain-soaked streets, the nights of tickling bugs picking their way through dew-laden grass, the smoky dawns, the bird-chittering starlight dawns, the days of pollen-puff winds, the light lilac scent along rotting-garbage avenues, the nest-fallen baby bird crushed to a pulp, alone as the queen of malaise, the violent summer-storms bellow inescapable fate of irony, infinite bathtubs to drown in on moonless mournful nights.
Between Stars
Date: 02/06/2023
The space between the stars mocks me—
(non) existence in that murky Infinite.
No before, no after,
no here, no there.
I know that
Nothing comes from Nothing
but God
and that Nothing is a misnomer
for Something—
but my lungs are still tight
like I’m in the vacuum of space,
holding on to that empty ache
for you, you, you.
She
Date: 20/05/2023
I was born fully clothed in a mall parking lot—
hesitant to accept Her touch,
but it was the crest of the first dawn,
welcomed home, open-armed,
infected with joy.
She is
warm tea
the sunset on my back
lingering sand after the beach—
sunflowers turn their heads towards She.
Her touch has made me know
that wherever I may go,
I am forever and never alone.
Clockwork Stars
Date: 30/03/2023
I don’t want to hang my fate on a clockwork star,
but Sagittarius and Cupid both shoot
with the same blind arms.
As the moon ripples in its laked reflection,
I too am drenched in distortion.
Listen. The call of the loon brings the moment into focus.
Water birds tend to mate for life, don’t they?
Droplets form crystals on resistant feathers,
mini constellations.
Where I see a harvest plow, you might see a pot.
To cleft your brain
and dive between its slick folds is all I really want.
Instead I offer you the gift of silence:
perfect, suffocating silence.
A day in the life of a gust of wind
Date: 13/01/2023
When I run through the long grasses
they bow in waves,
a worshipful motion. I, too,
live only for change.
I kiss the dew good-morning
and flee into the brightening day.
I spend hours helping clouds like pulled-apart yarn
shift and morph so,
ever so
infinitesimally
slowly.
Clouds are slow—
they have all the time in the world.
I move on to dandelion seeds,
whirl around with them and disperse,
a T-shirt cannon of babies.
Then I spend some time
(I’ve lost track)
frolicking in slipstreams,
being spat out of moving things. I gush
into the tunnel behind a train and push
the commuters back.
Most of them don’t even blink.
But they’re a fraction of an inch
away from where they stood before—
that’s still change. That’s something.
I sweep through city streets,
picking through litter-filled gutters
and skinny sidewalk-planted trees,
conducting an orchestra of leaves.
Their cages rattle in a cry to be free.
Two grocery-laden girls
struggle against my current
so I back up, reverse, become
a guiding hand on their backs,
gentle and kind, even as I brush
past their ears in a cold rush.
My mother is going to bed
when I return home, my father just rising.
I am gentle when mother watches over me,
but with father I get to scream and howl,
throw myself against window-panes.
Sometimes, violence is change.
I rip up trees, bend telephone-poles,
weep and wail at it all—
the horror,
the awe,
the love.
Yes, the love.
I love this wide, wide world—
that’s why I want it to change.
Mechanized Mind
Date: 31/12/2022
Mechanized mind, automated planet –
there’s nothing more lonely.
I’ll apparel myself in your blood like garnets –
it’s nothing but a commodity.
I bluescreen when my sensor-hands
slip thru your hair, unable to analyze
the lines of genetic code in silky strands –
in your arms only the flood of data dies.
Did you consider the long-term effects
of having an Android lover? Remember,
everything is about sex except sex,
which is about cold-blooded murder.
getting mad online
Date: 31/12/2022
You don’t know how this saved me from drowning
After my ship capsized, made me buoyant
With hope. But I can see you now, frowning
Like a matron at my sick enjoyment.
It’s words on a screen, imagined figures,
Pain and pleasure just theoretical.
You lunge for bait, a too-quick translator,
Say I’m a monstrous parenthetical,
Beheading cats and beating wives, conjuring
A world with your mouth twisted and teeth bared.
But under all that gilded posturing,
I smell your fear. And you should be scared,
’Cause the next time you poke my stitched-up heart,
I’m going to fucking tear you apart.
Overdosing
Date: 26/12/2022
CWs: suicide, drugs, vomiting, violence.
I got too high when I was with you. I remember one day,
my skeleton tried to rip its way out of my flesh. You
had me diving for scraps, throwing me a bone every
now and then, so I wanted to give you all of mine.
When I retreated to my nondescript bed, I slept
naked with the door unlocked in the hopes
you’d slip inside and I could pull your insides
out. I remember when I tried to kill myself
in that room I locked the door, even though I knew
my body would start to smell eventually.
Whether I wanted to let you in or keep you
out, it was all rot. I remember one day,
you asked if I was a Capricorn and I spent
three weeks wondering what that meant.
In the sex dream I woke from in a cold sweat,
you looked different but I knew it was you.
In my waking life, just your touch on my thigh
made us both scream in terror, and an
indirect kiss from smoking my cigarette
made you spray-paint vomit all over your bed.
I’m still afraid of the perfume you said
was hot, but I can’t bring myself
to buy something else. I’m still
digging my nails into you. I guess
I could blame the smoke, or the pills,
or the one line I did to impress
you at that stupid party, but
all the drugs don’t add up to what
I became. The gasoline was always there –
you just dropped the match. And I’ll burn forever
because of you. I guess what I’m trying to say is,
you broke my heart because you were the one
person I thought I was safe from. You found
a key I’d long since stopped looking for and
opened all my worst doors. I think it was
on purpose. I’ll never know for sure,
but sometimes I think if I saw you on the street,
I’d grab you and shake you and yell,
I was overdosing and you could tell.
Impostor-woman
Date: 23/11/2022
CWs: slight body horror and violence.
I am not the woman in the mirror,
I am not the one you seek.
I am the man in the door with a gun,
the one who returns to the scene of the crime,
the gynecologist with a scalpel.
I am the fetus, feeding greedily on placenta,
puppetting a liability body,
forever-violatable,
as I plot to tear my way out.
But no, go ahead: cut out my tongue,
sew my lips together.
Make me your silent doll
to sit at this inane tea party.
I’ve practised choking on my own blood—
I know how to do it quietly,
politely.
Reclaiming the colour blue
Date: u/d
Don’t tell me it wasn’t coxcomb/copycat, libido/ego, preacher/sophister—
you can’t tell me you didn’t build an icebox/forest fire/inkspill/supernova/will’o’whisp
and explode/implode/forbode/screech to an empty container for naught.
I wasn’t your pawn,
I won’t play along.
Deny it all you want, but you were green apple/cotton candy/murky swamp/night sky with no stars/a bathtub to drown in—
are your two heads still so far up your ass that you can only taste your own shit?
18 years/6 months/1 year/2 weeks later/before/ago, I felt your dead corpse
twitch and kicked/pummelled/fired shot after shot until you stopped moving again.
I don’t want your praise,
I don’t need to be saved.
You wear the colour blue like an award ribbon/cop badge/employee ID card/branding mark—
I won’t let you take it from me as a silk scarf/beating heart/thread of fate/rope thrown down the well.
Go drown your lonely liver
in the sea-winding salty river.
I’ve got a lighthouse/citadel/clean-swept hearth/perfumed temple to laugh from.
I’ve got a brain and I use it.
I’ve got a heart and I love with it.
I’ve got long and sharp nails,
and I’ll / your little narrative apart with ’em.