THE EYELIDS DIARIES

sara shone

the state of the eyelids is the state of the soul. on a sunday

when somebody is driving you to the seaside in their dads
mercedes 230E, you lean your right temple against the
windowpane, until it burns, theres sunlight all over your face,
wheat shimmers on both sides of the road, air conditioning not
working, no conversation left to improvise, the sky so clear it
feels threatening, vaguely exposing, you close your lids. its
snowing on the radio, and way too loud, you weave together
your mascara lashes and daydream about someone else. your
right eye starts lacrimating, he asks if youre alright.

to old friends and swollen scars

PART ONE

1
i am the malnourished mongrel that treads slowly. and scrapes
his over-sized ribcage against the red velvet creases of your
queasy meal of pleasures. the glasses jingle as i pass by, the
grapes roll off the table. two thousand commensals, each with
dilated pores, each with dilated pupils, and throats full to the
brim, and roman noses floating upon chaotic cirrus clouds of
laughter, vulgar how theyre pointing at the sky, aiming at a
fresco of perversions yet to perpetrate. four thousand hands
cupping gently my muzzle, forcing me to look away, too
unabashedly and persistent to be kind, too stubborn and sly to
be innocent, too lost in embroidering their persona grain after
grain to notice: how im not here to lick the fallen bones, how
im not here to gather the crumbs.

2
the intensity of you-concept, just the thought of you, of you, the
intensity of you, in me, it is. enough for an inward fall, an
intimate outburst it shatters the shell of myself. leave me,
for i am one single aching spot, precipitating into some
perversely contracted inner-tremble, earthquake-tremble,
through broken windows. still no cracks in this body, no
surfaces to scrape and fondle, perfect desperation, untouched,
distance perceived as unexpected migraines but not
experienced, the echo of a desert, morbid triumph, the
paralyzing liturgy of beauty, leave me. as i am.

3
generating sounds, of any nature, is something you need and
want winds flow and they blow inside of you but you, and
you, why do you let them brush against your skin, shake your
softness, stroke your strings?
when you groan in your sleep, those nights, certain
nightmares, perhaps you just wish for someone to come inside
and switch the light on? when you moan and youre with me,
when you laugh and youre with me, when you cry and your
tears resound between bathrooms tiles and your cry is not
silent, never quiet is this the purest way you have to let me
know?

4
the microscopic earthquake of beauty of those golden cracks
that open just so slightly and much more painfully between the
useless mauled murmurs of everyday conversation
someone is giving you the very words youll remember them
for.

5
been living inside this ache for too long. sometimes i listen for
hours to myself calling myself from one room to another, from
this depth to a different one. i perceive my body, distant in this
body, somewhere else, outside these walls. i can barely feel
myself around myself and always so light, so feeble and thin
as only skin is. the limits are blurred, this pain and its core can
never be found.

6
the unknown is an universe of its own. space between
borders, ignore matter. everything oscillating. it's harder to
draw flowers on paper when paper is ink-black already, easier
to draw flowers on paper whose color you can't see.

7
when i walk i just step from one thought to another, my feet
never feel like touching the ground. my head is filled with coal
dust, i drop memories that burn and blind me too much to be
told apart. and all fades, and i fade along. my fingers aren't
numb, i know where i am, i know which nightmare is next. i
point at things from a distance, things behind the glass,
objects inside the glass, lights wrapped in plastic.

8
i never got back the love i gave away. upright uptight, i never
asked. nothing is ever lost but love, nothing is ever created but
love. its just different, the matter of matter and the matter of
emotions. subtle as nerve gas. there are no scales, no juries.
the only witness denies. and they sucked it out of me.

9
if the ache is dull the body is strong can the body be at all?
normalize(d) sadness, we are all (screwed) mentalization
(slow, adagio) a thin layer, clumps of flesh, fake eyes, lids
bent inwards if the ache is dull the ache is dull dull dull
(echo) is it inside of me or am i am i around me am i around
it? i can wear wings, astral or genetic i need to grow
wings soon, muted volume when i break.

10
there's an ouija board machine online and a place where you
can buy white birch logs. eating fish embryos is considered
sophisticated, kissing is not always appropriate, five
paragraphs long speculations on cultural appropriation, pop
singer on TV (fake jungle), old singer on TV (nice tan), dead
singer on TV (big sweater), check out our new products, your
teeth could be brighter, your day not so much.

11
touching is touching. the wind whistling between the teeth of
longing. each hand accepting the slow shedding of the other.
decay undermines every movement. lift me, drag me down,
we're dancing together now.

12
wet, black, throbbing. one two, one two. organs work in the
dark, there's no light inside. self-awareness comes at night
time, the outer matches the inner -- and wonders. you sweat
and you're blind and you kick your sheets off. one two, one
two.

13
the overwhelming presence of myself inside myself. all the
crevices are crowded. i'm marble, arabesque over arabesque,
i'm things that kick and bump (LET ME OUT), i'm 55 kgs of
ocean, rough waves, smooth rocks, throbbing, elastic,
hardened, extra-tight ropes carved into pulp. surface tension.
this pressure will shatter me to wet sand.

14
they spat me here middle fight with ribs cracked already and
already barren lips cracked and mouthing water, water please.
the ground is dry the wind is wild, this ring is a wasteland of
dunes and shifting sands shifting flowing shifting through me
(forever is slow) concrete ocean, more waves than i can
count if i knew how to run i would not run if i knew these
words ive never heard id watch them swallow themselves let
them swallow me down.

15
these circles around my orbits are circles of stolen life upon a
blackened oak stump, converging lower, lowest, to moss
green liquid gloom. they can count on me all the days i spent
on my own, they can see the love you etched on me, never
healing up.

16
skinning your knees your whole life to scrape together crumbs
of nothing. asthmatic gag reflex panting and scratching and
sweating off the recoil of an axe blowing at the indestructible,
spine vibrating, metallic ache, every day blood stained nails.
dust fighting for dust. crawling breathless to a death by
accident, worth nothing, all your rotten heirlooms scattered on
the merciless concrete, all you throbbed and burned for,
awaiting yet another starving hyena in the neutral land of
human insignificance.

17
if only we were simply smuggled into these greased gloves of
skin at birth, could just smoothly slip inside and only then start
throbbing, swelling to fill every cubic inch. then maybe it
wouldn't drive us that much crazy to degenerate exaggerate
oxydate eventually get bitten by the frost of death. those finals
moments we would just sigh and say, oh it's nothing darlings, it
was the wrong envelope anyway. but i've been twisted and
twisting inside my skin, curled and protected, interconnected,
kept warm and complex, breathed and sweated oceans of
liters, sweated blood even, and all the many venoms of pain. i
am my skin. my skin is all i can see.

18
i close my lids without feeling it, with just the mechanical
aptitude required to dole out every drop to the throbbing glass.
as i close my lids ten thousand pounds of porcelain plates
shatter in the dead echo of a shutter falling shut. ten thousand
pounds of bones clash and crash. a car got stolen at the
northern edge of town, accidents have left the waiting room,
fatalities now slither slow and fluid in the grease of darkness.
the old bank is falling to pieces, its hardened and plumbeous
veins exposed. only stray barks fill up the night, the sidewalks
are staves for these mangled notes to yelp, and bay, like one
final groan, the last long doubt left to a man who dies alone. if
my heartbeat was distant and ripping-sharp and tenacious as
this wailing, this requiem of dirt and dust, my thoughts would
run on a single, whole string of something. barbed wire, silk
thread, thread with no needle (would have been good for old
socks), blade of grass, yarn and yearn, train tracks, do not
cross these lines. i was broken into pieces from the start. i am
small chunks bitten off death, a chain of junk-pearls, necklace
of dog-teeth, hanging entrails whose shadows drip in little
pools of blood on the butchers basement floor.

19
your lips reveal the bright void within yourself. youre telling me
things that sound too heavy for any of your surfaces, so you
just drop them. YOU ARE NOT YOUR BODY and things like
that. but you dont look too good yourself. if those things were
written on paper, i could barely read through the smears and
smallness. the tragic sun of your within shines through, your
lips move and when they do you just know, i just know that its
just another day of smothering, muffling the wheezing, losing
sight in the struggle of bucking with your lashes only. just to
conceal whats left of your bonfire pain. the flames reach out to
your eyes, but its not you. your crystalline has turned to thick
smoke. i reach out for you from here, locked inside. YOU ARE
NOT INSIDE YOUR BODY and things like that. im trembling
because im not a child anymore. i have detached myself from
the outside, and im not these things i can easily discern and
touch and count on my fingers. i got shoved into doubt to the
point of full absorption. there are no borders, no north and no
south to define my own where and what.

20
the scum of this town will outlive you. you are as dull as plastic
yet youre given the luxury to rot. and you seem committed to
that, you seem achingly aware. willing to get consumed, weteyed longing. i admire you, the flat naivety that dries up your
mouth just as you spit it all out and admit thats it, im
worthless. thats it, thats all ive got. i have learned to see past
all your furious excretions, your raging execration. i watch you
digging your nails into barren soil, mile after mile.

21
apparently it is true that matter is 99.9% empty. i sink deeper
and deeper inside myself everyday, choke on meaningless
soulscapes, unwanted by the void itself the elastic disgust
of my own abyss lets out an impenetrable groan, baritone and
slow, tells me to cut the crap. tells me to fix my eyes on the
ever-shifting ceiling. i am afloat. i am the only authentic throb
inside myself. and i keep spacing out. i space out stirring
coffee, space out waiting in line, space out taking notes, space
out smiling, mid-conversation, mid-hurt, mid-bleed, mid-cringe,
space out watching the news, taking the bus, spaced out
pleasantries, spaced out weather-sucks-todays and goodmorning-anyways, spaced out should-have-drunk-dialed-firsts,
space out missing calls, spaced out this stinks, this sucks,
spaced out give-ups, spaced out sweating, first time kickboxing, spaced out clogged toilet and expired disinfectants,
space out keeping the beat, losing it on purpose. theyll call it
la petite vie. spacing out staring at your cracked lips. you are
close and i can see you and i can see you are willing to detect
it, youve grown so attached to me so soon and so sweetly and
now you are worried. your voice is still strong and you grab me
by the shoulders to pull me out, and you save me but still see
nothing wrong. you hold my hand and you wait. still too cold.
you hold it until youre satisfied with its warmth.

22
now that i have forgiven too much, now that i have been
shoved into the dead-end between words and the world. now
that my skull cups moist soil for doubts to grow. i have
forgotten things. the first breath of air exhaled exhausted over
my scalp, and my mothers gown, and inside all the weeks
spent blooming blindly, when i was just absence and then
clutter, when there were no colors, just tones. quiet floating
coma, untainted yet so self-absorbed to reach universal
unconsciousness. still not there, almost sinking into darkness
again. untouched, but never sterile. a glass house sleeping in
the storm. a heart beating in its fingernail shape, see-through
petals and so much light, a shell of clean canvas folding
around silence and danger. at night i wrap my arms so tight
around this old idea of myself. in bed i spoon with death, i
dream of getting born again.

23
tacoma, 1940. the smooth polarization, bittersweet flow of
internal frequencies, slow and persuading both the
irreversible and the unattainable outside just quiet shivers,
zero friction. swinging sideways, no sparks, back and forth, no
opposition. holding sway, watching it go. the tragic dance to
the river had an unrealistic taste for the eternal. our private
resonations too, they ended up in collapse.

24
the architecture mimics that of a mosaic. each piece of the
great picture stands like a monolith with no time to cast its
shadow. and all come falling down, collapsing with their back
on the ground. onto each other. its a machine domino that you
set in motion at birth. each bit takes great effort, great amounts
of grinding teeth and squinting eyes and dark paint strokes
that just wont come off. you long to impress your flowing flesh
upon the careless state of static of the world. you think itll
keep you sane, defined. recognizing what your hands can do
by looking at the prints they leave, time after time. time in
control, your purposes finally labeled. leaping over and over
again over an overly lively idea of yourself, your arms pushing
down on your shoulders, your arms mimicking your arms.
overcoming time until the end of time.

25
my only gacela, asleep in the daze, hiding in the nerve gas
heat of memory. everybody knew what you tormented
between your teeth. the hummingbird bones you chewed up
idly they were mine.

26
clouded, blurred, all i ever grasp of myself is smoke. life by
suffocation, life by tiny doses. if my sight was clear and my
insides clean, id choke on myself. id choke to death, im too
much to take in.

27
june melts one by one the obsessions that kept you going all
winter long. wipes them off the table. leaves you dry and
naked and untouched not even a gust of breeze to relieve
your widening cracks. and again youre just sampled bones.
paralyzed. dead wood, tree with no lymph. waiting for the next
chainsaw to expose your very core.

28
the great ache of acknowledging ones own pain as small.
minor aches, just minor aches. i wont turn the other cheek just
to wet your hand and wish i could burn your blood instead, and
leave bleach-proof stains. the great ache fading way too slow,
of fading way too slow. and the tiny tears, everlasting dew on
those whom love was denied to. the great ache of having
mistaken it all, the great ache of never having known it whole.

29
me, holding in my arms my ruins and rubble, all the leftovers of
my private slaughters, one by one. the sons and daughters of
my anguish, and their sons sons, and their sons daughters.
the failures recited into detail, without even breathing. recited
by heart, in a low voice, like a prayer. i hold them in my arms
and i press them to my chest, i lull them and hush them and
tell them to go to sleep. with slow eyes and slow hands, my
sweetest nightmares and you. you, who are not like me, you
who kiss me with your eyes and you who laugh and collapse
and wreck the ground when youre wrecked. you are your own
avalanche.

30
an inconsolable storm watches over my sleep. theres not
enough space for time in my womb of concrete and do i feel
safe enough? i ask myself, and answer myself that theres no
need to do that now. just dont do that to yourself right now. i
see you in the distance, i see you sitting down on the synthetic
brown of the tennis court. sitting down with your legs crossed
because youre bored. that is how and where i saw you for the
first time, and when, it was long ago. and fuck, why. im scared
of not remembering it right, the whole damn scene and how
did it go and what did we say, and now it goes that i sit down
next to you. my hands fall by my sides and i look down at my
palms which are facing the sky, and i wonder why my palms
are facing the sky. it makes me look like im praying, ecstatic,
like ive just been fatally wounded, pathetic. if i could just stop
that, but i cant. the sky, which theyre facing, which my palms
are facing, it is gray. it is summer, it was summer when i saw
you sitting down on the synthetic brown of the tennis court,
and it was about to rain. you didnt cup my wounded hand,
which you are doing now, and you didnt squeeze it and ask
me why are you so scared of dreaming about people which
are gone and explain me youre just giving back to the
cosmos the love you dont need anymore, you know love can
get recycled these days and theres lots of people who need it.
i dont have the strength to protest. you used to say a lot of
fucked up shit my love, but you never said that. youre still
holding my hand now, youre promising youll dream of me,
you promise me long distance dreaming is just like ping pong
dont you see how easy it is, the universe is watching, dont
you see how the universe is nothing but a huge deformed
crystal while were specks and dots and broken bits,

interconnected, we shake in our cages all we want but can

never escape and my head is hurting now, there are beams
of light trying to cut through it. im not scared when thunders
wake me, but i know im not safe. im inconsolable.

31
i know exactly why im doing this, dissecting my inside-body
experience. square millimeter upon square millimeter.
inflammable, analyzing how to catalyze the combustion. i cant
stand the inertia of wholeness. self-destructive, but just to burn
you with my love. just to light up a different patch of sky. a
cathedral of bones set on fire. i wont stop until im sparks.

32
the horizon of potential is double-edged and shaped by doubt,
and where do my morals lay sleeping in this picture, where do
my rights? wild and raging, sickles for eyes exploring the tall
grass of the world around me, restless restless restless,
aggressive, pounding on the ground in this hectic one man
parade, do i keep proliferating, contaminating, turning silence
into other irrevocable things, spilling moans, leaving prints. or
do i erase myself, mole by mole, crease by crease, cleanse it
all, do i flat-line myself and blend in with the desert, tabula
absolutely rasa, do i and how can i please, face the water and
become water, how do i survive without doing no wrong, ever,
without ridiculing myself, without profaning other lives, me with
my brittle heart, always bleeding out, knees deep in mud
anyway,

33
we meet again after five months, after five months i still
havent smashed in the rotten teeth of this bad habit, hanging
down from your lashes whenever you cup your guts and burn
your eyes in me. you tell me things i dont need to decipher, i
flip through your dotted lines and exclamation marks as if i
knew already. and it hurts me to know you so well, to help you
cup your guts while were doing this. so sharply, we recognize
each other like knife and skin. if your eyes had lips they would
be agape and wheezing right now. i would be drenched and
shaking, left there, hanging loose, an old rag waiting in the
sun.

34
the atom body, theres a ninety-nine percent chance to find my
head where my head seems to be. but im not there. my body
is the smallest part of me, my flesh and bones are my one
percent. i get hurt by distant things, by distance itself i get
bruised. i see my face reflected in little known faces, in the
unknown i see myself expand.

35
this is for R. you just needed your own personal ganges. to
moonbathe below the midnight clouds and let the weight of the
water dissolve you. a sugar cube dipped in kerosene. walking
with leaden legs wrapped in the leaden river to neck level,
begging for the light-house light to spin your way. but you
wouldnt soak a finger there. youd spit in it from waters edge,
youd keep inhaling your high-priced, gold-coated carbon
monoxide. the sky i would paint for you is the sky he showed
me, violet and heavy, the night we climbed the stairs to the
attic, hand in hand, 80s starmaps, deep-blue, his new
spyglass. the moon looked crowned with fear, by dust. we
were thirteen, ive never told you. your pride will be your
downfall.

PART TWO

36
this is for K. you just needed the thought of death to cleanse
your mind more than two times a week. to cross your eyes
before you could shut them, to untie your temporal vein,
knotted in many knots of hate, black and fragile like a fallen
branch. a crack, an elastic snap. you shaped your mortal coil
with your own hands. i tried to stop you, but it was always too
late. you spun it yourself. smothered by disgust, maybe it was
just that your words were forced out of a crooked space. every
time too narrow, every time as hard as stone. cut like
diamonds no one could buy. maybe it was that you resented
my idea of beauty. blinded from life, by life. you made me feel
like a child.

37
pain and touch exclude each other. if i grab your hand, if i
reach out for your chest, to be pressed against your cage of
ribs, and inhale as you inhale, and exhale with you im
begging for analgesia. i do ache for you, crush me under your
fingertips.

38
how many strangers have you unstrangered in the past six
months? be careful, be full of care. did you have breakfast
together, did they have something stuck in their teeth, a
chipped nail, or bitten, a hole in the fabric over the elbow.
which color was their coat when you said come in, how
thrilling, or else irritating, the sound of their tennis shoes steps
on the moquette. be mindful of the parts of them you want
exposed. give it a millionth thought. modulate the enthusiasm
of your own hands as you pull off the blanket. dont let their
feet out, kiss their brows, dont leave them shaking.

39
there are no bricks left to dismantle yet the ground still bears
the pressure, an old unwanted weight, we pack and move
away before the deluge. we blame our leaving on bad
weather. now the muscle cabin in which we both hide is
sealed, boards and planks all glued together, but still creaking
and throbbing. you slammed the door open for me, you told
me i would be safe here. you said you had it all mended
somehow, you had it in control. i double-check all the
equations of our wanderings, with their reagents and
catalyzers, with my index i trace mid-air whats evaporated, i
count each speck of cinder, i grasp at floating dust. i
remember the premonition of a toothless mouth. if you have no
way to deconstruct it, grab your clipper scissors and be
cautious. cut along the dotted lines.

40
the amount of public bathrooms ive cried in, it isnt glamorous
at all. a highway stop around naples, the department of
biology, some winehouse downtown, my high school gym, the
toilets in the museum dorsay, an hotel room on the coast, the
theater before my first ballet (2003). im asking you to imagine
each blackened brick, the ivy crawling up the walls outside the
window, the spiders crawling down the walls inside the cracks,
all the telephone numbers, the obscene teenage outbursts
scribbled in red marker, the apathetic vibration of her textbacks, dry why are you telling me about this now? the
smell of croissants and abandon and hand sanitizers and
failure, the mirrors either oxidized or fogged, half-dead plants
in the corner, fake flowers. the barmans unsteady smile as i
flash past the counter, the fat attender all dressed in white,
scrolling her cigarette in a plastic plate filled with coins. the
reasons were always foolish and vulgar. thats a neat thought
and it stings like a needle. i lock myself in my room, a room
that is not mine, inside a home that is nothing but a highly
functional cathedral. tearing apart whats left of silence. four
shots to clean my lungs, pausing rhythmically, osmosis of
chaos, brain echo. ive always been immune to rational pain,
to celestial schemes. some would argue stardust is blood
soluble.

41
my mother hands me a grocery list written down in blue bic ink
on the back of an old photocopy. its just a small piece of
paper, folded in four, ripped from two sides exegesis for
kids, the crossing of the red sea, quick and dirty catechism.
what are you going to do, moses, with a bottle of skimmed milk
and this loaf of whole grain bread, with one liter of cardboard
packed orange juice and a ball of lettuce, with the tiny cat lady
living near the gas station, now walking up and down the same
aisle fifteen times per minute, holding a melon with both
hands, cupped. good evening, one bag please. why do you cry
to me, moses? stretch out your damn hand over the check-out.

42
modern neurosis, running around the gates of eden to find a
faulty lock and step back in. we feel so close to whats within,
but we cant befriend the ground to grow inside the cage
again. shaking bones and teeth, withdrawal symptoms coated
in gold, thieves and beggars wearing designer lingerie.

43
she says i wish all animals would just die, i cry for two hours
and half. youre the woman in my dreams, dressed in leather
and holding a baby lamb in her arms, a 4 credits worth
seminar on mental illnesses, ted bundy at 5 years old, scar
marks discovered at 45, death by accident, the dragon i think i
saw on a rorschach table "this is supposed to represent your
father" the mein kampf re-adapted for kids, a matryoshka of
voodoo dolls, summer prairie fires (arsons) and fire fighters
crashing down, kunderas tereza burying the dog, the closure
no one was expecting, assorted and diluted obsessions.

44
hands around the back of my neck, i admit that i am too young
for any of this. waking up at overdue hours with a head packed
full of chaotic and fluorescent sex dreams, endless chases,
one minute stand kisses, roaming fingers. and nightmares so
boring that do not make my body twitch anymore. expected to
swallow whole your sugarcoated anathemas for breakfast, to
nod quietly at your harmless dont worry, its benigns, at the
enervating, extended series of now you might want tos, and
chew with calculated slowness all the idiotic let go of denials,
these things will always happens. give me the intravenous
dose. quit my attempts at anticipation, waiting all my life in a
waiting room that is posh for no reason, ridiculous, halfslumped half-drowned in the oily smooth leather of this
otherwise empty five seats couch, staring at the ceiling, at the
fake gold chandelier. cheap delights, useless distractions. i am
comfortable enough, comfortable with the idea of death
looming over me. i cannot smell it on myself, yet the stench in
which passerbies are dipped and drenched it is enough. i
cough, and gag, i bring both my hands to my throat, i struggle
to hold my larynx in place.

45
weltgeschicte, all the layers of the world. how many
centimeters of rubble are we allowed in our lifetime, how many
decades will it take for our excretions to sediment, how many
centuries to saturate our private shreds of troposphere. and
which one of the surfaces above weighs on the rise of my
chest like the moons naked face, with its low tides and high
tides, precipitating with and against gravity. and then my skin,
mangled clay. shaped for millenniums, battered and squeezed,
moulded, folded, held, caressed by the glowing hand of
history.

46
your hands always slip from my eyes last. strong and pale,
veined like marble or extinct butterflies. explicable either by
nature or art, rare but hysterical. i follow them fluttering as you
overflow, all your words rearranged in rivers, horror of the
onlookers. you soul-bathe in conversation, the whole ancestral
rite. voice thick like tears, i almost feel the need to hand you
paper tissues to wipe the ink dripping to your chin, or else do it
myself. you say thats morbid a lot. i have to reassure you
from time to time, tell you that your sanity defines mine. you
blush and smile, your freckles are sparks, i stare at your
fingers once again before tilting my head to the side. perhaps i
saw too much, perhaps i still know nothing at all. i picture your
skin cutting its way inside foreign skin, your palm wrapped
around a newborns head.

47
lost at sea inside myself, floating weightless through cold flows
of blood, warm whirls, waves of skin wrapped around me ten
thousand times and more. i havent come up for air in weeks, i
dont remember where my bones are buried nor whose are the
faces shouting my name onshore. this is not a crysalis, theres
no solace in this, no protection, no doubt. deep blue water,
wildest limbo. the wind is changing and i want to get back.

48
sate and pathetic like a blind mosquito, drunk on someone
elses blood, i am left to sow stones and child teeth to calm the
ground, the dirt and dust still blooming in the sun, the swollen
soil and its smell of wet dog, of women lashes after the
rainstorm, hunter and prey, eager but defeated, the soil
burning and boiling, roaring, lamenting, waiting for bright
knees to kiss it, and kiss back with its jaws wide open. the
earthquake groans under my skin. i shake in the matriarchal
shadow of an old olive tree, i need a new pair of shoulders,
new arms to be grateful, to stretch my skin at stars, not just
satellytes, new lips and tongue and gums to twist my throat
well, and name them. nobody has been home in years, we
were taught no way to know better. nights are too damn warm
to feel like the day is ever over.

49
they say you cant say which smell your house smells of until
you shut the door behind your back and stay gone for months.
then you come back, swelling with exhaustion, remorse, a light
sense of loss, and your old house smells like wet wood smells,
smell of birch sipping lazily on raindrops, heavy but calm,
oblivious of the violence. i havent slept in three weeks. at
night i lay down on a worn out couch and bare my teeth to the
ceiling, check if my body feels the recoil of shooting thoughts
from lobe to lobe, silent bullets, old tracks, back and forth. the
friction of migraine, forth and back. i cannot sleep because
3:00 AM in this apartment is rush-hour for memories to crawl
back home. each rising moon silence drops my body
underwater, the room gets filled with sound, my muscle drum
scans the hour, one beat at a time. i hear my sister cry, my
sister laugh, my mother call, my father walking in every friday
afternoon, the rotary dial telephone stays unanswered while its
whim goes on and on, squeaking drawers in the kitchen, the
whole ton of porcelain cups and bohemian glasses shaking in
their cabinets, my child feet stumbling on every kilim rug, my
teenage guts coming clean on the persian one, the vintage fan
above me, loud and useless like an old insect, skyscrapers of
shelves gravid with slim books, bought for cents at one fleat
market or another, even baking a terrible apple pie with you on
that june afternoon has its sound at 3:00 AM, burning both our
tongues on hot chocolate, and when you came over after
renting the wrong movie, and when you recited me The
Complete List of Pills You Were Taking, said DONT WORRY I
AM OKAY, you got something for headaches? and laid down
on this very sofa, when you barged in to throw me a christmaswrapped book i never read and walked out (gotta go, got
coffee with my dealer in fifteen minutes), the summer we lost

amy winehouse and you said i want a national television

closure too, a death that counts as much as 77 teenage
killings do. i pick apart this grand ground noise and write it all
down in the morning to exorcise the evil of any future
hypnagogia, but it never works. when i come back after the
come back, my new house smells like freshly cut wood. wood
waiting for winter, awaiting the combustion. and i sleep fine at
night, but i measure my steps, hold each handle with firm and
gentle hand. the house is dry, no submarine feeling within its
naked rooms. i am afraid to wake these walls too, to witness
powerless their slow betrayal as they age into keepsakes.

50
these weak limbs are holy enough for well-seasoned blood to
be culled within, yet i still keep all the litanies to myself. my
best selling tragedy had your throat shake in a heart-breaking
yawn on page three, for it was you teaching me how to cheat,
and your fist clenching mine clenched upon our hidden
agenda. the sound of old skin coming apart neat and clean
under the knife. my crooked intentions and your frothing eyes
saw light from the same womb.

51
how do you know its your eyes you could see through when
youre blind, when unknown hands know hands only. you
never had time to spend on your own, i had too much.

52
you were golden when losing it all, you shone sharp and light
behind the curtain of fingers upon your face. a web of hair got
caught playing water-lily by the wet glow of midnight past five,
you hated it and cried. you cried when you realized there was
no time to bury your secrets in the sand, for the ocean would
not let you visualize all your false steps disappear. you cried
when i tried but could not shake hands with each of your
compulsions, obsessions, whatever, amen, when i fumbled
with blades and edges, unknotting your lashes, severing
leashes. i remember your old skin, your indigo lids, the little
vein bridged under the bridge of your nose. who cut your hair?
who did you cut your hair for? who do you think about when
you slip in those blue jeans? and who bought them for you?
look, thats a lot of questions for someone who will never learn
to listen. what did you just say? i said, we should leave this
place with fists shoved in our pockets, gaze down, just like
that. walk away, pace slow and hard. but we didnt. the elders
had no grip on your wrists and your generation taught you
nothing. now that your hunger lays spent beside you, you dont
need to hide yourself anymore.

53
our heroes are inert flesh, paper skin, smuggled data, faked
accents, manufactured alienation, cellulose triacetate locked
away in forgotten basements. now look down, look down
around you. all the ass-slappers, heart-patters, butt-fuckers,
back-stabbers, all these fucking sneering faces full-time
parading in the everlasting heritage of pride and hate, doesnt
the thought of leaving for good make your whole set of
mucosae wet?

54
when darkness falls it fears no gravity, and its slow and its
smooth as silk. but you who are burdened by grace, you who
do not feel heavy without heaving, you with your trembling
hands, with your back glued to the floor, swept up for nothing,
waiting for no one. you will drown in its black honey.

55
you come to sit by me and tell me how you conquered the
world, marching in time, many times. methodical, one for each
karat weighing on your fingers and twice for every onshore
wave of saliva glossing up your voracious lips. you lick them
once again, the tide comes in. my hips feel the unrest of a
looming thought and my legs do shake, my wrists chained still
to both sides of my silver plate. it seems to me that i only
breathe in, but never listen. the young monk sleeps naked, his
bright robe folded and sat waiting on the wooden chair, i think
about the needle and the thread that first marked it, and made
him theirs, i think about my fathers coat hung up in his room,
when the door is finally shut, i think about the wrinkled brow
wearing its cupped palm, and the fist slammed on the counter,
before the arms pass out. all the centuries you have spent in
silence, on your knees, praying for me to become yours to
crumble theyre forgiven. you had your back turned to the
moon.

56
twice is not enough for any nightmare to be recurring. one
morning i will not wake. i will wash my face into an empty
mirror and walk back to my pillow just to dream of myself
watching you leave. these sugarcoated hallucinations, they will
never sate me. my insomnia is disturbed by quiet chatter,
clinking cutlery, shuffling shoes of children playing catch inside
marble rooms. everyone is still talking about you, that you will
be home soon. your name is on the papers, spelled in neon
over barber shops and supermarkets. i got the symptoms, but i
have never withdrawn. the rain will come unannounced, and
fall down unheard.

57
they can break you once and five thousand times too many,
they can crook your bones, blow by blow, glowing anvil,
hammer down. crack them clean, first round. or else wear your
shedded sorrows and dance around your curved back, your
cupped face, to celebrate their delusion with derision. theyll
never have you, theyll never know. the last twitch of fingers to
check-mate what theyve done to you, that will be yours. inside
yourself theres yourself only, you are full and whole. cherish
your core muscle, the matter that moves your matter. the way
you want to appear is truthful and pure. in time your wish will
be your only shaping need.

58
black spider sprawled out on the wall above our mailbox,
crucifix and reminder of how any ache is ultimately paralysis,
pain as crippling pressure, bleeding gums in the jaw of time.

59
our beauty is worth nothing. we will never weigh enough to
leave any trace behind, any unregenerable scar, any incurable
damage. we spend our lives in limbo, never ever casting away.
and the earth laughs at us because she knows, that all is just
slow motion deterioration. theres no stasis when inches are
marked in flesh.

60
i have made rat kings out of my fears, left them at your door. i
contradict myself every once in a while as last resort to come
and go full circle, just to be sure. i crave the drops and watch
them carve my stone bones, and yet i know, dont i? that this
kind of flow needs no wind. here i am, cracking crease after
crease. when paint dries up, it usually gets darker. and you will
have yet another layer to cut through.

61
do they love you or do they just love to wildfire the neutral
lands framing your eyes? spinal reflex of compassion, is this
just another classified parameter, statistics-proof, sampled and
infallible, time and time again, forever unworn, this spat-out
coin, electronic beep, the on and off switch, ending quick and
clean, tested and tried, sold on the black market two
thousands years ago. would you lock it away under vulgar
and profane just because of the scratches it bears? would
your blood flow quieter, straighter, smoother, now that your
skin cant come apart against its old crumbling edges
anymore? softer and swollen, we have wasted centuries
pressing our tongues against the wet river beds of stitches and
scars. you dont shake now, you have dried out. and i wont
buy it all again, i wont sit still through the whole list of sick and
dead and missing. i can still pretend this sounds new to me,
that this feels true. slowness is sacred, the devotion
orchestrating caresses cant be faked.

62
you condescend to loving out of self-loathing, incandescent
and desperate, growing faithful weak slow like grass around
your crippling crack, your amateur distortion, your secret
congenital disease. omniscient tongue licking the dust off your
own lies, glance crawling up from wall to wall when its your
turn. hopeless, you dont hold me now that i am not. you
squeezed me hard enough to glue my crevices back together.

63
in my nightmares im lying to my friends. those nights i roam
around heartbroken, dry lips, cold sweat, how could i, whipping
myself with questions who do not even bleed out, how could i,
how could i. when i lay down with my friends, i cannot sleep. i
twist and jerk away my wrists from orpheus grip, cant you see
i cannot do this? cant you see. i remember the first time i
stayed up all night, it was spring. we got high and sat down
shoulder against shoulder, backs to the brick face of the
building, the balcony of some cheap hotel. all i could think
about was sheets, pillows, concrete. i imagined both our
bodies as pencil outlines, could almost feel our ribs, traced
and light, overlapping. puzzled together. when these things
happen you realize the city is just one big dormitory, you look
at any building and see its bones only, see all the beds in it,
mattress over mattress over mattres, iron strings, bended and
entwined, all just stacked onto layers of concrete. you pretend
no dirt gets in between waking up and going to sleep, ever. we
only do what we have to. when you quit trusting the moon to
do her thing, when you uncover the dangers you were
biologically trained to skip over, every and any detail always
looks washed out in the morning, almost trembling. it just
doesnt matter anymore, which and how many atoms you
could split in two in your own room. what could go wrong, it
doesnt bug you. what could go wrong. you dont regret it
because you survived something terrible within you. and they
did too, but they dont know. you are not the kind who would
like it better, looking away. we were children for too long, for
too long we would wake up pretending unknown men had left
gifts at our doors. when youre a kid theres always someone
working for you while you sleep.

64
it has come to a point where i cant stand the mere thought of
sitting down to share a meal with them. bite the hand that
smacks you around before shoving the pill down your throat,
and so on. i miss the south, i have hated it there all my life and
now i want to come back. there are places you can spend
hours at, entire afternoons, the sun will never falter. time never
walks past and youre forever ten years old, you can buy a bag
of pistachio nuts for cents, count the golden teeth and wooden
canes that tremble around you, make pretend cobblestones
were carved out of soap bars. and down along the coast, all
that really matters at lunch hour, when rocks split one by one
under the weight of the heat, is how loud you are, how much
you will sweat for it. you crawl down the cliffs and slip and
stretch and jump into the water. the sun will never falter and
its all just salt onto salt.

65
the cicadas outside my window have gone insane. there is
nothing i should be reminded of, nothing left to oblivion now. i
have learned that wounds never heal, or heal too much. heal
when you dont need to. heal while you are asleep, with one
final childish sting, to pull you back to consciousness. wet and
electric, your left foot shaking stiff, once and twice, sudden
goodbye to the paralysis of relief. this barren land got stitched
up many times, fall after fall. you shouldnt feel compelled to
be cautious. some clots are still bright and soft, round like
buds, carmine pearls. the mines i have found have all been
plucked out of the dirt, defused. those forgotten wait halfawake with you. wait to be breast-fed with rancorous grace, by
punctual promises whose candor was never granted. the
ground growls in thirst. and tonight too, my body lands could
quake. i am very careful, drunk with passion, walking barefoot
down the hallway, cupping with both palms a cup filled to the
brim, while the river banks grow higher, and you drink and you
swallow it slow from a borrowed pillow. you are warm, you are
quenched, you are reckless.

66
old people offer each other their seats on the bus. young boys
and girls stay put, they chew gum and watch. they sit and
stare at my shivering back, pressed to the glass. we go uphill,
grinding teeth, we make a five minutes turn to the left. no one
is looking outside. no one raises their voice to claim they are
here.

67
grass grows slow upside down from palate to tongue here i am
sinking deep beyond bone and marrow eyes and limbs
regressing to numbness my skull itself a hard swollen sponge
each punch-hole a thought of you last night i dreamt of desert
dunes as smooth as your knees tonight it is time for me to
shed some and change some and die some more and rain my
spores around i want
i want to wear your skin like plastic uncomfortable clean
aseptic some killer suit a butcher suit the suit of a chemical
engineer disposing waste your skin fitting around my own
organic waste and still yours to see through yours to shine
through they will love you much and hard but never own you
like i do.

68
the lights go out in the apartment, just as i am almost done
brushing my teeth. i close my eyes and let the foam talk, i do
know many stories about teeth that i can rattle out to myself on
monday mornings like this one. i slept fine. perhaps i was
supposed to dream about the things that i am reminded of
right now, i dont know. i can never tell for sure. theres the
hard shell of a suitcase standing tall on the moquette of our
hotel room in prague, im twelve years slower, were leaving
soon. mom and dad and me. brushing my teeth in the pale
april heat of a 6:00 AM weakly awake lightbulb in paris, right
above the mirror, im fifteen years old and i told you we were
late. brushing my teeth at the darkest 8:30 AM in the history of
all darkest 8:30 AMs, your rented room in milan, your flatmate
fled, im eighteen years old and youre still sleeping. mom and
dad and me, once more, in the breakfast room i am told not to
bite and grind on my silver spoon, quit making that noise
please, im nine years old, youre not coming with us ever
again. the teeth of those who kiss on the bus, silver-filled
teeth, dead teeth in the metal bowl, teeth waiting under the
pillow, cobblestone teeth, shark teeth, teeth you never saw,
but most of all the teeth of those who kiss on the bus. they are
ours and it is us, but we have chosen to take the underground.
i realize i cant remember anything at all about that ride.

69
i crave unknown places, i yearn for spaces unmapped, unruled,
unmarked, all marked by the un, the ir, the non. only dreamed,
foretold by the oracle of insight. delirium of beauty, delirium of
truth, delirium with no proof at all. for i know my body cannot part,
or be part of the scenario either. and i can still possess without
touching, and protect the untouched, and let the touch not spoil
the matter. my body forgotten by the experience, in the
experience lost. but not hidden, never hidden. molten, my body,
and consumed by the fire within, shaped anew, merging and
blending with the body of thought.

70
dont show your face to god, dont turn your head away when
they teach your hands to cheat. dont hide the filth of your fists
once youre done with stones. watch us as we lay out your
lies, to shine and sharpen them, to taste their blades for the
span of a drop. we gave you fire and we gave you blood, blood
we gave you and iron and dust. we gave you all the means to
protect yourself. not out of kindness nor pity, not out of
compassion we asked you to dance. on the 8th day we were
out of sleep. we dressed you up from muscle to gold, from
bone to diamond we dressed you, and for our own delight. we
armed you and we will do harm.

october 2013 november 2014