Thoughts from a dying beetle
by tynedaile
The pigmented dribble from my onyx back’s
Slow drizzle,
Would have you all for breakfast, if you only
Cared a little.
The pigmented dribble from my onyx back’s
Slow drizzle,
Would have you all for breakfast, if you only
Cared a little.
I am the speculator,
I am mixing your words with cloudy water,
then pouring them over the pavement.
I am mad without delay, my lips are frozen fingers.
I photograph the dying fish
that wreathe in greasy splendor.
The table has been set for hours,
a candle dribbles idiotically.
I am padding the insides of your cheeks
with blank cheques; you’re coughing on the telephone –
monotone. Wash it down with bourbon.
I’ve filled a bath with sulfuric acid,
set jazz upon the radio. I’ve
emptied out the garbage.
A flight to Puerto Rico
leaves in fifteen minutes.
Tomorrow I am washed like bed sheets,
set exposed to the afternoon,
flinging myself like a dancer in the airstream.
I am a merry-go-round in summer,
my joints are oiled
with ecstasy
and yet my heart grinds
like an aged boiler-room,
my stomach corrodes like playgrounds
and my eyes are as vacant as winter.
Where shall we go for dinner?
They can wait on us until midnight trickles in,
until glass clinks against
glass and glass slips into
rubber and rubber smells like
decaying mammals. And people would know
that something died; or so she said on Mercy Street.
There is nothing left to do, but cut ourselves off
and walk home like children.
When the crystal ball
spits into your ogling eye,
what do you do?
I stay up late.
I drink like no one’s watching.
I like to be atypical,
You’ve got to be disarming.
A jury mingles outside the convenience store;
chewing gum exchanged for story.
And the heat will turn to dusk.
The five o’clock drinks roll in,
along tongues, down, down, down
throats of boundless secrecy.
And the outcome will be polluted,
by a cigarette butt thrown by the woman
with long brown hair and a son by
the name of Lucifer,
who likes to make Churches with
cereal boxes – just like Daddy taught
him.
First, do you have the patience?
To count the raindrops
one by one?
Then pour them all into some overwhelming
question-
Are you cynical?
Does your heart beat faster
than most?
Does your stubble grow slower?
Do you have the right l-o-o-k?
Do tornadoes have a conscience?
When it drizzles non-stop for all of eternity,
how will you go?
The city is damp beyond repair and street
gutters blubber out wails
of the homeless.
Do you have the patience,
To follow cyclones back out to
sea?
To dissolve and resolve a
hurricane or two?
Are you selfish?
When does the drought start?
Where is my breakfast?
Can you touch me like you’re paying for it?
I suggest we read in bed
forever.
There’s a once-in-a-lifetime
storm coming and you’re our only savior.
Where do I stock up, Mr Weatherman?
Haven’t you got this
covered?
Eventually the icecaps fall
apart like teenagers?
The sky will crack open like a
glorious puzzle.
Where is the newspaper?
I’ll do whatever you tell me.
I’m really quite nice when it’s raining.
Read me the forecast and take
off my clothes.
The tropical season is nothing.
Everyone always says
that it’s the little things
that matter.
Where are the little things?
I can’t find mine.
And it’s been six weeks.
I’ve looked in the wardrobe
and in your hair.
They weren’t under there.
I scanned the grocery isles.
I asked the old lady,
the one with a limp.
I checked under the couch,
and behind the fridge.
They must be really…little.
Or are the little things actually big?
Am in looking in the wrong places,
because someone told a fib?
Are they the wine from last
night I can still taste
on the inside of my cheek?
Perhaps they’re under my pillow?
Oh, wait, that’s the t-shirt
you left here last week.
It was Sunday.
Crashing out my door and into your palms. It was intentional –
you had a coat done up tightly around you
keeping me out and
keeping you safely inside, only just.
Carlton. Young bones rattling around
the pub like loose matches.
You slipped in beside me like a secret,
your blue scarf keeping the words in.
Keeping my face out.
It was Sunday.
You leant against my stool like you needed to.
I couldn’t blame you.
You came to find me as if I had stolen
your tongue and had it in my handbag.
You came to find me like I knew you would,
to hand me your liver,
and your lungs that should know better,
so I took them.
It was Sunday.
I think we’d already decided.
I bought a watch
and your face replaced its face.
Your face: on my white arm
on the third seat back
of this bus.
Your face like an oversized freckle
with plans.
My room is cold and the things
in the roof are jumping in rhythm
with the tick
tick
of your night-time
recital.
Your face: down the
backstreets of
Brunswick, where graffiti leaps
from the walls
with thick sets of Achilles.
Where gutters slip and
buskers quote Chaucer
verbatim.
Click
tick
your face in my arm
like a swelling drip.
All the things you cannot count
are adding up around us.
And all the things you cannot change
have a oneway ticket to my pillowcase.
My pillowcase: the kamikaze.
The warm pancake of a thousand nocturnal
addicts. The night has figured you out. The
beer in your hand has figured you out. Your
bedside lamp is thinking. The moon is watching
you closely and there is nothing you can
do about it. But the moon is sick tomorrow.
The ticket inspector is sick tomorrow.
My shoes called in sick tomorrow and are
hiding in your pillowcase. Your hair is knotting.
Your wrists are swelling and clicking like
metronomes. Don’t expect to dream of angels
dear. I’m back in your bed and I’m back writing
poetry. Kiss me three times and roll over.
Sincerely, Kamikaze.
The potential swelling inside a Saturday morning. Muted at the softness
of your hands. Folding and unfolding and folding again like your mouth.
The oceanic sound of passing cars, each corner taken; a tidal wave outside
the quiet of the room, but gentle. And always obsessed with nothing.
When we turn at the right moment, and a glance crystallizes, all the stillness happens.
All the sky turns white-wash and paints itself chalky against the city.
All the city lurches into a photograph of blacks and greys and blistering blues. You
are always, always, thinking.
And all the Dali paintings in
the world couldn’t explain how
surreal it looks,
to see him bolted to the ground like that.
Shoulders pulled back as tight
as hospital sheets
and his face as white as anthrax.
Everything around me
looks like a children’s picture-book now
and this is how it’s going to be
and this is how it’s going to be seem
until all the Pulitzer’s come back from Hawaii,
with their pens between their lips
and their suitcases bursting like the ocean.
This is how it is, in mourning.
There was a day when you smiled,
with your mouth that had two lips,
two peeled peaches, opening and closing
like the heartbeat of a hotel lobby.
There was a day when you sat perched, quite remarkably,
on a rung of the great wooden ladder,
that stretched upwards, like your arms, to the boardroom of Trinity,
where three wise men sat, and drank red wine very slowly.
There was a moment, quite suddenly,
when you declined their invitation
and stepped down from the slippery-slide to glory
with your hair a dripping mess.
Surely this makes the six o’clock news, I thought
But the novelists had already boarded the plane.
There was a day of endless superlatives,
of Latin and prefix and light.
Half torn now in front of me, the mundane are setting up camp,
so I’ll wait, until the real world that came attached to your hip
calls up its publisher and says, ‘’it’s time, I’m coming home.’’
You threw your whole body at the icy lava
But it spat you out like a cork,
And all the little fish drank champagne
And danced the rumba because
They thought you’d given up
And they thought they had won.
The big green-eyed octopus down there
Skated along the soft ocean floor like messiah
Each day the slimy grin on his face,
That fatty enclave of salty grime,
Grew wider and wider, until the sea
Started to shiver at the thought of its size.
Months passed in the oyster-grey soup
Of the swelling Atlantic Ocean
But every morning you hear the
Broken-backed barnacles whispering your name
Your time is coming my darling, I can feel it
Put your goggles on, it’s time for a change.
Imagine a little switch that
you could just flick
just like that
‘’flick”
and whoever you’re talking
to goes silent
Like a big fat blimp far
far away
Animated
but so silent
As silent as the
night
As silent as grandma’s
Sunday afternoon,
on a quiet week
If I could get that switch
installed,
(giving the handyman a
cold, beer once
he’s done)
I’d use it on you
everytime
when you refuse to
shut the hell
up.
As still as a broken toy
But wired like a landmine
Waiting for something
I just haven’t quite
Figured out yet.
Every night across the
Silk-screen canvas of your brain;
A dazzling watercolour
Of ferocious intensity.
Ten long years of painting
Where all the colours
Smile and wink,
Dance to Moby,
And kiss each other
Hard on the mouth
Like Mulholland Drive paramedics.
You spend the first
twenty minutes of
the party sipping a
warm beer
and reading comics
in the kitchen
In the Solar System
the Sun and celestial
objects are bound to
one another by
gravity
You finally detach yourself
and roam through
the living room,
squinting just a little
bit through the
lingering
smoke
In the Solar System
small bodies such as
comets, dust and
centaurs travel
freely between
regions
You stroll around the
backyard for a while,
kicking abandoned bottles
and exploring the
sad looking vegetable
garden
The area beyond Neptune
is still largely unexplored
It appears to consist of
small planets composed
of rock and ice.
You return to the living
room and walk directly over
to where I’m standing
We nod for a bit to some
alt-rock track I don’t know the
name of then
leave together
immediately
The Sun is the
Solar System’s star
and produces temperatures
great enough to
sustain nuclear
fusion.
Not that there is an alternative, even though there are many
Who’s bittersweetness strikes faster, stays longer;
Not that I need to stay up for him, as hours drip
Into fat puddles of late night tv and limbs that shift
Like a seabed under their blankets. His charm isn’t
Worth sacrificing the house-wine for, initially.
If I help him along a bit, maybe?
Drop a sugar-cube, add some cream or milk.
Give the Atlantic back its icebergs. Yet not that
He’d notice: Curse the lactose intolerant!
There comes a time, when everything warm in
This world, gets lost in the Arctic. There comes a
Time, when the cat by the fire duly notes its place.
And despite knowing this, I drink a little faster;
And I, having tasted what I have tasted
With eyes that have known to stay open,
To the richest and the boldest, I am still a tourist
To be seen in coffee-shops by a clearer lens.
While I am this slow sipper in this
Place of eternal happy-hour: every new mouthful
Is a new land to see.
Kraus! Oh Schnitzler and Toberg;
Come on, oh come home with me.
Blooms like an oil spill
Demolishing the landscape
Of last night’s pizza
Your left cheek and
My chipped fingernail
A fat oscillating sponge
Gone mad at the hands
Of MSG and drunken karaoke.
But at night, the whisperer
Of gentle incantations
Of excellence that you
Don’t need to understand or
Heaven forbid write down.
The chug chug of the one one
Two
Tram
Gets me gets me
Going.
Gets me
Out and about
Gets me
Knowing
How much fun can be had
With $3.60
And an
Eye for the
Thrifty.
The confessional poets of the
fifties and sixties wanted you
to know all about their despondence
and what they thought of the
holocaust.
I’m not really that deep.
I don’t carry a leather satchel full
of international newspapers
and I don’t listen to
talkback radio.
What I can express in words though
is simple and to the point.
I find your utter ambivalence toward me
as irritating as undercooked
chicken.
A fat chunk of moon
Spat out like a sour lolly
Soft and almost lilac
Illuminates the young hands
Silvery, piano-agile, darting
Floating gestures by the light of
The moon
As light and wispy as the yellow
Summer pollen that falls nearby
Unseen
Just another secret in the night
The satisfying ‘thowck’ of snapped metal
Sends a murmur across taut lips
Ricochets from letterbox to fence
To lonely backyard kennel
And back again
They squeeze him through,
The big wooly giant, acquiescent
Prehistoric in size
Silent as a grave
Silent as their worn, highschool sneakers
On the manicured neighborhood pavement
Then out!
Out and shaky into the night
He trots off, absorbed quickly by darkness
But not unheard
As jovial ‘baaaas’ bounce across
A tin and brick suburbia
Leaving late night thinkers perplexed.
Brown paper bags
fat with lunch
crunch inside satchels
and under little feet.
Near the sandpit
with its secret goldmine
of hats and longlost shoes.
Such anticipation
for something so simple,
a red flying fox
and monkeybars
joined at the hip and
looming
tall
ready for use
but when the sun goes down
when skipping ropes
and yoyos scamper home
looming still
and tall
while homeless
dogs quietly
sleep.
I am walking bare foot
Over chalky concrete
Then it happens-
An unexpected downpour
Blogs, millions of them
Pelt down
You’re by the post office
I can see you
Standing there, brooding
Peeling off my soppy jacket
The blogs, frenzied
Drench my shirt underneath
I’m getting closer though
Not far now,
Maybe a football field
But then the clouds smirk
And down plunge the
Social networking sites
Nothing stays dry
They’re loaded, malicious
Each drop a smack on the head
Crisp leaves soak them up
Soak me up
I’m half way to swimming
A few feet ahead of me,
Vague text messages
Hit the pavement like bullets
A few feet ahead of you
A white wall of water hangs
Dancing like a drying sheet
Smacking shards and droplets
Away from my face
I look out, searching
You’re gone, walked inside
Posting something?
In transit
And I’m there
Sewer rat, dripping
Typetitypetype.
It took Plath less than twelve to boil her head.
The skinny clock hand that creeps around so fox-like
Doesn’t care if you made it all the way to the
Platform, just one hair after the last train home
Slips away, slug in a rug, down the chimney tunnel.
And like the cheeky alarm clock that taps its little
Toes all night long, like the fractures that creep
Their way into bingo-playing bones, it’s coming for you.
While your tea turns to a swamp and your cornflakes
Turn to baby vomit in their bowl, it’s coming for you.
So kiss me harder next time, because it’s coming for you
And don’t let your beer go warm like you have done.
Because it’s coming for you, and there’s no way of stopping it.
Sitting alone on a coffee stained couch
The youme contemplates irrelevant things
And raps fingers against a wine glass
Till its sloshy contents near escape
The youme refuses dinner tonight,
No longer needing the things that
Normal people seem to need like
Sleep or regular daily activities
How long a youme could stay indoors
Is anyone’s ridiculous speculation
Days and months could sail past
Before reality becomes a necessity
Books become long lost friends
And films become anxious memories
What could a youme possibly know of time?
Other than that it is deceiving
And when all is said and justly done
Who should care for a youme’s fate
When cars rush by like bloodstreams
And people exchange one another like coins.
Through the lapping,
salty sheets I fell.
Deep and deeper into
the soupy blue-green blood.
Past whispering barnacles,
and seaweed that reached out
with skinny desperate arms
and shredded
legs.
Deeper, even deeper,
under silent coral the
color of brain-matter and rocks
with faces.
It wasn’t cold down there,
among the little aluminum
fish and psychedelic crabs.
It was warm and balmy.
These slippery creatures passed
each other so calmly,
like old, fragile men.
Stopping only to talk about
the weather.
Stopping only to
stop.
Nothing really happened down
there- were you expecting something
to happen?
I threaded my way back up again,
kissed the air, wrung out my hair
and waited for the
serotonin.
As the world rotates he mutters incantations:
Poised (while nearby, people splutter
And mumble) he observes their demonstrations
And flicks a cigarette to the gutter.
Collar stiff, stubbled, alert, he muses
Of lonely nights in brothel-lit bars
Where brave thoughts came to bruises
And sodden heads watched passing cars.
The fire inside him has no destination
Or place to go where fuel is cheaper.
The days are a spoon-fed lamentation
That blur and flex toward their reaper
But life is his game with its daily grind
He paints its tones with his body and mind.
Boy, do you realize how crooked your table is?
When I entered the kitchen, it was the first thing I noticed.
Not the Everest of smoking hot classics
Or the expensive gin, although it did look tempting.
We sat at that landslide-waiting-to-happen for forty minutes
While the cat watched nearby, its glassy eyes diverted
One eye on us and one fixed on the wobbly leg,
Waiting for a downpour of cutlery, tail set and ready to run.
A year later, I bet that poor table is still holding on.
Under salt and pepper, books, red wine and elbows.
Wondering, with all its splinters and tomato sauce stains
How someone so shrewd, could be so damn neglectful.
I like to watch people
As they’re walking down the street
But I never see their faces
Cause’ I’m always looking
At their feet
Our fate was sealed standing there that night
Like macadam, bolted down and tar heavy
Months later my thoughts are still there,
Standing like little urchins outside that same pub,
Sipping ale, wearing moth-eaten black coats and
Smoking charcoal cigarettes while glaring at strangers.
They go back there only on weekends now,
Looking for a sign- my thoughts do,
Looking for a logic-god in a white Mercedes Benz
To pull up by the side of the road and
Tell them to go home, that “it all makes
Sense now”. But you’ve got a spare set of arms
To body- double with and so do I. So for now,
And since I know you don’t read my poems,
How about we just leave this thing in the storeroom.
A fat cram of color in front of us
Screaming like a flat footed baby
For attention. Or worse, appreciation.
You muttering something about
The brush strokes, as if they were
Exotic birds no one had named yet.
And me embracing the smell of oil,
Freshly polished brass, coffee, someone’s
Over-applied day-out perfume,
And the comforting muttering of
Museum voices, pressing their backs
Lightly against walls and pushing off
Again, to rest in softly lit corners,
Beside the gallery attendant, a
Mysterious beekeeper. A wise man.
You had found something on the
Seventh wall, something that itched
And amused in the way only a close-friend
Can. So I walked over to get a closer look.
There it was. A painting of the very gallery
We stood in, one hundred years before us.
So we took it in. Savored the snap-shot
In time. A chrysalis around us for just
A few moments. Until the bell rang
For closing and we left through the
Royal roof-scraping doors.
The mayhem of morning
with its black black shoes
and white white shirts
and extra shot this
and three sugars that
and freshly applied
hairspray- ultra hold
and please move further
down the carriage to
make room for other
passengers, thankyou
really just
stresses
me out so
much that i
want to
commute all
the way
home again,
open the door,
get
inside my
warm bed
and
listen
to
prince.
