dust breathers

Something serious and lovely

in equal parts all over your face

When you say ‘like this’

I’m swallowing guns in my dreams

and driving cars across your

nation of offers are wider than

your eyes \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

let’s keep it unrequited

like confused insects

I’m coming down and you’re starting to

piss me off.

lay in my bed. i dare you

watch light on my face and think of preserving it

you’ll turn it to a paste you can

spread on your sandwiches

while i spread the legs of my lover

we are all taking something

dust breathers

move your finger like an earthworm

through the dirt in my mouth

my arms are straight ahead

of me and my fingers are

Alligator teeth. Interlocking

8:10

12:15

2:45

7:20

3:30

You live in the pit

of my stomach

Every time I think of

you, you tear the walls

down

A Mental List of All My Friends

choose your own adventure

the sun lays in top of me like a body in the morning. sweating, hideously uncomfortable, i’m paralyzed beneath the hot weight.

i set about convincing myself i was about to throw up. nothing turns the mattress into a spring board like impending vomit. i dove off the bed at what was meant to be the last moment, slid into my spot in front of the toilet, and nothing. a pathetic dry heave. an awkward silence. me with the bowl between my knees. staring into last night’s unflushed piss gone iridescent.

remember when i had long hair? how, wet, it would spill over my chest. leaving my t-shirt so awkwardly dampened. now, head shaved and breasts heavy, my t-shirt is soaked at the tits from hunger. the tears are flowing in the next room and i’m drenched. exhausted, nipples gum-chewed into bursting, pitted cherries.

on a bus in 1948. frontline dirt roads. bloodless veins threading Poland. dry and tired. i sat cradling my breasts, enormous and aching to feed your tiny body. i’d left you with my sister that day, tugging on her eternal braid while your hunger pulls my tits to the ground. this was my break from your screaming mouth, gums already promising hard, sharp teeth.

two older women get on, glaring. ‘the young these days’ they crow ‘no respect’ loud under their breath, coveting my seat. the ride is bumping. every pothole threatens to rip my breasts from my body. and all the time they hurl embittered disapproval at me, rolled in the sugary aires of politeness they maintain between themselves. “no, widzi pani, jakie to czasy.” “no tak, moja kochana, tak to jest.”

until i’d had enough. i freed my hands from beneath the heaving mass and let them tear open my blouse in a fit that could not rob me of the dignity i did not have before the switchblade eyes of these dignified hags. i decided to glare back, breasts sopping wet and eyes on fire, tear brimmed.  their embarassed apologies seemed to quiet your hunger, and my blouse dried quietly before i reached Prokocim. as i was getting off the bus a withered woman handed me a button that had popped off my blouse and rolled under her feet. her friend took my vacant seat.

a leg you’re about to lose

i’m lying here trying not to feel like every touch will end me.  inside my skull i keep rereading my notes. i am the dispensable one. hard to do, inside my skull.  hard when, just outside, your fingers are grazing my temples.  i shake you off.  shake my head hard and feel a hangover like whiplash.  feel how hard your face throbs in there.  your face that just lies on that pillow for me to stare at.  your eyes like two fishbowls staring back. a lot of eyes collecting my image. discarding it in seconds.  you can stare at the pretty fish all you like, but it’s nearly impossible to touch one.  but i hunt you like a kitten.  getting my paws wet.  unskillfully.

i fly out of bed and into a frenzy of heading for the party.  your fishbowls gawking.  i’m crouching helplessly over a pool of clothes, fishing out pieces of fabric that have lost their meaning.  my head is swimming and i can’t tell sleeves from stockings.  and i keep talking.

“i want to throw up.”

a pair of longjohns is dislodged.  i teeter.

“my own pulse is about to knock me over.”

i excuse you and lie down huffing.  you declare the need for a cigarette like it’s our last hope.  with cold, professional resignation.  like a surgeon saying ‘we’ll have to amputate.’  but you’d have to step over me to get to the balcony, and somehow you can’t bring yourself to do it.  you collapse over me.  i’m touched.  i touch your hand. you put away the cigarette and hold me tight.  a leg you’re about to lose.

five years old

when i was five i dreamt of our sunny german flat. mainz. my mother, naked, with a platter serving fruit and liquor to my father and his boss. all bearded. beer-bellied. there was something sinister about Peter. the boss. and later that dream i was running towards a prison on a hillside. a dirt road cutting a long winding fairy tale into the  blue-green foaming fields. a dark fortress. and suddenly i’m inside. a tiny body behind thinly spaced bars.

the next day i told her i would marry her. my mother. i said i’d make her my wife one day. i declared my mission plainly, sparing her the details. i was calmer after that, knowing that one day she would be freed from her life of servitude. i, the liberator.

Melancholic Horror c. 2007

He holds the baby that drowned in a bucket dripping and dangling by its broken bucket-handle arm. The children he found in the river make a bloated stack in the corner of the yard. He’ll go to the river mouth tomorrow and stand where the water moves in two directions, salty and sweet, up to the knees and look out into the sea. He’ll wear polarized sunglasses and the glare won’t bother him. He’ll go out waist-deep and deeper. And he’ll look beneath the surface, past the glare that doesn’t bother him. When he sees one with the hem of its nightgown caught under a rock, he’ll reach with his toes and unhook it. When it floats to the top he’ll gently turn its face to the sun, peeling the wet hair from its eyes, letting its heaviness dissolve in the water. He’ll watch the hair swim around the head. It will seem almost formless, like shadow, and it will move like smoke. He’ll push the body with his fingers along the surface. He’ll brace himself for the moment its weight comes back into it from above, striking his forearms an spilling excess in small waterfalls down the white cliffs of the nightgown. He’ll bare it solemnly all the bright walk to the house, but once he reaches the door he’ll let the child slip down between his arms into a sopping pile on the porch. Though, perhaps, anticipating the unbearable thud, he’ll manage to catch its wrist before it hits the ground, probably breaking its arm at the shoulder.

“my ex boyfriend is trying to kill me,” a drama.

i wonder what my problem is today.

there are dogs on my mind. care to give and take. and all i can do to stay afloat is beg. beg for a dream raft to rise out of the water. gushing glory. it will be all slimy drift wood. some crust tooth hero right on top. with a huge cock. and a quiet way. i’ll be on it all morning. makeshift sailing. and no one trying to kill me.

the dream i had. he rode in. teeth like a picket fence. bike between his thighs. i rush to the front door. the house is all glass and hardwood and marble. i’m racing him to the threshold. him out on the street, closing in. me in the fancy house. long hair like a flash of deer startled by the sudden sprint. i don’t make it. he’s up the steps. bike still. still riding. it’s slow motion when i turn sharp. one eighty. my hair wraps around my face in some blonde dream. some cloud. some ocean wave. and he’s got something corrosive in a spray bottle. the plain, stylish kind. sprits your do at the salon. and he’s closing in. he’s cutting me off. he’s spraying me in the face. dream numbness where pain would strike the woken mouth. some makes it down my throat. is my lip swollen? has it been fried right off my face? i can’t tell. i’m running. for my fucking life. he is trying to kill me. daylight now. hillside. popular. when in this charming car, this charming man… he’s a doctor. takes a look at my face. “my ex boyfriend is trying to kill me.”

i wake up with a sore throat.

 

www.equeerie.com

April 2010. a reflection as year three begins. the same steady loss, a bright flame eating up the oxygen that may have fed all other pain.

scuttle down the hall.

cure cure cure.

the sound your miniature feet make dragging mud through the house.

cure cure cure cure cure.

there is none there is none

but you carry more mud on those tiny shoes

like little cakes.

up the stairs and back down thumping

cure. cure.

hard.

you never quite make it to the top.

and i’m up there thinking:

and who will clean up after you

when i’m gone?

 

Nesting

Autumn has been a the most neighbourly season. Tucked shallow into my new ground floor bachelor pad, I’ve learned to trust. Lovers and neighbours, I like to think we’re all looking out for each other. It has been close proximity that has made my heart grow tender and enormous. And, while I’m still working on various portals to babes in faraway lands, this winter is looking stacked. Here’s one for the gaybours.

as{s} promised.

the assholes project is under way. remember art fags, “your asshole’s political.” but {oh girl seriously} this does not mean you need to get analytical. just plain anal, thank you. i am taking a break from art history {to, so, you too} fuck assholes and fuck assholes. so please enjoy these, you aesthetes.