ode to a monster

cold, white

i learn the very details

of the roof

the walls

while you take pictures of my insides

where everything looks okay.

Little Red continued.

WHOSE BEEN SLEEPING IN MY BEDsaid the wolf 'it's a reference' he chuckled. 'Get it'
Red's shaking.
No one no one.
'not us' said the wolf followed by
'ha' and then
'ha'
not me i've been up all night with my eyes nailed through the ceiling i've forgotten how to count
count back from one hundred
i've forgotten how to count
count to ten
breathe
and
'i thought you liked it when i dressed up in woman's clothes, it made you feel safe to pretend'so WHOSE BEEN SLEEPING IN MY BED?

i guess i'll walk these streets
shaking
my fingers boring holes in my wrists
i hold my rage so tight.
and that clipclopclip
of my heels isn't followed by
a menacing echo,
it's the beat to my march.
i guess i'll walk these streets
with my eyes wide open
because i like to look around,
i like to look you in the eye
when you offer your advice
when i spit in your direction
that
i deserve to Be Safe
not Keep Safe.
i guess i'll hope you'll understand that
if i need your help
i really need it
and i need you ears
and not your eyes
and not your hand.
i guess i'll walk these streets
screaming, singing,
hear us.

i get smaller. i fashion a small boat from your smallest nail. stroke stroke stroke my head (i'm nervous) my thigh (i jump) stroke stroke stroke you exhale and the river drowns me.

THE CAT: I'd love to do something I really would. It's just such a shame, but I can't because I'm just a cat. THE BIRD: You have to do something. THE CAT: But I'm just a cat.

we meet our hero in an abandoned cattle-ranch in the middle of the big smoke wearing glasses that cover her forehead and devouring a vegetable pastie. she's got a cape that reaches the water-tangled miles away is a small child caught in the net of her cape drowning as they drag through the water, the rocks, the sand. Grit in their teeth, their eyeballs. hero has one person to save, a helluvalotofpaperwork.

i said i am very clever and i have accomplished many things head in a toilet bowl/the base of a tree/a garbage bin a wretch HERE. take this watering can. one day i will produce a flower you can live by, or these are the goals, or this is what must spill from the mouth of the can that feeds me. follow me, i have a loud voice i have many opinions (i mostly tell to you. i often feel i wait for my words to repeat out of someone else's mouth.) i will come storming in on horseback and take all the land and all the sea and we will live like kings.

this is wrote for you.

she walks in to the room with practised sass holding her heart in an outstretched hand. "what can you promise me?" he asks. she walks in to the room with every gift she's ever grown: throws a well developed and never thought of mixture of petals and ash and stars and howls to the ground. "what can you promise me?" he asks. she takes off her clothes, her skin, her hair. drains herself. "what can you promise me?" he huddles at her feet licking his wounds and shakes as the room fills with words repeated over and over again made in eternal filling up space their future building skyscrapes with no views with out understanding maths and the square metres of that wordeverything everything everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING everything everything everything EVERYTHING.

mutton birds.

In the beginning the moon was attached to the land. We made promises to the moon and stole glances with the sun. The moon grew jealous. The moon wanted to be a star. He went to singing lessons and deportment classes and didn't spend enough time with the earth. We said we were busy anyway. We withdrew. He didn't feel seen, or loved or needed. He said he needed space. He escaped. And lived to echo the sun. We betrayed the moon. We let him fall. Then we built walls around our cities, our hearts, we started eating each other, we waited for civilisation to come bounding through and destroy everything. He sent postcards “Wish you were here, the view of 'whatever exotic place' is breathtaking" ergo I can't breathe with out you. "I wave to you from time to time." as if we didn't notice the moon in full swing every month, probably with a smug expression, though maybe crying, if only we could see that far. We invented telescopes and spied on the one we still loved. We tied all the balloons in all the world together and started to fly. Let's wake at sunrise, born from our history, heartbreak, the memory of indifference. Let's rise in to the blue, defy the sun, chase, capture, hold. Bring him back to our chests complaining of tired arms and meaning 'I'm sorry.'

you throw
glass at your feet,
and admire the way
the light catches
yours shadows

//
this is how you see yourself
i think //

the house is quickly running out
of lightbulbs
i picture you living
in one of the broken ones
as it bursts
you bellow
from the place between your hips
where feelings go
and suffer infection

(i once had thrush for 6 months
and stabbing pains on the inside
the doctors said
there was nothing wrong
and prescribed anti depressants
to help the thrush
they hadn't found)

and you're Screaming
so low the room shakes
and the glass just BLOWS
with you inside.

and you're laughing
and say 'this reminds me of that time and so on and so forth and such and such'
that thing that you laugh at that makes me cry.

and you step on the glass
you Crush
and complain

that someone broke your home.

the size of a thumbnail,
foolish,
with one arm flailing
help me won't you

i built a spaceship

/glass, spit, twine/

it's a two-seater
but room for extension

/one dog, one cat, no ponies/

plenty of water
and cold air,
piled blankets to the ceiling
and
SPACE

i put glow-in-the-dark stars
on the glass roof

we can see the stars
and the stars
can see us

the stars can see

i over react
put newspaper under the glass
with sticky-tape
like
a sweat shop
in the centre of the city

you can't hear

i just spilt boiling water on my mouth.

it burns.

something to focus on, i am running.

i am sitting on the golden couch in my not-lounge-room-not-kitchen-not-anything designated couch area of my not-home-house.

i make pasta, i burn my mouth tasting the pasta. i spill boiling water on my mouth. my lips must be huge. i'm beautiful, i'm thin, i have massive lips with out the complication of surgery or injections.

i can't eat. i am running. BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOMmy heart is BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOMmy heart is BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOMmy heart is LOUD and FAST it is streets ahead. i am frozen.

[hunter was right, of course when he said]
i am afraid.

spoken word@midsumma.

I also read this:

like a game of sardines
i fold in to your decline
stretching my fingers
over any flesh
i can find and claim
as some wary explorer
with a tiny flag 'i was here!' 'i discovered this!'

(we were both shaking,
or that is how i will remember:
damp foreheads
skin roaming skin
bodies weeping.)

in these small moments i try
to memorise everything
i venture,
taking frantic notes
of scars, angles, textures-
love measured in your very form,
life measured in these little journeys.

i will say
"i have travelled over mountains, sea
to meet you,
my most beautiful adventure."

spoken word@midsumma.

I read this if front of people, then felt embarrased (stuff stolen from previous posts and made better or worse)....:

In the beginning there was God, or King Kong
depending on who you spoke to.

In the beginning there was God AND King Kong
sharing a pokey bed-sit above a shop in the Nevada desert.

They both agreed it was a nice enough place for the first apartment even though
King never kept the place tidy and God was always a few days late with his rent.

They were, for the most part happy.

In the beginning
there was a man who carved lovers from his bones.

In the beginning there was a chicken And an egg.

There was a single flower.

There was a seed.

In the beginning there was no land,
no sea.

Or,
there was sea
but no land.

There was still.

There was a single star.

There was sky.

There was a wish.

They chase each other around places of whimsy;
an old playground
carving each other in to grey bark;
they play games of cat and mouse
learnt from old copies of cosmo
make sweeping statements
that stain the air.

They fill breaths with lists:
these are the words that rush from our mouths with out sense,
planning impractical
infinite beauty.

They draw maps
of each other
and eat them
devouring each road
hoping it will latch on to a tonsil
a nerve
as a fashionable disease-

the kind that threatens to kill but rarely succeeds.


Somewhere
in the middle -
an argument of dishes
and depths of love
God screaming “Need me”.
King Kong
(with a hate of confrontation)
wetting himself,
stickying
the apricot
coloured tiles

thinking

[thank 'whoever' we never got that
shag carpet
laid out
there'd been disagreements
all round

these are the moments
to rejoice in]

saying

“we're out of milk”
sobbing in to the damp floor.

God leaves
with a grunt,
skulks to the end
of the block-
as small as he knows how.

King pictures
running to the rescue
scooping him
in to his arms
and kissing him tenderly
on the mouth
to a close.

He whispers.

"There is no blame.
There is no regret.
I have loved every moment."

He cleans up his mess.

They share
chaos
They learn
They stumble
They learn again.

They hold on.

At the end,
they huddle together
hands sunk in someone else's
pockets
shivering
beneath patchworks
they'd stitched
along the way.

one's eyelid sagged
and drooped
and dropped to close.

'if this is The End' they say
'i don't want to see it.'

They hold on.

The last star fades
soon the sky
only lingers of
black.

The two sit
hand in hand
in heart
and stare
in to the dark.

ME: What are you made of?

SOLDIER1: We don't ask questions like that here.

SOLDIER2: We keep

BOTH: still

SOLDIER: We keep.

Quietly, I walk to you.

I undress you.

YOU: The lights.

ME: That's what you're made of.

You shake your head.

YOU: The lights. I can't bare/

ME: /you're bare.

a long pause, a cough, the soldiers fuck in a dark corner.

YOU: I'm made of flesh, bones, guts, blood.

ME: You're made of laughter, strength, adventure.

YOU: Sadness, insecurities.

ME: Beauty.

YOU: So we agree to disagree?

ME: We agree...what do you say when we are in bed together? You lie above my body and I can feel your breath blowing in my hair. And you kiss my forehead and say "look at you".

YOU: Look at you.

ME: And I say I can't, I don't have a mirror.

YOU: You wouldn't see what I saw anyway.

ME: No, I wouldn't.

THE SOLDIERS (breaking rhythm): Look at you.

For Hunter

things i see when i look at you:

THE BEAR THAT HAS MY HEART.

"Little Red" Part One

the beginning of a new story...

“Little Red” he called her at the beginning, although as time passed he simply called her “Red”. Red like her lips when she bit them, her cape, and the colour she tinted when he said her name. He had courted her gently at first, showing up at the house from time to time with small gifts. His hair slicked back, his beard trimmed, that grey suit she loved freshly pressed. He left the gifts on her window sill outside her bedroom; apples, berries, cigarettes she had to hide from her mother, fake flowers dipped in LSD “to show you the world off the path you follow”. She felt dizzy when she thought of him.

They moved in to a studio apartment at the top of a high rise building. Her mother had found the cigarettes and accused her of being a junkie: his arms were strong and he held her to his chest late at night when she thought she was dying. He bathed her with a sponge that looked like a flower from the woods near her grandmothers house. She'd stopped visiting her family. Her grandma was old and dull and he said “She's bad for you. She won't let you be free.” Sometimes she still baked scones and biscuits and thought about sending them in the post but they never had money for stamps and he almost always caught her, “These are for you” she'd whimper “I made them for you of course.”

Red like the blood on her cheeks, the colour of his eyes mid-argument, her fear, her loneliness.
“I only need you” she echoed when he threatened to leave her and send her home to her mother. Her words reverberated through to the tip of her little red hood.

His beard had grown long and unruly, and scratched her leaving a rash when he made love to her. When she looked at him she saw glaring eyes and sharp teeth. “My,” she said with a sigh. “What big teeth you have.” He laughed. “All the better to eat you with.” The laugh roared around their apartment and she felt his teeth on her neck and hand creep across the small of her back. Fingernails felt like claws. “OUCH!” She said. He apologised and kissed her softly on her forehead.
“I was only trying to- I just wanted to make you feel good.”

A long pause that ends with an awkward cough and a kiss. She leaves the room.

This man.
This man.
I think he moves earth
when he speaks
leaves indents
with a sigh

(tonight, i am that anti-love the world cries over/i've seen that movie it ends in rom-com disaster we read The Book- or i didn't i was busy that night- i imagine- that Devil character screws things up, but She probably means well, she is probably flawed, Ugly, she probably doesn't know everything even if she pretends to with a nervous, vain, smile.)

I think his hurt
envelops me
with a rough tounge (ha ha ha)
edges me shut.

This man.
This man
holds me
[i am a pinprick
in your giant palm]
set to throw
or crush,
but nay, he holds me
tender.
These are the palms
of a man
i see as
a God.

This man.
This man

i Love.

i think 'you hate yourself' and i shake my head or i shake it on the inside and fight every urge not to shake You/fight you/claw at your eyes/your opinions- reason with you.
in there where i am not tight lipped i lift you up (inside my head with the shaking, i am very, very strong and you are a feather) and take you in to a mirrored room, the ceilings, the floor, the walls glaring at you so i forget which you i touch.
i point "see this. this i love. this is beautiful." i say, "in my hands i hold a pot of paint. i will make a mark on each part i am completely taken by, on each bit of you i adore and lust for." i whisper "on each part i would eat, if i could." i pick up the paint brush and draw an x where your heart lies. i pour the paint over your body. the room fills with paint : you are covered completely i can barely find you under all of it, and you can't see because the paint is clogging up your eyeballs and you can't breathe because it is filling up your mouth your lungs. "These are the parts i love." I say but you can not hear me, your ears have filled with the paint and your insides are revolting as the paint intertwines with your blood.

CENTAUR THEORY

He lived in the forest at the back of an urban nightmare, streets ahead were lost in smog and noise BEEP BEEP Get Off BEEP! the road you BEEP lunatic? Gotta dollar? FAGGOT BEEP! BEEP! SCrreeeEEEEECH. This, a city of suits and scum girls in red with blackened eyes and voices like claws. He lived in the forest where it was quiet and simple and he could hide from the stares that coloured him bruised and silent.

He lived in a small hut he'd fashioned from loose bark and hair from his tail and fallen trees he liked to imagine with some poetic license were oak (not knowing the difference between any sort of trees at all). "WHAT ARE YOU?" The crowds had jeered. "What is it?" a small child had said in a stage whisper, clinging to their mother's skirt. And he had cried. He cried every morning when he brushed his teeth, as he had his shower as he ate his breakfast, right up until lunch time when he would have a small break and make a cup of tea using the water from his tears. Then he would cry in the afternoon, the evening, and he would try to dry his eyes on the pillow as he lay his tired, damp head to sleep. Soon he had created a moat around his hut which threatened daily to overflow and collapse with the amount of water gushing daily through it. He built a beautiful water feature which he cried in to and sometimes he stopped crying when he realised he was thankful noone was here to see him like this, or see him at all, even if he did wish someone could see the lovely water feature he had built with his own two hands and a little help from his two hooves. "I'm a centaur." He sobbed.
"No." He looked at his reflection in the water that surrounded him. "I'm a man."

One day a young girl had ran from the noise of the streets through the glaring buildings and the black white grey red of the people that filled them and stumbled across his little hut. "What strange water!" She remarked to herself. "It looks so sad. But how can it be?" It pained her to look to the water but she compelled herself to continue towards the centaur's house. She took off her shoes, and her socks, and set about to wade through the moat. It was then she saw the centaur huddled over his water feature, tears streaming down his face. "You will be walking through my tears." He said.
"Yes." She stopped. "But so can you." The centaur shook his head.
"Why are you so sad?" She asked. "You have a beautiful house, peace and quiet and such lovely surrounds! Not to mention fresh running water. After all, there's water restrictions back in the city. But, I do wish you weren't so sad. What is the matter?" The Centaur crossed the moat, and lifted the young girl off the ground and on to his back and crossed back through the water.
"I am a man. But I have been born with this body."
"You are the most beautiful being I have ever seen." (The girl didn't reveal that she had always wanted a pony, feeling this might be seen as a bit insensitive.)
"I fled the city after many years of torment."
"But you are still tormented. Why? Because of who you are?"
The centaur nodded sadly.
"But you are More than a man. You are a masterful water feature maker, and I'm sure you have other skills and attributes besides that. And I bet you have a really swell smile."
The corners of the centaur's mouth began to creep in to the beginnings of a smile.
The young girl thought.
"I think, you are very lucky. I don't know much about centaurs but I do know you are very, very special. You understand life in a different way than those that are just 'man'. Besides which, most men I know are yukky."
"But I am a man."
"Oh yes, I know that. And so much more. And not because of your body, although that is beautiful and perfect in it's own way. Your body folds differently than others and it has seen and experienced things that no other body has experienced. These hooves have walked you through your life. But it is not just this that makes you beautiful. It is all the other things that make you you. These are the things that make you man, centaur, spirit."
The centaur began to weep again, but this time it was through happiness.
"You are right." He conceded, and he looked in to the water and managed a smile. "I'm a man. That I know. And I'm a centaur. And I'm me."
"And," the young girl said with a cheeky grin "you're beautiful." and she kissed him on his reddening cheeks.

He said 'of course you can eat me sweetheart' she swallowed her salivation, kissed him with a gently opened mouth. my what big teeth...the thought echoed from her throat, her teeth glinting in his light and she swallowed him whole.

(Only i wouldn't- I would savour every morsel, chew 100 times a bite so I would never have my full of you.)

a birthday card for my brother OR too many fairytales.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOBI!

Once apon a time there was a prince. He wasn't really a prince, but one day he would be King. He was a child of Big Ideas (Big a warm and loving father, and Ideas a clever and generous mother). One day the prince encountered an evil witch who went by the name of Life. Now Life was capable of being many things, and came in many unexpected forms. Life came as crying lovers, educational endeavours and once as a strange family meeting with a therapist. Sometimes Life made the prince's sister vicious and downright mean and sometimes Life twisted the prince's own self and made him withdrawn and sullen. But where there is bad there is good, and where there was an evil witch there was a good witch called Dreams. The prince soon learnt to follow his Dreams (he felt quite possessive of this witch and referred to her as such) and although sometimes Life got in the way he knew his Dreams would get him somewhere wonderful. With Dreams he made strangers laugh, he made friends shine and grow and flourish, he made the whole village appreciate art and words and the magic of being human. He built worlds. And in many ways the worlds had built him.

The prince was now 27 years old, and with some help from Dreams, Big Ideas, and even a little from Life, he had become a King.

(at least in the eyes of his little sister.)

shit shit watery brown black red tar shit shit hard shit blood shit vomit shit.
my life coiled around the toilet bowl.
and the doctor will say 'there is nothing wrong with you' and dizzy from dehydration, blood loss, the exhaustion of this all i will smear shit all over their smug face.

"We're out of milk" King sobbed in to the floor, praying (to Whoever) God hadn't listened when he'd suggested shag carpet in the kitchen earlier that year. There'd been disagreements all round over tile colours but at this moment he rejoiced in apricot. God took the hint, grunted, and left.
He walked to the end of the block, made himself as small as he knew how and wished he knew who to pray to.
"If this is my world...if we created this-
then I have no one to blame."

King pictured himself running down the street to God, scooping him in to his arms and kissing him tenderly on the mouth.
"There is no blame. There is no regret. I have loved every moment."
He fetched the mop from the tiny cupboard in the bathroom and cleaned up his mess.

Somewhere in the middle God and King Kong had an argument over dishes, God screaming "NEED ME." King hated confrontation and promptly wet himself, stickying the apricot coloured tiles.