chrome.

sonnet xi
pablo neruda

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

a final hit.

Worthless
by Nick Flynn

My fingers
cling to your shoulder blades now
until fucking becomes
an urging, a way to shake you, gently. How

can I tell you I don't feel
safe, when inside
a man holds bars before his face

believing himself into a prison,
when parrots fly from his open mouth
as he tries to speak, repeating worthless,

worthless? I'm trying to love you

but I don't know how, & then
I start to remember we are locked together
& pushing, pushing.

--

"I need one more fucking hit!"

blueski.

no-one must know, judith pordon

You lean to my side
tickling my desires.

Below my clothes
I quiver in infinities.

Others lean towards us.
Do they sense

your exhale is my inhale,
your out, my in?

We sit motionless
but betray ourselves,

glancing around
to see if anyone is looking.

the sun does not yet know it is a star.

(photo by matthew strong.)

the rhythm of legs moving in the sun
the rhythm of an engine deep and throaty
the rhythm of a summer that you walked in
the sound of a barking dog on a loop
a plane rises in the crystal blue
the rhythm of keys swinging in your hand
the rhythm of light comin' out of your fingers—

ninety-three years on.

Wrapped in the chill and silence of June, I find myself aching for long stretches of sunlit concrete and hourless, blurry days and nights. Today is for rain-streaked streets and my too-slim, miserable reflection in glass buildings watching me back from unrelentless grey. I always seem to fold back into myself during the winter.

--

your airplanes
Rachel McKibbens

I.

over breakfast,
my father asks what you see in me.

I bite the inside of my cheek,

shove a forkful of pancakes into my mouth,
notice the salt shaker eyeing my wounds.

II.

you launch "I love yous"
from a Brooklyn fire escape.

they travel 3,000 postcard miles
and collapse into my ear, exhausted.

I pinch their noses,
breathe new life into their lungs,
fold them into airplanes,

send them back to you
and wait.

III.

there isn't a building
taller than two stories
here in Orange County.
not a single fire escape.

no point in jumping.
the worst that could happen
is a broken leg or heart.

this is why the sad kids get
so goddamn creative around here.

the mayor's son rigged his noose
to raise with the garage door
when the Mercedes came home.

a nine-year old leapt into the lion's cage
at Prentice Park Zoo after
her dog was hit by a car.

IV.

on our wedding day,
when I tell you "I do,"

it's because I do.

it's because you understand
how ten-thousand dollar apologies
still keep fathers worthless,

it's because my ribcage expands
every time I think of you,

it's for all the things
you see in me

and pretend
not to notice.

ties.

eating a $5 plate of string hoppers, I think of my father
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

snoozing in front of Seinfeld on the beige on beige recliner
his belly folds after years
of american chop suey, hamburgers and Michelob
Nothing
he really wanted to eat
was ever on the shelves
of Iandolli's or the Big D
I think of that man
who cried three times in my life
once when appamma died
once when our dog died
& once when I sent him
a 99-cent package of tamarind candy
& he called me long distance after Ma went to bed
weeping from tasting tamarind
for the first time in thirty years

the ocean calls us.

© _barb_

maggie and milly and molly and may
e.e. cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

--

Off to Eildon for the weekend. Happy birthday, Calum. See you on the flipside.

in the distance.

I know loving Richard Siken is what all the cool kids are doing right now, but I couldn't resist.

Boot Theory
Richard Siken

A man walks into a bar and says:
Take my wife–please.
So you do.
You take her out into the rain and you fall in love with her
and she leaves you and you’re desolate.
You’re on your back in your undershirt, a broken man
on an ugly bedspread, staring at the water stains
on the ceiling.
And you can hear the man in the apartment above you
taking off his shoes.
You hear the first boot hit the floor and you’re looking up,
you’re waiting
because you thought it would follow, you thought there would be
some logic, perhaps, something to pull it all together
but here we are in the weeds again,
here we are
in the bowels of the thing: your world doesn’t make sense.
And then the second boot falls.
And then a third, a fourth, a fifth.

A man walks into a bar and says:
Take my wife–please.
But you take him instead.
You take him home, and you make him a cheese sandwich,
and you try to get his shoes off, but he kicks you
and he keeps kicking you.
You swallow a bottle of sleeping pills but they don’t work.
Boots continue to fall to the floor
in the apartment above you.
You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened.
Your co-workers ask
if everything’s okay and you tell them
you’re just tired.
And you’re trying to smile. And they’re trying to smile.

A man walks into a bar, you this time, and says:
Make it a double.
A man walks into a bar, you this time, and says:
Walk a mile in my shoes.
A man walks into a convenience store, still you, saying:
I only wanted something simple, something generic…
But the clerk tells you to buy something or get out.
A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river
but then he’s still left
with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away
but then he’s still left with his hands.

origins.

I'm terrible at updating this thing. Have been neglecting writing; moving out, work, friends all conspire against me. Fate is a cruel and harsh mistress!

If you know me, you've probably read this poem before. I'd count it as one of my favourite poems, and it's what the name of this blog is taken from.

The Whisper-Stream, Ian McBryde

No city sleeps. Weeds defeat concrete. The blood
runs and everyone comes from elsewhere, citizenless,

without an address. The midnights pass. Wheels spin,
sleek vehicles peel off just before the lights go green.

Justice weeps for itself, alone at home, wherever that
once was, if ever. Blackness gathers, falling on these

red rooms, this darkened carnival. One will stay, one
hastens away. High-rises wait. Abandoned blocks exhale,

safer places hold their breath. That which heals us also
rips us in half. The cruel bruise, the rack, the broken

back. Scarred shoulders in mirrors. The slaughterhouse
calmness of tired men lunching with their stun guns

on the table. The cave, the castle; there is no difference.
Long splashes of shadow over single women breasting

their children close in cold, lonely kitchens, believing
nothing they are told. Racks of candles reduced to stubs

in untended empty churches where there is nothing left
to confess. Bandages, triage, sirens. The dripping wall.

Everyone in hell wears kevlar. We all are coming back
from nowhere. Regret. Revenge. Truth rules the gutters.

All of us arriving in from nameless, nightshift places.
Blood runs. The messages are banking up. No city sleeps.

a gentle hum.

© edona at deviantart.

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.

'words, wide night' by carol ann duffy.

can be sweet, though incomplete.

and the frames will freeze
see me on all fours—

—it's been a long time.

Another late night, though this time not out wandering the streets of Melbourne. 'Inertia Creeps' is one of the singles off my favourite album ever, Mezzanine by Massive Attack. I recall a review of it describing it not as dark, but light-absorbing, and I think that's just perfect. Tense, volatile, and moody - the band went through some serious internal conflict (which, if you're interested, you can read about here) throughout the making of this album, and it's reflected in the feel of the album. It's the sort of record you need to listen to with good headphones - with heavy bass, of course - in a darkened room, at two in the morning to really get into. Do yourself a favour: acquire a copy and follow my instructions. Maybe go for a walk in the evening and plug yourself into it. Lose yourself. You will not regret this.

a change in pace.

© dyspeptic at deviantart.

I bring you: Bloc Party lyrics. (Stop looking at me like that.) While I'm not usually into this sort of indie-hipster music, it's undeniably well-written and goddamn, is it good to dance to or what.

i was sitting on the roof of my house
with a shotgun and a six-pack of beers
(six-pack of beers, six-pack of beers)

the newscaster says the enemy's among us
as bombs explode on the 30 bus
kill your middle-class indecision:
now is not the time for liberal thought

so i go hunting for witches
i go hunting for witches
heads are going to roll
i go hunting for—

in the nineties
optimistic as a teen
now it's terror
airplanes crash into towers

the daily mail says the enemy's among us
taking our women and taking our jobs
the reasonable fool is being drowned out
by the non-stop baying baying baying for blood

so i go hunting for witches
i go hunting for witches
heads are going to roll

i was an ordinary man with ordinary desire
i watched tv, it informed me
i was an ordinary man with ordinary desire
there must be accountability

disparate and misinformed:
fear will keep us all in place.

Singer and lyricist Kele Okereke on 'Hunting for Witches':

"The 30 bus in Hackney, which is just around the corner from where I live, was blown up. [That song was] written when I was just observing the reactions of the mainstream press in [the UK] and I was just amazed at how easy it’d been to whip them up into a fury. … I guess the point about the song for me is post-September 11th, the media has really traded on fear and the use of fear in controlling people."

So I'm in a little bit of awe with how sharp and insightful this track is. Opening with a haze of disjointed voices and white noise, as if one is shuffling through radio stations, receiving a mess of static instead of information. The lyrics have an almost absurd quality to them: "sitting on the roof of my house / with a shotgun and six-pack of beers", and the references to witches. And yet there's an element of reality about it: we've gone "hunting for witches" in a way that mirrors the witchhunts in Salem such a long time ago - demonising the Middle East, stirring up panic and hysteria and fear, lapping up the lies and spin fed to us by politicians and the media. And that bomb on the bus really did go off, those planes crashed into the Twin Towers. Nightmare and reality: it's as if they're becoming almost indistinguishable from each other.

I'll go to bed now.