this is how I used to be –
writing in longhand, being present only because I wasn’t absent,
wishing for remission, not quite getting there.
it reminds me of the time I tasted your tin in winter.
the time I hated you like a cold bullet,
lodged in the head of an ill person.
this is how I am –
seething in icicles, frozen syllables,
all that you have dabbled in your slag
and looped over me, like tinsel, or slugs,
or slopping vomit on citystreets. sick
I am, of your greasy housebeats.
this is how I used to be –
screaming touching tasting
ceaseless as quaffing wine. god fuck your stillness,
lazy blood like dark fruit, and your excuses.
your excuses! cheap as your thinnest vodka,
am I supposed to nod and exit, like an actress?
who, on closing night, does not accept her wage,
but vanishes, westward, and dissolves?
this is how I am – topped with films
I play back on my way to work, now,
as the train churns through the snow.
I cannot kill you, though it is fashionable.
this is how I see it –
you are what I’m not,
our air is two-sided, we are
diplocardiac.
you lay in the quiet, drinking, spewing perhaps.
I stand in the cold, and wait for you to need me.
