他们

The Train (火车)
Han Dong （韩东）

The train came from far away
You were the girl sitting in the carriage
Going far from the city where I was, or coming back
Separated by the dark night

I sat up in bed
Waiting for your return
You asked your parents if you could take the time
It was a long time, and so sweet!

Galvanised by the rolling of the train wheels,
I sometimes longed to speed to you
The wind gusted from far away and, far away, subsided
The fierce whistle turned to gentle smoke
Wafting toward me

When the train came from far away
Because of the distance, it meandered
Because of the night, it sounded sweet
Because of you, I saw the scenery was lovely


（1995）

Tiny Victories

We trudge soft mulch
viscous drops drench your lips-
wet skin tastes metalic.
I crane my neck;
within your tomb I shriek and shudder.

We slept too late.
Afternoon shadow-jumps
with red Mikado flare
on cornbread curtains;
behind your windows was a furnace.

Sly soft black shade
flickered across your chest
emaciated pale-
a barren savanna, and
among your thicket was my hideout.

you can touch me if you want to

this is entirely unrelated, purely cathartic and not for artful purposes. dig?


Coopers Hotel, 7pm.

Writing in a pen with no ink to appear busy, waiting in groups of five seconds, waiting for the rush of air around me and the fluster of material, of clothes and sighs as asses are plonked in seats. I don't, I can't wait the whole five seconds and I move, I fidget and meet the entering gaze. The conversation around the table which we picked with painstaking precision rises and hums, then buzzes painfully, roars and won't stop. My temples are burning, but I forgot to keep on the lookout and now you're already here, and I've waited with bile in my throat and now will you gone.


The women beside our three chairs stare at your pierced ears and long greasy hair and you snarl. I stare at the streetscape on the wall and remember when the red cake shop was discovered by our innocent tongues years ago and realise that the other stares at us both in turn, expectant.


She speaks in cheery false tones and we not but I want to scoff and I mostly want to stab and cry, infantile. I keep thinking how proud I am that we've never become and evolutionary off-cut and how the most forbidden unspeakable things have already happened but I don't care, I just want to be gone. You're both looking at me and sand has drained from my brain into my sinuses and now coats my tongue. Look away, burn away because I am concerned only with the painting behind her head and only it holds my fierce attention.


When I look up I have tears in my eyes and I'm so completely embarrassed but she's used to the dripping from my chin, but he's outraged and expresses the same frustration and hopelessness in the tearing of his voice, the angry high tones which might trade themselves for tears as free as mine if they could, just to try out how it feels to be able to leak like that. I would trade the blotches for anger if I could. People are scared of anger; tears are pathetic.


When I can see again, his hand is on her knee and she's smiling as me and all I see is love but why is his hand there if it's so clear that she needs me and I'm here but I don't have to be. A ring around my heart burns when our eyes meet because he and I are both really just sitting here alone with her and that smile which has made me crazy for six years.

je suis flaneuse

i used to scoff at poems like this. now that i see you tragically in every line, my skin crawls and my instestines squirm. the pathetic tension of the vocal chords and dull pain of the temples. someone knows or has known, or is speaking so quietly, and in terms so vague that i will drag them in beaten and bruised in a bodybag and claim them as those that have been unstrung and thieved from the sinews of my soul, stripped from the empty, sterile hallways of my memory. i will swear at the alter that this poet is screaming understanding into my ears so desperately and with such a psychotic smile of longing to be understood as i have just now, just this very thousandth of a second, that he has turned in his grave and now returns to rest undisturbed for the next thousand years until one more tongue rolls the verbs with the spark of the eye and the crystalline freezing of space and matter on the same word, the same thought which enlightened me. which left me so dumbstruck, which smarted about my ears and stung like frostbite, and which weighted your truth right to the bottom with a soft final thud, where it sits stubbornly inside me and is as real as my hands. To be granted that same rest, as my poet, I'd give a lifetime. while I wait, I'll follow your body to the ends of he earth, as that is all it deserves. can you ever even imagine, have you ever known a body which leaves that poverty in your bones? have you?

-

My friend, thou art good and cautious and wise; nay, thou art perfect -- and I, too, speak with thee wisely and cautiously. And yet I am mad. But I mask my madness. I would be mad alone. My friend, thou art not my friend, but how shall I make thee understand? My path is not thy path, yet together we walk, hand in hand.

-

anyway, i'm looking for a lou andreas-salome. or a maud gonne? even a goddamn nancy will be fine. please, no anna gordy's.

Blades

Everytime I stay up watching past life regression hypnotism videos, I spend the entire next day wondering why. Today is no exception. Being a compulsively lazy person, however, has it's perks. It's no easy feat, let me tell you, to create a universe which revolves on the axis of your hip bones, those which remain under cloth and skin not yet touched, not even a light accidental brush. Although I suspect no accidental thing exists, unless in her realm where fingers, lips and tongues are uninhabited and throwaway half-hearted echoes. The most mundane of shadows, of slips and of swoons send me into the regular hysteria. Oh god, this fall will hurt as no other.

Got It Made

Drawl. Veins. Teeth. Forearms.

How does the emaciated clear my brain of cohesion and replace it with cracked lips and a mouthful of dust.

Open up your throat.

sun.

ah, juicy fruit.