All the ink
that covers my body
are all the stories
I could never tell.
Secrets I've always kept,
every confession I've never made.
Tons of memories
made into drawings on my body.
Things that have scarred me so much
will literally stay with me forever.
All the things that have hit me so hard,
are now visible.
You look at me,
and judge you might,
but I'm covered
with the stories of my life.
I like to think of relationships
as candy.
Sometimes you have candies that
look the same
or taste the same
or just don't last long:
Other times you have huge jaw-breakers
that numb you with each lick,
and last a while,
but they don't last forever
like the package says they will.
Water drops down
On to the hard ground
And as tough as the ground might be
It still allows something as soft as water
Come through
"You gotta learn to hide the anger
Practice fake smiles in the mirror
It's like a mask."
And once you learn
To fake the best smile,
Laugh like you mean it,
Even if you're dying inside;
People will begin to fall
Under the illusion
That everyone is happy,
And nothing is wrong.
But if you let your guard down,
Your walls will fall too.
So will that smile
Everyone thought was true.
So keep up your walls
and I wonder,
in what language
am I supposed
to express this
passage?
(what is the pre-position
needed for this question?)
because if we
use lower letters
except of course
for the first person,
is it because we dread
magnitudes, the
grand eloquence of
conquerors and pirates?
it goes without saying
Computers used to be rooms
where you could walk into.
Now they are little boxes
that get into you.
You used to go to them.
Now they come with us.
Something hasn’t changed:
we still live in them.
My personal computer
is an intimate machine.
It goes to sleep with me.
If you could see into my hard drive
you would find him I think I am.
What strikes us
is the stillness.
It’s a common place:
“above us only sky.”
The beach just keeps on going:
the sand shows the traces
of a kid who scribbled “Poo!”
inside playful speech balloons
again, and again, and again.
You have to stand there
to understand.
The men are stilll
with their feet buried,
they can’t smell but
in the distance lookalikes
copy them with tripods and lenses
There is no thing
as total stillness
sound is movement
then the wind
there are clouds
behind the sunshine
I sit in a corner
and count the pebbles
the shade under a tree
the leaves dance
imperceptibly
A cut-out frame
opens up the microscopic
universe to the point
of bacteria and then
it’s all about the flow of oxygen
coffee-grinding time,
drop after drop
dilluted into a black spot.
Why would anyone
use paper scissors
to slit open an old page:
a moist yellowed paperback,
unread, like the ocean
of hair at the end
of a long day at the barber’s shop.
It’s all about the square
We come from the stone age:
the magic happens here.
It is medicine,
nutrients, seed,
sauce
cornerstone
sediment of history
the centre
holds
heavy
cold, totemic-
it is everything
multiple
make, serve,
be.
Basalt
We come back
to ourselves
again
and again
and again and
again
we know it
as kids,
remember
it as adults
then come
back
up and down
the thread
hangs.
Some took it
The question these mornings of birdsong
to wear a mask or not
working from home:
intimacy inside out
like a glove
after this- will we all go back
without pretending
there’s no life back home
the commute as space travel
the atmosphere of the real left behind
no crying children, no flushing toilets,
no hammering next door
no washing up, no clothes drying
will we keep using virtual backgrounds
last year’s hols behind the blue screen
of yet another online meeting,