You grimace in your sleep. Beautiful. As I watch you I see rainbows in oil slicks. Eyelashes. Nose hair. My desires have multiplied, they curve and clash like scimitars. Wonderful.
Who are you? Why did you drop into my world like a spider with seven legs beckoning? Why did you push so deep into me, twist me inside out and tatter me senseless? I want to know.
To hell with idealism. It was lost a long time ago. Lent and never returned. Who cares? Who cares and a box of matches.
My eyes argue. They refuse to see the same thing. My tongue is biting. Itself, mostly. My scab is cracking. There’s nothing underneath. I am happy. I am unzipped.
Who are you, stranger? Fly with me. Do you see the valley with the stenciled trees and cardboard people? Dive with me. Do you see the cave-heart crematorium? The bombed-out lovers? Let’s not join them.
There is so much I want to share with you. So much I want to do to you. Shape you. Absorb you. Fold you like a wallet. Life is mongoose and cobra to the death. A nowhere-go-round. A giant pile of hissing love. Rigmarole. Rigor mortis. Whatever.
Circumnavigate. Stay home and bake a cake. A tangle of legs. A black inky cloud. A beak. A head. A mouth that licks without parting its lips. That kills by making you feel alive. What am I talking about? Fireballs. Lassitude. Lackluster lightning bugs. Heaven below earth. Why not?
Books. Stones. Fragments. Pigments. Figments of cloud and I’m slipping. Dirt clods. Hold them, crumble them, mix the airdrops breathe your hands in so mixed up now. Wow.
Sleeping with someone. A tangle of arms. Sweat in the summer. Hand on my back. Skin on my skin. I will never hurt her nor lamb nor fly.
Paralysis. Give up, give in, look away from the edges. We walk jump fall so far. So slow.
Nighttime is awful and thirsty. I’ll follow you though it. In the morning will be water. In the morning will be motion. The ocean. The horizon. Relief. Succor. Vitamin. An opening of eyes. Recognition. A dipsy of ice to dunk ourselves in and a smile.
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“Bombed-out Lovers” inspired the name and lyrics of a track by London-based band Sea Stories. Listen to it on SoundCloud here.
Lost in a State 