there is yoghurt
dolloped on the vision board,
and thick hand-knitted moments,
patchworked, like bright, crushed
foods on a thali,
and syrup,
and you, of course
everything I want is viscous, including
the stretched tease of emptiness
bang in the middle of my wish,
the vacuum of unread future
discards me right here,
the now moment,
choiceless but to reel me in
so I do not wonder too long
who you are,
what you have been reading,
who you took care of today,
and if you will ever not be
nebulous, like the pigment in my iris,
forming an entrance
but not in it
my days, though,
are wonderful without you
for this, I suggest cloves,
friends who are large within their lives,
ginger, spinning,
a religion
outlined by hip circles and
filled in with afro-latin rhythms,
beetroot,
running middle and ring fingertips
up and down your own leg,
ghee,
staring at the dips in things,
murmuring good morning to god
into the coffee,
cultivating dangerous imagination,
a spreadeagle mind's eye,
eclipsing disbelief
with the steeled anticipation
of dreams fulfilled,
and stewed berries.
I have tumbled down
the brambled slope of backward youth
into giggling capitulation
to my own beauty,
which is a glade in the night,
which is a change in density
the acknowledgement comes in sighs,
puffed-cheeked and at a loss,
like a farmer
shaking her head at the work she loves
but is too tired for,
huffing, rolling up sleeves
before mucking out, devoted
the residue of my shrinking days
back when I was flat,
adhesive to walls and adorations,
what I scratched and flicked off myself
to try to sculpt a spirit
went nowhere,
recirculated as dust,
settled secretly,
thick coat on my pleural fluid,
sickness unnoted for its
constancy
last night the moon was casual,
no explanation offered
by her fullness, she
simply dragged me,
my too-clean sleeve,
in an uphill figure-eight of
remembering:
a man who hoarded the air,
who could not know me as a
something,
who was an instruction;
to gulp and not be
and the way I eroded
and developed techniques
and the way my ideas hunched
and my cares hung their heads
and my voice split like dry wood
and my passions' concussion
the way he blew out the flame of my ethic,
and the selfishness, he called it,
of singing just for me,
and the surveillance
bored into my leisure,
and the vigilance,
chronic and dermal,
and his resentment, a child,
when I didn't want my face touched,
and all the space
there should have been
to swirl, ponder, suffer
in my own home
so
I will not
proclamations sputter from the night
I will not, the words are a blinding headlight
and I'm walking shut-eyed,
I will not, the resolve is trance and my
sobbing is divine fixation
I will not ever again.
be silent at my own gagging,
give up solidity,
leave my impetus to dry
while those who would unperson me
accessorise, salve, parent themselves
with my gaze, which is my heart,
which is for all life and no one
more than any other —
something he will never comprehend
one wrong look at
my shape, my clustering,
the convergent boundary
of my life's odds, and I will
hiss in the tradition of the trees,
from the the base,
from sole and groin,
to the ally decomposers
we will fission a chorus
to scald and trip
whomever dares lick lips
at my limberness,
the carcass of survival method
will sink in peace
goddammit.
go.
trespass yourself
before attempting to cross my
non-size
as far as I can tell I am without circumference,
I am all the distances I ever
stared off into
while you laid bitter nothing
across the household cheek,
add to that
the sum of all daydreams
anyone has ever left a weak ego for
right under its nose
go.
give yourself a few
incarnations
to learn stamina
and tend to your spine
you are glazed over always,
telling me where to place my feet
and love, and I do the opposite,
resembling petulance
gladly, I will look like anything that is
a result of extremest tenderness,
legal or otherwise,
comprehensible or not
so there is yoghurt on the vision board,
and my ribs pressed into someone
whose gaze, which is their whole body,
generates an equal softness
and anarchy to mine
my life is wonderful without them,
I am a squeezing motion,
juice rises to my waist,
being is a slow wade,
slowed further by
floating on my back
and being waded through
by ocean families
one in every twenty blinks
is elongated
to make room for god
who flirts up at me
from poems and my feet
phenomena glide gracefully
past need of explanation,
desire is too engorged
with self-trust
to want justifying
all I have to shrug off
is feigned, faded nonchalance,
everything else, I devour
behind the thin cotton curtain
of my form
and yes, I am quiet
but require quiet of me
and I convulse in
the silent, sudden swell of
magma and tide,
gentle as seen by the birds,
thundering as heard by the crust
I am exactly as I am,
only I will choose
to overwhelm all openings,
to be a good invasion,
and expedite right rot
with tight, kind, destructive
focus
and I will recede
well-raged, well-stroked, well-armed,
with plenty give still, suppler than
should be possible,
having protected myself
on no-one's behalf but
mine,
a word
watching over me.
