Letter to The Underground

Earth, I got your message – a downfall,
your sap, bitter in my throat,
the clear song of your cruelty.
I expect no miracle,
I came only to kiss the dirt.
You dressed me in white cotton
and carmine lipstick
filled my mouth with words unknown.
Named me yes. Called me yes.
Sexualized me, like death
or spring,
untill I lay in the sun
dissolving ‘love’ into ‘lust’.

Now let me tell you about the drunkenness.
I ended drunk on your blue-misted nights,
drunk on nicotine-colored dawns
and prayers diluted in air,
drunk on the grey call of city birds.
Beasts, here, make sounds we can’t utter
only when children die,
only in asylums.
Music plays for what does not exist
or whatever is trying to.
Every interior is red.
No desire untrue.

I left my body in the hands of time
saw it bloom under cherry trees,
found it naked in bathtubs a tint too red,
what remained of light
caught into thin blades.
Earth, I chewed your flanks
the day I felt utterly emptied,
lying down with my fingers inside you,
you inside me.
I tasted the ground,
the real ground-thing.
Love surged out of it
like a white bulb,
I rubbed it in the sun,
– there was nothing else to see.

He,
he came with daybreak
from the East,
hips swaying, lips like wine,
when I think of it
he must have been the man.
We stayed in your grip
among dirty glasses and ashtrays,
an unmade bed for only home,
we dreamt you’d leave us there,
uncombed.
Earth, I expect no miracle,
what happens here happens
in a shot.
In your veins, I know,
there is enough fire to kill us both.

So let me sit here
with bare things,
this coffee cup, this table,
this lighter, things
in themselves.
Being his,
life fluttering
between my thighs.

Publication / The Deep Water Literary Journal

The Deep Water Literary Journal selected a poem I wrote in the memory of Jana, an eight months pregnant Croatian girl mentioned in the Trešnjevka Women’s Group report “Women and War”, for the winter edition 2014.
I spent months in Bosnia at the beginning of the war, and feel in many ways attached to this region of the world. So this publication is a real joy for me.
You can read the poem here :
http://www.deepwaterliterary.com/#/poetry-jana-14-1/4582528064

Chalk dust

– for Thierry.

Here you are, back from gender traps
back from stereotyped edens
with Adam’s broken rib and an old viper
calling at night for no reason.
You fix your chin on your fists,
and watch days volatilize as gasoline.
There’s no sky here,
just Brighton Pier’s countless bones
in blue backlight.
The wind is gone, birds anchored.
The sun keeps touching the boy
who never kissed darker lips than yours,
but he never returns
– that yellow eye
only warms the stone.
No need for another What is wrong.
What went wrong. What the hell.
You shake the dust off your feet
and locate home inside your elbow,
in a vein full of crystals.
Such a perfect exile.
No geography, no maps,
no roads, no bridges
to cross anymore.
Music floats in your arteries,
silted with violet and silver sparks
showing the way,
whispering your name, your name.
No one knows if you will come back.
Where you live, letters never arrive.
I listen to your voice at dawn,
your new language is unknown.
In the sand I lie with the loss of you,
I repeat these words you said,
about sad sex, gay porn and guilt
like a ditty.
Some days your laugh comes
to me, unchanged.
The stars get closer,
clear flashes of proud light,
roofs glitter, without shadows.
Brighton Pier’s skeleton has a golden heart,
a queer fish, beating fast in your chest.
I see it every night,
flickering on my cigarette
red, electric,
spilling its burning flesh.
Life swings here, impatient,
waiting for a puff.