The Housewife’s Tale

This will end with
a lifelong addiction to your
prefrontal cortex, vortex of innocence and song,
which I suddenly burst into
while I was reading Prufrock, and
the lines blurred and the letters
started jumping off the pages in a right
frenzy they did.

I had to sit down for a minute
to make the world stop spinning.

(Needless to say.) – (It didn’t.)

The pinheads in the cupboard were screaming
for their puppy love, each
a simile in its own right.

Picture perfect.

They had pierced Prfrck’s vowels
like the colourful butterflies they are.

Singled out: You, oh! You:

Your head, your brain, crushed between
my sympathy and my rough cobbler’s hands.

The year the birds didn’t sleep

The year the birds didn’t sleep
and fences became more invisible with each blink
we got up to stand on holy earth.
Our energy we drew from stars,
our dreams from dew.

We bathed our bare bodies in marigolds
and spent days lying face down, toe on toe, not looking but breathing.
The houses we had occupied only hours earlier
lay in front of our feet
like waxen statuettes waning in windy weather.

Wind couldn’t hold us down.
We would climb on roofs and pick tiles like apples
and stare at dusk and dawn alike,
seeing what grace was.

We prayed to the gods of little things
and instead of folding our hands
we painted our feet
because for the first time
we didn’t want to know better.

About you

You are a grain of salt
between my eyelashes:
when I blink,
you fall.

I am the water
flowing through your veins.
I run through you
like the river Nile,
giver of life
bringer of death.
I can fill you up
and I can drain you
and every two years you crumble
(you think I donʹt know
but I do).
I crush you beneath me
like a good god gone wrong.

You are the shadow beneath my feet:
when I move,
you disappear.

Paradigm Shift

You stand in the kitchen
Your back turned to me
Your skin transparent
Your veins pulspulspulspulspulsating
Your hair so soft it hurts my lips
And you say dinnerʹs ready
And I say Iʹm starving
And I mean it
And you raise your fork to your mouth and give me one of your
Telling smiles
Just before you devour this piece of meat
Your teeth so white and so smooth
Your lips so soft so slender so red
And I say could you pass the salt
And you say yes dear
And you touch my hand with yours
Just before I sink my knife into this piece of flesh
And you say fuck you
And I say go fuck yourself
And I mean it
Oh god I mean it.

Dasein

The question is one of parting.
The answer:
glowing figures in empty hallways
long forgotten words near the waterʹs edge
smiles unimaginably true.

Just today there was a bird
outside my window
that for a second
I mistook for a song I had once heard.
I do not remember the melody
nor, I think, will I ever sing it again.
The next second the flour in my hand
withered
and ‐ a formless, shapeless, bodiless entity ‐
it fell to the ground.

I tried once more.
But it was too late.

Impenetrate me

These are my hands working
their way
up your spine
creating the perfect rhythm of train tracks
one by one by one
perfectly square
fingers feeling bones
pores and sweat and yet
another human puzzle piece
until they crack you open and
{it’s so dark in here}
reveal your pulsating heart
still moving
they wind around this
pile of flesh
entangling encircling clasping.

These are my teeth
on your vocal chords
and they touch and no one
knows their secret
vibrations
as they form your consonants
they creep up your throat
reaching your tongue just
in time
to rip out this mouldy
artefact and
{at dawn}
resile.