In the great big house with wooden panels and high mirrors,
Old people are talking low, nurturing a life that is not mine.
Sunday is falling smugly over the young couples and scrawny babies
Queuing up for ice cream after a perfect day in the park.
The life I want is running through me like a sick river,
Making my skin twitch as I speak to a snotty grandmother.
I wanted to please you but you like sweet drunken girls,
Running around, leaving a trail of belongings,
Eyes to the heavens as the night passes by.
I didn't look crazy or sweetly drunk. I looked strong and decided.
It's what I want to be most of the time, keeping the furious whirlpool
Quiet beyond my eyes.
Are you in love? She said in my ears, her dark curls covering my eyes
And I answered: he doesn't love me
And I saw my eyes in her gold brown eyes
The sky kept changing as the clouds pressed rain down
Or separated like pulpy jellyfish,
Allowing the sun through to my cheeks.
And it matched the air in my lungs and the space
In my heart as it relaxed into friendship or tensed into desire
As I watched you walking towards me,
Cautious of the equilibrium that hung like thin ice,
Guarding the possibility of your long limbs against mine
From the surrounding shatter.
I felt very normal, because you were looking at me this way.
Apologising for the serpentine evening and centrifugal plans
Outlined drunkenly on the telephone as I sat strumming the guitar
On your soft bed,
Wondering about the computers under the light blue covers,
But mostly
Coming back to the red lamp shedding too strong a light
For the liquid kiss I wanted to put on your lips.
He said water and I said water,
But he took the early evening because I took the morning
And when I swam in the aluminium pool I held my breath,
And in the liquid silence I stared at the sky confusing the surface
And thought of him.
We were sitting in the courtyard under the much brighter stars.
Alcohol had left you like a light fog lifts and you were staring
At the blond girls, thinking of Paris and your home
And someone in your bed,
Calling for drinks to get mashed until early morning
And it all started again,
But different.
I think I know what you are looking for.
To make a cut in the surface of the quotidian
That will let life slide in.
You look for it like that, through hunger and un-owned flats,
Fish heads and the warmth of your best friend's body
On a narrow mattress on the floor,
Alcohol until the morning and endless playing on a battered guitar.
But then there are the sweet drunken girls,
Harpooned and dotting your bed like moths,
Vanishing in the mornings with hazy eyes and the hopes of a boyfriend.
There's the shiny computer squaring the room categorically,
And the unfinished songs as many attempts to slice
Into the sweltering heart of life
That ricochete and retreat meekly just as they graze the surface.
Back to the warmth of the sun and the sweet drunken girls
Like restless birds.
Are you in love?
He doesn't love me but he cut through my surface like the skin of a
Fish and exposed my humid heart and its raucous daydreams that
Walk my mind miles while the sun draws shadows of trees on my
Naked skin.
Swimming deep into the airless waters of my mind.
The fish we would catch.