pot of gold, poisoned apple, beanstalk.
an unread message.

how this kiss
feels like the first.

the birth of a stickman.
how we begin.

the line of an axis, where you and I
intersect at the point of origin.

a candle in a cupcake.
a signature signal to leave some party

and discover the favourite number
of our clumsy limbs.

your island on my speed dial.
365, 24, 60,

the crocodile has time in its belly
but it’s aching to bite.

your name is ticking in my throat
to a phone call I wait for every night.

you find a costume
for your sticky
skin, for
the club and last light to travel in
your eyes, red like
lasers for the camera
love in those
explosions, of people
colour laughter hot white
flashes and rainbow lights, love in
tangles of sweat and hair
you’re laughing all over, sometimes
you forget to smile in a picture
you’re drunk on everything, or just not sober
maybe you don’t
remember how you get
home.
someone is next to you, sleep
twitching. and you wonder about
love like that in everyone, tired
but still dancing.

I don’t blame you. That girl was made for hope.

A cruel gift unleashed on the impatient. She turns her head to you with the velocity one only gets from being romanticized by a million fools a minute. She doesn’t run. No one can catch her. So you decide to try. You give her your number. Wish your phone lit up and sang as easily as a cigarette. But she won’t call. That girl is a catalyst. And you are the impatient. If you didn’t know how to wait, you will. If you didn’t know what it’s like to be tough, someone’s got to break you so you can try again, right?

Suit yourself. But don’t call me for help anymore. You think you have trouble waiting? People I fall in love with, they walk up to me. Start conversations. Call me every day, my phone lights up and sings. My heart lights up and sings. But I learned patience, because they are only looking for a shortcut to her. Her, her, and always her.

How many words does it take to be alone with someone?
And which words do you use to be alone with so many people at the same time?
I thought I would know by now,
at least a little.

the sea, the sea
every inch we have trespassed in a year
of holding it down
feels like a century of “one day”s
one day
our love will wash ashore
in a bottle everyone
will want to pick up

the challenge: write a poem in five minutes using ‘ode’, ‘water’, ’shortage’, in a house that was barely occupied and (obviously) in a neighbourhood that woke up to water shortage one morning.

“–and my wallet—”

“I’ve heard this one, I think you’ve told me this story before. And then the pub and the girls?”

“Oh. Right.” He shrugs. “Well. All I have are my rehearsed stories.”

“Don’t we all. I dated this guy for a few years. He heard all my rehearsed stories. And then we broke up.”

That made him laugh. “Was that rehearsed?”

He could be referring to either my story, my telling of rehearsed stories in the relationship, the inevitable break-up, or even his own laugh. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I smiled.

“You know,” he went on. “You should write about that.”

… He could be referring to our conversation, or the story itself, or my generally awkward condition.
“Maybe I will.”

I don’t want anyone to learn that carbonated fizzypop snore.

Or the colour of her hair in the dark, the alto dip of her lower back, the exact weight of her sleepy eyelids. I still can’t figure it myself, how many ounces, milligrams, how many skyscrapers or lightyears. Is it science jazz math or love?

I can still taste her over her black coffee midnights.
Sometimes I think she makes two mugs of it not as a sweet gesture but as a film stub, so she would have her audience and her headrub because seriously — only a creature like her could sleep after downing all that concentrated electric black, nodding her head to the live music in that mug. I am up all night but she only smiles and turns over humming a bassline ooh, fading into a triplet z set for morning light.

I think about our toothbrushes making out in the bathroom with all the angst of having to be apart in a few hours. I think of the hotel rooms we’ll never sleep in. Countries we’ll never travel to. And whether she’d sleep this very same sleep across continents.

The thought of her travelling as far in person as she does in sleep,
or travelling the furthest; into the bermuda triangle of another man’s monologue –
I close my palms like passports she’s stamped with customs lies or facts to declare how’s this one for size: I don’t want to start over. I don’t want new learning curves or a different combo of scars and skin because by god I could get used to this and she’s only started only just started to let me in

I am unmarried
thirty
She is my mother
insane
for thirty long
since her baby
painfully graduated
to light.

I arrive home
on a day white hot
hot white
to find that she has
left
then returned
only
not quite.

Her body, her
thirty-scar
is locked in an emerald city of
one hundred
potted
plants.

I went to the nursery today
she says
because of the disappearing
everyday disappearing
I need to get it back we have to get this
back

I am still at the door
Looking at the room-living universe
her thirty-scar made
green
my shoes
red
no space for a forward step

and for a moment I forget
about our scars
all I could think of
were consequences
and how my mother
today
made sense.

My heart is in my throat.
Everytime I’m here, I feel unready to approach

These bright lights.
Nagasari shines off the beaten path,
it does all the cooking.
Its sister is my new friend, that next road, she sings jazz,
recites poetry.
She makes my knees turn to jelly
Weighed down from butterflies in my belly
I could be in heaven, or something like hell-y.
But I am climbing this road to you
My throat-rising heart is
screaming at my lips to part so it can move in
and bite the ears of this city’s sin,
to offer my voice as fodder for
the hum of its metal monsters

a heart is due to rise from these lips
& recite its own poetry.

—

note: When I began performing, I often had to drive onto Jalan Nagasari (Nagasari Road) to get to Jalan Mesui, where No Black Tie was. That jazzclub is the venue I’ve performed at most, yet everytime I turn into Jalan Nagasari, I break into a sweat again.