January 18th, 2015


Lotus Flower, Radiohead, 2011

It is still so poetic to clean lint from the lint trap

And now I'm lying back in the tub reading someone
else's poetry and the air is colder by the second and
the water is tickling me and gradually revealing my
skin and I realize the drain was open the whole time
but we have a clog, so it drifted down, the water, slowly, the
way Brett's smoke was drifting up just outside the front
door earlier. And now I'm exposed, a sand bar of flesh.

I slip my fingers through my fingers and squeeze to feel
the bone

The other night I went downstairs to put the water on for tea
and found it on already and forgotten. Brett was outside
smoking. The water beat angrily against the tin pot. I poured a
cup and clicked the gas stove off. I drew comfort from the fact
that I am not the only absentminded person here - not the only
one who wants to burn it all to the ground.

When I leave the bedroom just after midnight, every light in the
house has been shut off. The dark resonates.

On the way to the Jewish deli leaning on the car door
I imagined it opening, the highway rushing as a river
beneath. I said to myself "Death is just a door
to something more we're not allowed to open"
and I knew mostly that this was true, but it made my
stomach twist. At the Jewish deli I ordered a dirty
martini to wash my mouth of vomit.

But none of this is what we should be talking about.

Alex says over dinner: In Pakistan there are children 
who are afraid of the sky and only play on cloudy days.

Their sky is full of dead things bringing with them death.
These are our plagues.

but. oh. if you could taste the complexity of this apple
you would not question the songs I sing.