Love poem, not again

Travelling with your soul in a suitcase

at 4 am in the morning.

You know,

the winter sun can be such a bitch in the closet

moving through the mist of the red garment.

The train has arrived,

there is blood in your kingdom of love;

women move in and out through doors

and Raphael stares like a beast from the clouds,

on the ceiling there are faces of angels

you lust for in sleep.

So you’re in your room,

with junk, weed and coffee

with lovely eyes and breaths of grass.

Polish the face of the sun

with lizard’s claws in a black shoe-case

and the mirror that blackened your soul

Travelling in a blue car across sunset,

you remember women with Nazi lips

who carried bombs inside their pink ribbons,

you fill the suitcase with mutilated women,

their breasts, thighs and lips jostling for air

and send them in trains through the blue sunset.

Naked American stripper on the highway,

her limbs chopped off, her voice glassed

like dried grapes in the sun;

pack her fingers with the moon

and spice up the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,

feed her bones to the cannibals in the woods

and honour her as the last saint of modern art.

Preserve her breasts in vinegar and salt

as the last example of colonial peace.

You know,

I’m travelling with my soul in a suitcase

at 4 am in the morning

but you’re still unafraid to confess

that you love me,

can’t you see that every bitch with nuclear power

is trying to bomb us left and right?

Even my neighbour’s dog seems to be complaining;

Poems?

Right, it has come down to sentences,

even words,

your letters have been flushed down the toilet.

So I’m in your room

growing my hair long,

tattooing every inch of my dark skin

and living on wine and Radiohead.

This country seems to have lost it

(just like me, must I say)

fighting for a bill in the parliament

like babies fight over broken toys.

I wasn’t complaining,

riding to the market on Sundays,

you’re with your mom and turned away,

really girls can be such bitches when their moms are nearby.

I could have puked, I tell you

back from Criticism class on Wednesdays

and imagining you in my arms naked all these years.

The room was dark

and I had put on the Ninth Symphony,

my lungs felt heavy and full of shit.

Outside there was a man selling ice-cream

like corporates ferrying a degree,

For some hours, I lost track of time.

-2-

Thomas, Thomas

the telephone is ringing,

it’s been quite a while;

it’s 1945

and Annie has passed away,

she has swallowed pills, you tell me

no, no, I believe she was killed.

The Jews are praying for a sun

inside their blue chambers,

I fancy being Satan at times, it’s fun.

After breakfast, it’s 2010,

it’s always 2010 after breakfast

and 1945 after lunch and dinner.

What is Ophelia doing behind the leaves

playing with radioactive waste,

posing nude for Picasso in haste?

Ophelia, isn’t it?

Going round and round in sleep

with sex toys and…

So, the street-lamp spluttered,

So, the street-lamp gnawed,

Ah, you’re back again, scream.

“Yes”, the street-lamp cried,

“Yes”, the dark sky cried,

“Because you are back thinking in circles,

nth time and Zeroth time,

inseminated time and test-tube time,

dilated time and inflated time,

Alice’s dream and…”

Yes, Alice it is, Alice it will be,

going down the time hole

in a TV commercial,

I was watching a Tarantino film

and with closed eyes could picture

a beer can on the white sands amidst the swaying coconut trees,

Time can be an androgynous, self-copulating beast,

sterile, deprecating, having endless periods.

Somebody nailed the clock to the moon.

-3-

Bitch on the wall,

you’re provoking me again,

this is my last joint, I assure you

(as if you are ever watching me)

I’m so fucked up that I can’t help it.

And after this, I promise

I will try to write a nice, polite poem,

try to resurrect your letters

and dial your number.

Please, pick up the phone.