you are jeopardy,
I am your candidate.
I seek the questions
to your answers
which may well be just a lie.
boredom
lack of interest
weary, restless
perforation,
drill, a hole made
making tired
digging away
loose material –
the one I built
my life upon.
Shakespeare’s vanishing anagram
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
All damp, I tease you. Shame’s tremor
hums ahead. I act a role, so play me
as you create hell’s metaphor.
I am a sad muse, teach me hope.
Come, I’m all yours, Master
My spasms harm as I rot.
Still, you are there
to hear my praise.
I compare thee
to a red rose,
I presume.
Please,
dare
me.
New Look
after the treatment, some of it broke off.
for a while, my anger had been feeding
on my craving for attention.
the only thing left to do was to bleach my hair.
I had handed my body over twice the night before.
the first smelled bad and wanted instructions.
the second said smart things, then wet my bed.
he jumped up at dawn.
I made scrambled eggs for him later that day.
the sun had risen under thickened clouds.
I left with his sheets.
my mattress was still soaked.
I went to the mall and there it was.
dignity converted into peroxide.
in a box that said: New Look.
2020 Border Battles
(inspired by a sonnet form, arranging cut-outs from several reports on the “corona virus” and “migrant crisis” in March 2020)
In the battle, Europe has responded, discussing outer border closures,
Struggling with the influx and its screening,
As there’s confusion on the streets, regarding face-masks, meetings, and exposures;
The military build-ups gave new meaning,
To some ways which help communities combat, obeying social distances.
The border crisis calls for more fences,
All despite the several agreements that allow free movement without checks,
Water cannons and tear-gas will push back.
How dangerous is this virus, what are the symptoms and how are they detected?
As the crisis lasts, which European countries will be those worst affected?
Tell me, how many are, in fact, approved?
It might be a defeat for human rights,
But it’s a victory for the leaders that are braced: Together ahead, they move –
While children freeze to death in Syrian nights.
Frankly,
I only texted you
out of the boredom
that came up in a spare minute
between leaving my home
and waiting for the shared malfunctioning
laundry machine to seize
spinning.
The unlovables
I’ve been embracing you despite yourself,
in accurate defiance
of the peach hair on my neck,
against your will and maybe mine,
like unsweetened yoghurt,
yet less conducive to my guts.
I smelt your chest
in perfect congruence
with childish stubbornness
and in alignment with my craving
for the stale taste of
eternally unlovables.
May be a reminder
maybe you never were
more than a reminder
of the sugar cravings
I’d oppressed ever since
I was thirteen years old
maybe I never was
meant to pick her amber
hair off your cardigan
as you put too much fake
honey in my flat white
maybe my body was just not
ready to endure more
winter days in May
that seemed so cold to you
and awfully close to me
and surely it’s not you
who’s lying here right now
since you’re 8000 miles away
while I am in my childhood bed
again – clutching a hand that is not yours
posthuman
we multiply ontologies
and contemplate democracy
as though we were protagonists
transcending the anthropocene
we bended the whole universe
to hotheads and denialists
radically–rapidly
we strangled what was possible
whatever we could grasp
merged our bodies with
the running room to be
to live in ruptures, live like rats
in blind spots of the junk
expose the monsters we’d become
lurking in the dark
as incarnations of their fantasies
we’ll be crawling out in swarms
from the shades our childhood beds still cast
