I am listening to Radio 4
A endless stream of information
comes to me from
Radio 4

It is 4:28 before
I realise that I’m
listening to the
obituaries.
It finishes with
a reminder
that there
is “a handy
podcast”
available.

I dream that I strip your skin and peel
back the muscle and I snap your bones
and I pour out the marrow. It is a wonderful
expression of my love for you.

A man tells me that North Koreans are
shorter than South Koreans and
I want a doctor to blast you
with the most brutal
radiation and when
you were sick after
your radiation you
let me lower you
lovingly
into your
wheelchair.

On Radio 4 is a man telling another
man that he gave a kidney
to the other man and I fill
myself up with this.

4:07 pm  •  1 June 2012

I’ve been lapping at the incisions you’ve left on my lips,
the hot, pink trails you’ve tread
down the valley of my hips…
tracing words like sin, outlined
countless times.

Like a prisoner in my tormented skin,
you’ve scratched away the number of days
until I let you in—
in the steely cement walls of my imperfect mind,
groaning under the pressure,
the fractures in this terrified
design.

It’s the same old sex poetry, erotica,
telling and retelling the same story
using words like desire,
cold and tasteless on my tongue.

My foolish flesh indeed succumbs
to the redundant vanity
of words like temptation,
that mean nothing—
chanting them again and again
with my pen.

But there is nothing you will learn
from these fading, useless words,
words like coming,
moaned echoes from my mouth
and then lost.

Even that which you are peeling
from my body, unzipping and revealing
will tell you no secrets.

There are no mysteries resolved,
no stories to be told
by the exposed goosebumps on my chilled flesh,
or the insignificant, white-gold hairs
on the latter parts
of my back.

No, and nothing will tell you
anything,
except my words, written,
words like irreparable and uncertain,
yes, those words that I’ve carved into
the walls of my mind
words like divine

while you lie here, idly aside me and
your hands brush along my surface,
itching for the depth and reality of who I really am
pushing and prodding

and you hear nothing but these words,
the ones that say nothing is wrong
and I’m fine and
I love you.

Read the words on my face that say
none of it’s true.

6:02 am  •  1 June 2012

I don’t know you – but I embrace you now.
It’s the only time we have before you’re
back to strangeness. I trust your meanings and
live inside you as you hold me, guide me -
Pretending this is everything there is.
Pretending we don’t worry what comes next.
I may never learn what lurks beneath your
skin. I live just for the moment we are
in. Maybe I hope there is more than this,
Than this shallow, hollow, nameless grapple.
Than this thrusting, grabbing, beastly battle.
Or maybe – in this moment – I love you
Even though I cannot know you,
Because, just maybe, now is all there is.

4:39 pm  •  31 May 2012

We’ve put this on www.facebook.com/deadbeatsliteraryblog before, but how many reblogs can this picture of Marilyn reading James Joyce’s Ulysses get?

3:52 pm  •  31 May 2012