this is what i think of you

there's nothing like freshly brewed sarcasm in the morning...

Common People
Pulp

She came from Greece she had a thirst for knowledge,
she studied sculpture at Saint Martin's College.
That's where I caught her eye.
She told me that her Dad was loaded,
I said "In that case I'll have a rum and coca-cola."
She said "Fine."
And in thirty seconds time she said,

"I want to live like common people
I want to do whatever common people do
I want to sleep with common people;
I want to sleep with common people like you."

Well what else could I do -I said "I'll see what I can do."
I took her to a supermarket,
I don't know why but I had to start it somewhere, so it started there.
I said pretend you've got no money,
she just laughed and said,"Oh you're so funny."
I said "Yeah? Well I can't see anyone else smiling in here.
Are you sure you want to live like common people,
you want to see whatever common people see,
you want to sleep with common people,
you want to sleep with common people,like me."

But she didn't understand,
she just smiled and held my hand.
Rent a flat above a shop,
cut your hair and get a job.
Smoke some fags and play some pool,
pretend you never went to school.
But still you'll never get it right,
’cause when you get laid in bed at night,
watching roaches climb the wall,
if you call your Dad he could stop it all
You'll never live like common people,
you'll never do what common people do,
you'll never fail like common people,
you'll never watch your life slide out of view,
and dance and drink and screw,
because there's nothing else to do.

Sing along with the common people,
sing along and it might just get you through,
laugh along with the common people,
laugh along even though they're laughing at you,
and the stupid things that you do.
Because you think that poor is cool.

because blogging is a bitch sometimes

i had to repost these:

For C.C. ,who is permanently lost in the flood

the world has lost these pretty young girls.
their angst has woven a different, more impenetrable
planet around them. they sob and weep about
atrocities that take place in other dimensions of space where
everyone else is a lost mother , a drunken father, a neglected urchin of chance - versions of monsters
under beds, the dagger in the closet. they no longer know the importance of mystery,
of holding out. everything takes place outdoors. i would like to peep under
their skirts and find out if the myth is true -
if down there, there is really nothing much you can see but a built in boombox,
a transistor, and dozens of blue and red connectors stumbling all over themselves,
pricking their veins that are seas so blue they look painted on.
their mouths are always hungry for trophies of intellect, for disasters then and now,
for vague properties of love. they say words like "atrophy" or "vindication"as if they were new weapons that still have the capability to hurt. but their ideals are different.
they prefer them raw these days so that they’d be easier on the palate when they swallow them whole.
this fact alone makes me think less of the weaker ones - the ones who scar easily or those
who consider a bad hair day an opportunity for suicide. maybe this is just me,
barring time. in dreams, i see my younger self, running with bared teeth,
my brown skin soiled with so much anger.
i remember being unafraid. but now, i ask myself,
what was i running against? and for whom?

--------------------------------

House Cleaning

Today, I left him.

It was because of all that dust, really, the kind that sticks all over your furniture like an unwanted guest. Somehow, one of us invited it in. Or maybe at that time it was both of us, ushering it in our sunlit rooms, all the way to our new found feelings because we were scared to admit the fact that there were no divinities, no gods in blue.

I remember a day in September when I volunteered to clean the whole house but there was always something he hid, something precious but pointless, wrapped carefully in scented paper that smelled faintly of rotting flower petals. But because he was afraid of losing things, he always remembered where he kept them. He labeled the boxes " for further use." Before I realized it, there were already containers stowed away in darker parts of the room.

I hated stumbling upon them. It felt like I was spying.

There was also a time in early May when he decided to clean up. He got suffocated by the noose the dirt crafted around his willing neck.I thought he threw the boxes away, on account of the dust. We had splendid afternoons then – drinking wine from new bottles, making love on the green couches. He said "I am finally free to love you." Everything was cleaner than god. I forgot about other things, like the urgency of prayers, the anticipation of falling bricks.

But after a year, there it was again. It started with a whisper, a dialogue with wooden tables. It lurked in corners, in shadows of remonstrative possibilites. Then its voice became more insistent, laced with unfeeling confidence. It told me that I wasn't necessary anymore. I have never been. It told me that the past was present and future. There was nothing else. And that I was, after all, the interloper, the singular lie. After the end of the day, whatwas important here was really the insatiable mystery, divine interventions, the fluid liability of fate.

I realized then that doilies can only do so much. I can only do so much.

So I admit I left on account of all that dust. I took a train and went on that long-delayed trip to Panama. At least there, the sun shines without complications. Everything seems to belong to its proper place.
The most that can happen to you is sunburn. I don't really mind scorching a little skin. At least, that's all just surface vanity.

the thing with being paranoid is, you're always one step ahead of everyone. most things are demoted to black and white, really, even if some people deny it. it's always the heart or the sword against your neck. nothing ever surprises you anymore. when the expected happens, all you can do is look away, pretend that nothing ever goes on when you know exactly that things aren't all they're cracked up to be.

it's either you're a very good guesser or things have just become sadly predictable.

funny thing is, you miss the times of being unaware. oblivious,even. you miss feeling anything other than the steady gloating of being right.

Poem sharing!

Here are some poems I'd like to share. Enjoy.


Circe's Grief
Louise Glück

In the end, I made myself
Known to your wife as
A god would, in her own house, inIthaca, a voice
Without a body: she
Paused in her weaving, her head turning
First to the right, then left
Though it was hopeless of course
To trace that sound to any
Objective source: I doubt
She will return to her loom
With what she knows now. When
You see her again, tell her
This is how a god says goodbye:
If I am in her head forever
I am in your life forever.

One of the most beautiful poems I have ever read:

Under One Small Star
Wislawa Syzmborzka

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all.
Please, don't be angry, happiness,that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize for my record of minuets to those who cry from the depths.
I apologize to those who wait in railways stations for being asleep today at five a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.
And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the same cage,
your gaze always fixed on the same point in space,
forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.
My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Truth, please don't pay me much attention.
Dignity, please be magnanimous.Bear with me,
O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train.
Soul, don't take offense that I've only got you now and then.
My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can't be each woman and each man.
I know I won't be justified as long as I live,
since I myself stand in my own way.
Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
then labor heavily so that they may seem light.

Love After Love
Derek Walcott

The time will come when,
with elation you will greet yourself
arriving at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread.
Give back your heart to itself,
to the stranger who has loved you all your life,
whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Omissions: A Vignette

for A who says please before killing anyone

Not that she was a sadist, or hankered after being lonesome. Not that she was aroused by anger. It was more of the fact that she found it all ridiculous, these rites of passage for the mute and the eternally dumbstruck- the tiptoeing, secret handshakes, letters sent on the sly. Because she was curious, she could understand the logic behind omissions. What drew her to him was his inability to be farcical. For her, it was harder to break- this honesty, this total lack of regard for acknowledging sacredness. In his hand he holds poison that he never hides. No, he was not like the others. He liked holding it out, displaying his intentions. She sees this as more potent, more damagingly addictive, like the pungent smell of earth after the rain. A field of daffodils, yellow and bursting with strange revelation. Always, there was the promise of bloodshed, of bared wrists.

He tells her, all this is not about you My stories my poetry Some days, I write her letters She responds and it makes me lose my mind for a time I cry when she says she remembers me when she eats cold noodles You know she is in Korea studying I tell her about you She is not pleased Oh yes you are a likely substitute The slant of your neck when you bend down to tie your laces reminds me of hers Your eyes are hers teeth mouth candy ears But here it is, my hand over yours, however you would like to take it I'd like to think my heart is a carrot I will not pity you when I turn my back and say I don't know if I'll ever see you again Parting is never romantic It makes you feel oddly like snow written on then eventually smoothed over to make room for a new writer I will never omit never die for you never ever ever

When he gets this way, his hand brushes against hers. He says how's this for romance the moon you and overpriced coffee Love like everything else is a marketing tool. She smiles. This is the most love she's had in years.

A letter after the wedding

Tell me, what do I call you now?
Now that the tides have turned,
Now that the autumn leaves are my hands,
kissing cobblestones.
Now that you are no longer what is dearest.

Believe that I have always meant to write to you.
In my head, I scribble you notes everyday. I say
that lunch was lovely or that
I feel I will be coming down with a cold soon.

Some days, I write you real letters. He
encourages me to do so. I start off with
mundane weather reports - sunny, cloudy,
indeterminate. Then I move on to furniture,
to the smoothness of freshly polished woodwork.
Sometimes, I write down words
describing my perfumed happiness, about how
cold the new tiles feel under
my feet during early mornings, about
the occasional car passing beneath the window,
about the sound of raindrops falling on the new roof,
which by the way,was painted red.
Red for distress, for the solitary
offering of blood.I also tell you that I am sorry
you missed it. The papers said it was the
wedding of the century- a wedding of tulle, angel cake,
of great promises of everlasting etc etc.

There are moments when I would like to write about him,
to tell you about the way his
arm curves along the rumpled sheets,
an anchor weighing down this
mattress where I drown. I do not do this. Instead, I inquire
about how you are, how you have been,
have you been seeing someone. I try
to see you objectively, like I would
patterns on doilies he asks me to pick out or
the twirling of the wet clothes
in the new laundry machine.

Then I realize that
you are lost to me, that we are no longer
time and tide, twin stars, related incidents. So I write down I miss you.
The words remove themselves from
the page and pounce on me, eating my poignancy, my collection
of polite inquiries, my careful secrecy. All is lost.

I sometimes would like to ask a picture from you. In it, you should
be near the sea, standing on the deck, alone and waiting as if
nothing has changed.
As if the tides have remained still.
As if it is not already autumn.
As if you are still what is dearest, what is true.

I kept my promise. I continue carrying this memory of
you. It is my valise chained to a ready flight. But I am fine. We are all
fine. He sends you his love.

Yours, for always.