You're Only Lonely

Dylan Thomas, Before I Knocked

Before I knocked and flesh let enter,
With liquid hands tapped on the womb,
I who was as shapeless as the water
That shaped the Jordan near my home
Was brother to Mnetha's daughter
And sister to the fathering worm.

I who was deaf to spring and summer,
Who knew not sun nor moon by name,
Felt thud beneath my flesh's armour,
As yet was in a molten form
The leaden stars, the rainy hammer
Swung by my father from his dome.

I knew the message of the winter,
The darted hail, the childish snow,
And the wind was my sister suitor;
Wind in me leaped, the hellborn dew;
My veins flowed with the Eastern weather;
Ungotten I knew night and day.

As yet ungotten, I did suffer;
The rack of dreams my lily bones
Did twist into a living cipher,
And flesh was snipped to cross the lines
Of gallow crosses on the liver
And brambles in the wringing brains.

My throat knew thirst before the structure
Of skin and vein around the well
Where words and water make a mixture
Unfailing till the blood runs foul;
My heart knew love, my belly hunger;
I smelt the maggot in my stool.

And time cast forth my mortal creature
To drift or drown upon the seas
Acquainted with the salt adventure
Of tides that never touch the shores.
I who was rich was made the richer
By sipping at the vine of days.

I, born of flesh and ghost, was neither
A ghost nor man, but mortal ghost.
And I was struck down by death's feather.
I was a mortal to the last
Long breath that carried to my father
The message of his dying christ.

You who bow down at cross and altar,
Remember me and pity Him
Who took my flesh and bone for armour
And doublecrossed my mother's womb.

All we have to signify our living is the rhythm
we call the heart
which isn't an accurate sign of being alive
at all

It's wearing, marriages just is looking at them disintegrating all over the place knowing it is too late to turn back
too old to start over because it is what you've known the last twenty years no matter what others say
a marriage is a bad investment
it makes you believe in the prospects and profits the satisfaction that exist in the faces
of your children who are some times grateful
but mostly not
some times you wonder what happened to the happiness in loving your children
your first child, thinking you can never love anyone more than you ever can
Now you are a parent
watching them
never knowing whatever they are thinking of
and of yourself
a marriage is a bad investment
so if you think you want to get married
look at the fractured picture of your own parents and the equally fractured picture of the child that is yourself
and how you will never fracture that of your own

Losing you to geography

"Are you scared?" you had teased
"No, don't be stupid," but I lied
"Would you have been scared if I said I was?"

I clutched at then seat belt

And I smiled while you drove
Three times we missed the exit
The train would have served me better
But it was you and me
you and a car

You will fly when you have once drove

but I will remember how you curled your phalanges around the wheel then

But you will not remember how my phalanges look like typing these now

You will not remember how my fingers will look like
when they have been finally conditioned to hold a cigarette stick

when they have been diseased by arthritis at 80

when they have once understood the curls of your hair in them

Your Famous Facebook Friends and Beauty Creams

You walk out of the shower, skin polka dotted red from the hot water
Its always been this way even as a child
It was always about the hot water, the hotter the better
Funny how something this nondescript exists now as a
realisation to even write about

You lather yourself in creams
that promise to fade and whiten previous assaults of epidermis, they even promise to defy
quartz and clockwork
You know it is never about the properties or about its research done in Parisian laboratories
by Parisian researchers to justify its cost
It is only about the promise of the beauty you hope to attain
and beauty
can only be hoped for and not promised in a bottle/jar/tube

While awaiting the potions to assimilate into your skin
you log onto Facebook drifting through names of
people known as 'Friends' on the left side of your profile
You click to view all, marveling in your own predictions of how you were damn sure then,
of
Annie being happy earning nine hundred bucks a month after CPF as a clerk with a boyfriend pigmented in motifs on his mod-ride,
and how true it is now

You click to view all, surprised at how many famous people you have as friends
even though your contact is limited to the awkward hello at the shows you attend when you finally feel
more intelligent, creative and productive enough to show up
Others speak of these names in breathless awe and you want to say
Oh, he's my Facebook friend, but your heart taps your tongue to ask
excuse me but is he really a friend?
You decide against it and keep quiet
all the while knowing you haven't deleted these Friends yet because it makes you look better
but
at the same time
feel ashamed at your own superficiality of it all

Finally
You decide your Famous Facebook Friends (FFF) and beauty creams are the same
It all culminates in some wish for eventual potential
Of being as big as your FFF
Of being porcelain beautiful

You cannot love a man who hits you
they say
You cannot stay with a man who hits you
Apparently it drains your self esteem through a sieve of punches

Yet is esteem the final dented can in this warped production
I would hardly think so
I'm too busy fighting my own frenzy
what kind of feminist am I
to tolerate this on the same bed with the four peach walls that hold us in
what kind of sadist does that make me
to know I will forever
want the man I cannot have and he will want me the same way
too

I've said this before
They had me when I didn't have them

You cannot be with a man that hits you
They say and I agree

But life lives in the anger within a fist
It knows enough to hate
It hates enough to inspire
It inspires enough to love

You can't be with a man that hits you
They say and I agree
But it doesn't mean you can't love him
and it doesn't mean he doesn't love you

Strings and Lines

Those short short lines per stanza are supposed to be contemporary, perhaps
reflect insouciance or so
But we all know by now they only serve to be Bukowskiesque just like the many others
have imitated or so
Nothing wrong with writing longer lines
They don't discredit you any lesser
like how going to an art school makes you any more of an artist
or how cultivating an accent institutes your belonging
Nothing wrong with writing longer lines so keep dragging your sentence longer
as you would with your life as metres of yarn you would wind around the man you love to make him stay
until you run out of strings or he runs further than
the length you have
or until you strangle each other with it

I suppose suicide makes no sense to people who have never contemplated the secret strength, concealed mania and pompousness of sadness. And to be fair, I hanker after my own fame and pursue my desires the same way, rooting on one emotion that makes me feel real even if it does make me feel like shit.

There has been great assurance to creatives- seek treatment, inspiration will not dwindle with the aid of pharmaceuticals.

Perhaps at this moment, I can write this confidently, as I am less incline to kill myself (but just read those times when I have begged begged begged God to take me) at this moment, that I have absolutely nothing, no words no poetry, without pain.

It's all the environment, it's all in the heart, the mind, words that I have endured years of torment that come out eventually, that has people telling me, Joey I can relate to you, I know what you mean when you want to die, because I want to die too.

When I look back at my own work, I equate genius with pain. I romanticise my pain into poetry and prose that will otherwise never see the light of the day.

The same goes with starvation, the willpower associated with it. It's strength, and I have never felt this much control and will with anorexia. It's pure will and nothing else, and even I beautify eating disorders into a character trait. Yes you can die, yes yes you still feel beautiful and empowered. This supposed determination could be an illness itself... and you can only see it if you're in it.

I could go on about the eventual vitriolic consequences of smoking, but dear dear dear God, moments and people in my life so defined have all been punctuated by the brand of cigarette I had been imbibing, complementing the exact emotion with each exhalation of the erotic swirl of smoke.

And then there's men. I've lost track of the men standing behind each stanza, each suicide wish, and each manic episode. Most men and the experiences I have written about are beautiful characters and subplots stylised by my very own words and emotions. No I am not saying they have been exaggerated, they are facts, things did happen the way it did in real time, but I romanticise them so much, especially the bad things that happen that make them come alive in here, in words.

If I could show off the men I have seen and have been seeing, the realization is such that they are ordinary people, they do not dress fashionably but decently, they are not chiseled like models but rather girlfriends will approve of, artists but not struggling, not rocket scientists or heirs but with good enough a job or adequate trust funds, not from the royal family but respectable ones.

Yet, romanticising these men is not only about the subject but the other elements weaved into it- their assinine ways, their adorable mannerisms, and association. Association (of emotions and other subject matters) weave them ultimately into either the obsolete romantic or the absolute asshole.