Greater China

We're just two lost souls
swimming in a fish bowl
year after
year
running over the same old ground
what have we found,

the same old fears

- Pink Floyd

For some reason, that made my heart skip very quickly, and in the next immediate moment, it

sank

"It’s my specialty: cement
hearts and beautiful bodies. If you can find
a heart-beat, let me know.”

Bukowski

Title says it all: Happy but Afraid

Sure as hell we would have felt at least once in our lives... happy yet scared.
Scared of that happiness coming to an end. Perhaps how heavy that hapiness weighs and that is will eventually drag us all down to die

Imagining Retreat

10.
You admit nothing,
I deny everything.
You are a man.
I am just pretending.

9.
What were those drawings?
Is that your form of communication with me?
Or is that how you make
sense?

8.
Your pencil lines are precise but
scaled
to your terms,
I am lost in them.

7.
It was in the early 2000s.
Our concerns were parallel.
We were worried;
you about a promotion,
I about graduation,
both which happened.
Thereafter we became
parallel.

6.
Recently I told you the difference between
attention and actuality.
how it was idea of you I loved.
You said,
"It's like masturbation. Geographically, emotionally removed."

5.
Love is astringent.
To purify, you must first
hurt.

4.
I asked you about dreams.
You thought I meant desires.
I was refering to the REM kind.
I dreamt about you once,
you were going to be
a father.
I remember trying hard to stay awake for a long time
if dreams were going to betray me like this.

3.
We laughed,
but only I cried.

2.
I have not caught up with
the age you were when we met.
I am always behind,
the minute hand,
the ragged shadow.

1.
I want to know which of the above I can tell
without,
before you retreat.

Role

You are a man now after that first punch

after he challenged you

to equality.

So you invite him to strike

without stance or self-defence

believing you are strong,

if not

stronger,

imagining it does not hurt,

and that this is what it takes

to be equal.

You become the father who

wants to save him,

resigning to his penchant

for cigarettes, designer wear and drugs after all else

fails.

You become the husband who

keeps the altar and stomachs filled

honouring gods and family

because men are cleaner,

sturdier than women.

Then you become him,

when sex is but a faceless,

heartless fashion.



You are a man now

when before you were a woman

and did not know how to

not

be

a woman.

At the back of your head,

you know this is neither equality

nor feminism

and you are caught

in a halfway house

supporting this role that has

no name.

A Working List of Things I Will Never Tell You - Jon Sands

When I said I wasn’t with another girl
the January after we fell in love for the 3rd time,
it’s because it wasn’t actual sex.

In the February that began our radio silence,
it was actual sex. I hate the tight shirts
that go below your waistline.

Not only do they make you look too young,
but then your torso is a giraffe’s neck attached to tiny legs.
I screamed at myself in the subway

for writing poems about you still.
I made a scene. I think about you almost
each morning, and roughly every five days, I still

believe you’re there.
I still masturbate to you.
When we got really bad,

I would put another coat of mop water on the floor of the bar
to make sure you were asleep when I got to my side of the bed.
You are the only person to whom I’ve lied, knowing

I was telling the truth. I miss the way your neck
wraps around my face like a cave we are both lost in.
I remember when you said being with me

is like being alone with company.
My friend Sarah wrote a poem about pink ponies.
I’m scared you’re my pink pony.

Hers is dead. It is really sad. You’re not dead.
You live in Ohio, or Washington, or Wherever.
You are a shadow my body leaves on other girls.

I have a growing queue of things I know
will make you laugh and I don’t know where to put them.
I mourn like you’re dead. If you had asked me to stay,

I would not have said no.
It would never mean yes.

tie my hands behind my back,
that way you cannot
lose

-the stereophonics