page 1: "We are so healthy here"
page 2: "Our great modern feeling"
page 3: "Dear perfect friend,"
page 4: "Calm, quiet Sunday comes"
We are so healthy here
That mold grows on everything
Our kisses,
Our laughter,
Our dreams
We run round the kitchen table
Small as children
With large flowers in our hands
And in our hunger we pick through the bread
Shoving what's left of it into our mouths
We suck the juices from stale oranges
Liquid colour running on our hands and faces
Glistening
We are breeding new life
Here in the city
We are a two thousand dollar per month revolution of dazzlingly unattainable heights
We throw our leather shoes down off the balcony
We throw our love up to the rain
Swept back alleys
The world is our garden
We have the magic key
And when I leave this world
It's debts won't follow me.
Our great modern feeling
Or mine, at the very least
Dwindling down below ambition
There is no great hill to climb
No garden to tend
In this, our year
Or mine
I am drying roses round my home for you
My stately, well lit partition
360 watts higher than I should have
Burning bright
Nature creaks around me
The lives
My mattress
It's been a good year for the roses
At least
I risk my life to bring them here
And think of you.
Dear perfect friend,
I sit on the kitchen counter
Idle, alone,
Linoleum reflecting the light
In a circle around my silhouette
As I watch strangers pass by outside
I am stroking your hair in my hands
Telling you Everything
And the sunlight passes by
Our whole day, together
When the room dims, I stand
Walk across the floor to the light
And turn my dreaming off
There are myself and my ten fingers
There are all the people I mistook
For You
My Perfect friend
Glinting off the counter top
White tile flaked with gold.
Calm, quiet Sunday comes
and aligns each figure on the street
with their difficult answers
as they walk, searching
quickly and alone
or idle and in pairs
black spring jackets and blue jeans and paper cups
they breath in and out towards the screen of my window,
smaller than my little finger
never as loud as my thoughts
and whispered maps that would bring them to my calm and quiet Sunday room.
And then
To the spider, who has been in the sink all day:
I haven't killed you yet,
Why don't you go away.