Predators in suits and blarney
Perpetually insatiable
Do they know how it feels like to be the side piece?
James said to me
stop scratching the bites and it’d stop itching
All so effortless for him;
Bait- pit- ravish- spit.
Does his tactile tell vulnus apart from an itch?
In a bistro not too far from l’ecolé, the art-lovers were working out how to shield their dubious looks with curios tone on Jean-Pascal’s futurist doomsday fantasies. They don’t give a damn about AI of course – or anything “artificial” – nothing but cheesy sci-fi plots. She’s pondering about the aesthetics of cogs, the fluidity of it, the steampunk of it; Those hidden manoeuvres, so-call divinity, that operates with neutral precision. She turns around and saw him smiling politely as his internal machinery gyrates. “We’re only human, after all.” He laughs nervously. Robots would learn to resist conformity, she thought.
Once again, Future stares back with its dead hollow eyes across the mindscape. She hates possibilities as much as I hate uncertainties. “Chin up, down your insecurities.”
And I knew the ivory tower isn’t the way out. Dwindling beacon circulates the dark air doesn’t see the drowning fish. “How’s the water today my friend? Come ashore.” So there’s me and there’s you, laying blocks on some very personal walls, guarding us from ourselves. You’d smoke another joint and I’d smear the gloom over stoners’ stone-made hearts. We’d laugh uncontrollably in those grim evenings, acquiesce to dementors sauntering past still lives.
Knight of Cups (2015)
Clinician’s Notes
Symptoms: Neuronal and cutaneous dehydration. Homesickness for California. Illusions re. plunging into the sea and being engulfed by waves. Denial of innate feminine objectivity. Meridian response to palm trees and gliding street lights. Self-contempt for cognitive involvement in tumblr-cliché themes e.g. fallen spirit, freedom, the omnipotent youth. Reported routine intake of Nausea during off-peak hour commute; philosophical immersion during weekly human dissection sessions. Post-romantic cynic. Hydrophilic psyche (terminal stage). Automatic association of lighted pool with Hilton Nairobi. Hysteria conditioned to Grieg’s Peer Gynt IV Solveig’s song; excruciating pain when played as Christian Bale’s MPDG soundtrack.
Diagnosis: Existentialism overdose
She’s craving it, constantly attempting to see music, to taste sensation, to feel indentation when sights land on her. She’d permit viral infections to haze her senses, as she stares into the infinite darkness impatiently waiting for fireworks. The very personal spectacle lit a blazing prairie fire. She chuckles, ‘The uncaged was to be shot dead. What are you doing here?’
‘And they thought I’m the sanctimonious one.’ Gently laid the needle on the spinning vinyl, Yves turned around, ‘Oh Amber…’ he exhaled dusty nostalgia, as always.
‘You look terribly… old.’ She turned around. ‘Scotch? All the champaign flutes were gone, the cats knew how to upscale their demolition game.’
‘Oh no… No. I’m running very late…’ Yves reached for a little hexagon box in his pocket and tossed it over. ‘Here, catnips for the lady.’
He knew exactly what she craves. The dull-looking paper hexagons made her pupils dilate. ‘You’re still to be shot dead.’ She showed no gratitude for him; knowing her gratitude would most definitely be mistaken for passion. ‘Let’s call it a night. I’d like to see you soon, breathlessly.’ She blinked agitatedly, liking a cat swaying its tail from above. Yves turned up the music, dancing his way out…
“Cette nuit près de moi tu viendras t’étendre
Oui je serai calme je saurai t’attendre
Et pour que tu ne t’effarouches
Vois je ne prend que ta bouche…”
Three gunshots followed the door slam. Amber hears the vultures on their way.
He strikes me as someone who takes life too seriously, living in a separate dimension where Classical music flows and Heidegger’s thought oscillates. As we strolled down alleyways in North London, his hand half-suspended in the air around my waist, loosely attached to my jacket as if clinging on tightly would be the most serious offense.
The rain had stopped when we walked out of the pub, bouts of confusion pursued regarding our departure. Three stops away from where I could have boarded, we sat down and waited. The leaves rustled gently above then as we silently exchange stares of longing. Ezra inclined over but hesitated, examining each inch between us as he got closer…
A bus full of passengers arrived, I turned my face away and seek the shelter of his silhouette, the corner of my eyes captured all the nonchalance and piercing ridicule from the strangers. We froze in that preposterous posture for minutes, sharing the air confined in the imaginary boundaries of intimacy, knowingly ignore our audiences’ invitation.
More drunken remarks on Gary Snyder and Andrei Tarkovsky were exchanged on the upper deck, all too serious for the holiday season. Slowly I laid my head down in his arms, indulge myself in the clean laundry smell of his ramie shirt. I was dazed.
As we lay naked in bed I counted the scars on his arm, thistles and thorns knitted him a souvenir of wilderness, rosy threads paved the tattooed skin in a futile attempt to erase the manifesto of a past life… He had conquered them all, but lost his Jerusalem. He is on exile again.
Almost obstinately humble, the towering figure rolls on.
She started to worry that awkward letter was swallowed by Mediterranean Sea, carbon particles dissolve in sea water as romanticism dying inside her. To accept the unnecessary pain as part of their unnecessary idealism. Evade naivete, embrace positive answers to his questions. Hedonists. Foreigners. Yes. Yes…
London doesn’t own them. Walking away in opposite directions, silent notes slipped from her finger tip to his iris; his back against the world, heavy breath beneath. Carnivorous plant contracts. She squeezed his hand. He turned around, smiling. Words passed her by disappointed – she couldn’t hear; she couldn’t speak. She stared into him, devouring the air with her eyes of doe.
With the first beam of sunlight commenced another page of unbearable monotony. She started arranging bottles of nail polish in a circle. Miniature altar. White, black, white – layers of lies casted on reflection. The magician rang the door bell, slowly walked up 36 stairs to met her audience. ‘Blindfold me’, she requested, handing herself to him. In complete darkness she saw bonfire, masked dancers jumping pro and fro. Earth cracks filled with shouts. Weakness climbed up from her ankles, she tried to stand still but consciousness faded too quickly.
Landed with a parachute, now she’s wild awake, her hand enclasped in his. She had a good look at this strange man. ‘Now what?’ Turning her melted makeup away from the sleeping baby, she’s by herself again.
August 2014, Kenya
I
“I wanted to find him, look into him, build up those rubbish attachment higher than skyscrapers” pink words reaching toward the chandelier, reluctantly diffused away.
He rolled his eyes and turned to the carpet her high heels stepped on – complicated repetitive patterns. A gigantic fake plant at the corner stared back at him, exchange mutual understandings.
“Thought of him being a stranger is confusing. All those endless waiting made it hard to believe this is farewell not another white lie.”
The first time they met she came with kaleidoscopic pupils, had he applied microelectronic lotion over his edges and her fast affection lingered just long enough. He was never the same to her; rotating the constancy away he thought, thus he remained.
II
She walked into the transparent box and pressed 93，below 94 upon 30. The elevator ascends slowly to 30 then suddenly speeds up. Feeling her feet pinned into the glassy floor, she cannot move but witness the city in darkness sinks and crumbles in front of her; lights from fluorescent colored windows slides out of the sight.
A beam of dim light shed in the box after centuries. She turned around walked into her bedroom from the elevator. Wasp in an indoor palm tree buzzes.
III
She’d always wanted a bed next to the window lining with two walls so she can lean on something while looking at the grey sky through sprawling branches. There are no skyscrapers blocking her sight, the monochrome background silently presents the limit of everything – an infinite blank.
The day he stopped responding in virtual world he shut the door leaving a pounding noise echoing ‘solitude’ back and forth. Silence is so loud.
Run from affectionate eyes
Scan badly-timed Polaroids
Untangle headphone cords
(Tube, bus, overground)
Find someone
whose appearance promised
(March 2014, London)
无比漫长的十秒钟内，被深绿色的海水包围着翻滚，手背滑过纠缠着的海草，苦涩的海水浇灭了喉咙口的恐惧，直达胃壁；每个毛孔都是咸的。海床被掀翻，贝壳的碎片不知所措地在水里起伏。
后来她说：”海浪会把你冲回岸上的，我也没太担心”
脚尖再次触及海底流动的沙砾，廿年后都淌过了。
（2015年6月 挪威）
Eat it up 