Yves Saint Laurent says,
Black is the winning colour
I trust him because he's
A designer,
An outline of a house.
Pots and kettles speak, the screen won't
Start, they won't
Recycle it anyway
So who cares
Visual fields rot, and
Mum is afraid of not seeing you,
Walking home from a charity where
An occupational therapist is the only kind
Streets and stars, and streets, and stars and
When there aren't any more,
Heaven-dog swims through dark skies
Yapping to herself
The revolution happens every second
She gets it up for an X-ray, a
Colourless green idea
So squint one eye shut, concentrate
Your myopia,
My double vision
An ancient light, a history of touch
Fucks everyone asleep
In the mornings,
Our fists clutch the crayon, tracing
A map of cliche,
An outline of a house,
A heartbeat.
many years ago i lived in a dark rotten place where i hurt myself and was hurt over and over by a child who ate children. my head boiled inside. eventually i got tired of sleeping all day and i sawed the bars off the window and crawled out into the future with lesions on my palms.
i blinked in the light like a slow cat. i was happy. a girl found me outside spreading ointment across my skin. she loved how big and dark my pupils got in the morning. she loved my wet nose and my small purr. in the winter we lay in bed and steamed the windows. we walked outside in the bright cold and weaved our fingers together for warmth and laughed like ringing bells. sometimes she would step on my tail and sometimes i would scratch her, and afterwards we would be quiet and hold each other in a small white circle. i traced my fingers over her spine and watched as it grew and grew. she sang to me and i pressed my head into her hands. i didn't know the words to any of the songs. i met the child again at a market and he was a man now and full of bones. he tried to sell me them, and i didn't want any. she put ointment on my skin, a new kind, and my spine started to grow too, and i grew up and up and got vertigo, and all my body sang and i thought maybe i knew the words. i licked her clean to say goodbye and climbed a mountain to search for more vertigo. she called after me, but thought i couldn't hear her, and gave up. the echoes rang off the mountain. silence opened. i thought of her and purred and it rang everywhere.
when i got to the top it was nighttime. i saw in the distance a burning pyre. she lay herself on top of the pyre. a dog ate the inside of her stomach. all my hair stood on end. the ointment burned and burned. from very far away her face was not her face anymore, it was 3 words, and i didn't know them. all the ointment melted and ran into my fur, and i was slick and black and seeping, and it hurt, more than the rotten room, more than bones or large dark shapes. it hurt like fission, like daylight on flensing-meat, like the turquoise burn of x-rays, like the light through a crack on a bedroom wall. my head shone and shone. i felt sick.
i felt sick. the lesions became holes.
as i lay melting two stars shot across the sky. i trained my big black eyes on them and vowed to learn to speak without words.
the mountain was still. the silence was a black circle. there were no words.
after a long time i purred, and it jumped through the holes, and made a careful noise. the noise was a song with no words. it was the same as every song. i sang it alone for me on the mountain. the stars watched and nodded their heads.