knickerbockerglory

making our dreams come true

2007-06-27T01:40:00.000-07:00

the borg link seventh circle of blogging hell begins.

sucker

2007-06-26T07:31:00.000-07:00

From the first open-mouthed kiss
between nipple, cracked and gaping
& nibbling infant lips
an exchange was taking place.
I can’t be sure now, who fed on what
which satisfied which
who wanted what, what soured first.
I was already leaving, pressing back

to black-paned windows, while others laid their claims

demoting loving down to hoping,
& that becoming only looking, then everything
diminishing into simply thinking
& wishing on you, like you were a star.
Watering down a love, like that,
it is harder than any stone I know.
I could not see, so young
the mark left by my life, too young divided
discolouring your blood. A shared stain
colouring us ever, & I did not know
it would endure, through cowardly scrubbings;
I could not know, and so I went on scrubbing,
I scrubbed for quite a while, in that vein.

massive attack

2007-06-26T05:10:00.000-07:00

for natty matty and rico, who like it however I bring it

i saw one of your hands carrying fire
i saw one of your hands bringing water
i saw one of your hands bearing soil
by my own hand i brought forth air

one of your four hands fanned the racing flame
ahead of this flame the second hand moved the earth
the blaze failed under the third hand, the hand bringing water
by my own hand i brought forward winds and gathered you

the four elements of the globe converged. light crossed the earth.
we were more than the sum of our parts
and by our four hands now we are united:
bound by the hand of clay, refreshed by water,
made light by air, the flame laying bare a new and brilliant city,
ready at last for our new and brilliant living

with a little help from my friends

2007-06-26T05:08:00.000-07:00

by norah kay with lu

it is these things
it is only senseless positions
it is what i've got that you don't;
it is pretending. it is what i've got that you want
it is prostitution. it is all yours.
it's an innocent carcass. it's a carpet. it's a car.
it's someone who can't hold it together.
it's someone who couldn't care less.
it is younger than you. it is removal.
it is without any question marks
it is touching your back. it is shut up.
it only answering
it is very unpleasant. it is never no.
it is never please don't do that.
it is keeping it going. it is nil by mouth. it is complicated circling.
it is void of my body. it is not what you've heard.
it is unbuttoningit is done by this hand.
it is done in my name.

anyone for seconds

2007-06-26T05:03:00.001-07:00

The night creaks on. Jody keeps decreasing
while lights turn off across the land, like many eyes
at long last closing. Jody loves shrinking.
Hopes there is an El Dorado somewhere,
thinks she might yet escape the kingdom of her skin:
Wait for one murky hour like the one around us
then leave, in search of some less flimsy kingdom.
And stupidly, I say I wanna go where you're going,
because something in me mutters dumbly she is right.
There is dorado, somewhere. We could race there.
Bony feet flapping, spindly shins cracking, plaits lashing our backs.
This urge to run. We understand. It cannot be ignored.
Or halted with love, or someone's dinner. She has tried
and tried, she thinks, but life has eaten her alive. So she charges,
fast toward another dawn in which she won't be swallowed whole.
And a sound in the hall now. The walls blur it. I lift my fingers.
Flex. Then listen. I think someone sobs. Another girl here maybe,
another Jody. Another girl who is Going. They all around you,
just hard to see because of them being Nearly Not Here.
Anyway, it could be a dog barking. Or both. Or neither. Anyway.
I turn again to Jody, but she is off and racing
tripping through weed-thick fields, forgetting the taste of sugar
not even knowing it. She will rush on headlong,
because that is how the game ends.
Without any proper Goodbyes. Just Jody, running,
colliding with birds that are all at once emerging
this slip of a thing and tonnes of other tiny birds
earthbound at first, then together rising.
Their scores of tiny shapes a only a blush
a dark blush climbing freely up the clean cheek of the sky

you'll eat it and you'll like it

2007-06-26T04:33:00.000-07:00

Another ordinary evening. Someone is showering loudly
while Jody and I lie here. We've watched today dwindle
Tuesday unpinning her dim hair, dark curls drooping
evening lowering over us and our complicated collections of bones.
Our empty insides are grinding, so we gorge ourselves on talking
and I'm carefully eating everything Jody says.
Remember this, I think, It will matter to you later.
See, Jody is Nearly Not Here. And even though people do come back,
occasionally hobble home from I Feel Sick, or Hey!
I Went a Little Overboard,
there is no coming back after Nearly Not Here.
All the same, we play the game. Not much else to do.
We've covered You're Alright, and
Today I Am Considering Eating That.
But not Watch Out! You Are Nearly Not Here.
That one never works. Anyway, it's all just junk.
Jody knows she is Nearly Not Here. She's a slip of a thing,
as they say, and getting slippier every day.
She does not look All Right. She does not look Okay.
She makes you think words like Subhuman, think
Internal Haemorrhaging. And Organ Collapse.
She is sprawled under the piano, appearing unconscious
(as is her way), kicking the stool as I play Rachmaninov.
Her own fingers do not bend. Too brittle.
She has been told not to make fists, but she forgets.
I sometimes think you just forgot to grow up, Jodes,
I say to her, and she kicks my calf. Hard. Well.
She's not dead yet. The piano jangles. Angry. I look at her.
Whaddaya gonna do? she says and shrugs, then grins,
though I see it hurts her, because she is lying, and badly, too.
Yep, I know how this one goes.
It is Please Let's Just Pretend I Haven't Given Up.
I calculate the bones on show
and oh how I hope and hope I haven't got it right.
But I've played this game before, and I know by now
the ending never changes. It always ends in tears.

bodies of work

2007-06-26T02:44:00.000-07:00

a cherry light surrounds us-it's the morning flowering 'round us-
and here is what I'm thinking on this shiny crimson day:
of my hip bones and your track marks,
guessing which belongs to who and what belongs to which
and who of us is what at the end of the day anyway.
My veins are quivering blue under thin skin as I step.
Your eyes are unsteady, the colours all unanchored,
and I am thinking something without knowing I am thinking;
that both our sets of bones once were pressed from stone
once our four wrists wrung out straight from rock;
and something in us remembers being air, a long time back,
when we were water, and now our skin is crying,
trying to be cast back to the water, returned again to atmosphere.
it's been a long hard sweaty tired-out sorta day
I'm sure I thought we knew what we were doing once
I'm sure, at least I think I thought that we should get some sun on us
but here we are, and the light is falling gorgeous all around us,
sun is pouring pouring pouring, rushing fresh toward us
but all I'm thinking is your eyes your eyes and about your eyes some more
your blue and blank unnatural eyes but nothing to be seen.

literary illusion

2007-06-26T02:41:00.000-07:00

When the world around is righted
and the natural order apt,
a something still can equal nothing;
something yet subtracts.
When the scales hang in tandem,
pound of flesh for pound of flesh,
when white rabbits arrive quite early
& Lazarus awakes refreshed;
The balance still is skewed you know,
because there are no wrongs to write.
A constancy of state achieved.
Big Macs for Snow White.
Though each content sleeps safe at night
Salieri cries against you all
& I can hear the raven chanting
nevermore and nevermore.
Please do something, someone.
Do something. Anything. Now.
Morph, someone, or change. Something.
For once don't say what you mean.
I speak for unheard children.
I cannot live at Innisfree.

history repeating itself

2007-06-26T02:38:00.000-07:00

today is made of tin and tiny.
it smells of metal and has big thin fingers.
today leaves sticky prints all over.
you're smudged there where it touched you.
you are grimy! so stay away from today.
today believed that slippery witchy
& ate her bloated fruit. It's true.
now today is hoarse
& shivering & white.
but it deserves it.
today is a mirror, and in it you might be shrinking
you look like nostrils and nine strands of hair
and heaps of heavy breathing.
you wish today would knock on another somewhere door
a deadlocked door-not near here-
and it could stay and struggle there
wriggling its silly fingers in a little jiggly lock.
no one wants today
sticking its shaking face in their windows.
it scares them. so just say:
go away, today. and stop acting like that.
you won't regret it in the morning.

easy does it

2007-06-26T02:32:00.000-07:00

morning comes lightly
on quiet foot
with bended knee
a hushed rush of breath
a gasp
moving both earth and sky in its coming
from the first flowerto the last leaf
touching everything
meeting each
knowing all
a new born son
it has been so long dark
but now
lightly
morning comes

advice from the young

2007-06-26T02:29:00.000-07:00

you shouldn't have a baby if you are yourself a baby,
then actually start to love him. that's just dumb.
but if you're dumb and do it, then
don't next put his discovering & flourishing above all other things
instead listen (listen ok)
STOP HIM LEARNING EVERYTHING YOU CAN
don't even give him tips about how to learn to talk
you'll be better off, i swear. then he can never ever speak.
then he can never say "it's because of you i'm so fucked up, mum
i fucken hate you and i always will, you made me be this way"
and really make you sob the way he did just now. i mean
that's if i had a son. of course, i'm only guessing here,
i don't have one of my own.
but i'm guessing i'd be better off if he was silenced.
or someone would. you know.

pasing phase

2007-06-26T02:26:00.000-07:00

on a night such as this
when the moon is a steel trap
catching starfishes
and in my mouth
i feel the evening fizzing
when none of us considers
what anything might mean
when there is nothing to touch
but our wholly naked souls
and time at last reveals her lie,
that there is no time to lose
when nothing carries weight
but what we are right now
and we choose just to love again
and to live well
and to do more
when we are drawn
forward in time
by a new true moon
while we hope and hope
and hope that
when she comes back it will be beautiful
and that there could be another
night such as this
warm and brimful with damp promise
but for now babes
be still and wish on dark fishes splashing
you three far outshine these other ruined stars

free falling

2007-06-26T02:07:00.000-07:00

with no one else in the sky you flew
the biggest anyone i ever knew
your heart engorged and your mind engaged
a single scrawl on a pale blue page
always looking around and around
blind to your height looking down down down
while in the unknown belows the people blind
danced their dance and bided time
you were safe in the sky but impatient to know
how it might be to be more than alone
though you'd known only you something hurt in your mind
crying out for a friend thought too tiny to find
for a view from above made you think some new thunks
that to be more than alone you would have to be shrunk
small and then smaller to fit in down there
from so high they seemed small.
in another somewhere.
so you cut out a piece of your heart and your soul
you shaved back your skin and squashed into their mould
fresh tiny people saw you break through their fog
and you being different were proclaimed their new god
and what did you think? did you like being god?
did you forget you had shrunk? were you blinded by fog?
you were only fresh meat. their gods come on strong
they're adored and embraced but they never last long
i don't think you knew. those people were small.
they made you forget you had known things at all
gods always feel rare and of a whole the chief part
no matter how small they may be in their secretest hearts
you didn't want to be wrong. you were wrong just the same.
i saw you implored you but their dance overcame
in a chemical fog there is no need to breathe
when you don't breathe you can't feel and there's nothing to see
the world goes on swirling no matter what you give up
the people keep dancing under gods of the sun
then gods choke, they gasp fast, their eyes start to run
but the people keep dancing cos new gods will come
i just wish you'd known you can't breathe in that fog
you think that you can, but it's not breath, it's not
it feels good to stand proud, at last a known god
but you're breathing and breathing their terrible fog
i know that it's true. i know from feelings in me
and so i guess that it is, that it's all outta reach

everything old is new again

2007-06-26T02:03:00.000-07:00

the flakes have fallen and
everywhere the children are building
in gardens, on streetcorners
an army of snow children
a new bright brigade;
their sticky twins first kneeling,
stumbling, then running
raising their shining arms to the shining sky
grinning and pinching and snorting and skipping
looking everywhere with their eyes that are roses
but they are made of inconstant stuff
these snow children
where the sun touches them
their mouths drip, their fingers stream
their brilliant skin collapses
changing and moving,
moving and changing again
turning and turning,
each losing an ear
or an eye or a toe as the sun ascends
the snow children are melting,
everywhere around me
they are dissolving and and melting
the roses that were their eyes
dropping slow and cold to the earth

old news

2007-06-26T02:00:00.000-07:00

And how was I supposed to know anything, at thirteen?
I thought we'd all live forever then.
You had been the first to see me clearly, paper held to the light
Recognised, my thirteen-year-old eyes for the first time half-closed
Two trembling thighs the shaking corner of a huger universe.
But I didn't know how to save you, and the grief
the grief was coming unstuck and a blurry white raging,
a breaking and a straining and a cracked glass heart,
a whole other world. One without you in it.
I didn't know you could feel so many things
I didn't know you could be so undone by a death
There was so much I didn't know. I was thirteen,
I had no concept of forever.
How we can never catch or still the dancing brat of time
The terrible way we forget, as memories congeal and lose their glamour
And the last moment we always fail to savour, not knowing it is the last.
Until one awful day it all comes down to this:
Standing on a beach under a grey and uncertain sky
feeling a vague sort of sadness but not remembering why.

any given sunday

2007-06-26T01:50:00.000-07:00

My dreams are smaller than yours.
Only this: not to be the lone unlovely flower
Eternally shut tight, an eye squeezed closed.
But I can dream smaller yet. Wait.
Just no more of this
Just no more of this
Just no more need for any more of this ever again

baby don't hurt me

2007-06-26T01:46:00.000-07:00

this is how it is: you love them,
and then they are loved by you, and then that is the end of it.
because you love them, and they also love them.
what you fail to understand is what they know;
that we come into this world entirely alone,
that we go out of this world entirely alone,
and the stories in between are all more stale than sad.
so when someone says "all is not lost," all is actually lost,
it is always lost, nothing is ever underneath anything else,
it is always trying to teach us something, or the wrong colour, or just looking the other way.
some things are always missing. or everything is always missing.
it can be hard to remember which. In any case,
learn to love yourself because you can't love anyone until you can love yourself,
and once you love yourself you won't need anyone anyway.
sure, you knew love once, but that was a long time ago and you should forget it now,
now, or it will make you want to die when you put the curtains up,
remembering those times and how everything was.

you don't say

2007-06-26T01:38:00.000-07:00

he comes up the stairs
who moved all the shit around in debba's room? he says
I don't know, I say
I don't say, we were in there at 3AM with the lights blown, putting hands in dark cluttered boxes and praying to impossible gods
she follows him up you're looking thin she says
he says huh, you could stand to lose a few more
I smile and don't say I haven't eaten for three days you fuckwit, I've lost thirteen kilos and what else do I have to do? Instead I say your tan looks weird, not saying, you'll see
he doesn't say something then, I don't know what it is because he doesn't say it
goodnight, I say
goodnight, he says
I love you, I don't say,
help me I don't say,
he doesn't say something either, all these things we don't say,
nobody is saying anything to anyone

circle of friends

2007-06-26T01:37:00.000-07:00

mel, jase, let's never open the friendship circle application to anyone.

three's company

2007-06-26T01:34:00.000-07:00

reasons we need roncey:

1. "lu, you don't have to pretend anymore sweetie"
2. "EVERYBODY knows, sian"

reasons we don't need roncey: none.

let's get it together rico.

conversations with a god

2007-06-26T01:24:00.001-07:00

what was said tonight:

lu: "you can't let her do this. this is insanity"
nameless: "i love her lu, i'll love her until the very last second we have."