Lost Angeles

Paris

City of light and soft blue rain
momentary joy, driven sadness
you see we are here after all!
Paris of all worlds where we might
day and night be strong, because
luckily, love is incurable madness.
Paris for it's joy and despair
For all you had given to, and for,
and lost in Paris, we did, remaining
here in this old hotel apartment
caring nothing for the view, the weather
like a French teacher on your English tongue
doing this and that, to what and whom
like Prevert, the smell of your burned desires
three matches lit, one by one in the night
the first to see your face in its entirety
the second to see just your eyes
the last to see your bowed lips
and then, then complete darkness
to remind me of all you said to me
the slow clack of heels on cobblestones
along the river, the talking wounded
discarded Trojans, the pavement
like moist sheets beneath our bodies
my heart confessed insatiable
hankering for Love's unspoken avenues
an evening bird trapped in its charms
street by street we explored this city
like a flower, but in the end I realised
I didn't need to explore anything
but you the wife of Menelaus who
runs off with Paris, confident I'm Paris
I am no prince and have no riches
I seek my fortune in a love like this
kiss me my darling, share blessings
in each and every tender, even though
each one curses our stolen love forever
and brings down pictures, and the walls
they hang on, a café somewhere,
a starry night, quiet sleeps as
twilight diminishes, our last day
where can I put my last hope when
all the white doves are dirtied
and soundless neighbours, await tonight
a small revolution, waiting for the change,
at the dawn of a new day.

French Class

Mon amour,
mon amant,
Je t'aime,
Je te veux,
embrasse-moi
une fois de plus,
le clair de lune
sur notre peau,
une seule entité
dans un lit simple,
ne sont plus séparés.

My love,
my lover,
I love you,
I want you,
embrace me
once again,
the moonlight
on our skin,
a single entity
in a single bed,
no longer separated.

The Evolution of April

Whenever my twin palm trees sway,
rustling towards warmer waters,
I think of you in Los Angeles,
and then of Paris in Spring, our April,
that month sweetest and most cruel,
and on my list down, down,
near the Louvre i’d written: Love;
that romantic cliché, Paris for Eros.
I was living in the 4 th, the arrondissement
across from the Ile Saint Louis,
within sight of Notre Dame,
that’s the point where the Seine god
parts his legs expansively, stretching
for a moment, before he merges for the sea.
You called me, you were lost, and so I ran
down and around my creaking stairs,
and then you were there, my Azriel,
my Thanatos, a perfect shadow standing
at Metro St Paul, waiting in the sunshine,
and always, and in my haste to meet you,
I'd knocked my watch against the threshold,
my Breguet ‘Réveil du Tzar,’
a small blued-steel Awakening of Caesar,
stopping time for just one afternoon,
and those two tiny twin hands unnoticed
as second and week-day pointers,
were released from their routine,
and danced each other across that silver face of time,
magnetic to the other, and affixed their darting bodies
to the pomme-hole of the minute hand’s angel tip
and now months later they ride it still around,
ticking: All are equal! Tocking: Be special!
If only we, like them, were still in special orbit.
Ah, well, anyway. Later after awkward coffee
falling at the Caféohèque into desire,
kissing politely goodbye,
then French-kissing hello to Spring desire,
that brain-licking hell-hungry lion,
for me there was no hiding in ordinary days,
the new idea of you made my long-grasses shiver,
and the sprawl of you appeared in others faces.
Shehzaad, your name’s bright syllables,
named now a new discovered element of boy,
and a new world brave, uninvited, real and permanent,
you are always spring to me, and someday, sometime,
some way we will be again like those blue angel hands
a skipping kiss across the silver face of time,
but for now, those twin palms are clear in total blue
and so rustle on obscure, and never two without you.

17 Reasons

This great restaurant of night,
that light moving feast,
that other living,
in a city where even the water is hard
I love being such, or such,
was it the first bloom of middling perfidy?
Was it the massacre of the father?
Was it in that wilderness downtown?
Was it the wet fertile earth of that garden?
Was it that we are always Spring?
Was it that you’re easy
and bendy like saplings
that would rather break than bend,
so when we’ve got trees to knock-upon,
hearts can bang
like motel doors,
you’re young ugly duckling,
so it’s not how many beautiful people
slip through your fingers,
or how may fingers
slip through beautiful people.
It’s a tarnished full-moon
over the painted windows,
always knowing,
it’s open sesame.
Tonight?
No, no thats not my kind of opening,
it’s a dirty mind,
all windows are dirty
and jungle sirens
are scattering cygnets,
dragging by the lake,
unfamiliar dogs are sniffing
for a dead black swan
and underwater love,
our backs to an airy mirror
like a salmon to breeding,
trawling up the shallows,
a boy picks meadow flowers,
this is a dangerous act,
breaking garlands, loitering,
I trail, charged and waiting,
the glow of cigarettes
are like colander stars,
or fireflies, falling leaves,
confused like falling angels,
lonely shooting stars,
leafy weather,
Noontime, Nighttime, Anytime.
Why are you so closed?
The crackle of dry leaves
and twigs in the park,
and boys caught in the torchlight
are like startled rabbits,
love’s fugitives and strangers,
the children who didn’t make it
dishevelled curls,
waiting stares,
soft trustful nakedness,
the kids want to be so-hard,
so-sweet, so-friendly,
strangers, with angry candy,
strangers have the best candy,
Heaven, i’d love to,
Heaven, just, what you need,
Heaven, takes a little time.
Closed Mondays.
We’re not long to love,
pick my lock, tongues invoking,
beeking heat and the baking sweat,
hot scald my lips with raw affections,
near skins, full-moon madness,
echoing sirens and sighs,
bed-knobs and broomsticks
unleashed,
untangled in jungle exploration,
discovery, nothing but mammal,
a lost tribe, fingering love chords,
fumbling small talk, impatient affections,
your body and it’s dangers,
hard-up and dirty,
waking dreams wilding my world,
you see the back of light,
you know the inside of hunger,
you feel the thirst for mending,
you crave the milk and money,
a velvet revolution bites my tongue,
but no, take back your heart,
that tattooed star of broken glass,
anonymous and disposable as a cup,
sow the seed and soil the plough,
dragging as you lay,
weather deep,
you took the wind and rain,
the equaling of everything,
the leasting,
the love crumbs and the raindrops,
later at the train station,
the oncoming point of departure,
the fugitive passion,
with nothing more to offer you
than the sand in my pockets,
and only my dog
knows who you are, who?
You? you are the one,
the one who ate my heart out,
do you know the suburbs?
and until then?
and if not before? Perhapsy?
i’ll wear a ring somewhere else,
and kiss goodbye,
i’ll put you in a song,
demanding of my ghosts everything,
but now, don’t look back,
never look back.

Bigger Blue

Nothing is more blue,

nor anything more empty,

than a swimming pool,

it’s dry leaves,

and cracked bottom,

a heart of light,

and old rain,

glittered-out

with winking shards,

worn numb,

by the concrete of

some Hollywood life,

drained into pictures,

turning to the skies,

sitting knee-sprung,

poised,

over an unreflective gulf,

with different strokes,

all triumphant blue is lost,

and as these moments,

are wind measured,

with floating dust,

cracked glass,

and shelved light,

perhaps i’ll see you again,

reflected, refracted

and returning like a swimmer,

or perhaps,

I won’t see this day again,

a swimming pool,

a reflection and an echo,

a librarian, skimming pages,

splashed-up like leaves,

the colours of hopeful love.

For Three Months With You
(after Larissa Shmailo)

For three months with you, I would:
- Quit my job
- Leave my city
- Sell my books.

For six months with you, I would:
- Live in LA's Jungle
- Wait on tables
- Shave my chest

For nine months with you, I would:
- Be a sitcom extra
- Join a carpool
- Burn my paintings

For one year with you, I would:
- Break the law
- Break my heart
- Break my promises

But what if it doesn't work out?
- I'll be a monk
- I'll cut all my hair-off
- I'll get deported

Now ask me Baby, what I'd do,
for a lifetime with you?

The Trick

I learnt it in my teens
(how to let a boy inside)
1. Tighten your body until
Every. Muscle. Screams.
2. Then Release. Shiver-out,
relax down, like a horse.
If you're scared of stab,
and trembling - it hurts.
The Trick. Useful for every
injection, all examinations.
You'll never recoil if you
welcome it all, like a lover.
If you want to love me,
and I want you inside,
i'll hush my blood and
let you swim inside.

My addiction
you're my first
my fix
I get from you
thinking of your
familiar itch
craving that,
wanting
to let you flow
freely through
my heart and brain
i've never been
addicted to drugs
but i'm addicted
to you.

Modem
wire hums the space between us
light
air dry in early dusk
down
but sweet still while I wait
here
in hope to catch you under
evening's
dead and twinkling lights
feeling
that hot iron heart of earth turning
waiting
to give you my love again
but
I couldn't get through
those
unsaid words bubbling in my throat
are
you there? Are you
home
are you shaking the smog from your hair? and
washing
the day from your skin and in your
bedroom
do your winded clothes collapse on a chair?
wherever
you are I want to be there too
just
the soft weight of you
melting
warm skin becoming water and then air
palm
trees wave for you, and at
night
we're just puppets amidst the tangled strings of sleep
things
yes all good things; I hope, to those who wait.

Sphinx

Beyond the boulevard of sunset,
the streets flow softly in the night,
with deep bends waxing banks of shadows,
shady shores wash with crouching forms,
yield at the lightest touch, when beckoned,
they stroll thirsty legged for fixed embrace,
lapping mutes, panting their heart's shadows,
the full bowl of moon-milk brings them out
and skimming the dusty surface of the earth,
curving these gather, deep into themselves,
and come together with lips like dirty songs,
fake porn names and hungry tongues of fire,
i'm passing over these wilder shores for you,
my arcing lights caress and besiege your
impenetrable secret fur, your secrets, songs,
your nothings, your sweetly never whole or
shared becomings, all the letters of your name
are reasons of desire, they are pricked-out
like evening stars across the skies, a lettered
constellation entering the body of the night.
Sphinx, I know all the riddles of your breast,
keep your questions, a traveller can still guess
your city gate by waning shadows of your tail.

St Valentine's Day, Massacre
(14.Feb.2011)

Oh no, yes,
so...
so many ways
to begin,
and we try so hard
at the beginning
then, how
not to think of the end?
this time, that time
last year, there
postmarked Sydney,
I ended up in Paris
for an artist
Paris is a sad paradise,
the Louvre is a prison
of time's refugees
but then again,
Sydney is always a joyful hell.
L'église
de la Madeleine for the requiem
before we became entangled
and life turned us into Mahler's 5th
and became bound
in lunar vellum.

We met
in grey Paris,
because entanglement
is something we all do,
to Chopin
on his anniversary
and never expected that adeiu
was to be
our last words for some time.

because because
because you stood there
and met my gaze and liked me too.

The odds are stacked,
tell me how can I
lead a charmed life?
exactly what are the odds
of an intelligent person
finally being happy?
the odds of falling in love?
in Paris?
of making a living as an artist?
sometimes
I think I lead a charmed life.
I do with you. Do I?

Poetry
demands all my ghosts.
If I could
I would fly, fly, fly to you
as raised by swans
and steal back time

there's nothing
like looking
at a picture of a haircut,
at you,
Hollywood land
sweeps into your life
silver, careless like,
and fuck in your eyes,
you like me too,
so,
you're a unicorn,
something
is lost in translation,
you are seriousness

I imagine myself
at your Hollywood place
making pancakes in my underwear,
after crossing the internet abyss.

Love:
that warm distraction,
something hard
lodged in my chest
something that feeds
on pain.

This house
is all peeling mirrors,
tarnished silver
and clinking pearls.
I curl up
and turn to the massacre
of red roses
on the table
and imagine your lips,
Flores Belli, battle flowers.

I feel like some day
a screenwriter will write
all about our tortured relationship,
or maybe he won't,
as people like to ignore artists
like me,
and cast people like you
as terrorists, Taxi Drivers
or I.T. experts.

Maybe
i'll move to Hollywood,
learn the savage customs
of the natives
say SLAMMED when i'm busy
and BATSHIT for crazy,
and know that every waiter is
an actor/model/writer,
or Post-Grad
with a poet's sensibilities.

Everyone white
is thrice blessed
with every anything
to lose
is living armed
in triple-locked homes,
beyond full-breasted lawns:
how nice
is your: Tudor Hysterical,
Pro-Bellum...
International Party Deck.

Here else be dragons,
in the mirror.
the fleeting shadow
Like in a film
your thoughts unfold
a face disappears
into itself
moment by moment. 
into the curve of the piano .

I get the urge to buy
fine china,
kick-off my shoes
dip my feet
into the Beverly Hills
Country Club swimming pool,
after brunch, after shopping,
after stopping.

Books,
fiction doesn't sell,
neither does non-fiction,
nor does hard-covers,
e-books are the future,
the internet,
just the internet,
people won't read anymore,
or maybe they will?

Its always summer
somewhere, comfortable,
always summer here.
All-lazy inertia
and like the freeways,
slow, shiny, impossible city
the only thing
that keeps people going
is the hope of sucrose
and success.

Revolution, freedom,
did I feel free
because I was happy?
Or happy
because I was free?
I will tell all the room
that I will fight you
with words and flowers
and balls of snow, and kisses
and for my natural life
I will live in two cities.

Should
the wide world
roll-away tonight
I want to be
like the Flamarrion man,
sticking my neck
out into the empty universe
and run
with the hoof prints

of all the yearning stars.

Falling
asleep on the hottest night
in summer,
naked and safe
before the birds
sing-up.
The heat evaporates
and the breeze stirring
turns cool
I wake-up
and pull the sheets-up
and fall back into
a warm deep sleep,
that reflex to pull something
or someone warm
towards us
when we're sad
in the world
and ready for sleep
and happiness,
thats love.
In your light,
in your summer,
in your heat
I want to fall asleep
under a quilt
happy as a child.

To You, to Me

I had you over runways,
under freeways, beneath tunnels
you had me over bridges,
beside highways in the streets,
I had you spinning in in crescents
lost in cul-de-sacs, I had you more
I had you six times in the limo
before we reached the door
we had each other in driveways
up pathways, bumping up stairways
stumbling over doormats to hallways
under the breathless stag of seven tines,
over watched by glass-eyed beasts,
you had me in the park, I had you

If you let me

If you let me: Baby,

I would be all your clothes,

and cling to your body

and hang on your bones.

I would like to be

all the wind in the air

tracing your goosebumps

and ruffling your hair.

I would want to be

the sun at your place

warming your back

and kissing your face.

Oh Baby I'm tall, but

if you gave me a pass,

i'd be a lot smaller

and live in your apartment.

I remember how it felt
to stir towards the day
with bleary blue eyes
and no brewed coffee, but.

I am not sure what happened
when the LA sun made me stir
at 7:45 that morning and spread
it's warmth along the windows,
along my walking feet and
along limbs touristed sore.

I do not remember
when you arrived,
I was asleep, drowning in
dreams of where all of
Santa Monica beach
meets all the sky.

You were drowsing
on the sofa-bed
under a blanket
fearing to wake me and
as I exited the kitchen,
you rose-up, threw back
the blanket, and time
fell away in strands,
It had coloured you,
breathing as you did,
broken in places
like melting frost.

in my morning walking
when dreams come true
in my wide humid eyes
of hazy blue I saw a
vision of dark brown eyes
and a whisper, Hola Baby
but you have been
in my heart ever since
and I will never rest again
until this comes true again
and find those eyes again
I will walk in pain again.

Stray

Should your thoughts
stray towards me,
in that odd moment
when the LA traffic
holds it’s breath,
know it’s possible that
i’m thinking of you too,
i’m remembering
your great gentleness,
your kind eyes,
your dear voice,
and sweet lips.
In that moment
stray towards me.

Four Letter Names

I'll soon forget this boy, kneeling
on my rug with a gram of blow,
inhaling all his own reflection,
I know this bottom's heartache,
eyes aching for me to fill his void.
He's regular, not handsome or pretty,
I forget his name, where he's from,
its just enough he stays the night,
spends, and shelters from the storm.
And when he first enters my bed,
lifts his shirt and tugs the blanket back,
turning, he startles more than scares,
his lanky body, nowhere special,
pale thighs spread-out like railings.

His only question: Enjoying the Town?
It's bars are all guideposts to pillowing,
so across shadows, hope-worn streets,
I brave this brackish harbour for bed.
Diving into yesterdays's air, I taste
cologne, and salt, waking at three,
hungering again, feeling so empty
my throat aches from lack of sobs.
Beyond the night, up off the mattress,
I forget too, beyond the large fingers
inside me, my images of the big man
fading, with all the other loads sticky,
muffled, and indifferent as the stars,
I whisper for stop, but softer than sobs.

Locket

Los Angeles, the actor,
fishes out a locket from
the wardrobeand turns
it over In his palm,
curitorially, carefully into
the silver Hollywood light.
Touching the cold names
of Shah and Noor Jehan
etched in the crystal
with his fingertips,

It's gold case as heavy
as hopes, and as
inconvenient as love.
Door closes. There will be
no inquisition of the eyes,
just a fading of the light.

Sydney, the artist
downs his sticky brush,
wipes-off his fingers.
In the kitchen he lifts
an iron pot onto the hob,
radio, on, Mahler's march,
distractedly, leaning
on the edge, as it swells.

He touches his neck, and
then his empty pockets.
He looks out to sea,
as the ringing phone
echoes the gulls.

There are no longer
any words here, just
a salted love glaze
as vast and pacific
as oceans and
weighed down and
tossed overboard.

Too heavy for the travel,
of hours, days, and months.
All these tyranted words,
too heavy for satellites
too long for postcards,
too inflammatory for letters,
too sharp for ships,
too poisonous for birds.

All these words never go,
those words never do.
Some words, like polaroids,
remain in boxes,
an archeology of sorrow
for curling and dust.

He sighs sorftly, then
he smiles, and polishes
two champagne flutes,
changes the music to Jazz,
and the doorbell rings.

Hollywood Endings

New lovers are
the film stars of our lives,
every time we make eyes,
across a crowded room, we
choose danger over dishwater,
as the orchestra swells,
we moisten lips, inhale, sparkle,
becoming divas to melodrama,
re-living our favourite scenes,
putting burlesque to shame.

When we were boys,
and someone said Star,
we inhaled that tingling word:
ES-TE-AY-AR and savoured,
our image of the shining god,
that we’d seen at the multiplex,
a beautiful man, or boy,
who shone silvery in his skin,
amongst the sticky worn velvet,
and fumbled popcorn,
we’d argue our favourites -
who we looked more like,
or made-up a new demigod,
out of cool, handsome,
and danger, and brilliance.

Welcome to Hollywood, lover,
it’s not always so glamorous,
here, close-up, I mean sure…
there’s vintage charm,
and award ceremonies.
But, behind the scenes,
it’s more complicated -
you’re the director, producer,
what to wear,-? where to go?
how to walk the boulevards
while high, and do yoga, so you
can f*** in the middle of
the nightclub then keep the star
from spilling all their glitz
into the gutter, dodging paparazzi,
D.U.I. and not f***-up your visa.

How do you feel? Emote?
Do you think about pets that died?
This is just a screen-test,
for the kind of project
Hollywood won’t make,
maybe James Franco can help?
So we’ll make our own movies
on our iPhones, as we walk down
the palm-fringed boulevards.
We can make a revolution
of sneakers and t-shirts,
and work-it so hard getting
all the angles, get sore knees,
so Academy Members can
remember our screen names.

We need pills to sleep,
pills to wake, dreaming fitfully
on satin wishbones,
(our lover sleeps on the couch)
after spending all his talent,
all over us, for what?
For dreams - we dream,
dream of that cliff-hanger
Hollywood ending where
the hero is never really bruised,
or that the press won’t
mock the truth about love,
and dream of a place
where every boy can become
a hero, a star, a god, who can
open his arms to the sky,
as the ship turns into the sunset.
Yes, new lovers are the stars
of our lives, and we dream,
all the way back, to what boys
dared to dream in the dark.

Song of the Lost

Losing things is part of all we have:

I have lost my money, my keys, my mind,
my memories, my favourite watch.
(for this to rhyme I need a Scotch?)

But this month the list compounds
with every day, I lost a dog,
a childhood home, it's grounds.

But they were not the rudest shove,

I lost a city, an empire, a future,
fleeing a continent, I lost my love.

Chorus:

Loosing is not hard to do

until I finally lost you -
I dearly hope you go to Hell
Until then I'll have to keep
your secrets well.

Hollywoodlands

Cardboard sky, the stars,
last night, they burned holes,
through his cumulus blanket,
and blinded him with dreams.

America, you're old, tanned,
your hard thirsty untrod turf,
your hedges blossom litter,
your dripping subdues dust,
your strip malls conditioned,
your derricks suck for dreams
your tossed salad shudders.

Spring's peeling chrome
and blinking faulty neon,
angels here have feathered
hair, and oily rhinestones
inescapable, gorgeous
gasoline gardenias.

Skid-mark Row, all ignored.
Scrawled on the urinal wall:
“I will take cum in a park,
I will take cum in the dark.
Cum in my mouth if you will,
Cum right on me - fits the bill!
Give me all your sticky mess,
This is what I like the best!”
Call: (---) ---- ----

The palms are mended.
at the Chateau Marmont,
squinting amidst bungalows
Johnny eats his eggs
under his hat, under the hills
while round and around
the pool I go, lapping over,
as lemons nod, to scorched
sirens singing up canyons.

I did it my way, Freeway.
the pauses in a song,
I left you on the Highway.
after the car got stolen,
then, that body in the alley,
amongst smudgy cats.

Moonlight, slippery film,
writers spin in their rooms,
bewitched boys on fire,
centripetal chairs, to gold,
and cents and murmurs.

Out in force, the boys
are a tide of swaggorty,
drunken-ness, and lust.

Austin, of Idaho,
a bar in Silverlake
the glittering star of his
High School Musical
fresh from casting
standing shy to the corner,
I locked small words
to the tarnished shadows,
we drove home,
danced in the dark menage
he was shorter than me,
I couldn’t keep my hands
off his unblemished ass
or not enjoy his lips.

The full moon bouncing
nakedly, back and forth
over the underpass,
black above the bars
shielding the heavens.

The sun checked-in on us
I woke, sketched until he rose,
he woke, I took him again,
we drank strong coffee,
he gave me his number
I did not say what I meant,
though he must have known.

The wind sucked the paper,
out of my fingers, to the hedge,
with all the other flowers,
he paused red, at the lights,
then drove towards his dreams.

Alone again, I made coffee,
finally finished-off a poem,
answered my messages,
plumped the cushions,
watched the sprinklers dance,
I wish it would rain someday.