small stories.

and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young
____ee cummings











untitled by buradori



to my right a girl sits eating in a black corset. to my left, another. more nude.

when i get into bed she automatically climbs over me, pushes me back into my own side. it's one clumsy motion, another of night's awkward fumblings. i kiss the back of her neck and she purrs.
i like that sound.
so i do it again.

the rain tries to fool me. i'm not fooled. the humidity gives it away. this is a ploy. a stratagem. i ignore it, waiting for the ghosts of the heat to seep out of the hot cement : the rough tar of roads and sidewalks : and drift off,

i am bored and tired of everyallthethings we bore and tire of. today i am bored and tired of Monday. i am tired of vacant spaces,
sometime between 9am and noon i resolve to lock myself in a room somewhere. switch off my phone. to rest in being alone.

when i awake i am scared i cannot love.
i cannot be in one place.
cannot admit satisfaction.

i am soo proud of you she says. she says you're really shining right now she says when you were in my class i saw hints of it, sometimes you showed signs of it, but... well done. i ignore the inadvertent diss, i say if i may inquire, to what do i owe your generous laudations? she laughs, i worded it humorously, but i was serious: i have no idea what she's talking about. she laughs and walks away.

if this is not my body then whose is it?

when you give a recital it is a strange feeling. you sit on the stool. sometimes you have to lift the lid of the piano. other times not. depends. my teacher always said hear the first bar in your head, sound it perfectly in your head before you put your hands on the keyboard. then it starts. it's a dance for your hands. it's odd because the rest of your body feels like it's just hanging around waiting. like when you wait for your centre-of-attention GF/BF to get done talking to his/her friends so you can leave. you kinda just sit there. on the stool. try not to look around. try not to look to out of place. i'd always say to myself your role is to sit here politely. you hear the sounds and think oh, nicely done right hand. nicely done. sometimes there's a mistake. snaps you out of it long enough to make a few changes (like adjusting sound on the stereo). then you go back to sitting politely. daaaaaaa - dum!.
then it ends. you stand up, wonder how it went. it sounds different from 20 feet and a body away, so who knows what they heard. __bow. __shuffle off stage.

the rain stops and summer's thick tongue takes a big lick and exhales.

i do not want to be here.
to know anyone.
i want to be in Vietnam,
amongst white flowers.

it is hard not being myself. __i am tired of waiting for the opportunity to catch-up to myself.
so i shower again. reassess my wardrobe. worry about the future. __measure stuff.

i enjoyed the King's Speech. __mostly i want to live in Lionel's chambers. with the wallpaper and the model plane hanging from the ceiling and the wide spaces and the dark wood and the fireplace. ____i want Thom Yorke to teach me to dance.

- are you happy?
- i am not unhappy.
- then what are you?
- i do not know a word for it.

time is making me claustrophobic. and agoraphobic. one or either. maybe both. both. definitely both. i'm not sure whether i have too much of it or too little. i think it's both. like those days you feel fat and skinny at the same time. fat in the wrong places, skinny in the wrong places. but with time. and space.

i'll get them framed later he thinks.
to which she responds but there are no photos of you around anywhere.
that's true. there aren't. so he says there are photos of my memories. that's almost true. it's true, bar one missing photo. he gave one away. it is important to do that, once in a while. to give away something that means the world to you. give someone your version of the world. nice thought. a little jupiter-photo, a dusty saturn-ornament.

it is very Euripides. yes. i know, we've covered that ground already. but the furies, i can hear them. almost wish to hear them. maybe this time it's not even them, it's just me. it's the hum in my head. wants to run. move. relocate. scrub. restart. calibrate. purge. exorcise.

maybe though.
maybe what?
just maybe.
what ever. __so what's next?
the thing.
what thing?
whichever thing. the everyanynothing.
are you gonna have trouble sleeping tonight?

i cannot act this well for too much longer. __there must be some water here somewhere.