Saying yes, yes I want to live and be alive...You cry sometimes, now and then, but that's the way it IS, staying in this kind of funny city where reality slips into the heated fantasy of a poor man's drunken sleep and all his yesterdays skate the knife edge of what we want it to be. These mornings are unraveling fast into the endless aching blue coloured skies, blue like the eyes of them that you loved once, maybe, a long time ago. It reads like a funny story and you can't believe it happened to you, but it's like that sometimes. And if the road leads to other places like you dream about, well, it's a long way up from there.

Everything is a story, so tell and keep saying the things you're too tired to say. I saw you smile at a halfway house when I looked up you, you were gone. I'll say what I need to and what I don't will come out anyway. Saw the house lying beside the dusty road. Inside the sun's too bright and everything's stained yellow and the little dust motes fly up into oblivion and I don't know where. I get so sad sometimes thinking about them who lie in fitful sleep waiting for the world to remember, if ever. So the next time I see the sun set behind a row cars on the speeder's highway I'll let you know that everything has gone to the way it's supposed to go.

I keep winding and back again though I know I said I won't stay long, I dearly love to talk to the blurry windows that never hear my stories.  It was a lovely day they say, and it stares back boldly into my eyes and I'm so afraid to go outside and drink in the beauty of an alive reality.  Let me lock myself into my room of safety where the walls are uncoloured by years of tears and I can count the bricks with a dangerous abandon until I fade away in to the night.

Their laughter is jarring to my ears, something not quite right about this oh-so-perfect day...a surrealist painting applied onto the canvas of my mind so that it all seems so out of place but I can't put my finger on it, the finger that wears no ring and curves around my palm when I shake with unseen humour.  It is a funny story unto myself that makes me smile looking down which is what I do these days so often, counting the steps to this classroom, to the places past where I know he can see me.  Yes I do feel his eyes watching me gazing like a sightless bird trying so hard to figure out what's wrong with me because I told him I tried to kill myself six times already.

Ha, an exclamation without a drop of amusement she turned away and said more to the wall than him, Doesn't really matter anymore 'cause it's all in the past now.  I um still see his face so puzzled why, he's never seen anyone like me anymore.

Their words still slide across my head like I've heard them yesterday.

Why eat?  Why laugh?  Why drink?  Why fuck? 

Without an ounce of love to spare I think I'll find my way in the world that doesn't care too much for me all the while still looking down and whispering with a certain cadence along my every foostep crossing myself saying, Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow... This petty pace is far too fast for me now.

I will show the world my face when it stares out from beneath the veneer of your computer screen and I will unblinking say This Is Who I Am you sightless ravens, today and not nevermore.

They turn their backs on everything they know about and wish they'd come from across the ocean where things seem so much more something somehow. But I, I turn my back upon the rising city and everything is gonna be all right. It reads like someone else’s mail, like a secret diary carelessly left open for all the world to see, one of those little pink ones with the cheap lock that I twisted open to feed one someone else’s heart. But let it not be said that I judged a book by its errant behaviour. Don't let the magpies of bad faith shit on you now, so take care. Is it sacrilegious to kneel on the gravestone of someone you loved, to whisper words of wishing into their dust and fall asleep under a sultry September sky? The leaves have begun to fall again to look like yellow confetti except it won’t catch in my eyelashes and when I look down I smile a loveless face and let it all melt down into forever. Even now the winds are grey and they tell of places far away and I can’t shake the feeling that something big is about to happen and I don’t know what to say. Picture the perfection of me going away to somewhere you can’t see. She winds her way among the buildings that peer down on her bare feet slapping against the cobbled streets and fogged windows of abandoned factories that litter the streets of this part of Brooklyn. What is she doing there? They all went away years ago and nothing more can be said of what happened on summer afternoons. So, I’m going away and I don’t know if I’ll be back again. To find myself in a place of history I’ll go. So stay happy and I won’t say no more, just to say that they lied when they told me that life is a love story. Stepping out into the sunlight of a somewhere e l s e . . . .

She took to standing by the streetlight during the dusty afternoons just watching being staring at the one who would never come. All I wanted was a little time trying to claim something that's not even mine. I'm going to go away for a long time and I don't know if I'll be back again see it's time to get lost in the place of the centuries to be happy just wandering and walking alone out.

Picture-Perfect

Oh I saw a glimpse of you today as I floated down the hallway on feet of feathers and that peek of you was enough to make me smile, if a little bit sadly, and to myself. So I roam the little streets and feel the tiny pathways of my heart see it's magic capillarity as it draws the blood to my heart to make me so alive. See I don't have you but you don't have me so it's a fair exchange but only if you knew.

Lost like I don't know right through my fingertips to a place where I canNOT even see you but when you used to be here you'd never know. I'd close my eyes and wait for the jarring sound of your keyring so many locks to undo why not do mine and I will sit staring in hidden shadows to know you I am for lack of a better word OBSESSED maybe I don't know.

Oooooh pretty, they said to a dusty canopic jar.  It never responded.

I sat like I've done a million times before a window open to the blankness of the sky so oppressive the humidity it will cling to your skin and hold on for dear life. Feeling so tired I walk the long road home underneath the wetting trees balancing my books like a tightrope walker it's my own art in the one-ring circus of my life. I don't want to hear it, not today, when I feel like the future will kill me with an executioner's axe for not wanting to leave the present. I've got so much to do I tell myself quietly humming under my breath tracing circles on the surface of the glass condensation but I've gotta stop. Leaning sticking watching shyly I wanna feel the solidity of your body when I surprise you with a.

Oh but once you open your mouth the needle punctures the oh-so-stillness of your uncertainty which is beautiful to me.

And walk I will alone again I am at a loss for words.

What else is new? It's Monday.

Why do I keep on bothering with this same old.

Just don't tell me anything anymore and I'll lie faceup beneath the coloured skies with the rain all kissing my face and what else?

Walked away fading into the grey misted fog and disappeared for ever.

Rain on a Saturday Afternoon

Am I saying all the things that need to be said to empty myself so I can be free?

I don't think so.

Come back here he yelled getting up so fast he upset his chair which tipped crazily and hung for a second in midair before falling down to gravity again. One time. It was so bright that day I had to squint my Asian eyes and so warm I hugged myself and sang skipping down the street searching for me. Those people walking to work and back again I'm so invisible and I love it absolutely because. Hey look I've found exactly what I've missed my whole life its perfectly wondrous. Little green shoots of grass poking tentatively above the cracks of the cement and everything is so right for once even the electronic buzzing of the workplace streets I could just lie on the sidewalk and forget eeeeverything...

But not here and not today.

My reflection laughs at me because my hair on a good day reaches down to my back and I shake my head from side to side watching it fling around like the straight shiny hair that it is. Shrug at him saying so what? and sing a little ditty I composed all by my lonesome which goes like nothing. Slink out of my goddamn house 'cos it's a grey morning and my windows they face some brick wall that's scored and old like the faces I'll see on the subway today. Little pools of water form between the cracks of the cobblestones that runs like a road to the river and abandoned factories benevolently smile at me as I look up to their outdated encrusted windows because for once a human is winding in their blood veins.

He nods and counts my change and I'm off again RUNNING and I'll...

I don't know. The tops of the tall buildings are obscured in low slung clouds so it looks like they're rising up up into eternity and everything else is so pallid so grey on this wet dismal day.

And so what? I'm hiding because I feel like trying to sleep or read a good book curled up in my bed the world was too much for me today. I stepped out the door like testing the water and retreat back into the sanity of my room. Oh when the roofs start blowing away in a chill wind I shall come to the water's edge and look out for ever. It's static stagnant and everything else except I'm still looking for that person who won't look away when I cut my eyes at them because it's not nice to stare.

What do I feel? When they say the sky is falling no joke it really isn't so get up today and walk with me.

Wanting to Sleep, Then You...

Remember you told me to be that somebody.

It flickers like an old film reel slowly back to life and fade out again.

Haha, they still play in the sunlight that fades thinking that they'll see all their yesterday.

Paralysis has caught me in an open-armed embrace and I fall victim to it, letting myself lie on my back ashes over me like so much dust and then my cigarette staggers slowly aground. Let me feel the fatigue of the air draining into my body and of course you've got to understand that I'm not afflicted. You see, you welcomed me into the walking life and left me for someone I think I know I can't be.

Routine threatened me this morning with a newly sharpened knife that machete blade so sick it's made to be killer. Of course I went back to school today so what if they think that my face is beautiful. Like an opium poppy so to die for I'll make you grin off to sleep, the cousin of death. You dreamt of purple-coloured blooms lining the hillside soil? You saw the rain drop make the dusty flowers nod and lean to the ground sodden and soaking they can't take that much.

Yes and I'm taking my time dragging my feet that aren't bound in insensible shoes today and suddenly I notice the cracked asphalt so much the better my nose mere centimetres away from the crawling things of the earth.

Disappear underneath a sewer cover manhole, metal plated madness creaking speaking and saying so softly that you can't cry for them all.

So yes, oh yes. Face like a rice-papered blank window complete with wooden frames for features and then one by one like a sneaking thief run up behind this so I can see those shadows scampering away leaving it empty once more.

Stop wearing that vague smile about your face one day Jack Falstaff will come and steal it right off into the night. He wasn't here today to save me from myself.

The Small Morning

Soon, almost half an hour the world will begin to stir...like some big giant hairy monster that needs to take a piss.

Feeling like they all have mourning sickness, I want to slip away and let them enjoy their cellophane lives.

In a grey kitchen the colours all melting together, running down through the cracks in the floor and down down down. I sit alone listening to those goddamn bugs making the insane mechanical noise but I'm feeling magnanimous today so I'll leave them alone they'll perish of the cold soon anyway. Poking a cold spoon into my Lucky Charms with the big marshmallows I ah hope that this will make my day more fortunate 'cos I'm feeling down. There's a chill wind blowing in from the opened window and I'm too tired to close it so I shall endure the prickling of gooseflesh on the back of my arms forever more. Today's headlines so boring greying tiring weary flapping idly on top of some soiled laundry littering the kitchen tiles.

Living in squalor, there's no love in it.

Maybe I shan't go to school today but take a long ride alone on the train ignoring the stares of those lockjawed wingtipped businessmen types. Somewhere down near the water there's a warehouse dimly lit I used to wait outside so I can sell sweets to the unsuspecting or apathetic. Oh yes I went out of business long ago. Loved to walk in the streets of snow in a long coat and look wonderingly at night to the places I could have been but perfectly satisfied with where I am. Yeeees...it is that wherehouse, a wearhouse.

Ay this light creeps in so gently-coloured of cold rolled steel where could I go today?

Never belonged to suburbanite paradise so leave me out of it please. I'm picking, they say, the things to remember me by.

Walking noticing I look down and see so warm a glance in eyes so bright it makes me cry. I weep for the humans they are so full of love and alive vitally and the vapors of alcohol roll off his newspaper body. See his eyes fuzzy from the drinking and it makes me feel all right.

Wonder where I'll wander today?

When First Looked At

They played every day in the rain.

Then they'd skip home and wash off the grime of a decade in the shower, listening to the radio that beeps intermittently.

I walked upstairs and I walk and I walk and I watch but they don't see me you see because I'm watching very carefully. You're crazy you're absolutely crazy, you've got to be on some kind of drugs, he said in a careless tone of voice. I looked away. Did it matter that my feet hurt because I was walking in uncomfortable shoes today? Of course. Of course it did. I was hoping to see him today, to catch a glance of him as he floats indifferently and yet he tries so hard. What a good man I wish you knew I was alive. I know you see me when I stare at you, when I suddenly brush past you in and my looong hair fanning out when I turn to look at your face. You've seen me do that and tried to smile.

They, like mice, so happy in their own world slowly scatter away.

Sitting alone thinking of the one I should have had. What did it matter? Opened a book and stared with uncaring eyes at matters of velocity and unbalanced forces. 98.1 Newtons. I've been willing myself to up and out of this chair, in a long wide hallway seeing the innocents walk by for me to walk among the throngs of the unknown in the streets where I am a stranger.

Blue skies make me cry. They said he might have been alive no body found record clean no human remains. I saw you one last time and what did I say? Hope you have a nice life in a tone of sarcasm and weariness. They got you, man. What a shit.

A coffin-like room burning incense all day long drawn curtains and there she sits staring at the expanse of wood-paneled wall while her refuse clutters the polyurethaned floors. Temper rising I get up, where's the fucking curtains? I said there now get out please this isn't a place for you to see me. Why is she coming back and stealing my blood? Once you got away, you been away and there's no place for you here.

Said I'm seventeen. I'm Korean. Am a female. He's the CENSUS-TAKER!

Doors slide shut against me on the roaring subway and we catch eyes again, him wishing that I spoke to him, me thinking of someone I once met in Rome. I think you are very beautiful can I take you out for coffee or tea? On the stairs in an ancient church looking up at him. Sorry God why oh why do I have to be here now? I speak to him I whisper I'm sorry I'm too young I can't do that. So many that I could have had and now none at all.

The quiet is enough to make you hear. Like a different time and place I've slid into my own dimension so serene you can't understand that everything is all right after all. It'll do for the time being.

Except the street corners are dusty and the light is orangey-afternoon so please. You've got to resurrect the memory inside a fleeting doorframe.