♪ I WANT A GOD WHO STAYS DEAD, NOT PLAYS DEAD ♫

GEM

But the opposite then, over here. I want to spit myself out of my own mouth. 

We are not what we feed on.

Always mad dash to a gem—movie, book, track with the right pace, tension, release, gives a disjointed harmony that everyone in the room gets felt up by, you almost feel sick from it you’re so into it. But then it ends, signal comes back, you need more. And perma-hypnotised by the big dog progenitors who seem to supply the rare-earth goods with no real effort. In real time observing the hierarchies and links that form over this shared huffing. But realised, spent a lot of time hanging with people solid at living Swarovski, when all I could ever be was a rock. 

I remember going to see a movie, during the screening I couldn’t stop covering my necklace with my hands from shame. See-thru, no hardware, but finery. My aesthetic greed, the limpness of all that, started a loud bell in my head. Still ringing now. I understood my mother and my grandmother’s disgust with me, I walked away from their way of living from culpability, a sense of duty realised thru real work. The real dinning back, then the biche de bere chain and vintage prada boots w/ whooped rubber soles revealed for being the goofy ass clown costume that it always was. But it takes less than a minute with good people to abjectify a hulled identity, a matter if you look at it, or away. 

Even though it is in my bones all those things I dug up and fed on, I confused them for something else, thought it weighty and wore it as a camouflage…shading and huffing enough in an attempt to outwit where I came from, a way to shirk the debts I owe so many people in this world. That I have the privilege to look away, run away, at all. I didn’t want to see myself, and I didn’t bring the people up with me that I should have, when I got away and when I had the chance. Now I know it's why I think about them when I am falling asleep. 

Working to strip, and get upright. Reckoning, service is all. Will put it as right as I can. 

No one can bed me because they can select things well, and some of them really can, I know. But all we admit in that is shared leisure, a class bracket. I don't care anymore. I want to know. What do you have, under? I don't have a lot yet. But, any tooth at all? 

ONIBI

 

COLOSSAL YOUTH

“Guarding this isn’t like guarding the open-air market back home. Here you wield an iron hand in a velvet glove. There, it’s just an iron hand. Nothing but poverty. I know what I’m talking about. Here it’s another world. An ancient, untroubled world. No one shouts or runs or spits on the floor. It’s nice and easy. I can even take a little nap. So afternoons here in Egyptian Art are sacred to me. It’s trouble when someone like you turns up. But you don’t see people like you or me here often. We’re left in peace.”

Some people give off a royal temperament no matter what. 

“Nha cretcheu, my love, meeting again will brighten our lives for at least 30 years. I’ll return to you renewed and full of strength. I wish I could offer you 100,000 cigarettes, a dozen fancy new dresses, a car, that little lava house you always dreamed of, and a 40-cent bouquet... 

...But most of all, drink a bottle of good wine and think of me. The work here never stops. There are over a hundred of us now. Two days ago, on my birthday, I thought about you for a long while. Did my letter arrive safely? Still no word from you... 

...Maybe soon. Every day, every minute, I learn beautiful new words just for you and me, tailor-made for us both like fine silk pyjamas. I can only send you one letter a month. Still no word from you. Maybe soon...

...Sometimes I get scared building these walls, me with a pick and cement, you with your silence, pushing you ever deeper into a pit of forgetting. It hurts to see these things I don’t want to see. Your lovely hair slips through my fingers like dry grass. Sometimes I grow weak and think I’ll forget.” 

Layering talk about baby wipes, crocodiles, wanting shrimp with beer, and anacondas. She can speak about anything she wants through bad coughing, and we listen, charm in her grit