Poetry

You ask why I’m tense.

Try having boobs
and stubble.

Hips
and a voice like this.

Be this body
for five minutes.

after Yeats

Do not blame me for ruining you.
He called me him, put his hand on my thigh,
the guilt of my zip still sewn in his tongue.
Do not resent what you wanted:
my clavicle pours your poems back
through your eyes with glittery faggot spit.
Do not regret that I turned ‘hello gorgeous’
into a weapon. I got there first.
My girl bitch dick in your mouth
tasted sweet, then choked.
Give me the match. Look at my face.
Watch this world burn. Yours. The one built wrong.

“No bow tie is perfect,”
I’d say, tugging on yours.
“It needs to look messy —
not like a clip-on.”

The one you liked was too long:
fussy, like Evelyn Waugh.

On the retie, I wrenched it into shape,
bows and back, knot tightening
as the black fabric flopped out.

I’d step back,
admire my work,

dreading the party.

The shape of love
Is not a heart
But the inky sphere
Of a growing pupil.

Those space-wide
Black eyes.

i think about the gifts you never got me
the thoughts you never had
i wonder if this is

society
consumerism
or if there’s something broke between us

My thoughts feel sharp again
And they're black-purple:
The colour of the crush card virus
And shimmering industrial music

That plays like a car crash;
Metallic and distorted.

We keep on having these beautiful days
But I keep bracing for the penny's drop.
I look at you, and then my body aches.
It's far too good; I know it has to stop.

You flood my thoughts, and then we meditate,
A calm defiance of this city's pace.
My thoughts drift forward—I can hardly wait
My soul close to yours; your mouth's gentle trace.

This moment swells, my doubts begin to shake
You meet my parents; breakfast shared by four.
We lie in bed, and I watch as you wake
Quiet things I didn't dream of before.

The drop never comes, the stop never starts
I’ve opened my life, you’ve opened my heart.

there's a a cold in the salon
that I don't feel anywhere else.
slime purple, a wet silver
a crown of gelatine eels:
nipping my head
stealing my warmth
icing my blonde.

Sometimes
When I’m feeling sad or guilty
I wonder if I was so used
To the dull background hum
Of the way we live now
So afraid of being bored
That I misunderstood:
It wasn’t monotony,
But something close to peace.

2014 Laverne Cox on the cover of Time:
That moment seems so far away
A memory locked behind a screen
Its nostalgia blurring softly
And all the context we have learned:

The world is different now.
I thought that we were making it
As it shaped itself around us.

It’s September and the weather is cooling now,
Autumn sunshine that’s crisp with new beginnings;
I feel its peaceful energy
So much more than Spring renewal.

Falling leaves always seem so auspicious; don’t they?
The earth-coloured return to my birth –
and time in which I feel most at home

Another thing that’s changed,
in a summer filled with dislocation:
one wet week when my life became unstuck;

Its wreckage settled inside my heart.