a-metrical

[a-metrical]

Il mare (1962)

[a-metrical]

1. beatus vir

The man dight in the Him delights in His law and on it lingers. His ears have no whispers, he has no place, no company, that is not from Him delivered. He is with Him in the night, they sit at day together. Like a tree in fulsome waters, like a cog with the pick of oil, so is he: of riches spun, he riches spins. As the machine will work aright, so the tree bears sweet juices. See the difference, rust stops the cog on its track sick dust grows on the bark; so are the ungodly to be broken their way will stop and it’s He’ll do it.

[a-metrical]

Domine exaudii orationem meam

I have written the words given me without complaint. I have been silent in my devotions. But I can spin dun straw no more, nor be quiet at my window. Lord, enemies surround me, they throw mud at our grandmothers they sling hated phrases. Lord, their boots are on your ensigns. In the temple. In the yeshiva. They mistake your words deliberately. Lord sing them down. Lord crack their teeth. Break their hedges, rot their walls, make them eat their glad rags Lord fold them out of the world.

[a-metrical]

stocktake

My deare my beloved my loue I heard thee calling and yon did I come it is most pleasing good to heede your call, there be no labour in love save pleasure the workings off it as providentialle as an easeing ague in the soft dawne as the apple falling on beggars lap as a prayer answer’d in the saying of’t. My loue, my chosen Lord how t’please you that has yet every luxurie the chief that has stores full of riches rarely seene that wants nothing more in this earthy realm, thee whose wealth was that happy day secured when he named me fellow Lord of his loue. My deare my loue, we are well provishioned no gilt stoolls nor rich fruits nor creames nor meats, of possessions a dry well contents us; instead gran’ries and bazars full stocked are, replete with the unspoiling fruits of loue.

[a-metrical]

Formas de hombre

Shapes men take: the guys, the lads, the gents, the so-and-sos, the blokes and boys... mal bichos, fulanos, tíos y tipos y mozos.   Thighs akimbo shorts short, arrowed to the crux, to the ingle, el eje, el quid the kernel, the hub, the nub and nib.   Veins at the surface se las puede tocar se las puede seguir to anywhere, wherever you like, to the places you long to be, the moment where he ...   Formas de hombre you’ll be what you are but see the shapes men take around you, de noche en el Retiro o rozándote in the metro, the chispa and chutzpah echadas in a glance, or can only you see?   Is it mad, bad, dangerous to want to know the shapes men take, and where they could take you?

[a-metrical]

pateando

estoy echando barriga comiendo barras por las calles de Madrid   así me dice mi sombra… se me va la voz pero se me entraron las voces   entrecomillas, yo, aquí, la palabra ‘oferta’, otras subrayadas, por ejemplo tiempo matado   entro en bares y les digo ‘pues, póngame en entredicho’ y pongo la caña fría en la frente   a medianoche me acuesto y en la mañana, las sábanas se han hecho soga.

[a-metrical]

close

A stray feeling wandering from the main like a goosebump on a hand.   The face of a passenger on a passing bus; The conversation turning as you turn a corner; The laundry powder smell a girl draws along.   A cipher in the ledger you left as an aide-mémoire, like a computer shortcut that goes nowhere, anymore.   But once, it did— half-remembered, dodging away like a pantomime villain, leaving only the swish of a familiar fabric whose owner you know you knew.   Step aside, let it come to you, or forget it for the 404 error it is; rare for it to be worth the effort anyway; though you can’t know it isn’t, either.

[a-metrical]

cars

The day Mum died was the day I sat my full driver’s test. People say I have a lot of obsessions but with driving they’re right. One of my first memories was watching Mum’s hands moving around the wheel. It looked so complicated but there was no strain in her face at all.   She loved driving too. When she had fights with her boyfriends she’d tell me to get in the car and we would go for a long drive. They could last hours. She’d say, ‘Left, or right?’, ‘Down here, you think?’, ‘Let’s just see what’s around this corner, OK?’. I’d fall asleep with my head against the passenger window. Even asleep, I could feel the lights going past. I used to imagine I was being photocopied. That when I woke up, there would be two of me. Or not two of me, but a brother. This was another obsession I had.   I knew the driving test would be easy, but I liked the excuse to drive. My first car was a green Toyota Camry from 1990. I washed it religiously but I was never satisfied. There were dents and chips in the paint that no amount of washing could hide. I didn’t have the money to fix it and it wouldn’t have been worth it even if I did. Mum got me Turtle Wax for Christmas three years running. Of course she stopped when she died.   When I was preparing for my test, I would drive across the city to the suburb where I was born and where I went to primary school. It was quiet there. If I went at night, which I usually did, I would often be the only car on the road. I would practice emergency braking, parallel park between the parked cars. I’d go round and round the one empty roundabout.   Another reason I liked to go to this suburb is because it was where my uncle lived. I was sixteen, so this was before I moved in with him. At this point, he was in his late twenties and he lived with four other guys in what used to be a sailing club. Mum was weird about him, and she looked tense when he was around, and especially when he was around me. But I thought he was great. At Christmas at Mum’s, I’d gone outside with him and he’d shared his weed with me. He pushed the smoke out of his nostrils and breathed it in through his mouth. It made him look like the tentacle guy from the Pirates of the Caribbean. We’d gone for a walk and he’d told me in hyperreal detail the right way to eat a girl out. And then he did this impression of his girlfriend coming, this crazy, three-minute impression, right then while we were walking around the streets. It was scarily good. His breath juddered, his lips shivered, came ajar and then shut again, as he re-enacted the gradual rise, fall, and rise again until eventually he ‘came’. When he finished, he winked at me, and said: ‘Let me guess, you’re hard?’   The impression probably wasn’t the reason I went to go see him, but after that Christmas I knew I wanted to be around him. So I’d drive around for an hour and then I’d head to his place. He’d make it out like me being there was a big hassle, but it’d always end up with us drinking and listening to music with his flatmates. They had a huge lounge which still had a picture of a ship (a barque, because it had three masts) on the wall.   Most times I’d drink so much that I had to stay the night. The next morning, Mum would always be sitting at the kitchen bench in her yellow dressing gown, waiting. She didn’t ask me, but she seemed to know where I’d been.   The day of the test I washed the car in the morning, and then drove out to the test centre. I made a point of turning my phone, a Nokia 3350, off before I went in. I didn’t want any distractions. I had a woman assessor which threw me off. When I’d imagined it, I’d pictured a man. At first she was sharp with me, probably because I was young and a guy. When she did her inspection of the car, though, she did say, off-hand, ‘wow, you keep this old thing clean.’ And when I started driving, she quickly relaxed. For some of the test, she just sat there looking out the passenger window. ‘Have you had a long day?’ I asked. For a moment I thought I’d said the wrong thing. She looked angry. But then she leant back against the seat and just said ‘Yeah’.   When we got back to the test centre, she told me I’d passed and smiled. I was relieved. I only realised then how terrified I’d been of failing. I was so happy that, when she took me back into the test centre to sign some forms, I could barely hold the pen. When I eventually got back to the car, I sat in the drivers seat for a few minutes taking long breaths, trying to calm down. I thought about driving to my uncle’s. Then I remembered my phone, got it out of my pocket, and pushed the power button up the top.

[a-metrical]

Persian Rug

I would always look into the dark bedroom with the mirror. It had a low ceiling, and no windows, so that its only light was borrowed from the corridor. It was filled with huge, Persian rugs, most rolled tight but some half un-done, spilling gardens, 100s of kilograms of stitched flowers and colours. The rug room. That’s what my friend and his mum called it, and it was off-limits. You’re not allowed in there, his mum said when I first went over, and Ben, my friend, said, don’t worry, it’s not you—no one is.

At the time, I was living with my uncle, a 29-year old ‘poet’ who lived in a basement apartment that always smelled a bit wet. So you see, I was used to the dark. He used to say we had cat’s eyes. We’d go for walks in the middle of the night and scan the horizon. Eyesight was our secret weapon. When we saw something move, we’d hide, crouch down behind a tree or a wall and wait, breath bated, till they passed. I asked him what he thought about the rug room and he told me that Ben’s father was a scam artist, that they were probably fake rugs no one’d take.

I wasn’t sure I believed my uncle. Lying was his bread and butter. This was another thing he would say to me, and I knew it was true because lying also came naturally to me and because I knew his tic. When he lied, his right eye twitched, just like mine did; it was genetic or something, and he’d twitched talking about the rugs. It didn’t matter to me if they were fake or real. I didn’t know what the difference would be, anyway. I was still fascinated with the room.

Ben and I didn’t have much in common, but I’d keep going over so I could walk past that room a few times. The door was always a bit ajar, which Ben said was so it could air, not having a window or anything. Even my uncle’s apartment had windows, along the top like the vents in a rubbish bin. I imagined going into the rug room and closing the door, so absolutely no light could get in. I liked the idea that the mirror would have nothing to reflect. I’d be enveloped in the darkness, it’d be like a liquid, thick and warm, touching me all over. I’d lie on the rugs and spread my hands out, over the rough undersides, the soft fronts. It sounds odd but the thought of being in the rug room made me horny.

I hatched a plan, got my uncle to buy me beers, and took them to Ben’s. We played COD for hours until his mum told us to be quiet. When she was asleep we drank and played some more, tried to watch Battle Royale. I didn’t drink as much as Ben, but he got drunk. We were both 17, but it was his first time drinking. I was on the bed and suddenly he sat next to me spread out. He put one his hand on my back. I said I had to piss and got up.

The corridor was dark but there was still light from the street. I was alone. Even so, my heart thudded as I walked to the rug room, pushed the door open, and went in. It was so dark I couldn’t see the rugs and I thought they might have gone, unrolling and rolling up as they were pushed down the road. I closed the door behind me and took off my clothes, using them to block the light from under the door. I was getting hard. As I pushed my t-shirt under the gap, it felt like the black liquid behind me was stroking me, the hairs around my bare asshole prickling.

I almost tripped over the rugs when I went deeper in. I really couldn’t see anything. I went down on my knees and clambered up, feeling the rough threads on my knees and shins. I shivered. I felt like I was endangering my life. I ran myself over them for a while and then I started rubbing myself against one, the way a kid masturbates before they know how to do it right. It was rough, it hurt, and the more it did the better it was. Running my hands over the hidden flowers, I thought about my uncle and what he’d said about them being fake. Before, it felt hotter that they were fake, like they deserved to be fucked, but when I had jizz on my fingers and I was rubbing it over the gardens, the beautiful world of the stitching, I wanted them to be real. I wanted the room to be so bright with light that my cum’d be an unmistakable silver thread.

When I went back to Ben’s room, he was asleep, his fingers half-way under his belt.

[a-metrical]

post hoc 1

A yell from the hills interrupts the watering can, her wrist lifts. She looks up, listens. The dark side of the afternoon has fallen over the ridge. She can hardly make out the trees. But probably not a scream, probably not a woman screaming.   The wind is up, it rustles the skirt of the willow trees over by the pond, loudly: the sound of someone putting on a duvet cover. Sammi’s race-car spread she picked herself and Sara was so proud it wasn’t Frozen, but her friend (some friend...) teased her about it, forgotten her name—but made her so angry— wanted to call her mother, but was stopped, calmed down or was calmed, by Olly, probably. Olly, probably. Probably not alive.   Here, though, a reputation for being even-keeled fallen over her like a shawl. Another token of age.   The soil around the silver beet is lightening again. She breathes. Carpe diem, Sara, trusting little in the future.   She has almost discounted the possibility of the yell now, so looks around, makes a point of it, sees the mountains brim the thirsty land like white wine in a glass. Sara feels contained but also lifted, as though she was on an Olympic podium or a pop-star, or one of those Calippo ice blocks, pushing up through the moulting cardboard.   The wind suddenly dies, the rustling fades. Sara moves her head instinctively to the spot on the ridge where she heard it. And there it goes again: one, two, three seconds, a long, deliberate woman’s scream.   A sob comes out of her as she puts the watering can down.

[a-metrical]

6. heliocentric

I have written about cocks and the shapes men make taking off their sweatshirts, but I haven’t written you yet. Please take it as a compliment. Just as the sun gives life and makes it according to its currencies, furnishing our vision with a vehicle and the spheres with motion, and just as for those reasons we don’t linger on it, knowing it’s there just by seeing clearly, so too do I forget to write about you, or to remind myself to be dazzled by your abundant energy that opens all my curtains, undoes all my screens, and brings joy to every day of my life.

[a-metrical]

5. apologetic

Last time I wrote I mentioned lying. These are worst when they are easy, I suppose, but being asymptomatic, at least for me who issues them forth like a rogue librarian with a barcode scanner, they can seem like shadows on the wall. They will only have weight when they go out into the world. To give you an example: I have written a whole, very good manuscript but my laptop is still 2.5kg, same as when I started. And ensconced as I am in this digital realm which has taught me I am blameless and unreal I have no sense of the power of words, let alone deeds.

[a-metrical]

4. Stock-take

I lied about the myrmidons and about other things. I’ve told myself I’m basically sedentary, content to drift, like one of those bugs that stands on the thicker surface of the water. But I see double, looking at my laptop, writing this. Some things I am wise about. I know that selves bend under the pressure applied them, that finding yourself is no substitute for being found, that others will brag for you and make modesty cheap. Wisdom is my entire conceit. I say I want to sit extremely still and that is something people commend to each other while they take a turn, but I do fidget, do have neuroses, want to wander.

[a-metrical]

Me, Myrmidon

3.   The Myrmidons, Homer tells, died bravely, and good deaths, they can be hard to come by. In the Anthropocene, there's no such thing. A sour-snake protruding from my body like in the film Donnie Darko, pulling me over, across, through an airplane crash we all die in but no-one remembers, save a figment of it, or a knickknack. But I do not want to be a flashback, a hot June day Facebook reminds me of. There are so many muscles in a face, Patroclus found this out by watching others' move. The gaps in what gets through we speak through; if I scream I’ll leave a hole stuff'll be shoved into.

[agameofme]

boys don’t cry/moonlight: going to movies alone

(Moonlight spoilers)

It was an overcast morning, the Saturday or Sunday in October of 1999 when I drove to the Sunset 5 in West Hollywood to see Boys Don’t Cry. I would have just turned 23. I went alone. Nobody knew I was trans, so afterwards I could talk about the movie but I couldn’t really talk about the movie, if you know what I mean. I was still trapped, yearning for the kind of freedom Brandon so bravely pursued, yet so afraid of paying a price like the one he had to pay for trying to assert his identity in a hostile world. 

I remember how devastating it was when Brandon’s identity was literally stripped from him, an act of murder before the act of murder, his face sinking as he knew he’d never be truly seen again. But I also remember the radiance of his smile when he was truly seen, when his existence was acknowledged and he was accepted and loved as himself.  

It was an overcast Saturday today when I took BART into downtown Berkeley to see Moonlight. Now I’m 40. I went alone. It is strange to think that it was almost half my life ago that I went to see Boys Don’t Cry, to think of everything that has changed, and everything that hasn’t. 

How my identity, hidden from the world then, is now alternately acknowledged and denied. Acknowledged by my friends and coworkers and by friendly acquaintances on the internet, but often denied, inadvertently or deliberately, by strangers and harassers. The way people carelessly call me “sir” or the way jerks tweet at me just to tell me that I’m not a woman. The way some asshole called me “buddy” in a hostile way during game 7 of the World Series. “The Cubs are gonna lose, buddy,” he said, leaving the bar after nine innings. “I’m not your buddy,” I shot back. 

In his review of Moonlight for rogerebert.com, Brian Tallerico writes of the film’s main character, 

Chiron’s eyes say so much that this young man has not been taught how to express. He is young, black, gay, poor, and largely friendless—the kind of person who feels like he could literally vanish from being so unseen by the world.

There is no question that Chiron’s life has been much harder than mine, but I do know this feeling of being profoundly unseen, and in his own way, he is trapped like I once was. But when, in one key scene, Chiron tells Kevin, a person with whom he has shared a complicated connection over the years, “You don’t know me,” Kevin sizes him up with a look that recalls everything that has happened between them and challenges Chiron, saying “I don’t know you?” In that moment, we know that he does, just as Chiron knows that he does and just as he knows that he does. I almost envied Chiron his connection with Kevin a little in that moment, his awareness of really being seen.  

It’s been years and years since Chiron and Kevin saw each other last. So long that Kevin was reminded of Chiron and reached out to him because someone came into his restaurant and played “Hello Stranger” by Barbara Lewis on the jukebox.

Hello, stranger It seems so good to see you back again How long has it been? It seems like a mighty long time And in the film’s final moments, desperate for a genuine, close connection, Chiron tells Kevin that he’s never shared anything with anyone else like what he shared with Kevin, that in all those years nobody else has touched him and he hasn’t touched anyone. 

And I think of how little real, meaningful touch there has been in my life, and how I still go to so many movies alone. Sometimes it feels like my life is the act of going to movies alone, and seeing onscreen, in films like Boys Don’t Cry and Moonlight, images of characters who are looking for visibility and acceptance and connection and love, while I’m still looking for all of those things myself.

Moonlight’s final image, after Kevin responds to Chiron’s plea by seeing him and loving him, is of a much younger Chiron, clearly visible in the moonlight. This makes sense to me because I believe that there is a way in which, when we find a real, mutual connection, it can reach into our past and heal us. I believe that someday there may be someone who walks with me through my memories of my childhood home, someone who I feel was there, seeing me clearly, every time the world made me feel invisible, someone who holds my hand in the dark at that 1999 screening of Boys Don’t Cry in West Hollywood.

[a-metrical]

sonnet 2: bulb

Overlong looks from neighbours and the smell of plastic burning when I walk into his apartment block. Keep coming back, though, to let him take the box cutter to me. He has ruined my hedges, made me bare and sharp like a plucked goose in lean times a Frenchman might hold up by the feet. Leaving into the dark like a cat let out of a garbage bag. He’s made me feel naked all the time. Trying to smother myself in my jeans like a light when others are sleeping.

[a-metrical]

sonnet 1

I’m slowly forgetting, for the shape of you, large in my life because so close, what happened before we two met. When people lose someone, they later lose the ability to bring the long-loved face to mind           (and, true, I can’t imagine my exes’ cocks now). But your face is spreading, it has insinuated itself into a past where it wasn’t and become the future’s mien. How many do you want? There are gaps earmarked for you in all my childhood photos. Lacunas left by a Barrel Of Monkeys hooking and hooking a chain round them (a shaky way to build a life, forgetting bits). The prologue is lost to me. Whose, the epilogue?