smart flesh in milwaukee

music and poetry by georgie hurst

[smartfleshinmilwaukee]

you started this

servile, she nods with a modest blush, a hushed red hot fluster beneath that complacent outer shell.  

head creaks careening beneath the enervated sky; heavier, still, from heaving fables that don’t fit inside there right. they writhe

awkwardly amongst each other, shoulder to shoulder, stuffy like the brimful cup of porous nightclubs sweating their fetid fumes into the evening air— each incongruence molests the other in a frenzied mass of shock.

war, they say, revives an interest in poetry, this one is no different — newspaper jigsawed lugs language back from the barber, flayed, disfigured debris strewn from woolwich ferry to highgate (darling), strewn across an apathetic nation hung up its coat and scarf, drags its docile feat to armchair, sigh its familial dormancy, chew its cheeseburger-a-day to give the militant something to complain about,

they just want something to complain about.

[smartfleshinmilwaukee]

martian

The wind rustles   the trees in a TV                        static                             cacophony,                        birds sailing through the              breeze like robotic paper airplanes — soundless, swelling, synchronised troops of them expand and recede in my effulgent spectacles.

The dead fall to the moist plains where they will be eaten, a ritual that, with time-lapsed motion, whips in rapid regenerative swirls like a washing machine, tumbled dry in periods of liquifying heat.

~

the landscape of the tropics warps a foreboding breeze                         punctuated                  by c-quivering radio antenna.

The parks are the pretty coloured parts of pages from a colouring book. The sky’s been

                                        left empty —

but the book is very worn and so our majestic trees         bleed          into a dishwater-dull sky, the invisible, ignored part of the page.

[smartfleshinmilwaukee]

inviting the flies

Inviting the flies to dine with us,

that sour disillusionment 

        - repent -

when three-day-old wine 

turns to vinegar.

They don’t rot, they

don’t sink. 

Float there,

transfixed in a moment of serene pleasure,

or slowly submerge

into a congealed tomb of yoghurt. 

It’s a science experiment,

new life.

Monotone fizzing in the breeze,

drawn by a false promise of fertility -

a sticky, sweet death. 

[smartfleshinmilwaukee]

feinschnitt

Wear it on your wrist. 

It gets caught in my

hair and your bones sehr groß,

it’s stuck there

anyway. 

              Take care.

Feinschnitt - a new reminder. 

My red dress, your red arm,

sore lips, sore feinschnitt.

Dry tobacco, an import 

that clings - the smell and the

gentle torture it brings. 

Your smell clings like a child 

to me. 

My red dress, your pink arm

that glows and turns tenderness into a feinschnitt. 

A fresh wound I open when your new skin

- bumpy, tender - 

caresses my thighs. 

Passion torn with a touch.

[smartfleshinmilwaukee]

The Moth

Little moth, thy summer’s play

my vacuum snout hath sucked away.

You sat yourself not far from I,

a dusty genus of butterfly.

Oh, my micro nebula,my brazen Lepidoptera,

to perch in such plain sight – despair!I buried you in carpet hair.

With gentlest touch of plastic mouth,

my faithful appliance took you out,

And away you go to whence you came;

drawn to my vacuum bag like a flame. 

[smartfleshinmilwaukee]

aestivate

September sings to soften dry soil. Replying it’s impassioned song to dying days, diffusing into  persistent night. 

Where beating dulls to muffled gale and the wind begins his bloodless coup; indolence, that did prevail, is now wanting at it’s own pursuit.

While fat, flushed cheeks tense with clenching teeth, the impending hiemal presses on. Lingering eyes are  thus wrenched from days gone, forced to gorge upon lacklustre skies.

Yet in the passing months of illicit stir,  I found that pleasure, too, was an illicit guest. The drone of weeks bled into one, a carcinogen of prolonged unrest.

All life was still, no breeze was there to lug my leaden legs along. I felt no itch with which to scratch, stagnated by the pulsing sun. 

Now, I feel my infertile wits awaken; a reunion, too, between pathetic legs and feet. That stretch of dormancy has,
 like all things, run it’s course. 

But, as habit speaks, my tendencies I cannot beat, and again I will wrestle with it’s force. 

[smartfleshinmilwaukee]

(Smart Flesh in Milwaukee)

[smartfleshinmilwaukee]

rupture

I tried, I did. 
                                   I did, I tried. did i? blank nonsense writhing from 
my tongue these days. make sense, say why —
                                                                   take a temporary dose of happy-ness. 
 why say?

tradition fuels the artifice, back and forth between necessity and lonely-ness.

and —           this part is puzzling, i said, said i: this day passes too fast for my-self to grasp. these days tremble on                                    like the words i said when i said:                   —— what i said. i rearrange, and re-focus and shift my weight from one letter to the next. fumble for an answer i do not know myself.

and we go on like this for days                            in between the mesh-work of years passed. sketching your eyes frantically on shreds of time like once before, a tactile image straddling  
the glances i made on train journeys and my clouded,                            blundering, visions of hereafter. 
and then— a passing feeling is shot out,                                               it hits. with winged bullets it -barely- skims the surface, causing a wound the size of everything. 
 and, now, instead of standing up                                            we’re falling down.

[smartfleshinmilwaukee]

(Smart Flesh in Milwaukee)

A new song I uploaded to my solo music soundcloud! 

[smartfleshinmilwaukee]

the sharp legs of ladies

These sharp legs of ladies that I’ve grown to know so well. That, as a girl child, I did sit to watch dance above my brow.

The curtains about my face, grown unruly, now swept neatly by the sharp legs of these ladies who are not as careless as I.

These sharp legs of ladies, they depend upon my hands, to guide them through the shapes I make, the mystic wonderlands

of snowflakes and angels, but love notes and goodbyes too. The sharp legs of these ladies that help separate my life in two.

These sharp legs of ladies, their future task unknown. The creative purpose once possessed to them is long outgrown.

How I should use their innocence for the task of my abuse. Choose the sharp legs of these ladies over any other noose.

These sharp legs of ladies, sharper now I know the score. Sharper when I hold them thus for they feel sharper than before.

But is this wrong? Do i deceive them? I’d never tell a lie. 
 Oh my sharp legs of ladies, see: I’m not afraid to die.

[smartfleshinmilwaukee]

alchimia

Sleep, pretty sleep that falls, drifts from my eyes into a warm lake of alkahest,

an intrusion to the brain, the same wide access through which the solvent seeps into, dissolves

me. I am supine, passive to it. Do not find me in the grounds, or in the alley, or in the places you once knew me.

Find me here, churning my thoughts as they mutate into pulp and acid. Nigredo, my mind, Albedo, my skin,

Citrinitus, my hair, Rubedo, my love. In bed I can hear the process persisting, red hot

irons goring into my skin. Manganese here i am. Submerged and aching for it- caress me, make me perfect.

[smartfleshinmilwaukee]

platonic?

Into his worn copy of Eugene Onegin, 
 he blushes, the first time in thirty-eight years. How he would watch, eyes affixed, unflinching,
 Oh! I adore, adore, mon amore! 

Unnamed, untamed, twenty-one years of age, 
to him, impenetrable and profound. 
Words he knows so well, turn to tremors on the page,
 how artless was the note which spoke of love again! 

But his love-anchored bitterness spat venom since that acrimonious divorce. 
Three years in conflict with her professional antagonists,
 and nothing, but memories of a caustic and loveless marriage.

She had drained every drip of compassion, 
sliced and bled him dry, hanging putrid mid-air. 
Not even the fate of Onegin could distract him,
 yet he remained austere, read on, without care. 

He would not once believe, the bitter old man, 
should be resurrected by the girl across the way. 
 How he would long for again, hypnotised on the train,
 transient, where all depart, she should stay.

[smartfleshinmilwaukee]

Greetings From The Curb

Heavy, heavy, heart. it
 Feels so warm when I despair
 Into that swimming pool.

Penning out a postcard from 
 My cell at 42 Boromwood 
 Avenue, 6 feet away, separated by
 


Perplex glass from The rest of the world, double 
 Glazing over like lacquer 
 Desks that they pen their Lives out on. I am penning Out a postcard to you. 
 
 Signed, yours, sincerely
 Wishing you were here
 As I force my sanity through 
 
 That crack at the bottom of the door. 
 Tell the folks at home I’m
 Doing fine, just fine!
 
 Basting in the sun, the shine 
 of the tungsten that doesn’t ever go
 out. Lights on means we’re rolling
 
 For the cameras, and everything is 
 Wonderful, tell the folks at home, I send
 My greetings in a single line. 
 Lights off means footsteps
 Up the stairs, up and up and up
 And up till I reach the top 
 
 Where I feel sublime.
 Everyone looks up at me, as if
 to say ‘I know her.’ Fame
 
 And money and cars and all a girl 
 Like me could want. Read my postcard
 And tell them all of this moment of
 
 Ecstasy, how my belly was full
 Of the thrill of life.
 How I feel that little child beating on my soft
 
 flesh, louder and louder, and I am convulsing
 Because she is rapping that, 
 Goddamned, knocker so hard, she is getting


A bit too excited and I am -
 Still writing, writing you this postcard
 It’s my way of saying thank you, 
 


Don’t forget about me while I’m gone.
 I remember that year i went to Belarus and You painted my entire room lime green
 
 Because you forgot I hate that colour. 
 I’m getting ahead of myself, I really just wanted
 To say hi and send my greetings 
 
 In cursive, italicised in this ethereal seat, 
 Suspended mid-flight and gawping at The passers by, and today they pay no mind. 
 
 I bet it’s jealousy because they wish they
 could fly. They wish they could
 feel the little drummer boy beating
 
 his drum against their chest and know what it
 means to be alive. Greetings! Can you hear me? greetings! greetings!


I can see their faces now as I - 


[smartfleshinmilwaukee]

Milkweeds

The cockscombs are dead! cried Albert, He crushes his hand to his head 
 And sighs,



And the milkweeds, he forages, Everywhere, can’t control ‘em. 


Ethel ploughs the ground,
 Lament. 
He is sad most of the time.



Black Sundays at the kitchen table— 
What are we to do about the weather? Says Albert, 
 His prickly chicken legs stick out of his 
 night shirt. Black Sundays when there is nothing 

on the telly. Nothing on the telly Ethel! Albert. Evenings get colder these days.

The seaside, for a change? tries Ethel. her plight is lukewarm like

This tea, Ethel. Lukewarm. and then No time to dilly dally dear, seaside would

be bad this time of year. Busy, he suspects. Best to stay where one belongs.

One belongs, kitchen table, Black Sunday, And no more cockscombs

What a shame, damn shame, Ethel. again, Black Sundays and no more cockscombs

Something of a sign of things perhaps suppose. Ethel is gone to the window, but there is

No use daydreaming, what a child you are You are Such a child on Sundays

Petticoats and frilly socks like when We were children, Ethel, remember? once more But Ethel, Ethel doesn't hear Albert

Doesn’t hear Ethel isn’t here

Albert.