write petty

i want to write pretty
but i forget the whole thing is like muscles
i have to train
so the red stays red
and the white stays fat
and not turn into red
i worry about staying a half-beat behind
and enunciate every syllable as if it was the last
is that what they call phrasing?
i say to myself everyday:
today i’m going to lose it
the way i lost my petit javanaise
through lack of use.
but that’s not entirely true,
i can still speak it, perhaps
the problem is i was
never much good at it .
you know i want everything to be perfect
so i can’t ever think: oh, but the good
outweighs the bad.
to me the bad always outweighs the good!
sometimes i say, ah, let me just
paint pictures, as long as i have them
i will never run out of things to say.
i mean, don’t all intelligent people think in pictures?
or did he say only intelligent people think in pictures?
it’s only after that a whiff of words
flies past your nose
and you can only hope you catch all of it.
but they’re usually slippery as ghosts.
i’ll give you one:

i tilt my ipod
30 gigs for 30 years
of music geekery
so the angle
reveals to me
the white plastic
smooth to the touch
hides crop circles
of hairline scratches
that disappear again
when the sunlight
through the taxi window
hits.

see something’s wrong with the last line?
like it’s missing a word
and i know what’s missing
is a picture.
it was (scratches ...) “lit by the sun”
is it the passive construction?
or the servility of by
that i hate?
i mean, i’m learning new things
shoot new pictures into my brain
like how up or down is always better
than moving forwards
or that when she had her hair cut
the next day the shadows of her old cut
refused to go still
or that we memorise
the kinds of wood
but not the names
of trees
or a helluva things about nightfruits.
i make notes so that i don’t have to remember anything.
and i have learned how to suffer
esorais m’ hos ekdika paskho!
so i don’t have to cry
but still i worry how
the pictures play in widescreen
without a sound.
my drama! ha!:

and i see her in her old swimsuit
with the blue leaves
of the nameless plant on her left breast
and she had on a new bracelet, brown suede,
the way she likes it,
to go with her old look:
when she stares into space
and it is as if
she looks through you.
(i don’t have to tell you that she was standing
right on the edge
of the row of friends
she had since high school,
a feet further apart from the others,
the way she always does)

or do i make notes so i don’t have to write?
there’s nothing real in practising
just as there should be no trace
of practice in the real thing.
i am sorry i take thunders away from you
as if i need more
and you never need one.
“even in the slow practice
of a fast kung fu move”
and that’s just a picture,
after i plug the words
which i drag
out from the cold, in. as
i cup my mouse
with the tenderness of a virgin lover
and feel the talc of dust
on its curves.