You’d Like It If I Used Your Name, Wouldn’t You?

I cut you off,

Like cutting cords

One by one,

By three

Now I’ll never look at neon-lit garages

Without your perfume

Shivering through my neurons –

Haunting me

.

Alone, too old

Wrapped in the smoke of memories

The nights when my DJ was literally a ghost,

Mind-flashes a sigh of long-dead boys;

Blonde hair and eyes as wide as a Nebraska sky

Chewing gum smashed, grinning, between labret-chipped teeth

And wild purple cowboy dreams…

Phones animating in the bliss of Ecstasy-spinning eyes

Clove smoke that swirled

Round the ghost of your tracing fingers –

They wrapped so warm through mine…

When scrolling alien intelligence

Whirled wild across neon blacklit tubes

In a charred-down building:

I know our ghosts haunt the yuppies, now

I miss you

And I miss you already

I saw my shadow –

It still looked 16

.

You pulverised my soul.

I don’t know how anything

Is recognisable

Anymore…

.

So answer me this, B –

Will the DJ ever be a ghost, again?

Should I even want it to be?

You were an asshole

But you were my asshole

Sometimes.

Thanks for ruining my favourite band

Beautiful

Thanks for taking me to that stadium

Sitting on the roof, high above, with…

Sandwiches?

Why?

Who knows

That was the glory of you

Unexpected, luminous, amazing

Awful

Crazy, comforting,

Wild…

Awful?

I’ll never really know

I can sense you here, by the way

I’m not that blind, you know

You think you sneak under the radar

But baby, you don’t – you glow.

If I play that band, will you come back to me?

Spooky chemistry at a distance?

Anything is possible

And raising the dead

Is so much easier

Than moving the living…

.

I miss you…

…but don’t come back.

You aren’t welcome here –

I can love and resent you,

In one singular breath.

You thought that was my weakness

You prayed for my hate

For meltdowns and breakdowns and suicide attempts –

But where you imagined weakness,

You failed to see complexity

So no…

I don’t hate you, B,

You showed me your world

It far out-sparkled mine:

You may have crushed my soul to dust,

But what I do with my memories

Is mine.

You’re loved, but you’re not welcome –

Your memory shines brighter

Than any truth of you.

You taught me

That nothing

Is prettier

Than a lie –

Your bullshit was beautiful

Baby

But it was,

Ultimately

Bullshit.