bukit brown, singapore
like several edible birds
inserted forcibly into a
holiday turducken
the city intrudes
if you turn a cemetery upside
down it looks
like the middle of a city
like a skyscraper[1]
we have buried too many bodies
now they must make way for
motorways
carparks
supermarkets
colonoscopy practices
flotation therapy centres
pilates studios
dog grooming salons overflowing
with perfect poodles
yapping in perfect unison
the death of a death
leaves a hole[2]
writing a poem feels like
digging a hole
with yr bare hands
when you have very little
upper body strength to speak of
yr manicure breaks
tiny pathetic half-moons
lying in the dirt
and then you get rained on
by acid rain
bc it’s 2020
and the world is not
healing itself
and a perfect poodle
a grooming salon escapee
pisses on u
its hot steaming piss
running down yr leg
and you fall
back down
into the hole
and you cut into
the hole
and the hole is
a piece of cake
whole foods on east houston st, new york
they said all this pain will be important one day
but what if the pain is buried in a graveyard
but what if there are no guests at the burial
but what if the graveyard gets paved over
but what if the graveyard becomes a whole foods
but what if they put up ads that say
life without pasta is not
worth living
what if they put up ads that say
whatever makes you whole
what tho
when people say whole foods
I see vultures circling a sky burial
when I say whole foods
you say vulture!
whole foods! vulture! whole foods! vulture!
once I saw a couple break up in the whole foods
food court. she was eating a quinoa salad that
looked like a trichophobic’s nightmare, he was
weeping into his hot bar selection
there was a dot of quinoa quivering
on her lip
and a congealed smudge of slop
on his cheek
and the pain was not important
the pain was just a circling vulture
the pain was just something
on yr face
san michele, venice
every silky morning
I leave a dent in my beautiful pillow
in this life I had my hopes and schemes
practiced daily how to be the good meat
took delicate foot pics like a non-wannabe anna delvey
dreamed abt lavish burial in a floating venetian cemetery
rode horses in expensive jeans and got expensive thigh chafe
lounged in deckchairs like a divorcee who has scored the big divorce bucks
green juice in one claw, fuck-off vodka in the other
it is a beautiful life
and it will be taken away
pearls flushing down a toilet bowl
and yes, this body is a
once-in-a-lifetime experience
and yes, I’m wasting it
like sheets of silk
spoiling on a clothesline
in the sticky wind
the world presses in
blurred outline
permanent imprint
relentless life
[1] Dr Julie Rugg, Cemetery Research Group
[2] Please Bury Me In This by Allison Benis White
Read the rest of Poetry in Lockdown, edited by Toby Fitch and Melody Paloma
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