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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