this time, hopefully
my brother is getting married next year. in korea. apparently my family is going. i am now drafting a letter to all the major american studios to get backing for the film version. those yankee pricks will want to cast chevy chase as my father and jamie lee curtis as my mother. but everyone knows that my dad MUST be played by michael caton. i'll get back to you on my mum.
got to finish drafting.
*note: the film will be packed full of culturally hillarious moments, when my white family is confused, embarrassed, befuddled and bewildered by the utterly strange habits of the asian world. for example: you mean they really don't speak english?! this will be juxtaposed with the undeniable normality and logic of the white-australian family. it's going to be fucking great.
*note ii: i should really fucking sleep shouldn't i.
bad poetry is even worse than bad prose. it's a literary fact. but fuck it. it's 3:30 am and i can't sleep.
we should all be in pain if i am in pain.
the fat boat driver,
with his fat, boat-driver moustache,
took the hand of every
dame
as they stepped down onto the boat
and pulled his hand away for every man.
sat round for a few hours
with a russian kid
in the kitchen.
he came for the finnish girl
who wasn't there.
played us russian music
that didn't really do anything for me.
i had no context for it,
unfortunately.
he had thin nostrils
and an hour or two in,
when i mentioned donnie darko
he mentioned that he had a wife.
eastern people had a better
demographic,
he said,
because they're less afraid
of marriage.
why is it that i fall
hapless and heavy
at 2pm,
my face all doughy with fatigue.
but then at 2am,
when all i want is sleep,
when ALL I HAVE EVER WANTED IS SLEEP,
i am so full of wakefulness
that i feel as if
i could kick a cop
in the face
and run the six blocks
to escape?
i like your stuff.
but you can be a cunt some times.
i mean,
that one about the white american middle-class male,
i just wanted you
to shut the fuck up
before i punched you in your old,
dead face.
and you know what?
some of your stuff wasn't even that good,
but i think you thought
that somehow,
that made you even better.
this city makes me want to write poetry. with it's big fat streets and my haaaazy lazy slumbering mind and the crumbled rumbles inside me. the roads full of cars as cut throat as war and the alcohol and weed of skinny-thighed russian boys.
though for me poetry has almost nothing to do with actually writing poetry. it's about the dream of writing poetry at the moment of the doing of experiences. and it's tthe invention of titles before the poetry, like 'the st petersburg suite' it is walking loudly along the popping in-and-out metal of old russian rooftops and thinking: this would make fantastic poetry.
so i've actually only got round to writing one or two pieces. eg:
Dead rat,
fat, floating, face-down on the Nevsky,
like a suicide.
saying:
we're not all better off
after communism.
and:
russian boy dancing,
with energy unsurpassed.
completely alone
wearing so much cologne!
and this day is being eaten up with defensive mechanisms. plotting what to wear, what to eat, homely warfare against depression and fatigue. this morning i was victorious with tea, jam on bread with the sponginess of a crumpet, and charles bukowski found on the kitchen table. mmm.
i made it to st petersburg. lenin, grand and solid and dark, offered me his hand and cupped me into his great breast.
then he dropped me into the earth a thousand feet down and i was standing on the metro. and i made up ways of remembering which station i needed in cryllic script. and i got off early and then got back on, and i got off at the right stop.
i approached people with shame and said: do you speak english? and i made my 'ee' sounds tighter and sharper when i did this, as i squint my eyes with the pain of having to ask it.
and i bought horrible food after being laughed at openly by teenage russian fast-food worker girls, and i spoke french with a sixty year old russian woman before bidding her merci.
and i bought fantastic food [blinis] and ate them over and over again.
and i got drunk on hard liquor for the first time in a while. and i couldn't drink water before sleeping because you can't drink the water so i woke slowly over about eight hours and wanted to die for a whole day.
and i nearly drowned in people in an art gallery and wished i was around other, more specific people.
didnt quite find the bus stop last night to make my way to st petersburg. so i got stuck in tallinn, in estonia for a night. which is actually a stunning city. and now im in some tiny little internet place that feels like an old soviet bunker. and the currency here is about 15 kroons to the euro. so you buy a meal and they say 100. excellent.
i saw an argentinian girl in the airport so i started talking to her. really i just sort of wanted to show off. im the biggest social cripple in english, but ill talk to people if its in spanish.
ive been travelling for a few days and i already feel so alone. my skin is weak.
i'm in barcelona. i fly to london tomorrow to eventually get to st petersburg. i have 45€ in my wallet and nothing in my bank account. we've had some money flow problems lately. and yes i'm looking at you, centrelink. and yes i'm looking at me too. i had to let a lovely man at the russian consulate pay for my visa with his credit card because they wouldn't accept cash. but now my passport has a russian visa. they convert my name into russian script. i've already forgotten what you call russian script. i'll look that up again before i get there. and my bed for tonight in barcelona may have fallen through. we'll see.
alba
another skinny white boy
antipopper
asti
english lessons
hon
no se puede
somnambulist
today
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