The Careers Section

I was in the paper
My face has lined birdcages
Breakfast crumbs have sprayed over me
Who am I, scattered about in different rooms?

I have been in elevators,
Folded under suited arms, warm
In the pits of business men and women
Peeling back the glad wrap from their lunch rolls.

Who am I, when, to pack the jugs
And vases tight so they don’t fragment
In the removalists van beside cupboards and lounges
I am torn and stuffed deep down into crockery mouths?

Guttered in the street I blow
A footprint stamps me, weeks
Go by and, brittled yellow, who am I
When the next gust blows up and busts me into ash?

I told a friend this mad weather suits me.

A kitsch draft:

There are tombs and isles in thy body:
The crypts of Lieberkuhn, the islets of Langherhans,
Thy spine a white obelisk, stabbed
Like a swordfish sabre, UP
Through the dense muscled red of thy flesh.

There are catacombs too, winding around
In the belly of thy private Gaia, and in
Your South mouth, there are whispers
Of movement and of fear
And nervous pleasure.

And here there are two long-stemmed royal orbs, from which
Hormones spread in halos, carrying crystalline hysterics through your webs
And half-cells, half-lives, huddle there.
Behind these, that long word ‘duodenum’ leads to
GUTS, in which mesh laws of supply and demand.

Then there are thy chains and spirals, protein acids that
Map thy life, and that decide
How the dark empire will spread, as it divides and subdivides -
The winding spiralled stairs of thy existence, and its repair.

A banyan tree of glands, and veins
And faceless butting guts in a warm batallion, oh
Do not ravage these lands with poisons.
Thy brain is a Lusitania it will take only one shell to sink.

Now remember, I want you to pretend to be my boyfriend. And remember, you've gotta say your name is Jade, OK? Wait, will you let me fix your hair? OK. No wait. There. OK, now can you remember all the things I wanted you to say? When we arrive, OK, when I introduce you to Josh, right, I want you to make sure you call me babe, 'k? And you've got to do this with your hand, OK? Like you own me. All right. Let's go.

the literary text as sanitary pad!