He found himself momentarily paused in the chewing-gum-ness of time. Clocks had thrown themselves out and in before, expanded, contracted. Hands pulled the minutes and pushed the hours. It happened in the searing agony of pain, when his body bent towards death. In letters of rejection, when the future seemed to fall right away. In spaces of memory, when photographs of the past crashingly hurtled events back into the now. In lingering looks of desire and all the promises that yearned to be spoken. Music brought countlessness and endlessness into four minutes, certain touches would warm his skin long past the first brushing of limbs.

The times he held his face stonily unmoved as tears gathered in his head, those felt like eternities. Also conversations that demanded unconscious replaying deep into coming nights. As he became older, he tried to impose limits on time, bordering it with calendars, stopwatches, routines. He would, with mechanical regularity, abandon himself to its scorn through alcohol, and envelop himself in its mendacity through pills, potions and smoke. Eventually, at moments of pause such as this, he simply succumbed to the relativity of it all. He left his office, locked the toilet door, and sat, and sat, slumped, boneless. Flora had died today. It began and ended there.

The balance.

It's often thought that being slow about language is an indulgence. Choosing the best words with careful consideration, pondering over the metre of a phrase is a luxury for those who gluttonously consume time. But when one strikes the perfect balance between meaning and linguistic aesthetics, a sentence can sing. It resonates with deep generous tones of beauty, the words have arranged themselves in perfect order. The pieces fit into their places and prose becomes poetry. Meaning is denoted, inner worlds connoted, and even the individual glyphs have found themselves a home. We temporarily hire words and send them on their way. The syllables are balanced by the pauses. The pauses are given their signs. There emits a glow from the writing, we hear the thrilling sound of speech, and remember that we were born simply to communicate.

There is a point in the process of loss when crying begins to hurt. Skin chafes, eyes burn, and the body weakly dwindles in emotional collapse. The pain that began the sadness reverses so the sadness causes pain. Crying becomes dying. The inner becomes outer, we pull ourselves inside out with total desolation. Our lungs fail us, breathing is ragged and jagged and we fall to the ground. Muscles refuse, limbs shake in convulsion. Our hands hold our heads together as we wonder how we will ever continue. Time hurls itself backwards to memories and forwards to plans. Goodbye to it all, goodbye.

Maybe we were never made to feel pain as devastating as this. Or perhaps this is when we shed our bodies, stop being men and start being gods.

Córdoba.

The southern Spanish heat rises from the cobblestones in waves, lighting the ancient bricks of the castles and churches from the inside until a scorching orange glow permeates the town. Palm trees droop in complaint and small birds hide in window corners to escape the dusty forty-eight degree suffocation, shooting out from their cool hideouts only to sip and bathe from the fountains that dot the streets and plazas. It is all cobblestone and brick, a dizzying breathlessness in the narrow terraced calles where the street numbers are tiled and the tourists forget their names. Cars bump along the stones, tyres rumbling in incompatible technology. Horses clip-clop you back to fourteen fifty-five.


We red ghouls pour agua down our gullets and wander the closed shopping mall only for the cool relief and takeaway joint toilets. The Japanese look at spun silver, the Americans peer at flamenco costumes and flies the size of bees settle on foreign arms during the day while mosquitoes mix our blood into a modern milkshake at night. Postcards show pictures of La Mezquita from every possible angle except Allah's, reflecting sunlight into the eyes of passersby. The most important Islamic building in the West is reduced to card and plastic depictions. In reality, the red archways throw goosebumps down my neck, a humbling sight of precise geometry and re-written religious history.

Jamon serrano is covered in bread and wrapped in plastic; consumption comes in tapas, half or full size. At night the winds blow dusty clouds around the feet of hungry pedestrians, knocking over wine glasses and leaving shards for crisp white-shirted waiters to crush on their routes around the tables. The organ player's organ doesn't want to play as the waiter speaks English to me when I bid ciao in Italian, sling my Indonesian bag around my neck and think of the Shanghai sun.

Traditional guitar music rings out of the bodegas and tapas houses. Glimpses through the open doors reveal wooden walls and terracotta tiled floors, brick archways on the sides create small eating spaces where chatter fights for space in the air with the music. Souvenir shops sell enough multi-coloured plates to fill the world's kitchen cupboards, more aprons than there are cooks and more keyrings than there are keys. Córdoba is manufactured, represented, symbolised, captured, recreated and reinvented through a multitude of objects for walls, drawers, body parts, shelves, cars, windows and fridges. Any part of your life can be Córdobised for five Euros. Fly a flag on your chest. Wear the country on your head. Adorn yourself in an exotic language. Smell like a local.

I buy my knick-knacks, an oil painting and some shoes, and take away a piece of the city like every other sunglassed, wild-haired visitor does and every shop owner hopes we do. In Seville I will do the same, as in Granada, Amsterdam, Berlin and Sofia, and although grand things still move me to poetry and prose, and although I try to buy local products, I am left wondering whether I am selling out to something frighteningly bland and disposable. Paul sings that every fucking city feels the same. Is it that, or do we just get better at walking over and past the differences?

city spring.

backpacked tourists traipse down the Terrace
golden camels, journeying, sucking on water bottles.
the sun throws itself off the glass towers
and they speak in tongues
as I guess which ones.

i wait for three buses that do not come,
buy lychees in cans and
prove who i am to the video shop girl.
murmuring down the aisles of discs
i speak in tongues,
guess which ones.

Pardon me.

I am the side platter at the table. Tasty but unsatisfying, special but simple. I am the forgotten supporting act, the bumbling sidekick, the truncated blurb. I am a summary of multiple parts, the labels on a graph, the scribbles in the margins.

Show me the right direction and I will go another, following the river, darting through the crowds. I trip myself up trying to get out of your way, but you will not look back.

Stay and play.

Standing, saying nothing, just looking at each other. Just looking. The gazes, the pauses, the eye-wrapped gauzes. Cover me like a gift with your lanced glances, but not too tightly and not too forever. You know I have trouble breathing when you ask me where I am.

Stay, I say, stay and play. I'll do the chasing while you run away. We'll undo each other, the knots of time and of loss. Pretend to be my everything and I will smile, knowing that we'll die someday and I'll stay free.

Where ARE you,
you bark,
and I sink into the grass.

I like to move. I do return, but one day I'll not, and give you another knot, ready for someone else to tug at your ear. Hello, I'm here, come and peer.

Don't give me a watch because I'll never wear it, and don't ask me the date because I'll lie. The corridors are made for us with our futures in open diaries, to fill the time and space with airs and grace in our Converse and denim. We eat like vultures, love like germs. I wear a ribbon in my hair while I plot murder, say a prayer for a doomed bug. Churches are photographs waiting to happen.

Postcards are for the poets.

Play your part, I'm auditioning. Don't forget to speak up because sometimes I'm hard of hearing. I like to let the phone ring out in my hand, chirping earnestly, so write me some words or wrap me in your gauze. I may be hard of hearing but I know the love laws. When I don't speak, I have the most to say. Standing, saying nothing, just looking at you. Just looking, as you do.

Sufletul meu.

muerda mi lengua y come mi piel,
danzamos en ritmo. el tiempo corre.
sufletul meu debajo, adentro, alrededor,
cogemos horas de la casa del Dracul.

la ventana, abierta,
las cortinas hacen el tango con el aire.
respiro hondo y redondo
y digo, 'para'.