Kill it, Myths about Lying Down & Sex with Neo by Luoyang Chen
Kill it
A line is twisted and cut in between
Yielding a pragmatic smile to
Academic birds —
Lineament or lineality? Full of joy
And contempt and I-am-not-you cynicism
With your entitled rhetorical usage, I induce passivity
Hatred is a continuity. “I hate you”. Said once, said
Twice. Quadruple it. In the name of. Name it. Revolution
Is call it a different name. Actually, what did you do? What
Did you actually do? Language does, of course. Look
What it does to the aunty not in your literary
Community. A seagull flutters overhead. Gull is a verb
Remember this. Every war starts with ideology. Don’t
Hate me. Kill it.
Myths about Lying Down
*
Labour, you are not a dream I want to sleep with. Supplement the sleep. I wake up in my own health. An ancient one. But is half-forgotten. Sickness. Cracks it opens. Bellies are for thirst with pulps. Every morning I iron my heart. This morning flies consume the snail you crushed last night. A snail is a hickey. A hickey is getting lost in my Monday morning blues.
*
Body, I train you to rest. You smoke four cigarettes per day. Lately, you feel more and more like a body. Each day you dislocate at the hospital. At night, you groan like a wounded wolf.
*
Ficus, I kept watering and telling you ‘Don’t die” until you died. I think I still dream of you sometimes. It’s impossible to heal what is broken. It is not impossible. To make absence present. If I am an elegist or collage artist. I stay dying and you stay being dead. Death is immortality. We are kin.
*
Words, your cadence annoys me. Bashing. Peeling. You speak English very well. You speak English, very well. You, speak English, very well. Semantic history, sashay away.
*
Mermaid, I apologise for running away.
Sex with Neo
For three years, I had zero interest in watching the Matrix, even when I was occasionally shamed by some asshole philosophy students. “You haven’t watched the Matrix!”
Even though at the time all I could write were those second-class-honours-division-A papers, their Matrix references and jargons were not incomprehensible.
I never watched the Matrix.
Now I have and
All I want to do is to have sex with Neo.
I am corrupted.
I am ruined again.
Or feel corrupted, feel ruined.
The distinction doesn’t seem to matter:
To be and to feel, what’s the difference?
I’ve always wanted to have a boyfriend called “Jude”.
(That’s a lie. But there’re some truths to it.)
Why did you take me to the op-shop?
Why did you take me to op-shop books of poetry
And a tray to hold an artisan soap?
I thought it was all sex with you.
I opened the notebook which I received from a poet who writes to the sea
And wrote this: a wave looms —
Does the land want to dissolve into the sea or does the sea want to become the land?
I wrote: I’d rather touch myself than let others touch the edge of me. Others exclude you.
But you left me sprawling like devil’s ivy.
After the op-shop, you drove me back
To my apartment where we cuddled and listened to
Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean and more. You
Told me that “It’s interesting to show a person something/someone
Famous and yet that person had no idea of what/who that was.”
As interesting as me driving a jeep, or Suzuki Jimny, or Suzuki Sierra —
I wanted to say but I kept my mouth shut. Instead, I called your name.
“Yes, I am listening.” I looked at your eyes. The reality is raw. The illusion is empty.
How about sex?
Executive Producers
Hayley Scrivenor
Sue White
