Serafine
She flickers like lighter fluid,
my tongue still swollen with wasp venom.
Come, she says—a nurse who’s read too much Bataille—
Come, you’ve earned your little shot
of codeine.
She grabs my wrist
like a carnival claw machine
snatching a ragged bear.
I feel my heart
syruping with cheap nail polish.
Then we dance.
I tremble on an eyelash.
We spin and turn to dust.
We spin.
Resistance
Paranoia is an icy star,
but at least it’s a beginning.
I’m always at odds with eternity.
I’m always at odds with eternity.
I can’t handle
finitude.
If only I were made of sperm,
if only I were white rice
and you my falling star…
I’m always at odds with eternity.
I’m always at odds with finitude.
Naturally
The sun keeps dumping, just the sun.
Shoulder pads have had their day.
These are not times for a beautiful letter.
Friendship is a spreadsheet dilemma.
I can think of something better
than letting the world finger my photo album.
I might say something, perhaps—
something to vanish in thousands of self-help books—
but why should I, why?
The sun keeps dumping, just the sun.
Shoulder pads have had their day.
Boxes
I took a job in protest
because I didn’t want friends.
That wasn’t appreciated
by an order established
to keep an eye on friends.
I worked myself to the bone.
Nested boxes like Russian dolls
with nothing inside.
I had more arms
than a Shiva impersonator.
At night: wrecked,
couch-shaped coffin,
watching static.
A brilliant method
for dodging repetition—
until they found me.
The friends.
They came in through the television.
I don’t know how.
I still don’t know how.
But sing we do.
Each night,
on the spot,
we sing the same propaganda jingle.
Affair
Darling, you’re beautiful as a hazard sign.
I could knot you up like headphone wires.
Darling, you glow like a news alert.
Let me sell you a dream.
You’re a diesel-stained factory town
I drive through in two cigarettes.
There’s the Hema (bankrupt).
There’s the V&D (bankrupt).
Oh — is that a bridge too?
Baby, you’re beautiful as a hazard sign.
I never want to abandon you.
(Just abandon you a little.)
Hollywood
Sweetheart, don’t be afraid,
no one holds your fillings against you.
We know each other inside out,
you stood at my cradle, whispering softly:
your dreams became mine.
I heard
rockets rising from Cape Canaveral.
Later, under the bomb’s Instagram filter,
my first kiss in a Jacuzzi—
which was still called a whirlpool
when I swam there.
Sweetheart, even then,
I was thinking of you.
You are the thumbnail
of my generation,
and they hate you—
pesticide-green apple
in the heavenly waiting room,
staining the yellowing wallpaper
of our childhood.
*
These poems are from my second poetry collection *Wat koop ik voor jouw donkerwilde machten, Willem*, originally published in 2011 and reissued in 2014 by Van Gennep.