Nude II
House DJs always keep their hair short
so their heads can be easily cut from press shots,
then dropped onto fluorescent posters
and a thousand other reasons to be clean-cut and rhythmical
to drip dry after the morning shower
when our signal-to-noise ratio is at its peak.
A teacher once told me that poetry aspires
to the simplicity of the nude.
To be naked, he said, was to speak without footnotes.
Though, in my opinion, a naked person
usually has more explaining to do than anyone.
I am sitting on your toilet with my empty notepad.
You are drying your fake tan with a hairdryer,
Talking to me through the bathroom mirror,
Asking if the back of you matches the front,
and I can’t even hazard a guess.
Your body is too much. London is too much.
I can barely connect two parts of it.
The diagrams we use are useless upon the surface.
It’s in moments like this that I realise
How little my A to Z has to do with the alphabet,
Language collapsing into farce, fizzing with data
like nudist beaches.
Which is why I write I am in love with your neck.
Just like the maniac cuts bodies into pieces.
