别姬

对自己无能为力。既然记忆抹不去，我只能断了过去，将仍在隐隐做疼的心房冷藏，，让泪眼朦胧的神伤，一次过掏出来，抹杀算了。实在太累了。连啤酒和烟草的薰香，也变得苦涩，无味。痛也痛了，累也累了。剩下的，只能藏在心底，让这交瘁的无奈，糜烂在无止尽的深崖内，算了。

Swan Song

When New Radicals broke in to the scene
with their chart-topping, one hit wonder,
as a child then I’d wonder if it was called
out of context, but tenacity, however dismal,
was the building block of my rippled spine,
and the words you get what you give
resonated, in thumping bass, a stirring bone song.

Honesty was the cornerstone I wrote my lyric upon.

Then, the years fell apart like leaves in autumn,
as if a grim parallel, the layers in bright eyes
strip away, dimming carelessly, past skin and flesh
into uncanny soul. I grew up and I didn’t know.
Armour, forged from white searing heat of experience,
folded into the self, adamantine. It’s all the same.
Though it’ll never be too far ago before it once again
crumples into barren fields of sunned-in gold,
a clearing abandoned and left behind.
The sunshine, well, I saved in a tiny pillbox.
So I could see you better. Love you better.
Pull your tangles out from the ghosts haunting still.
But I was caught in all you wished for,
and all you need. What was it that Elliott Smith said?
Situations get fucked up, a happy day, then you pay.
So I must leave you, as you wished, be the last to know,
and fool somebody else. Be the best imitation of myself.

Some years past Tegan and Sara sang,
in their doowah blues folk, wondering
if this were the last honest love I’d ever give.
if losing was a problem of speech, the theories of the little play.
Scenes of war-torn Belfast crept into the heart’s sound stage
(Braxton was never this potent when digging a hole
evolved into performance art) and life became a matter
of combating over and again without hanging from a moment.

Now it’s all the same. Teetering on an unbalanced pole,
hardly on an even plain. So I’ve learnt to withhold the rest
(unsucessfully), though there were times I would slip
and land, painfully, on points of shakened bones. If
listening to the radio were tuning the gut’s frequencies,
I’d gladly disown all and be bohemian. Like the nameless
you’s, all that have lost their religion, and sought
succor in the hallowed halls of a long lost refrain,
languish on the Milky Way. But predicably,

as always, I’ve said too much. And I’ve said enough.
I’m not the exception to the rule, only damaged bad at best.
Draw the blinds. Close the window. Pull your sore ribs in.
Players only love you when they’re playing. It’s only almost
the end of the world, blue on Sunday, withered on a Wednesday.

Back

from the city of contradictions
where confusion is nothing new
and everything else, is a best imitation
of whatever could have mattered,
could have happened, could have lingered -
and so it is, shimmering on a silver platter,
consistent, a kaleidoscope of colours and patterns,
a million tongues whispering helloes and goodbyes.