OOGY WAWA

by Penny Goring

You write suicide notes on the backs of my knees – it tingles.

High-keyed evasive balloons floating shape of death swan songs, that’s what I am made of – things that are difficult to grasp, coated in PVA and rolled in glitter, wrung out from the flesh.

Sugar perfection poppers hitched to obscure destinations, that’s what I am made of – things that are damp and corrupt, gentled and tempted with heirlooms, wrung out from the flesh.

International lodgers begrudging cockney peculiar guests, that’s what I am made of – things that hide under impasto, tamed and embellished with novelties, wrung out from the flesh.

I am a nameless nude known to collectors, an overdosed under-achiever, greatest pilot to your inhospitable middle class rationale. I am a fuming breed constantly scheming, a coldly reluctant trophy entertaining vacuous lightweights papering do not disturb silhouettes.

There are things we cannot know until they are wrung from the flesh.

Don’t ask what song I’m singing – you hear me loud and clear. Don’t ask what disguise I’m wearing – you see me as if I were here: I’m prancing across your flooring, dutifully parading the new, mouth making wow shapes and kissers – wrung out and clowning for you.

You know how you wring a wet towel? That’s how you wring me. Grasping me at either end you twist me length-wise, then you wring me out until I’m gushing – that’s how you wring me.

I am celestial and irrational and I’m losing my inhibitions – watch me – I’m wearing the sky. (It’s outside.) I am transparent and promiscuous and I’m losing my reflection – watch me – I’m wearing the sky. (It’s obvious.) I’m thin and high, fragile and loose, bat-shaped, star-shaped, I’m making bigger shapes, sunlight is filling my skirts. I live slow as green trickle methadone and I die fast as mainlining smack. I shake my two fists at the face on you and I curl on the pavements and cry. I revel in dealings with strangers and I need you to witness my trysts. I kill boredom for a paltry fee and I don’t feel obliged to deliver. I chase my delusions to illogical conclusions and I have given up trying to fly. I start each day with an ad-lib full-facial and then I go out nicking cars. You crave my bermuda hairy triangle but you are sick of my pathetic palaver.

OOGY OOGY WAWA.

When you nuzzle my gusset the world retreats and I am happening happily. I am happening in your head, I am happening in your rooms – and in the sky, I happened. When your hand moves from side to side you are dandling my dark abstraction, and then, when you send me to womb strewn, I am entirely marooned on the swoon. Voom, voom, the drastic tomb – I zoom to my spastic doom.

We are performing in front of a painting with a crowd of critics applauding. We are doing it in the street, boiling and frying our heat. We are making it on the sly – furtive, you stifle my cry. Things that are soft and ridiculous, that’s what we are made of, wrung out from the flesh.

You gouge your goodbyes in my sugar-scrubbed thighs and you die every time – that’s what you’re good for.