Layley Lu

---

Your Message

when your message came late last night 
floating on small boats which bobbed with
perfectly brown accents of shit
i was a kite tied high on the masts and 
flailed in fits of twisted laughter whipping the hour
past my bed. the place i seen you swimming for.

i heard the tip toe of scented flowers showing no face,
and followed them around in wayward plays of 
lightless themes. have you danced the glimmer 
of a swage on the sickle?       i am there when i laugh. 

if you wish to come to me and walk with me 
or just sit with me, then come out into the dark.
there are no promises of cool mists
over green moss or growing things.
no albatross dreaming over silk seas.

your silk seas came from worms.
they will return to worms.
they have always been
worms...

come out into the dark and grope with your facelessness
swathed in sweat and density, your breath surging 
into blood tumult and godless ether. 
there are no leaves left on the limbs.  it’s moonless here.

your message came and went with an unsigned mortgage
to the workers of broken darknesses. deep inside
another dying inspiration rolled over but pressed no grapes.

This

this tofu moon
this paulownia zaru
this freckled ubiquity
castaway
in your face

wait for me?
i am raking feathers
from my pillow
in dreams of
nearing into you

Necessities of Rain

There is Layley Lu
            hung on the wall by the back of her coat
            effigy stuffed with straw
            engulfing smoke rings
            and wearing smoke rings
            on fingers that link the chains
            on flimsy wrists and husky throat
            and limpid, puny ankles bare
            dripping tears of chaff

            Kyoto has been kind to me
            (verbatim)
            please do the honour and
            light a French cigarette
            sing to me in soprano logic :
                    swine imbibing ink which
            makes the fat cats drunk
                        jasmine and her unicorn
                        gliding through the checker-board
                        cityscape would pause to drink
                        Katsura river with a monk
                        if that was just as funky

There is Layley Lu
                slumped on a hook divining ayu
                watermelon, osmotic infarction
                reconstituting goodness
                in bukkake blessings
                and a courteous mess of
                mixed up girl in
                mixed up worlds
                of minke bones and fever

                incinerate her stuffy brain
                incinerate her body
                dangling like a scrap
                torch her useless skeleton
                and recite Basho quietly
                by the light of pending ash
                powdering the walls
                                come sweep her away
                                through unhinged door
                                with necessities of rain
                                which ease the wild seeds into
                                fresh greening miracles

There is Layley Lu
                framed in a coma of punitive dreams
                head slumped with heavy guilt
                a breeze enters
            her teeth rustle
                in the corner some silhouette
                feigns to play with matches
​

Into

The stairs
were manifold,
fanned around the door.

May shuddered and her hat
crumbled
into puffs of wind ...
​

Knot

they call it tenkara line
my crown
black magnetite

i learned thirty ways
to tie a death knot
with tenkara line

if only this spinal cord would break
groovy, trench runner
that it is

i could kick and not feel
the worthlessness
of kicking

for only two ways
can I place my feet
to cut tenkara line

yubitsume

I made my finger fly
for the lies I told not, but believed.
Mistake.

I can.
We mean it.
You love me.

Bakuto propulsion jaunts
through black jack oyabun.
Higher education.

High rise of low places.
My grip is better now
and it was not supposed to be.

Tattoo parlour, me.
I took notes
with a needle on my soul.

Layley Lu's profile

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Rice Paper

There’s a wind
where comes my Australian boy
through the barley in this place,
foreign upon foreign
face of mine
squinting through dust
that is not mine.


I am a fetish
and he is a blistering fever blowing
through my cluttered machiya,
carnage upon carnage
staining my sheets
and carpet,
but walls not mine.


I long to cry.
I long so much for my honesty
through testaments heaping
cloud upon useless cloud
in the emptiness
of this place
that is not mine.


There’s a thunder
where follows a freakish poise.
The soundlessness of this place
wrings vapour so tight
it wells
from my rice paper belly,
and the land slides.
​

            I Make of Ice

                            Ignore
                            me
                            and richness is mine


                            I make
                            of
                            ice
                            a feather bed


                            I
                            dance
                            to
                            death
                            in drifts of snow


                            Without
                            a
                            false word said


                            I
                            glide
                            in
                            streams
                            of geiko tea


                            Deplore
                            me
                            and i vow to thrive


                            The willow world
                            is
                            where
                            i go


                            Kimono turning
                            red
                            to
                            white
​

                  Whiffle

                        sky whiffles sun
                        into a party of
                        onion flowers

Softail

asphalt fatboys


k . i . s . s l . o . v . e
inked into knuckles inked into knuckles


smoking pistols on tattooed biceps



i have been with the bikers with the beefy voices

full throttle

silver bullet

growling


+ chained lightning ‘round my sprockets +


softail ~

prowling

Rest Now, Tempest Rest

I have not been the strong one.
I petrified my suppleness and swallowed cold rocks
from tall island to wide island, crissed and cross with jags:
chopped winters into useless grief, ploughed snow,
minced sleet to eye shadow in shades of hoary blasts.

I will no longer shame your house.

I have broken my cedar veins against the wash stones,
and hang my skin in high branches for beating or for bleach.

Nor will I longer weep.

These fronds have taken up the rusty saw in their palm:
lopped and fell the hard edged gale gusting on the shore.
Salt and sand trickle down from starlight beacons overhead,
praying: rest now,
tempest rest...

By Compassion Pond

by compassion pond
fingering the waters
when
news of your dying
stomps down

and all the
brilliant trout black
out
into breathless
sun

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