A few words in a poem about Ennui and Decadence. From a woman who does not know where to live or how to do it well.

Domicile

Dubai, 27/11/2010

Everything is as simple as breathing.

Cities tug at your skin, cracks appear where you thought

sheen and silk would endure, be

the past and the future, an opposition of drives split

this impulsive body into fragments, a battlefield of religions, a philosophy of me.

Some cities awaken you with hard brown bodies, penetrate shivers all day,

a taste of tequila burns the numbness we each

inherit, smoke to open horizons of self inside you, a clearing of cobwebs private

where sugar lines and circles of laughter crisscross

shameless triangles of flesh and

poetry. A city that spanks you before bedtime, hurts you

on your knees, showering you with stories of murder, bathed in

vengeance and looming threats of

disease, telling you,

whispering,

cackling, to live for this moment eternal, to breathe, to

take all clothes off and jump in the nudity of a dark dirty sea. Some cities smear their

name on your back, a welded tattoo of pleasure

and war

and words you will always fear. Heat and cold interplay in equal measure till the

rational you needs to scream. Some cities are merciless,

a tattered rose hangs from their teeth, beckoning the romance

of an old, returning,

wasted

good-time fuck you love to keep.

Other cities let you sleep. Sand is warm under your toes, and there is silence,

knee deep, and rising. Everything is open, even your eyes.

Possibly, even your heart.

Your mind follows patterns of peace, till

the timid voice you killed coos inside you to say,

love, love, love

marry,

have children,

wake up early,

sleep early, stop drinking, stop smoking, make money,

make a car, make love, brush your teeth, eat veggies,

make more babies, check your balance, walk on the water,

stretch out your limbs to the sun,

breathe. Marry, have children, you’re aging and still swinging

from chandeliers of glitter,

hanging on to nothing yet sparkling just to tease.

Some cities have no history, no future,

and a present full of insurmountable seconds

of ease. Be secure, be safe,

look around you. Everything is clean. A machine of urban wheels in motion

spinning on an axis of dollars,

vulgar at times, tasteless at others, always obscene.

Still, your stomach is languid. A cradle for life stirs in your

chest, the correct words tumble out,

prim,

proper,

full of luster and gleam.

Some cities smile at you, in your sleep.

But you,

you know,

you will go stir crazy,

wanting both the abandonment and the homebound yearning,

wanting the colored smoke churning at

the center of your sobriety, wanting the liquid

seething at mediocrity,

wanting the peace to pen words on paper not aflame,

wanting to burn that word you just penned

in ennui and shame,

wanting nothing but an answer to this future question you think

you seek.

You know you will drown in this clean quicksand.

You know you will drown in that dirty sea.

Nothing is as simple as breathing.