BY LUCY RYAN
NOTE: For my in-everything-but-blood-and-proximity sister Lizzie on her birthday, for being my reflecting pool.
PLAYLIST/CONTENTS: AMERICAN …. LANA DEL REY TENNIS COURT …. LORDE GIRLS YOUR AGE …. TRANSVIOLET CALIFORNIA …. GRIMES VICES .... BRAND NEW EMPTY GOLD …. HALSEY POST BLUE …. PLACEBO NOBODY ASKED ME (IF I WAS OKAY) …. SKY FERREIRA RIP 2 MY YOUTH …. THE NBHD
american starch stiff collar collar meets cream sweater on the fireside and touch like bloodletting, like monochrome. impressionistic kids taking on bruises to so love their skin, kissing abandon like the nouveau riche. call them art deco days. by sunglasses weather we mean february snow. we mean bundled in the dark with the parisian song and a splash of red. walk out of church with a halo from a burning cross like the Boss told us what to light up. a vigil, sacrificial ritual and Dylan singing last rites. these are the people you see, think God you’re cool. these are the people you bring to your victim’s funeral. distinct like dissipated smoke, beat lyrics on the bedroom wall. when the end comes in fireworks, I imagine we’re the ones who get bronzed in the wreckage.
tennis court open up - straight onto the asphalt // Baby Girl stands on stick-shift bones in Sunday best // Sunday Girl parts the rivers // all doe-eyes and blush bluebells spring up all across suburbia // and Sunday Girl trails the Wastelanders along the curbs // dropping glitter like dew // bird feathers and white fur // crying delirium // hysteria // into the river // and taking the water back inside
girls your age i was born straight up young & unafraid & i’ve had this pair of doe-legs since day 1 & i’ve been outrunning every stray laughing bullet bullet as in: leather jacket boys undercut girls backdoor rhythm & the rock n’ roll show i have snapped up, kissed stubble dressed up wings in grown-up colours press a mouth to the bottle and fly i took his jacket with me when i left the liquor store & spiked my blood with lemonade kiss my blush-cheeks and know: pixies kill things too
california she says, ‘i like that fresh-cry glow, grant me that pretty disembowelment.’ raise a girl on poison and she learns two things: savage what rears you and crave everything but that so she falls for the ocean, which never called her beautiful, never blamed her for the wreckage. the ocean kisses her feet and asks to drown and take her home. feels like a buzz, veins all hollow with salt and scarring. want to be a bad thing just the once; no need for gore on the living room carpet. she falls asleep with mouthfulls of sand, streams down her cheeks all shell and glass. say she wakes up, or falls deeper. says, ‘i wanna bleed out, i wanna go home.’ steps into the ocean and bursts into tears - her body shattered and replaced by raindrops. she slides back into the waves.
vices i violent things trade off my discord mistakes from either my gentle heart or shattered bones ii birds take off from the mountain ledges fragile and fearless and i compare all my bruises to falling or flight iii i cut my leg on the razor in the shower this morning blood and water and steam; good things come to people without feathers sticking from their spine
empty gold empty little world gets full up of nobodies. chasing that void thrill, Cigarette Smoke pushes fingers into reality as long as he can stand it then shakes off the ashes. it’s like cloud-cover, dust over the burn scar, violent and gorgeous. an acid-wash mouth doesn’t take to the atmosphere. where but the darklands do the glorious go - they go to church, shining so even God can’t see them for the light. he took a train out into the city when the suburbs went down; he took a suitcase full of camera parts and a plastic alarm clock. dust caught on the train tracks like a dead body, he set the alarm and started building. his hands were cut to pieces. flash for the skyline. flash for the bruises on his beautiful wrists. everything just rushing to decay the underdog, he gets up and heaven crawls up to meet him.
post blue here come the teeth; bet you forget about princesses getting vaccines poison shots gold venom to bleed off that dusky pink good like glass, gourmet glitter and dust so comes the cellar floor, a dance floor burial all still spinning when versace catches flame
two ghosts trading smoke on the castle bedsheets and shooting off their mouths like basslines could pray or give a fuck - all our blood-lined gums gold caps, patching cotton candy rot girl sees, needs, eats boy silver kid raised on novocaine read: neon/heaven/hysteria cutthroat’s smile got an edge like cut coke slipping straight into styx and going down down down
nobody asked me (if I was okay) gorgeous things like me don’t sleep in alleys though we beg to. take me to your ruins. i wanna be alexandria. i wanna be pompeii. go up up up in flames like everything gold must. remember hamartia? i kissed with the same mouth i drank the prophecy with. i said to the mirror cracks, ‘teach me that pretty/wreck. show me sewing scar tissue into apple blossom petals.’ think iphigenia, ariadne, eurydice. what legend leaves living? i’m just the tick boom in the rain tonight, babe. kiss me i’m going, going, girl gets gone.
rip 2 my youth kids fuck with daisychains for decaying halos // our knife-edge angel wings heads tilted to the sky // watch us cliff-jump and the stars come catching
© Lucy Ryan 2016