The Reflection of my Patchwork Skin
This week I’m going to be reading at not one but two gigs – Text in the City, which I’m putting on this Thursday in Oxford Castle, and Grit Lit in Brighton on Friday. Both are showacses of urban fiction, and I realised I haven’t written anything about the city in a while. So I did, and I’ll be starting both sets with it.
I haunt the street to build a life
From other people’s pieces
And souls switch off the lights while bodies do their thing
And skins naked under neon veins and leather
Sweat the madman’s shakes
And snake man screams falsetto dreams
And basement prophetesses roll their eyes
And loose-limbed priests shriek hymns at peeling skies
And jacked-up housemaids howl Baudelaire at their whores
And off key ends of torch songs promise velvet lashes
And louche ladettes in lamé queues stub half-finished cigarettes
And slickers slip one another roofies and condoms and lies
And lips wrapped up in chat slap noodle sauce on Ferragamos
And a student passes the porno door for the fifteenth time
And chalk and chucked up chips duet
And anxious eyes feel out the night for open doorways
And anxious hands are fast behind
And poetry collectives cut anarchist zines to paste in booths
And cologned and sweaty suits pass them up for Frida, firm and forty double D
And in windows the reflection of my patchwork skin
And I can’t go home.
I would not let me in
Year Zero Writers 
Sound work. That last line is perfect.
Thank you, Rebecca
a list + free use of AND = YES!
Pen
And is a much underrated word
and I get sick every time I delete an AND and I think I will stop doing it and I left more than I usually would in Darklings and starting sentences with AND makes perfect sense because there is always something else before that particular something.
If you’re going by rhythm alone then everything should start with an and. It makes things flow so beautifully
I use quite a lot of ands too and I know it works in terms of rhythm and when you are writing prose it changes something and almost brings in poetry where poetry shouldn’t really be and I like that sense of cheating and I know I can do what I want anyway and I know all this and yet still there is a but. But I am not sure what the but is.
I like the last line too! And the contrast between the porno and the suits.
And I love that people are using more ands in their comments
That was a beautiful and dreamy and gorgeous read. Thank you, Dan.
‘And’ is a brilliant word when used with quality, as it means more quality, like this. There’d be someone on autho telling you to avoid repetition.
Really like it Dan. Good luck with the readings!
Thanks, both 🙂
Yes, Simon, I can imagine the comments now…
Beautiful. My favorite line: “And jacked-up housemaids howl Baudelaire at their whores”
thanks, i realised I wasn’t 100% sure of my terminology – are they called housemaids sometimes, or just maids?
you know what I meant by housemaids, though?