the Kirstie Alley dream (2005)

I

You never used to be like this. Honey,
you've been hacked into. You got the grey in spades but

where
oh
where is the incandescence ?

Used to be unstable nucleus of uranium 235
& now look

you’re dunking
artificial sweetener in your eye.

Don’t play green, jellybean. (I’ve seen every frame of footage.)

And this party food is small. Place is dead. This isn’t like you.

These aren’t the lips I used to know -
stickier,
chapped and unresponsive. They are so lonely.

I dream inertia, dreams where I’m submerged in the office as usual, casting bubbles with my mouth, but you no longer take your place at my workstation, treading water over my out tray; can’t even offer me dreamt lassitude.

(Not impressed.)


II

“Let’s be logical.” That’s cute, but we don’t even start being logical. The bedroom remains impassive. It is a clearance sale. It is a shingle beach. And other tributes to this malfunctioning frost-engine.

Look at us now, waiting in the data for a research methodology.

How long did it take before you started using again? I’m not about to point my finger at the drugs, I know the problems pre-dated. Believe me, I know. Like a mother.

Don’t straighten your make-up, re-calibrate your clothes. Won’t make one iota. The trajectory of my questioning is keyed. Headed for your swerves, skids, fishtails… i.e. your brain’s most lizardly sanctuaries, most manipulative little hatchlings.

I don’t mean to talk down to you. Just don’t ask me for change. Or if you do, make it like that Meek stencil (“Keep your coins, I want CHANGE”), with full-blown political statement backlighting your plight.

Guess you wanted to control, nudge my faders, split my cables. Got ransacked by you. Control is never harmlessly itself, but it’s always impeccably presented. You were always dressed up like a Superpower.

That's where you score – on the street?

The subtext of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is that bright rainbows of designer drugs could invade our schools, and look what’s happened. Not that I blame you.


III

Looking for a challenge? Sure you are.

You’re forever high, scratching away
asphalt skies

lost so much time freezeframed

Sometimes I go digging through dusty old record crates,
the vinyl warped by sixteen summers.
Within the raw & wildest cuts,
trace your sexual genealogy.

I argue with old songs.

[lot of your opinions I don’t think are just.]

But can still catch the beery bittersweet.

A rare connectivity when we first. As if we could face the sun, head the moon.

When we forked, I didn’t mince; said, “I can dream without you.”

blackberries

fractal

slowmotion into

tzatziki

copies

And then later in my dream you are Kirstie Alley. You go public about the length of time you've gone without sexual relations: 4.5 years, because, you say, you didn’t want “fat sex.”


IV

You never reached 'no', never refused anything. Although you never could abide inflatables; didn’t do prosthetics. Would've shared tapas and boutique piss with the Menem government in Buenos Aires. If you could.

Your credo: stereoscopy, South Yarra style;
more credible than scientology at least (the Kirstie Alley dream is a haunter).

Each year, a blood-direct original, a surprise movie comes to light us. Flash back to you in '02. Scooped awards, bagged the white lies, banked them. Economy of one-liners: one line never satisfies. Now you’ve still got a little pollen dust above your lip, hanging like a plaque, saying, “This was my success”. This was your secret.

But this is (or was) our home, and this is your captain speaking. Kirstie Alley has written a book called How to Lose Your Ass and Regain Your Life. I’m not recommending it. But it promises to be an opus in the metamorphic tradition. It would make Kafka cough, Ovid ovulate. It might make you sing again.


V

The bridge was not designed to carry large pedestrian crowds. And we are like this.





Notes

* Uranium-235 is an isotope of uranium that differs from the element's other common isotope, uranium-238, by its ability to cause a rapidly expanding fission chain reaction. (wikipedia entry)

* Carlos Menem was president of Argentina from 1989 to 1999. (wikipedia entry)

* Kirstie Alley really has written a book entitled How to Lose Your Ass and Regain Your Life. She is a scientologist, and is probably best known for her performances in the TV series Cheers and the Look Who's Talking series of films. Alley has become an anti-obesity campaigner, and is a spokesperson for the Jenny Craig weight-loss program. Recently she admitted to not having had sex for four and a half years, because she didn't want to have "fat sex".

* A photograph of the stencil artwork by 'Meek' is shown below. More of Meek's work can be seen on the streets and alleys of Melbourne, or else go here: