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Poems by Camille Daytona

2.bmp

#posted January 5, 2023

blurred stone

 

each steering wheel I sleep behind,

each flower I forget to smell,

I lay down my body amongst the stones.

I become a stone, discoloured,

one in a dozen, in a thousand, in a field.

my echo is plain,

naked and obvious, every way I stand out 

is accidental.

 

#posted November 19, 2022

 

I couldn’t tell you

 

how it is. I entered a room of

of frost, icewhite frost. even the flowers

are ice. I moved them three times, from the hallway

to the counter, to the sink, to the floor.

 

for a man

to put on that face, that broken wretched face,

and ask for me to see it, and beyond the blunt despair,

 

for a sulking child

thirteen years my senior,

for a bull that is a goat that is a crow that is a dog,

for a hexed wish,

I freeze my bones. 

 

beware of your garden, before I tend it,

cultivate your weedy mess 

before I come,

before I come and live in it.

on internal harmony

 

I want to know a feeling:

to wake up from

the deep sleep I, sadly, 

never reach. Or instead of 

Destination Unkown  

to have some sort of security -

but the arms that feel secure

are seldom really so.

 

but Destination Known would be a bad song 

and these months I hurry from

distraction to disguise. 

 

lately I like to agree with myself.

it goes like this:

 

- I’m such a good girl. 

     - exactly, I’m right. I am such a good girl!

- thanks for agreeing with me.

 

it’s like softfucking a mirror.

I highly recommend.

horse show

 

 

sometimes I think up names: Mia,

Scarlett, Sam.

but I will stay a childless mother -

better than a motherless child.

my current lover has no sense of smell,

which he did not choose, but with his

bold and able mind he did choose this:

to never reproduce.

I don’t know yet if his body is 

supposed to be my pillow.

there is a very specific way

a head fits in a shoulder notch.

a fist fits in a fist.

 

II

 

my Mia would be crooked and tall,

an unapologetic star. she would be so tired

constantly having to shake the crumbs of her mother’s

life off her sheets.

 

III

 

a sleepyhead may give a woman such a look,

the look of slight disinterest that some men

perceive to be sexy. lucky me,

lucky pageant horse,

bows on my braided manes,

standing so still, inspected,

no rearing, no jumping through hoops, 

no nothing.

springclean

 

    dedicated to j.s.

 

I put things back in order:

my skirts sorted by hue. 

your clouds next to mine, yours are more aggressive,

but you are not the agressor, 

you are not the ballfisted

beast in this story, not who I made you out to be.

train tickets in the trash, the cat food with the scoop,

the pill closet stays closed.

 

I thought to leave the city, the same but somewhere else,

same coffee, same joints cracking. 

jack stauber said that today, today / is one of those

days / stuck between 

yesterday and tomorrow, 

and I don’t need to know his face to love him. 

 

I don’t need a hand that pinches, 

I need the limpest of hands on top of mine,

no cracking, no urge, no clouds,

only the broadness of time 

and the hand of my beautiful beast declawing.

my purring, snoring 

clump of a beast.

#posted April 10, 2022

 

Escher’s stairs

 

look, the sky still has mercy

after all the sickening slander

it still stretches its limbs out wide.

just like I do for you,

a widely sprawled angel for you.

 

we don’t always see release coming,

or know how many corners left

to lurk behind.

 

life, stupid gleeful 

serpentine of life,

an endless string of corners,

forever awaiting you, 

forever on Escher’s stairs.

 

 

#posted March 6, 2022

pink swan

 

the day had a silver air to it.

between strolling and fucking

and reading and fucking, there was still 

my weakness seeping through. 

but we took big breaths and sought out

the best of the best of chairs 

in order for me not to

swoon.

 

we passed by a ballet gear shop.

I pointed towards a baby pink 

cross-body knit, said

    if I were alone now,

    I would’ve gone in there.

 

if I were alone now. 

my words age badly!

I would’ve ripped you apart if you let me.

heck, I would’ve eaten your saliva 

off a plate. 

#posted March 5, 2022

 

mimosas on saturday

 

you get so sad, so sad. I hear your sadness

first thing, last thing. firstly, lastly.

you meow all the time now. 

 

*

 

there is a machine inside me.

it signals to and from my bedroom.

when I walk blindly, it tells me so.

just like you, I had to learn how to rest.

 

*

 

my mother! she gave me a cutting.

a cutting of a flower. it traveled with me on the train.

on top of all my stuff, in sheer plastic.

I like plastic, but I mustn’t. I can like it, 

I’m allowed to like, but only the way a child likes.

 

*

 

so your meow, is it a blessing

or a warning or a cry?

I offer you things: olives, coffee, a 

piece of my bread. it does not make you better,

I know.

 

*

 

while nothing really does, is 

it still comforting to be offered?

candles, cake, a chocolate egg.

or my body - not really an offer,

since there’s nothing to give up.

 

*

 

besides the vacuum and the cat,

nothing disturbed your sleep, maybe

only a knife or a little spoon ringing in my glass.

but not impatience, worry or 

a hurried pace. nothing, nothing,

no small thing to deny you 

safety.

#posted March 1, 2022

 

confession of a kleptogirl

 

my mouth is blue from being.

 

I want to find a when to my ever,

an obstacle in my open field.

a reason to tighten the leather.

to wear it ostentatiously around my thigh.

 

sometimes I collect stupid nothings

to make me feel accomplished when I get home.

 

once in the office of doctor fibromyalgia,

whom I don’t see any longer

because I do not have it -

 

I stole a roll of medical tape because

it made my trip more worthwhile.

it was memorable because it was so secret

a secret among the flat flat truth.

 

and it was not even truth.

 

#posted February 26, 2022

 

my angel

 

I will always pursue my secret angel.

I will never take her out of my palm.

she collects my whiteness, my rare, rare whiteness. 

she disposes of it. 

not in a discarding way, no, my tiny little angel

sprinkles my white dust all over the grass,

all over the soil, patting it lightly.

 

I feel it again, the lurking call. I listen.

 

sometimes I want to undo knowledge,

wear a shield to protect myself,

do a speedrun, away from this tangled mess 

of a world. but I love the modern age,

I love the joy of knowing. 

my wikipedia is marked by a red flag.

 

but again on my angel -

I squeeze and she collects:

working hard in my hand,

tough labor in my pocket.

she collects and collects 

my whiteness

and gives it back to the earth.

#posted February 7, 2022
 

blues (mood ring)

 

I am accepting the 

unscripted, willingly giving up

the false idea of mastery

(but for you, 

you feign it so beautifully 

as to script my every move, pluck my

petals, as to stop counting them)

 

I am cherishing my 

change in colour, like a mood ring,

I spend my mornings

decorating: a hair pin,

a buttoned dress

to be seen like a star is seen: when you blink,

I am renewed,

my yesteryear still sparkling in,

or despite,

its corruption

 

then you provide 

an entryway: two pillars encircled

with a shitload of ivy, a good old palm fibre 

welcome mat,

so I can meet with it, eye-to-eye,

face down 

you grant me 

your assistance,

provide me with your shelving

I am

building a 

 

pawn shop for my past

my salty revenge

 

like a pirouette that falters 

I cannot fully amend my lifestyle to fit

I sting myself quite often 

at the amounts of pills I own

the grand collector they call me

 

I never touched a real horse -

afraid of brain injury

or that my back is split open again

they did it with such precision 

the type of mancraft that is supposed to be a 

once in a lifetime thing

(bless your statements!

 twice for me)

 

the sour earth may wait for my body

but I am practicing preservation

drawn back to the waters, oh purple waters,

waters that carry my body like a raft,

bottomless turbid waters, 

still 

less likely to drown

    let them watch while my bones turn brittle

                 breakable     

                    like their promises

lovely, softly, barely there

 

there are days when having big hopes is tiring

like pampas grass sitting proudly in a vase,

that once in a while I just want empty, I put it away,

for no good cause but for the sudden 

stoic in me

 

but on you:

we pass through levels of a video game,

our swords lined up 

in the corner of our eyes

you snap your iron age out of its container

I pick up the machete, it makes a clicking sound

which you repeat,

as to have the last word

(I’m not a man of power! but nevertheless I toy with the idea

of a kingdom, a ruthless kingdom, but not cold,

a prodigy, a kingdom kind 

like a warm body with frozen fingertips)

 

endearing you, dear you, I think about

our enchanting lowlife

a careful symbiosis, our cloudheads

complying with our feet firm,

knees supported, a gentle fight

never in the brightest light, sometimes I might

just have an existential crisis

‘always take one step back’ 

I say every month, but don’t 

repent

for you I do it all over 

# posted May 16, 2021

 

diptych

 

lacking physical evidence

I scream

when my nerve endings are glowing

confirmation through 

actual sound

is unnecessary.

 

I once had a body of a 

hot air balloon, landing in a palace

with yellow gardens

no rocks

outlines of shadows

cast by mermaids

with neon tails shimmering

and crystal rods through their

pineal glands

sitting in the same spot

through the afternoon.

 

in my kitchens I would keep 

mangoes, or 

everything

but medicine.

 

of the heavens and the earth I 

know a lot of tales

watch me when I struggle

to remember

 

watch me 

wither in my 

silicone bed

extra tender around the shoulders

 

like me.

# posted May 13, 2021

aripiprazole

 

it is inside your capsule

that I lie coiled

like in a womb.

 

not many sunsets ago

I was counting ways

to reach the highest berry

in the tree.

 

the purple one

was the most sedating

and everyone knows that indolence

is best avoided

at all costs

 

now I crawl with my knees

scraping against the root

to pick the flavour

closest to the soil

 

my muted mouth

a purple smile 

for God’s witness.

# posted November 6, 2020

 

there is nothing that holds my grudges

 

there is nothing that holds my grudges

and I knew my wreckage long ago

as I saw it before it had a name

all the mistakes right before me

it faked a purpose to keep me saddled

the leather is worn where the muscle is weakest

boulders would it carry

happily, but not me

 

oldest, contaminated wrath

all the fibers picked apart

I organize them by ability to hide

let’s not go over it this time

let’s keep the lid closed 

possibly forever

with my quilted blanket

uncontaminated

perfectly intact 

serving on a silver plate 

a permanent regression

until the space it cannot hold

until it shrieks when it feels my coldness

 

call me a squeezer

puzzled by the clock

I have to do almost nothing for it

the milking persists

 

I want to hear the fullest word

but in your favour

I want to hear the most plausible outcome

sugarcoated

held but not squeezed

some sort of resistance

some sort of ignorance

# posted August 24, 2020

pinch poem

 

I keep improvising a re-enactment

I fumble with something I once felt was real

real real 

painfully real

days stretched very far

when I symbolically chose  the placement of a sticker

 

an induced real

a deformed memory

that shifts a grid

obvious

(not having to make a point)

like a golden flower

that sprouts from a rare seed

that stands alone

 

and when    

          there comes a branch        

                     it is not clipped to     

                              another one

 

 

on my back

i’m sliding back down the dell

 

with the reverence of a moth 

for light,

with deception of a jump

I jump up

to a phone cell

to a hotel

to go into hibernation

to wipe the same spot until it discolors

like a notebook over time

# posted June 21, 2020

U.Z.

 

the surgeon sped through hallway a few times

vaguely, like a ghost.

he was like a famous person

whose time you could not afford to buy.

on rare occasions we would sit face to face.

he would lean back into his orthopedic chair,

all saggy. I could see his spine bend through his skin.

I had my jewelry on everytime I went.

“take off your weapons”,

he would instruct.

 

when he opened my back

he could not fathom wat he saw. 

I prepared him but he did not listen.

I asked to keep the evidence, which I used

to build a shrine.

now it is scattered: 

one piece is in my boyfriend’s bedroom

most of it is in the drawer

where it acts as a magnetic field

to keep the shame out of my body.

it will never decompose.

 

the surgeon was busy for eight hours.

if I hadn’t been asleep,

I would’ve turned around to see the surgeon’s face

and whispered like they did at my high school lectures:

“why are you all red?”

aide-memoire

 

the most abominable sight

can be one to cherish after all.

whether it penetrates our eyes like acid,

or not,

it brings forth a truth

and displays fear.

 

something feels unsettling

when using the word truth.

I would rather never use any word ever again

that summons the idea

of me as a knower.

 

the sky has to keep amazing me.

when it stops doing that,

that is my quavering red flag.

I would rather submit myself

to a tree or a lion

but I have an agile mind.

I can not sit still when I have to listen.

but I can ignore and ignore

like no other person.

I might do something really silly after all

like studying astrophysics.

# posted March 9, 2020

thinktank 

        thanks 4 Dewi

 

and so I sit cross-legged between the smudge

I grub

I clasp to the roots 

that peep out of the pile.

every day conflicts with the other

a chain link continuum,

perpetual

towards the glazed bushes in gardens

in which crumpled love notes from teenage girls 

lie yellowing

thrown from the top floor window.

haven’t I been that before?

the way my stockings glimmer

is a substitute for void.

if I catalogize my belongings

will the chaos decline?

I make myself uncomfortable

on the carpet

and I count.

soon enough I see the images again:

as they come flashing

previously from smoking weed

now from just existing.

soon enough the mist comes,

thickening.

 

but the dog keeps me in charge:

it checks on my presence when I am far gone.

foreplaying till cows come home

 

I realize I need a frame.

a lack of boundaries is what,

contradictorily,

eliminates my freedom.

 

I want someone to tell me what to do,

or cry excessive tears 

so it is clear that I am sad

instead of guessing the weather.

the only thing I know

is that my climate is turbid

and lawless like slab city.

I haven’t made it there yet.

maybe a muscle twitch

is a crypted message

to run.

I’ll sell my furniture

and curate my environment.

I’ll conspire a sham marriage.

for B.

 

how much do you want to stay unknown

or how much do you want me to unsee you?

you know I can’t unsee you

or anything I read about anything to do with blood

I am very afraid of time

I bought a mango which I left to decompose

which I didn’t mean to

sometimes purity has a pungent taste to it

I ask you to imagine this in my voice

while all this time I have bathed and bathed

mostly I like the water to exceed the level of heat that is bearable

where on the scale of bearableness would you place me

strong bones run in my family

my grandmother could build a house in the blink of an eye

she said we took to long to make a plan

or that once you have gathered all the materials needed

you have to act fast

for your willpower not to weaken

I have a plan but I am tethered to a post

and very prone to illness

so I am excluded from this precious piece of advice

you know that but you do not know the severity of it

many of my hues go unperceived

my appearance is confusing

to doctors and to women prone to the evil eye disease

and I had to re-open the gate myself many times

in fact it always closes before it is even fully opened

in fact it is a loophole without an end

December Two Thousand Nineteen

 

to be receptive is an active verb

it needs me

slightly uncomfortable on the top of a hill 

in hiking boots

and an invisible star at the end of each fingernail

 

spawning the desire

or the will

or both the desire and the will 

to stare at an ugly purple vegetable

and to seperate the roots from the weeds

 

the will seems to be rather the act of toleration, 

which is passive

 

there is a smell to this room too neutral 

it makes me not be here

I wonder what clouds smell like

in high school I once smelled a chemical that you’re not allowed to smell

I almost lost my sense of smell

the list of smells without connotation keeps shrinking

 

I have a new daily challenge

it starts with me opening my eyes to see the same pearl string chandelier

but it is Wednesday

and I have to say the month and the year out loud

and I have to repeat it with a stern voice, as if to convince anyone

that there is no one present in this building

# posted February 12, 2020

the World must be here somehow

 

the World must be here somehow

at the sight of a dream before it is known

or touched -

with a knife clenched somewhere

and the houses beautifully sown to each other

where we do not live and never will

tragically 

 

mundane 

beautiful starfield

when I look inside sometimes it is completely hollow

sometimes there are

tiny envelopes swarming 

glimmering promises kept small

by choice or

by destiny

 

this is the best try of all tries

I blue -

    my eyelashes

I think about the past as a different life entirely

I try to touch pictures 

they melt in my hands

 

stay sedated

and asleep

resume your filthy ways of stumbling

in a sandhole

very, very deep

like a tower reversed

 

meet me at the top of it 

 

the only thing that feels real is rain

with the voice under one’s breath

that whispers

the World must be here somehow

Coney girl memoir

 

by the thought of getting past this morning

I was pinned

like a butterfly in a frame

and there were pins that went inside the muscle

and they entered

and you came

racing towards me 

your smile formed a fountain

and I stood by with a checkered flag 

and I gave up on the standing part

and I lay watching

as many many tasks undid themselves

through consolation

through regression

 

I threw one coin in the fountain to show my devotion

and one for the fun of the act

then one for you

and one for me

I kept throwing and throwing

like through the slot of a coin dozer machine

that pushes through the gold and the gadgets

where children run around with goldfish

this must be the place, I say

I know this state of being

it is accountable for all and every cloud of hope

that fades before the sublimation

sliding on a conveyer belt

back into butterfly being

where every pin lowers the treshold of pain

that is what happens when you put metal inside of a girl

# posted January 6, 2020

airborne children

 

we are nowhere in particular

we are a 

           dot on a map

we are a falcon stone-grown to a roof

yet we are still a falcon.

we are airborne babies

kept in recluse.

 

we think we know about these streets and their features

or that we have to move cities 

in order to rewire our brain.

 

maybe it is enough to leave the door ajar

or shower with the lights off.

if you take a shower every day

you never get very filthy.

 

it is shameful,

all the comfort

that kept us from ever reaching this state.

 

maybe we have to see the worst

landflood in history

or suffer a concussion.

snowflake bath

 

before I lay my eyes upon the proof of something - before I do that,

I must feel the fuck out of nothings

what I would like is to stay in overlooked corners

what I dream of is a meta-life

that I can get back to and count the days as a way of keeping them

there are a lot of boxes to be filled

and purged and filled again

 

I will remove myself out of situations too legitimate

or useful,

to return to him and me in a snowflake bath

with crystals by the window

 

(and to the things that are very very tangible

like shells printed on paper

or like when something is very old

or odd, 

the touch hits differently)

October 14

 

wherever it lays pounding

still warm and tactile

in sheets of a river bed 

we do not go there anymore 

we thrive on electricity

we repair and replace in the blink of an eye

where does the light even still come from

 

be it the core that holds the grit 

be it the hold of a hand

which is sometimes an attempt

sometimes a confirmation

be it the surprising capability

of the aformentioned core

be it the sight of the gate that holds something from you

it holds something from you

now I say this again but this without hesitation

September 28

 

time and time again

turning in a big wheel

with the fossils and the flowers

the fumes and the fuels

I sit in disharmony because I was put on this earth

as a sweet invitation to turn that around

and to kiss and to shatter 

and to find shelter in forgetting

without the proving or the affirmations 

spinning low in the grass beneath the clouds like a cottonmouth

never having read anything ever

no one else’s nor my own

forever on a silken threadmill

the dots erased before their marking

lurking in their whiteness

declaration

I declare this field outdated

I declare my cortex undamaged

I rewrite the story

I recall anything and everything to be unreal

and replace it with a surrogate 

I exist along with the faces of men 

undamaged

I fulfill conjoined desires

I fall

I fuck and unfuck

G.

 

you are the soldier and the sheep

and the rainbow inbetween, the leap towards

a treetrunk where we sit on 

faces covered from the sun 

 

the well we unwillingly drank from is blessing us after all 

the spools rewinding

back into the lavender and the concrete flowers

towards the discomfort of wetness 

the sight of sameness

the sunken sand  

neokarma 

 

in divine timing

in all this crap and clutter,

the drum

the blade

between disorder and heaven

 

that’s where we meet

Imre

when my body is weak I turn to the sight of Imre on the graveyard

when we gave him goat cheese pie

I wanted so badly to take him home and too late, the realization struck me

only a child does that,

only a child takes a bird out of its nest, no matter how bleak in appearance

 

Imre was the diamond cat

Imre did nothing

it’s easy to pretend you’re being followed

when all you want is a following

with your pointy fingers on the foreheads of creatures

all sizes and ages

to give them names

May 31

 

you call your dad but he speaks in his 2011 voice

you lie despondent in the same bed 

you think you are cemented in a stone wall

 

you look at the universe while it’s not there

you look through the same eyes that contain it

 

they pierce through the middle ages and the holy fruit of Eden

they thread a needle through virgin Sophia’s brain

and the tincture of her womb has dissolved in your body

the cleansed solution is within you

chaos is nothing but the white of an egg

May 22

elsewhere than where the snake bites its own tail

lies are sold like candy

 

empty-handedness is mistaken for void

 

the greatest occurence of a lifetime is not sweet 

but still sticks under every chair we ever sit on

it smashes to pieces our childhood bed

it unentertains us 

22 

 

eleven is a nicer word than it is a number

my number was supposed to be twenty-two

because it was sewn onto my jeans

and now I am twenty-two and I keep quantities in boxes

and I loathe the fabric

cornucopian angel

 

I miss her like that:

 

when she walked with a spring in her step

and denied the dead probably trampling their daisies 

if conscious ignorance exists

then that was what it was, and the bricks she touched seemed supercharged 

but she never heard of ego death

 

the body carried like a lamb

licked in both ears

succumbing softly never knowing of 

a skin behind the peel

 

and still peeling 

May 1

 

what is it that draws me back to the zero point

I like emptiness because it keeps me low

set

to rise eventually

 

selective blindness works greatly

you let your body do a slow dance 

between energy poles

in one room 

lateral

 

sometimes I miss the hospital

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