& yes I’ll carry it           like all the others

waiting for the dan             when I don’t wake up          thinking about

all the debts I owe          to people in my life         all the money I’m doing wrong

in this sci-fi film        to this opening music like

what could possibly happen next svet?          throw ur muppet birds & duck armies @ me

people keep making plans like           another year         might actually come           but I’m not so sure

my plans r less made more        looking @ apartments in NYC &        wishing there were two of me

so I could split the rent          between myself &            myself.2

the problem with a second me is            she’d still be me &           she’d probably still be a poet &

struggle to pay rent &          we’d sleep on receipts            instead of madraci
Tata talks         of buying an investment property &          taking out another loan

he says        Robbie Williams has a Beverly Hills house      with 22 bathrooms &        when asked why

he said        what if he has a party        & every one of the guests         get diarrhoea?

Tata says in Darwin          u can buy a property           four bedrooms for $304k

Mama says        ne volim properties
pls let me keep pretending         like the jobseeker & writing money         in my account

is my own       & for spending

or @ least        let me dwell on my dreams          as if they’re still possible

even though

so much          was never meant          to be attainable
I’m comparing myself to friends again          but not everyone

is from a working-class migrant home            in this unemployment shit for lyf

& a poet sick of x-po-sure

that is to say         disappointing my family           is more than likely

with the road I’ve chosen to take
Tata says          me & my sestra r lucky

we just have to show          we’re young & motivated         & they’ll give us a job on the spot

this is not         the saddest delusion he nurtures

  in Alex Chee’s ‘Inheritance’      he writes      ‘My mistake being that money is not

power over pain. Facing pain is.’
as the first daughter       in a new world       I carry us all        not only myself

so I need to know things for us all

like how the average wage        for full-time working Australians       in the second quarter of 2018

was over $82k—I’d       laugh if I didn’t feel sick about this—

or the cost of living          & minimum wage           for Bosnia & Serbia
I still wonder             if I’d be writing              if my parents never left

I still keep all my receipts         (no matter how old)          in boxes under my bed &

remember to pack them        when I move—choosing to        accumulate to         sustain a wage fantasy

I still never expect          to pay off any of our debts           in this lifetime
there r 400 wild horses          bringing tourists to Bosnia           despite their abandoned ancestors

these horses r their own bosses now      & have humans who love them enough       to build/work for them

& I know       money abandoned us

I know this country         continues to abandon & silence        so many

& I just want to be       these horses for them        want to be      sjajni snovi fulfilled
I want the kind of money          to picnic inside this landscape         cloud watch with loved ones

& not worry          about returning to the world

‘Do not return, my mother

shouts from her sleep. Do not

return.’


Return to Tell Me Like You Mean It volume 4.