Bret Easton Ellis - 'Imperial Bedrooms'

Well this shouldn’t work. A sequel to Bret Easton Ellis’ debut novel? Your initial response is that he’s run out of ideas/steam and is falling back on something to get attention. Then you read it and realise he’s still a fucking genius and ‘Imperial Bedrooms’ is as much of a masterwork as ‘Less Than Zero’ was.

The genius of the novel is that the voices are all the same as you remember them. The images you carry in your mind of Blair, Rip, Julian and Clay come back to life speaking exactly as themselves, this isn’t a Xeroxing of the first book, in fact if it wasn’t for references to Pixar, iPhone and IMDB then you could imagine he sat down the day after finishing ‘Less Than Zero’ and created this. By page two you’re back in the muddy waters of love, desire, loss, confusion, depression, aloneness and friction. As Clay describes it “A mosaic of youth, a place you don’t really belong anymore.” Things have changed on the outside, Clay is a successful writer, Julian is clean, Rip is botoxed to high heaven and Blair is married. To none of them.

References to U2 and Hungry Like The Wolf might drag you back but soon Clay is listening to The Fray (The Fray!) as a girl he likes has them on her MySpace. We’re not in the eighties anymore, Toto.

What is it about? Like the original, it’s about people. It’s about change and staying the same. It’s about protecting yourself whilst simultaneously laying yourself open to hurt. There’s less drugs, less sex, more exercise and a couple of disturbing incidents which see Ellis juggling a mix of nausea and voyeurism not seen since American Psycho.

It’s beautiful. It’s shocking. It’s Bret Easton Ellis at the top of his game. Amazing.

“The ghosts swarming everywhere whispering ‘you need to be careful who you let into your life’”

POEM: 'Man's Best Friend'

There’s a hole in his heart where the love should go.
Empty, beating, a life longing to live.
Homogenised with drink
Blur life into a glass
Forget your faults
Forget the girl.
Head on the bar,
Salome laughs.
Last orders
Hit the road
Walking into the dark
The moon shows its face
It’s jeering Cheddar face.
Stars laughing at your fragility
Rain sneers at your stupidity.

Home alone again.
Hit the bottle one last time
Clock tick-tick-ticks on
The hands mocking you
The only thing not going forward.
The alarm is the bell of the final round
Technical knockout.

The dog brushes your head
Sniffing waiting for you to wake.
He’s still there three days later
When the flies are breeding.

POEM: 'World Of Paper Heartbreak'

I woke up dreaming of a paper sun
Origami shade for the world.
With my paper heart beating fast
I stride into the rays.
Walk half an hour in the wrong direction to stroll past your house by accident.
Dog barks and I scurry away
Sure I saw the curtains twitch…
Sit alone on a paper sidewalk
Drawing faces on the street
Two souls colliding
A car splashes and they disappear.
The sun’s going down
Walk back in the wrong direction, past your house again.
See a coupled shadow in the window
And puke on the driveway.
Brush my gasping mouth with my sleeve
A Mountain Dew rinse
And then the emptiness comes.
The paper moon arrives
I pick up the phone to call
But the shadow pulls my hands down and I go under.

Paper razor clears the air
Paper sleep, without a care.

POEM: 'Musselmaner'

Mute salvation scream.
Shrunk down to nothing
Tracing paper skin
Name as number inked on the arm.
I hear some pray as sleep taunts me
“Don’t you see your god has forsaken us???”
They rock and murmur more,
Mothers cuddling the corpses of offspring.

Morning comes, no cock crows, no bird sings
Awakened by sirens of death
Future workers vs future experiments
Sifted through like diseased cattle.
Ribs above the surface
Legs like brittle bamboo blades
Do hearts even still beat?

Fight a child for a sliver of bread
Break a cripple’s nose for a spoon of pissed-in soup.
Guards laugh
Bodies fall.
Again, god turns his back without a word.
If he’s walking the Lagerstrasse,
He’s walking away.

POEM: 'I'm In The Sky, I'm In The Stars'

I realise how quick life goes
How everything spins away so fast
And no one stops to smell the roses.
I realise you don’t believe me
I look like a wooden doll on a stage
Fake applause and confetti tears.
I realise how special you are
And I’m just another face in the scene
Another it-boy, another loser.
I realise as I hold the candle
That the wax is already burning down my arm
But I’m not dropping the plate
I’m not giving in to the hand
Pushing me forever under.
I’m looking out of the grave
Onto a clearer day for tomorrow.
Alone, choking in the sun
I guess I was wrong
What I want is not for me.
The flower I sent decayed before arrival
A sickening reminder of my shallow self.
Keep dreaming my beautiful
I’m in the sky, I’m in the stars.

POEM: 'A bug under a stone'

A bug under a stone
Waiting to be discovered.
An ugly duckling
Drowning in a pool of unease.
The other guy
Waiting to be most important.
The corpse
Fighting on the catafalque.
Plane going down
Look across to the couple saying goodbye
Drink a Heineken alone
As the plane hits the ground.
Rebirth?
A bug on the asphalt.
Dodging people to and fro
Trying to find the dirtpile.
Descending into a hole
Snapping the cable
Sailing downwards
You’re nothing Bugman,
Nobody hears your body hit the floor.
A bug under a stone
Waiting to be discovered.

POEM: 'Dream (Of a floating head and a laughing Jesus)'

Laying on the bed alone
My arms becoming weeds
Worms dance across the sheets
As minutes become hours.
Eyes wide open, blind,
Moths fly in my mouth
To sleep
To choke
To steal my breath
Like the cats in the alley.
A hand over my mouth
Avoiding malicious microbes in the air,
Beware the invisible malevolence.
Cough up blood
Cotton wool itch
Try to spit, nothing, choke again.
Reach for water
Hands become spiders
Crawling away
Falling lifeless.
Like the white rabbit
I’m late.
Important date cancelled
A kid becomes a corpse.