If I said my heart was a cyanide laced pomegranate,
would that make its expressions any less ******?
If I said falling in love was like throwing yourself off a cliff on a winter night and drowning yourself tumbling through the air blind like a bag of kittens, but I was quoting Kierkegaard,
would that make it any less of an awkward melodrama?
If I told you the western blocks blind attacks on the other,
kinda resembled Freud's account of the mother
of a miscarriages melancholia,
is that a condoning or a condemnation?
if I translated every meta-narrative of class relation, oppression, wage slavery, state violence, suppression,
into anthropomorphic allegories for a myriad of psychological phenomena,
would I be an academic or a shinto miko?
[and would the world be any better?]
if I superimposed on the geographical topology,
the political and then the existential,
would I have a sandwich?
Or a lasagne?

'i've only ever really read one poem. i, i have to admit.*  
You know, that, that one poem that everyone’s read, whatsit,
Howl by Ginsberg, 'best-minds-of-my-generation-destroyed-by-madness,-starving-hyste­rical-naked,' , yeah, that one;'
'It's just, I identify with it so strongly.' she says,
'That poem is soo me.'
It's funny how commentary on a generation 60 odd years ago come across as timeless insights..
how we learn that true spirit of rebellion and counterculture three generations ago,
  as it is taught to us by two generation ago countercounterculture academics.
but I guess, inevitably
                                         we
                                                  return,
  to those half drowned pontifications inevitably decried into transcendental truth by the onward spilling ratchet of cultural recognition;
  that sense of universal oneness generated by the unwashed ramblings of beat-generation hipsters dense innuendo in run on sentences running, running from their upper-lower-middle-class New York homes and their privilege of true vacant meaninglessness and despair,
   to those nervous tucked in shirted clean shaven scholars swooning over the same seme drugged, melancholic bearded men profussing the deepest of opaque truths only found up the furthest reaches of their own *****.
  As we push through to our lectures, the mosaic in motion of blazer wearing mac-users and mac-pac wearing blazers,
  As we hysterically interpret the formatting conditions for our reports, which could hang in the balance of whether the dreams we once had will ever be actualised,
  As we felt lost and found and found and lost at those park benches under the stars, where occasional strangers strolled by offering sessions and life-stories,
  As we paid exorbitantly to get out of our parents homes, and into tin-can flats with broken windows, absentee landlords and cracked paint only held together by all the moss, (the empowerment that is wage slavery,) for in our youth, poverty is not an ever-present pejorative, but the rite of passage to show that we are alive,
  As rituals of manhood are defined by two things and two things only; how much insomnia one can accumulate to meet insane and inane deadlines, and how much one can illuminate the walls in ***** from all the beers, spirits, cheap wines and questionable home-brews,
  As the government dismantles the human-rights commission, and we nervously attend the rallies initiated by the radicals, and the man on the megaphone calls on the crowd to chant and we can only mumble and laugh nervously at ourselves,
  And when the next speaker runs onto stage feeling the need to plead to this already nervous, placid mass that this is in-fact a PEACEFUL PROTEST, and that we are all true patriots and they insist everyone start singing the national anthem and we all look down and we again mumble, or pretend somehow not to hear them,
  and when, in this biggest independent rally around a unified cause our generation's ever seen, we have never felt so alone ,
  and isolated,  
                                  we
                                             remember,
                                                                    those earlier days,
  When we'd bleach our hair; we'd poison ourselves white, in the vain mystic hope that this was just the transition period to the time when we'd get true colour into our lives,
  Remember our wonder at the Eurocentric Asiatic television representations of the Abrahamic faiths, given transubstantiated holy revival by the medium of Saturday morning digital pastel pasture; when we were children staring excited and wide eyed into the Metatrons Fire of Sinai 'Random Almighty Mega Damage'; as Dante and the seraph class Tyrant-infused-Michael inevitably made battle with YHWH, -in the one True End,- as we grinded within the monolithic emerald obsidian halls, Mystical wonderment spilling forth from our reddened hollow eyes, at the beautiful unlimited expansive world contained within our console/consoling digital unit discs; conformally mapped and etched into the convex hull of our minds,
  Where we were gods, doing battle with every possible creature in morphospace, filleted into overpriced cards and cartridges, for which our strategies meant so much to us though none of us really understood the game,
  When we could quote verbatim every piece of dialogue in GTA2, and get concerned glances from our parents as we conjured veiled imagery of bukake-ladled innuendo which we didn't really understand until six or seven years later,
  When sexuality was a special secret club our elders and the kids in the years above came across so wise for being a member of, rather than an anti-turing test; a farcical ritual where everyone tries their best to imitate the hyper-reality of MTV while hiding the nervous feelings that this whole thing was really meant for someone other than us,
  When creating a whole new lexicon for our self-hood (be it artistic, ******, political or philosophical) felt like existential emancipation; a transcendental rebellion against the normalising identities and semantics of old, rather than an impenetrable circle-**** taxonomy,
  When one day we'd unveil a new term in some text, and it would completely change our outlook on every corner of our lives,
  Or, the next day, when we'd give up and just sit back on rolling banks, and look out at a veil of stars,
  Or the next day, when we'd wonder desperate and painfully, which of the last two was the real pursuit and which was wasted time? (Or was it this day, the day spent building an illusory dialectic between them?)
  Remember when we were in kindergarden, and you had to pass through the kitchen, -the adults zone,- to get to the toilet, and you'd feel both shame and wonderment listening in of the snippets of conversation muttered by these titanic figures; discussing abstruse issues from the newspaper in foreign yet noble tongues?
  Remember when we were teens, and every form-checking observation and question from these same adults was so painstakingly pedantically banal and asinine, that one could only respond with monosyllabic grunts and silent hysterics?
  And remember as 'young adults', when we'd inevitably entered this same dull Aristotelian world of forms, how we'd ask the same adults for advice on filling these paperworks, at once still asemic gibberish, and at once the fine-print that contained and predicted our lives?
  Remember when our dreams for the future were not bounded by the economy of our grade point averages and just how much debt we were willing to incur
                                …
I've seen the best minds of my generation climb into pre-packaged little boxes; and pay through the teeth for the privilege of doing so.  
  Akin to a 'Howl' they call it? Our cry for selfhood? What a scream.
It's not even a cry. Barely a whimper.
More of a zombified groan, completely aware our intrepid Journey of Self is just a pricey guided tour. (Tv Ad's static commodified existential emancipatory platitudes; 'your place in the world' / 'well it's my place and it's my time' urgh.)
And so we march asleep; all lame all blind.
  Trudging through the mind-fields; arguing, unravelling the semantic distinctions between the empty boundaries and the boundaries of emptiness.
  Transcribed down for essay deadlines,  /  assessing our lives trajectory as dead lines,
Becoming increasingly aware,
  We are not the living beings, the dasein, the Übermenschen being actualised; we are the machinery through which the institutions, the factories, the markets and education facilities actualise themselves.
  (While the only acceptable language we can breathe in opposition to these ratcheting pedagogical machines is the lexicon they provide us..
  ('oh, you hate systemic neoliberal alienation; the deestablishment of ontological anthropocentrism? Tell me more about the esoteric uselessness of academic culture.') bluh.)

But

       the more we follow those phantom images we built of ourselves,
the more we become aware they are but sirens; hypnotic dreamlike figures luring us to our doom,
  and as this awareness dawns; and the cognitive dissonances and schizophrenia grows,
       We


                                just try to keep calm and carry on regardless.

Can we really claim the arrogance of having a better path?
The conceit that there's a better cliff we should be guiding ourselves to to top ourselves off?
I don't know,
I reaally
really
just don't know.

the only way to make ends meet,
   istocrushthemtogethercompletely
      till not even bones remain

(not a poem i guess but eh)


–

Space keeps falling to the sides. I try to concentrate, - I mean, I make a token effort every now and again,- but concentration, fixation is always in terms of something external, something I'm not sure I can deal with.  I roll over and go back to sleep.

–

'Where's the flour?'
'Where you left it.'
'Which is where?'
'On the table. What you want it for anyway?'
'Which table?'
'Haha. The generic maple with the ugly-*** spandrels. What are you making?'
'You think we could afford that? Nah, it's like, faux-pine or some ****. And like muffins.'
'Oh good, there's banan's that need using up'
'No no, like, other muffins. Crumpets and such. Got any golden syrup?'
'I think there's some maple.'
'No, it's like, ply, I swear.'

–

I haven't moved in days. I need to. He'll come eventually and I don't want him to see me like this. Plus, I need to locate that smell. I can't have guests over with it here. I'm just not sure where it is though. I  feel like it's on my left arm when I’m in the middle of the room, but off to the right everywhere else. It's.. acerbic, but fermenting, like vegetables on the onset of rot but not quite there yet. Not that I know; I haven't moved in days. I don't want to smell it again. Also garlic, definitely garlic.

–

We visited the inland sea the other day. The hundred years since last time hadn't changed it one bit. The beached clay was brittle under the midday sun, and the cracking footsteps fragmented it into a hundred hexagons.
               'I hear a strain of the pathogen is airborne. It's only a matter of time now'
A group of tourists park up by the shore. A child holds out their arms and runs in small circles.

–

The corridor keeps flashing. And maybe spinning. It's hard to tell, the colour change starts at a different point each time and there's no discernible rhythm to it. You keep pacing up and down. I feel self conscious that you want to leave, but then again, you did show up unannounced. You shake the snowglobe disinterestedly. The fragments burn like molten static.
'Stop that. I feel like I’m vomiting spiders.'
'You're being dramatic.'
'None the less.'
'Don't worry; you'll get through it. The world is transitioning, and this is just motion sickness.'
'I know that, I didn't say I was worried, I said I wanted it to stop.'

'sorry'

–

We'd always go for a walk at night if we felt we needed to talk. It was an unwritten rule. The veil of amber filter let our more timid thoughts breath in the nebulous darkness. Stark daylight was always too suffocatingly real, and that was the one thing we were never allowed to be; real. You'd always talk superficially if we discussed personal matters. That day you did a one-third spin clockwise and faced my side, and talked grandeloquently, hammed up like on a stage. You gave an embarrassed smile and blew a kiss for the invisible audience. I always felt jealous of those nothings, those non-existent beings, that got to figure into your world.

–

'Christ it's warm today. I can't think.'
'so don't bother.'
I spin in the chair. Whooosh. Whooosh.

–

It's the end of a 6 hour shift. A customer, a mother in her odd thirties, was angry that a sale item was out of stock, like sale items always are: She'd only gone out of her way to shop at this store because of the advertised deal, and we had taken time out of her busy schedule under false pretence. Her child stared at the ground intensely, his eyes watering. I tried to imagine the situation through his eyes, to try and ground myself; to remain both present, but stable. She insisted on speaking to the manager. It's a relief really; He's a skeevy ****, but he at least knows when the customers are just there to start ****, and responds accordingly. He comes over, asks what the problem is. It turns out I entered the code wrong and the item was still available after all. He gets one from out the back, handles the transaction, says have a nice day and apologises for me and everything, and I just stand there blankly; I’d had the graveyard shift the night before and honestly I’m beyond feeling right now, but when she mutters 'dumb *****' as she turns away a tight feeling still twists in my gut anyway.
I come home and leave the door hanging open framed in the setting sun and just drop my bags in the hallway. You're in the kitchen, hunched over a workbench eating out of a mug.
'Whatcha having?'
'Cornflakes.'
'….Cornflakes?'
'Yep.' you pivot as I approach. 'corn..flakes.' you hold out the packet.
'coooornfllllakkkkkkkeeeessssss' I start laughing.
'coooornfllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaakes'
we chorus the term in groaning monotone, and I grab the packet out your hand and throw it down and violently stomp it into the ground with every non-energy I have left. You just laugh and egg me on, repeating 'cornflakes! Cornflakes!' in crescendo, ostinato. The satisfaction of each crunch gives me the drive to smash them further, and corn dust spills out of the pulverised cardboard and gets everywhere. In the end I’m panting, my face is a mess of tears, and I collapse over onto it and just roll, bathing in the glorious fragments of reconstituted mulch.

–

'They say another ice age is coming.'
'They also say we'll be swallowed by the sun'
'well, it's true.'
'Yeah, but which'll happen first? I need to know to dress accordingly.'
'Tunnel's up ahead'
'I know, I see it.'
I deliberately swerve to the side and speed up, changing back at the last moment.
'You know I hate it when you do that.'
'What, don't you wanna die together with me? Here and now? Immortalised, as if our existences actually meant something?'
'like Diana and the nameless chauffeur?'
'******* exactly.'
We step out onto the hill, frozen **** tufts breaking underfoot. It's cold as hell but the skies glittering. You get out the telescope you borrowed off your rich *** sister.
'I think that's Jupiter over there.'
'Pfft, Jupiter.'
'What?'
'What's the blankest space you can find?'
'Hmm.. that way?'
You point it in that direction. 'Look'
I stare into it, but it's hard to keep focus while shaking from the cold. You keep adjusting and asking ,’See anything?', eventually some hazy distortion comes into view.
'See, no matter where you look, there's always something there.' You're trying to sound eloquent. 'Even when it seems like you're drowning in nothing.'
I stand back. 'That's terrifying. I feel sick.' I try to breathe but it's shaky and shallow. I stare into the ground, but I can still feel it; the blaze of the myriad innumerable heavens burn into me. Their judging gaze pierces through me and tears me to shreds.  

–

'You know, I think I read that Spinoza thought that consciousness is manifest in the ability of finite beings to continue persisting in and of their own will over time.'
'Doesn't that make a toaster more conscious than us?'
'Yeah, you don't say.'

–

We were twelve and at the department store. It was strange. I'd never taken the bus by myself to just hang out in town before. I always feel disorientated and light-headed in crowds so it had a strangeness; waves of apprehension cushioned by the homogeneity of it. one can be truly alone in a crowd; floating in a sea of otherness, where each gaze is no longer a signification of anything, but a warm static. We were among the aisles of a department store, in the toys and tacky house ornament section. Like, the junk you buy children and grandparents for their birthday. **** that you'd only attribute to people whom have no discernible qualities of their own. We were looking at snow globes. We kept trying to shake them violently enough so that the scene framed within would become entirely lost to the fog; it always felt so disappointing when clarity returned and things re-became what they were. I remember saying, 'I wonder if it tastes like real snow', I don't remember, It was stupid, I don't know why I said it, it sounded cool in my head. But you responded, that I remember, by taking the thing and smashing it against the concrete floor, and pouring out all the fragments into our hands. We tried them together and coughed and choked in laugher. It tasted awful, entirely unsurprisingly. On a rush you stuck one in your pocket, grabbed my hand, and we promptly left the store, and my heart was palpitating, it felt like all the rules, all the natural laws that had prefigured my world were crumbling, and I was terrified, trapped in the gaze of my mothers look of disappointment when we'd be inevitably caught, somehow watching me from its potential future, and I'd no longer be allowed to visit you but it was okay because I was here with you now in this moment and we were alone in this faceless mechanical place crumbling around us, and when we left, and no sirens buzzed, I felt sick with excitement at the unbounded possibility present in everything in every second. I cringe thinking back on it, and feel ashamed at finding such meaning, feeling such unabashed wholesale virtue in indiscriminate destruction, but sometimes, sometimes I still shake that snowglobe as hard as I can, till everything determinate is lost in haze, and I still feel a wave of comfort wash over me.

–

‘We’ve been walking for ages. you know where we’re going, right?’
‘It’s just up ahead. I swear’
‘You swear?’

‘I mean, I’ve only been there once before myself.’
‘****. This way?’
‘Wait-‘
‘What?’
‘Huh. Nothing. Sorry, I thought I heard a car coming.’
…
…
‘I think that’s the ocean?’
‘But.. aren’t we heading inland?’
‘You sure?’
‘Yeah, I swear.’

–

We're in your room. Your reading on your bed and I'm in the swivelly chair by the desk, pretending to work, but really we're just chatting, talking about.. something. Whatever. It was probably stupid, laughing at our own jokes, as always, catchphrases repeated till they loose all meaning. It's been a long day and honestly we're both too tired for coherence by this point, but the lack of effort lends the air an easy comfortability. But then suddenly.. Suddenly you stare into my eyes as if you're looking at me and it's somehow different, an intense gaze that I can't escape, as if you somehow found something located there, something fixed in those abyssal pupils. The feeling is overwhelming and terrifying. I am grounded, ripped into the prison of being and frozen static like a dumb animal transfixed in headlights: I am outside myself facing in, and I’m falling away. I pull you in and kiss you to escape; now, it is your touch that is fixed, your smell, your taste, and I breath a sigh of reprieve. You hold my back as I fall into you. I lace my fingers through the buttons in your shirt and feel the faint pulse of your flickering heartbeat. At once an ever-changing epiphenomena, and a calming rhythmic certainty. I vacantly tug at the buttons and your expression changes, gone is the feeling of suffocating questioning, but one of transfixed observation. Your touch is not a reaching out into something, but a continuation of yourself; I am an instrument of your lust, an extension. Holding me in your arm, you nervously run your hand down from my nape and trace my bra from the strap over the line of my breast. The lightness of your touch is a painful tickling and I push myself into you further, my thighs wrapping around yours. Your touch shoots a burning into me, not painful, but like glowing kindling, or the warmth of a blanket; an immanence, a retreat. I let my mind go blank and we continue; you fumble with my bra as I fumble with your belt. We're both shaking but too far gone to notice, too distant to care. The dry freeze of the night air contrasts your damp heat. You clasp me as you trace your hand under my skirt and I feel your arm brush my thigh. I tremble slightly at the sharp coldness of the damp cotton coming unstuck. After a stretching moment of awkward liminality, I feel you pass into me. It's a burning smoothness, distilled liquor. The rubber is an alien feeling, and for some reason I imagine myself as a giant balloon; a malleable featureless surface, filled with emptiness. I feel myself through the threshold of your presence and I am afraid; I am a boundary which encompasses nothing, and by your passing through I fear that I will be pierced; I will burst and out will flow an obsidian wind that will wither you to nothing, but it will keep coming, an endless torrent that will subsume the world and turn everything to desert, and the only way to save you is to keep it bound up as tight as I possibly can till my heart feels like burning metal, and I feel my tears land on my hand tightly clasping your shoulder. You ask through wavering breaths if I want to stop, but I shake my head; if you left now I would be caught and torn open; no, instead I subsume your undulations into myself; till the rhythm is as oceanic noise; a surface rolling located miles above a lightless motionless centre.

–

The pale green lamplight flickers. A nausea, tepid, but understated. The sentience of moss; an almost motionless drone, but the sense of unfolding. The corridor seems larger than it once was. Blank reflections harrowing accusations, mechanically indifferent but piercing; an alarm clocks wail. I lie still, I lie still. The buzzing repeats. I lie still. I am flowing, seeping through floorboards into the pores of the earth, into colonies of worms and I am lost and free, a motion, a multiplicity, pure form without the anxious drudgery of parts; pure alimentary canal, pure Elysium absolution. The flickering quickens and gets brighter. A pulsating light, a strobe, a beat frequency wavering behind vision. The liquid earth, saturated by light, hardens and dissolves. And 'I' am lost among the ruins, a vague memory of a sentiment. A nostalgic grief, an asphyxiated longing. I reach out to you desperately in the drag of the undertow, but you are the chalk of faded bones; cast to the winds centuries prior. A thousand years pass of blanket darkness, and a unitary bell rings. The flotsam batters against the temple gates. Debris collects in cracks, and my pieces are among them. I cling to retention, and return. I am cold sweat outlining the floorboards, the feeling of clenching before vomiting, repeated endlessly.

–

A few weeks after, turning off an avenue onto the main road, I see you. You're crossing, coming this way. It was bound to happen eventually. I bite back the moisture forming in my eyes and try to remain faceless. You suddenly change your trajectory, and hit the side of a car. It honks at you and you dodge around it. I allow a bitter smile to myself; the fact I can cause you such disorientating discomfit indicates I still mean something to you. Even if it's just a discomforting anxiousness, something beyond the boundary to be avoided, I have causal powers, extension; I can see my flicker of presence in you even now, even if I cannot for the life of me find it within myself. You run around and I walk straight. It's empowering; I can remain fixed, even if the torrent of the world flows around me. At that moment, I feel the indubitable strength to persevere. I am stronger than this world; I am stronger than you. But then, just as suddenly, the feeling folds upon itself and is gone. I felt solidified, just now, by the fact that I was the one that remained in this random encounter. I won, you lost. but Won how? With the ability to pretend that I can exist alone, in a world that means nothing to me? The ability to maintain a solid spectral façade, when underneath, scratching away under the skin, I contain nothing? To continue terrifies me. Knowing that I have the strength to continue terrifies me. That last thing I ever intended was to outlive you. I feel the world drain away from me, and yet I remain, left standing, alone, in a of realm of perpetual nothing.  

–

I feel sick

a hundred years pass in the cavity of the desert. Merchants make trade off raided materials and makeshift weapons. A library is burned. A soldier, wanders freely. An insect buzzes around his face. He darts about the place in annoyance, but it remains. He can't shake it. He closes his eyes. It's still there

I feel sick

the sun burns bright arrhythmic  clicking.  A late twenties couple go clothes shopping, however the child is hungry and will have none of it. Lunch is suggested. They are jocular about the decision, but feel an uneasiness about the indulgence. The air is saturated and dries

"the photographer, as well as the horrors of the warzone, also captured those brief moments of humanity."


                  "air freshener naturalizes the air by eliminating unwanted odours"

..
….
…...
….....
…...........
…..................
…............
­….....................
…............
….........................
…­.................
….....
barometric tendrils
psuedo-random and hybrid sets
growing like ivy in the clutches of time
such a
           chocking
                   but actualising
    grasp

..huh? what?
oh yes! sorry, sorry
come in, come in,
                       ..you know,
I too, once, like how you are now,
was here too
                          so
                                 very
                                            very
                                                       present.
Aha! Oh yes!
Permit me a mock stifled cry of ostentatious self derision,
'hee hee hee'
aaaaaahhh..
I really was pitiful back then.
seeing you there now, I feel oh so whimsical and overcome
with
ahem
sorry.
..dank and musty cellars,
    hashish and a can of beans.
(baked, not fried, -we were really naive enough to believe that?- )
had it all back then though, didn't we?
By which I mean we had nothing,
but the conviction
that obligation was something that actually meant something
rather than a Cryptocurrency in a Ponzi scheme,
                                                            (with a slice of lemon)
confidence intervals stockpiled in the stocks of confidence men.
Derivative markets
oh, so very much so
                        so very
                            derivative
                                  idiomatic
                                        and *******
                                              asinine.  

..Still, it does harken to its era, doesn't it?
'detached and disposable.'
toothpicks
limbs
ideals
all that
goodness!
I was supposed to be offering advice, wasn't I?
Interpolate up some mediated conjecture.
But the kids can look after themselves just fine, can't they?
So our fiscal policy seems to think;
'I wager we shear up the youth
to buy shares in implementing youth wages.'
sorry, I guess it's an antiquated complaint,
“think of the children!” , they say?
Can't they see,
the whole **** market's aimed at the proto-teens??
we do it all for them the little snots.
laissez faire welfare
hedge or double down?
A shrubbery?
Or a bacon butty with bread as ****** chicken and cheese?
(I just vomited in my mouth a little,
(how pastiche))

See, and people ask why I’m trapped in the past;
the future's got me car sick.
and honestly
we're just brimming with history
(the scourge of post-modernity)
like a black moss spewed on the walls
Poisoning visions and Rheumatic fever
tearing up our lovely
lovely
pacified
pay and display
psuedo
proto
posterity
….....
….................
….......­..................
…............
….....................
…........­....
…..................
…...........
….....
…...
….
..

a pale neurology
within
pale iron gates
painted in pallid shades
of steel, gold and myrrh.
locked within recursive delusions of grandeur
like granite, horizontal and brittle
snapping within their multiplicities
lost within blindness' entangled waves.
drowning at the cusps of its own banality:
vacant plasticity
homeomorphic sludge
betraying nothing
of the mystified real
but an idempotent of
projected projections,
of a recursively flickering reel,
an echo-chamber,
of pale
gated communities.

aether.
flesh.
bronze.
iron.
silver.
gold.
gold.
ink.
(tape)
flesh.
sili­con.
pale.
pale.
ether,
aether
    
                           (void)

i am lost in the wisp of your faltering
the fluttering of concrete entrenched
into stoic rigmarole

to reach out layer by layer
peeling unearthing
a catatonic subdivision of disjoint subdivisions
a limit ordinal
between touch and feeling

where we kiss on the cusp of that silent ocean on the edge of sound
drowned in the nebulous familiarity of
a distant melody
a tired resolve
re  solve the old puzzle  muscle memory's misted amnesia
half the pieces falling out the warn tinderbox

inarticulate drowned severed isomorphisms over
brea(d)thless infinities
self adjoint matted topologies
nestled snugly in the amniotic absolution
of form before being

      hands of matted ice
contorted into perfection
by the sculpting propensities
  of undulations of estrangement,

where we touch in the cusp of self reflections thousand mirrors inverted propensities
                        infinite infinitesimals
  nestled meromorphic partitions
hidden corners in the brevity of dusk
multiplicities fragmenting behind empty veils
(  to be seen is to be made discrete
   to be discrete is to flicker
                                     and disappear
  (inevitably invariable
          inevitable invariability))

we
       stand in a waterfall of gravel
   and drown our voices in the choke of our cellophane hearts

caked
             into fillets of aphasic tundra


  where we whisper our nothings in the desert on the boundary of silence

our words
                         escape us
           like rats from shipwreck


                                      we are
                       disembowelled catharsis
                           intentional and fatuous
                                   retching upon itself

       severed
and free
       and dead

you'd always come home via the garden path, reveling in the crunching of the twigs, the slooshing of the leaves, the endless clackering of misfound footfalls. till the day, after a particularly satisfying stomp snapping, you looked underfoot and saw the remains of the fallen sparrow's nest


it took you five days to soak out the blood


tonight's supposed to be the biggest moon in 68 years. Biggest moon! Wow.


a girl at the party says it's stupid to care what others think. i agreed with her. She agreed with my agreeance, and then burst into tears. i ignored her and walked away. i'm a frigid *****, but theys' gotsta learn, they


God, the flies, it's such a cliché, but it's true, as you trek down into the sludge you can't see them but you can hear it, the buzzing, you can always, from everywhere, the buzzing


when our flatmate left, he deconstructed his bed. he didn't take it with him, he just, took the mattress, threw it in the water closet, left the headboard on the stairway landing, and the sides and springs'n-**** in the garage
                      i really respect the gesture


in the gully between the graveyard and the mine, they built a highschool. a ******* highschool. lord knows why. it looks like a ******* campers lodge, all the kids climb up the banks and the uni students sell them acid in lolly mix nickel bags. everyone i've ever known came from that school, one way or another. heavens know why. hey, look at the big chimney, guess the furnace is on. it's still in use, huh? probably shouldn't be loitering. anyway-


the big diggerman's dig up the concrete, put it in a bucket.
the big diggermans with the big digger truck, with all the cones and stop signs.
Bawm! Bwam! the big muscle arm, full of strewn piping and pistons, bab's the ground bab bab. Take that, ground! Bab Bab!! the spinning chair vibrates, the man gyrates, and the big arm up's and downs, down down, swivel, dump.


remember when we were thirteen, and the idiot boys made a game of standing in a circle, trying to **** into their own mouths? you wanted to punch them in the face, but didn't want to get your hands *****. if only you'd known, back then, that your limbs were really just overgrown turnips, would you of been so insistent at keeping your distance? keeping the world at arms length? that's always the irony, isn't it. the world was inside you all along

–

At the end of the cemetery, past the hedges, a car park, overlooking the hill, where there's a huge oak tree, and all the concrete is just fractured under its weight, and the asphalt is in tar stricken colours a blackbird in mid-dive splatter. Anyway. Sorry,-

god, you're making porridge? Porridge? *******, are you even hungry, or did you just ******* want to see the ******* oat-*****-muchus coat everything you

-just, there, in this graveside car-park overlooking the city but also in the middle of nowhere, there's two cars. One, a ******* Mitsubishi GT, all slick and weltering plastic, pure pristine millionaire CEO's toy phallus, and beside it, a banged up old Datsun, and it all seems like an allegory for something, but it isn't, it's just, someone dumped these two ******* cars here, but they're not even dumped per see, the registry in the windows are up to date and everything, but they're just there


      all the damp men take the STOP out the truck, stand on the road, hold the cones, watch the digger man seat shuffling; gotta shuffle move up the pavement before you big hand down


You were too clever, weren't you? to bash her head, right there, in the corner, there, above the left cheek bone, so i couldn't tell, right? to make her look like just one more corpse, among the rot? obscure that one side, turned away? left to decompose, mid-perch, on a desert highway? well, maybe it wasn't, maybe it was just someone else, but the fact that you knew, you knew i'd check above the left temple, and that you ****** chose that as the point of rupture, it shows, it just ******* shows, the


the flies never gather, at the point of death, they just breed in the damp, the gulleys surrounding it, why is that


and just look at you now, sitting there, naked as a newborn, crying to yourself, wiping your weepy eyes with your simpering turnip paws, and it's just pathetic, isn't it? And i love you, i do, it's the one moment i can say it, i can feel it with burning, simple purity, with self effacing truth and clarity, because, here, i don't matter. you don't need me, you need a body to hold, an arm to hug you. in loving you i can be absolved of all qualities, and so, for once, i do, i do

Yeah no! In sixty-eight years! What even is the moon



it's amazing, i've eaten nothing in the last thirty-six hours, except a single dried apricot. yet
                                   i need to *****

  you know that feeling? What a feeling. You need to retch, but there's nothing to retch, and there you are, just standing there, at 5am gagging to yourself in a damp field. A stomach, trying to turn away, fold upon and shaft itself a vicissitude. A stomach, no, no, yes, you see?  You need to empty yourself of this bile. What bile? Exactly. There's nothing. Nothing up-emptied onto nothing. And that's all there is, right, that's all that life is, is given right there; the gag, the convulsion, the upturning unto itself, the attempt, attempt, you understand? Of the cathexis, of the innerworld, taken to contain only the unspeakable within itself, miserly bile, a concomitant of all the worlds ills and would be ills and then upon it taken as an ill unto itself, a single nebulous fluid husk of malignant umbra, held in *******, bound in fleshy lining. But then the expulsion, the retch, is attempted, to take all the seething disease of the inner and to project, upturn it onto the outer world. Where? It doesn't matter. In the bin, into the shrubbery, Anywhere but in here. Once it's gone, it gone, that's all that matters, gone, go, go, get. The body tries to push the malaise of(as) the internal unto the external, the outer, but in doing so, finds itself(boundary) empty, where it thought it incubated only vile, there was instead, only nothing, but still, somehow, the convulsing, the retching, the act itself, remains. And that's it, you see? That's all it is, all the emotional turmoil, all the half-hearted hallucentric episodes, the all of everything, is just that, just an, an emptiness trying to upend itself but finding there's nothing to upend, but it still asserts itself as process, as an unending nausea, unresolvable nausea, both grounding and thrown, the throwing and that-which-is-cast, bent under itself,  nausea



the swamp reclaimed the garden last summer. flood season, after all. some days the stagnant waves came right up to the brickwork, can still see the lines, see? your old swing set's a gonna though. all the rabbits either abandoned their dens, or were drowned out. lord knows how many micro-organisms died as well. lot's of new ones were probably borne though, right? hear those flies, bzzt, bzzt. life loves damp heat. you can never tell, never tell really.

we break into the graveyard after hours. no purpose, but it's just there, down the road. and it's nice the way it overlooks the ocean.
   climbing over the hedges, we see a middle-aged couple already there, blasting dixieland on a portable radio. we share a confused look, and just leave again, a tad indignantly. it's the kinda thing that's ruined if someone else's doing it.

                                                  summer drags on,


the sound of trucks. bubbled wallpaper in pavement creaks.
wonder with the directed slice of soft fallen pillow lumps.

we
          round the way to the two parks, one with the children mewling on the wooden
stumps and the other with the cigarette butts, sports grounds, snubbed out sunday radio. the wind make a steady jaunt down the long
forgotten corridors. there's little to see here, but it's an easy place to make home. the trees sway something rotten that would make a newcomer uncomfortable, but you learn to shut it out.

we're
standing in the road, hands in pockets, against the chill. no one's sure what to say. not sure if saying anything really helps the fact. it just embroids the situation with complexity, detracting from an otherwise pure, if unpleasant, tone. we settle for a 'see you around.' the claim, if it is a claim, is false. the movers come early the next morning. and the house down the way stands vacant. the boards rot away. a year later the building is knocked down. rebuilt. craftsmen and diggers. but the same lot. same dirt. chewed up and digested. every winter the worms die. are replaced. tendrils expanding and contracting. sit down. it becomes so wearisome, but sometimes the sun's mild presence  makes it okay. the boards buckle in the damp morning light. the
  water filtration system hums down the road. the neighbour's kid crosses the road to the other park. kicks a soccer-ball for a few hours, gets dejected, and returns home, is reswallowed by the painted timber.  


the bible pushers did the usual rounds on wednesday. Mrs. Grensten would always let them in for tea. we'd watch from the other window, and imagine infidelities, convoluted fetish play that they'd get up to. a game of enticing disgust. eyes on the window in the hope they'd slip up, and we'd see a shot of tired flesh among the drawn curtains. a vacant voyeurism. laugh in the boredom of a dreary sin.
       they haven't visited for some years. after Mrs Grensten died, the next time they came Mr Grensten chased them away with his walking stick among coarse shouts and tears. the downstairs windows and now left open, but there's nothing inside


your pen-pal in Romania sent a postcard. they didn't write anything, but there was an old chapel in a field on it


some days the sea is quiet. generally in the early morning, during lowtide. under the moon the sand takes on this expansive pale blue luminescence  
        usually it's either too crowded, or the waves make up for the lull in people. i thought i had a point here, but i didn't


  she stands in cotton robes, stained and dyed with gin. mother says to ignore her. she rings a small ornamental bell. you don't really get it. you ask why she's ringing it. with a finger to the mouth she shushes you. you look offended. as you 're about to persist in demanding explanation, she steps out into the road, just as a courier van speeds round the corner. she wears a soft smile. the tiremarks on the cotton makes a pattern that reminds you of something, but you're not really sure what.


a humming light on an old oak table. there's a peacefulness here. you loose tempo, and the crowding figures look at you with irritation. you feel small and wish to melt, to become liquid and drain away, move in motions already dictated, they ask the next question. Who are you? Why? Justify your reasoning.
       a half ****** caramel drop. sticky.
       pavement grit. coarse.
   they
                closed the walkway due to wasp nests.
you're not sure which route to take. you pass
     by the graveyard instead, and look out to sea. there's a gentleness here. it reminds you of something, but you're not sure what


   we used to find bugs at the pond edge. the area had a piercing smell, but that was part of the charm. it meant we'd never dare enter the water, though. one day in teenage bravado, we did. it was slimy in texture. suddenly, you pushed my head down among the green folds. there was something there. a soft, but solid texture, like jelly. electric scatterings. old tire tracks folding out, like a deconstructed rubiks cube. i shoved your head in as well. we laughed and splashed in viscera.  wye's spoke in empty folds and promised us the world in reassuring tones. the warmth of a log fire on a winter eve, crackling sparks glowing in undulation. the muffled tones of a showerhead, blanketed in feathers. a mellow smile of the certainty of an inviting future. we lay on our backs and the sun shone down through the trees. as it passed the yardarm we headed back to shore, lost rapture of the soft kisses of meadow-banks. you grabbed a rock and bashed me in the head. a solid but glancing blow. this too, was fine. no fear, just laughter. i grabbed one too. with blunt instruments, we chiselled skin and bone. small enfolds of the rising moon. we stretched out, fingers entwined. no fear. possibly regret? but a soft regret, the kind that tracks the passing of time, that lets you register the ceaseless withering of the past, and hopefully, see beyond. rivulets of blood. i breathe in your gaze, and melt into grass. just laughter.


the stitches in the corner of your mouth are rotten. that's good, that means the healing is done. flesh reunited with flesh. you feel it with your finger. there's a bumpiness, but little sign of much else

it moves in lines, upon flat surfaces
  we tried to catch it last week, but, no dice
‘that’s your department, isn’t it? take responsibility.’
  true.
but, we were waiting for confirmation.
                  ‘excuses aren’t relevant here,
                        moving forward is a precondition for itself,
                                 so nothing will change until it’s properly addressed.’

the counter’s still pointing at「 green 」 though.

  things should be safe for now


three months pass.


         it multiplies in aggregates
               motion seeps within still surfaces,

‘where were you last summer?’           like a lava lamp
oh, you know, out and about,               it deforms
busy. buzzy. buzz.                                  and,
‘oh. yeah. we can’t afford                      separates from itself

deficit here, can we?                              into self contained units
i hope everything’s okay.’                     and
   it’s fine.                                                 floats away.
                                    …
                     ­       ‘that’s good’
                                    …
‘we were thinking of leaving this place soon, anyway.’

…

fair enough.
  no one’s
                  really expecting anything to be found, anyway.

the counter is pointing at 「 red 」 now, though


three months pass.


it breeds through rumpled cloth, and breaths out through solid objects.
colours float over matted patches, a ringing sound pierces out of iron bars.

        -   the counter no longer shows anything

people pass themselves at crossroads,  half turning,
  to  speak,    but carry on walking their separate ways
  (it’s okay, none of us had anything to say, really)

        -   we expect a full report, you understand?

the spaces between take root. shadows flicker though the limelight
        filter filter, pass over. embroid and disperse

        -   yes,   of course. there’s no one left to read it, though.

the counter is pointing to 「 itself 」

huh.

must be broken

pale shadows of flung anger
 fault towards your toothless call
economy of silent fury
   shell your bones
   shell your bones

crow feather
   ggarbled fflight
  plot by plot
fall

quiet spill
     the knell ossified
   brittle ruptures
of foam pour

take it out
take it out
take it out
take it out

speak in silence
  lacerated gaze

**** or have killed
  bifurcated for your own good,
  possibility will be revoked

the only choice
     blood on your hands
or blood in your throat

  till all
    the
internal haemorrhages resonate
and spill the world to dust to dust to

swollen mudflap dreams
  voice of sinew street
the
     wooden flakes     clap the wind

terra-cotta creaks muffle
choir kiss velvet thin in
  empty mountain air, sinai drift
( peace be with you, peace be )

         a long year        here's to another

–


  gotta visit the family in an hour
coffee and cake,
  brother and i will argue 'bout politics
he runs some business, i've never worked in my life
he uses productivity to hide his loneliness
i use social grace to hide my emptiness

we probably understand each other perfectly
       but will never steep to sympathy


–

big canary
best in school
sing your
lelujah for the gulls

break your wings in
crumbs and sandwich tins

burrow down to a
                     maize of glass
    build a temple of sleet
   and have a cry in it

–

bed lump, bed lump   lump
lump

  fight your frozen toes

  last week a lily bush grew in our drain,
pools of **** and tissue clogged and sputtered out
  the flowers were real pretty tho

–

it's like that feeling, you know, when you wonder, if    you
  left the gas cooker on, with the children still sleeping
an anxious terror overruns you, but you gotta get to work
too late to turn back now,
  you can't just stop everything every \
time you realize how easy it would be to loose it all

so you keep on,   determined resigned comfort
   despite an unshakable certainty
                                 it all burnt away long ago

–

go for a walk to calm
            rolling cloud
valley glut
                       last light's wet custard haze
  a solitary bird tries to mate with its echo

  branches tear
cut weave through silence
            effervescent haze
  the
dust road hill the valley fall the blur below


i dreamt last night  an old crush held me
and pulled my teeth out one by one
i really miss her

–

and so you lie, there, thin cotton down, gunked up on the drip,
   i read you a story,
                                  you don't want me to
               tired and disorientated, falling into sleep, among the
            bleeps and light,                 smell   of alcohol and saccharine
                                        you can't handle the leech of words right now,
but you insist i continue anyway.
i need this,  i
to prove i was there   by your side,
  for your sake,
and you are too polite to refuse me this narcissism,
too scared to shatter it all
          and turn away at the last

–

oh, hey! sorry i haven't
  yeah
       yeah no,
it's been years, hasn't it?
i- i know i know, i was the one who insisted-
and then never made the effort
what's up?
uh, nothing new, really
  still haven't fixed the wiring
still just
        flickering
anxious feeling
ambling along a
                           longing

that paradoxical redemption,  that

           impossible unity
    of innocence and forgiveness

…

yeah, no,
    nah

–

and so you float up, out of the vents, above the roof
  into the clouds, the rain sets in,   oh - the
       drier's broken, you can't afford to get these clothes wet -  but
the  pattering feels good on your blistering skin

  so you drift
      melt

and
       far below
you 
             hear
                                                  the bell's pale ring
   sunday murmur bubble and gather
       muffle ***** wring shoelace voices
              river wiped bored communal toes
          mudfleck shoes and patchwork rags

  a turn, another, then,
                                worn timber creak


the church doors open

you stopped visiting the ocean after your brother died
so we drove inland, instead, that day
and found the pit of old bunkers
left to decay
        from a more actively
                                  apocalyptic age
and, inside, the
      eschewal vision of
                                      tinned food,
                                                           concrete pillars,
   liquid flesh
warm comfort in disintegration,
    emerald concavities that lace the sky

we considered stealing some ****, but just drove on back instead,
  leave history to history


if you stack the boxes, there will be more space, you-
   yeah, just like that.
    the chairs have no back, sorry, so you'll have to be careful.
sorry, i just have to deal with,
  yeah, the drain pipes broke again,
   it now decants into the living room, all
  dammed up with paper mache and static

so uh
   make yourself some tea if you have to
   -ah, no, sorry, i didn't mean to be curt
it's just,
there's no time
    but stay, anyway, please

it gets lonely at night
                  all boarded windows and
                                                     old casements
till in the end you're just
              embracing a
                               damp ****** guilt
just to pass the time
           with a forgiveness complex


do you think you'd do it?
they make you wear their shirt, and take a photo,
but they give a free ice-cream at the end.
i mean, it doesn't cost you anything,
                         nothing palpable, anyway


remember that time we drove inland?
   and found that petrified forest,
                        buried in basalt and pumice?
we walked among treetops, near the old crater lake
    and
                         skipped stones

harbour abyss
shallow dwell our shotgun cells
open wide
tastes like magnesium
swallow now
magnesium magnesium

fall down you barrow folds


     why are all the snails out?

                                 you haven't heard?
    it's been forty weeks of rain
    it's been forty years of rain

      crush them if you see them-
       don't you know we're in a bubble economy?


the churches crumble
cats lie bored in parking lots
surrounded by nothing
pat pat


the summer heat


dye your bones
in rohypnol veils

empty into cartridges
shoot up
sky burial
float the concentric
lace of vultures


    do you ever pantomime being hurt,
                              just to hide your hurting?

       hahahahaa,
                                        no



this ******* heat


  pavement swells
dig up the dirt
relay the dirt
reseal over                                   spit your teeth
tap tap                                           from the mountaintop
                                                    i­nto the ocean

spend the days watching
    kids stamp on the ants
and then cry as they learn what it is to know death

mothers stare on with tired eyes


        the summer heat  
        the summer heat
              who took all the rain?  



-sosososo,
there's this game,
this game, you see
  you
make a jigsaw
but replace every odd or so tile,
with an image of your own design


after a few tries,
the whole thing becomes entirely incomprehensible,

but at least it's yours

the kindergarden down the road
                                         had a revolt
            and the children insisted on self directing story-time

   two thirds in
     the hero abandoned their quest,
   turned into a bubble
   and evaporated

       the adults insisted a story needs a proper conclusion
                                                but they knew better


walk by

    light in the distance
bares at me

is it moving?
...
no
      it's not.
ah-
  it's gone now
...
  no
    there it is again

there     gone
there     gone

a silence becoming
and a silent vacating

unnerving  comfort


    the skateboarders down the road
         chiseled all the letters out of the road signs
    till all the tourists were helplessly lost
          / excuse me,
          / sorry,
          / what way to the lookout?

              \ you're already at it
              \ just keep going


a wail
   oscillating
bares at me

a bird or a car siren?

too organic for a machine
too regular for life

…

never mind

head home


  the church groups down the road
                          formed an action committee,
                                                      ­      after the flood

                       even had some humanitarian in
                                                              ­ to give a slide show

     but the software was updating
                        so we ended up watching the loading bar instead

              while the kids played in the puddles outside


    the asphalt damp
is borne to me

figures keep passing through
unformed spaces
with unfathomable ease
  alacrity

fragments pop glitter
     valley sparks
         of disheveled winter

pass by

tumble down through
grassy banks
  to the vermillion ocean

caulk the lungs
and drift

mama warned me
about becoming attached to ghosts,
about chasing the lights that flicker behind closed eyelids,
   trailing their
     ruminant symbiology
      down labyrinthine tunnels
till you're left, stranded
   in a nowhere from where you started
and they fade
away
to nothing.

...

I keep loosing sight  in the lag
    that hesitant flickering pivoting between footsteps,
those   pauses  of breath  between paragraphs
of the mold in the ceilings dictated speeches,
the decade old dust encrusted spider-webs on the coffers abandoned superstructures, intricate semantic patterns, still present, present, but encapsulating nothing.

                                     (Educations warped my mind
                                       into prescriptive paradigms
                                      drugged up on science fiction
                                      alternate attritions of future presents)


–//

One day,
      the ocean promised to swallow the world,
but failed to set a date; just a vague sense of inevitability.
and everyone gets uncomfortable about the liminality,
and there's
                     a moment of rupturing
                      unveiling the blanketing
in the process of our mass comatose suicide,
                            That    no     ones sure what to do with.
And we collapse into the indecision
of what to make of this wavering present
  loosing sight
between barricades of candy bars and cheeseburger pies
while the radio static sighs
'boys only want love if it's torture'

                                                  (i find it a bit optimistic)

//–


I keep becoming waylaid in the lag
   the hesitant faltering between long warn down footprints
   travelling down some path set out by the last
   in no way definitive; but, at least, defined
   by the haphazard indentations left behind
  while sometimes there’s treasure in the depths that we climb
   it's never the kind
                                 that explains itself.

            (But still time turns and churns and burns
                while we frantically mine all the scattered urns.)


   –\

            The philosophers and neuroscientists keep working to find the foundations underlying why
               we think what we think, why we feel what we feel,
     they peel up the carpet and peer into what's beneath, but
                                     they just keep finding

                                         ripped up carpet  and musk.

                 \–


I keep searching for home in the lag,
    the tumbling bind of footfalls enshrined.
      but even if there's no way out of here,
      there's occasionally a whisper of camaraderie in the air


       (you never escape,
              no no,
            but sometimes
                the enclosure unfolds )

...

mama warned me
about becoming attached to ghosts,
about chasing the lights that flicker behind closed eyelids.
    but here in the dark,
  i'm not sure what else to follow.

speak
    lie to me
the meterbox is leaking
black teeth stretch through bramble hearts
look
       draw me an ocean
  swirling
  swirling
find space in spaces
and drown in them
     there
    the doresh haTorah
     writes his code
     stamps his envelops
enveloped in folds
suffocated in empty spaces
touch
clasp for her
radiant flesh
anchored in robes of sung feathers
blood pools at consecrated feet
a slave to the idea of sin
but always withering its invite
spit on your forgiveness
taste
a plum
solid but porous centre
fermenting mud
stinking bottleneck
smog your beaded eyes
gloss over and choke
hear
the unfathomable word
polysemous and locked
in hermetic seals
speak
shout
call to them
any direction will do
you know
you know what they say?
he'd beat his kids
**** his daughters
gnaw their scalps
but he can never remember where he put them
      can never remember their faces
isn't that funny?
isn't it?

The first year of blood  was drowned in the ocean
matted steel lined the straw chaff's brittling downs
the cracks in the pavement enveloped the world,
and the call centres melted to sand
\
    you      speak
             through a hole in your chest
                      ah, no , not missing,
        more
                just
                             estranged from itself
           (don't worry mines bigger)
\
the second was garrotted on the sinews of cloth
its body dumped by the bay
the opaque gloss in its eyes shattered to dust,
as the blue and red lights echoed away
\
      your smile's apodeictic,
                  dressed in your stretcher of red
        the world   tumbles
         round your kneecaps swollen kisses
                        dripped out of glistening thread
      \

the third took seventeen bottles of pills
and breathed heaven through a canal of rolled mortgage bills.
It swallowed its repayments through a rusted spray-can
  and  swam
                              in bleached birch trees by the sea
             \


   i had a theory that day;
                     “it's all a false dichotomy,
                       one side to two coins:
                       eat the apple, be banished from heaven;
                       eat the pomegranate, be imprisoned in hell.”
   you made fake retching sounds
   and we laughed at the esoteric stupidity,
     but when the bus arrived at the gas station early
       we found we'd left the tickets in the hotel lobby.
                      \

                           \
the forth died in conception
never to know the carress of the real
while    the fifth
                          was born a billowing desert
                          but died a still field of glass.

          /                  
  

     my lungs are chocking on empty air
          they just want to fly,
           but I keep them trapped here.

/

when i was young
i never intended on living to adulthood
    i didn't have any dramatic plans for my death
    but i hadn't planned for the contrary, either
and so
time rolled on, the way it does
and through pure neglect
i found myself here
   alive today

and the years keep passing, the way they do
time's funny that way:
it increments in loops;
      another year forward,                
      another revolution of the same.

when i was younger
i didn't believe in the future,
i still don't, but now i find,
that the present tends to stick around.
and one's seeming imperative thoughts and actions,
one's urgent sparks of actuality,
aren't flames of some eternal logos,
but are more
the random shower of a Catherine wheel
spinning aimlessly on a pike

and so, through sheer inertia
the world keeps on turning
and you with it
till one day
you stop
and are left
disorientated and thrown
into a wall

i'm not sure what i'm trying to say here,
or if this maudlin sentimentality amounts to much
but if i had any truism
from my time spent,
it would be this:

the self is a clear plate of glass
onto which meaning condenses like steam
at first invisible to yourself,
you become aware of your shape through
the foggy coalescence of the things you cherish.
but sometimes,
those meanings become too much to bear
and they condense
into a liquid
and silently drip off.
then
maybe you wait,
slowly drying out,
for the process to hopefully start all over again
but in the mean time
you're left there,
gently and vacantly
estranged
translucent

and damp

Every fire hazard sign points the arrow at 'extreme'.

                      The drought has lasted several months now, clouds form and the world is left encased in midday shadow, but they just watch, never speaking up, never expelling.

                                   Industrial sprinklers produce short burst waves in spinning circles, the grass a crop circle of pale embryonic green within it's radius; brittle fragments of bleached hay and dry dirt outside.

/
          The fly the waiter gases lands on a half deflated bag causing it to buzz incredibly loudly as it chokes, making everyone uncomfortable
         /

---------------------------------------------------------------­--

        #@000000000000091   The town is French themed, a pastiche for the tourists. it's imprinted on the crockery, see. The restaurants are all le Chinese takeaways selling Classic London Style Fish and Chips. Which i mean there's nothing wrong with i guess but it's just kinda funny in the loosely jarring kinda sense, the we-are-all-thrown-into-history,-into-ablative-cultural-efficacy-b­ut-it's-never-quite-something-graspable-or-fixed;-never-quite-s­omething-that-orientates-itself sense,  is all i'm saying.   i
                 mean it's a port town it makes sense they sell fish, but as all the tourists pass by and the Harbour mouth surrounding the 12 million year old magma plug breaths out the ocean ebbs up onto the rugby parks into the downtown area and breaths through all the cobblestone shop windows, It inhales, and the cars slowly waltz away from their anchorage and into the middle of the lake, which is fine because all the pedestrians have floated into the sky, hardly noticing with the sombre and tired paper-deep excitement that the tourist and holiday workers mirror at each other.

                                   -----------------------------------------------------------------­-


-   //
 #AAC00000121.  A local restaurant and hotel owner laments to the newspaper that it's been a slow valentine day season   "it's like   people have forgotten what this is supposed to mean to them."
//   -

....

a faint line remains marking where the magma reached up the cliff faces each time it drowned everything every few thousand millennia, everyone murmurs that it's jolly interesting, but
    make indignant mewling sounds as the bubbling lava dissolves their bones.



                                  |||   |||
                              /  ///

.
  .
     . . . . .


[...ANywqay, yeah sorry. so what i was getting at was this. yeah yeah no i was! a punchline and everything! yeah! yep, ]
                   so
there's this one art museum a few blocks down from the main street,
  that focuses on cups and mugs; beautiful antique drinking vessels uniting every place and class and history.
         they change the theme occasionally, but really most of the itinerary remains the same so there's only so much they can do. currently it's

            "the sublime
                            as manifest
                                               in the functional and inconsequential"

these simple, life supporting tools, at once represent mans departure from nature, whilst functionally reaffirming our dependence on simple essentials. The drive to turn even these basic utensils into a reflective aesthetic process, showcases -even in primitive societies,- this emergent human drive for the sublime. This gallery hosts in equal regard the exquisite geometry of the gemmed goblets of patron kings, alongside the hand-wrought asymmetric terracotta mugs of artisan peasants. In each is the baseness of re-hydration, in each, the transcendental act of creation.



the coffee at the gift shop cafe was served in bleached polyethylene

soft asphalt hills
breathe your way
in burgundy sleeves
frayed rusted shoefoil
of cobbled years

scatter your papers
march aniseed dreams
indent the sandstone wall
with your ha'penny smile

you, too, were a child of bones
upon the sea of bleached clay
ground saul and peter
breath of crimson lines

learning to crawl
through leather-bound walls
but getting caught
coiled on the grief
of noontide pebbles

the misery of whim
quiet dignity of nothing
gentle pride of the abyss

find cheap relief
in twelve chamber meals
lard and mushy peas in
tiled up garden rows

worn down by
the soft focus sun
passing by

call for your step daughter
sit her down
comb her hair
peel her clothes
like mandarin folds

a tar voyeurism
bored of lust
but locked in cruelty
out of old habit

admit it,
don't you want to
burn the beds
just to see whose sleeping?
to find your face,
among the retreating blisters?

a shallow water charlatan
slice off your wings
feed them to your pets,
laugh as they choke
on feathers and blood

  just like
the gulls outside,
always humming the same **** tune
for generation after generation,

yet still
they go out to sea to die

=/ww'/do you ever feel as if, behind the waking world, there is just pulsating79?
like when you draw in breath and hold, everything stops, just for a second?



   it's rude to ***** on your neighbours tree.
                            don't be rude



all the sound, all but sounds

the heat infects everything, muggy rain batter churning through murk

i close my hand and
   cut the fingers on the lip


  we left the forms on the third floor, which
is the fourth floor, really, english standard  i
  always forget that

the generator hums
  they're     doing something with the piping
     sounds like drills
        but probably isn't


we had to close up early when the vents broke and
   water gushed all over the computers, washed away the paper screens, we were
  told to vacate, but I just stand, you
                in baby blue  slacks, poke me   but i’m too busy  
staring at my bleeding hand


the envelope was addressed here but i didn’t recognize the name,
no, wait, the other; it was to someone
         i knew but
                                         not from around here, i   think


   there is much     and i

fall,  though cushion and sponge
          big eggplant river

              remember when you were eighteen months and you ran and fell into the mirror? under a deep conviction that that was how you passed through, into the image beyond? but instead you just saw it shatter, and it gashed your arm up all the way up along the metal hinge? still have the scar, right? nowadays you don't trust reflections; you're always instead looking for that jagged lip, that latent violence of the edge, it's
   probably a good attitude, really


in the mirror    shattered birds,
               break their necks on  bad design  
too pathetic for tragedy
   don’t worry, we’re all self-hating narcissists here, you’ll
feel right at home-
     chuggin  on woolf and plath
           only seek wisdom from self willed death
       it’s an indulgent bias
             but the living are all such ******* suits, man

  just, look, how
        they are speaking, now, in a row, a flat screen, projected, and words filter out. the faces are blur, the words are static,  but the form is discernible. accusations. charges. prosecute; indite. plaintiff paper wrung. burn the body and pin it to itself. axiomatized sin. society as the codification of a hatred too bored to sustain itself.  i ask for a glass of water, but the words only form wheeze through the strain. Quiet. Your turn to speak is later. i'd run away, but i'm invested now. gotta see how it ends. the screen retches on. do you recognize this letter? i ask, but the words are wheeze-


sorry, sorry, i know, even if it's all about you, i'm just carrying on about-
   yeah.
       Well!
                Then!
                          So!
   Do
           do you-
                        do you prefer to just embrace it?  wear it out, burn it all up at once?
     the repulsive husk at the end is just confirms that there was something prior, after all. death is affirmation as well as negation.
         or           do you prefer to hold it close, hide it away in dark spaces? i mean, that's fine too. a candle rarely lit never burns out. and only a few flickers are all you need for a wax seal; to drip your mark over sheathed words-

        maybe it's the smell. it was sent from my hometown, after all. the name was never important, but the winter and coal. The olfactory of old factories. sorry. i know, but i couldn't resist  
                         how we'd

we'd laugh in silence,
moths flooding through broken glass,
bodies only figured
       as sparks in orbit
     against the amber light
  always
     all too light
light light
  and colour.

weightless as paper
               a paper weight,   wait-
   thrown through a window?
no,   too
                 long ago to recall


  the post office says they'll take it back to the sender. they can retry, repeat. it'll find it's way from there. it's okay, your responsibility is over; hand it over, leave your body at the door. as long as it's still sealed; as long as the envelope's not too frayed to cut, it's still good enough to exchange. interchangeable.   i run, still clutching  

  and   they,     funnel us out,
river down the concrete stairway,
  those echoing closet tones,
to the street below,
  and stare back at the mess, they're
   putting out cones,
                       and handing out ponchos,
for the typhoon rain of summer bare


and- and that's it. so what do you do? it's not entirely rhetorical. what can you do? do you
      just
   scrawl a note, explaining yourself -everything this misplaced message became to you,- over the outside, and send it off? forcibly insert yourself into the conversation? and just, imagine, project some understanding, some insight, that they'll get from it, that you provided?
    just break the seal? you can't open it, can you? it was never meant for you. hell, what answers would be found there, in words for another?
  but   perhaps-
    perhaps   there are secret codes; messages, not in the words themselves, or the letters, but only to be found and understood by the eavesdropper, the guilty. that outside, absent third party, on the boundary of it all; just gazing in, standing there, speechless, beyond the mirrors glare

    
      but that's just fantasy

cherry syrup wine
warm cheer,   soft
   stain the vinyl   ocean blue
blesses to the calfling child,
swim swim
swim child

  do you remember?
  do you remember?

the day they drunk the matches
the day they swallowed the lights

sparklers under blankets
huddle midnight kisses
     half sunk jelly plane
  red letters fall of sand

do you remember?
do you remember?

the day they drunk the voices
the day they swam out bright

midnight child of mangled limbs

keep swimming
keep swimming

"I am matter trapped in reason"
           -scrawl on a restroom stall wall


1am


A couple blocks from the centre of town. The haze of rumbling sub-bass, the buzz of a hundred voices, the multifaceted shapes of flesh in heels and black dresses and puffer-jackets congregating outside nightclubs. Converging on the heart of the city, each voice becomes distinct, discernible from the background noise, a palpable aspect midst the otherwise nebulous air;

'We could just commit? I'd be so down for a chicken scorcher..'
'Ah man it's Gary! Gaary bro! bro! Gary!'
'I-it's okay, do you have your I.D on you? no, aah, no don't lean on the bank doors when vomiting, you might set off an alarm. h-hey, yeah you, sorry, do you have any water she could borrow?'
'Well you know, even though maccas is out of the way...'
'Aww mate gary! GARY! Aww yeah! Show us your ******! Gary!'


2am


A small gathering convenes on the lawn of a nondescript flat. the building next door is covered in scaffolding, a mess of pale grey illuminated orange parallel geometries hanging, droplets of mist swirling in light breeze.  indistinct chatter. Shuffling figures standing around packing herbs into a small metal cartridge. A flickering light. Coughing. Repeat.

On the other side, over a small fence and through a window, a figure stands in his kitchen naked, looking out, watching. An indeterminate expression.  

A voice of the circle calls out.

'Hey! Hey ****! what the ******* looking at?!'

the figure turns away.
'Ha, oh man, I bet he's gonna go get a shotgun. I beat he's gonna ******* **** us!'
('oh man this ****'s naasty')
'**** son, ******* look at him go, I think you're ******* right.'*
('dude, we should ******* maccas, are you keen? I'm keen.')
'Oh man! oh man, I'm so pumped. are you pumped? I'm so pumped. Aah, we're gonna die, I so ******* hope he does.'


3am


The streetlights have gone out a couple blocks down. Rather than the usual orange haze, the dumped cars and pavement are illuminated by the traffic lights alone, a universal filter flickering between crimson and lime.

A man approaches from across the street. Moment of apprehension. Mid twenties. Staggering. Broken nose, blood down front. Flash of switchblade in hand. Increasing apprehension.

'Oi, were you at that party? You with that ****** that ******* punched me?'
'N-nah, sorry, I wasn't there..'
'How do you know if you weren’t there?'
'Well.. which party? not that one over there?'
'No no, the one down that way'
'Where?'
'The one on high street.'
'High street? isn't that like.. somewhere in Mornington?'
'No, it’s.. the one we’re currently on.'
'...wait, really?'
'..yeah? I.. i think so?'
Both start looking around uncertainly, the man looses balance and tumbles rather dramatically into a fern.
'Um. Are you alright...?'
'Haha, yeah, just, rather drunk. and maybe concussed?'
..."/Cough/ ..Anyway, you seem all good ****, don't worry about it, sorry to have bothered you."
/awkwardly puts knife in pocket to shake hands/


4 am


Return to town. Humanities dilution and waning departure. Droves of seagulls dive in, assuming command of the area and the plastic bags. Only a couple handful of figures remain. Police cars and taxis patrol, dance in concentric circles. the last drunken remnants of raving students lie down in the street, clap their heels together

'Tell George to hurry the **** up or he’ll be left behind!'
'What?'
'I said hurry up! We're going for a Maccas mish!'
‘Who?’
'I said we’re going for a Maccas mish!'
‘Aww mate! I’m keen! Hold up.'

Swirling isolated points of light escape from street lamps caught in rows of trees, and a confetti of shadows swim along the sidewalk in motion with the gentle breeze. A twenty something in a hoody cargo shorts and sandals explains to a policeman in breaking drunken fevered tongues how,

     love, love, love, is the godhead and the godhead is love;
       within us reaching out, but also on the outside reaching in,
          it makes you whole by ripping you apart.

while vomiting on the officers car


5am


  A blanketing dampness sets in. not quite rain, but an omnipresent mist. A gentle fog slowly folds out, wavering among pale streetlights. While substanceless, it still holds form as an ambient covering poultice; drawing in the illumination surrounding into opaque convalescence, but then
     dispersing too,
                                    in turn.

there are yellow spots in my vision
i should porbably lie down
^probably
“porbably”
hee hee
then do
:P
fine, i shall
hmph >:
…
…
…
…
where were you yesterday anyway?
you’re back?
yeah
but, anyway,
??
oh you know, out and
stuff
stuff?
yeah
what stuff?
just
…
?
revisiting that place
by the park
where those trees overhang the river
that we used to climb as kids
oh.
when our mums met to chat after work
yeah.
i’m not sure why
it felt like we were venturing towards something
we won if we ever got to the top
i know.
i was there.
sorry
and then that day..
my brother won.
yeah.
and the branch..
yeah.
….
can we talk about something else?
yeah, sorry
it’s just…
i’ve been feeling that way a lot lately
what?
that i’ve been striving towards something,
but that in spite the yearning,
all it leads too is
snap, crack, gone?
yeah
...you’re really comparing your ennui to the death of my sibling?
you ******* degenerate.
stop ******* complaining
get a ******* job.
sorry, sorry
…
i didn’t mean-
no, it’s fine.
i know the feeling tbh
but i still resent the comparison
yeah no,
yeah,
fair.
why were you there anyway?
i mean, it’s a nice park
they put a plaque under the tree, you know
yeah, i know
it’s what happens when your mum knows the councilman
what did it say again?
that’s the thing
i mean, there Used to be words there
Used to be?
did it fade?
no,
i mean, there’s still symbols
bound into rows
and such
and such?
but
they became unglued
unglued?
the thing that makes symbols words,
ran out
ran out?
yeah,
t͚̺͗̿̽̀̀͢h̨̖͇̫̳̹̿̏̄̂̄ḗ̜̜͈͇͕̘̓͒ ̴͕̂̆͒̓̀͘ŗ̳͔̩̭̈ͭ̾͝ẻ̛̌ͨ̽ͫ҉̳̞͓̪̕f̼̹̞̠̟̫̉̆̋̆̋ẹ̸͇̬̩̗̻̆̔͝r̺͖̿ͣ̒͊̅ͤȩ̷̲̣̝­ͨņ̗̼̞̰̥̿̓͆ͥͫ͟c̨̛̪͇̗͇͚̤͑͒̑̃ͥͮ̃̀̀ë́̍͑̈͗҉͓͖̰̖̯̗͉͔̭͝,͔̬ͦ̊͊̾͘ ̵̸͙̼̣̮̩ͨͫͧ̀ͥ͋c̦͓̯ͤͩ̀̓o̵͚̫̠ͥ̍͐̾͂͘͡r̡̮̱̠̟̼̖̗ͤ͑̓̎ͯ̽̎ͮͦ͠r̷͖̰̞̭̰̩̩͖̯͗͒­̊͜ẹ̺͒͐ͯ̈̇͂͗̇͘ș̸̼̹͔ͫ̇ͦͩ̾̎͝p̴͉̰͈ͣ̓̂͂ͭͪ̏ơ̶̭̝͔͚̭̻̟͕̼̅ͪͭͥ͛͋ͪͦ͗n̰̘̲̯̠̺̜­͐̇́͜d̝̼̋͒ͨě̯̅͟͠n̢͙͗ͯ̊͋̾̊ͯͬ̐c͊̽̇ͅe̪̜̫̎̃ͤͨ͘͢,̶͉̼̹̥̙͎̻̜̈́̐̄͒ͮ̓̇͂̽
̡̗­͔͎̟̦̝͖̝̲̍ͣ͗ͤ ̡̬̯̰̦̘̈ͯ̉͗ ̴͎̠̈́̋ͭ ̛͚͚͖͓̿ͤ͞ ̦̺̜̻̖ͪͭͣ͆ͧ͊̄̓ ̼͍͇͔̺̟̓ͯͯ̃ͅ ͎̘̟͚̮̗̙̌ͩ̂͛͋̀̚͢ͅ ̾͑ͩ́̚͏̳̹̼̩̱̳dͦ̎̈̃̑͠͏͍͎̻̳̩͕ͅi̛͈͔̲̥̝̮̼̳ͤ̒͌ͥ̆f͌̄̆ͩ͗ͣ҉͚̹̟̫̬̗f̧̻̞̠͔͔̘̻­̳̂̍̓̓͐͘é̹͖̃̿̆ͭ̐̀r̴̦̳̳̪͐͋͘͟ȩ̈̉ͪ̕҉̳͕̩n͕̤̳͔̖͉͎̣̯ͣͥ̓̅̔͗ͦ̈́̚c̷̭͔͓̮̖̯̒̽­͊e̗̟̞̟̼̓̋̋ͬ́̚͠,͕̙̰̐̈́́ ̯̣̖̗̠͓̼ͮ̆̅͜ ̈̾̍͏͉ā̿̾̑̍͐ͣ̿̓͏̶̥̰͖̤̟͘l̢̥͔̦̜͕̄ͣ̃ͯl̟̩̤̤̺ͧ̐̽̈́̑ͤ͟ ͉̦̮̟͕̯̦͌͗͛̀ṭ̵͈͕͍̙̲̅̓ͮ̃ͮ̃ḣ̴̺̹̙̌̕ͅa͐ͬ̄ͦ̈͌̀ͤ͏҉̣̱̳t̴͉̠̐̾̎͛͜ ̨̫̳͈͔̯̩͖̺ͩ̇̆̍́̃̕͜
huh?
sorry,
it’s just harder to find these days
find what?
the glue.
glue again?
yeah,
that’s the term she used, anyway.
she?
someone else fell from there
that tree?
yeah.
just last year
what happened?
she was concussed, hospitalised, but lived
that’s nice, i guess.
anyway, she claimed she could read it
the plaque?
yeah.
and other things.
other things?
walls
power poles
the ruptures in the pavement,
the gaps between houses
the lost words of derelict places.
what did they say?
she said she couldn’t say
the meanings don’t translate?
something like that,
but also,
      kinda,
it’s words weren’t words per say
  but the murmurs of the glue itself

hmm.
what poppycock.
i mean, pretty much.
but,
you don’t remember, do you?
what your mother had had inscribed that day?
ah..
  no.
sorry.
you couldn’t ask,
   could you?
...
sorry, i don’t mean to pressure
its just been bugging me.
…
sorry.
i’d rather not.
i’m not..
not really sure how to broach the subject.
fair enough
it’s fine, i’m in two minds really.
oh?
yeah.
i mean, i want to reach an understanding,
but i feel if i do, it’d be
snap, crack?
yeah.
..yeah no, sorry.
mum, and, i…
i dunno.
dfsjgksdfgjldfkjgdfls
do you sometimes feel you can’t get through to others,
or rather, that there’s no way to say what you feel you need to say?
don’t worry, i reckon the feeling's universal
thats not actually that reassuring.
ha, sorry.
but at the least
i suspect it gets easier,
as it becomes less immediate
and more over and done with
...yeah.
i guess

obsequious bitterness
cawed of your hallowed mask
take 5 steps and
disappear

cakes in the oven, save
for the life after next, save,

footsteps, tinnitus ring,
records and mulch


everyone cowers
  at the wasp on the bus
that's passed unnoticed on the open street

uneasy

orbits of flight
  inchoate rage
bashing its head against the windows
radicalization of blind corners
spectacle of death
coil and frisk


how miserable how unfortunate how tragic how mindless how unthinkable how predictable how impossible how  urgent how hopeless how uncomfortable how


tongue severed tie

the centre expands, ossifies,
swallows and dissolves

best leave the dead to speak for themselves, they've
history on their side
  after all


inflected bias
in silent tears


if only  i could drown the whole world in melancholy


siren wail
   nervous tinder and pike
buzz and clutter


everyone
  waves their arms in discomfort, but
otherwise sits still


the irrefutable materiality of inertia




the bus drives on

paint the walls
  with mouthfuls of dirt
picnic blanket over
old wounds
 tired and frail
calloused and hardened

one, two,
spill the guts and chew the fat
expand out
drip down
  an infinity edges empty boundary
  horizontal tears
  fracture and falter

fill the walls
with embroided words,
   (the hail still stings
    against severed limbs)

expand out
 graft over holes,
 tear harrowed folds

one, two,
weightless
a canvas of flesh
  lighter
      fluid and ash

expand out
   float down to the rivers end
     go with the flow
         loose yourself
         among empty surfaces;
                                                           eventually
all the leaves in the gutter
coagulate
 and homogenise
to mulch

there's a wasp nest in the roof tiles
when it rains they all drown and get angry and stab you to death

the school up the road
   kid with the big cardboard
whacks the ground
envy of class
   ******* mother dripping
croissant ears and belgium tails

no this, isn't where i -

  no matter
if i pass through myself i'll get to you
god i'm pathetic
pathetic pathet-
Ah,
good. Here we are
back again

yes, this warm embrace
feels like styrofoam
in winter breeze
crawled on by the ants

your plaintive smile of
split wood
rusted tin and copper green
damp coffee beans and barley mold
tumbled **** and dry retch

light a candle in a puddle
watch it fizzle and melt

beneath the pavement flecks
you once dreamed of caverns
of solitude and lime
biscuits and frozen pizza

distance is always warmer in memory

now
                 we're just

rows of slates stitched break and crack cross hatched
the greased snide of new age atheist
scrambled eggs of surplus tongues
muzzled **** of an aphasiac dynasty

weightless

yesterday i read an essay on post-colonialism
and then watched some ****
of a japanese woman ******* on some african man's feet
he looked mostly scared
    somewhat confused

its all so
  unbearably inundated in discourse

i tend to prefer sleep these days
i guess that's getting old

but there's always a guilty disgust
in knowing you're the intended audience


white man is a gaze
reified in disappearance
immortalized by impotence

a genocidal roar
of muffled incompetence

twirl ballroom spritz
    'cross abandoned parking lots

weave your lamentations
    out in umber mist

gin and panadol
white arsenic cordial

death drive in moderation                      


bushy dough
down your gumboot towers
yyo faggg
fark your sign'a'lings
carped up in the haddock pouch

in maudlin dreams
swirl your phone sleeve
round your wristflick
                                         nah
you blooster mate
right cranberry

where the **** is it? where the **** did you put it? it's not funny, hahaha, oh god, hahaa…..


but     later,    


  radio incinerator
   nightcap in sodium cloud
beached tire tree

yellow discus
                                        break the sky

in porcelain wash

                                              the
      gle­am union tethers
                of cleft verandahs
                         pavement and weeds


  in slow dawn

                                   follow

         into houses
                               into houses


sit

                        wait and ease

             coffee mugs and soda stream

       an old sofa tear
          left in half rupture

the humbling comfort
     of a freely shared meal

aside

                            make small talk with the locals
                         before the next
                                                    mortar shells


till
       pack at first light

                       amiable waves
          side-long goodbyes


get up
                  fall down
                                        march on


listening in
     the children songs
        of cakewalk structures


                  fall down


live from a backpack
   foam mattress and gas light
       soft monoxide dreams


                                        march on


don't get left behind
             from standing too long
                         squinting in confusion

among

                 city streets
                    phantom bodies
          lost in half rapture


get up

           changeling soldier
       of changing skies

                                        march on


             live in a backpack
     canvas and tent pegs





the blanketing rain
         is always a comfort
  'cept when you're in it

hi my name is and I believe in                   expand out
myself as community together                  remain seated
small businesses and growth                     rend your vision with lens
finance and restructuring                           of sedatives and phlegm
downsizing and expansion                  
small businesses and growth                     the cannibal chair of a limbless corpse
small businesses and growth                     the social vision of
small businesses and growth                     erected stone and allotted plots



                                 look away
                                                            ­             where?
                             To the future
                                                          ­               how?
                       Remain positive
                                                        ­                 with respect to what-
                                                           ­                                       -Don't ask that
                                                            ­             but
                                                                ­                                  -shh
                       shh­


                                                           shh.

you were

water parts



     the burrowing sun
cries


take our pitchforks to the aisles
  drenched in meridian sleet  


did you hear did you hear?

  the sirens last week
yeah yeah, the day that really massive bee got trapped in the window
apparently the whole neighbourhood was aflame

   we never notice anything, do we?



The noon, a pebble
  how were are at you where what too going today?


i-  i’m really sorry, i
   yes

yes, no
                 no


so did you, in the end?


        Ah, no!     It
    wasn’t




just
     couldn’t find
it

      gushing mush
   drowned out

       fallowed hallways
   left upturned

wait so,
    did you
                in
  find it?         the end?

..
what?


             oh-
         sorry,
nevermind





.

i am the rotting flesh wrapped around a cherry stone

they did a sweep of the area twice more
dusting off the panels as they passed
white porcelain light blinkering
as they bandaged up the remains

\\\

piipiipiipii, bzzzdt.
Tap, taptpatptaptap.
Vrrrrrrrrrr, vrrhhhhhrrr,
ckah-clunk, bzzzdt.

/////

several years later, they unwrapped the hollow
when they forgot how to read the patients form
but found only, etched into the edges of the chasm
walls of maize and paper cranes
and the soft siren call
  of
        the ringing truck

\

so
     skid on the mud
of last winters drought
the windfall is better
the bigger your pouch

or,
   cull your tinnitus'
ambiguous haze
on your conjured
                      posterities
marionette gaze

   mix up a stew
   in a broken egg's shell
   and say your child's
   the same as always you knew
   ( always knew )


and then

wait
watch
  see?

as the frosted lanterns
sing the harbor dry
                                                             /

but who am I to judge
all boarded windows and gusts

i who you where us we,

-
    till just-


follow on down
into that
absent labyrinthine corpse,

crawl on down
  into soft mist and dirt

speak the air


and breathe