A call on the white telephone awakens the room, disturbing the crystal liqueur bottles I will never drink from. She sweeps in from the balcony where she was wistfully overseeing-

All the dogs have fled. On some nights though, I see them in some corner or some alley mouth, a pair of howitzer eyes lying in the bunker of a ruined doorway. Nobody told them it was over.

And in the studios you never see the outdoors, never see that grainy drunken view of the streets, just the pristine suites, a hint of sun and the telephone, the white telephone.

Level the rest I say. Sink and crumble any who were passed over. Cut the power lines, burn the last scraps of food and cut a perfect hole in every cinema screen. Ruins are what we do best.

It didn't happen.
It did.
But it didn't happen.*
But it did.

I sit
No, I lie
Yes
It is New Years Day
There is an ache in my arms
Time runs away when I do not watch
And stares me down if I do so

It is New Years Day
I still lie
Why prepare
Why brace for anything
The morning won't seem possible
The precipice will go unseen
And down below, somebody has poisoned the water

It is New Years Day
No
I cannot answer your questions
No
There will not be a spot of grace
No
There will  be no name yelled in anguish at the last second
No
It has always been too early and too late
Let me lie

So the wind whistles
So the naked trees wave
So the air turns to still life and the grass dies
So the rain sits above me but never falls
So the garden gate swings a little then stops
So a wheelbarrow sits at the foot of the hill, traction now impossible
So the only life I see goes by at 50km an hour
So my thoughts are condensation on a pane of glass
They fog up for a moment, then vanish.

In the morning the wind cuts past us to prove that we exist and that we may fill space.
In the evening the wind erodes the name etched on the headstone and kicks up the soil.
And makes the weeds
Dance.

there are branches fingers of a dead will tendrils waving into a roaring white nothing wine into milk declaring themselves trying to make their realness known but reaching further into nothing and pin pricking out of the air texture to nothing like stained glass on a cage it gave us like in the beginning was the word and the word was like pretending there is an aether and they guard it and if I race through their gaps

Wake in nothing.
Put on my debris.
Cup my hand to The Sun.
Sit in a stone room and touch myself.

and let's be frank (the radio said)
you'll have to know when to skip dinner
and tell your kids to do the same

and you'll have to know (the radio said)
when a bloodstain is a leaking statue
and when it's just a needed leaching

and don't forget (the radio said)
when to export your sins
when to import others
and when to hide them behind stained glass
good for a few decades, sleet proof

and coming up (the radio said)
the new kind of drama that-CLICK-

For best results, turn lights on at 5:30

There must be stifled laughter every ten seconds.

A child must eat this much, shout that much and sleep in an hour.

You must take dishonest, calculated steps across my back.

This much many meals must be missed.

Your chosen (and I didn't say by who) track must be followed to the outskirts of someplace and abandoned for bald hair, stained shirts and hatred diluted by ****** beer.

A measurement of replaceable children must fly off buildings, kick down chairs or barricade themselves in rooms of sweat.

The buildings must grow by a dozen floors, annual, until nobody is left to count them.