Displacements

 
 
- a week of conversations in Sydney, and elsewhere

              Every day is impossible

              I struggle with the outline.

My skyline still breathes, white haze

so close, such distance.

                            You ring me ... a fortress or a party?

                            your joke ... as if we could decide.

Gutterals, street rhythms

the slippery glab of stones in mouths.

                   Dusty trees shiver in dark

                   strafed by day, waiting for it to happen.

The prophets of the morning

tag and count in other cities.

                           Silver clouds, heights and tiny cracks

                           craters in the midst, holes made by language.

 

                       Here we wait, rainclouds, offshore breeze

                       another boat is sighted.

We are not one, these streets -

if we are many … stones, underground.

                                       This cruel movie deal topples -

                                       we die in rehearsal.

            We were talking ... speaking ...

            or listening to what? The nag of posterity?

                      You are packing the jeep, deep

                      and heading for the pale yellow distance.

We enter ... the stages

where each word will be stolen.

Never the sum of our parts

still drafting other selves.

                      I still see us - lounge lizards in the wastes

                      drinking green cocktails of lost time.

This time ...

                    Elvis has left the building.

                       God bless the veil

                                        of dust.

 

 

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