the ones you wore when we were

the rooftop is open to the moon. radiators hang like palm trees over every other table so we sit outside in the shadow of the skyline. the few buildings tall enough to scrape the sky look silly amidst more modest friends. from this distance it's hard to tell which ones are used for what. but it doesn't really matter. what really can from such a distance?

across the table a stranger twirls his hair like I would as a child. sangria and ambiguity for two. he talks about returning from another world to feel alien in his own home. I try to understand and think I can a little, thinking of chapters closed in transit between one life and another. we laugh about the city and being the way we are / timid / proud / precious in the face of our decay. he seems nice enough and we seem to enjoy our time under the radiators. but he has your nose and hair and his glasses look too much like the ones you wore when we were for a moment. if I look too close his eyes might also belong to you. he wants to find something to eat. I want to hear you say my name again.

after dinner we decide to surrender to the cold. I leave him waiting for the tram. do you remember how it felt to lose and win each other back between our planes and trains? you kissed me at the station for both of our goodbyes. I ride down streets you'll never see and wonder when you last thought of me.

sushi and seagulls

world war three is seagulls shrieking / tearing sushi airborne through the lunch crowds in fed square. 'some animals are much more palatable than others'. cats or dogs or condensation? we come for one reason and stay for another. I laugh a little much until I leave forgetting why. you linger like a curse on every other second question.

Helicon's lament

and I could not give you the moon

though I see her every night

looking back at me through glass

crying stars into the dark

if words would work I’d ask her why

but words mean less to giants

I wonder what she thinks

looking down on us to death

condemned to witness every fault and flame

silent and lonely

undersung after the sun

almost beyond utility

a truth-knowing god without hands

left to spectate our decline into the clay from which we came

a little closer every day

a matter of patience

she waits with little else to do

sick of pulling tides and glowing

watch us dance

watch us spinning out of reason

through the veils of vice and virtue

making tombs of our tomorrows

at night

judgement day on the horizon

she would laugh if she could

if the moon had a mouth.

death with flowers

death walks beside a girl with flowers. the petals fall for no one in particular. but you’re still here. how did you become my burning hill? I swear the last one never died. the coals still glow sometimes.

some other kind of prison

the apartment suite is white and round and inward facing. at the eleventh hour the place is soft and still if not for the trickle of fountains. streams pass down the white walls of one landing to the next in and out of plants hanging and crawling in latitudinal directions. each landing is a ring of rooms sheltered from natural light under the spire of a beige big top tent. you'd never know it's nearly midnight from inside. a soft stone courtyard below and stepping stones to cross the manmade streams. from our spot on the top landing we could see any other movement as it happened if it did. a zen panopticon or some other kind of prison. it reminds us both of a gallery in New York, though we don't say so til morning.

you sacrifice a Friday night to leave the silly city / see me acting in a play. the stars or moon give us our best run of the season. I bite my tongue in thanks. in the audience I see you sitting with my mother. after the show she tells me you bought her dinner. you play coy and laugh off her thanks. when we make it to our room we're as we were before. our limbs coil to comfort / close the space between the time since last we danced around our hearts. I find it funny that you came all this way to see me play pretend. have you not seen us in the mirror?

our last words into sleep are the same. when I wake it's dark before the cracks under the curtains. you're warm against my neck. I wear you like a coffin.

to Eden

because I cannot change like wind I lose another day in transit. leaving one bed for another to sleep alone again. most days trickle on like water / feel as though I live more in corridors than rooms. I pour time into keys into cells made of codes on liquid crystals I don't understand. passing by the sun at dusk makes shadows of the hills / over rich green fields rendered in periphery. the seat in front takes photographs of sheep. I should close the lid and watch some world pass through the window.

in the data from another world somebody praises God. when asked about their ideal state they bow their head to Eden. where others dream of change this one rejoices in the promise they believe in. there's a challenge to look at what we have / to cherish the given that's taken for granted. what more could we want than a whole life? who needs the moon? they say we should be grateful for fertile time crops. I'm more grateful for ambiguity. still, I agree to thank the sky today for the abundance of being and tomorrow. we can only pray for peaceful co-existence with the rest.

civic people

I overhear a breakup whilst I’m typing in the food court. she asks questions. when he doesn’t respond she starts to cry and speak quicker. a pigeon stirs to scraping chairs and flies into the ceiling. Mum falls asleep on her hands on the table. faux marble and laminated timber. man in green plaid shirt giggles like the joker into his phone across the hall. his laugh would give me nightmares. I wonder if my mum can hear him in her dreams.