city of stars

second floor arts west hiding from the sun / crawling into my computer try to get some thinking done. someone plays the piano by the lift on the first landing. a tune twinged with saudade / spun from a film about choosing to lose art or love. we hummed the melody / an air we knew without knowing and danced in the kitchen at the end of our little life, twirling each other from different ends of the earth / swimming seamlessly in song. I think of you and every other ghost I've loved. questions laugh at any misplaced sense of certainty. I close my ears and watch the people living on my phone.

dental

the dentist covers the gap between their charge the chronicles between my last clean. a new consumer special. x-ray on a flimsy neon plastic frame to see my teeth a little clearer. photorecords with another camera in my mouth; they show me pictures on the television. calculus removed with water and a sharper metal rod.

I think about how much has past since last another person cleaned my teeth. they tell me to keep doing what I'm doing maybe floss at night instead of morning that my teeth haven't changed. if only we were so predictable. they ask me to come back in six months. I spit the mouthwash back into a plastic cup.

our momentary babel

they let me use a screwdriver to take apart the set. I feel like a boy like someone they want to rely on. I work on bolts in different places: fake office tables monitors and platforms. our little world forged for fun for a moment now vacated for good. we use pliers to pull out the staples in the back of the throne. our momentary babel is torn with our own hands to scraps they'll use for something else. I think about the boards that made the desk at which I played under synthetic light wonder what was torn to build it how they'll next be used to shape another scene or set a funeral pyre. returning to clay at the end of the day we leave our tools behind. how many lifetimes are held by a tree? why must this matter less than me?

we mop and cleanse the stage of demons on our way out of the theatre. my bucket fills the colour of our mess. I watch it cyclone make a whirlpool in the sink.

another lost thing

on the way home with guests without my bike waiting for the tram. we've had Chinese for dinner and mulled wine for the cold. a lady sways across the tracks casting spells in some other language. she drags along a plastic ziplock bag the size of a flatscreen cables and bathroom essentials inside. webs of tattoo run along her bones from ankles to fingertips. she stands in the lights of another closing bar calling out to oncoming traffic from the middle of the road I ride to school. I think she's lost but doubt she'd be any other way anywhere else.

by time our tram arrives she's crossed the road to board before us. we take the door at the other end of the carriage. from where we sit I hear her mumbling. the foreign tongue is nearly familiar, close enough to intelligible to retain concern to keep ears open. she is restless in her seat and stands crossing the tram to meet the window. she reaches stares provokes and wipes the tears of her reflection tracing veins in the glass masking faces with fog. she reminds me of ghosts from my dreams and prophets I met on ward. perhaps she's something in between. I know I am for now.

the office at the end of the world

choking smoke under tomorrow's silent detonation clawing through a cemetery of postmodern living manifest. clamber over office chairs toppled like tombstones in the dark. I reach for the files on the floor / unbinded forecasts / scattered forgotten children. the oracle legs crossed sitting on the desk under the last LED light. he scribes code like prophecy one hand eyes fixed on the void beyond the stage. my body scrambles cross the bureau for the scripture on all fours. my mind is out of office. I grasp his latest proverb let my eyes absorb the facts and figures characters that once I might have made some sense of. they store the data someplace else. post-digital we've lost the need for sense or comprehension.

his papers top the pile of files I pass on to the queen. she sits in the last chair spinning at the end of the world. she thanks me for the files. each is torn one at a time. I reach for their remains and crawl to claim another prophecy from the pen of the diviner.

the queen recounts her dreams into the shadows. the particles of sound pass through my skull, reverberating in an empty chamber pleading to mean more than bumps than rhythm. I fold the dregs of files left at my fingertips, stacking piles to unfold open when there's nothing left to file. soon she will run out of dreams to remember. soon she will want something more than mergers and the armour of surrender to the whim of something greater.

we watch her turn to the machine. a decision has been reached. murmurs of a pulse return with punches. fists first stilettos second to slam against the box. the force tears me to my knees the fiberoptic pressure choking long forgotten nerves. her rage continues pulling cables kicking panting trying to reclaim a dormant self from the computer we call home. every hit is a needle stirs my senses sober to the nightmare. they exorcise a scream of two millennia of fear of butchered bliss of ignorance of trust in progress of grief of what we thought we bought of how it ends of another great day in the office. then virus rattles through me / claims my body / makes a home in what remains. I scream into the vacuum without reason / waiting for the sky to fall.

hands in the sink

I find an old friend at a funeral. overcast mid-afternoon the church I grew my teeth in. we hold each other in the foyer between the water and the eulogies.

back home after the service I'm washing dishes embarrassed by the state the house is in with so many guests. they're here to be fed and talk about themselves. they eat and talk. like them I don't have time to listen: food to stuff, dishes to clean. but there's more guests than hands in the sink. no sooner is the kitchen clean the sink is filled with new dishes dirtied. despite my best efforts there's no keeping up the china starts to overflow I start to sweat. someone says something about the gratification of cleaning after other people like they're buying their excuse to not offer their hands as though their dirty dishes are a gift they should be thanked for. I want to be where I am when I wake: hidden in my room under the covers. when I wake I want to go to church.

the third day

no real answers no real tools no real self beyond this feeling all this plastic packaging the virus and her parasite. the body is the temple in the self help and Corinthians. Jesus split the temple open when they tore him off the cross. to leave they bid me do the same. I feel the changes my foundations shake waistline threatened with implosion. and so we break my temple open lacking tools for resurrection. I pray the third day never comes.