we put everything
we owned
into one place
a time capsule
of fragrances
and the knowledge
that everything must end
the possibility
of an archive
the promise
that something
will be remembered
a future city
full of children.
a daylight moon
my foot to the floor
you were tall
and eternal
and i was
falling asleep
at the wheel
A high powered radio transmitter and all the information in the world. I still couldn’t reach you. I wanted a monument that was invisible to everyone but us. Like a still body of water and the sound of the city at dusk. Or a reflection.
Later I was in a gift shop in chinatown trying to think of something significant to buy. There were charms for health and prosperity, but nothing to slow down time. And definitely nothing to stop it.
We set about building a vanishing city. We took apart pieces of politics and body parts. We painted walls with the imaginary shade of twilight. We powered the population with involuntary mechanisms. Like heartbeats. And revolutions. I stayed still in the shadows of our cities’ tallest buildings and though about c words. Like ‘civilisation’ and ‘collapse’ and ‘cunt’. To us community was something unraveling all the time. We did not want to put people together, but to pull them apart. We made governments and religion that were nothing more than the sound of wind through leaves. Or an afterthought. There was no such thing as manifesto. Only shopping lists and the places where posters had been torn down from walls. We were always afraid of loosing language. So we spoke in riddles and some times in song. Nothing was written down. Nothing was kept. We thought archives were vanity and libraries science fiction. Every morning after we slept, we burned our beds to the ground. Our photographs were invisible records, like a distant voice on a telephone line. Everything absent, everything incomplete. Everything open. Nothing at night and nothing in the morning.
we passed 5
roadside shrines
in an hour
i felt the highway
tear a way like a page
every word written
was whispered
and there was nothing
paul kelly could tell us
that we didn’t already know.
i was watching all those things
which are quick,
become things which are
slow.
sometimes all it takes
is the colour
of the light
through the window
we built tunnels
to the depths
of our bodies
but in that
yellow light
i felt it all
undoing.
there was only
landscape
now
that pastel house
a museum
like the vanishing point
of the road
endlessly
undoing.
everything you told me
was true
the stars burned
sulfur
holes in the black sky
and i waited
for you
to stop talking.
you take a long time
between breaths
and i note tiny details;
the way your skin feels
somehow self-conscious
the sound
of raindrops
on the roof.
