like a storm that might be coming

like something cold
has bubbled up from a deep well.

there are pieces of us every
where
and only this simple
ceremony
can gather them back.

another day on the road
and the street signs
are beginning to take on
strange significance

like fortune cookies
or one word horoscopes

everything becomes a map
we can’t understand.

i said
not this. not right now.

and there was something
explicit
in your touch.

and the heavens
were only just beginning

to open.

and i allow you
the perfection
of doing
the only thing
you know how

the tyranny of language
is the moment
it doesn’t exist

and everything
i’ve told you
you already know.

my hot breath
kept the
cold windows
moist
as the inside of a ribcage.

you were on the radio
most days
you played old love songs
a broadcast to no where

i kept the motor running at night
nothing careful, nothing tentative
about that constant hum.

we drove through
a city of lights
and all around us
silence

somewhere
in another room
someone is being sick

we had herbal concoctions
to last us a lifetime

a desk job
an endless time-sheet
and sick days to spare

we worked out the odds
and went the way
of the lighthorse

***

you were tall
and eternal
and i was
falling asleep
at the wheel

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.

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.

five pixels of gaussian blur.

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.

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.

a world of words
writ
against impossible
skies

where silence soared
like high rise buildings
tunneling towards the sun.

we landed
in the capital
at dawn

your fingers
squeezed to your
temples

and the sound
of distant
helicopters

all the simple
parts of our lives
vanished

and at that moment
i gave up on
ever remembering
what happened next…

all around the outskirts
we found tall buildings
filled with pigeons

i marvelled
at the tangled overpasses
forming nets above us

a struggle of highways
thick enough
to catch the bodies of dead birds
as they fell from the sky.

endless nights of dreaming
in a foreign language

and the translations were
becoming disturbing-

a dream logic
stripped of its familiar
syntax

listening to the dead tones
of old lovers

always with words
which have all been
heard before.

we ate Vietnamese food
in the suburb where I grew up
and waited for the panic to stop

it was dawn when you finally came round,
a blue car with the music
turned up

across the road I saw
the colour of our shadows
turn to white.

there is nothing but
indigestion and
google earth
a sign of things to come.

i could see them falling
like old fruit
into silence

and i tried to guess the colour
of the vowels.

i felt a burst of heat
from the space where you were
standing

there was a distant ringing

and i thought about
poems
that were more like pop songs.