you had a microphone
in your pocket
and a mouthful of glass

there were still
days and days
ahead of us

brightly lit streets and
sugar headaches

you whispered to me:
no one will
stop us now.

we were still at
version 1.0

by the time
you arrived
with munitions.

in the newspapers
teenagers were
atrophying

in the sky
the stars were
sinking.

veins that
rise over knuckles

a deaf syntax

digital cities built
on the spot.

***

you looked at me
the way an orphan might

& i would squeeze the sun from the sky
to thank you.

you wrote the city underfoot
with songlines
sixteen stories up

listening we stood still

as words formed around us

ancient maps of traffic and power stations.

you start to predict the weather
not for tomorrow,
but for centuries ahead

a walking tour
of streets that nobody treads

until somewhere in another suburb
I can hear you sleeping.

we waited there

until the sunlight disintergrated

*

you erected microphone stands

in every room in your house

*

we wanted to see

the code cracked

that night

you nursed your illness
like a baby

spending hours in the construction
of a complex algorithm
to plot the trajectory
of your own demise.

i placed flowers
in water

& paced the halls
of this institution
of desire.

the overexposed

parts

of your body

glow like

lens flares in the dark.

the lengths you go to

to steal a conversation.

it fills

clouds as full as sails

this is the first moment of our victory

heat rises during the night
and unsettles our most profound solitude

we make placards to remind us
of a dream that will only come late in life

a warm piece of the earth
that i remember occasionally

is breaking now into
itself.

a turning
was taking place in the familiar.

places
that were usually silent

now spoke.

in your most lucid moment

you could not have
known such repose.

we dealt our drugs
back and forth

a mother and a baby bird

your limbs splayed out
like piano keys

gentle gestures back & forwards.

you asked me to make a flip book
about our lives
but i drowned
in the animation.

sharp strands of charcoal
began to engulf me

all i could see were

flickers & glimmers of 2D characters,
mechanical dances devoid of colour.

i found it difficult to differentiate
between the physical &
the existential

i would hallucinate
nausea
until i actually vomited,
hot seething piles all around the bed.

some mornings,
you would go down to the street,
just to place your palm
on the pedestrian crossing button

and feel the slight pulse
of its steady beep
echo through your body
like the heartbeat
of a small animal.

A row of leopard print gowns
swing
like pendulums
in the back of your ute.

A gross mutation
has occurred here
& nobody suspects
a thing

Five empty houses
filled
with bank clerks.

History is not repeating,
it is disintegrating

one day at a time.

I couldn’t blame
the door-to-door salesman,
although I surely would have liked to.

The musky smell of his deodorant
lingered
in the corridor
for days.

I felt like I was in a screenplay
from a 1950s Hollywood film,
except I had forgotten all my lines.

A siren on Main Street
burned a line of sound
in the back of my mind.

The taste of bile rising,
sooner than expected,
in my throat.

clouds shaped like piñatas
populate my waking hours

pressure systems
move in eccentric directions

like maps traced on
my palm.