you can now find me at:
http://eatingmywords.net/unutterable

even though you were sad that day,
you looked like a dream
in your summer dress.

my memory of you flickers
like an 8mm film projection:
soft focus & golden blowouts.

we had run out of money
by the time we crossed the border,
but neither of us ever
thought about stopping.

i felt pure as if i had just
mainlined penicillin & you

took the wheel for a moment
while i stuck my hand out the window

and every single star
just fell from the sky.

1.
lines of people
oblivious to the fire
inside themselves

2.
footpaths once trodden
by heels of revolution

3.
summer skies
without light

4.
boxes painted
with household garbage

5.
a language that sounds
the way it is spelt

6.
the space right in front
of you
that is eternally dissapearing
behind.

they set fire
to the ships in the sky

and brought
to our bedsides
delicate beverages
to calm us.

a sick feeling
forming
in our stomachs

clutching
one-way
tickets

we take
photographs
of every cloud

passing,

a time-lapse immigration

that smears seconds

across the equator.

do not speak to us
of history
in this place

do not speak to us
at all.

seven
pilgrimages
in seven years

& already i wonder
if this journey is my journey
at all.

***

the city walls
pulse with a language
understood only

by those
who have just been born
& those about to die.

the city gate opens,

i close my hand
over my mouth

one last time.

the ghosts of the city
were everywhere that night

cascading down escalators

sleeping in doorways
of houses all over
the eastern suburbs.

you sat in a hot portable classroom
staring at interesting cloud formations,

still seven songs separating

your ghosts from mine.

we stayed for days
on the underpass

watching mechanical music
fall from the sky

watching cars spill onto
the streets beneath us.

unimaginable colours
marbled across
dashboards and windscreens

you held
all ten fingers

up to the sky

a highway semaphore

i imagined
what radio waves
might haunt
the crisp clean air
around us.

we played ugly politics
and we played beautiful politics.

we debated
thoughts
that had not even
been formed yet

and they moved through
our bodies
like shadows
passing behind coloured glass.

i wrote
and you erased

two simple codes to

obfuscate
the same meaning,

soliloquies

that we could not anticipate,
let alone control.

i awake
with a nose bleed
on a train
that does not stop.

the whole carriage
of commuters
are whistling
the same strange
song

all around me,
a symphony
of blood letting.

your fingers
cluster
around my collarbone,
a necklace
of invisible veins.

***

tall ships
in a distant
harbour,
you don’t even
hear your phone
ring.

***

i remember
seven or eight
places
that existed
before you.

a love letter
written in braille

-for your fingers only-

provides the map
to an economy of shadows

where we trade words
instead of numbers

and the ones we don’t believe in

are always worth the most.

a row of coke bottles
stand to attention

stand in
the formation
of ten pins

you ask me to
step outside

and i remind you
that there is no out side.

out side

does not exist.

we are momentarily distracted

by the reassuring sight
of a couple waltzing
on a deserted railway platform.

dusk.

the hour that things
begin to
turn around.

a single airplane
dangles
behind a haze
of overhead wires

we take our weapons out
the moment it passes.

in this war

everything
must be interpreted
as a warning sign.

i wouldn’t have called it an epiphany, but it was one of those illuminating moments. one of those moments where somehow objects can speak to you, but people cannot.

violet was already more than half an hour late. i was half an hour into a warm flat beer. over the years i’d grown fond of this ritual of ours. the same table every time, the same view of the church across the road. violet arriving as one schooner has turned into three and i am glowing as much from expectation as i am from the alcohol.

well, well.

you haven’t changed a bit, harry

the words sigh from her mouth, scraps of hair and earrings and shopping bags float all around her.

i sense her body relax as she slides onto the bar stool, long fingers clasping around a cold glass of beer, the stress of the day- the week- slipping away into the periphery.

what have you brought for me this time?

a glimmer of a smile flashes coyly across my face.

the dance has begun.

what makes you think i have anything for you?

violet takes up my cue effortlessly.

well,

i let the words ooze out from between my lips,

in all the years we’ve been coming here, i’ve never gone home empty handed…in one way or another…

i don’t see why this year would be any different. besides, i know you, i know you couldn’t stop yourself…

ha!

her wild eyes flick a sideways glance at me, a look that brings a familiar tingling across my skin.

well, i might as well get it over and done with, you asshole…

reaching into one of her bags.

coming in
to taiwan
the lights
of the city

are probably
a film projector
trained on a wall of clouds

it is impossible to get
good staff
in this country

you confide in me

through pursed lips

a half-peeled mandarin
in your hand.

and i imagine,

that for you,
it is.