Category Archives: travelogue

hill end

you said that metaphors are
for the weak-minded

i counted the cracks
in the windscreen
of our hire car

a landscape
riveted by insect carcasses
powdered
with a film of earth so red
it leaves the taste of rust
in our mouths.

we are children again
melting into the back seat,
the windows rolled down
and i tune the radio
to the frequency of
powerlines and rabbit fences,
the perfect broadcast
for a journey that

starts out with a promise

but quickly becomes
interminable.

it is the fundamental law
of movement
– of course –
to be always not quite there,
and not quite here.

in fact,
the further you follow
the thin white line
the faster
it disappears.

you wanted deliverance
but instead we came
to a ghost town

“home!”
“let me go home!”

some where
the landscape moves so quickly it
interlaces
and you tell me that
this is how you see through time.

i concentrate, staring out the window,
colour pixels
rendered in rose quartz
and honey ant yellow—
those mineral shades that
are always part-way
through some kind of chemical reaction, alchemy.

i let my gaze become unfixed and
think about “continuity”…

our car is always
a movie camera
and each window
the perfect frame.

on this road
there is no beginning and end
and beginning and end,
only the part in the middle,
the part
happening now.

five days

for 5 days
i slept in your car
the seats rolled back
as far as they would go

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.

how to invoke the sunset clause

you begin to stir. woken by the sounds of traffic from the street below. motorbike horns and the humid surge of afternoon. a constant humming from the fluro light in the bathroom. you crawl out of bed and the room seems green around you. infinite shades of green and in the heat, the promise of rain. we don’t have much time left in this city. i am a world away from home. you are a tourist in your own country. “do you know about the sunset clause?”, i say. but you don’t hear me. there is not much to do but sit and wait the afternoon out. sit and wait for the storm.