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.

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.