Thursday 19 July 2012

women and I, the old hospital


women and I –
                                !!!

all the hollow gorilla’s-
-chest beats I contrive to write of
so prophetic and full-
-souled but fail so singly to
textualise that odd pairing

or maul the whole body
of significance with cowardly
epigraphs and tangents
about gorillas!

even now I’m turning the pol-
-yester tag of a pair of trousers
over in the hand without a pen
in it – I love the tag to distraction

because I don’t want to see the real picture
drawn except surreally, behind curtains
with crazy patterns and faultless
fire-retardance – because women

repeal all the laws I’ve imposed,
drive me to mental banditry –
women are pointillists and em dashes
keyed across the rare earth elements
of my cold plot of composure –

the contorted seams of the cheap
pillow case their heads rest on
and perfume for weeks and months
seem to show what it looks like inside
when I try to describe what I feel for them –

now the trouser tag is a couple of balls
fallen down an unreachable crevice
behind my bed, I think that my ailment
stems from the soil of their being
better than me, and that, to tell the truth,
I’m yet to really know any.


...


then slowly I walk a little
               slower past the delta
crane boring ward by ward  
                through the old
Royal Children’s – sunset
                bleeding out
over halved helipads and barbed
                 wrecking hooks
walls fleeced open like skin and
                  tin fences
fringed like Bible tassels –  
                  glassless windows
holding latent night all day
                  until the holes
are so agape they’re no longer
                  holes – dogs
burying bits of debris with the
                  greed of a junk
artist exhuming them– the U.S
                  army built this
and also the Royal Melbourne –
                   now I can think
of nothing more lullingly still –
                   after the cranes
fall silent and it’s only a jagged
                   silhouette
against the glow of tireless
                   Flemington
road traffic, and the walkers and
                    joggers of twi-
-light have retired to shower
                    I slowly seek out
a little window of dry grass and
                    watch until I too
am crumbling, and black, and quiet.


               

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