grizzly bear

don’t you know those hairs on your feet are a sight unseen

unseen when opinions are formed (well after the sight)

that the angles of your face in sunglasses aren’t spoken about

by the men selling polarised portals at Aussie Angler

and if asked they’d say, perplexed, that it was normal

everybody looks through the water for fish the same way –

remember when we’d go to Sugarloaf reservoir and catch redfin

while dad drove golf balls and looked askance for cops

and mum gave the water treatment plant the third degree –

found errors, usually misplaced apostrophes, on its imposing signs –

and barbecued onions would sluice through the summer air

to our flimsy camp seats by the shores of that flash of brocade?

room so dim that the hat on the rack is a spinning black disc

and the elephants embroidered on my bedspread have faded to brail

I think that maybe I haven’t cried for you enough this week

I think that maybe I need to make you cry and cry out that you’re alone

I play music that used to be catalytic in a way it no longer is

I play emotionally defunct music and pop pills and feel dismayed –

moonlight looks jaundiced against their immaculate skin –

those women on the sides of the septums of whom I’ve found

hair longer than your eyelashes, and yet it’s you who can’t leave

aloneness without first cutting them down to size

who sees people as only the compound of all of their problems

who in a couple of months will be twenty-one years of age.