poem in which synonyms flock like birds

the clouds of this and no other afternoon

sandwich as if in layers of acetate

printed endlessly with a single panorama

the synonym flocks so distant, so perfect

in distance, they move as shoals of tiny fish

never collide, even when dive-bombing low

through crowded streets, writhes of a muscle

through puddles from the surface to the road

ghosts of puddles, when the surface is the road

road the surface, shadows that smell like building

sites like fresh unmaking, sites too mired in mud

and mortar to tell if the structure is rising or falling

from now, bolt by bolt, brick by brick –

if the hammer blows that echo through the places –

under siege and where I am – echo with life or with death.

*

when the only silks in sight are tattered scarves

lassoed over power lines spearing trees –

connected to homes so flimsily – those twinkles

of Melbourne’s one-phase star, and the silks

whisper the discovery of new ways to get high

I run my teeth from the back of my tongue to the front

look around, around, and say, desertion shouldn’t be

so redolent in the air – the Tiger Moth wing-

-velveteen abandonment I feel has no right to be

here in the evening in the dominion of the living –

this is where water flows warm in winter pipes

where blood in winter veins flows warm

where every gnomic grating steams with warmth!

but of all those flocks in the sky, quiet and cold

belong to the same, and they’re the hour’s bombardiers.

*

they’re the strangest of parallels – her startled lips

the little crook in her nose, the impasse leaking

from her mind by way of eyes as yellow as lines

which take a metre from the places people wait

for trains to embark on – making my patience hemorrhage

making me jam up coin slots with foreign currency

shudder for the fate of all warm things

pluck birds from the sky and fish from the sea

strip them of their currency except as signs

that language also moves outside of me

and I it. I see a man that youth no longer visits

deserted by women and good years

but still fucked well occasionally by tears

smiling with surprise at how they manage

to always fuck him harder than before –

*

the bonds and screw-tight safety words he’s got

for joy don’t work with sadness – the dim basement

studio he’s sitting in, filthy, superimposing

all sunrises one by one over themselves

until what appears to be a close-up of rotten salmon

conjures in him its reek from the usual perfumes

of every woman who’s traveled with him to dawn

every woman who’s spit into his hands

and gone sleepless for him, who’s packed bags

and upped and downed and pirouetted to be where he is –

then in his hands his pale face feels interred.

*

so dark and starless an evening, the afternoon clouds

might have passed unnoticed to the horizon

like fists through silent glass, I count myself lucky

to live in a world so rich that cruelty’s mostly self-inflicted

and although words seem not to compliment feelings

but dive-bomb them, mine are deadeyes, mine are coming.