(i) 43 days
all on foot, drug ripe and addled,
Tramadols and Endones puppeting mice
in the peripherals, trekking lanes and
limestone, withered grapes atop walls, to the West
sky smeared peach, on the demolition site
pink ribbons around the trunks of two tuarts –
heritage listed? termites? brake lights and
brittling couch grass, the bruising of a
week closed, sutures of hours – clockwise
is off. to the wharves, slap of ropes
and tide, ‘Spliethoft’, Dutch, engorging.
it’s a Vaselined moon tonight, March brooding
(ii) venn intersects
in this convalescence – good word that with it’s
gauze-like length and syllabic wrap – been
practicing the lost art of waiting, bus and
train stations, doctors’ rooms, never enough
shade or new ‘New Ideas’, been watching,
the wizened and the upright, figs ripening,
footpaths that flow like prose then trip like
misspellings, been rubbing paperbark trees,
listening in on frogs, been mulling over the
difference between learned and remembered,
the venn intersects, making a mantra
of ‘clockwise is off’ while pondering the
origin of knowns, the mind that did
the choosing, hands that shape our days
(iii) rope armies
taken my lungs to ocean, remembering
that on taps, clockwise is off, though
that is my truth, my tomorrow, not that
of the clock hands and been thinking
‘bout tides and un-neaping, and let’s call it
global swarming though we’ll never get there
of course, when, for every ant there’s
a human – they know that, ‘cos for us
‘mining’ means ‘mine’ and we’re more blind
than they are and while we’re making
books for our faces they’re forming rope
armies to bind and save the world
