i.
this is the last time i try & turn us
into the ocean. i want to be wave motion
but know shitting & sweating are the same
pack aged par cel complete with Atlantic
origin story, each cell repeating murky beginnings
on election night meeting at a birth
day party, talking only of endings – it is hard
not to be political, difficult
to divide via semantics, the physical
, the actual & the symbol.

ii.
we hold hands for the first time watching
Salo or 120 Days of Sodom dir. P Pasolini (1975)
. above her covers winter is holding on out
side, wrist meeting mine half way across my chest
& i am facing away – she will have to see my eyes curl
in the laptop screen, repress a smile through torture
deprivation shit-eating howdidtheyeven?? apparently,
(i’ll read this later), Pasolini gave the kids chocolate,
& they were constantly on the crest of laughing
fits. Salo has been mostly banned in Australia. so too
once was Salinger, & so are visual depictions of the inner
labia, even now, viewing Salo is only allowed
with 180 minutes of extra material, which we will not watch
so I guess this is illegal but

iii.
i know all words have their
place-making agenda. we hold hands & two nights later
she’ll tell me how her mother died of cancer when she was
fourteen . i’ll ask if she heard through a network
about my own run-in, whether she is surrounding herself
with this on purpose. she’ll say
she never got to see how chemo actually
happens. i tell her everything became an image of myself
amplified leaving its brine in my
memory & finger shadows on my back. she likes the way
my veins bulge. nurses told me
they were clear as day but thick skin required extra
downward pressure. we hold hands while the moon
pastels her motions fissured & silver, a reflection

iv.
on the water, hyperbole skipping at some hundred
knotted characters. it resonates & grows while we filter
feed on what we want to know – at least we can
download Salo, watch above covers & hold hands
while the new PM occupies negative space. i know
he & i are the same in that we are both obsessed with self
replication & validation before a recognised audience.
he is buoyed by the country
voting like the inward-looking sickly, while i am stuck
on the analogy – it is too transmutable, or perhaps it is simply
too easy to get cancer. all
this information is more likely to divide

v.
than unite, dears caught in backlights
tracking anachronisms through dimming
distance. afterwards we put on Slacker dir. R Linklater (1991)
& spend all night almost
fucking, half skin against hemisphere, these two surfaces –
planets apart from one movie ago when holding hands
for the first time, now plying planets into poems
to dissolve insurmountable distances, as though words
are alchemy of Fe 2 or 3 plus concentrates in the current. we touch
& reach constantly. we try not to break the illusion
that to be staring into eyes is to be sharing thoughts
& feelings, a cross-purpose colony , a multicellular entity
coming together & glooping into history’s ether. swim
, reel, swim.Salo finishes with the final

vi.
crushing fade out of ambivalent dancing & we realise
that we are watching, still attached by the ends
of our upper limbs. without growing fins
she looks me in the eyes & tells me about Pink Flamingos
dir. J Waters (1972) & how Divine eats dog shit, not
chocolate, & there is nothing quite like it
in all of cinema.