I.
Something drops onto my left shoulder

as we dreamfuck each other’s outlines. I scream

A COCKROACH. They brush it off

but the threat is still there

and the bedroom is too messy and there are

too many places for insects the size

of THE FINGER to hide.

As much as I want to

keep us between our thighs, Kafka’s too real and I

stumble backwards through the

doorway.
II.
Sunlight refracts and glitters like a miracle.

I burst up from beneath the water

to the surface. An old beard on the shore is

jump–waving at me, not in greeting

but in warning. The ocean is coming.

I swim–run–crash to the sand; it breaks, consumes the mangroves,

the leftover lands.
III.
Reach into the independent world created out of pure intelligence.

Find the Eye of Horus fragments and balance them back together,

a reaction, a product,

a chromodynamic alchemist trapped in their own house–

X’s bedroom–childhood home,

underground tunnels blocked off by

bookshelves–cupboards–rubble.
IV.
I clamber further into the womb that bears no new life,

only that which has died many times before.

I know it is a trap.

Submit to the pursuit–earthquake–collapsing

lungs,

the red blue eyes that do not blink. A knife is never just a knife

but the intention.

I surrender / cease to slither. I am at the bottom of a hole

in the earth and all I can see

is the light I cannot reach,

diaphanous mercury

mutating.
V.
Until the hole is not a hole

but the outline of other people creatures.

I have so much space to move

between them, even nod my head in greeting to some,

share a knowing crescent moon.
VI.
I did not expect to find you here, waiting for me.

Your skin a forest floor,

your greeting that of a child

run–laugh–hiccupping

down a hill.

Open I LOVE YOU like

I’ve loved you for as long as

the speed of causality

which I have, since
\ the doubletake on the bicycle
          \ a doorstep and scrolls of voice across the strait
\ a journey to                                           \ the choir

    the end of the night                                                                 \ prescient fried

                                                        \ the backseat of a taxi          vegetable dumplings
\ 4am fog       \ the smell of the first fruit                    \ eight hours straight

                          of fig season                                              along the Hume Highway
\ the second cup

    of a twice-born panther            \ , since I first saw you on stage.
VII.
            I am inappropriately dressed for such an occasion,

        swaddled only in the misery

           we were assigned

               but as we embrace, the cloak transitions:

                    a shimmering black cape,

                  a manta ray,

                 pale rainbow nacre,

                  the warp and weft of

                    sunrise–sunset.
VIII.
And though we are two separate knots

together

   we disentangle.
   Wind the loom’s prophecy

backwards   then

                 reloop:
IX.
             \\ Kαι εν κοιλάδι σκιάς θανάτου

        η ΓΗ είναι ο ποιμήν μου –
    \\ Yea, though I walk through the valley

                  the LAND is my shepherd –
X.
                time travels south

                 into the gut

                   and pelvis
                                               horny! for the tall copper tower

                                 horny! for the many names of truth

                              horny! for visions bigger than revolution
                                                        walk the language

                                                        between languages
                                                                                   the breaking of the word

                                                                                   like bread