I want the building

that stretches up past

the top of the white like driving
up a summer road into heat-haze

that ends, might end, here

with low gray 
and I never noticed the sky.

Why fear what’s out of the frame?

I cannot name this city
except to say I went there once

and everywhere was white

and perpendicular and nothing
was like myself or my city.

Man has not burnt with fire,

this building shall not either.
Black has a falseness.

I grow nostalgic

for primary colours, for sound. 
But I work when the scenes

only empty,

the end of the stairs.
I think the sky is clouded

but maybe it’s not. They can create me,

I give myself the lassitude of stone.
I wanted none of this. Speech

beyond speechlessness.

A slow lyric.
Step away from me,

back towards the cars

parked resting in a row.
I want to gather together

our last breaths

and float.
I cast nothing behind. Step.

I’ll find a piece of wood

to step to. A bridge.
I’m casting shadows you can’t see.

Here. It’s all the way

gone down slow.
Talk slower. My building

to tear. You tear.

Wear myself, your sleeve,
tissue thin, skin,

voice is the opposite

of cloud.
I’ve missed

the sensate elements of thought.

Your mouth
tastes metal as you fall,

or as you remember

falling.
What my hand holds

is not mine,

but the sensation is,
those small tendrils

of electricity.

I am never going to be a person.
I am never going to be a person

who dies in a fire,

I am never going to. 
Put your face

up against

a window,
it’s yours

these clouds,

slow pokes of air,
your lungs burn,

even if a fire

couldn’t make a match flicker,
keep this: sand, sky, stone,

the grim thing of what’s outside,

your own fallow feelings,
the falling.