the years of collection, walls

nacreous from hoardings, a paper

codex, squirrelings, till each room,
a labyrinth of the past, teeters

ceiling to floor with extracted

life, objectified, amassed, meant,
grows out to clog the doors

packs down the hallway,

exudes into the garage, engulfs

a car, morphs towards the street
this refuge for roadside discards knows

all the damp sufferings of domestic

disintegration, the decay

of possibilities for:
baskets, doll houses, tins, cupboards,

chairs, lowboys, blinds, plastic toy

lawnmowers, upholstered blanket

boxes, ornaments, a model elephant, wicker

side tables, pots, decades of newspaper
when the grey wisps pump out

from the side of the house, grey blood

rising furious at past containment
everything there comes into itself

the house, the stacks, the compacts

with rancid fat and frayed electrics

all the puttings-up with of the floor

the doors,  frame work, roof and

tiles, all conspire, cease to be

shelter and go with the loading

to make

too much fuel for any fire to continue

to resist
heat, fervent heat and plenty of it,

billows of pumping smoke,

carbon unbounded
glass exploding, a fire music,

as windows hammer

out a percussive map
bits of ash, cinders, specks

newspaper coins

floating off
a fire engine pissing itself

like a red cow on bitumen
dozens of red blue lights rotate

in scenic hypnosis, everything

a filtre of smoke, strobes,

sirens, engine burble

takes over as sound
Is your mike switched on –

he shouts ?± I've got no fucking

audio ?± young men in suits

ask the voyeurs

do you live here?
I half expect that newspaper,

1986 front page coverage of the Space

Shuttle disaster, betrayed to the

footpath in the year 2000

to come back burning,  those

fragments floating down

might be the Space Shuttle

falling, burning twice
instead a grey, yellow, fluxing

mauve  and green plume

of particulates, fume, ash, monoxides

cyanides and stinging aromatics

lifts, snakes over the Harbour Bridge,
the firies, muddy with ash

sag in the gutter, companionable

with their green air tanks
the smoke kinks south, sifts

falls and blows, undoing, like flames

in all foolish directions