I

A nightmare about two land masses, and the wind is too strong to fly across. Fashion photography of melting ice. Less and less control

archeology is all upturned faces
unexpected digs

anthropologists stumble on thawing soldiers in mountain slough.

Roiling warmth.
Trickles of sound where there was silence.

Maybe now the man can become unstuck.
The heavy gears of mind

might free him, and then it won’t be silence but the long stream of sound in his mind
overheard, for this level of cold cannot sustain life.

Maybe now the woman can slow down, not whir with desperate grace to cover
her mind with sound.

II

The thick air of almost forty years old supports
memory codes, layered events. Daguerreotypes of children in water

movement in silence. Body is the water
but cannot bear it. Almost forty shuffles through index cards fast.

Toy of my generation: Star Wars figurines that move, screenwriting that elates and wires up intelligence. Dr Who, I understand!

(The planet suffers fatal surgery and donates its eyes)

The other land is not a symbol.
I am the symbol.
Binary mind: man woman mind cannot encompass the third, the child and breaks.

III

Perhaps the son is more ancient than the father, closer to sense. The son protects the father from hurt by avenging his sadness or going in, to see what was hurt and where, only to find there is no mortal enemy and no lines even, and enemy is everywhere, friend is everywhere and thought fills all space so he cannot shoot enough to stop the sound of his thudding heart.

Please don’t follow me here, would the hero say this? Let me die
harmonized by godlike love, washed clean. I know man

and woman but the truth is in between.

The story of the woman is a painting with eyes that follow you.
The story is not what happens.

IV

Any daughter must be enraged before her body will move. Stunned still by her useless power,
she must pick up each leg and tell it move. While you are moving
there is hope, she could say this

or say altogether less.

Streams of words trickling to form decisions or cures.
Sound could drive us mad really.

Everything is kept online anyway – but maybe hard drives always were external, if basic memory stores much of it and what we do defines us.

Find a word in this stream of consciousness.
This is a word hunt game,
the woman says.

Melbourne has put on bulk and sways like buildings
except they are fire. Art

is fire. Sky might.