The Satisfaction of Speech

By | 1 June 2014

Stretched out across the selfish wool table,
I fix on a mood in the high key of you,
twiddle my hi-viz wedding ring
and laugh at the way rhyme and metre
protect us from happiness. Angels’ tears
fill the rivers of hell in a song I wrote about you
but nobody’s crying in Atlantis now that we’ve
franchised the reckless antinomies of belated
centurian. Flickering intimate ceremonies
across elmscape cinemas – I wonder how I got so far
away. Landscaped by patent-pending geography,
maxed out in the merchant’s tent of never giving up
on always disappearing. Something in the way you
move, the stave that answers to what was barely
required. The concentration of your Northern Rivers
Cattle Rustle Drawl strings silence across the estuary
wide on sonic sighs and moans. Hitching a ride on your
electrical substation, the way you say my father’s name,
a high tension wire whipping through the gizzard
of I feel too much the surfeit. Are you a real shearer
or just pretending? Your Yackandandah stare fleeces me
witless, that wolf you’re wearing goes with everything.

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