I am a long acceptance of things rusted on

a passive agent of decay:

             a sick flow, blooming/spreading

             down weathered stair treads,

the rotten stench of paperbark trees rising,

a window-slung bed sheet, trapping heat.
I am complicit. I give and receive in equal

measure – a deep trouble settled:

             the verandah and its war-weary

             collection of baby things,

4pm starts, dark/dangerous – his kitchen

chair perch: rugby shorts and bare chest.
The idea of going is intermittent, delicate,

bursting quietly under hangdog skin

             outside of the choke

             when the wind/blood gets up

and the boiled night spills from hallways,

up/down streets: family lines and Bibles. 
I grow middle-aged/ugly between walls.

I lay belly-up, like the letter D.

             I imagine playing dead

             my body, carried away by insects

better that, than the hunting inside this

blunt menace: mill town engines/denims.
I imagine the road out, serpentine sure,

hugging the thickened river’s gleam

             past smashed bauble middens

             surveyors’ pegs marking hot spots

for every broken angle here in this place,

each fall, effortlessly close to the branch.
Under my eyelids, the vivid flicker of flight

pictures – cheap rooms! ice cold beer!

             the town’s deadpan whistling,

             pocketed hands by the river,

generational harbours and hideouts for

pounds of muscle, straining at the chain.