i. Midflight, United States
Don’t look, says the Moon. Once again I remember how I got sick to my bones with gravity, with clarity I can’t bring myself to recount. Like sitting at a table laden with strangers. I am tapping the left to manage the cacophony. To the right, a sharpening axe. Scrolling through my phone, a bent cop snatches my hand. Cold and exhausted city, the Moon in its eye, looking gone for years.
ii. Sags and Dearth in Middle England
Ah / To be able to feel / That way // To not ask rainy questions of the Spring /// To win the genetic ballot and be able to garden / With no gloves on / No hay / Fever / Interruption. // To introspect instead of sneeze / Or flee // To have the space / To till the soil of one’s desiring // To love without observing / Traffic lights / Inspection schedules // Knowing full well / You’re going straight to Hull // Your body / A road paved with rude dementia / Boarded windows / Gandhian eyebrows / Small British squalor // Nah nah nah / Nah nah nah nah / Spattering in your lonely head / All the way to Kingston
iii. Midway on the journey of
The road I’ve taken,
made of disinclinations
and distentions, is
often not a road
at all, but a kind of skid,
a scuddle, a shunt —
gravity pulling
weight, declaring direction
in the unmarked wilds,
and then: the glare of
an absence, the misplaced trust.
Sometimes the fresh-fuelled
car won’t start. Sometimes
a different cardinal proves
magnetic. Home is
the road we need not
follow; that shadows us. Crest
or trough, no map may
ascertain. Until
the heart is plumbed. The clear path
forsworn to tend its
bounds; how we must bend
to bear, witness, deem what it
was that was passed through.
