We become our shopping

something that’s not quite feeling

a semi-emotion as if underwater

or near tears unable to breathe or drown.
Are we living in the present

tense or another kind of mood?

Where are the horses, the plains?

All is now the ting machine

like hearts and minds living

diffidently ‘with eyes closed’.
Tiredness streams in the

supermarket’s eyes, all of this

heaviness on shelves

shrinkwrap cackling.
There are dry leaves everywhere

bursting in the doors

over the white floor

perpetual death and life intertwined

like insect swarms, webs, cords.
The weights of money and goods

topple against our hide, our putty

skins, our plastic dresses, over our gritty

eyes, the smoke in our torsos

abdomens, our breasts all sexual desires

melting around our knees

packages of frozen meat, spiderlike

movements over our buttocks, tattoos

on our ankles in the shape of wings

but faded, distended.
We should be laughing instead

of wandering like evaporated luck

or a plot of cash points

a graph of bewilderments on price tags

sliding doors into the great cavern of the centre

full of gems, gowns, movie tricks.
And exit signs stretch out like

a system, a straight-seeming system

that is soon a dead-end, a locked door

in the shape of wings but faded.