We are divided by Colorbond and legality

finding only quandary in the fine print.

A figure bends before a typewriter, striking
and striking and continually returning to

the same point, the same itinerant waiver

made in the same index by the same key.
Carbon copies lay their stain on everything

and are peeled away to give a grey facsimile,

the non-idealised present from a definite past.
The pallor has no expectation of this happening

again. It has been revealed and shaken off from

the original and all the division, the notation,
the rummaging for words to give it authority

will not let the attribution of each laboured

phrase more than a moments speculation
before the thought moves on. The bell will

ring, like a tiny bicycle travelling. The carriage

will return like a car not hitting the right gear
and fingers will seem snide and calculating

as they often do in this protracted happening

which crosses the page and knows no temper
other than its reach toward an ending. You

are not contained here, in the processing,

arguing words. You are not contained in an
alphabet which straps you in an armband

of apology. When the fences are raised

and the argument over, there is only a garden
seat to hold you in contemplation, long after

the unsatisfactory copy has been dealt out

to all those who may feel its vigour, bill-posted
or tacked against a lean-to of unacceptable

risk. The placards have been torn by the wind

or shredded in anger. The opening of green
is now simply a locked gate in the iron. When

the face of the question is returned to again

it will be as if all the words of pro- and con-
came and went and meant nothing. The sky

is seeded with letters ripped from the page

and the air around you is a fingerprint which
dissipates in the rain. We have drawn these

lines and they are now a frame or cage, and

everything written is extrapolation towards
an ending. Is this the only copy? I hear

someone say. Is there only one expectation

you hold for a legality? My only answer is
in the page that now flies uncontained in

the wind. If you should want another you

must look to the typewriter which made
me do it. Let it ring like a telephone as

the next page is ejected. Let it ring like a

school bell, a shrill sound for where it began.
Let it ring for a year of so little colour, where

the patience for legitimising words seeps

in ink from a key held down far too long.