doubt

I've begun to doubt the structure
of things - I fear slipping out the
bottom of the bus, tumbling through
seats into the ocean basalt
everything seems dangerously translucent,
opacity removed
I see skeletons, rigid metal under-
structures but the skin's gone and I'm
porous, seeping out
I'm losing faith in the structure of
all things

fiscal returns

I've been living beyond my means,
reckless, irreversible, for far too long
I've borrowed, spent and spent
I can't sustain it anymore.

I've taken from you
freely given perhaps, but pounds
are pounds when paid in flesh
and this is nothing less than liquidation

you've nothing to give, oh, I know
I'm scrambling, pleading with
implacable men in dark suits
inscrutable behind horizon lenses

you're out there, lost to deprivation
we wish each other sleep
we wish each other well but
I've nothing you want anymore

far

And now, very suddenly, inexplicably, I am alone again.

On the far side of the world, with someone who can't love me properly anymore, because she doesn't feel she loves herself.

I have only love for her, still.

But that's not enough. Not anymore.

I'm flying 'home', where she isn't - I'm not sure if I'll come back.

What choice is there? Stay and forge a new life in the same city or leave, fleeing her and here; write it off as a bad bad year and slip back home, slink back home, alone, without her.

Whilst she moves and lives, on the far side of the world...

...

a break with tradition

ectomies

don't even know if you come
here
not anymore, that's a step too
far - to much engaged with our
secret failings, orange-juice conspiracies and
tumors unsaid
simple scars aren't a guide to slips and
purses
you're aching, stripped, white, greedy
for a new skin
greedy for an eloquence, a rage
something to delight in
not this abstract
second-hand condition

try not to say the word 'I' -
it's harder than you think - stay
in the prose and lick your way out.
there's a spark in everything
it's just that you're not;
complete in teeth
sound of mind
bathed in a glow like kerosene-fire

how burning's burnt?
would you meddle just to stay
bonded - drawn bakers, bring
a platter round, lay out sweet meats
and indelicate cheese hunks,
a stiff odd knife left to cut
(in the shape of a mouse)
everything here is ours
it's marked

the air, the atoms, the tiny cracks in the paint
on the door above your bed,
where you disipate each night
I watch you slink back in like a fog,
re-piece yourself, fill up the doona,
patch by patch
to resemble you - but tonight
I see infra-red
and it's a dark red smear across your face
obscuring
endless
savage
unhealed and unheralded

That face - it seeps me of me
wrings dry sweat, I can't stop smelling my self
the stink - pent up, pulsed, pushed
the stink
politeness is not the answer,
dogged semantic water-boarding brain
sleep-deprived, insolent
it gives name and rank
name and rank
name and rank
but nothing comes out, a cake
crumbling into bathwater

turning, hoping the subtle power of my
stare captivates you to talk -
begs you to corroborate,
to suggest just one second-guess
but I see all the spectrum
and you're already trailing out the door
a red gash, a tell tale invitation
to make shanty town preparations for
inebriate healing

I think the lumps back -
at least that's something