David Byrne is pulled apart
by the paper-thin gears
inside my father’s car stereo,
compacting him into cubes,
swallowing them with my ear
over the opaque flotsam of
his backup band’s actions.
he is irrelevant to me,
as I pass the sun again,
burning over the perfume of
empty-looking gas stations,
and unzip the dress of the country
my car bouncing off into the distance
like a sound
gutted
and dying from loss of volume.
Alcohol is in the grass, my hair
in this green arena
where sunsets disrobe
like gods dying in battle.
The air is full of memories:
in unpicked flowers
and cheap swing sets
where the panorama of the city
will never find them.
It is forever a cool summer,
sobering to the skin,
as though nature looked back
and thought
those were the days.
Around train tracks,
the ghosts of Milcroft Park
wait like those lovers you wanted
to come and blind you with happiness
for no reason at all but
a healthy coincidence,
and then lay barefoot in the sun
like hearing your favourite song
for the first time.
Night will come from
the tail end of jealous floodlights,
bringing an oasis to its knees
where sunsets breathe into shadow
and the girls of summer go home again
like a diary page forgot.
Production: J Dilla
Featured Vocals: Pharoahe Monch
in autumn months
I am in love by the afternoon,
with the forest’s long hair head and
collecting in pillars by the road.
windows stay shut
and strangers dwell inside their own cage
with doubled medication
like a torch as the moon comes alive.
in autumn months
gardeners crack their skin on
electric green dew
and inhale the summer’s final breath
as the wilderness closes in.
trips to coffee
shops continue alone,
with the gust of highway traffic
licking my hands like a cold knife.
I.
cold moon morning crack in the country
white snow star trash is
filling the road with its dull girth
damn the artillery of aging cars
body which works against itself
engine and radio screaming
smell of gasoline with morning coffee
flat farms for miles
twin ends
converge
geometry of a car crash
sound of glass in slow motion
where angles cross angles over and over
while headlights close face
sobbing oil in all directions
and heartbeat like a skipping record
the angels
come faster than paramedics
II.
Do you remember the smell of late May growth,
when plants and weeds would yawn in afternoons
and glow with the cicada,
with the echo of their colour dying by sundown?
I knew you young,
back when seasons did not have date stamps
and the head of schoolyard blacktops was very real.
Back during that spring that seemed to
break into foreign months with reckless fury
and curse us with the promise of a clear sky.
There were birthdays: gold yellow,
turning the clock of our bodies to
wrinkles and other permanent things
that were less important than new toys.
Then, when
the cold broke, I hid in your basement with its
body like a clock, full of small plastic faces
and gears painted a thick, soppy white.
Winter’s purity tried to kill us,
out where the city could not molest fine air
lungs like mine could not swallow.
Blue scarf and toque
in hand, we walked though country wastelands
met by the crunch of our boots,
passed trees dead or dying,
to lakes, to bridges, to the end of flat earth
in the weak shells of our planetary skin
where the purity of gravity poked holes in the ice
and we sent toy after toy flying into that
shallow white bed,
just because.
Do you remember forgetting
me, like I forgot you among gowns and tassels;
among maturity and how playing for dreams while awake
is no longer enough for us?
My hair, cut, with every memory
falling in brown tufts to the floor of
barbershops. They are swept up with every
minor inconvenience and fed to the wind –
that faceless librarian of found stories –
and I march away like quicksilver.
No, there is no remembering,
for all my body is lost
and we are not the sepia children
amazed by joint computers;
holding stomachs full of cake;
painted by a fair’s perfect sunlight;
or anything else
I think we should be.
There is just G.I. Joe
laying at the bottom of the lake,
eyes bent skyward,
done with waiting.
Performed by: Yo La Tengo
white holy tranquilizer
with a kiss like
warm milk shots
eclipsing my lips
drowning drowning
in cotton candy rapture
love is shooting from our calm
gravitational theatre
we are abstract
an arsenal of hues
which blend & moan
like an autumn sunset
in event horizon
joining or hands over
deadstars islands & dreamwaves
our song moves every atom
cut
at the end of desperation’s cable
sliding into oblivion
you are a parachute of a warm lightning
who mingles with my bones
and rides the carousel
of my breath
this is everytime
we let our phones fall asleep
or put down a pen
in favour of wild
rainbows without reward
I find myself in your palm
ashgrey blue & unspoken
with every lost dog sorrow
every ending to fix
and you revive me
like a fifth season without
name or time
here we are
melting forever
in the labyrinth of your room
under acrylic blankets
and I shall not want
with your voice to create
constellations in our
shadow lines
