cordeaux

three resounding knocks from the inside of my ilium.

they try to escape from my hips

and they manage to seep out through the seams

only when i sit, nude.

seven fentanyl-doused clicks from the inside of my ulna.

they try to escape from my wrist

and they manage to seep out through the seams

only when in hospital, surrounded by four

that try to coax them back in.

and fifty-nine crackling pops from the inside of my patella.

they try to escape from my knees

and they manage to seep out through the seams

‘that never used to happen’

have you not been watching, or have i not?

and they have some good ideas,

and they are pretty smart,

to make me realise that i need to let them out

with their ploys and their inconveniences,

heed their warning when you sit there,

as the sky burns a shameful red,

and think to yourself,

that there isn’t much time left to let them out.

if they must crack my bones

and tear my muscles to get out,

i don’t think they’re stubborn,

i just won’t listen.

and they may never see the light of dawn.

they may never see the scalp of the earth,

and they may never see the dark of dusk,

or the white, star speckled halo far from our feet.

they may never be me,

and we, together, might never be them.

crooked and sinister, they discuss.

congregating below and hiding above,

splitting to a smile inside a smile,

and offwhiting, and migrating.

it's our job to liberate them,

to cleave their maxilla

and create fault lines,

to rumble them into place,

our job to unbeige an idiosyncratic melange,

to condemn,

twixt track and mountain,

i sit on a boundary of bitumen,

on a small bench in front of a polite sign,

enshrining this here

with what it is to be called.

this a memory i have that i hoped might truly be

o, for your cheeks will be sand dunes from some foreign desert,

and when the sands shift as you smile

two wells appear on either side.

to run athwart would tire our greatest warriors.

o, for your craters will be a dozen fallen stars,

a constellation,

and your nose will glow bright with your recent skin.

i have never seen you besides in a mirror.

as i sat on that train, and as that train pulled to a stop,

in the window’s reflection it seemed as if you were there,

sitting on that small bench in front of that polite sign.

staying put

i think for thirteen months since visiting Gaia’s right shoulder –

a climb climbed mudded and sodden –

i’ve known the petrol station lies in Her blown-off head.

overshadowed by fernleaf, underscored by bitumen,

as the cars travel the highway

through the gap between Her collarbones.

to tend to the cars are two people,

father and son, living a standardised life

cradled by black from Her lungs,

we entitle it naphtha, black gold;

it lies in vats on their aluminium shelves.

in thirteen months, i return to herald Her ethereal cerebrum,

a ghost of Her neck cut for a highway.

i return, return to view flattened undulations,

the distant towers near, to hear the roar of machine,

and i can see: