There's never been an excuse, you always knew
it was best to ignore it, to drown that hollowing voice
in cascades of inertia. Those fluid columns
fall with a certain beauty after all, and smash
stunningly into your stillness, as if there really were
something happening, as if those tossed reflections
were faces that belonged to you. And what of the recessed
demons who grin and turn away, the flames
are flickering darkly against the roof of your mouth.
It takes so long to be obvious. If you knew who to call
your throat would be full of god, but the code slips past you,
simple and closed, like the face of a celebrity,
and you just wait on the train between stations,
watching the sky break open and float away.
Behind the afternoon are stars that only the darkness can beckon,
behind those faces a flame is waiting for nightfall,
impossible bridges arc over the horizons
in inexplicable colours, as if a dream came real
and stepped outside you, and all this beauty were yours.
You watch your hand on the cliff face, it seems astounding
such power could curl inside it, to lift a bottle of lye
or drive a knife through skin or sign the ultimatum,
one small act and everything is different. What world is this
that has such choices in it? Yet when the ads peel back
their dazzling skins, who cares? That late-night horror
plays again and again, the blood-mouthed woman
stretches out on the shiny car, the planet goes on dying
under the welts of a billion poverties, and all the little flies
curl up and buzz inside a billion webs. Their prismed wings
are clogged with dust, and at this distance panic
dulls to a drowsy hum. Who were you waiting for? Angels?
Or have they abandoned the earth, being abandoned?
As if the tight white ball of a bud on an orange tree
could save you, as if the rose-coloured light
that alters a street of naked trees were a blessing,
you wait, trusting the warped seasons. You hear
that the art of hope is obsolete, and wipe your benchtops
clean with poison, turn on the silent clocks, measure
your life with whitegoods. And who now stalks these cavities,
monstrous with belief? Was it a god, were those plutonium wings
once made of feathers? It's not as if you can see
the path of its voice, the dread scorching beneath your skin.
It's not as if you know why your hair stiffens
with awe. And is there anything bigger than you, that galaxy
afloat in your skull? Where to begin?
--
Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
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