Poetry

Fish do not have hands but do
display a breathless, almost
childlike, quality, even in emails.
Everyday activities can often be
 
the most meaningful signifiers.
I want to create that exclamation
mark balloon & “DING” sound
to occur during a cutscene, but
 
my browser can’t play the video.

Around the stone, unusually smooth
I’d feel the spit inside my cheeks
and think of how an oyster works
at a single piece of grit.
I remember once reading
that sucking at a pebble
could stave off thirst.
I doubted this and always felt a shiver
when it touched against my teeth.

White ibis unpicks lawn seams / on slope from road with mansions / down to river where trees fret / if they rise even slightly higher/ than views from balconies. These / jitters of an infernal naturalism.

Did the fury descend, or burst? Permian Extinction followed the Permian Eruptions; thus, precedence. I was pretty worried about dying during this long phase of my life, even underwater, greatly upsetting the bioluminescence. As a shrimp, I felt like a little kid. There were no libraries in the ocean then. I had to make do with wild hypothesis, skittering tra-la through the coral reefs and somehow knowing one day I’d wear a T-shirt saying, ‘I Survived the Permian’.

Some tired nights are just a put-on for sleeping / if wake-ups sometimes unfurl in uppercase bold / or wallow in triggering charades or hectic sense.

 

Shuttling through dreams and their unruly debriefings / I’m pieced together barely, as a funky slippage told / with an addition of madcap or cryptic interest.

In Antwerp he asks the truck drivers

but in vain. The day starts fading

& they, without being trapped by

retrospective, exert no influence upon

judgements of distance. He walks away

 

from them. All totalitarian dystopias,

in life & in art, seem to be obsessed

with the everyday crimes of the

middle classes. The Texas Chain-

saw Massacre keeps looping in

Hey don’t get mad this is not for you

you’re not rich white

in velvet seats

saucer eyes waiting

 

for overripe tropes of war

to theatre-rise & muzak gush:

Vietnam whorehouses US helicopters

I don’t understand this new way

of living. Buying a house then razing it.

 

Even the grass. So everything

 

is new. Everything

 

is not new. Is it

 

a relentless flight from

 

ourselves?