Leafland
Thin divide of tarmac and sewer gap,
Stretching a line across street's danger
And the shove, heave, sidewalk glisten
Accosted by maws and drool and good
Couples leering, smiling, select glinting
As to…
No we're not large enough for empathy
—not just yet.
Whistle of falling leaves and heaving
Lungs and incalculable distance, too
Minute and private, blank eyes held in a
Network of missingnesses, sweating
Green matrix of unreciprocation— or
You wish.
Reciprocation delivers in the essence of dogs laughing and the lurching, spluttering of the shadows who guide them. Not human, but unalone
—and all too.
Emotions from the future (if it's not new
We don't wanna feel it), entangled
In the enemy's minimum-effort empathy,
Ran like interference, leaf-fall on the lakes
Of their souls they made from mirrors
(They're more scared of you),
How in viral shudders your arms are the colour of music. The radar's unreadable. Long- and too minute-, incalculable-range missiles astonish the enemy with invisible and inaudible fury. Feel what shouldn't be, and they'll say
They feel nothing.
There's no conspiracy, except against
Secrecy, 'And is that not the opposite?'
Night in Nouméa, cruise guide warns me:
'The trees have eyes, we say,' but the people?
Here, where the royal colour is Infrared,
Only the bats have eyes.
Among many, the first Rite of Belonging
is the penance of not-being. Unborn again,
blinking in the dry air,
They blink the light back out of their teeth.
Ash-sift of dust, rain's disintegration
As flecks, motes, gold particles of absence
Flock, speckle the wind with nothing to breathe,
Stack gapnesses extorting oxygen,
Dry, spitting depths like invisible smoke
That drown the death out,
And cram your soul with jagged cubes, cuts of life nobody asked for, indeed screamed protest at the ripping and plunging sun-bits retched high-up-to-down to snick, to bloodlet
Your Nothing back.
Time's mark on two dimensions on Screen Street
Spills knots of bodiless zoning, blurs tracks,
Tracks blurs, re-paths amid the re-organ-ing
Of the Disembody. Maps de-collapse.
Maps wake. Golden Age sucks bruise-blue Youth down
To site. To 'You are here—'
Joie de vivre's a niche kink. Nothing you should be looking to see, hoping to see reflected, in any generation too young to be any of your dick's business. Live with
'—and not there.'
… [unfinished]