dinner with YL - at my place is a rice wrapper, and written on it a line that the woman next to me translates something like - the cloth that covers the dead... you wrap it and wrap it around your wound...


"YL I have to say you are the happiest poet I've ever seen-"
"-well, the first thing is that poetry isn't made on the face"

& then there's "nightmare inspiration"

an ocean of the dead    like iron, giving off a fishy smell 
the rusty sunlight has passed by 
sniffs at you like an old dog 
a dog staring    the scene is particularly clear from the bridge

over and over you wrap the shroud around your wound - 


hello again Carmen of the cream skin your hair cerise then violet then umber then fuschia, weekly, daily changes framing silence we're 13 silence in french class if you have to your accent is better than anyone's

when we're 18 there you go grafton bridge

hello Carmen the accent of your past, mum and dad soothing bedtime tears with weed, green weeds linking so many feet together

hello dog, dear friend, hello dog

under the bridge now do I kiss, whose swollen hands becoming ground and ground becoming  - a language, rooted in inchoate remembrance, opening to rain, rain washing the black carbon, sulphur, exhaustion from the shining leaves. now do I kiss who, who, who.

shining, leaves.

hello you.

I wrapped your shroud around my wound many times. your ears, on the inside, were black. you were fried but the make-up was good.



slow images bubbling up in front of the drowsing fingers - the motorbike, the motorbike
the red motorbike in the driveway, this meant nothing

till I remembered the motorbike I sold
till I remembered the motorbike you said
I'm going to drive it off the fucking bridge
(easy easy)
drunken beast in yellow plastic roaring no,
no you don't, if you loved me you wouldn't treat me like this

operatic

tentative fingers darling plumb your old helmet


prepare it for sale



check the tag for size



& on my fingers comes the smell of rancid skin


 (I pours like sand in a funnel into itself. am I ok? am I ok? embellishment of sand, a funnel for sand made of sand. of course I's not ok. wants to stop here, in a tragedy of gagging in the sink

only, nothing stopped there or started there, more questions, open your eyes