there’s a place I don’t go
where the rocks grind smooth
a place where dancing cockatoos
sing glitter tunes in hot pubs with
sticky carpet and the clunk of
boulles outside in a warm
pink evening
I don’t abide there anymore
in a beer-soaked fug of joy
the urgent oration
knowing words were
so important
ephemeral
and you
looked at me across the bar
flying on sequin wings
back to the room of my four-poster bed
yet another place I no longer dwell
my sands are shifting
and the tides
always the same but
look at the minutiae
different every time
so how
do you justify or feel safe
always, it vibrates
buzzing with life or at
mechanical pace
like the train rattles by my place
at night, dark speedthought tangles trace
catch and drag
that undertow when sleep
is lying backwards
underwater and
looking up at the light
nowhere else to hide
and no place to return to
do, do, do, do
ideas massed like kelp piles, stinking high
how do I…
where is, why,
just write.
clairevetica 