Daybook Fragments

1.

It is the variable distance
between two fixed points.

2.

Splayed your arms
reach the dead

on a sleeping verdure:
weigh the profusion
of eyelids─

symptomatic
of themselves: restless
lights bounce

in semaphore
over black waters.

3.

It is the burden

of unknowing the known
burden: laying-back in the past

preparing some kind
of demonstrative resolve.

4.

Inaudible breezes

backing the revolutions
of rusty clotheslines.

*

Fog curling

in tight fronds
over a corrugated
fence.

5.

Robed in blue light:

how the staircase
trembled beneath us.

We were already
there before─

testing our keener habits

our splintered urges

unsustainable
comforts.

6.

It is the moment the murmur
became the whisper
fed through thick-fingered hands.

7.

On the gray
pillow─

pressed to her hand:
sleep-stung lips

still courting

their issue of silence:
her violent dreams

out-reckoned.

8.

Rise like iris smoke: mouthing hostilities.

It is the action unaware of its origin.

Winter Memento

          for Dean Havard

Recall a night
sitting on the roof
of your garret
at 253 Ponsonby Rd:
We smoked Lucky Strikes
& drank gulag coffee.

*

An aria wailed
in six million tongues
from the beat-up tape deck
as rainclouds
swallowed North Head
& drifted in across the harbour:
threatening to clear the city
of its neon conscience.

*

Remember, then,
the lit rooms of the houses
on the colonial streets
sloping down
to meet that storm─
how you showed me
a new ghost at every window.

©Michael Steven