Iron plenty of smooth space, alone and not belonging
to the porcupine cladding of the public domain
the metal concerto of my body's roads goes on through the night
when I hear the freight trains from a summer room
in the Three Flamingos Hotel shaping to sleep
in the endless hollow hands of others
when touch is all there is and we call it 'a journey'
when peace is all there is and we call it 'myself'

I almost cry when I think of the words of the Zen master on love
(there is no need to guard love,
you may as well try to guard space itself)
while in cigarette light of the Different Motel the Next Day Motel
I'm smoked azimuths and laterals a mishmash of takeaway foods
thinking of Being-broken Kerouac alone on Desolation Peak
still reaching for you with my airspace fingers
and still lost somewhere between eggshells and seashells

The small railway station is painted a light-faded pink
and holds the desert close between cactus lips and bleeds a little
and can't support its own huge symbolic status for longer than a breath
is like trembling wings in the butterfly book the Rarest Hotel
we rest in a moment the beautiful illustration an oasis of highs
our lift-off colours split poppyhead green split poppyhead red
and in elite sighs our handpicked illusion comes apart at the seams
fleeing the austral heat Tokyo neon and a semantic delirium
cleaving to the fatality of detail the exact click of icecubes in a glass
and the dwarf crunch of sugarcubes the long trip
runs straight through we call 'the kiss afterwards'
your smile littered with tiny crumbs
our picky ambition fasting among lamas and zero rocks
our hunger to slow ourselves down to one mutual mirror
and a careless gaze see shells
in narrow mantis eyes romanticised our classic positions
edible people in all their soluble flesh
snapped off the branch in rigid tongues
choosing the flower we call 'I'
choosing the terminal we call 'mine'

Yes our progress is picaresque and we change trains all the time
the Station Pink butterfly alights on your hand
and is the rarest species of that moment in the sun
and no one is staying in the Ovid Motel tonight
except us and the kiss we call Abraham, the kiss we call David, or Isaiah
and our xeroxing caresses snow manna in the wilderness style
Mandelstam's lithographic Crimea and the secret
philatelist of moments the beautiful
Dutch Blues soviet lustres the strange eye–siege
the drooping desk clerk in his chocolate and ochre livery
surveying the Ocean Feet and the Ozymandias Fiat
the genus slipping my mind for a spell
the slipshod achilles of the fleet
and the humbled, the cool water love in the mirage of meaning
taking a drink we call 'loss'
yet still being thirsty

Copyright © Michael Ayres, 2003.