Big animal of times, you roam loose between storeys
in a country of gas like the bright routes of electrons
and the ground now shower
disturbs you, its colours of rose or acid pink
catch you in rumours trapped between states
(the postage stamp rectitude of Maine)
(the secular Israel of California)
as a woman (caught between) kisses as a man
sheltering a moment from sudden rain…
… may speak later of kissing

When the tower is 'it' and the object fort
kissing lips us all and we separate, you, I,
days in the sparkling inn of thought by the sea
crystallised like a sugar cube to the shape of philosophy
faces aching for fingers or a tongue
to dissolve from wrapped things to taste or touch
to melt into use and to constant users

When 'total' is dust and ash, are you checking in?
Portmanteau story, you commence with new friends
who care for the lovely phenomena of your eyes
which are swept up to the dice–
hand of your thrown name
and the laundered Himalayas of September cloud
I step from like a mountain hostel
pure and anchoritic among slack seasonal trade
myself bright and neat as the rectangles of stamps
and distilled to such fame as the British Guyana 1 Cent
the sweetest shape to travel across borders
defined within its own a definite sign

Inn of the pulse, you register in heartbeats
wait by the phone on the shore of a voice
your head resting atomic weights in your hands
grief guilt regret despair
the poet too tired to keep your head together
the windscreen wipers of a German car
saying nein: verboten nein: verboten to rain
when 'total' is Israel, the zion of sleep
after a long long time on the way
your diary a soft strobe of filling stations and fast food
blurring to the one light darkness
Eaten by rose and by arrows of pink leading away to you
qualities graze on you when the subject is 'cloud'
and by some distance an all-consuming passion
the genius philatelist with a book of rare stamps
the priceless (ones) freaks the aborted, suppressed
to a fading inn of unique mutation
the head you love most the one like your child
cut from the soul's letter and the address it contained
secret and unseen (it) in our lives between us
is held in the strange bank for a common safekeeping

Solitary ruminant of the massive tower
when the building is 'fire', the index 'inferno'
in the distinct patois of each region you are debated
and illuminated skins record dead gods
in a scrapbook atlas of marine detours
living in the remains of torn up seas

The wrecked angles of cars lie by the roadside
and you pass them in light traffic and leave them behind you
while that enigmatic columnar 'I' is enveloped by signs
like a letter you wrote when you were younger, and believed
like the tattooed number upon a forearm, a shavenheaded song
(All my thoughts are of you)
(You are always on my mind)
the semblance of another day
booking into your motelhead, crashing for hours

This poem is called Gethsemane III: The Impossibility of Watching
and I am a sleeping disciple my weariness
cut from your Jesus and your word and,
my room number is 1 when the story begins
and the good hotel of your smile makes a guest of me
resting late in the morning and then not hearing
of how the Treskilling Yellow was sold
Hollywood Time making its film of dust, the epic Meanwhile
selves in tins a moral by-product
the stamp a skin the light hurt with no one feeling
and the atmosphere of held breath corroded
a Nazi lampshade and my baby grief
and rumour, the stuff of instants,
in the pilgrim diner, massive for seconds

Copyright © Michael Ayres, 2003.