We began as a clumsy collision
our bodies bumping and bruising with each dance of the carriage
a rattling rumba… ti ti ka ti, ti ti ka ti, 1 2 & 3, now where are we?
We try to make each other fit, etch ourselves upon the other
We spend time in each other’s daydreams, lulled by age and the lure of longings past
Slipping into sleep, your edges soften and I can climb in and explore your secrets,
crawl into your corners,
balance on your broken edges,
scramble across your scarred surfaces,
I find messages of forgotten codes and lost loves
a ticket, a talisman, a proof, a truth, a telling
I don’t let up
“Why are you leaving?” … “Where are you going?”
I’m shaking you awake and launching into you
until I’m impaled, expelled, laid bare, undone…
This time together is peeling me like wallpaper groaning off a wall
You skin me
and the hot red mess of my life spills out staining the floor
a murder on the dis-orient express
You remind me that my body is a vintage carriage and I’m a passenger in it, on this journey,
My life is running through me like a film
a stream of postcards and blurred impressions
merging into a melancholic rhythm
possibilities flashing past us and within us
like air rushing past bodies plummeting to earth
and we are dropped into each others’ arms
with a gasp, a jolt
(where am I?)
An almost death, a pleasurable preview of another place
beyond the confines of this carcass
outside the adolescent fumblings of flesh
But no, we’re not there yet
This is not truth but transience
We are derailed, marooned, in our fragile shells
drawing a promise in the misted window and opening a can of worms
Wanting
Distance
It’s always further than you thought…
And over before you know it.