a tourist in your own city

less than one week
in the city of light
and we have already chosen
brand new names
for all our old diseases.

announcements
boom out across
the streets,
nonsensical combinations
of dada poetry
that turn passer-bys
back and forth
on the footpaths,
navigating the invisible maze
of sound in their minds.

***

we’d made paintings
that breathed in our pockets,
living capsules of pigment
to carry about
like mobile phones:
stroking, clutching
whispering to.

we’d penned multiple
sonatas for posterity,
pieced together from notes
found lying on the footpaths

our final rauschenberg homage
sculptures of invisible skin
built on the frames of our bodies.

we’d birthed
panic
the colour of kerouac,
the colour of metal

deposits
built up in our blood like silt
a reminder of
substances
we had ingested or inhaled
sometime in our childhood
and would remain with us
indefinitely.