seven

do not speak to us
of history
in this place

do not speak to us
at all.

seven
pilgrimages
in seven years

& already i wonder
if this journey is my journey
at all.

***

the city walls
pulse with a language
understood only

by those
who have just been born
& those about to die.

the city gate opens,

i close my hand
over my mouth

one last time.

the thought

report card

the ghosts of the city
were everywhere that night

cascading down escalators

sleeping in doorways
of houses all over
the eastern suburbs.

you sat in a hot portable classroom
staring at interesting cloud formations,

still seven songs separating


your ghosts from mine.

the alphabet one feels with their fingers to read

we stayed for days
on the underpass

watching mechanical music
fall from the sky

watching cars spill onto
the streets beneath us.

unimaginable colours
marbled across
dashboards and windscreens

you held
all ten fingers

up to the sky

a highway semaphore

i imagined
what radio waves
might haunt
the crisp clean air
around us.