After each voyage has crumbled into ephemera
I return to the house
and its quay; I circle the edge before skittling
off to the suburbs.
Come to me, I cry, crass plastic and screaming sail,
shining, golden city
slumped and seeping tune! This evening
my heart’s emptier than a harbour.
I gulp down your butyric cocktails
of seafood and suit.
I drink, drown and restart
sharp as a note, sharp
as a particlar location in space
– one
of one million locations – one
of one trillion locations in space.
Looming, it’s stretched, blasting,
the melody caves in
upon me and I’m pushed out
the other side
into pure noise, pure scrunching and there’s Sydney,
the starless face,
the writhing highway intoxicated with its own
waxed tarmac.
Ragged music blows in from the desert,
from the sea;
ragged sheet music catches
on a barb. Sydney’s
a barb on a rusted wire;
it pierces currents, injects tetanus;
it’s the time towards which
we tumble inexorably,
away from which we surge, searching.
© Stuart Cooke
Poem and Dish 