The Year I Delete Instagram
Sitting at this distance from the city—
resonant intolerable growl, and its back shimmering
in the old-growth smoke; it is some dying thing
in immense planes of prehistory,
it is starship stripped for parts. Jazz sounds,
incipient flick of floodlights, then from that gloom
faces of the young people, all half-eaten
or mummified, walking on bridges, dozing in the sun,
medicated, swimmers in a dream, woozy overdrunk,
woozy with a love they have no name for,
something some call hope or fear or shame.
Such tender new muscles aching, such tears that flow:
let the year roll over me like a great grassland, like a lover
turning on their back away from me, like these fingers
that run like water over glass, glossed machine visions,
seeing only war, its expanses on which our generation
will cut its teeth, what a waste of expensive dentistry,
what a waste. And then fireworks.
Let the muscles open, arms outstretched,
let me read your palm—deep love line, bifurcate,
these thick uncertain fingers: tang of sweat,
three kids in a clapboard on the coast. No great romance,
an early death, a sinful passion,
cigarettes on the verandah after five.
Pub floor—sawdust—cider—spit of someone
in love—drunkard’s piss—fallen evening light. Or
you cling fast, come unstuck, like a shell opened
and showing your silver mouth,
an entire gleaming world.