You have to start looking for a point of departure somewhere,
so all lines of approach are possible.
More troublesome is getting free
of the word ‘arbitrary’.
You are still attached to fragmentation.
Hundreds of streets wind round your pointing finger.
Seek the axis of the city the heart of the city, fortress
around the flowering inner courtyard with cesspit;
the brain of the city; tortuous
conglomeration of energy pinpricks,
surfacing on all sides and
searching for an exit as access
to their safe havens.
Like a sailor on shore leave
you roll down the street.
But the streets are behind you now.
You have an address.
Left right turn criss-cross up the gutter round the corner cross
distracted suddenly down at heel twisted ankle in the tram track.
You fish out your foot. Rambling through no man’s land,
no man’s island.
Not a man in sight.
No hat to lay, no bird in the hand,
no dog to feed, no chickens to come home to roost.
Once this was a block. Now it’s a street.
And there, where no one ever lived, is your assigned address.
The crown on your registration and
the confirmation of your name as alibi
for committing all those accumulated years.
There, in transparent layers, five floors lie stacked.
All imaginable furniture; contents refrigerator smell of bedding,
drone of washing television play corner ceiling lights pot plants.
And your body opposite, tenuous,
still on the threshold, lethargic.
The seeking has to go with you, there where
glittering panes have descended in the misty wall.
The façade’s false teeth.
Reflecting outside to make the reflection
startle itself and seeing from inside
how your glass self stumbles.
The clatter!
so all lines of approach are possible.
More troublesome is getting free
of the word ‘arbitrary’.
You are still attached to fragmentation.
Hundreds of streets wind round your pointing finger.
Seek the axis of the city the heart of the city, fortress
around the flowering inner courtyard with cesspit;
the brain of the city; tortuous
conglomeration of energy pinpricks,
surfacing on all sides and
searching for an exit as access
to their safe havens.
Like a sailor on shore leave
you roll down the street.
But the streets are behind you now.
You have an address.
Left right turn criss-cross up the gutter round the corner cross
distracted suddenly down at heel twisted ankle in the tram track.
You fish out your foot. Rambling through no man’s land,
no man’s island.
Not a man in sight.
No hat to lay, no bird in the hand,
no dog to feed, no chickens to come home to roost.
Once this was a block. Now it’s a street.
And there, where no one ever lived, is your assigned address.
The crown on your registration and
the confirmation of your name as alibi
for committing all those accumulated years.
There, in transparent layers, five floors lie stacked.
All imaginable furniture; contents refrigerator smell of bedding,
drone of washing television play corner ceiling lights pot plants.
And your body opposite, tenuous,
still on the threshold, lethargic.
The seeking has to go with you, there where
glittering panes have descended in the misty wall.
The façade’s false teeth.
Reflecting outside to make the reflection
startle itself and seeing from inside
how your glass self stumbles.
The clatter!
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