walhalla

gibbous banksia moon kisses your temple

your smile clicks into the dusty drawer in my chest

mending my lonely splintered wood

which was forever creaking towards the slit of light

.

each dawn the glow would pull nearer my numb shoulders

my moth wings fluttering, my heartbeat waiting outside for me

i soared to this petrichor sunlight town

a blood clementine cracking open in my chest

my stale-bread heart swelling with kindness and curiosity

your Fanta laugh fizzing in spooky Walhalla

.

our lungs drink bark of sap-trickled mint

our children-shadow limbs loping Bambi doe

we trip into stories on invisible cave walls —

licks of silver fire on bumpy roofs and

the police station’s museum flyers

ink of the villagers’ journeys settle in our brains

our skin shrinks behind us into the night

our skin

always the same under city lights and bar signs and screensavers

our skin

husks shielding inner truths

.

.

a dandelion-wish hand bends in hotel windows

...........................a tawny frogmouth molten coco flurry

..................................................a strident trumpeter ghost on the bandstand

.

.

i’m Igor hunched with a backpack and icicle fingers


our torches sleepy eyes tapered by night

ancient pockets of molten lava whisper

in the torch-eyes periphery — encased in tweed shadow

we feel the peoples’ stories welling in our chests even if we can’t

submerge our hands in their tacit, tectonic blood

those who once glimmered with unearthed gold-nugget stars

from tortoiseshell mines of ash-tinged graphite

.

our footsteps slope on bedlinen grass

hiking boot heels shouldering mud

the graves

those who lived in this town are dreaming

throats clamped with coal disease

mallet and pick ghosts

water waist deep — a liquorice obsidian world

fingerprint voices of finality nestled in headstones

.

your head is quiet and so is mine

we peel back endless cognisant reeds

but they refuse to whisper back to us

so we learn: let the quiet keep its gentle sway

one day our lava-blood will course through soil

for now the gentle pressure of your bracelet is a balm, soothing my crevices

ocean salt and cool against my wrist

and i feel ok

stranded and surrounded by planes of varnish blue

this blue of your eyes, of our minds, of night and sky and dirt and time and

the gravestones — forever watching snail-trail, one-way-traffic clouds

.

we take a step back from where we came

a cicada bellyflops off a pebble diving-board

ripples expand in silk-glass puddle

spiderwebs blossom behind our blinking-unconscious eyelids

forming tapestries of where ancestors trekked

unseen by our shuttering headlights in vapour-frost

as we leave the murky gully of Walhalla

bringing back brushes of pine — ribbed on shirt cuffs