Occasional Impressions

Gemini 3

Ways of Escape

Exotic locations never helped him much.
They only cleared the air
to make the interference stronger.
Distance lent a clarity
to his disturbance, and in his calmed brain
he saw the spectres clearly,
semi-transparent as transfers
over the black cliffs of Santorini,
the Duomo's dome and a campsite
somewhere South of Lyons.
On a Caribbean island eyeing
brown-bottomed girls in tangas
and rastas with ghetto-blasters
through foliage in a glass,
he began to judder like a sizzled killer
twitching his last.
His liquid forest fell to the gravel.
He hauled himself out of the sun
and flew back to the shadows
over Terminal One.

Better to be under the belly of the beast
than noticed, outlined on the horizon.
Bathed in its foul breathing
he no longer hears the single crochets
reduced to a background hum.
The many peaks and troughs
cancel to a straight tightening wire.
Held in place by conflicting forces
he can no longer explode.
Self-knowledge is out of the question
among all this other.
He clamps a fist on his diary
and tells himself little lies
as he wears away from inside.

ijf

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