Things Under Lights

for George Franklin
i'm waiting at Flinders St for the 9:12
and it's cold i'm chewing a burger
My hand is missing
my mouth is

on line with the tunnel
mouth
where the city's petrified and dead internals lurch out
and you arrange the space of your eyes. You have had too much
to drink

and i have found a question among the sesame seeds, well actually i
was born
with it
stuck to my lips like a twin. No limbs, only a terrible molar
trying to grind in space.

Behind us the people creep and squeeze
and everything frozen creaks, the externals—
skin and white lung clouds

have only got the present, they have no memories
and the clock strikes 9 and never loses concentration
and the footpath networks continue
constructing vast pedantic mathematical proofs of the existence of
God
far out into the useless suburbs,

page 133

and the spent sparrows roll into chip packets,
benign
pieces of end under the whitestick lights of the subway where
even the living
are framed and explained
like finished art:
In this world of Post Mortems
even the unusual can be understood if it
moves very
slowly

or not at all

And i suddenly want to ask you if it is possible
to speak without knowing whole things but
before i can say you've
pissed off to the toilet again and i notice

as you pass him, the speaker on the steps becomes his own stream
of words, unchecked and unheeded and
the unhinged universe is a monologue, directed not at people
but at itself and
the guy in the crowd with the rat's eyes suddenly
grows a tail and can fit under doors.