By the Stream of the Death

We make love. Our bottoms taste the gravels.
The overbridge runs near us, naked.
Honking fills the wind. All the dead people
of this town decide to leave the scene of pandemic.
We make love. Your legs quiver on my shoulders.
Nothing to be panicked for. Forward stream
the traffic of the demised ones across the bridge.

The population of the poplars on the other side
murmurs back to the birds sewing through the scene.
I inhale your juice and skin. If there be no land
promising us to stand and stride we shall lie
and roll here, dirty, bare, blended with the life
and the death alike.

Daughter Draws

“Can I watch Pokémon on phone?”
“No, draw a chair, colour something
on the papers lying on the table.”

The long kitchen ends into a child drawn
rill trilling on the crags until its evanescence
means a lost picnic, a fishing rod streaming far.
“Cannot you draw anything else?”

She draws a Pokemon with father’s face
down in the dirt flashed from the stroke
and sketches trees screaming and a bird
tired to be any bird specific reduced to a V.

Silence Coughs

Caught between the now and never
sun swears to requite; a black bird
boomerang tears through the haze
and here comes the rain. Porch makes noise.
Silence coughs next door. My mother
heats up the water, tells my father
to gurgle with betadine. Rain wipes his answer.
Everything drowned remains fine.
Things fine rot in basement; once my pet
gnawed up a human bone, humour bone intact.
I watch the sun. Water turns to vapour.

Childhood

A bar. The red in Tim’s mother’s glass
disappears. Hit me again. She says.
A bar. Tim shall look after himself.

A blur. The tire swing replaced every summer
wets the muddy ground with its rain
soaked shadow. Tim blurs away in
his eyes. I am late. I should be there
with those underaged beers I promised.

We have toy revolvers that look like
a heady mix of black and clotted blood.

Somewhere

The vetus memory of rain, lichens,
remain in between and spilled over
the road tiles.

A Sunday quarantine mother rolls sour dough.
Somewhere.

Just life. The bare hands of it knows
no mind; if it ever come to baking buns
the sprinkles of cinnamon or of chilli
will be thoughtless availability.

Somewhere.
Rain turns sour in the cracks and
cleavage of the cement works.