to the contents page.)
Very white smooth and flat surfaces,
hardly marked by lines, and so on; you
are the surround - seek contact, but
bloodless, seek eyes and even a slight
smile, but never closer. You are the safely
grazing faces, just faces on engines of
soil and slow circlings; you the soft shiny
layers of gloss, self-conscious animations
of something you've seen somewhere, the
moving of a subtlety you wouldn't recognise.
He asks "What would you do with contact?" and he
can't know if his question seeks an answer
he'd rather remain unaware of.
If the gradient remains at this time and place,
the reaction he reveals (to gravity) will
pull him upwards 'til he sees the eyes of
women waiting in the restaurant, spread-out faces
over cigarettes and coffee. He feels a tiny
trickle leave his face, trace its course
down through his chest-hair - feels it
reverse and
soak into his softness,
wealed and sold to faces laced by weather
and the onset of gravity. Tries to
speak to white tables, formica tops and
untouched coffee-cups, lipstick stains
just waiting to appear, latent in the gleam
of china. His eyes clear momentarily,
and he recalls a white less smooth;
there's a myriad black speck that
hangs in the air, legion and mute (the
white tops disclose cat's-cradles of black
scars). He fears silence, but paints it
around his face and hands (his feet are gone,
unfelt, but his footprints shimmer in the
dust about his knees, his throat),
paints a courage he can't feel, sings
a hymn he can't remember, hopes the women
don't hear.
The women never hear.
( to the contents page.)