Cassie Lewis
Battered Holden

Night
owls, like trees bloom
light beams.  ‘Nothing’s

so sad nor serious when shared’.  Not the events
but, on the beach, laughter rolls
its camera.

That’s what we must
share.  Us.

Time-lapse photography shows
we keep standing
for decades,

in fact.
Beautiful trees shimmer
coins.

Night expands to fit itself.  Thoughts
germinate from those left
behind here
like, ‘I am equal to this’.  To you.
This last, the only true compliment.

I film myself swimming
through bright sky.  I was demonstrating escape
to a young woman.  Sheer drop
from the uppermost
floor.

Determined to sit still tonight my right leg shakes like brandy-specific consciousness.

Biography pulls
us onwards:
snow dogs, and words, snow dogs.

Words overturn constantly
on the page,
like some revolving restaurant,

catering concepts in the sky.

I am listening to Beethoven.  Feeling old suddenly.  The radio skips
from this to an uncanny
repetition of words: ‘love’, ‘love’, ‘love’.

‘Rock, rock, rock’ on.

I want to be some paradigm.
I want to hold your illness still as
this stillness.  Darkness.

They are selling us our own dreams.  By the mind’s plaza,
David Bowie dances in a street under lamplight.

His sexiness free of all the time
to follow.

return to SHAMPOO 14