BANALITIES for the East Cape (by Ruark Lewis)

BANALITIES for the East Cape

1. she flies over the molten lava and looks out to sea

2. the bird is accustomed to headaches, yet no one acts naturally. when the car rounds the corner expecting collision. heartaches, clenching teeth, shortness of breath or far-off something that sounds like a skidding snake

3. when the fire burns it follows orders. it makes no mistake by diverting attention or lowering its heat

4. where food is beside sleep nothing is resolved, nothing except a fart

5. movements open the door to the face without translation. kiss my teeth to whisper . . . . . I say nothing then I ask, would you leave and you don't

6. the soup is customary, like tidal lagoons it has something to say to the sun

7. the trees disappear, they simply leave a gap of broken teeth

8. this surface makes a trace, a space between rivers, between land plates for grazing cattle and tracks for explorers. it is about proximity, about length and breadth, over time and space hillock and mound are turned to acres then to shires their measure of weight and height we sell abstractly full of weeds

9. in the course of the day, eros and desire, urgency and gaze pushes me ‘til I sleep

10. nothing follows, things follow things where a thing seems to move round and round and is followed around then turns and having followed it again when they have followed all day long looking for a voice that persists – in time these things come and go and then they turn. their beauty has no order. their being has no movement outside where a bird is literally caught in flight – and squeezed to death

11. sound. my ears are made of deafness in the roar of reckless care

12. beside this measure where else is the edge or morsel beside taste and food?

13. the application in itself goes against the tide, and that line yawns absentmindedly, that's how conversations circle one another, in time and after, a beautiful intelligence with nothing to say, that things end sometimes before the next phase of time exists at all, or perhaps way after it should – given time I think I would settle for charming you

14. but trees are like that – they rarely risk attack

15. the uneasy condition sore and broken has fallen from a mighty height

16. to get it on. to lose the plot. to never reach the end. to drown here where it is shallow

17. size sets elements to organise old Greeks and Egyptians, but now in the age of everything things are elementary, they are full of principles and coordinates

18. around and around sent off spare the wool drawn up against your hair

19. in crime as in freedom honesty is pretty universal

20. in sea myths storms are synonymous

2003

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…for more Ruark Lewis please visit:
http://groups.msn.com/TheSilhouettes/shoebox.msnw?Page=1
http://www.cottier.com.au/justfornothing
http://www.rainerlinz.net/NMA/

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