When Julia asks I think
‘It’s difficult to think right now.’
It’s the drugs and all that.
I want to begin by talking about folds. About folds
within folds. But this
is lightning. In the pink. Sunset
sometimes. Flesh two layers in.
The colour of pregnancy tests
of watermelon, of guava. I see
an Aries-ram-head-left-horn-eye-socket.
I don’t know what’s good anymore.
It’s the drugs and all that.
I see a shadow foetus. My head feels
like a drop of tar. Tessa says
‘When I stopped taking the drugs,
my brain came back.’ I think
‘Might this be purple?’
R=222 B=0 G=222, #db00db, C17 M100 Y70 K5
What does purple mean?
Or pink, or red. I don’t know
what’s good anymore. It’s the veins
under a closed eyelid. Why do veins
look like lightning? Illumination,
like neon. A headache in the gaudy light.
Or are these roots? Why do roots
look like lightning?
Cerebral gyri and sulci—folds
within folds. It’s difficult to think
right now. It’s the drugs
and all that. Are we reduced
to phenomena, reaction and observation?
Gemma says ‘You’ll get through this’.
Like lightning. Like the tresses of a spindly dress.
Like roots drawn through the ground.
A falling. A folding. We are
reduced. What is it
to understand? To fold one hand
against another? Am I asking too much
of myself. These are the facts:
beautiful and temporary and luminous.
I don’t know what’s good anymore.
Pike
Pike-free Trojan
asteroid
Cauterised, animate
ghost
In the machine
transparent
Skull the skin
that holds
The hunting deaths
and failings
To recognise you are
elegant
with blazed curled words