in total darkness shadows hover on the bay road

air conditioners  groaning like trapped female spirits

they seem to me  to hum and scream through the metal meat thin strips

they seem to come alive in our head and above in the trees

whispering please dont go away so urgently

yeah our heart breaks and mends as the road bends to the sea

old white and green sports cars flash past

their dashboard glow a sheen on some rich man show

come on you cant be serious this is obviously a dream..!

says a voice in another room

although our hair is full of salt spray and sand

we followed the laneways down to the ocean

under palms and great pines we sit divining the time

where the beautiful shells groan in the tides

and the great silver mackerel on the breakers he rides

in the darkness the sharks smell us even in our dreams

underwater we flounder  around but on dry dream ground

we are only walking along in a dark night thats all

the traffic lights blurred as though in a cyclone

the rain drop tears hit our lenses like a kiss

a stranger then is at the rail as i stand before the greatest ocean

the deepest the bluest most roiling green and boiling sea

hello you say are you a man or a woman?

well we cant tell we say because i think i am blind

but we sense certain that softness before they step into the lamplit beam

in milky incandescence the effervescing sea sways incessantly

against the sides of our dream

come on follow me it will be too late tomorrow

but we cant even see the moon as it ascends over west endings

a hand in our hand tho down an aromatic path to the cliff tops

a gate leads to the dunes and then the open water

there are rockpools and caves and vague shapes in the waves

here here as you slip into the brine

deliciously cold we are rolled and flung with the surf

later near the trees we light a fire and dry off by a river

traffic slurs over the bridge the red and white lights piercing me

the sultry night begins again to ooze tears of rain

that streak across some thoughtless thoughts we have thought

and your brown limbs grow just a like a tree like a lebanon cedar from distant history

and the stars echo and murmur in the effulgence around your aura

a weird stabbing pain in the head which will come to fill us with dread

mercurial planets hurl themselves around our worlds

when we kiss the dirty feet of the eel we reeled in

pressed against your burning un-human skin

we feel a vibration in the air above begin

the whisky taste of a fiery tongue lightning peels back the sky

my empty pockets are full of the phone numbers of forests

oh baby! we all said as the thunder boom a tremolo doom

its only you and me… we said at the same time

struggling to see yet perceiving still

i will my eyes open

hopelessly unable to filter the dazzling luminescence

back on Patmos… somebody mutters

in an atmosphere of sudden quiescence

 

what message crackles down the lines overhead..?