The Conflict

rain falls in two parts–
want and
don’t want

(or an epic struggle between lawn-mower and beer on the deck)

as I feel when you care
or politicians do although
you must know they don’t

care for anything beyond the wastelands of the public purse
but / but / but

this is a thought about how we drink coffee on the deck
and the sun is rising against the other side of the house–

at eight in the morning
we half-finished the newspaper somewhere
between births and ads
I stretch for the comics

and you ask for the daily menu of events (daybook still
thought dishevelled by a lack of place)
I already in afternoon

and knowing which wine I want with dinner
which television I don’t want as the last light is flicked off
like a dream
onrye/holdthemayo/and damnthetorpedoes

racing for the future while the past
seems still so very quite a serviceable tool

Back Stage Disney

in the ordinary world
       of

bedclothes and breakfast ornaments

aggression

           lives the common life

roasting ants with a magnifying glass and
throwing

       the words in books
against encroaching bodies



I have a dream
it rattles off the rules of every world
ever built by man

I have a dream
that waves fall in supplication to
concrete poured this morning



and love is a skittish rabbit running
back yards in the neighbourhood of

           the way July
bleeds into September



I have a dream regarding love
           and making love
       and making peace

while the paint on the garage door dries
and the doves in the side yard pine coo
to the history of

the differences between a European refugee
and those escaping African genocide

as though a bullet would know the difference
or a social faux pas

   or the sun setting on towering pines
and not on mangos / banana trees /a coral reef

           or the sun setting
against our concrete kiss on the border

where the ants struggle against the universe of garage
and the gods remain confused

           about boundaries