A poem about us with photography by Wayne Levin. What makes 'us'? And what exactly are we doing together?


Us (Tuesday morning, 12pm, 29 June 2010)


Here again
somewhere familiar
and foreign
has been lying in wait for me
to turn a corner
and break a delicate glass in my mouth
and now the shards splinter my lips as i
keep kissing
keep kissing
and looking away
from you
as you think
and i imagine
these spaces that are hanging in the air
invisible places that we are visiting
together, alone
like deep sea explorers
or cockroaches, rock coaches
loaches




busying about our business
discovering
territories unknown
by us at least
as if we were the first, the only
ones to explore
to investigate space
between human and human
new man and woman
rolling and waving
as the tides overcome us
spluttering lonely
as we look to our horizons




they are written on our hands
carved into our heads
like promises to god
I will be true
to myself
to you
I will wander
waver
she will wallow in herself
as the water beseeches
her borders
his frontiers, he savours
like a proper French breakfast
jam in her mouth, mixed up with blood
from the glass shards that tear
that have torn some great holes
portals to nowhere
pools of blue
oceans
that she saw in his eyes
camouflaged motions
making him blind
to me, to us
to this union
communion
labour of (love)
emotion
unsettles
as it washes us clean
like salt water babies
swaddled in time
mine meandering
as yours rolls back
yours pulling out
as the tide wanders free
mine once immersed
now standing alone
an island
in oceans
a rock in the sea.
So this is where we wake
today delivering
us from ourselves
with subtle dismay
to ceaselessly scour
the heart of our action
the heat of our traction
and as the cigarette lingers
in place
between our split lip
we find the earth
that we sailed from
back beneath our feet.


Notes to reader: When I was 5 I bit into a thin glass whilst drinking from it, and it broke in my mouth, splintering through my lower lip and under my tongue.


The other that I refer to held a certain significance to the existence of cockroaches.


The ocean provides a physical comparison for internal landscapes.




See more of my work on my artist's blog at
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See more of Wayne Levin's work at
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