Getting Sick Poem by Tim Lilburn

I dug a slot into no address,

I dug a slot warm as a hand into the water of the air.

The eye seeing me is a charred-wood backed river cannonballing

through badlands badly disciplined, lizardly hills, water in mitres

of cinder freighting necessity's weight past my head on the ground sleeping,

the eye's windy mouth, love-yanked love wall; pines triple axel in it.

Coal-masked generosity, no name.


*

Two years we were stubbed on the floor, bone-eared, smoke-cheeked.

Urgency, in a torn gown, held my chin between its thumb and index finger

and unreined its face lunging

into my face, its face a foot from mine cataracted, and said

a single word a day from a pack of ten.

I put my finger in its mouth, and, then, sick, was triaged

up barely blacksmithed, leprechaun, lignin creeks

that were unloading the hills,

its nose a foot from my face,

bonemeal, burnt wire creeks,

flicker of antler, thinlipped cat, graphite dust, no cartilege

creeks, I followed them up, with a bag of burnt sand, bag

of swung sticks, pushed in shopping cart, building materials for the very

top, the static of Europe bulging my knee.

I dug a slot into no address,

my knee geigered a snailheaded ghost, an unread Chaldean library

below the hover of Plato's soul.

In small stones houses, violet field were artillerying from a century ago

under the floors.