Nalas wind up river























Two bullet holes. The second for certain. Hammer against nail sealing the box for good. Bang! No chance of resurrection; this day to die forever; water turned to mercury, summer frozen by winter’s gaze, Elysium caught in a mirror. Click click. Smile please. Snap! Snap!

Happiness transfixed to heavenly eternity. 

Coffins sleeping under water.

Do not disturb! whispering cover us cover us. Painted to a pool that doesn't move, they too born of a brush with no interest in flux or flow, summer its prey not spring, these leaves are rafts, anchored below the water’s silver surface.

Steps to the underworld? 

Yellow is autumn calling.

Every day must die. August falls into September expiring two months later. A staircase, these coffins. Reminding us that moments do not last, that already this one is on its way; travelling to the next town already it is thinking of the one after that, and so on and on to the final stop, each station the flash of a photographer’s camera long since run out of film. Here, gone, vanished, forgotten. Here, gone, vanish…

On and so on and on and on. 

We shoot the driver of this train.

Bang! We shoot again, bang! The driver and his mate are dead. It will be hours before the scene changes, help arrives, they carefully - we squeeze delicately in here - remove us; the passengers delivered to their destinations. Time to make up a story. Something quaint. How about little Kenny astride a gigantic albatross, who thinks she is a helicopter; poor bird, you must never take a poet for a ride… Watching ourselves always. Laughing inside the carriage glass - Frank, Jane and Grace laboriously arranging their lips and teeth, their eyes cut into irregular triangles by fingers playing games - John whips out his polaroid. Snap! snap! snap! as we write a paragraph on the window pane: albatross hit by ground-to-air missile. Sammy drunk on his revenge is drowning in giggles. Throw him, you good fellows, something dour. No. Not melancholy. That will sink the poor chap.

Little is real here. 

Two ripples two memories; the only activity we need.

All is reflection. Looking into this still pool we are quiet and sombre. We have stopped the world and made a paradise. We are content here. Content. Outside, there are loud and urgent calls, the feet of men running; we hear them stamping up the steps; there are whistles, sirens, the ground moves…

Still we stand looking.

Looking into this glass at the words we will never see.

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