Part 02

There is no grave epiphany, no grand event that
befits a prologue. At first, there isn’t even happiness,
just the absence of grief, arguable degrees of non-
grief. But aren’t abstract measures of happiness
and forever, futile? Why do we force-fit round
equations into our polygonal universe? This is
not that kind of story. This is not an ode to joy.

Muddled pathos — because you don’t know how
much joy is enough joy, because you cannot
feel any more pain when even this much is too
much to bear alone. Don’t we calibrate our
feelings to fit our capacity for burden? Our ability
to fly? One pinch of blue sky to fit into one tiny
beak? A story with neither beginning nor end has

all the attributes of night. Light fades and
deepens with the rhythm of the earth, night is
a consequence, the singular failure of that turning.
This story is the side-effect of a larger becoming.
A parallel unbelonging. This story is a night in which
the appearance of an inconstant moon makes
no bloody difference to the overwhelming dark.

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Part 01

I want to write that story
the story with no beginning
whose end I cannot know
there’s only a bit of the middle
the knots not yet untangled
the moon in the witness box
commits dastardly perjury
the stars gossip with
idle townsfolk in the bazaar
night after fucking night

the story so ordinary
like cheap clothes on sidewalk racks
flapping empty skins under a
sky muddy grey-brown
nothing big happens to anyone
no one becomes anything big
a story you see out of a bus window
someone crossing the road
someone waiting to cross
someone dead under the last

rush of a beat-up car
a step too late
a wheel too soon
just that much rain to wet your shoes
and keep you uncomfortable
the bus lurching ahead
but now through wet glass
odd smears of coloured light
and the illusion of a world still moving
everything a star, everything a moon

a story, faceless, nameless
unravelling inside itself
a story washing its dirty
parts so it can be
clean enough to tell