summer had been torn
pinched by the first bare
arms of the autumn
beginning to undo buttons
and remove the loose light
and the stored earth heat
leaked out quicker,
and the beautiful
career of being awake now
asked and expected overtime
so I was up and moving
lines around the notebook
in a cool dewy predawn
facing a green-brown
and pine-black peripheral
of a mountain bike terrain
and grey-tan gravel
of an oval running track.
each in gradual degrees
of stop were brightening
as the volume of the light increased.
I sat on the rolled up sleeping
bag, and felt the fire-orange
red blend quickly into blues
the juvenile hue of the gas flame.
the sharp tip of the flame top
muffled under the stainless
steel coffee cup
I thought I would say was
like the born broke
workforce I live in, shouldering
bent-over the water.
but then I thought of the camera-
followed world class performers
who can’t buy a burger
in track pants
without immediate
comment, likewise
their cellulite
in swim gear, the exaggerated
un-care, the envious
shopped images
of the favoured that month.
and as I carefully heated
the croissant, turning
with a twig
through the pastry like meat
on a spit
and while the runners with prams
and hatted babies
received dawn properties
of benediction I’d left
off thinking
it was like a wage-feed
workforce, this squashed
burning of presence freed
from the pressurised can,
and more of a wealth
beyond privilege thing, sigil
-holding families
filmed from the balcony,
the steerage expected: the King
is dead, long live their Kin
in this Roll, that Position,
remaining, as people are pushed
into their palaces to dress
and be presented.
this spinning set running in us
and as they come around the track
each time, the babies, their faces
say they’re utterly perfectly at peace
with that. the burning gas
at controlled release—
no more historical than that.