Richmond

Surely now, that sense of crow’s nest sway will ease

now we are brought down

first me, then my brother — my mum now —

and our memories

and soon, they say, these towers too.

Not homes but housing — high rise —

slum-reclaimed, stacked in virgin skies

with killer views.

No, way too soon. Vale, truly, to the jumper

three doors (and 14 floors) down, to the squatters

between us — their trip-cords siphon state power —

to the nod-and-slumper

in the common laundry that day, on linoleum

slick and bright with blood

as the deck of the whale-ship Nisshin Maru.

I remember you. And, friends, when

they tear the towers down

I’ll be up alongside you in those crazed wind tunnels,

you stairwell pissers, you fish-sauce-stinkers,

you tatted track-marked denizens

of trackies, hoodies, beanies, obloid shopping-

walkers, pilfered Coles & Woolies trolleys —

all my indigents & immigrants — my fellow fellows

on the line & out of water — air-drowning.

So we were experiments.

We with less set over those with more.

Community & caged doors.

Pre-fab slabs — the feeling of whole stories suspended,

and so, yes, I have so many questions!

Like why only two lifts — for twenty-plus floors? — and

why clad the lifts in autopsy-tray steel? One

of them is always out of commission — why?

Why have a security guard

who buzzes literally everyone in — including some

wheeling a new bike each time?

How many bikes does a human body need?

Needles, on the other hand. (Spread them, I say, like seeds.)

Did I say memories, I meant things.

Remember: the steel-sided scream of things

shoved down the hopper — the long-drop chute — and

where else have humble things known so tall a fall?

Why, though, is the rubbish skip not right

under the discharge door — but neatly next to it?

And why oh why those 6am drillings of concrete cores?

When they tear the towers down, what remains

will be an amazement of loss:

Of sleep, and shadow, boxed in from show-off light. Of boxed-

up sound, where before there’d been

only silent roar — wind against nothing.

Of heat, hoarded as a living body hoards,

 its densities tightly held;

and smell, in place of perfect dissipation.

The cores will know: where once was desire reorganised —

taller than churches, immense before our eyes,

will drift only a hallucination of sky

and no sediment but light to fossilise —

will rest empty shelves in air, figment winds

seeking shape and voice where

once things were because we were, and are no more.

And the sky leaks depth, diminishing.