so we took the rhyme
out of poetry
and the reason
out of song
we took rhythm
out of voices
chose flat,
unpretentious faces
and smiled in ways
and days
lazy eyes and
wandering
laughter
looking for new methods
with dead means
inventing
terse terminology for termites
found
desiccated deracinated dreams
flakes of skin
and dusted hope
swept to the corners into piles
swept under and up and away
broke Shakespeare’s bones
skull-fucking the past, and fast
conquering death with a grin
one orgasm at a time
and we’ll call it poetry
in ransacked mother tongues
coming up with Roman coins
she whispers from the stage
‘the murderous heart of Caesar
must be unafraid of daggers’
because I’m still dreaming
Pax Romana without the Romans
without iron swords or empires
a new kind of colosseum
for a new kind of poetry, that
is ready for lions and bears
is ready for other Roman games
like crucifixion and decimation
that sees the stage as a place
worth spilling your blood
and now she says
‘I’ve seen the past and future
and you and I are neither
poetry is what remains now’
and she leaves
me
wondering
what else to do
with everything
all the things that I need
to sacrifice
she answers as she exits
‘we have hidden the world
in these ancient skulls
we wear as our heads’
a new kind of poetry
that requires Roman skills
with hammers and ladders
aqueducts still running
that offer digital blood
digital circulation, a heart
a perfect reconstruction
an ideal systolic
diastolic
digital
rhythm
that says
poetry is
poetry was
poetry never ceases
she whispers from the wings
‘it doesn’t matter what we’ve done
look at what poetry does with us’
A. S. Patric is a writer and bookseller living in bayside Melbourne with his wife and two daughters. Alec has taught Contemporary Fictions and Creative Nonfiction at the University of Melbourne andconducts novel and short story writing workshops nationally.