Gary Robinson

No Ishmael...


my feet break into stones
but are deaf
to their soliloquies

and green thick as rain
is saying something
rushing in the wind's speech
but these senses are too selfish     refuse to move

having been
silent in my ideas
here I am

beneath starry museums
        stumbling
in a drift of skin      collecting
                the noise
of night like a fist of flies
                    with black tongues

while buses and cars
wave a semaphore of lights
past the coloured trees
shrunk like pages
of ancient mumbling

creak and indecipherable

        standing
in the dark throat
of the world as
frog and cricket chants
a necklace of sound
alien and illiterate
to this man
of the city wilderness