Ambient II

After Aphex Twin

All I conjure is the vertigo of ancient cliffs
while listening to voices from the radiator,
muffled sentences- ‘rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb’
they murmur, a bad tv play. I clutch a hanky,
concentrating on horizontal tree roots, the grass
clinging to granite. I try not to think of the mold
that grows logarithmically behind the curtains.
My future is a distant ocean below, a grey blur.
What is my life compared to weathered stone?
Already my fingertips are mutating into blue calx,
already my forehead is developing parallel stripes
of strata. The decay inevitable, like shiny metal rods
over thousands of years. This house will be a grey strip
soon, our dwelling marked only by a mutated ‘z’ twig
growing in the cracks. Look, how worn the windowsill
is already. I sigh to the silence, tracing a hexagon
in dust. This world is not ours, it is owned by lichen,
ours is only the shadow. We see reality in spots,
in all those neglected corners, on the damp tassels
of curtains. My body is indistinct, only a blur too,
edges forgotten, bones crumbling to matchsticks.