Poem 61

Contemplating a fractal theory of the universe on my morning climb to Victoria to work as a research assistant in the Psych Dept 1983 …

… it comes near the end of Folio # 2 in which I recorded poems written from the day after my 23rd birthday through to December the year after … the folio charts the change from handwritten to typewritten … so this poem was typed on the typewriter my sister bought me secondhand for my 24th birthday … it had Rotorua Police emblazoned on the side …

Dixon Street Steps

Howdy bro
beautiful morning
take a look down here
at this buzzing model of an atom
rings of flies round a smashed snail
like planes over a glistening wet city
dirty planets round a slick sun

someone's bound to come down these stairs
to tell me the spiral arm
doesn't look like a double alpha helix at all
I won't listen to them
not this morning
a sheet of water like plastic wrap
still unbroken on a fresh world

I'll be back this way sometime
maybe tonight after work
or next time round the galaxy

this atom beats on at my feet
this blob of smashed snail
is hurtling round the sun
is it any wonder that it shines
that these flies are burnt black?