Overland literary journal

Machine Code

My eyes are like machine code, running lines
up from the lanes and screens
or avenues of trees my limbs walk down,
open mouths or sideways squints
which open up my mouth or make me squint.
It’s one thing to think about it,
another thing to live it through,
when resemblances cannot be told apart
from repetition. Bubbles wobble and rise
from a morning dive in the pool
where after several laps I tire and lose count.
If comparisons were true instead of pathways,
fishing lines, I’d happily shut down
but it’s not the truth that wakes me up at 3 am,
just its piercing semblance.

David Musgrave is a poet, critic, novelist and publisher at Puncher & Wattmann. His latest books are Phantom Limb (John Leonard Press) and Glissando: A Melodrama (Sleepers Publishing).
© David Musgrave
Overland 201-summer 2010, p. 87

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