My friend Neil says there's too much smoke

in Apocalypse Now

we've been arguing about it for years

he says poetry and Viet Nam don't mix

he says that fat bastard mixed up his nightmare with someone else’s

and charged us 40 million for it

I tell myself

my friend Neil has good taste in films

I tell myself things aren't what they seem

I tell him we can always catch Blade Runner at the reps.

I admit to him all the books I've never been able to read

starting with Finnegan's Wake

what I don't tell him is

that I don't know what napalm smells like

that the images of one man's vision of hell on some beat-up movie screen

make me understand what we're waiting for

I call up my friend Neil

we talk about this and that

mostly quiet things

I tell him good night

what I don't tell him is that there is a bit too much smoke

and that although Conard isn't quite rolling in his grave

he must be shaking his head at least a little.

Mass

coherent unit of matter

celebration of the Eucharist

the velocity and distance of my journey have not separated the dream

from the dreamer

yes, I can stand on the edge of the moon

yes, I can feel the marrow-piercing silence up here

Thelonious Monk spiralled us into a frenzy past the limits of imagination

Copernicus gave us the keys to a white El Dorado

with which we could drive into the centre of imagination

you told me God existed

that I could piece together a ladder of bones that would take me to him

that I could walk a tightrope of stars

so it is, that I can no longer tell if there is even an angstrom of difference

between the spirit and the mind

the only truth I find is in the cadence of my own words

sound and meaning are lost up here in the heavens

E=bee and bop everything is unbearably relative

I am alone

a once-fallen angel risen, allowed beyond the blood rainbow

from my observatory the rivers are cherry, red, crimson, scarlet

my trajectory is not precise enough I can no longer feel the pull

my escape velocity has taken me light years away from you

I dream of atoms, neutrons, protons the precise language of science

I see diamonds in the night

my heart is concave, convex

in my pocket I carry an astrolabe made of gun metal

the distance between us is insurmountable

I have no way of telling you there is nothing but confusion and dust

I am unable to will you to point the barrel of your revolver in my direction

what exists up here is not what you wanted

I have lost all sense of seasons and the position of the planets

I sometimes curse Nic for giving me those keys and sometimes myself

for taking them

I listen hard for the laws of physics, the laws of Monk to bring me home

hoping there will be a simple aria at the end of it all

hoping I might be able to explain the essentials behind the miles

hoping E does equal something

hoping the brilliance of the sun has not been lost on us

I close my eyes briefly, the circumference of my nightmare is vast

some things, even at absolute zero do not freeze.