Vapours Poem by L.B. Temuco

Ah ****
in the city
churches hung in the air
between buildings
vapours trailing
in the blue desolate sky
Ah Gauguin
Ah ****
were searching
backwards, forwards
everywhere
but where we were
Ah ****
when you have nothing
to say
everything is stilled
and words fall
from inside waterfalls
in torrents
vapours, white tunnels
across the sky
in which memories
crawl, over and over
fingers scratching at the air
causing it to bleed
cobalt
Ah Gauguin
blood, dripping
like ink on this page
where words form
wrestling with meaning
all flesh without feeling,
when we, with the other eye
recall being there, then, now
those long endless seconds,
whispers, in the rapturous eye
of the universe
beneath trembling lids
Pi no answer
love no theorem
passion shoots hot
over desperate curling limbs
scalding the naked moistness
falling from murmuring lips
until they become forever
our inseparable ash
Ah ****
lay curled over my soul
stay like that always
Ah ****
you hang like a white gull
between these buildings
I see near this river
I gaze
a heart shackled by irons
I gaze, from a prisoner’s window
Ah ****
these vapours
cannot enter me again
for they have never left
I rise
I rise and fall
in your eternal mist
I lose
I lose myself in a great blindness
that cannot be seen
Ah ****
nothing has left us
that cannot leave,
that cannot bear the scent of dying
that will not end
vapours, rising
changing to water
in clouds, ready to fall
Ah ****
in these buildings
people have climbed stairs
have followed hoping
have felt the heart warm at each step
have disturbed the sweet dust of knowing
of loving
of disappearing
have watched from the beach
the great tides of loneliness break
white horses, spread
and flow, metallic,
gouging such deep pleasure
into unloved skin,
and have not forgotten
have not forgotten
much, much
and far, far less than us
than you and I
the tightest wound coil
the steepest mountain
the wettest of clouds
the only moment left
the endless nothing we are
when we are, what we are
Ah ****
you can never be wrong
about all that
about everything
about love
about what I see
between buildings.