Absence (2006)

Since you left I’ve traded cruise control
for working on the case (Wittgenstein: “the world
is everything that is the case”).

It’s not so hard,
keeping out of trouble. Got friends queuing to keep me out of it.

Cruising St Kilda streets for a skanky dayglo fixup
is not an option, except in fiction. I don’t need a fix;
need a reinvention.

I could head to some seedy basement bookstore,
look at pink
for an hour. But even that I’d see as morbid infidelity.

Fact is, you don’t get these strings attached from talk alone. You have to do something
with your body, like what we’ve done down in the bunker,
while bombs whistled & jolted above. Once you’ve repaired one
another it’s all over,
and the strings begin. And let's face it,

I love your strings.