Various Airports

At Anchorage Airport,
flights arrive
before they have left,
while I crouch like a bear
in my cave…

Atomic clocks are ticking
all over the world,
but no-one knows the time.

At Frankfurt,
I become the Egyptologist
of modern hieroglyphs,
fire exits,
toilets,
porn cinemas and sex shops,
all blurring into one.

In the moments
when it all makes sense,
I just want to laugh.

In the transit lounge
at Moscow,
I sit pondering
Catherine the Great
and the horse,
wishing it were true.

I travel,
I displace myself
for the sensation of stagnation,
as all cities merge into one,
frenzied
and uniform,
numbed by repetition,
and in my head
the names of airports,
fascinating
and horrible...

(Disillusioned?
I wonder:
was I ever illusioned?
It seems the truth
entered the world
with me,
my stillborn twin
ghosting the mind ever after...)

Like a tormented emu,
accelerating madly,
determined to take off,
to fly,
I race towards the dustcloud horizon...

From one point to another
I limbo under the threshold,
tracing ellipses,
passing through parentheses...
(Twenty-four hours
of arrivals and departures,
stopovers
and connections)

In airports,
motorways
and supermarkets,
I find myself free and afraid...
There is no safe passage on earth,
only emergency exits....

We are the private,
the self-obsessed,
temporary giants
stiltwalking through madness,
denying death and failure
to the very end...