Tracks

There’s an eagle on your chest,
but I can’t read the message beyond
the snarl of your fuck-off eyes

as you nod into the window on a train
with your trakkies on, skew-whiff,
blue and baggy like a cheap commercial
for the sky.

Your hair is straight and brown
and it reminds me of a boy
who’s been out playing for too long.
Your beauty is formerly attractive.
And that’s the depressing part of something else.

Maybe the silver grind of the wheels
betrays the twilight in your blood?

It’s a kind of ghost story under flouros
and you half scare me into hating you
when I’m not just beating my heart
with an invisible stone called ‘the end’.

Aboriginal girl, there not here, scratching out
a smacky dream slow and sure
on the city circle where you ride and ride and ride.

I’ll leave you in that window, subterranean, in a false light
scratching at your neck through the closed eyes of a dream
tunneling your own night. Bird on your own flight.


- Mark Mordue


* First published in The Fine Print (University of Technology, Sydney, 2007)