an hour after suicide constable johnston is still
breathing/ a streetlight is a streetlight/ as his
environment resumes its correct proportions/
houses are blocks of solid colour lit by morning/
& dawn frost dampens his blue uniform/ an hour
after suicide every flower that held the face of
death within its tiny centre reverts back to
pollen/
& he is a blue flash moving across the
dust/ the soft focus surface which he had almost
crumbled into/ an hour after suicide constable
johnston can barely hold onto his global torso/
his dark heart splits & pink pebbles from his
eyes fall like boulders down the canyons of his
chest/ & invading insects stick to his cheeks/ as
he falls softly like a lost ball into long grass/
an hour after suicide he is still unconvinced/
that the sunlight which penetrates his police
forced skin is healing/ (constable johnston where
have you been?)/ wet eyed & trembling?/ swimming
in the slow gashes of your injuries or wallowing in
lazy blood up to your earlobes?/ or spraying the
world crimson like a garden sprinkler?/ turning
along your dark axis with no direction but outwards?/
an hour after suicide constable johnston knew the
sky existed/ with or without his observations of
it/ because he saw the polar clouds afloat on their
seascapes & he saw the birds as bright as ice &
the sun & its far away focus like a magnifying
glass/ like the office bar heater cooking his back
beneath his blue shirt/ & how it burnt huge holes
into the black barrel longings of his eyes/
an hour after suicide constable johnston is twenty-
seven years down the track/ within his mind his
lonely landscape/ & from within the tree trunk or
beneath the door the great white note/ stark &
protruding like a folded napkin to wipe the dribble
from his mouth/ the final letter to himself to be
finally read again/
an hour after suicide a car
screech is a car screech & nothing larger than its
familiar drag of road on rubber/ & like a cloud he
was observing or the unmarked car he was driving/
constable johnston will blow back in/ like old fag
smoke into the new dry morning/ weakened down like
a beachball deflated like cordial/ an hour after
suicide he is a silly boy & his shoelaces are undone
