Thursday, February 22, 2007



What time is it there?

By Adam Gibson ©

dusk in a cold phone booth of
cigarettes and call girl cards
and the steam from my breath
is the ghost of words that
i have spoken
but no one's heard

what time is it there
what time is it where you are

i am scratching off a PIN code or
i am following instructions or
going ahead and reversing my charges
and getting a hometown operator
and not altering my accent a jot

and i know the light outside where she is
and she has no idea what
she means to me
at that moment

what time is it there?
what time is it where you are?

a specific combination of numbers
conjures a specific combination of
consonants and vowels
which coalesce into sound
which organises into a voice
that i can see a mouth speaking
and the expression of face
it's creating

what time is there?
what time is it where you are?

a dangling thread across the world
a missed stitch and loose link
a thin tightrope of hopes and hands:
we don't even know how it happens
and don't want to try to comprehend it...
are there ants in heaven?
when did time begin?
how is it that i can
hear my mum's cat Freddie
playing with the phone cord
12,000km away through the phone
and how is that that can devastate me
and buoy me
in exactly equal degrees?

what time is it there?
what time is it where you are?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i don't know about anywhere else, but it's 17.07 where i am. but thats only for now, later it'll have changed. maybe to 19.32.

figured i hadn't commented about the awesome-ness of your poems for a while.

your poetry is awesome. and thats coming from a non poem kinda girl.

x

Adam Gibson said...

hey thanks Kaz... i hadn't realised i had switched off the automatic posting of comments. i did that cos i was getting all sorts of weirdo messages on here. god there's some loose screws out there.