Magdalena Ball #44: Gap Junction

Gap Junction

Every year is another risk

when the gate opens

all things become possible

I wait here, at the rocky surf coast

bubbleweed below my feet

the breath of change on my neck

always this attempt to

connect across intercellular space

if only I could try harder

to bring it all into me

a motherly impulse

from way back when

resolving to resolve

this year, not to say no

because fear is a necklace inherited

waiting for the ball to drop

in this alternate naming system

is semantics only, a lexicon

the truth lies elsewhere

in that fragile space between
our delicate lies.

Magdalena Ball #17: Signal to Noise

Signal to Noise

while ice melts
in the arctic sea
setting new records

I hold a telephone handset
against my jaw
using nothing but
facial muscles
and a hunched shoulder

words come through encoded
action this, deep dive, enablers
voices blurring into
the hum at the back of the line
a growing headache
beneath the socket of my right eye
combines with the hiss of vocals
and awareness of distant danger
as the sound reaches peak abstraction

the words on the line
meld and then break
into phonemes
which dance across the
cold sweat on my arms

it’s like two worlds in co-existence
my body hovering between these
multiple spaces
fragmented into components

I wonder if I’ll ever return
to the conversation

Magdalena Ball #13: Lines for Feynman

Lines for Feynman

Take the atomic scale for instance

this isn’t coming from me

where things
behave like nothing
you have any direct
experience about

not like waves, particles, clouds
billiard balls
or weights on springs

can we pause for a moment at
weights on springs

to explore the behaviour
not of matter and light
but of a scientist
playing at the quantum scale
the way a child might play with sand
a pail, shovel
building castles and forts

laughing uproariously
as if the universe were the
funniest comedian
a conundrum
the best of jokes

can we find, not only solace
that our stupid rhetoric
and shallow jockeying for power
is not the only language on offer

but also in how much there is to know
and how little of it is mapped

steeped in my own
particular ignorance
I find hope

probabilities
just add together

this is the only mystery
we cannot solve can use

in this perilous
but still correct
existence.

Magdalena Ball #3: Reverse Hallucination

Reverse Hallucination

It was the most familiar circumstance
you eating toast with marmalade
drinking ginger tea
the balmy deck
what we might have called ordinary

there was a beach
because there is always a beach
the ocean at its edge
that slightly overcast weather
and empty

this is what we chose
the meeting place
when things got rough
a sensory disorder
autonomous sensations
created at the point of disintegration

when I reach for your hand
I smell salt
connect with the table
hand against picnic wood
splinter of pain: a link

eyes watering through
sea spray aerosols
ocean life, bacteria, phytoplankton
cold, not tears

time passing is
a seagull caw
the break of waves on shore
shore on rock
day into night, and I laugh
into the vision

just as we planned it