A Minor Return

Soft, wet fleshy night:  a christening,
seminal birth-pangs in the bed of 
apple-eating dreams.  The sharp
rust-taste of cunt, the tang of clitoris,
fading into ashen morning.  Sheets
strewn and stained with blood, 
with sperm, a mattress squashed
upon a floor with the weight
of spilled bodies.  These half-unpacked
bags grinning like demented ghosts;
our bones, a thick sediment/ settled,
unsettled/ dreaming of airports and
shrines, strangers chanting incantations,
burning spices and effigies/ a sack
of memories stirred and mashed
in a plaster of paris pestle...
and we awake, spent, with expectations
that are beyond the here and now/ 
no longer capable of sleep, the sun
rising through fog, casting shadows
of acid, colourless light, so that the walls
conspire to breath; and I feel
breathless, an asthmatic struggling
for the air of a new day.  We are home/
we have returned; and I am too tired
to run away again.  I lay, head propped
on hand, watching you stirring, listening
to the dull, beating heart
of this strange, too familiar city.