Lost Boys


We are lost boys,
running round a lost house.
Lost in a place that folded like a note
has been mislaid.

Someone, somewhere
was meant to get a memo about us,
but something went wrong and the paper
dissolved like water — and now we are here.

I don't know what this place is.
It is a white cave of blind electric light
with lots of things in. It's like a place
I half recall — like I've been here before—

but not here. This place is colder.
There are no doors and the windows
are furred with dust. We do not clean
them. We are just children. Lost boys—

a boy and a girl, you and me, we
have forgotten everything. There is mess.
We pick our way through it like goats
traversing rocks, yellow eyed and hungry—

making more with every step and our
corridors have collapsed with the weight of
clothes hooks. There is an upturned bag
and a dark red raincoat, pooling shiny—

like heavy blood. This place has no rules.
We make them up then break them. Once
there was a place where even air smelt good,
a place like this but not like this, a place that—

wasn't lost. There was order,
rhythms we could understand:
                                                       a compass, a timepiece,

                       a small brass metronome?




                                    ticking in our hands.


                                    Here, there are no clocks.
                                    It gets dark and we know to sleep.
                                    It gets light.