Evil prepares itself
in the body,
chasing me
through the wolf hour’s 2PAC version
of Abdi’s compass courses,
out of cruise control, fury forced 'tween the plowbanks
over thaw-eaten March margins
along road 356;
a barely sensed groove through the March forests,
the bass beating through the dark,
the headlight beams almost dead in the mist;
a slender shadow medical-transported in the back seat,
long-legged, leaning, silent; the opposite
of old TOY advertising,
yet with the same cineastic breath

The years cannot go unanswered
when lone wolves arrive flock-flowering
in the first available body-shell
and the assertions stand with wet paper slips
in the municipal offices

The day after, infra-rumble rolls in the afterbirth
when the snow releases from the stable roof,
all horses and cats soon accounted for,
at a safe distance,
while the bumble-brahmins from another poem
murmurs evasively across the seasons

Answerlessnesses form a chain in the side-darknesses
between Notträsk, Skogså, Skatamark, Inbyn,
Åskogen, Nedre Flåsjön, Degerselet & Niemisel,
faces pale-eyed above blind-spoken unutterings

The surnames deny all knowledge,
meet up in higher court
before new evidence, 90s-rap-mouthy

Evil apples itself under the radar;
no one knows why the females behave
Simon-and-Mohamsson-like in the hopelessness

The alarms stand eye to eye
in gang conflicts of the endgames,
garish, Arvo Pärtish, fratres-gnawing

Security firms arrive with antidotes

In the waiting rooms they sit prepared
with their personal numbers;
the diagnoses randomly drawn
in the inner rooms,
now & immediately hooking arm
with a Couperin piece

Abdi lights his way
up through the birch lane of Station 45 at 03:15
on Thursday;
makes an elegant 180-degree turn, asks:

“Is this where you live?”
or: “Is that you there, brother?”

steps out and fixes something
in the trunk;
2PAC across the yard
as I switch on the porch light,
the basslines –
another world’s solar-plexus language –
rolling back down the birch-lined lane
from Noret’s hill of till,
the red tail-lights fading in the fog
on the way to Överkalix
with the almost micro-engraved lady
hovering far too lightly in the back
of Abdi’s cab, so airy,
moored to the seat with the seatbelt,
like sleeping-bagged astronauts
along the walls of the International Space Station
as I walk up the steps
and open a 2PAC on Spotify
and let it run