Poem by James Wilkes
Interpolation and video by Ariadne Radi Cor
Filmed from a taxi in Dubai.
Higher than the Troposphere, that damp soup flowing west to east and dirty with rising and falling commercial airliners and dead terns. Higher than the Stratosphere (the worst of the o’spheres), full of airliners, commercial vultures, etc. Higher than the Mesosphere, its noctilucent herringbones and tedious veils only cosmonauts or commercial airline pilots bother to photograph; higher than the Mesopause.
Remember swimming across ripe limestone
the coefficient of friction nears zero
walk in raw space
I saw the Baltic sea, Baltic
tangled with this stranger
and your deeply exciting eyes vanish
but grace in a pressurised shoulder drapes casual arms
the bones and your deeply exciting eyes vanish
higher than the Mesopause