..........


speech breaks, and it's only
so many dawn walks, so many
fenced fields, poppies
blown across the bricked-in cities
friends of panic
gather together where the surface
rises and breaks, speech

given a language, given an instrument
energies that fry their makers
murdered for making sex
born to carry trouble around
like a crate of medicines
the previously unloved

In the hard folds of a peach pit
or where astronomy enters the beach party
our conversation will come apart
because loneliness has made a cave
the human map no longer holds together
hyacinths spill from the gridplan

we discuss holiness, being unholy
we are learning the heat of a standstill