DISSOLUTION
for Paige Murphy

green wharf is for the listeners.
you do the sickle walk 
into fissures of craw future

to spite what freezes,
to love what changes,
to float in the disappeared inlets weaving seaweed.

scream-chirr masked, stutter
how garden implements 
must be taken to existence, a bright rake

spoke like subterranean 
unknown mews
of the grey visitor

whatever sound holds you
will be the sound
that holds you.

at deli dusk I attached myself to a shooting star 
cup-and-sword-leap over Leeds
then cut myself off in the dark. 

the only way open is to never stop trying,
with a flowering briar 
hanging from your mouth

and a double bass
for a feat
and the pure loneliness asked for, even in trios.

you make the whole darkroom a masterpiece
for the passersby there
who remember, red jetty, who remember, red jetty.

the crowd will always have their problem with it
let them. only fog. only rhetoric.
only what separates them.

I throw my shoes in the river 
and have done.
what we want is far away.

art perceives us.
the dead do too.
last cloud. first brooch.

EMAILS SOMERSAULTING THROUGH THE NIGHT

so it’s goodbye to the days of frost.
I remember the hair’s breadth too.

in the riptide, my
two green ships.
in the riptide.

from your desk
you slurred nine dells, low

armoured cars 
riding the motorway
allow bill over-violence
grunt aesthetics

postal worker of a mote noise
one law leap then sane also.

you give the sea no more time.
the sea speaks colours of poetry
weapon waters
go to the robots
the robots go to the sea.

pillow birding
washes the
ditch years
the robots go to the sea.

only sound thing to get drunk on is poems
exeunt toll 
each one 
like allium morning 
after a deep sleep.

would I isolate from that?
cast them like spinning tops
into the arches of the street?

but your ear works 
harshest spark 
in the comma cosmos

no choice. 
moonlight. ruth. 

revolutions
before us

ICI IN THE BLOODSTREAM, OVERDRIVE BETWEEN THE EYES

July the second
dark dream
can only think 
how desperately I need you all this close
terrorist wind in the terrorist sky.

upstart redstart
animalish poets ever on the bite brink
but fly their heavy haven from green ears.

terrorist heart in the terrorist chest.
lock-clear disgraceful love 
we chirp into the earth’s pelt

fledgling robin you tried to save
in the last back garden of cloudy terrorism

that my cart tune collaborates
with naked nothing

and though we vanish 
from our single meeting place, 
these lily lines

the night holds sea spray,
bravery and pirouettes

AFTERTHOUGHTS

we give noise to the word shears.
it’s like bayleaf balance 
and rare breakfast headlights 
in my new hard hat 
sprouting overdrive.

 all spring belongs to you.
it’s what we bind in our aprons,
strokes our doomed faces, cut up
makes intense loneliness an only ocean arrow.

each poem, out of daub death, like a nervous surprise
mouths the phrase to the darkest woods.

some people are working there. 
nothing has been written about them,
no songs, no TV,
only earthworms pressed in children’s books.

the spring is yours 
and you will carry it forever

never taken away or lost
love, the fireboats of the night.