the morning has felt European, Tamlin—

white skies, waiting for something to happen, 

for momentum from bitter coffee,

how do we recapture this? 

it’s tempting to run fingers through leaves,

or tease the insect in transit, 

or give names to each other 

& other nebulous things

 

the people we could see today,

in the dial of their own private lives,

will only be misremembered shapes

pieced together as murmurs 

when you repossess the world 

in your own ticking over moments

 

we’ll stay in the pigeon-coloured light

drifting with stale smells & bare walls

& if the risk of speech is tempting,

let’s be atonal animals: i promise the

knowledge of boredom is luminous—

& that bulging inertia 

is just the cardiac 

haunting between us 

 

the twitch of a joke is in your face

& in the grooves of my tongue:

better to let gravity digest it 

& inhale instead, casually does it—

all else is just opinions 

& possession