your quiet complicity
makes me think of saints
and how peacefully
they would let themselves
be chained.

have you ever tried to
find the echo in a cavern
or in a canyon?
your cries grow louder.

my response has become
a shuddering possession

you first time in my sight
set me ringing like bells
filled every bend and channel
of the sinews and the nerves
that run my skin

in our first words the sound
escaped me, audible under
my speech to you who set it
and you turned your head
to catch it.

not long and we were
racing the street
the locked church towers left us
kicking cars for their alarms
and pressing every door’s
buzzer, they answered
to our laughter

i found in our collapse
into each other,
in the quiet of the room,
a high pure sound seeped
from your skin.

when it is quiet,
like on warm evenings
where there is not enough wind
to raise a hiss from the trees

and it is late enough
for the people to have settled
in their houses

so the only sound carried
into the room
is the insects calling,

in that stillness
I always hear a trumpet
and smell cigarettes.

we cannot admit
we are haunted
by the living.

spring dreams feed
on the heat
and, from the light,
distil raw scenes
that the season
in its duty
slyly promises

scenes of mouth and limb
we never acted
but these vivid, holy days
push through sleep to see and leave
an electric feeling to linger
beyond waking

it lasts to fill the hours
of crowing and singing
spent to find you
in the hope that you
might undo these dreams
and dissipate this charge
i feel in the pulse of my wrist,
in the crook of my arm,
and through all my veins

a memory surfaced
you can see
time moving on
when they close in
on a decade

you velvet otter sleek
tan striped
chewing my shoulder
in the middle
of a summer night

bed sheets
pushed to the floor
a desk fan rattles
but its breeze
doesn’t reach us

like flies, the fumes
from your oil paints
can’t find the window
on newspaper
spread over the carpet
your wet canvases glow

i imagined i was proper
that night
you twisted your legs
chewed my shoulder
and growled