Life Cycles

What you give to me is soluble,
a missed heartbeat disappearing into blood,
a recognisable quiet, blank speech bubbles
above a sea of strangers. We cross
paths, railroads, wavering map contours
that encircle joints, street corners where
we meet and become a little more
like each other.

If I have managed to love you,
somewhere in the dermatology of a landscape
there has been a blush, a tingling ringing
disguised as birdcall. If in harmless studies
of passing-by, we have inflicted loneliness
on each other, there has been a closed sunset,
a minute shutting-down of the soul,
disguised as night.

What I give to you is soluble,
a promise melting down a phone line,
a suggestion of fidelity, red roses awaiting arrest
in the web of a flower-shop. We dislocate
faces, landmarks, the jumbled
melodies of untraceable laughter.
We form collages that go on and on--- a piece
of gum on a politician's sole, an umbrella blocking out
a scene of danger, an ironic twist--- never
making sense, never pretending not to.