tonight i inhale
Bach violin concerto
the newly electrified streets,
fine porcelain, bone meal-
all grist to my mill.

A frenzy of high notes
climbs the stairs
to an insomniac
crescendo. A month's
uneaten meals
are a penicillin farm
i have snow in my face.

'whatever is left,
however improbable,
must be the truth'
i was never myself
when we met,
absorbed like sugar
in damp lanes,

my head full of secrets
and empires,
the chill mathematics
of suicide chess
and corruption
i was a connoisseur,
a skeleton.

i felt you
when i worked late,
a shadow-boxer
ducking my punches,
a deep-water shoal
always escaping my net.