Does language always fail or simply tear itself up

      into gaps, like flakes

of papyrus and ink      like love
All the words wriggle away into earth

      blow into tonight’s suburban haze

flush into stormwater or waiting seas

      but also to where thought works itself out
Maybe I want to call to other beings

      but they squirt back in my face    cry out

run from me, burn, crumble, rot, die away
Sometimes I stand stupid, nonplussed, curious

      angry, withdrawn as if

I should get something more back
Sometimes I should just howl, cry      coo a little

      empty my mind      welcome the wrong foot

forget being an adult of any history      any gender

      forget being solemn, cool, wary      important
I’m not what I believe myself to be

I’m the one afraid of stains      Cleanliness

      is next to murder
There are powers we don’t know in every garden

      rubbish dump, fatberg, forest     the spray of

a spoken word     slag heap, supermarket     toilet, dam
A beach never stays the same

      just ask the shells and seaweed      beach glass

discarded towels and sunscreen      the floating shit
Our stories break up like geological eras

      or transmissions from stars     gashes, ruptures

orgasmic oblivion, platonic slippage      
Or curve forwards      to an end      as so many facts

      dense as the milky way

or root systems      fossils, graveyards, sea beds
Is water a consciousness      or simply a stream

      a throughway      as it pushes us

towards another stream, and another
So, I’m looking for form     like some poet?

      I’ll never find it

      Every form remakes itself

Every genre begets another      or crosses it out
What if I sing      like the wind, a whale

      so many birds

a dog      the whole eisteddfodau
If I’m a wrong one, will you also be that

      with me      almost righted

in the stream, holding on      or going down together      
But time to stop talking

      time to show up, hear the other sounds

They don’t care about me, about us
And that is what matters

      What is without us      And what we are      without
It’s an emergency

      But also, where different forms emerge

Entwined?

      Yes, sometimes we are