Mayday: two came to field in such wise :
'A daisied mead', each said to each,
So were they one; so sought they couch,
Across barbed stile, through flocked brown cows.

'No pitchforked farmer, please,' she said;
'May cockcrow guard us safe,' said he;
By blackthorn thicket, flower spray
They pitched their coats, come to green bed.

Below: a fen where water stood;
Aslant: their hill of stinging nettle;
Then, honor-bound, mute grazing cattle;
Above: leaf-wraithed white air, white cloud.

All afternoon these lovers lay
Until the sun turned pale from warm,
Until sweet wind changed tune, blew harm :
Cruel nettles stung her angles raw.

Rueful, most vexed, that tender skin
Should accept so fell a wound,
He stamped and cracked stalks to the ground
Which had caused his dear girl pain.

Now he goes from his rightful road
And, under honor, will depart;
While she stands burning, venom-girt,
In wait for sharper smart to fade.

the previous listener, who did so faintly and in a manner foreign to me, sat reasonably as I do now, or perhaps lain starry and jaded on some soft lawn riddled with the paused movements of those who watched, clouded with distraction, the life of a sweet nothing drown in descent from above as they cheered and screamed for it, for that meaningless treasure tainted by the vanity of their own desire, ignorant of the listener, of her own treasure then forming, as something warm and enduring in the seat of her chest, something to brood, to analyze, to cherish for a length, at great odds with the fleet and trivia that so dominated the struct of their noire.

but the listener had none of this, gulfed from the shaking and pressing, shielded the same from its symbol and write, opting to push for those few golden moments most certainly approaching her as the rest wraithed past, softly and shyly granting the scarcest and most shamefully starved of treelines, roadways and ballparks and wire staff, knowing but keeping that the few she would most deeply and fondly remember would be just these.

and so the listener and her lover stood past, sweeping over the artificial earths with little concern, not pausing or skipping for a moment to witness the wonder in the world around them and to soak up some indefinable fraction of its infinite offerings. from lain block to patch grass they strode, searching for their one moment, for that which so surely stood staunch and unmoving at some near point in their passage, but which always seemed to elude them, to taunt and hang and cackle in the face of their steadily growing contempt.

and then, as the crowd deserted their peaks for the safe and steady and trough, allowing those moments of elation to slip from them with ease, the listener let likewise all that was precious to her from her grasp, and fell into a similar place, one of deserted lows and recollections of the brightness that lay behind, of those very moments that felt their way independently into her heart and her soul, and left her love beside her, forever looking up into the dark.

We saw her leaving Jericho
Tearing down the walls
Throwing a childish tantrum
Whilst ******* in the halls

We saw her chasing pigeons
In the local council park
We caught her chewing daffodils
Whilst humming 'Baby Shark'

She drank a lot
Ate nothing much
But the ice
Inside the tube

Grit her teeth
Swallowing bubbles
The plastic straw
The noxious fumes

She was forever
Chasing a high
That cost too much
And left too soon

We saw her licking batteries
Relaying messages to Earth
We caught her hiding sanitary towels
Underneath the dirt

That lined the filthy walls
Of her low-rent, low-mood high-rise
Ghosts that wraithed inside her head
Left bruises on her thighs

We saw her join the homeless men
In the shadow of the mall
She combed the streets every day
And still found sweet **** all

She sang a lot
And never slept
Beneath the weight
Of a poisoned sky

We knew she was sad
All the time
But we never saw her
Cry

We saw her live
Her lonesome life
Even saw her when she
Died

From the other side of hell
We decorate our homes
Forget the fine line
The thin divide

Between our professional smile
And the crazy inside our bones