(Taking A) Walk

Every evening's like taking a hard breath.
I'm choking on eyes, eyes that can't cope
with how dangerously clean I am. Someone will offer me a favour.
I'll want to come out later to the gardens.

Park-side lounges are sitcoms
for my channel-hopping silhouette. From the waist-down
I'm rooted to the shrubbery. I straighten up shakily,
growing in the cut-shot shakes of a wildlife documentary.

I walk through parks at four in the morning
to wear the same noiseless monochrome
and warm greys as the city. Are you counting
the bones in my neck?

A man brought me down by the ankle once,
by a giant metal chess-set. It wasn't really a man,
just someone out of their mind who thinks life, even short grass
is felt at a run, a thick slam to the ground.

'You had a man at home.
What were you doing getting yourself in this state?'
Probably the same as me, the same as you: treading on the grass,
spying for cats, mumbling songs, talking the dark out of it with a look.