Since words were introduced, Things have gone poorly for the planet

Rivers and oceans met each other and did not mix. So too stars, which discovered they weren’t each other. Entirely. 

Beetles played monopoly with the biggest landlords and won with their 400,000 described species, metamorphic pupal stages, and their 

trillions of forenames, surnames, middle names, and marital names.

Things piled up in crab-buckets and dictionaries. You were found listed under distant. I have more or less money now. 

All one breath broke and distributed itself across pairs, triplets, the real absence of lungs. I wrote less.

The butterfly population boomed, throwing millions of flower species into hyperpollination.

Colours grew complicated and took longer to think about. They sound 

Like runaway marbles on cobbled streets. You blinked twice

And found a name for everything, ran from the station shouting TAXI, shouting

DRIVE, shouting MIDDLE-CLASS CONCESSION TO CONVENIENCE. At the beach howling

PLASTIC PLASTIC and PLASTIC GARBAGE at the Ammonite, you give in, you crawl in,

Humming in the shell-walls shouting SEA.