Candy coated whisper, we begin bottle necking,
and lick the grimy fingers of success.
Chai and warm corners
full of dust and secrets of someone we haven’t met.
Dip your finger in and kiss the sweetness.
Impulse control lingers
behind eyelids half closed in stupor.

Sleeping pills roll from the corners of our mouths,
Rhymes and books and velvet curtained rooms.
these people in their haze of poppy seeds and cornflowers.
Drifting, drifting.
They laze about, propped on the pillowed winds
and tree branches of the parks across America.
Perhaps one day.

Cardboard bridges and steeple fingers hold our gaze.
Dusty eyed wonders of the underworld.
Who were they?
A face in the steam, a fire leaping to life,
metallic birds flap towards the heavens
and the sky is filled with music.
Endless.

Bow drawn across a deep bellied coffee cup,
The saw played by the man with three fingers,
sound of the starving.
Curls of smoke wrap round their noses,
eyes and lips part in conversation with yesterday.
Sound of the starving.

The crunch of snow under foot
and the wishes of the forest intermingle
and it’s hard to decipher which is the truth.
Ecstatic waters drip dry in scummy pools of asphalt.
Eyes lock across the table
and the children run until they can no longer see.

Liquid or solid drink it up, baby,
and dance with me.
Hips move in and out,
Dance, while the laughter floats up into the stars,
listen to it sing.
Melodies fill our ears
with the soft sounds of arms and shoulders.
Hands grope in the dark, finding each other in the dust.

I wish you the very best,
you sweet wonder.
Kisses dance from under your ribs,
and with shadowed eyes you look at me
with only hold a glimmer of what you once were.
You’re concave, sinking in,
imploding against the back wall,
a splatter of denial and your wisdom is for shit.

Suck lemon drops, cough drops,
and still your lips will not part.
Cardboard signs and paper planes
and slack keyed guitars winding up in pawn shop windows.
When you die, I’ll be there to hold your hand,
walking you across the street,
light to dark, the storms cloud in and I let you go.

The oily sheen of your teeth against tongue,
biting off more than you can chew.
Play your mandolin
teasing melodies from thin air,
with an opaque freshness I will always equate
to smoke and saltwater.

Sometimes when the wind blows,
I can feel your breath on my cheek,
that smoky billowing from deep within the lungs of the earth, a halfwit sigh.
You caress me in my dreams,
satin curtain gone musty with age
parts to reveal something mossy, moist, green.
I feel the lushness with the very soul of my being,
your sadness melted into the world
and emanating from each follicle, every petal.

The hammered copper kettle whistles
and I pour the tea into the mug you gave me on my twelfth birthday.
The last time I saw you.
The sounds of Saturday fill my ears,
and I sip silently, speculating
Supposing, stupidly, that someday soon, I’d see you again.