A serene cottage upon a dreary hillside
  Where my mind's listless galaxy of neurons
Synapse in the absolute darkness,
  Is painted in Victorian hues, cold and haunting.

Dejection rains down from the leeward sky
  With nothing harkened save for the ocean's
Stormy roar and a desolate lighthouse,
  Beckoning through the fog and memoirs of the past.

The deeper my soul is carved out with sorrow,
  The deeper the hollow can be filled with joy.
But alas, I feel nothing of joy but only a void
  Left by the dagger of yesterday's darkening tragedies.

I feel the rain soothe my skin and kiss my cheek
  Like the sweetest lover on midnight's embrace,
Yet my moth-eaten quilt of memories only seems
  Enough to shelter our legs but ne'er our feet.

My heart feels the warmth of an autumn fire,
  Kindling in the crisp rain, bleeding beneath
A rose where we burn in the endless torture
  Of our own despondence.

I can feel the blood in my veins turning to fire
  As I imagine her fingertips unzipping my spine
As though it were full of secrets and mysteries
  Unbeknowst to myself...

I can feel the inferno that rages within my aortic arch
  Every moment I imagine losing myself within her
Eyes, glimmering like an eclipse over a midnight
  Sea...the Sleepless Coventry.

She unlocks my secrets and weaves them in the bouquet
  Of tendrils in her hair like ribbons of crimson and light,
Waving in the vehement northerlies with numbing scents
  Of argan and spice.

Her body is but a canvas wrapped neatly around a
  Paper mache skeleton, the most beautifully tragic
Foundation known to humanity...
  
She arrives right on the equinox to set fire to my sorrow,
  Intoxicating me with her kiss and infecting me with her smile.

And so enters the conflagration of my soul,
  An annihilation of light, blackening my coronary
Artery whilst shooting smoke through my cinnamon
  Whiskey tainted veins.

'Tis hard to look through such a misconstrued lens
  As such, the Vena Cava Kaleidoscope...
Where the flames burn through the galaxy of neurons
  Expending the harrowing memories as its fuel.

I can see the magnetic alloy of her Cobalt eyes reflecting
  The fire that consumes me from the inside out.
She pulls on me like the moon pulls upon the tide
  As she whispers with her soft, enamored sigh.

I burn in my silent knowing, my liquid mind
  Awakening in fervor and strange euphoria.

I burn for the Aurora Infinite.

You consume and consecrate like a locust
  In the heat of a summer night;
A mirage of your face casts before me in the
  Hellfire of a southern prairie.

The scorched ends of my eyelids struggle
  To see through the sunlight;
I can no longer see you.
  You've packed up and left behind a dust bowl.

A large section of my heart is left empty
  And hollow;
It's a place you've decimated to the very end
  Until I am left with nothing more.

I'm used up.

My heart has been reduced to ashes
  Where your wild fire caught me.

I am withered like the edges of thirsty leaves
  And blackened;
  My soul is cauterized with the flame
Of remorse and grief.

I'm an oil derrick shifting restlessly
  Up and down hoping to salvage
What is left our love in a drying well;
  A lonely machine working around the clock.

I'm just a faded polaroid blanketed by dust...
  Emaciated and hopeless.

I wish you could feel how heartbroken
  You've made me!

Hangman's noose snaps under the weight of
  Whisky and bygone memories.

You've consumed me like a locust.

Please allow me to bestow upon you a nocturne
  The music of the night...
Just listen to it...
  ...the reverence...

Why must I sit here in grey silence,
  Listening to the hard rain on the window sill?
I dreamt of you.
  Your smile.

Every arpeggiated chord.
  Every melodic line.
Every soft passage.
  I dreamt of you.

I awake and read your words
  And fall deeper into enigma.
Where am I?
  I dreamt of you.

I heard a voice in my right hand.
  Trying to escape, it led into an appoggiatura of trust,
A suspension of sympathy.
  I dreamt of you.

All of these crazed non-harmonic tones
  Clashing high above my flashpoint.
The dissonance carries.
  I dreamt of you.

Am I just so lost in the music I see in you?
  Or am I once again over-analyzing?
It's you! It's you!
  I dreamt of you.

Where am I?
  Why am I not near you?
This entrancement is becoming indefinite.
  I dreamt of you.

Please come closer.
  Beyond this shadow of thought,
Lies the key to a locked door.
  I dreamt of you.

Your words pierce my heart like a dagger,
  Making the soft nocturne glow as bright as you.
While I breathe, I hope.
  I hope we meet in our dreams tonight.

When the winds blow and howl through
  The air like an exasperated ghost,
Her hair becomes drenched in oxygen and light,
  Slowly levitating above her shoulders.

Each gold and silver laden tip flies just as
  She flies.

A storm approaches from the seaward way,
  Bringing a fierce sadness that eats away
At the rocky coastline and the houses
  On weak stilts.

But she dare not move.

To what extent is her fear innate?

She embraces the thunderous turmoil,
  The salty brine and sand flooding her eyes;
She cannot tell if it is tears.
  Or the ocean's waters.

The roar of the storm is the white noise
  That helps her sleep in despair.

She is fearless despite that dejection has consumed
  All that remains.

Although sorrow has taken the city and painted
  Its bridges and buildings in hues of grey and black...

Somehow, she is the only one with
  Colour.

A cooling zephyr blew across
  Union Hill and twisted and turned
Until it was caught in a dream,
  Tangled in ribbons of reflective light...

Light that was amplified by her
  Grace and cerulean eyes,
Like burning cobalt
  In an eventide sky.

The profound depth of her mere
  Being was enough to hold me
Down, something gravity
  Could ne'er do.

As I looked behind her
  Bright stained glass windows,
I witnessed every beautiful
  Objectification.

Sometimes, I swear I could hear the
  Song of myself ringing in her tears,
Dying in love in those cries
  With nothing more than a sweet embrace.

I began to feel a foreboding
  Sense of impending happiness
Dwelling among the empty chambers
  Of my restless mind as though it were...

A ghost...
  Haunting my soul at its very apex,
Flooding my arteries with
  Love's summer venom...

Sweet like her sugarcane
  Kisses...
Warm to the evanescent touch,
  Yet cold to the efflorescent taste.

Oh, how light flowed
  Forth from her tender fingertips,
The same fingertips that touched
  My face at midnight...

That witching hour we spent together,
  Killing each other's
Sullen loneliness until
  Time and white silence lulled us to sleep.

By every passing moment in the
  Sensuous manifest we call
Romance, the light cuts me
  Deeper with its rusty blade...

And disarms my final breath...
  "No more, no more",
And forevermore.

I fall weary in my crimson tide
  As she draws me near and nigh
With her soft spoken words
  And enamored sigh.

I am drowning in her August Light but
  My Bleeding Heart bleeds for hers, every night.

Just as the colors of Summer
  Fade into gentle shades of
Nighttime cerulean and smoke,
  The velveteen sky whispers...

A restless secret echoing across
  Silent meadows, heavy with shadows
That bleed shrouded consciousness
  Into the museum of my thoughts.

Each canvas is made of my skin,
  Drawn tight to a bone structure of
A paradoxical girl who's fingertips
  Emit a light...

A strong light which used to flow
  Like a river over midnight tears
And take me beyond to the realm
  Of sensation.

But now, I fall weak before the canvas
  Into a slumber as deep as time.

Billowing cloudbursts of paint in hues
  Of sorrow white and southern red
Rain upon my resting body
  On the floor.

The ghost of my conscience comes
  To cover me with a quilt patched
In foggy memories, incidentally
  Soaked in honey whiskey...

Just as the ghost covers me,
  It softly focuses on lips and breathes
"The empirical nature of your thought
  Rhymes with sensational control."

Though I venture in and out of
  Dreamscapes unknown,
I still hear the sound of the
  Wraith in my mind...

Like the somaticism of a beckoning
  And lonesome mockingbird calling
In the nightside fields of
  What I suppose is peace.

My chest becomes burdened with a sigh,
  A decadent and pure intoxication
Of the abstraction of
  Reality...

Seven miles above a three inch
  Reality.

The Watercolors flood the ever deepening
  Hallow of the museum of thoughts,
Drowning the corridors of my mind with
  Her liquefied heart.

I have completely lost a piece
  Of myself in her forever...

And light [watercolors] flowed from her tender fingertips.

I want to feel you breathe,
  So cool and languid,
A gentle rise and fall
  Of your sweet skin...

Oh so calm and temperate
  Like the resting waters
In the glassy fields
  At nightfall.

I want to rest my head
  Against your flesh,
Pale and cold like
  A cooling, winter sunset...

And kiss your [cadaver] eyes
  All the while drifting lightly like ash
Along the soft currents
  We are carried through.

The tempest carries our bodies
  To the Sleepless Coventry
As the Albatross flies
  Over head, leading and bleeding.

The night with the eyes of water and
  Painted in decay, cries for
The tragedy I wish to
  Live...

And 'tis such a tragedy so,
  For I want to love you
In the most ardent
  Sense, my darling.

My sweet love, I wish to feel the fire inside your
  Heart to keep me warm in my coldest hour.

My ocean soul covets the
  Warmth and the silent curves
Of your tender body, becoming
  One with the waves...

Like a lone kindling flame
  Beneath the sparkling waters,
We burn together, attracting
  The teeming luminescent.

Dearest lover, let us fall together into the sea...
  Hold me tight in your arms...

And these lips will
  Caress your watery eyes,
And bring you the loveliest
  Cloud of dreams.


Hand in hand,
  We are Shadows by the stormy sea...

Restless Shadows and the Sleepless Coventry.