The clouds as I see them, rising
urgently, roseate in the
mounting of somber power


surging in evening haste over
roofs and hermetic
grim walls—


Last night
As if death had lit a pale light
in your flesh, your flesh
was cold to my touch, or not cold
but cool, cooling, as if the last traces
of warmth were still fading in you.
My thigh burned in cold fear where
yours touched it.


But I forced to mind my vision of a sky
close and enclosed, unlike the space in which these clouds move—
a sky of gray mist it appeared—
and how looking intently at it we saw
its gray was not gray but a milky white
in which radiant traces of opal greens,
fiery blues, gleamed, faded, gleamed again,
and how only then, seeing the color in the gray,
a field sprang into sight, extending
between where we stood and the horizon,


a field of freshest deep spiring grass
starred with dandelions,
green and gold
gold and green alternating in closewoven
chords, madrigal field.


Is death’s chill that visited our bed
other than what it seemed, is it
a gray to be watched keenly?


Wiping my glasses and leaning westward,
clearing my mind of the day’s mist and leaning
into myself to see
the colors of truth


I watch the clouds as I see them
in pomp advancing, pursuing
the fallen sun.

It's said that it takes seven years for your body to replace its cells.
Memories die.
They wither away;
become unexplained hints of familiarity in a stranger's face.
Scars are replaced by renewed skin. Bruises disappear, erased as though by magic.

My body is a eulogy for your touch.
You were a merciless lover. You scratched your name into my skin. Your teethmarks are still imprinted on my tongue. The bruises, around my throat.
"Here lies he who commands my breath".
My lungs are still learning to forgive you. My muscles are still learning to forget you.

It's been four months and two weeks. I can feel the ghost of you restless, haunting my flesh. It wails at night and I still cry myself to sleep,
longing for dead things to remain dead.

if you erased all words
cleaned the paper
blank again  

would the feelings
still breathe
in the paper

you know like secrets do
in air  
between the meaningfull gaze
of two close friends