Gold across the treetops
The sun's begun to fall
What lives exist beneath -
Beyond my backyard wall?

Trade winds blow backwards
My mind reels
Insight in insight

Thirdhand apocrypha
Melting all the time
Icebergs within icebergs

Waxing philosophical on the porch
Beneath a string of neon lights
The lighter blinks on as the stars keep blinking out
Let's celebrate our waning nights

I ask you please to fuse my flesh
Let me be some other thing
Let my voice fade on the wind, I'll
Forget what it means to sing

Structures crack and atoms melt
I beg you to relinquish me
Stress will drag me to the ground
This cruel responsibility

Don't dare to cry, I cannot scream
Please let my words be hollow
I'll lock away my simplest dreams
For fear someone may follow

Burn up all the evidence
Please dissipate now on the breeze
Hide this body out of sight
Sink every thought beneath the seas
Leave nothing but a silent eye

Across the street and just below the lilac sky
Catch ashy grey roof tiles that evade the eye
A portal of lamplight, amber and glass
Familiar strangers, imagined pasts

Memories that weren't
Things you don't know
Doors that are locked
A place you can't go

Tell me
Send voices
Swimming to the shore

Tell me
Smoke signals
Dead weight on the floor

Hanging humid
Limply from the palms
Stiffly stepping
Blood flow slowly calms

The tide drags time
Motion out to sea
Half-remember
Somewhere you'd rather be

Stray hair and thick air
An embrace without care
— anywhere but here —
A summertime nightmare