i made a small fire with all
of the paper messages
that you ever left for me:
tiny flame flickering-smells like lipstick and cigarettes and hollow words.

everything you wrote to me makes up my list in its entirety:
the most recent things
that I am going to forget.

mad and tiny toed
she came to share my asylum sleeping place
a wonder in the moonlight's dust-ride
a wrangler of the dreaming

winterworn and coatless,
i slept soundless,
wept tearless,
woke restless;
for the hinges of time's doorways creaked non-stop with our leaving

heart is heavy
a trainload of lead
better get an adjustment
listen a little
get out of my head.

my love is in lock-up
gotta spring her today
do what i must do
do what it takes

walk through what is before me
with great gratitude
lessen the gravity
these are my shoes

waiting on nothing
yet the waiting's worthwhile
working at forgetting
last year's
wasted time
a bloodletting

stripped of  your innocent wrapper
a snake that has molted
its skin
you somehow seem to have convinced me
of what a worthless waste it is
attempting to wring something sweeter out of this senseless death-trap

the shadow of your cowardice
and lack of sincerity rides the memory of our loving
like the moon rides the earth
******* the sun's light for itself
at once cheap and
parasitic

i hate myself for believing you

harvest your own lack of loyalty
and
betrayal trappings
you will glean
all that you brought me--trouble is caustic
an unbridled acid tongue bleeding

that trouble shall hunt you
all of your days that remain
the sign you leave
being easy to track
as the world's last beast

if love were fish and the bones of them
love's memory would swim through multi-colored cascading  
cathedral fountains
floating by
suspended
with lighted bell shaped alure
and small lips good for kissing

love's memory would swim through
tiny myopic refractions
of shattered life
broken by shafts of
twinkling light that has
no set source