last night in my dreams i went to a bar

in the void

it was all darkness

dimly lit

there was an over-sized jukebox making otherworldly sounds in

what looked like a round corner

while the space felt crowded, it was almost deserted, almost empty

except for

the promise of wakeful suffering

the past's burn of *****

dinner, unsettled but unmoved

and an empty bag of fancy chocolate

to keep me company

long dead gods sometimes showed their faces and were unrecognized

i never drank a thing

i wasn't thirsty

but i sat at the bar, staring at everything but the jukebox

an empty, chipped glass in my hands

an empty, chipped smile on my face

I want to drink the stars
Shine, their constellations running through my veins
Suffocate on their glow
Ragged breaths their edges shred my throat
Did stars always bleed so red?

The library is more like a hospital.
Bleached lights cause migraines,
the words too clinical and exposed
like eczema scars on my wrists.
It is too bright to fall in a thicket
of cognitive thought  and blind imagery.

The secret of beauty is good lighting.
I could never fall in love with a word
under such a surgical glow,
all intimacy on show in a place meant for
German Dictionaries and free wi-fi.
A place for the missing to sleep,
and not a place to daydream.

There is no smell of coffee,
only the occasional whiff and crackle
of a surreptitious sandwich interrupting
the stale breath of printer ink and ointment.
I am all for public places
until I find myself within one.

Exposed under these artificial stars,
I come here for a chance of no distraction.
Each time, however, I find myself languid.
Eyes set to some indefatigable point
whilst I catch the taste of shared air,
the sirens in the distance,
the location of nowhere.

Her hair was the color of the filtered rays
of sunlight that streamed
through the trees that summer.
"Look, look under that rock"
I looked around my ankles
"Where?" Rings jumped up
at my heavy steps.
"There" her arm thin,
like the branch above my head
shot up holding another crawdad.
"How do you do that?"
"I don't know"
Her lithe steps left foot prints in the mud
and I pressed them out with my feet.
Erasing any traces we where ever together,
there on that bank
on that hot august day.