I look at you
and note
the way your shoulders extinguish the sleepy light
your freckle sitting just so
below unaware taunt lips
your eyes
like any other
not worthy of weak knees and blooming cheeks
your jaw
jutting arrogantly,  
as though (impossibly) aware
of the slow furling burn
that is so sweetly
turning me to dust

There is a place I call Soldier Way  
Sacked at the hem of one ruddy bay  
The open casket of a living ash town

Along the non cerulean periphery  
Waves in battalions besieged in the shores' retreat  
Flitting ceremoniously to a soup of heat  

The white sea calls in a scepter  
Of fleeting air lilies in salt-simmered clouds
Subsumed in daydreams of wet palm castaways

Fiery, elusive pearls praised at my feet  
Then went on to their deaths, fluxing flummoxed  
As flushed touch-me-nots upon human graze 

There, twenty eight steps apart—children cheered  
Flamboyant flowers in a backdrop of a resigned hue  
I smiled against the vigilance of momentary isolation  

In great imaginations, the sea does speak  
To the boulders by the homely sand  
My spring back on their furnaces

Today
The sun
Climbed through the air
Like a glowing tortoise

And we all sat
Under our musasa
With glistening penny cools
And freckled knees

Tick tock
It's 2 am
Rather late
To be contemplating today
And tomorrow
and yesterday
And perhaps last June
(Remember?)
When jazz bands played
In the English sun

months stretch on
And yet pile up
in no time at all
And days disappear
And weeks run into each other
meandering (so quickly) away

Yet here I lie
As though time were
an idea
dreamed up
somewhere
As years fit into a single second
in my pondering mind

And I wonder
what will happen when the clock
slips to 4 am
and waking birds ruffle their feathers

You see, time will take me captive
And only on another rare sleepless night
Days, weeks, years ahead
I will again question
The clocks unending whirr

All they do is glisten, beckoning and prodding with gold dipped fingers. A hazy taunt, washed in soft delightful hues of eternal summer, and dying evening light and young tight smiles. Glimpses of an existence that now is rusted leaves scattered across a dusty path, an empty wind sighing in forlorn cadence, the hopeless reaches of a sleepy dipping sun. The world is spinning on its axis taking me with it and yet leaving me quite behind.

Take one a day and mind the gap,
the rich and the poor, the beer on tap,
stand in line, date and sign,
the Red Bull jitters, the box of wine,
give way to the left, give way to the right,
the artificial winter, the bringer of night.