I remember the tops of clouds,
Looking as far as I could see.
I don't know if the Pacific
Is a pretty place,
But at altitude,
At least it's sunny.
Under the cumulus blanket,
Man makes his own clouds,
Thick with metal and smoke,
All black and shrapnel,
And God help you
If one opens up around your wingtips.
I remember nosing down,
Gritted teeth and twisted belly,
Eyes flitting between instruments
And the little ship
Getting fatter and fatter
Through my prop.
You wait till the last second,
Drop your ordinance,
And pull your nose
Up and up and then
You push that little throttle bar
To the limit,
And then the **** black clouds
Start up all around you,
And when your big baby shakes,
You know something's wrong,
And you cry out
"Buck? Buck?"
Like I did.
And then you don't know
If your face is covered in tears
Or blood from you or Buck.
I remember landing on that carrier,
Big and metal and gray,
Like a big tombstone for your friend,
And your plane is the coffin.
**** it, I remember.

Fluorescent flickers illuminate the stained cement floors of the hallway. Your slippered feet music an uneven pad and scuff. This ***** city is home, whatever that means. This ***** city holds you like you're someone else's child. A burst of joy and music reaches for you through the window; someone bangs a door and you turn on the tap. As water sputters onto your toothbrush you catch a whiff of Dakota Jim's racist southern drawl, a puff of his ketamine breath.

You walk to the window, toothbrush dangling.

[Oh London, I know you love no one, but nights like this I feel your heartbeat in your embrace.]

History swells beneath your feet. Your eyes land on a seated figure, his grand headdress of feathers overpowering the tableau, his gaze calmer than the other mad happy swirls that make up the crowd. It makes you wonder what he sees. Probably nothing. You will learn that when he seems profound it is usually an accident. You are penned in by jagged skyline hieroglyphics. History swells. Your heavy hearted story is a speck consumed in all this history. All the history you were taught in school was death, you remember your mother bemoaning this war generals and battle dates history. You wonder at how much death this place has seen, how many lives the city has birthed and eaten, hungry mother staving off starvation.

We all write our stories on other people's bones. Of course the greatest cities would leave the greatest scars. And what did you come here looking for anyway?

[Hello Momento Mori city. I see you. I see your rooftops straining to **** stars. Do you mourn for your dead? Are they heavy in your belly? Are you going to eat me, too?]

But now, if you drag your little mind back from the immensities, everything around you is alive. Everyone is dancing, happy to be caught in her belly. Or her womb. Not one of you knows which, but there you are. In the courtyard, the small, steady figure of Freddie Stitz brings a lit cigarette to his lips and smiles up at you in the window.

Wipe that toothpaste off your face, you look ridiculous. Go back to bed.

The paint on the canvas
never had a chance to fully dry
before you painted on another layer.
You couldn't quite stay between the lines,
and an acrylic became a watercolor
when tears stained our so called masterpiece.
Days spent debating
whether to paint over the wreckage
or crumple the paper,
but I've never been much of an artist.

The sky is about to make you a liar
because
to the moon and back
is utterly impossible.
I still believe you
even if the universe never did.

And danger was closer and closer with each passing moon
but anyway
we turned to stargazing.
But even the stars fall from the sky
and no dream of mine could make you love me;
Or you for that matter
but I do
I love you.

You look good in blue,
it imitates my eyes
which mirrors my heart
that is yours
forevermore.

I weaved something beautiful for us both
but life is not a loom.
Its a series of complex embroideries
and our patterns never
matched.

At least you're honest,
that's something I've never been much good at.

Floating across a river of blood
in a pool of massacred dreams,
ripples of hope.
The water runs red because of the plague,
to remind of the good and warn of the bad.
Undesirable outcomes
of the ways we've been behaving.
I wanted to take a dip in that forbidden stream
before all this happened.
To watch it run clear and catch flickers
of light across it's ebbs and flows,
like someone had sprinkled glitter into it.
I wanted the beauty,
even though I didn't know how to swim.
Never had I been within something so
natural and crisp.
I was willing to drown if it could wash over me,
and make me feel as connected as it seemed
to everything around it.
How could this be considered erroneous?
It seemed peaceful...
Until lives were slaugtered on its banks.
Others who felt the same,
our kindered hearts,
we wept into the deep opaque water.
Water none of us knew existed until we saw it.
This same small creek,
that I had never been emerged in,
was now a scarlet current infused with tears.
Ripples from the sobbing rain are what remind us,
that it is an ever moving entity,
with a mind and a song,
and will filter itself someday,
with a slow, harmonious bubbling of purification.
I can wait, and let time heal my subtle rejection,
because now I know what I want.
I want to swim in this elixir of life.