In the afternoon of a Sunday evening, all painted
in the dust lingered in sunshafts, a giant
though smaller in person, entered my life.

She spoke in common prosaic, until she didn't.
And when the sunshaft lowered itself as sun did
in the evening horizon; so did her native naivety.

She met once, or more, a man who with hands,
acted as God. And in her life he swelled around
her heart a strangling deluge. Inundation of temptation.
Regret like the pirouette of dust as faltered in dusk.

By now I saw her stature as looming shadow,
and in moonlight I read her leylines.
Runed with the abuse of self and worth a penny more,
than the collection plate gathered at friend's expenses.

I watched a stumble in her walk that never molested her gait.
In her a sprezzatura, and finally, a person deserving of the word.

She woke me with a lantern, once, and pointed to the halo--
the beam encircled as accretion disk, the darkness pulled
and we were the gravity.
And so danced the dust, again.

As of many thoughts, and her my imagination, she had to leave.
A must. A certainty. And I will never be the same.
With each stitch I sew, forevermore, her will shall exist braided within.

Somewhere in the sinews of my chasm breaths beats in pace with love.
Saudade creeps into the same cavern, now darkening;
sonatas with no moon,
shafts with no dust,
art with no art.

With the outset of your child
to a brisk, cold wind unfettered.
How do you stare starving virgins
in the face as they float untethered.

Lies are a currency, counterfeit only to etiquette,
and emotion, and love. We lie,
locked eye within eye, in ways
to boost pride.

When vainglory preaches to you from a
styrofoam podium.
How do you recollect your bargains
Made in dead of night,
blanket to your neck.
Lies can sate those fever dreams
crept upon you from *****.

Does love mean love if it is said with force?
Faint heart never won fair lady.
Without Victorian hysteria;
Our corsets are not so tight
We lack the need for chaise longue
May we lack the need for, indeed nor,
the lie?

For some reason I felt compelled to share with others, strangers I guess, I never met them.
Strangers then. Compelled to share with them you. To prove to people who never knew us that I loved you. That we were lovers.
I wonder if I harp on that word too often. Bet I do.

I do.

I connected the misery of your loss into The Antlers - Hospice.
In some cowardly preoccupation with signaling the virtues of  a luminous man I pretended in due process. Much of me as you must understand.

You were a woman and a girl.
And I forced myself under to suffer in some actual mourning.
So a world built on my word.
My hands need rest.
My mind needs rest.
I want to stop.

I'd swallow a breathful of Plath-itudes.
If it'd quieten the lore of some rolling hill of you.
Somewhere scrawled in a red oak desk,
Borders and plyings a mess.

I likened you to a spectre.
For a literal in lieu

Why can't I let up off myself.
Why won't I accept love.

You are the woman protagonist in a fiction
And only your performance merits applause.

Frame your Sunday brunch as a childhood sweetbit,
manufacture after the capture with more redflags;
pour relations after kith and kin with feigned hit.

The brunch is done and so is our agreement.
The contract is as napkin math, undone and smeared
***** lipstick and cigaretted.

Forget about it, the millennium came and went and gone.
All we have now is a time eerily similar to another
without the escape of waking up and wiping face with yawn.

Cumbersome troubles on our sleeves tattoo'd for self-expression.
But what did you need so badly to tell us about yourself, what lesson
shall we learn through the sifting of eyefucks in Starbucks.
Through the popular apathy of shrugged shoulders when mentioned Sisyphusian boulder.
"**** happens."
What else could?
And in your gleaning of brilliant observation on the banality of complaints.
What did you muster as axiom within your world-view of constraints?
Did your unfinished novel and penchant for humanities,
remove you further from nature than consciousness,
remove you further from what makes us you and me?
The condition we live in, despite temporal and generational
bridges,
hinges on the livings of lives.
The thrives and thrivings of not,
cannot be captured nor caught
within the shallow swaip of a Sunday portrait turned to the side for landscape.

Remember the suddenness. How it all came in pour, and not drips or drabs.
A dauber, you were, and how you'd have to paint barefoot.
(I used to love watching you take off
your socks)
Your jaw locked and intensity gaze magnifying and ablaze.
Licentious.
You taught me that word was more than ***,
and taught me to be archaic.

You would study my studied glare as I toiled my own art.
Mostly for show, because I didn't know what to do;
with my hands or the words that needed massaging
from their tense sinews.
Then you, fashion of a muse came dancing to my stag self,
awe shucks off to the side and we'd boogie in darkness.

I left you at the altar.
You blew me a kiss with a nervous laugh,
and told me your heart beat for me like free form jazz.
Even when the music stopped and our hips ceased,
from lips you creased and then from pout poured,
"I love you, Jonathan Lore."

Sick sweetness taking beatings, and still shoulders rumble.
Meek teeth passed lips, and words so soft to avoid being trouble.
You can't help but be who you are, and were modeled.
A clay beauty, ****** through air, for those hunters and shot all.

To pieces, my missus, you must lift and stand and shake.
The rest of the day, and must portray, tween dawn and dusk at best.
You're a profound expression, eureka not lessened, and you heave to and fro.

The ocean ebbs, and sadness flow, inundated even at rest.
But chin does bob, and body does buoy, as you float and kick feet in dark mess.
Above all water, you pretend not the bother, and laugh smile with all feigned jest.

If it smells dead, it probably is
Rot makes no mistakes
I sit and spin my wheels and it takes
Everything inside of me

To rid myself of her stink
Seventeen years of parental nurture
Two weeks of preying in search for;
Only six minutes of squeezing to be

Left only to be filth again
Passed over and forgotten
Are my words too heavy for your song?
Sing loudly so I can hear you

Again, my pale skinned love
As I hover above and sweat into your mouth
Quiet swan song sung, splash of **** all too loud
Calm I grow as from you, I take my cue

Does my breath not fog glass as much as yours?
If I crawl away now, I won't appear to move.
Silently shaking and praying in search for
Something less living, something less grand

Bedside stories told to you once at night
A lone little light plugged in low by your closet
You feared the wrong monsters, and I felt that fright
It clung to the air; you were my first as by my hand.

But my hand pulls away now--
My fingers hardwired, pulling, reaching
For something warm to touch
And you were warm once, too