I still see you
laying in the balled dark,
moon-pretty,
pinkish ache,
webbed in lash.
I still hear you
& fall in swoon
when you tell me
in Turkish
that your little left hand
is still sleeping.
O darling...
I stand in the doorway
& let my heart *****
to your ghost.
You're here and not here.
How can I sleep like this,
on a bed so pricking with memory?
In this slush of shadow,
this leavened night breath,
your absence feels almost like love.

a quick shrug, ***** my shoulders - anger rolls to floor.
I wade through it - bear love and hope a little higher over its tides.

They may refer to it as a 'road map'
as if this is just another journey,
but we all know
that at the moment we're not allowed to travel
so what use is a map?
come to think of it
what use is a road?

it's just another soundbite to overload the signals that your brains try hard to process in the age of the pandemic.

I am turning into Rip Van and
no better than white van man,

falling asleep at the wheel or
searching Amazon for a deal
it's all a mix-up
feel like a setup
wish I had met up
with
Michel de Nostredame.

A black ****** slips stars
into the withered
low-tide triangle
at Sandymount -
     Where are you?

My clenched chest beats bruises
into a defaced molt of moon
& down the quay, pursuing you,
before acceding to reality:
     You are missing.

Sun comes up,
she goes down
on some upended main drag,
if i were an archaeologist
i still wouldn't dig this place,
every other day she dwells
in tedious, empty cafés,
but on the weekends she flashes
her "license and registration"
to oncoming traffic,
hoping for grifted furlough
to wear as silken, shiny beads,
and so we ride
this merry-go-round,
because moving in circles
is far better than being trapped in a square,
we've stopped climbing the calendar
in search of higher elevation,
she used to pour it on thick,
stirring drinks inside my head,
i used to shake
worries from her hair,
now with bitter orange marmalade
low in the sky, and stacked against us,
it's home before dark,
lest our eyes open wide to see
we are nothing more
but strangers at sundown.