Morrow, morrow, city of dreams
Turpentine, slowly sifting
Invades here in sashes of silk
Sounds through bone, bone
Fluid, lures the brain:
It follows coy, curious
Shuffling its thoughts, like one
With fingers, like you
with seasons— blue, and then bold—

The crows shift on the wall
Linseed a moment, and then acetone
I can only overhang and see
The stretches of the city
Forever overspill, overkill— overt
And covert— sounding through
Its buz-busses and snorts; crickets,
Cats, night, white, night
An ox-y-mo-ron, you
Are an orchestra, a tryst

Sweet mo-no-to-ny, a
Platform in a plaza
A plaque on a platform in a plaza
I ransack the dictionary in search of you
The road to lead to the relic of you—
Feed the retrospect’s imagery away
Then the crows look at me
Like I killed their maa
Lit up a June solstice in the beautiful light
Pollution and sound pollution, you
Are homecoming, I say
I say, nothing blinds like home, I say
And I cough the air out like a slang
Your city is ****, a skullduggery
To last the brazen evening
And sag by the night, you are slant
Static, ruthless to the stone come for moss
A slap on the face
Of my sentimentality
How I love to draw you: this way,
This, however I like, since you
Are sightless like a TV, hive of bee
You jig like rain, like sun, woe to me
Like sen-su-a-lity
A satin city, itty bitty pretty
Silly, let me study!

Did you weep too?
when we put down our cups of hot tea and joy
they seemed to speak to the wavering air
some reticent secrets of themselves or us
I thought: death is like my father now
it names me, not after, for itself
and I smell the petalled incense of its security
security…
Security. Security.
I thought: we are written
you pull right, and I pull to left
and we go stumbling forward to papa
I thought: I am a cold bottle put in the day
I wipe my tears, and I smile at the beautiful sun
and then again, I wipe my tears, and I smile at the beautiful sun
Did you whimper?
sweetly like a child
I could have loved you if I wasn’t afraid
You say: I am always afraid
You say: it is my excuse for everything
You act so brave, you think I do not think
I have seen you in the velvet dark
crystalline eyed and thin,
not yet the woman that becomes my sin
You are just like me

I thought the eyes would swell and mama would know
so, I stopped and quietened
breathing like a valley, sniffing like lizards
We heard the city sing by
I thought: it is like a train
its tail hooked to the nose, it moves in a circle
and we are in it
Say, do you recall at all?
not more a nigh to pass, but the sentimentality fades,
and we ought to go

Say, stay?
Say, stay for a dance
However pained– a waltz of held-hand and shoe
I will try not to tremble
like that acrid tongue of forever time
Now your forehead gleams with the smear of gloom
and we are wont to let it dry
wont then, to become canvases
wont then, to hide them away, in slots of unlit places
(like ******* or... palm-on-palm or... in between bookshelves or lip)
with so many others
Remember that one? Then that, then that, then that
when we wore our shameless dresses of terror and shame
and we cursed the holy heavens of youth,
when we fought, when we fought, when ran like laughter
There was so much grief
I thought: it will eat us
I thought: I will never escape this
this name that papa wrote
on the paper of my breath
we will always be here, babes, fumbling in shawls
and pleasing the house
plaint and faint and so much like fear

Did you weep too?
I was astray in the street, I couldn’t quite see
I could’ve kissed you like the girls on TV
but mama was everywhere, and she was dressed in papa’s shadow
She said
She said—
She needn’t say anything at all

Say, did you weep at all?
I said I was afraid,
I said then so much of it, I forgot of you
Say, I don’t think you did.

Roused in fanfare, these facets
are full of scantiness,
of cold-***** futility, of bitter thanks

The light turns, morphs them
now they are faces, now limbs
now rancid rag houses again

Crooked sun gurgles, spits a fraud spring
and the office men observe their machines
straight-backed like chairs, they droop
rampant on scarped brown desks,
desks with picked-nail edges, so brown
no one sees them, so solid one forgets to

The sky runs her threads again
accumulating: stagnant noon, sitting
spread-legged, with wax-paper eyes
it watches, watches the aging

Slowly, everyone leaves
the formal men, their leisurely burlap work
lights blink as if to bulwark tears, and
the foul remnants of day's charred pleasure
begin to settle on skin.
the wrists thin, some nails cave in
some lichens on stone-nose

Things that elude cuddle elastic back
into the things they elude
and, spent, the sky breaks at last the thread
to another demure death:
glitchy and green, riddled
in its own secrecies,
dry-lipped as a crone

The light turns again
and this time, it is perfect:
just past the critical angle,
where bustle-bundles of beam
flee unfettered
and leave unlit the grateful subject
reticent, stale
bold in a boastless brood

only a singular fissure
of pretend slight
to mourn aloud in the spectacle of black

Slow and steady wins the race
so please be patient with my heart,
I'm back to notebooks filled up past
the brim with simple love poems
and an empty bed to preach them to,
She has done and filled me up,
Put light back in my smile and
remembered that blue is my favorite color.
So even with hearts beating fast
playing kickball inside my ribcage,
I will walk slow, remember that
slow and steady will win the race,
So hold my heart, and teach it patience