Shhhh,
It's spoken.
Spoken like a dream in handcuffs
Broken like a relief in progress,
and single as an eyelash.
Trusted in darker hallways.
Sinful as the walkways of a stolen word,
Crash to open.
Send it to a brighter world.
Let the dim light linger.
Never let your finger
touch the lips of babes.

"I'm not sure I believe anything,"
words spilling out my mouth,
staining the carpet.
"And everyone's like Christmas on the outside."
Cold as it may be,
right as you were,
hanging like a lantern from a streetlamp.

If you are going to be dramatic, be dramatic in some new way.
Because the way you are being now wafts the scent of that old worn out you.
The one from years ago,
pining and whining and all together unpleasantly reminiscent of my younger years.
Oh to be young,
but never to be that again.
Yet there you are somehow captured in time.
Trapped in amber forever so as to perpetually present the same shade of tortured.
The same DNA ****** out of your bones to recreate that 'brand new you' into infinitude.
You haven't evolved
and I'm afraid I haven't devolved enough for us to be on the same end of the food chain.
I would shame you and wag my finger in front of your face,
but I'll hold.
One doesn't go to a museum to bemoan history.
I wanted to see how far I had come and man were my boots made for walkin'.

You pulled a 'My Sister' straight down to the ground
down, down, down
no one's going to miss her
my sister, my sister
no one's going to want her around
the sounds of the well as you wished her to hell
as you shivered and shook all around
you pulled a 'my sister', my sister
you pulled her right down to the ground

When I was young my mother painted the ceiling with every color there was.
She made the falling stucco and sealant into clouds and rainbows and horses;
horses of blue and purple and green.
One time I left my room and stared all night at the stars,
they were so much more vivid.
You couldn't deny their presence,
they were like little beings coming straight toward you.
Didn't need to look up, you could stare straight forward out of the window and it's like they were looking at you too.
But cautious, they never came close enough for me to grab them and trap them in my hand like a rolli-polly.
There were fireflies that loved to gather like tiny self supporting oil lamps by the tree next to our house.
They would swim around me because they knew they were far too clever for me.
There were toadstools that I would kick out of principal and river rocks that were never smooth enough for the current hadn't the will.
Caves where the ivy would circle for no reason but to give me the best hiding place of all time.
We ate snow that one time, when it had snowed for the one time it would in 7 years.
There was a single stoplight in a square of one tiny block where I would get dizzy riding my bike.
Then the Crawfords would let me ride their horse.
That's where I got stung by a bee for the first time and I fell on the red dirt road and cried and cried.
One time a tornado almost swallowed me whole while my trailer baby-sitter wasn't looking.
I remember asking with all sincerity for the third time how to spell cat.
Lolly-pops adorned the daycare where I watched trolls singing Kokomo.
These are all the good things I can remember,
so I cherish them.

frailty
in beauty, as if that was the way it was supposed to be.
with hollow bones, like sparrows, just a stones throw away
if she was wicker, someone paid a hefty price.
and the bed sheets smelled twice laundered.
thin and devoid of meaning.
such a silly thing,
that moved like wind and breath would sway her
willow tree, that one
bent over in eternal weakness
like a daisy, wilting
but how she lorded over all the thoughts of men like a sovereign

For the record, I suppose it should be stated I lost my soul in Vegas.
I would love to go back there and find it among those glittering lights and buffet tables of never-ending artful desserts.
It's funny that all I really remember are those pretty desserts and fried mashed potatoes.
I want those things back.

I'm like a raver with those lights.
I want to consume them.
I want to glow in my pores.
Not the cliched glow that wraps itself around the impregnated many,
but the glow that comes from sitting next to neon for too long.
That it could somehow stain you.
Rub off like fairy dust on skin.
That I could fly away due to its energy or wishful thinking.

Take me back to Vegas,
where they still hand that out for free by the boatload.
I need not gamble.
I need not glad-hand.
I would simply sit idly by the buzzing of pinks and blues and greens and reds.
And me and those cheap 1920's lights will have a moment,
a moment I can share with the cocktail waitress who asks me for the third time if I'm sure I don't need a little refresher drink.