Your words sizzle,
spouting fire in the back of my mind
from kindling
to flames from the maw of an unappeased dragon.
They twitch at my lips,
begging to be set free
but I keep them trapped.
They want to flee
so my mind rinses cleaner than Pilate’s hands.
They cling like spiders to my gums,
finding holes from which to poke
a solitary spindly leg
and then explode,
scattering shadows and hallucinations
and vocabulary *****.
But now the monsters are lurking in corners
not just in my brain
and they reach out with scaly claws
to brush passersby on the shoulder
or neck
and I am Pandora and you are
the box.

I will walk with you in dreamland,
and verdant trees will brush our brows
with hoary leaves,
and silvered fish will swim in untouched seas.
The sun will warm our hearts and kiss our cheeks
as does the doting father.

I will walk with you in starlight
while the incandescent crescent marks the ground
with dappled light,
and the night watchers will peer at us through leaves
up, up away where they are secreted and safe
from sun’s harsh glare.

I will walk with you in meadows
where the peonies and bluebells prosper,
soft and slow,
kissing sweetly as their petals brush our skin.
And the meadowlark shall sing for us, her song of joy
sent forth in notes of gold.

I will walk with you forever,
down the path untamed and tangled up
in brambles,
and also down the road so clear and straight
and gilded by the sun with bricks of gold.
Wherever you shall go, my darling,

I will walk with you.

When I was young, I caught a moonbeam
in a jar.
And I caught the summer breeze, too,
and the smell of wildflowers,
and just the way the mourning dove sang
outside my window.

And the moonbeam glanced through the glass
in a thousand rays,
and the breeze swirled around
for a hundred days
and the dove’s notes trilled and echoed back
into themselves.

And I put them in a little drawer
and turned the key –
to keep them safe, you see.
But I kept them there for overlong,
the lids were tight, ******* on too strong,
and dust had settled over the tops.

And when again I pulled them out,
the moonbeam flickered, small and sick,
and not so quick, the summer breeze.
The flowers were a vague perfume of
summer, and the birdsong was a whisper,
nothing more.

Most carefully I unscrewed all the jars,
and shook the remnants out the window like
dead things.
But the new wind caught them and
carried them away on its wings,
ferried off to the grave of the uncatchable things.