a cotton-coloured sky sheared with wiping hands

foggy windows

when I'm with you through the windshield until

the frame gives and it follows is to the ground

the crows roared Poe loud and low in metronome flow

and floe that hides more than it shows and grows and grows and grows

until we're too cold to move move move

solid

and I was naive to believe the street strips skin

stretches it thin over drum kits like canvas

and lets the beat sound low and loud

names faces traces places

the laces of shoes she said I couldn't walk a mile in

but my feet are fins that should slice tides like skin

but they're rocks chipping

ticking clocks documenting inception

redemption and the vain conclusions you beat to and beyond the grave

from ivory frames crushed in the dark room they rise

as flies bursting into the focus of the microscope's lens broadening past

the horizon of a single winged back

I wear this flannel-plaid red and black button-up long-sleeved shirt

more often than a pair of shoes done-up

to the neck and wrists so tight

bunny-eared laces roped around blue hands and head

I sit on a couch bought however long ago with a floral fabric

dark wood trim flowing from back to arms into its talon feet

dug deep in the flesh of the oak-wood floor

it's quicksand cushions swirl to the dark cracks where change

and TV remotes die where habit lies

contrives to **** the quarters and dimes I might use to buy a new sofa

and wardrobe

I fell in love last night in the eight-hour time when I rested my eyes

I could fly but wouldn't realize the dream becoming lucid even

just to realize the falseness of the perfect woman I arrested in my sleep

never did I think of how we met or why she could have descended

from the sky and I wouldn't have thought twice for I might ruin

the illusion  I didn't know was one but it couldn't be I felt her with me

I held her softy but tight as could be

but she escaped me

got her wings when I refused mine and now they're gone

as the straight-jacket cinder-block reality I wake up in clips them

I'm trying to place her face what she looked like

how her voice sounds why she made me happy

makes

all I have left is a vivid slice of the best night in a while

that felt like years and miles

I'm lying in bed and she leans to kiss my face

though I never saw hers

this world asleep is a pond of still water

and she is my mind's daughter

I had horrible dreams of her last night

of a Mother red haired with soft hands and fine skin that demand

her two boys' respect or the cunning not to be caught in contempt

of her as she doesn't mind burying her head in the sand

if they kiss her before she slips under her dune comforter and sleeps

for a selfish safe-keeping with a smile but is the kind of lady

who pins her lip corners on her cork board cheeks daily like a cast list

while she cooks turkey for all cleaning the wishbones before her plate

to use as window-sill ornaments until her kids come home so they might fly

or at least not to waste the magic on herself but they hide blocks away

in the parking lot shadow of the auto-repair shop's spinning sign

from the Sun and sky

I'm fatally dancing advancing with and toward

a slow zoom through hallways to the dark room

trying to shorten my strides or grip the walls at my sides gouging

a fingernail fear of mortality that makes out the shape

of the cursive-signed names of everyone or thing ever in a

not-so clever attempt to accept the thief that's in and is the night

I breathe heavily and wide to prove that I'm alive until my ribs

touch the white-walls rubbing along in a washboard song

that peels paint like turpentine with a rank smell wafting

from the room at the end of the line and time knuckling under

the backs of my knees scraping off of the floorboards slouching across

the adjacent door frames where exit signs should read thee

forehead pulsating expelling sweat to absolve me and for moments

the room might shine and I am still

I'd rather be the bad guy in situations

of indignation when the mistreatment is

misinterpreted or fleeting

I'll greet salt in your chest that would cauterize

but ostracize when your brine-blood boils to thaw

my cold heart on contact til it expands and contracts again

in blind hope of seeing something new but I won't

wound you