Watching smoke curl in the sky
A simmer reflection, a residue of death stealing life
The scent of sweet burning arrives
Between breaths misting predawn light

A womb collects dead children
We hear them shrink and shiver
Their limbs atrophied, their eyes wide

Every kiss is wildfire
Every yearning is weathered
Like the shedding paint on the boards outside
That needed a touchup, a lifetime ago

Every touch is parched
Every trust is dystopian
The flesh departs from neuronal collections
Untraceable to the heart inside

No daughters, no sons
No lovers, no love
No affection, connection; truth or simple trust
No daughters, no sons
No lovers, no love
No future
No hope

Twenty one years
Swept through all at once, a hurricane rush
Biting the heels of hate and loneliness

I walked the streets of old lives
They grew colder, more familiar every step
I saw faces on the other sides of one way mirrors touched by time
And watched as my words fell like mist on glass

Walk without charring your soul
On approaching apparitions
Their chilling resonance
Will shake the present existence

Casual catastrophe
The hollow yearn of death’s widow
Bites the pavement on a thunderous night
For crippled rattles to ignite

The insidious ruin
Rides a blanket corpse into the liquor store hold up
Feigns apparitions for the madness
Distilling cruelty as a hand’s reach for addicts

A sleeper savant
Stretches his face across barren lust
A killing grin between rotting tusks
That rent the light out of a *****’s still blood

Devouring maggots
Of the ignorant, the arrogant, the cruel
Kiss the blisters on the swollen hearts
Of starving nations left to tear themselves apart

I remember a girl whose eyes were liquid fire
Whose passion dragged me under
She had lips frozen by winter
That melted on touch

Between summer and autumn
The air breathed hot and cold around her
And her eyes grew soft
And her heart grew close

We lost a year in a teenage rush
Of after school talks, and pre-dawn love
Of where we’d go, and what we’d become
A forever we never touched

My pre-dawn conviction is weak
This cold ember death will sink its teeth
My winter coat is a sickly sheath
Sloughing with every retreat

I hope you know
Your eyes lit a thousand snows
We drowned beneath

I hope you know
Your lips caught aflame so cold
Disintegrating against me

For whatever reason
Your glassy stare broke apart in the autumn chill
Fluctuating against summer’s warm laugh
Our first wavering dance

We soaked our skin in teenage radiance
An adolescent haze of lust
Plotting our dreams
In the lull before dawn and dusk

I know I’m dwelling on better times
Wasting my life away
Can’t ******* shake this habit of mine
I guess I miss the days
When love was just a song and dance
And every breath held weight
I’m catching ghosts in the pre-dawn light
Lost in a memory daze

Restless, you lie
Draped in autumn gold
You brush the dirt from your wings
And the leaves from your soul

You trail the night
Fire-flight through your skin
Brightest at the horizon
Distant and brief

Cold fire, wild love
Your passion spills over
Spills out
Cold desire, wild love
Your passion is dire
Count me out