The clouds dipped low,
low enough for our fingertips
to touch perfume to their necks

glancing over the town lights,
filtering darkness into a
sick pink haze, they lay and swell in valleys
like gaudy jewels on the neck of a
woman laying at a wake.
Maybe her lies are the
most believable truth
we'd never take.

we were two doves,
beaded on gossamer wires
early windswept sunlight
it cracked our skin
metallic melodies
bathed listening
ears in it’s soulless rapture
a call of illusory progress
lifting above sagging rooftops

sky packaged in brown lace,
and at her feet
glittering blankets white.

although it was the bitter
rinds of a passive love
cellophane days
crackle loud in a static mind

Swim in hot
manilla seas; Where dreams
fail to be a membrane to
protect from waking

we were two doves on a wire
intertwined between dusk and daylight
the weight of the day
settled with a hazy sigh
upon our bones
shadows spreading
like spilled ink bled
from trees.

Headlights hang.
trapped in eyelashes
aspirations wandered above
struck down into
the musty grass of a church lot
there was no mercy to be had
I swore it heaved
the floorboards bled purple,
Clocks tore themselves apart
while the frothy whispers of flowers
haunted the humidity.
to get lost here
among the carnation sky
would almost be better.

In a shrill corner
with overcast clouds dully wasting the day
for contemplation washes in brackish waves
flood mouth and eyes

I tell you but
no better words hover lazily
like dust caught in light

In the shrill corner
held with fierce intensity,
the best way small palms can clench.
you were some treasure I'd finally found
which might slip
from my pockets, of threadbare fabric
burying between the thistle and trash
by the sidewalks'  path
by my own oversight

you make a promise
I can’t swim to the bottom
for fear of what truth might look like.

Consumed without discretion.
without abatement.
smoke and ashes will settle
into bloodstream and bone
leaving  fossil traces

If one day you want to slip between the fibers
to be among something new
I will understand
let you pass

with fists clenched.
around their flesh
I will make a promise.