Your perfect mouth forms
An inundation of sweet nothings
But your eyes don't echo the words

You hold my face like I mean something
But the reflections in your eyes show only
The ghosts of lovers past

Your body radiates beckoning warmth
I inhale your subtle scent
You're human
You're real
Every sense I possess tells me so

But as I reach for you
All I grasp is air
It slips between my fingers
And sends a chill through my body

Your electricity lingers in my lips, my fingertips, my breath
Raising goosebumps on my arms
Running a current along my spine

I yearn to again
Electrocute myself with your touch
I ache to feel your vitality
I long for a phantom
A man whose thoughts I will never again invade
I long for a memory

Once you're gone,
I have trouble,
Finding comfort,
In drowsiness.
I see only red and orange.
Yet when you're here,
I see only red and orange.
Yet, completely different hues.
So how can the same colors,
Meet at polar opposites?
An impossible feat,
Yet accomplished so effortlessly.

They stole the night
out from beneath their feet
and replaced it
with endless painted black billboards
with cosmic advertisements
that read: tired of those pesky feelings?
then come on down to the real world
and the stars were switched with
fluorescent bulbs and Christmas lights
the clouds are just moving back drops
and the moon a search light
they stole the day
replaced vibrant blue with
coral blue #64
or baby blue
but mostly gray
they beat ambition with baseball bats
and left it for dead in a ditch
on the side of a high way
they took life
and made it banal
a product
Honey I've shrunk the conversation!
they took the world
and all of it's people
but don't let them
mean you

The blackcurrant words
     seemed grotesque to you
     on the vast tarnished landscape.
Letters curling as October leaves
     pricked your old silver eyes,
     slapdash lines
and glitter thoughts
     splurged upon your paintings.
     You were a poppy,
a dark, minute dot,
     but every idea burst in gaudy red
     from you.
The poems would arrive,
     would come eventually,
     leap from your fingers,
punch onto the page
     and would it be good enough?
     Your product, complete.