leave me
let the quiet come here
allow my porous dreams a chance
to be cored no more
to be filled with sponge-bath waters

or come to me
with eyes ripened for a funeral
foam on your cheeks from jaunty phantoms
who lean down with a wayward kiss
from eternities bound to a melancholy

oblivion creeping in our stairwell
I crawl down the causeway a stranger
with a plea leashed to my wrist
a bargain on my mind

love is a harsh word
and I dare not speak it here
for fear of cataclysm
or lack thereof