Starlit nights bring a sense of tininess.
The vast soot-stained cloak of the sky,
pierced with so many tiny scintillating
spots of vim opalescent flares, is a heavy
intoxicant. It contains a thing most panache.
A girlish teetotaler beside me says,
"We're like those stars, distantly inflamed,
lost in a void of what we cannot know."

She is most apt in her contrivance.
I wish to be castellated, terraced
with Byzantine buttresses and towers-tops.
I want a portcullis for my portico that is
made mostly out of gold, an inner bailey
where the stars can sleep and the wine may flow.
I want the wine most metaphysical,
the type that flows and churns, perning
inside the inner sanctum of the mind.