Dream for me
a Savannah,
a sestina in reds
at Pandora’s threshold,
clothed in bludgeons of light
and these tears are nothing
but the nightingale’s burden,

the words laden and livid as storm
across the mauve wasteland
unfolds, the sky in its deceit,
promises rain, delivers nothing,
in this room the light will ruin me,
the squall of glass slippers overhead,

on my knees, now
the abstraction of the body, opaque
I write in the limber whisper
of fingertips, deep villanelles
about love, restless love
on the skin of your back,

histories annotated
by gestures of supplication,
I drag fingernails across a fairytale
and out falls a wide-eyed harem,
April-blue veils trail their blood, narrowing
the flagrant staccato echo in my sternum,

A palm reader warns of conduits
and spells, the darkness
that puddles like lake water
in my mind, moths of Summer
a fragrant blue,
restless blue

notes like scorpions
scurry beneath the blankets,
strands of hair, stained sheets
this vacancy glows through the shears
I forget, how early, and still
the night falls here,

as how early it fails.....