For G. H.*

The secondhand smoke on your old hoodie
is tendrils of disembodied electricity
mercilessly carving through my diaphragm.
Somehow, I envision ivy climbing the side of an
abandoned house in unkempt droves of static veins…
My throat is cruel in the way that it seeks you,
like in the way squatters seek warmth behind boarded
doors that won’t easily open up.
If we ever kissed, I imagine them dwelling both of
our atriums and airways simultaneously,
and zero degree weather would use our breath
to leave crudely written IOU’s on the only
window still intact. I’d think an angry ghost would appear,
and remind us why we’re there in the first place.
Even then, I’d still like to believe
you’d give me a light all the same.

This silent sentinel haunted by time,
Unearthly screams and violent crimes!
Abandoned; decrypted, this barren womb.
In darkling corners, a petrified tomb,
Where unbidden echoes hammer at the walls
As the wraiths creep on their hollow foot-falls.

on silver she flies
this delicate
mother-of-pearls

moon adrift
during the daylight

she's luminous
like snow atop
auburn branches

or like pale petals
from the sky

an ethereal
daydream

fluttering
on a
warm breeze

The parched night-blooming cereus
aches for la lune’s silvery caress,
the same as I ache for the words
etched in secret codes on your tongue.

There’s a nightly symphony in your touch;
chamber music inspired by the hints
of heavy crimson within your lips;
velvet petals spreading before a rapture...

How I long to crush them to mine
with a sweet, savage brutality!
How I long to hear the angelic aria
of your moan.

With my cold hands,
I wash the sepulcher,
As the flaxen widow
Crudely set aside her
Floral wares.

In all black, she saunters
Along. There’s a tiny bell
That snickers in her petticoats,
As well as a pocket watch,
Unfamiliar with the folds
Of a silk handkerchief.

The stones were oddly
Quiet that day, but I do recall
An uneasy sermon…
The Earth wailed to me
In the rain, and I became
Inebriated by petrichor, and a
Light sneeze…

Her bony hands fingered
The bell in her petticoats,
And the pocket watch fell
To her feet.
In silence, she knelt
To retrieve her late husband’s
True love; how he loathed
To waste his waking hours!

I set adrift a funeral pyre
once. There was blood
on the waves for days after that,
and the sun seemed to cringe
whenever their reds
touched…
The stories were once beautiful,
like old letters bound together
by a scarlet ribbon.
Faded pink stationary, –
a redolent salt and Clair de Lune
mingling in the folds of a
paper cut…
The sea burned with fury
around them.
They were wayward bottles
filled with pearls,
and love notes so envied
by the her; they’d just never seem
to grow old with her.
She hated that, I suppose.
I would have too…
“You’re too far inland,”
some would say…
"Not even a lake for miles
to skip stones – not even a river
to lose a wedding ring too!"
I suppose the sea was my
only true love after that,
then I remembered that ghost
on the shoreline, –
salt falling freely from
his palms.

Apparently she was a mermaid;
there wedding was
to be a plastic Malibu affair.
Her dress, a bedazzled, gaudy
sarong with leis for a train, and coral
bits for the rings…

She said she was addicted to pearls, –
ate them like candy,
until about a year ago when they plucked
her from the ocean,
and gave her pills instead.

“Entertain her for a bit,” the other nurse said.
So I picked up the Ken doll,
and let Barbie buy another pet dolphin.