I imagine petals sound like
a star spray of
harp song
  when they fall on
a dreamer's tilled
land
and that Azaleas grow
  in a backwards life
where time isn't counted by
clock hand
  You have painted
a Floristry of roses
in a neglected girl of a
wasteland.

The life that we live in
Is just a train we all ride
A crescent appears in the skies
When the moon falls behind
Darkness is all over the place
When the sun goes blind
This is not a story to make you sad
Or something to make you hide
It's to tell you how the pain ends
If you choose who stays beside
Life can be worth living after all
When you throw sadness aside
I can't tell you how happy I can be
Every time you cross my mind
So please just stay close to me
Don't let me disappear in the tide

~


Heat mirage on sandy soil
disintegrating cirrus left from the cool night
skittering horn toad flattens to hiss before
leaving the sunbaked earth
for shadowed hollow protections.

Large red-bottomed fire ants
carry back to a simple hole cuttings of magpie
they store foodstuffs for the hard months ahead
while cleaning the land of rotting bodies.

Hollow bones stripped of flesh
begin to bleach and crack
stiff winds pile feldspar and quartz along the western edge
of a bird long free from nest building and chick rearing.

Only a passing coyote gives the magpie body a second thought
before turning west towards dancing foothills.   /

It sounds silly to complain,
every other girl would say I'm lucky
say I've got it in the bag,
that I've got things I thought I'd never have,
yet still I am not pleased,
for while my bank account as been eased
my heart
has not

so there's no more laughing
at an evening fire
no more the crackle of flames
to echo our desire
for summer is on its way
yet all i feel is the cold
sat staring at the dying embers
of a love once known
your reasoning remains certain
and so easily evoked
those moments i recall now
mere epitaphs i wrote
what of that first kiss or
that walk upon your stairs
the warmth of our breath
as i slide through your hair
cast aside as mere memories,
lost shadows in this game
as the ashes burn out
through the endlessness of blame

summer does beckon as you
heed its call to take flight
redefining your season
escaping my darkness to light
alone to search deep inside
and what will I see
complicated and broken lives
but only one truly free
for no mirror will ever conceal
my self inflicted lies
decisions and failures welling up
in these guilty grey eyes
a sentence delivered through
the coldness of silence
yet I will appeal to take solace
in some other summer dress
to mask the responsibilities,
to seek shelter for this shame
it is I that must carry the burden,
bear the endlessness of blame