If only poets could also be perfumers, imagine
the wonders they could bottle (as I am no poet,
forgive this concoction, but I couldn't resist).
It smells like our love, give it a whiff.

Those top notes you smell? Scales of butterfly wings
and paper, new guitar strings and pollia
berry. You can catch a slight odor of your
much-hated fish fins (I swore you were a child of the ocean).

It gets deeper at the heart, excuse my pun and
irony (your heart turned out more shallow than my
bathroom sink).

Here tequila meets *****, the night bleeds into
day. An orchid on the verge of rot, a mouthful
of condensed milk and tears to kiss away the
growing, gaping ****.

Only near the end notes does this spell truly
break (so forgive the “midnight” reference I put in the formula).
When you smell the crushed angel wings and
blood-soaked, shattered
chandelier, a paprika heart beating wildly,
remember the smell of bruises and nightmares.

I trust you need no recipe to recreate
this masterpiece but not in the same proportion,
bottle, ways; I refuse to be your donor of raw
human juices.

With broken wing
She tried to fly
A broken wing
The ruse she tried
On broken wing
The sigh, it died
For broken wing
Her lover cried

r ~ 12Mar14

Tiptoe with me through roads of mottled rainbows
We’ll build a city of coffee cream clouds and crystallized light
Our sticky shadows can stumble jump rope with fizzling stars
And our light will tang in the air with peace

Every streecorner will have an off-key symphony
Played with tongues broken from laughter
Raise your arms to catch the words that’ve ballooned into the stratosphere
I’ll tangle my fingers in your palm to lift you higher

You’ll collect liquid moon in a sandcastle bucket
Drips of silver catching in your spidersilk hair
I’ll pour it down all outside the doily mold
It’ll twist down to earth in fractured motion

Trust me, I never knew how to fly
Only to fall, and to fall with broken hands
Jump with me and skate down a sunset
Dorothy ain’t got nothin’ on this kind of color

I’m blinder than an arsonist with night vision goggles
But only ‘cause I see with my heart instead of reflections of light
Life is opaque when your soul is an old one
Though I’m still getting drunk on the learning wine

Take a rose and ***** a finger on a petal
The softest feelings always have the sharpest bite
The devil’s left the details to hammer her way up to heaven
She’ll shatter kaleidoscope bullets into mosaics of sin

Love is the game that all the best dreamers play
I think up slow nonsense that fills my lungs with longing
Bright towns are always blurrier than the grey
And my brush is shaky from absent disuse

So bring me home (my home is you)
Build love from the broken rubble souls
Sing for our voices reaching higher than the sun
As my hair links with yours in the summer breeze

Frozen bubbles can chime on every door
Our bare feet will press into wet desert clay
Smiles will be painted pure and golden
And all the colors will fill our footprints as we walk away in joy.

Tiptoe with me through roads of mottled rainbows
We’ll build a city of coffee cream clouds and crystallized light
Our sticky shadows can stumble jump rope with fizzling stars
And our light will tang in the air with peace

Every streecorner will have an off-key symphony
Played with tongues broken from laughter
Raise your arms to catch the words that’ve ballooned into the stratosphere
I’ll tangle my fingers in your palm to lift you higher

You’ll collect liquid moon in a sandcastle bucket
Drips of silver catching in your spidersilk hair
I’ll pour it down all outside the doily mold
It’ll twist down to earth in fractured motion

Trust me, I never knew how to fly
Only to fall, and to fall with broken hands
Jump with me and skate down a sunset
Dorothy ain’t got nothin’ on this kind of color

I’m blinder than an arsonist with night vision goggles
But only ‘cause I see with my heart instead of reflections of light
Life is opaque when your soul is an old one
Though I’m still getting drunk on the learning wine

Take a rose and ***** a finger on a petal
The softest feelings always have the sharpest bite
The devil’s left the details to hammer her way up to heaven
She’ll shatter kaleidoscope bullets into mosaics of sin

Love is the game that all the best dreamers play
I think up slow nonsense that fills my lungs with longing
Bright towns are always blurrier than the grey
And my brush is shaky from absent disuse

So bring me home (my home is you)
Build love from the broken rubble souls
Sing for our voices reaching higher than the sun
As my hair links with yours in the summer breeze

Frozen bubbles can chime on every door
Our bare feet will press into wet desert clay
Smiles will be painted pure and golden
And all the colors will fill our footprints as we walk away in joy.

Pay to play
For a right of way
Nothing to say
It’s mandatory

It starts off good
You feel alive
But then it all
Starts to dive

When you don’t sing
Because they might hear
Even thought the words
In your lungs still sear

High rise on the demise
Of everything you thought
Was real but compromised
In what your taught

Hear your name
Look the other way
Fangs will meet you all the same

For now fight
For freedom and right
To sing through the night
Which you own
And to others
Shant you condone.

Pay to play
For a right of way
Nothing to say
It’s mandatory

It starts off good
You feel alive
But then it all
Starts to dive

When you don’t sing
Because they might hear
Even thought the words
In your lungs still sear

High rise on the demise
Of everything you thought
Was real but compromised
In what your taught

Hear your name
Look the other way
Fangs will meet you all the same

For now fight
For freedom and right
To sing through the night
Which you own
And to others
Shant you condone.