It’s cold tonight in Eden
A full moon is a spectral sight
An apple tree is in full bloom
In this garden where we may say our prayers
Dirt is caked under my nails
I’m tumblin' down, down, down
Eight feet, just for you my dear,
Lenore can’t so no
Not when the throes of passion
Are caught so deep
I’m restless against the stillness
Aching and grinding
Yet paradise is so cool this low

My mind is a graveyard,
of memories I’ve put to rest,
sometimes I’ll drop off flowers for the ones still banging at my chest,
but I’ve learned the more I visit them,
the more they hurt,
like ghosts they’ll haunt me,
till I dig them back up,
God, why do I love playing with zombies that never even loved me?
people who care for you don’t make you dig up graves,
just to bury themselves again,
but truth is,
zombies aren’t real,
and neither were your apologies,
because who apologizes by digging up dead memories,
instead of planting flowers on their graves.

my own importance is swallowed like a pill,
by the resonance of his voice,
vocabulary ****** dry and replaced with a sheen of the need to
stay so unbearably quiet.

i always want to waltz in open spaces,
feel the air rushing past my arms as i spin,
but walking into a house so white and so cold,
i feel like i have ignored the welcome mat at the door.

it's his alleged presence,
or maybe it's just my own scepticism acquiring the patina of caution.
i walk with soft slow steps as if not to wake the dead in the garden,
cut short the swirl of my movements,
replace air vents in cartilage joints with rocks or plaster.
am i even supposed to feel like a person in my own right?

i wish someone would drop a pin for me to assess the quiet,
but there is a soft small current of people feeling at home,
or the quiet and the cautious mixing in like a cavity in a set of white teeth.

when i step back out into the sun,
my lungs grow fuller with oxygen, the leaves appear greener and the sky is more vibrant.
i do not feel his eyes on me as much; or the weight of being contained.
perhaps he just wanted me to go home.

City cops, either
all pigs or all fathers,
break cement curbs with rubber
as the shin of a warm body
brushes a front bumper;
warning sign clearer than headlights.

I stand arrested across the highway.
An idle ghost, mouth agape, eyeballing
the Record Courier parking lot,
officers breaking cement
breaking kneecaps of a civilian.

Where he kisses the ground
I once analyzed the black of the sun,
diseasing slowly from time and the light.
I soaked the now with a present mind
and active heart, living for life

defined by want.
I recall Impressionist interpretations
of Carson Valley sitting on
the windowsill of the Courier,
a hand wrapped around my wrist

using its nails to pick off my skin
naively, so I’ll bleed out
through my scabs and my corpse
will be captured in that moment.
Handcuffed, legs pressed

between my shoulder blades,
but seconds still pass.
Divorced from a faded past,
I wait until three uniforms
shove a man into the backseat

and drive to the station.
We’re now shadows of
our former selves in
the lights of a cop car,
separated from when
our heartbeats were the loudest.

Big city.
Crowded train.
Observe the vast graveyard,
on the commute.
All those who came before.
Some days it induces fear.
The great unknown.
The hard stop.
Some days it spurrs a sigh.
A releiving exhale.
All things end.
Reminder of the moment.
A promise to end all suffering.
Assuming I'm patient enough,
to let it consume me naturally.
Reminder not to rush to the finale.
It is inevitable, after all.

Feathers, falling
from the wings of the dark
angel, falling, losing height
over the foggy graveyard
- the fields with stakes and stones

Men had to ****
boys were frightened heroes
hunger and disease did the rest

Life is scrawny, the chests
of the girls are too flat
for the babies in their bellies

Between the frail black feathers
they arrange flowers of past times
- the flowers of future times

With every colour they dream
of the veiled sun
and wish it back