skirting the rusty rose of a brooch
dangling on canvas bodice as she leans
tightly over me; the waves of wrinkles
on her be-bangled red hands pointing to the
wrong punctuation; this is dream-building
in the fifth grade; don't end the dream
too soon, she gruffs sing-song like
a prize-winning racoon; and still applauds
the bricklaying we so clumsily feign
for our castles in the sky; tho she, too,
dies of cancer in the last year; the tubes at the
very last weaving through the canvas;
something of a final stitch to the making
of a dream; and so i think all dreams in me
they die in darkness and still i wonder
what happens to the crenellated castle
walls i abandoned scores of years and
many As ago; and still we pat our doeeyes
on their infinitile heads and **** our
cynical shacks-by-the-forest-fires back
into our heads, begging beneath the
damp light of early-onset reverie: save
us, won't you, from the stiff stillborn of
dreams our generation lost to the fantasy
of getting what the saddest, dreamless
dollared dupes decree; oh be better yet for me,
my naive sums, and take your brick-laying;
your canvas sheen; your impossible, doubtless
dreams with broach and gnarl; with gruff and
soundless trill; your soulful self metastasized
with every beat
to the happy grave.
