Look at you, Blue Oleander
at the margins
of a birthday wish—

at seventeen, you were
the night’s favorite
sparkler,

and at twenty-seven,
the morning’s
favorite petal to kiss.

1.
Toss n turn all night i cant sleep
see my pills think I might OD

Too many thoughts inside my head
Chest full of regret and ashes from the cigarettes

2.
Toss n turn all night to the break of dawn
check my phone each minute see if you are on
line, my heart is weak i change position
to fill the void where you used to lay within

(break)

Tossin n turning
my heart is hurting

How did I turn astray

Drinks I'll be stirring
slowly I'm learning

Why you chose to walk away

Money I'm yearning
**** I keep burning

Baby don't leave me

I cant't be strong
If you are gone

....

On the cusp,
heat on heat on heat
breaking to snot ridden storms
and hoarse, blasted throats

the following cold front
isn’t ideal
but in its heavy blue resolve
lowered pressure leads
to a duvet covered peace

September heat to melt the
sealing wax, closing off summer
as grasses, golden as they die
still whisper with insect thought

the trees reply in kind
though the greying of their temples
can’t be hidden
reminding of the irresistible slide
to winter’s wide silences

Commute recommenced,
the verges rekindled their
annual morning conversations,
heard twenty times

As my muscle memory drove,
I sought the last red comments
of poppy heads cheering,
but the long, dry grasses
sounded familiar tired whispers
that threatened to drown

I could allow them to dictate the script
of another season,
clichés so often spoken
as to be silence

but I can still hear
the poppy red
I hear the poppy red

I know the autumn is waiting,
pensive to embrace the loss of heat,
sweats moving on to other climes
where they’re understood

I hold til the skeleton of winter
can be seen and read
by my fingers on the sorry bones
that please me, alone

The impulse of summer waning
sends an annual, yet always forgotten shift,
the hedgerows and fields conspire
to rewrite the scent enough
so the mind wanders to open fires
and comfort food
even though the sun still beats
scant weeks away we’ll swaddle

i wrote that drunk
i was trying to bypass
an impasse
lucked out and
circumnavigated the
rabbit
ran into the fox
he stole my color
only to find it again
at first light
and now i nod
to the speed of life
the unceasing turning
of greater and greater
wheels
the lightness of death
as it passes

there's no
circumnavigating
that