my bus draws in a shudder down the chine
of tarmac dusk; the heavens not quite mine,
  sole slick of oil beneath a slant of bane.
we pass late souls, their windows’ chasmal wounds,
mongrels lie limp in lawns that no one prunes,
       and gardens taint in hiding, piled in vain.

the mounds give way behind their sunken name,
worn to bone, yet stripped of earned acclaim,
  they bend like oaths soon shattered by the dawn.
their bark was not quite mine, though flesh i’d come to know;
but woods are nonsense wrapped in autumn’s glow,
  lone pyrrhic den that holds no lasting mourn.

my face bursts into shards without a frame,
my eyes and veins are ichor’s vile flame,
  the fire not quite mine; it climbs a colder spire.
once saccharine and syrup tight as lace,
i kissed the charm, then drifted into space,
  and yet rue looped itself around a wire.

she spoke in sore orts of scripture that night,
her verses saintly writhen out of the light,
    wry sultry keen she wore beneath her skin.
she faded soon, as fever always goes;
i kept her spikes in jars, where sorrow grows,
     bittersweet ire, not quite mine, burning in.

the driver hums beneath a simmering pall,
a woman knits her rosary’s funeral call,
  the beads tightening a hoop around her breath.
a child bleeds cherry from a sinful shed,
blasphemy clings close, like blood to the head,
  a carcass, not quite mine, trails close to death.

i glean spent hours from dusk’s malicious shrine,
seek vestiges where aching seasons twine,
  and in their still, catch breathlessly, a rhyme.
what breaks behind remains in salt and brine,
   all not quite mine, yet wholly mine, this time.

i logged the warheads’ saintly arc,
through treaties transcribed just to shrink,
while taboo colonized the dark,
a name is never worth the ink.

i processed breath in programmed loops,
the margins where the righteous blink,
between the cables and the troops,
a name is never worth the ink.

each border twitched in nitrate maps,
the walls revised in auto-sync,
i traced the bloodstained autographs,
a name is never worth the ink.

she entered nothing but a tag,
a field in forms that didn’t think,
her voice absorbed by final lag,
a name is never worth the ink.

the city burned in filament,
the state dreamed red and blue in sync,
we lost her in the precedent,
a name is never worth the ink.

the cat observed, the shutters closed,
she left a toothbrush by the sink,
her absence, not to be disclosed,
a name is never worth the ink.

the archives hum. the geiger talks.
my shell is built where memos clink.
they tested God beneath the rocks:
a name is never worth the ink.

deterrence smiles with sober teeth,
bureaucracy demands a link,
but all that lives remains beneath,
a name is never worth the ink.

once upon a murky gleaming, while I sat in peaceful dreaming,
haunted by the golden streaming of a sun I knew before;
while i lingered, senses slipping, sudden came a memory, dripping;
dripping soft as footsteps; tipping o’er a childhood door.
“’tis a dream,” i whispered faintly, “just a dream, and nothing more,
    just the dawn, and nothing more.”

ah, i well recall the hour, twin in soul and form and flower,
two in gait, in skirt and collar, bound for days that soared and tore.
hand in hand we walked unknowing, where the amber sky was glowing,
past the railing, wind still blowing, through a world we’d yet explore,
past the gleam and fading laughter down a bridge of evermore...
    gone, it seems, forevermore.

and the warm and wistful trailing of her shadow, faint and failing,
fell across my thoughts like ashes from a hearth now cold and sore.
strangely stilled was all her love, changed her tone to aching woe,
gone the warmth, replaced by woe, cold and clean behind closed doors.
“speak,” i begged, “the one I cherished, has she vanished to some shore?”...
   but the silence answered, “nevermore.”

then I climbed a roof, forsaken, sunset gold and soul mistaken,
there to gaze on roofs and fences of a life i held before.
she, the girl with pigtail braiding, now in poise and poise parading,
spoke in tongues of grown detaching, eyes that sought my own no more.
“has the night devoured her laughter, locked it past some inner door?”
      still the air replied, “no more.”

o, how softly sang the twilight! once we shared this selfsame skylight,
now i watch alone, in silence, as the orange embers pour.
roof and ridge in shadow yawn, and all the girl i knew was gone,
changed to stranger sharp and drawn, who held my hand no more.
and the sky, once wide and wondrous, seemed to whisper from its core:
    “you shall find her; nevermore.”

was it time that drew the curtain, or some sorrow, slow but certain?
did she walk ahead in yearning for a self she fancied more?
did i falter? was i clinging? while her soul began its winging,
winging toward a world where union withered into folklore?
still I searched the golden fading, still I reached, forever sore,
      she is not the girl before.

so i sit, alone, in grieving, sun and shadow interweaving,
all the bridges burnt and silent that we crossed in days of yore.
and within that glow descending, I saw not her form, unbending,
but the ghost of all pretending we had ever been before.
now my soul, beneath that sunset, whispers softly evermore:
      “she is gone, and nothing more.”

it was so long and so long ago
  in a gloaming-lit room where the lamplight lay low,
that i, with the hand of a slumbering saint,
  summoned a spirit from water and paint.

no angel in heaven had garments so fair,
 his robe was of lustre, his crown made of air,
and his wings, they were tremulous shawls of the sea,
 and he looked; yes, he looked; ever rarin’ for me.

i knew not his name, nor the path he would take,
 but i dreamed him in silence, for dreaming’s own sake.
and i left him alone in the hems of the sky,
 where the clouds chimed gray and the years drifted by.

but o!—through the tombs where the sun-blind are led,
 he wandered, he wandered, the palette of dread,
till the Lord, in a hush, let His finger unbind
 the brushstroke from Time, and the thought from my mind.

and he fell like a stain from the hand of a heir;
  as dew falls unseen on the throat of the air.
with the sigh of a page that has turned in the gloom,
 he came to my door as if risen from tomb.

he remembered the lines i had drawn as a child,
 the blush in his cheeks, and the colors run wild;
his voice freed the sinners and demons from Hell,
 as though all the old noels had forgotten to dwell.

he bore not sacral swords from kingdoms above,
 but eyes that had wept through the ink of my love.
and he whispered—o Heaven!—he whispered to me:
 “i searched all the stars, but you painted the sea.”

now each day that i bide in the shade of his grace,
 the world is a shush when i gaze on his face.
for he walks with the mumble of chants that were true,
 the cherub i painted, who came when fate knew.

and though men may scoff, and though suns may implode,
 the colors still bloom where my longing abode.
for love, in its balm, is a sacred decree,
  and he is the seraph God borrowed from me.